CD 2.0 1.0

Some lucky person will be receiving this song from the brand new (and cooler) CD Exchange group.

Um...Yum?

So...this

So...I just bought this on DVD. Waste of money? Instant classic?

Student From Hell

Since the beginning of January and right up until the end of the school year, I had to tutor an 8th grader who had been suspended for fighting.  At first, everything went along swimmingly.  Around March, it all went south.  I initially wrote a very strong letter to the school district expressing my displeasure at how the student's grades were determined and the lack of assistance I received.  After discussing it with my job, it was decided that sending the letter was not necessary as my paperwork would suffice to show how poor a performance this student turned in.  I altered the letter into a memo, taking out most references to how the district is run by idiots and morons.  I thought I'd share the resulting memo with you.  I have [redacted] the student's name as well as locations. 
____________________________________________________
This note is about [redacted] and the grades that were attributed to her for the second half of the 2010-2011 school year.


I was first assigned to teach [redacted]back on January 10th. We had 12 sessions for the month of January, of which she attended 10. The first two weeks of tutoring were spent on busy work as I did not receive curriculum materials until later in the month, so tutoring truly started on January 24th. At the close of that week, I filled out the paperwork, assigning grades for January based on the five days of work with curriculum materials. I subsequently found out that this grade, based solely on that final week, had been assigned as [redacted] entire second marking period grade. To wit, a single two-hour tutoring session per subject was used to give her a grade for two-and-a-half months of schooling. Despite the fact that she was in school during the second marking period for the months of November and December, none of the work she completed there was used in the computation of her grade.

The same issue around grading arose in the third marking period. We had 10 tutoring sessions in the month of February, of which [redacted] attended 8. At the beginning of March, [redacted] and her family moved into [redacted]. (She was previously living in [redacted], and was being bused to the [redacted] Library.) Once this move took place, [redacted] was no longer bused to the library. This started a pattern of only a 50% attendance rate. There were 18 tutoring sessions in March, of which [redacted] only attended 9. However, I discovered that [redacted] third marking period grades were taken solely from the grades on February’s sheets, discounting all of March and a small part of April. This means that her third marking period grade was determined by only four hours of tutoring per subject. Given that [redacted] had a 40% absentee rate for the third marking period, my official grades for the third marking period would have been much lower, if not failing.

Overall, this means that [redacted] grades for the second and third marking period, a total of five months of school, have been based on only six hours of work per subject.

This pattern of only attending 50% of the sessions continued into the fourth marking period. Of the 13 tutoring sessions in April, [redacted] attended 7. Of the 15 tutoring sessions in May, [redacted] attended 7. In June, [redacted] attended 2 of 8 sessions. Most times, I would receive a text message either moments before or after the session began stating that she would not be coming for tutoring. Other times, I would hear nothing.

At one point in May, [redacted] started to ask that I come to the house to tutor her. I agreed a few times. Then it quickly reached the point where she told me that she wanted to call me every day to inform me whether we would meet at the library or at her house and what time we would meet at. At that point, I had the district office call the parent, as this uncertainty of where and when tutoring was to take place on a daily basis was now a situation I could no longer work with. I was told that the result of the phone call was that [reacted] would meet me at the library from now on. Subsequent to this phone call, which was made on May 17th, [redacted] only came to 4 of the final 14 sessions.

In addition to her absences, [redacted] also would only be present for 1 of the 2 hours of tutoring. As an example of this, if our session was scheduled for 1:30pm, instead of taking the 12:17pm bus from her apartment to be at the library on time, [redacted] would take the 1:17pm bus, arriving at the library around 2:00pm. Then, instead of taking a bus home after the session ended at 3:30pm, she would take the 3:15pm bus home, leaving the library at 3:00pm to make the bus. Therefore, she would arrive a ½ hour late to each session and leave a ½ hour early. This pattern commenced in March and continued to the conclusion of tutoring. In short, since March 1st, [redacted] has only received a little over 20 hours of instruction, roughly 2 ½ weeks of tutoring. She has missed 33 days of instruction, or 8 weeks of tutoring.

To conclude, based on her attendance and work completed, [redacted]did not pass any of her subjects for the second half of the school year 2010-2011.

