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Review: Impolex
From its surplus-store WWII pageantry to its hot, fuzzy cinematography somehow suggestive of both Bolex and Instagram at once, Impolex is an uncommonly honest paean to millennial fecklessness. Borrowing a plot smidgen or two from Thomas Pynchon, writer-director Alex Ross Perry's Cracker Jack prize of a premise jettisons Tyrone S. (Riley O'Bryan), a mush-mouthed pretty boy with a GI haircut and an amnesiac personality, off into an unidentifiable and interminable postwar wood on a search for twin V2 rockets (00 and 01). What purpose the WMDs themselves serve is unclear; there's a conversation at one point about whether Tyrone is seeking rockets that have been "exploded" or not, and he answers obliquely. The task primarily provides the character with a purpose he can adopt as leisurely as possible; he commits himself to halfheartedly going through the motions of what is likely a wild goose chase while occasionally forgetting where he is and what he's doing. When confusion capsizes his search, he tends to sing softly to himself wartime tunes to which he clearly can't recall the lyrics.
We want quite desperately to gloss this anti-dramatic behavior within the comfortable context of stereotypical twentysomething airheadedness, to convince ourselves this is all jejune historical pranking. And, to be sure, despite the diagetic absence of marijuana or acid, a handful of countercultural motifs threaten to simplify the stately sedateness as medicinally induced. Among the likely imaginary sages that appear before Tyrone on his trek, for example, is a ruddy-bearded, eye-patch-wearing demi-hippie, hilariously called "Adrian the Pirate" (Bruno Meyrick Jones) in the press notes. (Tyrone's chats with him form lyrically illogical smoke circles: "I'm not worried about finding the rockets," Tyrone tells him prosaically. "I'm worried about finding lots of rockets, and my rockets getting mixed up with all these other lesser rockets.") Tyrone also occasionally encounters a girlfriend (Kate Lyn Sheil) that he thought he left behind in the States—she's the spontaneously teleporting Penelope to his rudderless Odysseus—who displays a suspicious interest in/knowledge of the loose leafs stamped "Classified" that he lugs around with him. Okay, so the rocket science is perhaps the Gmail account of the 1940s, full of hopeless dead-ends and effusive indulgences, and the shamanic lover represents the fear of being hacked and exposed while paradoxically desiring the intimate unmasking such an invasion would constitute?
The problem with this interpretation, and with any interpretation we could hobble together from the film's dizzing cues, is that the narrative doesn't validate our diagnostic agency any more than it does the motivation of its protagonist; it lulls us into its reckless passivity to the point that even the comedic duds possess a languid hint of funny. (Tyrone's piggy-nose shtick is second-rate Steve Martin, but befits the atmosphere of "fuck it" that the movie steadily maintains; the lysergic, fire-licked opening feels equally vapid, but retrospectively becomes a kind of purposeful faux-poetry.) Adopting a peripatetic rhythm like that of Alejandro Jodorowsky's paraplegic-obsessed debut Fando y Lis, Impolex's blasé approach to its weird happenings melts from a dumb joke into an opaque comment on talentlessness.
Tyrone can't find rockets (he locates one, then loses it), he can't communicate properly with the various people he meets in his travels, and he can't emote to save his life. He delivers lines alternately to the floor and the firmament, and his attempts to assert himself are both flat and gawky. At one point in an argument with a vague, muscular competitor in the rocket search, his nemesis cryptically remarks, "I've already found what I'm looking for." The intended passive-aggressiveness of Tyrone's retort dribbles out of his mouth, freeze-dried and sterile: "Oh. And. What. Might. That. Be."
In another admittedly gut-busting sequence, he becomes so exasperated with the one rocket he's been able to retrieve (a large, obviously plastic retro totem) that he pummels it against the side of a hill until growing fatigued and heaving himself downward to spoon with the warhead. Tyrone's ineptness is such that he unwittingly mistakes the phallic object of the 20th century for a noisome, maybe even lightly feminine, irritant, like the pawned-off purse of a significant other that can shift all-too-easily from publicly embarrassing to sexily yonic. Slim Pickens put the bomb where it belonged; it became his manhood. To call Tyrone castrated by comparison is both grossly reductive and too violent: Impolex isn't about a man who can't find his dick so much as it is an internalization of the problematic dick semiotics of today's young adults. If everything's a blithe dick joke then where does that leave the male psyche?
What's left in its place is inert, to be sure, but Impolex ekes out stirring whispers of tender masculine grief. When Tyrone befriends an Anglophonic octopus (voiced by comic Eugene Mirman) with a charming, inflating/deflating head-bulb, he confesses envy for the social credibility of the man who made seersucker fashionable. (He then recounts a mangled, mythic shaggy-dog tale about the gentleman's colorful appearance at a party, much to the delight of the cephalopod.) And in the lengthy, relationship-oriented conversation of a finale, where the girlfriend laughably attempts to gain some rhetorical control over the madness we've just witnessed, Tyrone's inane bumbling is understood as a kind of emotional nakedness. He sips a stemless glass of red wine and waxes romantic over a memory of watching his lover swim at a beach. Tyrone, like most Millenials, can be mushily nostalgic. But any sentimentality is swaddled in deadly serious—rather than ironic—numbness. While provoking him to reminisce, the girlfriend asks: "Do you remember that time you took me to the beach?" Despite the piddles of reverence and regret to follow after the floodgates of remembrance are pried open, he scratches his head and blinks, saying, "You're going to have to be more specific."
Cast: Riley O'Bryan, Kate Lyn Sheil, Bruno Meyrick Jones, Ben Shapiro, Roy Berkeley, Eugene Mirman Director: Alex Ross Perry Screenwriter: Alex Ross Perry Running Time: 73 min Rating: R Year: 2009
Review: Kill It and Leave This Town Vividly Marries the Mundane and the Dreamlike
Mariusz Wilczyński's animation style strikes an unlikely balance between the childlike and the proficient.3
Composed of sketches in motion, against backdrops of lined paper with the wrinkles, smudges, and tape left visible, Polish artist and performer Mariusz Wilczyński's Kill It and Leave This Town militates against the extinction of traditional animation techniques. Not for a moment is the viewer allowed to forget that these are drawings, sequenced to create the illusion of movement. If the magic of animation is resurrected in Wilczyński's hands, it's a dark magic, as familiar with the grotesque as it is the lyrical.
Kill It and Leave This Town explores the industrial city in Poland where Wilczyński grew up. Among factories humming with machinery, along dreary streets lined with beer cans where the only splashes of color are the red stripe of the Polish flag or the ribbon in an old lady's hair, Wilczyński's mother and father stumble through their lives. Wilczyński himself makes cameos from time to time, drawn as a naked giant, at once infantile and overgrown. In one scene, the father attempts to show the family a fairy tale titled "How Fiki Miki Mouse Sailed Across the Seas and Oceans from America" on a slide projector, raving and cursing when the device gets stuck between slides. In another, the mother babbles on her deathbed to a son too busy drawing to pay her any attention. The film borrows its form from poetry as opposed to traditional narrative cinema, resulting in a loose assemblage of vignettes that loop back on one another, recreating the associative activity of memory and imagination.
The film's animation style strikes an unlikely balance between the childlike and the proficient. Dense spirals pouring out of smokestacks, a recurring motif, resemble smoke only insofar as they cite the scribbles that stand in for it in children's drawings, whereas the sequence of a mortician's hands sewing up the body of Wilczyński's mother exhibits the cold precision of a draftsman. One scene on a trolley is rendered entirely by hand except for the windows, replaced with live-action film of rain droplets streaming down glass. Such atmospheric composites recall Don Hertzfelt's Everything Will Be Okay, as well as Soyuzmultfilm classics like Yuri Norstein's Hedgehog in the Fog. Tadeusz Nalepa's score, with all the charm of someone improvising songs on a guitar, echoes the animation's off-the-cuff quality.
