www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv0smG7ptcM

I honestly don’t understand people sometimes. How, after 8 years of our country going down the drain can people look at the two presidential candidates and choose to not change anything. One candidate talks about issues while the alternative just talks about the opposition. One provides concrete ideas for change and the other doesn’t offer anything different then what we have now. The policies that John McCain puts forth are the exact policies that we have right now, so how could anything be different when he’s in office? I can honesty say that I can’t begin to fathom how an informed citizen could cast a vote for McCain/Palin. If someone can give me a good solid reason I’d love to hear it.
A friend of mine said something a few years ago and at first I didn’t agree, but now a few years later I can really see the wisdom in it. He said that the Republican party (then my party of choice, I now claim no party affiliation) holds people, especially conservative christians, hostage with issues like abortion and gay marriage. He said that there are many, many people out there that vote based on those issues and those alone. He’s completely right, there are many people who look at Barack Obama’s stance on abortion and immediately count him out. People even take into consideration issues like prayer in school, that have been dead for decades, and cast their vote accordingly. It’s time to really look at the problems in our country and look at what it will take to fix them. Abortion isn’t ever going to be illegal, if you don’t support it then help out programs that give young mothers another way out. Gay marriage is about equality not personal beliefs. No one wants to change your bible they just want to be able to have hospital rights for their loved ones. America is a democracy and it’s policies will never match your beliefs or dogma, it wasn’t built as a Christian nation it was built on the idea of freedom of religion and that means compromise. Not compromise of your beliefs but compromise in the rules we all have to live by.

If you have looked at John McCain’s record on the economy, on health care and foreign relations and still think he would make a better leader then ok. At least look at the issues though, and also look at how he is conducting his campaign, the following video sums it up.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b42UI_m-HSU

Alright, no more politics for a while.
Everything is good down here, I’m busy with work and school. I have a couple of cool projects I’m working on so I should have some good video to show in the near future.
David Hildreth

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Wake Up America!

During my week off from school I was able to get out of work for a day and drive up to the Grand Canyon with a good friend. We drove through Sedona on the way up and I can’t even being to tell you how awesome that was. In all honestly we should have just stopped and chilled in Sedona for the day, but my travel companion had never seen The Grandest of Canyons so we ventured on. Sedona is like another state, it’s not hot, it’s not dry or desolate. It’s beautiful and green, there’s a river and the temperature is tolerable. I really want to get back up there soon, it’s a very expensive little town so it’l just be a simple day trip, but there is a part of me that wants so badly to jump into a river. It’s simply been too long since I at least scoffed at the opportunity to do so. Later the trip hit a sour note when I found out that my friend didn’t know where Idaho was on the map. After a few texts to ChaCha she got the picture but I don’t think I’ll let her live it down any time soon.

I’m sure by now you’ve all heard who McCain picked to be his VP. It’s never been more appairent that he would rather win an election then effectivly govern.
That’s about all I can stomach to say about it… I’ll just let John Stewart take over.

If you didn’t catch Obama’s speech I suggest catching up. I’m interested to see how the Republicans react at their convention.

In other completely unrelated and slightly random news I told someone special this week flat out “I want to be with you.” She said something about being light headed… I think that’s a good thing.
Time will tell.

David Hildreth

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A good week off

A friend and I finished work on a local commercial last week, it’s for a sister station of The EDGE, and turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. If you don’t know who MC Magic is then you’re probably not the target demo of this spot. It’s slated to air on MTV Tr3s… which I only recently found out existed.