[redacted] Absentee Dates: 1/13; 1/24; 2/4; 2/11; 3/2; 3/4; 3/5; 3/10; 3/15; 3/18; 3/23; 3/24; 3/31; 4/7; 4/13; 4/14; 4/15; 4/28; 4/29; 5/6; 5/10; 5/13; 5/19; 5/20; 5/24; 5/25; 5/31; 6/1; 6/2; 6/3; 6/8; 6/10; 6/13

April/May Movies

Oof. Two jobs have been kicking me around. 7 days a week of 10-14 hour days totally depleted me. Still, time was found to watch some films the past two months......

Man Without a Cell Phone (C): A Palestinian slacker gets his political voice as he joins his father in fighting against the local cell tower. A cute, but extremely slight comedy.

The Density of Lesser Animals (B-): A Ghanaian action film? Guess so. The action was passable, but far too many slow stretches extolling the beauties of Ghana and why it's far preferable to stay there then go the U.S. Hey, I'm all for visiting Ghana, I just don't need 10 minutes commercials in the middle of my movie.

Paul (A-): Simon Pegg and Nick Frosts' third film parodying film genres loses a little bite from their first two, due to the less manic direction of Greg Mottola, but it still kept me laughing for nearly the entire time. Seth Rogen hasn't gotten tired for me yet, so his antics as the alien suited me just fine.

Born to Be Wild 3D (B-): Baby monkeys, baby elephants and Morgan Freeman. Pretty much what you expect.

The Human Resources Manager (B): The titular man is forced to go to Romania to bury a co-worker to help his company save face. Minor amusement ensues. Enjoyable enough, but forgettable later.

Before the Fall (B): A young boy is sent to one of Hitler's elite schools to train as a boxer, until he discovers that maybe he's being trained for something else. Cliched, but I like Max Riemelt.

Scream 4 (C+): Good killer reveal, horrible 90 minutes before it took place. Sorry sequel.

Hanna (B+): This one I liked. Good story, nice turns by the stars, didn't feel the need to explain everything. Plus, the world needs more killer children.

I Heart Huckabees (D): Billed as an existential comedy, the question I had was : Why am I watching this crap?

Citizen Ruth (A-):  The funniest abortion comedy I've ever seen.  Alexander Payne has not disappointed me yet.  Looking very forward to "The Descendants" later this year.

Hey Boo! Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird (B-):  A perfectly serviceable documentary about a book I've not read, nor a movie I've seen.

How to Live Forever (B-):  A perfectly serviceable documentary about people discussing why some of us might live to be seriously old, which I'm not near yet.

Fast and Furious (C):  A reasonably serviceable 105 minute set up for the 5th film.  What happened in this film?  Were there cars?

The First Grader (C):  A man in his 80's wants to go to school in Nigeria to learn how to read and write.  I was all set to love this film, but the sheer animosity shown him by nearly all the other characters in the film really threw me off.  He can't have been hated that badly.

Buck (B-):  A documentary about the man who served as an consultant on "The Horse Whisperer".  I guess he's good with horses.  Me. I live in Southern NY, not a lot of horses.

Midnight in Paris (B+):  Finally, Woody Allen directs an enjoyable film after a string of misses.  A writer in Paris ditches his fiancee to visit the giants of yesteryear.  Good storyline, good jokes.  That's all I need from a Woody Allen film.  And it keeps me up to date with seeing all he's directed.

The Wonderful World of Tupperware (B):  A rather boring documentary about how Tupperware is created suddenly transforms halfway thorough into a filmed record of an annual Tupperware bacchanalia, replete with Anita Bryant and white robed Tupperware officials conducting a ritual.  I'm throwing out all my remaining bowls before I'm told to commit suicide by the company.

(There might be typos in this.  I'm working 10 hour days every day of the week.  I was up at 4am today.  I don't have a day off until mid June.  Forgive me.)

Another Year Closer.....to DEATH!

March Movies

Time for some more personal thoughts. This time, all the films I saw in March!

A Visitor From the Living (A) and The Karski Report (A): Two documentaries from Claude Lanzmann that are offshoots from his Holocaust documentary Shoah. Living concerns Maurice Rossel's visit to the Theresienstadt camp while Karski deals with Jan Karski's story of reporting the atrocities to the U.S. Government. Both stories are absolutely riveting.

3 Backyards (B-): Three separate slice of life dramas set in Long Island one summer afternoon. Only Edie Falco's story really works, and since the stories never intersect, that means you have a nice 30 minute story in a 90 minute film.