Wilczyński exploits his medium to bind the mundane with the dreamlike, continuing a long tradition of Eastern European surrealism. In a scene at a fishmonger, the fish floating in a barrel of water become people ready to be gutted and beheaded. Later, Wilczyński's mother stumbles off the trolley into an ominous figure, sheathed in a trench coat, hat, and gloves, who gives her change for the fare. When she asks, "Who the devil are you," his head swivels around to reveal a talking cat, like Behemoth from Buglakov's Master and Margarita, who claims to be "part of that power which wills forever evil, yet does forever good."
Only in hand-drawn animation can such fairy-tale grotesqueries convince, in part because it never aims for photorealism; Wilczyński leaves in the free-hand scribbles and the stutter between frames for our imagination to iron out. Even in a city only accessible to memory, a world of the past constrained by poverty and despair, anything is possible for Wilczyński, as it must have seemed in childhood—and yet no possibility scrubs clean of the stain of death.
Cast: Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Chyra, Maja Ostaszewska, Małgorzata Kożuchowska Director: Mariusz Wilczyński Screenwriter: Mariusz Wilczyński Distributor: Outsider Pictures Running Time: 88 min Rating: NR Year: 2020
Review: 76 Days Is a Harrowing Document of the Covid Outbreak in Wuhan
The documentary may be the defining portrait of the dawning of the Covid-19 pandemic.3
Like Ai Weiwei's Coronation, Hao Wu and Wiexi Chen's 76 Days—co-directed by another journalist who chose to remain anonymous—documents the early days of the Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. While Ai's film manages to slip a number of pointed critiques of China's authoritarian tactics passed the country's typically hawk-eyed censors, 76 Days, which takes its title from the length of Wuhan's lockdown early in 2020, presents China in a more universally flattering light. What the film lacks in political commentary, however, it makes up for with its tight focus on the daily grind of the medical staff and countless volunteers tirelessly working at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital.
Much of the film follows doctors and nurses, clad in protective gear, as they make their rounds, reassuring patients that everything will be fine, even as they're only just beginning to understand the virus and how to treat it. The toll this regiment of 12-plus-hour days takes on the staff is palpable in virtually every frame, with insert shots of the medical team asleep on benches or slumped over in chairs speaking to the sheer exhaustion of being a cog in a medical machine, quickly churning through patients with no light at the end of the tunnel. One nurse, while being comforted as her dying father is taken away to quarantine, is ultimately told that she needs to remain composed so she can ready herself to return to work the next day.
Although the staff's sacrifice and composure under fire is amply documented, 76 Days never stoops to sentimentality, eschewing fawning talking-head interviews and a musical score. Throughout, we're left brimming in the immediacy of the chaos at hand; only the glimpses we catch of patients who've spent weeks, sometimes months, in the hospital provide a concrete sense of time's passage since the start of the lockdown. Most memorable of these patients is an elderly man who repeatedly leaves his room to wander around the hospital and is continually corralled by different nurses back to his room. His exploits lend the film a bit of levity even as his backstory, once revealed, makes his foibles all the more heartbreaking.
The nightmare of caring for thousands of patients during a pandemic also extends to the intake and discharge processes. This makes for a few touching and cathartic scenes once certain patients finally receive the approval to return home, such as when the aforementioned older gentleman receives applause and well wishes from many of the nursing staff as he exits the hospital. But the film's most poignant moment comes when an endlessly patient young couple finally meets their newborn child for the first time several weeks after her birth.
These brief glimpses of joy are counterbalanced not only by the gravity of the pandemic as it's being fought on the frontlines, but also by the cumbersome and often tragic logistical tasks that the hospital staff must perform, such as dealing with the belongings of the dead. Among said belongings is the still-functioning cellphone of one deceased patient that displays 31 missed messages, a mere hint of the suffering that even many of the healthy residents of Wuhan endured in those early days of the outbreak. 76 Days is full of small yet revelatory moments like this, and in keeping its gaze so firmly planted on both the medical staff and patients as they're forced to navigate the uncharted territory of a deadly new virus, the film may be the defining portrait of the dawning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Director: Hao Wu, Wiexi Chen, Anonymous Distributor: MTV Documentary Films Running Time: 93 min Rating: NR Year: 2020
Review: Soul More Sublimely Mediates on the Pull of Music Than It Does the Afterlife
In a troubling reversal from Pixar films past, it's kids who will have to do the most heavy lifting to keep up here.2.5
Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), the main character of Pixar's Soul, is a jazz pianist living in Harlem who's desperate for music gigs alongside his part-time job directing the disengaged middle schoolers in his band class. When the school principal offers him full-time hours with benefits, it feels more like a final surrender than a lifeline. The threat of lifelong mediocrity has tightened its grasp around every corner of Joe's life. In a brilliant stroke, even the classic "When You Wish Upon a Star" tune that plays over the logo before most Disney movies is heard here as if played by Joe's out-of-tune student ensemble.
Soul, directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Kemp Powers, quickly reveals that Joe is anything but mediocre. Hearing melody in the wail of sirens and rhythm in the cacophony of a jackhammer, he has music in his, well, soul. When Joe catches his big break auditioning to play with a pro quartet, headlined by imperious jazz saxophonist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett), the film follows him into "the zone." Not since Fantasia has a Disney film treated music with such reverence, as the seed of all the visual flowering that follows. As pinks and purples swirl around Joe and as his fingers coax unexpected harmonies from the keyboard (Jon Batiste provides the impassioned playing), Soul gives itself over fully to his music.
For these gloriously substantial few minutes, it's jazz set to animation rather than the other way around. As such, it's hard not to want Soul to be all about music, not just as metaphor but as the very real engine that drives the film's characters forward. Music's extraordinary impact is palpable when Joe's face lights up as one of his students, Connie (Cora Champommier), leans into a trombone solo, and as Joe's fingers escape his anxiety in their own improvisatory pursuit. Walk away 15 minutes into the film, at the end of what would make, on its own, a snazzy, sublime short, and you'll have seen Pixar's greatest, purest tribute to the arts.
But Joe's joy, and soon the film's, is cut short when he plummets down an open manhole, and finds himself—or, rather, his soul, depicted here as a blue-green turnip-shaped substance with glasses and a fedora—on the pathway to the Great Beyond. Refusing to face death, Joe hurtles into the void toward the Great Before, where not-yet-born souls obtain their personalities in a Youth Seminar. Mistaken for a celebrated psychologist, Joe's soul is assigned a mentee, a cranky pre-human called 22 (Tina Fey) who refuses to cooperate: She's unwilling, and, so far, unable to find the "spark" that will allow her to be born into a human body. Previous famous mentors have tried and failed (the soul of Carl Jung amusingly tells the difficult 22, "Stop talking—my unconscious mind hates you"), but Joe sees 22 as his ticket back to Earth.
It's somewhere around here that Soul, co-written by Docter, Powers, and Mike Jones, starts to veer down its own wrong path, abandoning its accessible storytelling, along with that vitalizing jazz soundtrack, for a confusing maze of pseudo-spiritual planes of existence. Besides the Great Beyond and the Great Before, souls can also be in the Zone, where tuned-in artists like Joe sometimes find themselves while still alive, or in a desert of Lost Souls, which belong to people who've forgotten how to live (hedge fund managers, in particular, we're told).
In this ever-evolving terrain occupied by 2D and 3D life forms, the film's visual adventurousness takes off as contrasting animation styles collide. At the Youth Seminar, flat, geometric figures with transparent features direct the bulbous souls to where they can pick up personality traits (at the Excitable Pavilion, for example). Meanwhile, a New Age-inflected Mystics Without Borders subplot, with Graham Norton voicing the tripped-out Moonwind, adds a daringly vibrant psychedelic color palette to the gentle blues and greens of the Great Before. But as the categories of souls keep expanding, the rules for these overlapping worlds grow foggy, and by the time that Fey's voice is coming out of Joe's body in a switcheroo that's never quite explained, it's hard not to feel as if the film has lost track of its internal logic.
At the core of the Pixar model is an exploration of friendship within the familiar parameters of the buddy comedy—Joy and Sadness in Inside Out, Sully and Mike in Monsters, Inc., Marlin and Dory in Finding Nemo, all the way back to Toy Story's Buzz and Woody—and Soul tries hard to plug into the transformative power of friendship in pairing Joe with 22. Despite Fey's droll delivery, 22, who says she chooses to speak with the voice of a middle-aged white lady in order to be "annoying," isn't convincing enough as a fully formed character for their relationship, or Joe's investment in 22's decision to be born, to ever matter.