There is an interesting story about how I came to work on this spot, but that is for another day. Some people who read this may not think it’s an interesting story as much as they think it’s an aggravating one :|

I saw a few movies since I posted last. The first is The Bicycle Thief, a classic Italian film that focuses on how a small action can impact someone in ways one can only imagine. It’s age shows but there is a very powerful plot in there if you’re ok with classic cinema. Another is Hearts and Minds, it’s a documentary on Vietnam… sort of a 70s version of Fahrenheit 911, only much better. It does have a bias but I didn’t find it heavy handed, a lot of the material in there applies to today just as it did then. It does a good job of reminding people how the Vietnam War started and that colonialism is just as terrible as it ever was. The last is Rattle and Hum, an amazing rockumentary (yes, it’s a word) about U2′s Joshua Tree tour. I loved Coldplay: Live 2003 and it definitely owes a lot to this film. It follows U2 around the US and has stunning performances from two different concerts. Both, interestingly enough, are in places I’ve been: Denver’s old McNichols Area and Tempe’s Sun Devil Stadium. OK, maybe that’s not interesting but I thought it was cool.
I highly recommend all three films, the first two are in the Criterion Collection and the third runs on MHD quite a bit.

I’m out for now, take it easy
David Hussein Hildreth

P.S. Tomorrow I will have lived in Arizona 2 years.

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Everyone’s favorite Hussein

The screening for my latest weekend film festival was saturday. Only seven teams finished the challenge but the ones that made it were pretty good. We ended up getting third place, which I am happy with. We went a very simplistic route so I’m not sure we deserved a whole lot more then that. The films that beat us were good, the production value of one was pretty low but it was clever and that’s kinda how these things work.

I got to go see Stars on friday and they put on a great concert. The opening band was a local act named Back Ted N Ted. A friend had shown them to me a few months ago because he was in talks to produce a music video for them. The music ranges from some cool electronic rock to some weirder almost experimental stuff but you should definitely check em out. After seeing them rock out on stage I’m definitely going to try to get that video to actually happen. Our little group has now done a few videos but all have been hip hop or rap and I really want to direct a rock video.
Stars took the stage soon after and while I’ve been into Stars for quite a while I’m sad to say that I had no idea Amy Millan played guitar. The band uses two vocalists on most of their songs but I didn’t know that both also played other instruments. There was a session guitarist who played a lot of the guitar stuff and almost every solo, which I hate to see, but Amy definitely played her share and did some acoustic stuff. The other lead, Torquil Campbell, actually plays the trumpet parts in a few songs, the keyboard and the melodica. The band rocked the house for the next hour, took a break and then proceeded to play just about every song on their last two albums. The show was at The Brickhouse, which I had never been too because I’m lame, but it’s a nice little bar and was packed. I’ve been pretty proud about how Phoenix turns out for indie shows. The band could have easily filled one of the small venues in town, they seemed pretty surprised at the turnout and were sincerely appreciative. After a great set the two founding members of the band came back out for an encore and played “Barricade” which was awesome.

I went out with a new friend of mine last night. We met a few weekends back on the set of an ASU production I was helping out on. I honestly had no plan of action, I just knew I wanted to see her so we took a walk down Mill Ave and ended up at Tempe Beach Park (which is surprisingly nice). It was really low key but a lot of fun. I felt a little bad that I didn’t have some great idea of what to do, but we simply enjoyed each other’s company and that seemed to turn out for the best.

I leave you with the following two videos, they have nothing in common other then the fact that I like them both. During the week I often collect links that I think I’d like to reference in a post and usually don’t end up writing about them. However these are too good to not share.

A great promo for the Discovery Channel, the VFX were done by a cool production house called Method.

If you’re still on the fence about the whole Hillary vs Obama thing this should pretty much cement things for ya :D

Thanks to everyone who send me a note or a card, I’ve had a pretty good Birthday. Being 23 was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to being 24 :D
David Hildreth

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Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse!