Potiche (C+): Francois Ozon's new film never finds the story it wants to tell. It's a comedy, it's a drama, it's a feminist parable, the left, the right. There's a good film to be found in the story of a trophy wife taking over the family business, but the tone veers so wildly throughout, the film never settles down.

White Irish Drinkers (B+): A perfectly acceptable coming-of-age film set in NY in the 1970's. Every character and situation comes straight from cliche central, but new to me Nick Thurston and the other actors bring their A game, so the film passes by pleasantly.

Limitless (B): A little pill opens up the sections of your mind that you don't normally use. Too bad the screenwriter didn't take one; the ending would have been better. Bradly Cooper has charm and Robert DeNiro is having a good time, which makes the film go down easily; but as stated, the ending just doesn't feel right to me after what came before.

Rango (B+): It looks like other companies are finally catching up to Pixar. A fun and enjoyable romp, with quirky characters and enough humor for adults to keep the proceedings enjoyable. Johnny Depp has great line readings, and while the plot may be a little stale, you'll still walk out smiling.

Source Code (B): A soldier has the last 8 minutes of someone else's like to find the bomber of a train. How does it work? No clue, even the movie admits it's preposterous. The type of film you watch, enjoy, then forget about the next day.

Illegal (B): A social justice film about the plight of illegal immigrants in Belgium. The lead actress does a good job, which helps, but there are still a lot of questions left at the end. Still, I believe the film is looking more to expose injustice then tell a coherent story.

The Panels of São Vicente de Fora: A Poetic Vision (C-): Manoel De Oliveira's short about a character from a painting explaining the painting. Exactly. Still, it has Ricardo Trepa in it.

Sergeant Slaughter, My Big Brother (D): I have absolutely no idea what this short was about. Two brothers fight, then one goes somewhere and the other gets chased for some reason. I'm glad it was only 10 minutes.

Kubrick

Barry Lyndon (B): Great first half, middling second half. I'm not sure the film is the masterpiece others say it is, but it didn't deserve to be the failure it was. The trouble is the two halves of the film are so distinct from each other, they don't quite mesh into one.

Spartacus (B+): A grand, old-fashioned Roman epic. Loads of fun to watch, especially Peter Ustinov. I was a little surprised that Spartacus himself barely figures into the final hour of the film, that took me away from it a bit.

Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (B): Best for the numerous pictures of Kubrick at work and some interesting facts. Otherwise, it's a basic "He was so fantastic and everyone loved him" type of documentary.

Color Me Kubrick (D): God, this was bad. Apparently Kubrick had someone who pretended to be him and swindled some people in 1990's Britain. This is not a good version of the story. The film is just boring, more concerned with fitting in as many callbacks to Kubrick films as possible than in telling a story.

New Directors/New Films

One (D): Continuing the theme of crappy shorts, this one is about a young Afghan girl who walks around and collects items in a metal box she carries on her back. If there was anything more to the film, I missed it.

Winter Vacation (C+): A Chinese film about some youths and adults in a rural Chinese town whiling the time away before winter vacation ends. The humor is meant to be deadpan, and some of it does work; but 90 minutes of the same style over and over just did not work for me here.

Tyrannosaur (B-): A horrible, violent man meets a woman abused by her husband. There is hope in the story, but the consistent downbeat tone before that comes leaves the film feeling like a slog to get through.

Catherine Breillat

Sleeping Beauty (B): Breillat's take on the classic fairy tale starts off intriguingly then flies off the rails at the end. A young girl is put to sleep for 100 years, but does she spend this time living with a family in the woods? What is real, what isn't? All good questions to ponder, until she wakes up? and the film morphs into a feminist parable for the last 15 minutes that makes no sense.

Anatomy of Hell (F): This might be the most horrifying film I've ever sat through. If I had any last shreds of heterosexuality in me, this film grabbed them by the roots and tore them out of me. The nominal plot involves a woman who pays a gay man to watch her for 4 days doing "stuff". The "stuff" is forever seared into my brain and makes me cry on occasion.

A Real Young Girl (C): Not learning my lesson, I watched Breillat's first film, which essentially involves a 14 year girl inserting various objects into her ahem..."lady parts" in extreme closeup for 90 minutes. Fingers, utensils, even a bottle of suntan lotion gets to join the party. Of course, this all takes place when the film is not showing closeups of her expelling liquid waste or having pieces of an earthworm placed down there. There might have been some mild semblence of a plot, but I was too busy contemplating what SPF she was using.