The contours of these worlds seem just hazy enough to land on the safe side of blasphemy; sometimes it seems like the film's imprecision is a deliberate attempt to draw piecemeal from various belief systems and sidestep offending religious audiences by addressing the presence or absence of higher powers at all. But the viewers that seem most painfully left behind are the ones to which Soul should rightly matter the most: kids. Soul swirls with self-help lingo about finding your spark and seeking your purpose, but that's almost entirely in the context of Joe's midlife crisis, a sliver of the human experience with which children seem unlikely to resonate. In a troubling reversal from Pixar films past, which magnanimously welcomed grownups along for a sophisticated ride, it's kids who will have to do the most heavy lifting to keep up here.
Coco's take on the Land of the Dead and Inside Out's representation of depression exemplify explorations of "grownup" topics with a probing awareness of the ways they also touch kids' lives. For a while, it seems that Soul, in its treatment of the Great Before, will have a similar capacity for digging into big, unanswerable questions with care and clarity. But while most Pixar films pride themselves on presenting rich, fantastical responses to real-world wonderings, Soul keeps conjuring up visions that don't correspond precisely enough to anything in the real world. It's not clear whether the film ultimately offers a call to arms to pursue a passion or a warning that creative passion alone doesn't provide for a fulfilling life.
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Questlove, Angela Bassett, Cora Champommier, Margo Hall, Daveed Diggs, Rhodessa Jones, Wes Studi Director: Pete Docter Screenwriter: Pete Docter, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Running Time: 100 min Rating: PG Year: 2020
Review: Black Bear Is an Unnerving Look at the Baggage that Fuels Creation
Shot through with darkly existentialist humor, the film finds Aubrey Plaza throwing a gauntlet to filmmakers who have typecast her in the past.3
Lawrence Michael Levine's Black Bear belongs to a long tradition of sexual psychodrama, in which a handful of frustrated and privileged characters hole up in a remote place and exorcize their resentments. This tradition is so venerable that it was parodied by Christopher Guest over 30 years ago in The Big Picture, and there's also a dark strand of existentialist humor running through this similarly self-conscious film.
Levine casts doubt on his narrative's sense of reality in the opening sequence, wherein a young woman (Aubrey Plaza) is sitting on a pier in a swimsuit looking out at a vast foggy lake. After a moment, she rises and proceeds into a luxurious home, ascends a flight of stairs, and sits at a desk and smokes a cigarette. Soon, she begins to write in a notebook and the narrative segues into what's presumably a dramatization of the story she fashions. This scene will be repeated several times in Black Bear, suggesting both a leitmotif and a temporal loop.
We then see this woman, Allison, being dropped off on a road a bit away from the home. Meeting Allison at the drop-off point is Gabe (Christopher Abbott), who immediately sets about flirting with her. It's the sort of flirtation indulged by aspiring artists and self-conscious intellectuals-in-training, rife with deflections, fake-outs, and challenges to the nature of reality that complement the suggestion that the entire situation is possibly a projection of some kind. Allison and Gabe arrive at the residence to meet Blair (Sarah Gadon), who's pregnant with Gabe's child, which wasn't mentioned when Gabe was probing Allison about her career as a filmmaker and, especially, her relationship status. The trio have a long and boozy dinner and air a variety of grievances, leading to a shocking accident.
Allison, initially suggesting a prototypical Plaza character, seemingly prizes hip detachment above all else, in the process enraging the judgmental Blair, who was hoping for help in persecuting Gabe for various slights. This characterization of Allison is a purposeful trap door—a sop to expectation that Levine detonates. In Black Bear's first half, Allison is cast as a male fantasy—a sexy, seemingly willing and wandering artist who's uninterested in Blair's sermonizing about gender roles. In effect, Allison gratifies the submerged feelings of men and even women who may feel that women wish to be subjugated—feelings that are perversely validated in the moment by Blair's caustic hectoring, which is realistic of the patter of the blowhard at parties who wishes to bore everyone into submission with rigid political views. The film's early scenes are so stacked against Blair that one may forgive Gabe's own simplistic speechifying, though such forgiveness may prompt us to examine our own biases.
Remarkably, the film's emotional intensity is inseparable from its parlor game-like self-consciousness, especially when Allison's "cool girl" demeanor is unexpectedly demolished. At its halfway mark, Black Bear effectively reboots itself, switching the core identities of the women, with only Gabe tellingly gaining more power in the process. Suddenly, Allison becomes the vulnerable and rejected party, and Plaza imbues her transformed character with a raw and frenzied anguish. Plaza throws a gauntlet to filmmakers who have typecast her in the past, while Levine plumbs the various forms of subjugation that fuel the creative process.
In Black Bear's second half, the remote house is now a set for an independent film with a plot that roughly re-stages the earlier clashes between Allison, Blair, and Gabe, who are now reimagined as two actresses and the director, respectively. The film thusly expands beyond the confines of a chamber play to include a micro community, with sustained, confidently intricate set pieces—reminiscent of the game-show scenes in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia—that explore the exhilaration and terror of corralling dozens of working parts and personalities to create something palatable for audiences. Both films understand such corralling to thrive in part on exploitation, and in the case of Black Bear, the film-within-a-story-within-the-film is constructed around Gabe's gaslighting of Allison, which Levine stages with a sense of unnerving intimacy that might playfully echo his own experience working with his spouse, filmmaker and actress Sophie Takal, who's among Black Bear's co-producers.
Levine is hunting big game in Black Bear, as the film reflects to varying degrees the influence of dozens of self-reflective film classics, mostly notably Ingmar Bergman's Persona and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. If Black Bear feels too neat, a little too resolved as a game, it may be because the framing device gives us a convenient exit, though even the conclusion isn't without ambiguities. Given that both stories are sex triangles fueled by exploitation, you may be driven to wonder if Plaza's writer is attempting to find a way to channel real trauma. Or, perhaps more disturbingly, she's conjuring it out of thin air, accessing unvarnished pain out of sheer talent and for the hell of it. This coda restores the smug Plaza stereotype to an extent, while alluding to the vast emotional undertow it suppresses.
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Abbott, Sarah Gadon, Lindsay Burdge, Alexander Koch, Paola Lázaro, Jennifer Kim, Shannon O'Neill, Grantham Coleman, Haitao Zeng, Lou Gonzalez Director: Lawrence Michael Levine Screenwriter: Lawrence Michael Levine Distributor: Momentum Pictures Running Time: 105 min Rating: R Year: 2020
Review: Survival Skills Surreally Straddles the Line Between Parody and Pathos
Survival Skills feels like something you'd stumble upon on Adult Swim circa 2014.2.5
Purporting to be an actual VHS-shot police training video unearthed from the last gasp of the Reagan era, Survival Skills feels like something you'd stumble upon on Adult Swim circa 2014, sandwiched between Too Many Cooks and reruns of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Yet writer-director Quinn Armstrong's debut feature resists indulging the easy trappings of our current cultural obsession with '80s-era aesthetics as it digs into some rather contentious and particularly timely subject matter.
Survival Skills opens on a training guide introducing his lesson on a stagy classroom set. Credited as the Narrator, he's played by Stacy Keach, a recognizable enough personality to immediately break any illusion of found-footage "authenticity." But seeing as Armstrong will continue to break the fourth wall and experiment with meta-fictional ideas throughout, Keach, with his never-failing gravitas, becomes the perfect chaperone for this cracked video project.
The Narrator's first order of business is creating the ideal police trainee, filtering the expected qualities needed for the job through an ancient computer system to end up with Jim Williams (Vayu O'Donnell), an all-American goody-two-shoes who we'll follow through his first year on the force in quaint Middletown, U.S.A. Speaking in insufferably chipper soundbites, Jim acts and sounds exactly like someone who you'd see in the kind of stilted training video that Survival Skills spoofs throughout. But as we enter Jim's video world, the joke becomes that he's almost the only one here who behaves this way, while his hardened partner—curiously named Allison Lohmann (Erika Kreutz), in what must be some kind of inside joke—and the people they encounter are all perplexed by his alien manner. No matter, though, as Jim continues to take his cues from the Narrator's booming voice, which seems to be heard solely by him.
