Spirited Scripts

InterTribal Entertainment, Southern California Indian Center, Inc. and VSA Arts of New Mexico are inviting Native American storytellers to submit a 10-page screenplay in any genre that reflects the American Indian experience. The fourth annual Creative Spirit Script-To-Screen Initiative is designed to provide employment and training opportunities for American Indians in film production. Two winning 10-page scripts will be chosen by a panel of judges from the entertainment industry and the Native American community. One script will be produced and screened as part of the second annual Two Worlds Festival of Native Film and Theater in Albuquerque this September. The other script will be produced by InterTribal Entertainment in Los Angeles sometime in the fall of 2009. Visit nativefilm.com to view trailers of previous Creative Spirit productions and to download guidelines and submission forms. There is no entry fee, but scripts must be postmarked by Friday, June 26.

Kids = cute. Sick kids = sad ... and cute.

There are those who maintain that whole milk, gathered in the “old-fashioned” way—that is, gently hand-pulled straight from a cow’s udder and quaffed fresh from the milkmaid’s bucket—is among the most pure and genuine of food experiences. Those selfsame purists would also say that milk obtained by more modern methods—say, from an industrial milking machine on the floor of some massive factory—is more of a soulless, mechanical product. I don’t know from farms. But I do know movies. And there’s a vast difference between a tearjerker that earns its emotions in a seamless and organic manner and one that cranks up the waterworks with all the subtlety of a fireman attacking a fireplug with a monkey wrench. My Sister’s Keeper falls squarely in the latter category.

Double-featured art documentaries inform Guild Cinema this weekend

When one man’s wadded-up piece of paper is another man’s exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, the infinite mystery—and absurdity, perhaps—of the art world is clearly evident. Two documentaries dealing with people who penetrated, comprehended and conquered the often confusing realm of aesthetics take an artful, layman-friendly look at differentiating between what is visually ordinary and what is extraordinary.

“Man vs. Cartoon” on truTV

The best science programs are the ones in which things blow up a lot and there is the distinct, recurrent possibility that someone could get hurt very badly. I can’t vouch for the fact that viewers actually learn much from these sorts of shows, but they’re definitely more entertaining than that high school science lab you had.

Week in Sloth

The Week in Sloth