SuperWonderBang

I just got back from seeing This Is England at the Belcourt with some coworkers. Hands-down, it is the best film I have seen in several years. The plot echoes deeply with today’s political and social situations. More than that, it portrays the deep sadness with which some childhoods are filled.

The movie is relentlessly taut with the threat of violence and despair just outside the corner of every frame, even during the film’s few comic turns. The pervasive disillusion emanates from the starkly crumbling environs, as well as, from the broken spirits and hearts that make up the film.

What some critics have called a formulaic ending is really an attempt at explaining how easily love and hate can seemingly inexplicably live within the same human being.

The film left me stunned and awed. The performances are real and engaging and serve to transform what is certainly a political film into a probing personal drama.

Technorati Tags: this is england,   skinheads, belcourt, turgoose

If you have a minute and are inclined to read some of my writing, please head over to Urbis to review “A Snow Falls.” Your reviews and comments could really help me out as I whip that puppy into shape for further submissions.

I have been disconnected recently from the political scene, the daily news, and really any sort of ongoing topical interests. It’s mostly due to being really busy with work during the day and trying, unsuccessfully (despite lots of time and effort), to make some progress with a freelance project I am working on.

With this pressure, I’ve turned to the digital crack of this day and age: Madden on the Xbox360. I am finally revisiting my Cincinnati Bengals franchise which I started over a year ago. I’m also shredding on Guitar Hero, though I am not very good at that game at all.

In addition to these distractions, the weather seems to be putting a damper on just about everything. It’s hot. It’s dry. It just makes me want to sit on the couch with a book or else watching Vanilla Ice trying to ride a bucking bull on that Ty Murray TV show.

So, what I am looking for is some sort of rejuvenation. Any recommendations?

It was a long, but fantastic day. A great coming together of minds and ideas. Others will be able to sum it up better than I, but I will say that of what I saw, David Owens really took it to another level with some thought-provoking questions of beauty and attraction.

I met some great folks, had some big laughs, and worked pretty hard, too. Sleep now, maybe more on the day in the morning.

Technorati Tags: barcampnashville, nashville, david owens

I arrive at 7:30 am and started the setup for BarCamp. Now, the first speaker is on stage. It was fun morning.

Jessica and I had quite the adventure picking up the coffee. Someone decided to send the two people who know where nothing is in Nashville to pick up coffee and all the accouterments. We nearly spilled about 30 gallons of coffee into the middle of Broadway.

Technorati Tags: barcampnashville, nashville, bongo java

For a project at work, I’ve been diving into the Salesforce.com application framework. It is truly awe-inspiring what they have been able to do.

In addition to building a really powerful and somewhat easy interface into a click-and-build framework for the more technically adept business user, they have created a state-of-the-art SOAP API that offers good security and amazing power. Now, they’ve come out with Apex Code which allows an ever deeper level of integration between your own code/system and your Salesforce applications.

I’m excited about the possibilities of what we can do with Salesforce. I’m looking forward to the internal apps we can build and the really cool stuff we will be able to do for our clients. It’s nice to have a really juicy project to dig into.

Technorati Tags: salesforce, apex code, web services