The line between the staged world and the real one blurs even further when Jim and Allison are tasked with responding to a domestic violence call involving a married couple, the Jennings. After the cops diffuse the situation, Mr. Jennings (Bradford Farwell) assures them that everything is okay while Mrs. Jennings (Emily Chisholm) sheepishly nods along, but Jim can't shake the feeling that something is off. Defying orders from his superiors (and the natural progression of the training video), Jim begins a quixotic attempt to rescue Mrs. Jennings and her daughter (Madeline Anderson) from a situation that no one but him seems to particularly care about, while the Narrator desperately tries to steer him back on track.
Unlike many a throwback that adopts a retro look and doesn't offer much beyond hollow non sequiturs (Jack Henry Robbins's VHYes instantly comes to mind), the film avoids cheapening its domestic-abuse storyline by using its formal conceit to also highlight another absurdity that Jim must confront: the impossibility of positive, meaningful police work within a broken legal (and social) system. The only lesson Jim can ultimately take away from his training is how to not get too involved, while his well-meaning suggestions to Mrs. Jennings that she flee her husband and file charges provoke immediate scorn from the same person he's trying to help, since she's already well aware how stacked the system is against her.
While mostly pulling off this tricky balancing act of humor and real-life horror, Survival Skills doesn't quite go far enough in its critiques, especially in a climate where police-community relations are more frayed than ever. The whimsical mechanics of Armstrong's world occasionally take precedence over the thematic issues at play, making it strange at times that Jim, who for all intents and purposes is a glorified android (Allison tellingly nicknames him "Robocop"), becomes so obsessed with this one case when he can barely read the room in any other setting. This dichotomy is even more pronounced in scenes with Jim's hyperbolically domesticated wife, Jenny (Tyra Colar), who, while being the only other person in the film to behave in the same pre-programmed way, is clearly undergoing a stifled breakdown of her own. In these moments, Armstrong hints at but doesn't fully comment on the correlation between the pressures of police work and domestic violence in police families.
The final act of Survival Skills, however, still intrigues, with Jim's impossible quandary causing his idyllic existence to come unglued at the seams. Armstrong forcefully dives headfirst into the deep end of the meta pool, staging an aptly surreal revenge climax before Keach's narrator concludes with a blunt lesson in the futility of policing. It's a sentiment that ultimately resonates beyond the film's stylistic posturing.
Cast: Stacy Keach, Vayu O'Donnell, Spencer Garrett, Ericka Kreutz, Tyra Colar, Emily Chisholm, Bradford Farwell Director: Quinn Armstrong Screenwriter: Quinn Armstrong Distributor: Cranked Up Films Running Time: 88 min Rating: NR Year: 2020
Review: I'm Your Woman Is an Unresolved Grab at Feminist Revisionism
Julia Hart drains the crime film genre of its macho bluster without replacing it with anything.1.5
Julia Hart's I'm Your Woman is, in practice, a feminist response to the decidedly male-centric crime genre. Rather than follow a hoodlum named Eddie (Bill Heck) as he eludes his gangster cohorts, the film tracks Eddie's wife, Jean (Rachel Brosnahan), and their baby, Harry, as the latter are inducted into an underworld witness protection program. Such a premise has immense potential, especially given that Jean knows little about Eddie's profession and that anyone could be an enemy looking to get back at him through her and Harry. A head of paranoid steam, resonant of Jean's indentured status as a "kept" woman, could have been built up by the film, but Hart and co-screenwriter Jordan Horowitz are barely invested in engendering suspense. Instead, I'm Your Woman is content to have us cheer Jean as she comes into her own apart from Eddie's lies and manipulations—except that she never does, which appears to be an accidentally achieved irony on the filmmakers' part.
I'm Your Woman is set in the 1970s, in conjunction with the second and third waves of feminism, and more pressingly so that Hart may have reason to offer the retro pop songs and ostentatious set designs that are common of films replicating the era. A strange opening scene, in which Eddie presents the mysteriously acquired Harry to Jean as one might an impulse purchase from a fancy store, establishes above all Jean's complacency, which would shame a stereotypical American housewife of the 1950s, let alone the '70s. Indeed, Jean is so accommodating, defenseless, and opinion-less that she resembles a cult member, and as such you may wonder how she's held the firebrand Eddie's attention. As proffered here, these details are stereotypical and unconvincing, existing only as easy thematic signifiers.
None of this might matter if I'm Your Woman were remotely serviceable as a thriller, but it's composed of a thicket of incoherent exposition, with a cipher at its center. Jean often hears rumors of what's happening to Eddie while he's hiding somewhere else, mostly as related by her primary protector, Cal (Arinzé Kene), and these stories suggest the conventional male-centric narrative that's being consciously elided by Hart and Horowitz. But this gambit backfires, given that the story that Cal relates to Jean, however convoluted, is more exciting than the one we actually see play out on screen. At times, I'm Your Woman appears to be tipping its hat to Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Gloria—two films, both made by men, that are far more curious about the inner lives of women than this one. Martin Scorsese and John Cassavetes didn't see their heroines merely as embodiments of an agenda, but also as volatile, intelligent, furious living and breathing human beings.
By contrast, nothing seems to elicit a recognizably human emotion from Jean. Once she's sprung from life as Eddie's plus one, Jean remains supernaturally passive—entirely reactive and played by the usually inventive Brosnahan in a monotonal stupor that nulls Hart's theme of female empowerment. Jean is almost killed several times, and commits murder in self-defense, all without evincing remorse, panic, or jubilation at facing extremities of human existence, which Hart films perfunctorily without offering even scraps of the sort of basic narrative context that might've made these sequences thrilling. In other words, Hart drains the crime film genre of its macho bluster without replacing it with anything, only to restore said bluster belatedly and halfheartedly once she's run her single idea into the ground.
Cast: Rachel Brosnahan, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Arinzé Kene, Frankie Faison, Marceline Hugot, James McMenamin, Jarrod DiGiorgi, Bill Heck, James Charles, Justin Charles Director: Julia Hart Screenwriter: Julia Hart, Jordan Horowitz Distributor: Amazon Studios Running Time: 120 min Rating: R Year: 2020
Review: Superintelligence Keeps a Lid on Melissa McCarthy's Comic Energy
The big disappointment of the film is that McCarthy's performance is all Jekyll and no Hyde.2
Melissa McCarthy successfully transitioned from television to film playing outcasts who chafe at conventional standards of appearances and manners. The exhilaration of the actress's performances, especially in Paul Feig comedies like Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Spy, resides in the volcanic force she lends characters who might be reduced in to wallflowers in your run-of-the-mill production. Such visceral comic energy represents a revenge-of-the-oppressed transcendence, as these vehicles find a diminutive, overweight middle-aged woman stealing productions out from under more traditionally sophisticated stars via the profound force of her personality and talent. McCarthy is a veritable superstar-as-everyperson, which is a rare pose for an actor to convincingly master.
The big disappointment, then, of Ben Falcone's Superintelligence is that McCarthy's performance is all Jekyll and no Hyde. At first, Carol (McCarthy), a computer programmer who quit her job years ago out of frustration with corporate heartlessness, appears to be the sort of stunted ne'er-do-well that the actress specializes in playing. Superintelligence's early scenes are its sharpest, parodying how Google- and Apple-type companies attempt to launder the complacency they demand from consumers and employees alike with therapeutic babble about wellness and self, which Carol isn't able to convincingly sell. After a botched interview for a new dating site amusingly called Badankadonk, the viewer is primed to wait patiently for Carol's rage to explode in characteristic McCarthy fashion, as a satirical rebuke against the faux-progressive hivemind of our social media age, yet this combustion never occurs.