I’ve talked a little about the upcoming election but I’d like to now make my position clear. I support Barack Obama for president. I do so for a variety of reasons, but the main reason is because I see something different in him. I like the above cartoon because I think it shows a difference in attitude between generations. Barack Obama’s message is mainly just hope, at the heart of his campaign is the idea that we CAN fix our countries problems. I really do believe that it’s time for us to look inward and begin to work on social issues. Say what you want about our role as world police, but I think that it’s time to turn our efforts and money back towards our own shores. Healthcare, social security and our economy have been neglected and I think that a real change in the White House is what is needed to fix our problems. “Socialized” medicine is a must, our government could very well be headed for bankruptcy but it’s citizens are guaranteed it without healthcare reform. I hate how pessimistic people are about it though, how can you change something if you don’t believe it can be done? A lot of the people I’ve talked to say they don’t want socialized medicine because they don’t believe the government is competent enough to run it. They don’t want the government telling them when and where to see a doctor, they don’t want to lose their perceived control of their health. It doesn’t take more then a few minutes of research to find out that in other countries (like Canada or the UK) people aren’t assigned a doctor, they don’t have to go though miles of red tape to visit the emergency room. Doctors make good wages and the overall quality of care is, by virtually every study done, a lot better than it is in the US. There is a lie in our country that says that publicly funded medicine is bad, it’s been around for more then half a decade and it’s time for it to be stopped. We have government run police and fire departments, federal mail delivery and even television, people just don’t like to think about it that way. If something as important as a local police department is overseen by a city, county, state and federal bureaucracy why do we then not trust our government to run our healthcare system? We are basically the only 1st world country without it and our overall standard of living and life expectancy is far worse then most of Europe. We spend more then anyone and get the least in return.

The header of Barack Obama’s website says “I’m asking you to believe not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.” I’ll take that over someone who has only failed in the past, someone who changes his story to get elected, someone who brings up tragedy to scare up votes or even someone who’s ideas sounds good but are without substance.

This is Barack Obama’s response to the 2008 State of the Union address, I think it does a great job of showing who he is. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing skip ahead to about 4:00 and watch until the end. He’ll be here in Arizona on 1/30/08 and I’m looking forward to going and hearing him speak.

I’ve seen quite a few movies since I last posted. One was of course Cloverfield, which I loved. I think you can really tell a lot about someone’s taste in film by their opinion of that movie. Some others were There Will Be Blood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Lives of Others. I should have seen The Lives of Others like a year ago, it won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006 and has been on DVD and Blu-Ray for a while. I really enjoyed it, it’s about a man who works for the East German secret police and how he gets involved in the lives of people he is suppose to be spying on. I highly recommend it, it’s no surprise it’s gotten all the attention it has. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was also very good, it’s about a man who has a stroke and is paralyzed from head to toe. His only means of communication is to blink, and with the help of others he writes a book. The movie is more about making the book and how the man felt as he lay helpless in the hospital. There are excerpts of the book in the movie but I am excited to read all of what he wrote. The movie is a french film so finding it in a theater might be a bit tough, but it’s definitely worth driving across town for. There Will Be Blood was incredible, people have been calling it the director’s masterpiece and I can only agree. It’s a dark drama about an oil man, who’s greed and competition ruins everyone around him. It’s a must see, just be ready for it, you do feel every minute it’s two hour running time.

It’s day 2454 of the job hunt (ok I made that up, I’m currently too lazy to open up iCal) and things are still going alright. I’ll probably start working something next week to pay some bills, but I’m not giving up on an editing position yet. I have some new leads and I’ve recently tweaked my demo reel a bit so we’ll see what happens. I’m also, once again, trying to get on work study. Hopefully now that I am a little further removed from my old job I’ll meet the requirements. I am also mulling over getting a stipend from my student loan. I can not begin to describe to you how amazing it has been to just focus on school. Is it worth about $6,000? I’m not sure yet, but when you figure I’m going to owe an embarrassing amount of money anyway, I might as well milk that 20 year payment plan for all it’s worth.

I’m not sure if many of the people who read this have ever gone through a photoshop tutorial, but in my years of interneting this is definitely the best and most educational series I’ve come across. You Suck at Photoshop is a real step forward in tutorials, the host is lovable and confident and he always gets across exactly what you need to know. There are three other episodes, and I highly recommend watching them all. The third is one of the funniest and probably the most accessible. enjoy ;)

Until the next time I’m bored enough to write here,
David

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