Sundance Film Festival 2020, Monday 1/27

Director of Time Garrett Bradley & the Richardson family

Time (Bradley, 2019) was once again the first Sundance film of the week that just wrecked me, but in a good way. The story portrays the resilience and odyssey of Sibil Fox Richardson as she advocates and waits for her husband Robert to be released from our dehumanizing prison system in the United States. By focusing on perseverance at incredible duration, it is impossible to not feel moved to make a difference.

Director Robert Machoian and cast of The Killing of Two Lovers

The Killing of Two Lovers (Machoian, 2019) is the version of Marriage Story (Baumbach, 2019) that I can get behind (in alignment with Chuck Klosterman's point of view on MS as stated on Bill Simmons's podcast). Killing begins with a longtake of the protagonist running along a rural street, the image split in half--dark road below, bleak white sky and snow-capped mountains above. Our runner, in drab dark clothing, matches the lower half of the screen but contrasts with the white. He may or may not have just committed a murder, and the stunning soundscape during the sequence is of little help--gunshots reverberate throughout the film but if they're interior or exterior sounds remains to be seen. The whole film is fantastic and I'm at a loss for words besides describing the opening...still recovering and still grateful to have seen it.

Fiction Project: iForce vs. Red X Storylines

Setting: The City
Embed from Getty Images
Embed from Getty Images

Fiction Project: iForce

Fiction Project: Red X

Fiction Project: Rogue Assassins

Fiction Project: The Independents

"Clarifying Street Culture: Integrating a Diversity of Opinions and Voices"

It was a pleasure to work alongside G. James Daichendt, Sebastian Kurtenbach, Paul Gilchrist, and Monique Charles and to be invited by Criminologist Jeffrey Ian Ross (follow his work on Twitter @jeffreyianross) to co-author the article: "Clarifying Street Culture: Integrating a Diversity of Opinions and Voices," published in Urban Research & Practice (22 June 2019).

As presented in the abstract: "This article synthesizes current ideas about the study of street culture by examining six major questions that street culture researchers currently grapple with. The article outlines suggestions for improving scholarship in this field," for "despite the frequency of its usage in the social sciences, urban planning, and selected areas of the visual arts, rarely is the term street culture defined and when it is, the definitions are often conceptually lacking."

Interestingly, this collaborative project began as a Twitter chat with #streetculture on Sept. 8, 2018--each participant responded to questions about the way "street culture" is defined within their respective academic field of study. The resulting article is available here.

My new article, “Clarifying street culture: integrating a diversity of opinions and voices,” co-authored with @Daichendt @skurtenbach @paulgilchrist @Neake81 @jawicks75 appearing in URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE https://t.co/ENYUzEQ7s7 pic.twitter.com/NxrR2IdJE3

— Jeffrey Ian Ross (@jeffreyianross) June 23, 2019