Superintelligence is less a parody of modern consumerism than a bland gene splice of a rom-com and a 1980s-era film in which a loner befriends either an alien, a robot, or, in this case, a sentient, super-intelligent program voiced—in another amusing touch—by James Corden. Porting a narrative with such a distinctly Cold War-era makeup into the modern day also has satiric potential, for suggesting the similarity between past and present anxieties about technology run amok. And this commonality is acknowledged by the film in exactly one joke, in which the sentient program emulates the computer from John Badham's WarGames in order to screw with characters who're all old enough to get the reference.
Falcone and screenwriter Steve Mallory soon skimp on another wellspring for comedy, as the program gifts Carol with wealth and fashionable baubles—the sorts of privileged things that she comes to resent less once she's capable of attaining them. Such hypocrisy, alive and well in virtually every present-day American, is acknowledged in a few fleeting jokes and soon forgotten, and even the general premise of a super-intelligent program as a kind of modern god-slash-genie is sidelined. Superintelligence is a junkyard of missed opportunities, as the unutilized ideas and gimmicks are revealed to exist as window dressing adorning a simple, frictionless kind of comedy-of-remarriage between Carol and the man who got away, George (Bobby Cannavale), who's defined only by his sweetness and availability.
Superintelligence is probably intended by Falcone, McCarthy's husband and regular collaborator, as a conventional star vehicle in which McCarthy plays the sort of wistful lonely heart that was once monopolized by the likes of Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock. The film's conventionality is meant to show that McCarthy needn't always play the tormented weirdo with reserves of inner rage; she can also be a regular lead with regular problems with a regularly good-looking man as her "one and only." But such generic and insidiously conformist attitudes, though born of reverence, insult and inhibit McCarthy's talents.
McCarthy was authentically weird, profane, and confident, and therefore sexy, when playing a character who stood up to all those sexist men in Spy, which positioned her opposite of Jason Statham romantically without treating it as a big deal. By contrast, Falcone self-consciously lionizes McCarthy as an avatar of normalized romantic longing, trapping her in the process. The filmmakers here fatally forget that we love Melissa McCarthy because she isn't a princess.
Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, Brian Tyree Henry, Jean Smart, Ben Falcone, Josh McKissic Director: Ben Falcone Screenwriter: Steve Mallory Distributor: HBO Max Running Time: 108 min Rating: PG Year: 2020
Review: Julien Temple's Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan
The film is affectingly poignant in its frequently uncomfortable presentation of MacGowan's physical ruination.3
The legend of Shane MacGowan, frontman for the Pogues and imbiber extraordinaire, looms large over Julien Temple's alternately fantastical and down-to-earth documentary Crock of Gold. Since achieving international renown in the 1980s leading the biggest Irish band after U2—and just about the only one to fully celebrate and explore their Irishness—MacGowan carved out a position as one of rock's most determined boozers, druggies, fighters, and all-around hellraisers. But though he had a Keith Richards-sized appetite, being on a smaller budget meant going without a protective rock-star bubble.
MacGowan's kinetic and alcohol-fueled energy was a big part of the Pogues's appeal, vividly captured here by the footage Temple includes of people roaring and dancing in packed concert venues. But time took its toll, as evidenced by MacGowan's downward spiral of performances sabotaged by his copious drinking. Eventually, the slurred speech, physical decrepitude, and ever-more gnarled dentition spotted in the archival footage from the 1980s and '90s became like a self-fulfilling stereotype of the dedicated Irish drunk. While Temple includes a full view of MacGowan in his earlier form, the spiky-haired and Brendan Behan-worshipping punk balladeer, the story is told primarily through the lens of MacGowan's racked and ruined present visage, prematurely aged and slurring his speech from a wheelchair. In MacGowan's mind, he destroyed his body in pursuit of a different kind of legend entirely.
Much of the musician's personal history is relayed via present-day interviews with interlocutors such as Johnny Deep—a friend of MacGowan's and one of the film's producers—former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. But here and there throughout Crock of Gold, MacGowan looks back over his own life, telling stories with a slow, slurring mumble punctuated by the occasional surly snap of pique or wheeze that approximates a laugh.
MacGowan acknowledges the problematic aspects of being the drunken Irishmen who hated British stereotypes of drunken Irishmen. "You want Paddy?" he asks rhetorically. "I'll give you fucking Paddy." But beyond the aggression that came from being a hyper-imaginative kid who hated the discrimination he felt being raised in 1960s England, he says that his creative drive was ultimately to create a different kind of legend. He wanted to do nothing less than save Irish culture. If not that, he wanted to at least resurrect the feeling that he had during the childhood summers he spent back in his extended family's farmhouse in Tipperary (a one-time safe house for the I.R.A.), where even as a six-year-old he took part in the drinking and smoking and singing during the clan's frequent all-night bashes.
MacGowan's take on his culture is fiercely proud yet somewhat removed; his Irishness seems to come almost as much through literature and myth as through his family. Dreamy black-and-white recreations of a boy gamboling through Irish fields and archival footage of the Easter Rising and Ireland's War of Independence fuel the sense that everything MacGowan strove for later in his art was in his mind a kind of fantasy crusade. "I did what I did for Ireland," he says.
Raised mostly in England, MacGowan found the perfect outlet for that old poetry-infused rebel spirit when as a teenager he discovered his tribe in London's punk scene. The raw chaos fit his natural state. After a several-month stay in Bedlam, his first concert was the Sex Pistols. Although this feels like a too-good story from a man who doesn't mind gilding the lily, Temple includes grubby old footage showing MacGowan ecstatically pogo-ing just feet away from Johnny Rotten. Temple's evocation of London street life in the period is short but vivid, in particular a segment set to "The Old Main Drag", MacGowan's semi-autobiographical song about a teenage hustler ("Just hand jobs," he says with a grin in a later interview).
Wanting to "give tradition a kick in the ass" and make "Irish hip again," MacGowan infused the lilt of traditional Irish music with a mixture of punk speed, wartime urgency, and late-night boozy romanticism. His recollections of the Pogues's early years when their first three albums were met with increasing acclaim and popularity make clear that he knows that was the high point. The near-constant touring that followed the breakthrough success of 1988's If I Should Fall from Grace with God seems to have pushed his addictions over the edge. Most everything after the '80s—the later albums of dwindling quality, varying side projects and break-ups, and late-career encomiums—are handled in mostly chronological but still somewhat blurred fashion by Temple in an approximation of how MacGowan likely remembers them. In this way, the film is of a piece with the ruinous spectacle that Temple's Sex Pistols films covered and the fireside intimacy of Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, affectingly poignant in its frequently uncomfortable presentation of MacGowan's physical ruination.
Director: Julien Temple Running Time: 124 min Year: 2020
Review: Before Turning Histrionic, Uncle Frank Is a Tender Look at Outsider Kinship
Alan Ball quickly loses sight of the sense of power that fuels the film's early moments when his characters basically just gaze at each other.2
Alan Ball's '70s-set Uncle Frank commences as a rare portrait of the love between an uncle and his niece. Beth (Sophia Lillis), a provincial teenager with cosmopolitan dreams, is in awe of her uncle Frank (Paul Bettany), a gay man living in New York City, a very long way from his South Carolina roots. "Uncle Frank was different," Beth tells us in voiceover as we watch her pine for him at a family get-together. He was different than everyone around her because he was a college professor, his fingernails were always clear, and he used aftershave. But mostly because she could listen to him all day.
That sequence is shot like a conversation between lovers, slow-motioned laughter and all. But this isn't the budding of incestuous love. It's the sort of veneration that children are sometimes lucky enough to feel for the one adult in their midst who's freer than most. Which is perhaps why many a queer uncle learns very quickly how disrupting their presence can be in family affairs. Frank represents a certain elsewhere. He truly listens to Beth, which visibly feels like some kind of a first for her. At one point, he tells her what she needs to hear with kindness—namely to believe in her dreams, which is code for her to get the hell out of the South. Four years later, she's an NYU freshman obsessed with Harper Lee, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain.
When Beth moves to New York and they start hanging out, Frank can't hide his homosexuality for long. After all, he lives with his long-term partner, Wally (Peter Macdissi), and an iguana named Barbara Stanwyck. Beth has never interacted with gay people before but gets used to the idea very quickly. And it's at this moment, when the distance between uncle and niece shortens, that Uncle Frank ceases to be a tender portrait of outsider kinship and transforms into a histrionic road movie with screwball intentions, more interested in plot twists than the characters themselves. It's an unfortunate pivot, as Ball loses sight of the sense of power that fuels the film's early moments when his characters basically just gaze at each other, basking in what the other has to give, and something queer is transmitted.
When Frank's father (Stephen Root) passes away, he drives back to the family home with Beth in tow. Also tagging along in a separate car, and much to Frank's chagrin, is Wally, effectively triggering a predictable series of alternately kooky and unfortunate events, all interspersed with traumatic flashbacks to the source of the animosity between Frank and his father. It's a whirlwind of melodrama that, before arriving at the obligatory happy ending, harkens back to the film's initial quietude when Beth, sitting across from Frank at a diner, asks him, "Did you always know you were gay?" He responds that he always knew he was different, and in this moment Ball lets the characters breathe again, framing them much as he did at the start of Uncle Frank—in the midst of bonding, as a different sort of inheritance is passed on.
Cast: Paul Bettany, Sophia Lillis, Peter Macdissi, Steve Zahn, Judy Greer, Margo Martindale, Stephen Root, Lois Smith, Jane McNeil, Caity Brewer, Hannah Black, Burgess Jenkins, Zach Sturm, Colton Ryan, Britt Rentschler, Alan Campell, Cole Doman, Michael Perez Director: Alan Ball Screenwriter: Alan Ball Distributor: Amazon Studios Running Time: 95 min Rating: R Year: 2020
Review: The Croods: A New Age Is a Step Up that Still Leaves You Wanting More
The film is brightly colored, inventively designed, and constantly flirting with the outright psychedelic.2.5
Brightly colored, inventively designed, and constantly flirting with the outright psychedelic, The Croods: A New Age resembles what it might be like for a three-year-old to take an acid trip. Whereas its relatively subdued predecessor, directed by Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco, was grounded in some semblance of the real world, the sequel follows the path of another DreamWorks Animation series, Trolls, by packing as much manic energy and candy-coated visual excess into its runtime as it possibly can. The approach mostly improves on the limp family-comedy of the original, trading tired jokes about overprotective fathers for sprawling action sequences and a bevy of oddball creatures including wolf-spider hybrids, kung fu-fighting monkeys, and a King Kong-sized baboon with porcupine spikes.
Which isn't to say that A New Age turns its back on the Crood family. In fact, it juggles a half-dozen or so emotional arcs pertaining to their daily lives, with the relationship between the feisty Eep (Emma Stone) and her conservative father, Grug (Nicolas Cage), once more at the heart of the narrative. As the film opens, the Croods, who've accepted Eep's boyfriend, Guy (Ryan Reynolds), into the family fold, are desperately searching for food and safety when they happen upon an Edenic walled paradise owned by the technologically advanced Phil and Hope Betterman (Peter Dinklage and Leslie Mann), who chafe at the boorish antics of the backwards Croods. Discovering that they knew Guy when he was a boy, the Bettermans contrive to kick the coarse cavemen off their property while stealing Guy away from Eep to live with them and create a family with their cheery daughter, Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran).
Though ostensibly existing in the prehistoric world, the Bettermans, with their turquoise jewelry and rope sandals, epitomize a certain kind of well-heeled contemporary liberalism, where a rehearsed casual demeanor masks a fundamental narrow-mindedness and even intolerance of the uncouthness of their perceived inferiors. They're the kind of people who won't let a struggling family stay for long on their unused property but will send them off with a passive-aggressive smile and gift basket full of fancy soaps. The Bettermans are surprisingly complex, thanks in large part to Dinklage and Mann's nuanced voice acting. In particular, Dinklage finds droll humor in a man whose conceitedness belies an essentially good heart.
This sort of gentle satire on class divisions isn't the most natural fit with the film's sweeping prehistoric milieu, but the screenplay manages to strike a relatively deft balance between its character moments and the comedy-adventure set pieces that are the film's real raison d'être. A New Age doles out its emotional beats with a refreshingly light touch, never allowing sentimentalism to overpower its buoyant sense of adventure. But aside from some delightfully crusty line readings by Cloris Leachman as Gran, the film is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. Indeed, the film is so packed full of incident that it rarely gives its jokes the space to land.
Similarly, its overall sense of spectacle is stronger than any particular image or scene. We're never wanting for things to look at in the film—there's nearly always some wacky creature or impossible Roger Dean-style landscape or virtuosic bit of animation onscreen—but we rarely get much chance to take any of them in before the film has moved on to the next thing. There's plenty to look at in A New Age, but not a whole lot to truly savor.
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Clark Duke, Cloris Leachman, Peter Dinklage, Leslie Mann, Kelly Marie Tran Director: Joel Crawford Screenwriter: Kevin Hageman, Dan Hageman, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan Distributor: Universal Pictures Running Time: 95 min Rating: PG Year: 2020
Review: BTS's Be Vies for Simplicity but Proves Too Insular
Review: Assassin's Creed Valhalla Brings the Fun, but It May Leave You Uneasy
Blu-ray Review: 15-Disc Essential Fellini Box Set on the Criterion Collection
Review: Julien Temple's Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan
Review: Superintelligence Keeps a Lid on Melissa McCarthy's Comic Energy
Review: Kill It and Leave This Town Vividly Marries the Mundane and the Dreamlike
Review: Miley Cyrus's Plastic Hearts Is an Obvious but Unapologetic Genre Exercise
Review: Smashing Pumpkins's Sprawling CYR Is Marred by Unchecked Ambition
Review: 76 Days Is a Harrowing Document of the Covid Outbreak in Wuhan
Review: Soul More Sublimely Mediates on the Pull of Music Than It Does the Afterlife
- Music6 days ago
Review: BTS's Be Vies for Simplicity but Proves Too Insular
- Games7 days ago
Review: Assassin's Creed Valhalla Brings the Fun, but It May Leave You Uneasy
- Video6 days ago
Blu-ray Review: 15-Disc Essential Fellini Box Set on the Criterion Collection
- Film7 days ago
Review: Julien Temple's Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan


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LOS ANGELES, Calif. - The set decorator who earned Oscar nominations for his work on "Beaches," ''Glory," ''Hook" and "Bram Stoker's Dracula" has died.
A longtime friend of Garrett Lewis says he died Jan. 29 of natural causes. He was 77.
Wendy Weaver says Lewis worked as an actor on Broadway and in films and television before becoming a set decorator in the late 1970s. He appeared in "Hello, Dolly" on stage, "Funny Lady" on film and "The Julie Andrews Hour" on TV.
He became a set decorator after designing private homes for his celebrity friends and went on to work on 39 films, including "Pretty Woman," ''Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Steel Magnolias."
Lewis is survived by his sister, Jane Peiker, and five nieces and nephews.

subset: commoncrawl


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On Sale
South Shore Oahu Surf Map
"South Shore Oahu Surf Map" - Nick Kuchar
Print is sized at 12"x18" and is beautifully full color offset press printed on heavyweight smooth stock. Print is custom designed by artist Nick Kuchar
Order the print framed in one out of 2 design options:
1) In a sleek and simple natural block wood look. Frame measures 3/4" in width & 1 3/4" in depth
2) In our ever popular Barnwood style frame, with a uniquely distressed feel to complete the perfect beach worn look. Frame measures 2 1/4" in width & 1" in depth
*Please allow for a possible production time of up to a week, before packing & shipment.


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Pope visits Vatican lot after urging 'humble' cars
Pope Francis is following up on his call for priests to eschew fancy cars.
A Vatican official says the 76-year-old pope visited the Vatican garage where the city state's fleet of cars is housed to see if they met his "humble" standards.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to divulge the pope's activities, said the impromptu visit Thursday followed Francis' comments over the weekend in which he said it "hurts my heart when I see a priest with the latest model car." He urged priests to use "more humble ones" and dedicate the savings to the poor.
Francis, who traveled around his native Buenos Aires by bus as a cardinal, has called for a more humble church that looks out for the poor.


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LONDON — For just a moment, the miracle looked possible.
The start signal hadn't sounded, but the prohibitive favourite to win the men's 1,500-metre freestyle race, China's Sun Yang, was gone from his block and in the water.
And Ryan Cochrane, who'd had only a faint hope of a gold medal coming in, must have thought: wait a minute. False start? Does this mean ...?
His whole country was surely thinking it.
"I was so scared," the 20-year-old Chinese said later. "It was all black before my eyes."
Cochrane, though, said he wasn't making any assumptions.
"I kind of assumed he wouldn't be out, just because of the way he went into the water, but I was kind of surprised how quickly they got us back on the blocks," the 23-year-old from Victoria said Saturday night, after swimming the race of his life to hold off Beijing Olympic champion Oussama Mellouli and win the silver medal behind the world-record swim of the untouchable Sun.
The referee, it seems, had asked the crowd to be quiet after the swimmers had taken their mark, and Sun toppled off the block.
"It is what it is. We prepare for anything," Cochrane said. "[Sun] was pretty pissed off by it, I think, but it's such a little thing in the grand scheme, and it's going to be 15 minutes of pain no matter what, so ... he got his feet wet first."
There was no raining on Cochrane's mood after his silver made it a Super Saturday for Canada — a gold-silver-bronze day that bumped the team's medal count to 10, for 11th-place in the total medals table.
"This is the happiest I've been after any race in my career," he said. "I was just so thankful to know that there's nothing else I could have done."
• Photos: Ryan Cochrane wins silver for Canada
Truly Yang — who also won the 400 metres, a silver at 200 and a bronze in the 4x200 relay — left in a hurry and never looked back. Cochrane hung with him for a while, but eventually settled into a second-place race with Korea's Park Taehwan, shed him about the halfway mark, and then hunkered down for the grim battle to deny Mellouli.
With 100 metres left, it looked as though the Tunisian might catch him, but Cochrane reached into his reserves and sprinted home in a Canadian record of 14 minutes, 39.63 seconds — less than 7/10ths of a second ahead of Mellouli, but well behind Sun, whose 14:31 beat his own world record by more than three seconds.
"It was a tough fight the last 100 metres, but I also knew the first half felt so good that I was going to have some stuff left in the tank," said Cochrane. "When [Mellouli] passed me in Beijing, I wasn't expecting it. This time, I was going to fight probably to the death to make sure he didn't get ahead of me.
"But I did have memories of what it was like in Beijing when I was fighting for that third-place spot, so I knew I was going to have to sprint that last 50 — and that's what we train every day for.
"I knew I had to be out hard, but I didn't want to go out too hard and fall into a heap, I just wanted to be sure I didn't leave anything in the pool," he said. "When I was feeling good around the 700-metre mark, I knew it was time to test the waters every 100-150 metres, and it felt good every time I did it, and it's nice to say, because usually it feels terrible.
"I knew, going into it, 'This is going to be an excruciating swim.' But it wasn't like Beijing, where I hit the 1,100-metre mark and I was in so much pain, I didn't even know what to do."
Cochrane's unexpected bronze in Beijing at age 19 salvaged what could have been a disastrous meet for Canada. This one capped a week that was somewhat better, with Brent Hayden's gritty bronze in the 100-metre free and seven swimmers reaching finals.
But it was still the first silver medal by a Canadian in an Olympic pool since Marianne Limpert's 200-metre individual medley at Atlanta, 16 years ago, and that's hard to believe.
"It's a double-edged sword, because part of me wanted to be five seconds faster and vying for that world record," Cochrane said.
"When I was young, I thought I could do anything, and then the years go by and you keep on getting second place, and you think, 'Maybe this is the best I can do,'" he said, having followed up his Beijing bronze with runner-up medals at the 2009 and 2011 world championships.
"And I know this was second place, too, but I'm still progressing — to be faster than four years ago, without the [body]suits, I think is fantastic."
He's been right there, all along, and that's why he was as sure a thing as Canada had in the pool, coming in. Swimming Canada projected "two to three" medals for the London Games, but the second and third were hopes, rather than expectations. Cochrane was carrying those.
The 1,500 is about work, and mileage, and the ability to suffer — and it's less susceptible to the vagaries of a poor start or a rough turn or two, or five. It's about stroke rate and stamina and stubborn tenacity. He had all that.
Cochrane had failed to qualify for the final of the 400 metres on the opening day of this meet — a race in which he had given himself an outside chance at a medal — "so I knew I had to go out with a bang or I wasn't going to be happy with the whole experience," he said.
"The 400, I thought, was a lost opportunity, but there's no point being devastated about it for days on end when you know you have your best race coming up. I underestimated how hard the mental side of this meet would be. I thought with experience it would be easier; in the end it was a lot harder."
On Twitter: Twitter.com/rcamcole


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Rosario's development to continue under Lachemann
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- A smiling Rockies catcher Wilin Rosario returned to the team after missing two days to be with his wife, Genesis, and the couple's second child, a girl, Aidelys, born Tuesday.
"I brought her home, she's feeling comfortable and now I'm here, ready for work," Rosario said.
Rosario has been in the Majors since being called up from Double-A in 2011. His 52 home runs and .813 OPS since his debut make him one of the Majors' top offensive catchers, but his defense is still developing.
He'll have a change in mentorship. Jerry Weinstein, last year's catching coach, was quiet and professorial -- he recently has had a book published (The Complete Handbook of Coaching Catchers, published by Coaches Choice). Weinstein took a job as an offensive coordinator in the Minor League system. This year, Rosario and the catchers are coached by former Major League manager Rene Lachemann, who is a high-energy and high-humor teacher. Rosario believes his learning curve will be the same because the message hasn't changed.
"Believe it or not, it's the same thing," Rosario said. "They're the same behind the plate. 'Lach' is a little dynamic. You can laugh a little more. With Jerry, it's a little serious. The time that we're going to work, we're going to work. It's no joke. I miss that guy. We're pretty tight."
To deal with the wear and tear of catching, Rosario reported lighter -- in the 223-225-pound range, down from the 231-232 of last season -- and concentrated on strength and flexibility in his legs. Also, the Rockies hope to use Rosario for a few games at first base to spell Justin Morneau and keep his bat in the lineup.
"I'm not that great a player like [Todd] Helton or Morneau, but I try to serve," Rosario said. "If they need me there sometimes, I'm going to be there."


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Jamboree Collectionsstevejb68 on July 29, 2013 in collections, Jamboree, Memorabilia
The 2013 National Jamboree is officially over. The new Summit high adventure base has completed its first real test at handling large groups of Boy Scouts, leaders, and staff. It will be interesting during the next several weeks to see what the reports will read. Were there problems? How will things change for the next Jamboree? What will remain the same. What will change? And the most important question, did the Scouts have a great time? I would be willing to bet that Bryan at http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org will keep us informed.
I have been reading things online written by both leaders and Scouts who have attended this year's big event. One thing that impressed me is that many of the council patches have really been outstanding. I wish I would have attended just to collect patches. Granted, I did collect a fair amount when I attended the 2001 National Jamboree, but I think I would have had to bring five times as many patches to trade if I would have attended this year.
Every Jamboree has plenty of stuff to collect, not just patches. There are shirts, pants, towels, neckerchiefs, books, pamphlets, pins, rings, papers, and lots of other miscellaneous stuff. And I would guess there is more to collect now then there was 12 years ago. The picture above shows some of the "official" things I accumulated during the 2001 Jamboree, including a towel, cap, and tee shirt. I even kept a couple shopping bags for good measure.
During the next few articles I thought I would share a few other things I saved from the jamboree, including some special items that are irreplaceable. Stay tuned. Or should I say, plugged in?


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ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at firstname.lastname@example.com.
- Arizona State University
- Yu, Zhengshan
- 1 Alford, Terry
- 1 Holman, Zachary
- 1 Sukumar Mony, Sujyot
- 1 English
- 1 Public
- Energy
- Solar Cell
- 1 Applied physics
- 1 Electron microscopy
- 1 Laser Welding
- 1 Materials Science
- Reverse Fountain Cytoplasmic Streaming in Rhizopus Oryzae
- Diné Research Practices and Protocols: An Intersectional Paradigm Incorporating Indigenous Feminism, Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies and Diné Knowledge Systems
- Developing an Augmented Reality Solution for Mapping Underground Infrastructure
- Characterization of 2D Human Ankle Stiffness during Postural Balance and Walking for Robot-aided Ankle Rehabilitation
- Using Molecular, Cellular and Bioengineering Approaches Towards Understanding Muscle Stem Cell Biology
Interconnection methods for IBC photovoltaic (PV) module integration have widely been explored yet a concrete and cost-effective solution has yet to be found. Traditional methods of tabbing and stringing which are still being used today impart increased stress on the cells, not to mention the high temperatures induced during the soldering process as well. In this work and effective and economical interconnection method is demonstrated, by laser welding an embossed aluminum (Al) electrode layer to screen-printed silver (Ag) on the solar cell. Contact resistivity below 1mΩ.cm2 is measured with the proposed design. Cross-sectional analysis of interfaces is conducted via Scanning …
- Contributors
- Sukumar Mony, Sujyot, Holman, Zachary, Alford, Terry, et al.
- Created Date
- 2019


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Pressure high for NFC breakthrough players
Being tabbed as a player on the brink of a potential breakthrough year in the NFL means dealing with more pressure and living up to higher expectations.
In a survey by team correspondents for The Sports Xchange, that double-edged label of potential breakthrough player for 2013 was placed on a variety of stars in the National Football Conference.
They range from so-called can't-miss rookie wide receiver Tavon Austin of the St. Louis Rams to former sixth-round draftee Josh Morgan of the Washington Redskins, a wide receiver still trying to prove himself in his sixth season.
The survey included a couple of potential head-scratchers, including Carolina Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly, whom most people might think already had a breakthrough year as 2012 Defensive Rookie of the Year. Was that merely a harbinger of even greater things to come?
Perhaps it shows that regardless how well one plays, expectations will continue to increase pressure.
Here is a closer look at potential breakthrough players for 2013 in the NFC:
ARIZONA -- Third-year tight end Rob Housler.
Athletic former basketball player who was targeted 29 times and caught 21 passes for 146 yards in his final five games last year. Housler's ascent should continue with the addition of tight end happy head coach Bruce Arians and veteran quarterback Carson Palmer.
ATLANTA -- Rookie cornerback Desmond Trufant.
He missed some OTAs because he was finishing college work, but stayed in touch with secondary coach Tim Lewis via Skype. He was tested in minicamp by Roddy White and Julio Jones, but who wouldn't be? Some games might be easier than practice.
CAROLINA -- Second-year linebacker Luke Kuechly.
Survey seems sketchy here because Kuechly qualified for breakout year as NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2012. The rationale, such as it is, contends that the addition of first round defensive tackles Star Lotulelei and Kawann Short to keep Kuechly clean so he can make even more plays. Meantime, watch for Lottulelei to be a breakthrough, ah, star himself.
CHICAGO -- Fourth-year defensive end Corey Wootton.
Wootton finally emerged last season, taking the starting job from veteran Israel Idonije and notching seven sacks and 12 pressures. At 6-6, 270, Wootton can stop the run and is another year removed from the knee injury that caused him to fall into the fourth round in 2010.
DALLAS -- Third-year linebacker Bruce Carter.
Although Sean Lee gets the attention, Carter has star potential written all over him as the most athletic and fastest linebacker on the team. He finished last year injured, but seems ready to move to his natural position as the weak-side linebacker in the 4-3.
DETROIT -- Second-year left tackle Riley Reiff.
The fact Reiff played multiple positions during O-line rebuild last year does not mean he wasn't good enough for left tackle. He was just too valuable everywhere else. Reiff is up ten pounds and looks great at 315 pounds, ready to become a fixture at left tackle.
GREEN BAY -- Rookie defensive end Datone Jones.
This first round pick from UCLA is on fast track to being an opening-day starter Sept. 8 in rematch from 2012 debacle against San Francisco as the Packers get started on trying to keep teams from running all over them. The 6-4, 285-pound Jones can help as run-stopper and pass rusher off edge or inside.
MINNESOTA -- Rookie cornerback Xavier Rhodes.
One of three first round picks, Rhodes is expected to make the biggest impact immediately. He will start from Day 1 and has the size, skill and attitude to handle the pressure in the pass-crazy NFC North.
NEW ORLEANS -- Fourth-year outside linebacker Junior Galette.
Galette is primed to make big strides in the 3-4 defense -- especially if he can replace the injured Victor Butler. The 256-pound Galette has ability to get to the quarterback but will be tested covering running backs and tight ends.
N.Y. GIANTS -- Third year cornerback Prince Amukamara.
When he was not being hazed and embarrassed by teammates, Amukamara showed flashes last year of why he was drafted in the first round in 2011. He added some bulk and appears more aggressive, which should help against receivers as well as teammates who throw him into the training room tub.
PHILADELPHIA -- Rookie tight end Zach Ertz.
Ertz, a consensus All-American and second-round pick, missed all OTAs and minicamps because of rules prohibiting rookies from playing until the school semester ends. But he is expected to pick up Chip Kelly's offense quickly and could be a highlight in two and three tight end alignments.
ST. LOUIS -- Rookie receiver Tavon Austin.
Hyped as the next coming of Percy Harvin in terms of versatility and big-play ability as a receiver and returner., Austin will need to do very well to match expectations. Former Rams wide receiver Isaac Bruce said: "He's electrifying. I mean, you look at this guy; he can stop on a dime and leave you two nickels."
SAN FRANCISCO -- Second-year running back LaMichael James.
Former do-it-all in Chip Kelly's offense assaults at Oregon, James figures to be more of a key player this season when quarterback Colin Kaepernick breaks out the read-option plays.
SEATTLE -- Second-year tight end Sean McGrath.
This qualifies as an under-the-radar pick as McGrath was an undrafted rookie free agent from Henderson State. He is expected to have an impact on both the running and passing game, although the listed starter is still Zach Miller.
TAMPA BAY -- Third-year defensive end Adrian Clayborn.
It seems this former first-round pick is on the verge of a breakthrough almost every year, but injuries have not helped. He had 7.5 sacks and a torn ACL last year. He bulked up in rehab and if he regains quickness could team with Gerald McCoy as a tough twosome up front.
WASHINGTON -- Sixth-year wide receiver Josh Morgan.
Morgan, a sixth-round pick by the San Francisco 49ers in 2008, led Washington last year with 48 catches but produced just 510 yards while running with screws in the ankle still mending from a break that prematurely ended his 2011 season. The screws have been removed and Morgan is running freely.


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We are lucky to have a rich hunting ground for such treasures nearby. One of our regular haunts is Shepton Mallet, whether it be the antiques or flea market. The flea market tends to be a favourite because it is more moochy (and prices tend to be cheaper). There haven't been as many stalls over the Winter months because obviously, the weather is not too great but there is always a handful of sturdy folk who brave the cold. They are rewarded with plenty of eager shoppers.
Of course, I am always on the look out for textiles. I am now wondering why I didn't buy that red flowery one!
Some sellers make a real effort to style their stall and have themes to what they are selling as with this colourful example below. Others pile it all on and the sturdier amongst us get down and have a good rummage!
I see this stall with its roses in bottles at many of the fairs including Ardingly. I've no idea if they ever sell any as I keep seeing them, sometimes months apart! Very pretty, though.
Paper ephemera has become another favourite of mine. This seller had come all the way to Shepton from Brighton. What is it about old script writing and parchment paper that is so appealing? It was quite pricey, though.
We have a big car and we know how to fill it!
Almost better than the treasure hunting itself, is getting back home and having a play with all the goodies I've found. Over the last few months, I'd been on the look out for pieces for the sitting room we've just decorated (so nearly ready to show you that, just the curtains to hang). When I get home, the Furry Inspector is always ready for a good sniff!
Other than the fairs, there are lots of pretty villages and towns in the West Country to visit. The other week, we popped to Honiton, just over the border in Devon, which is a town known for its many antiques shops. I was on the look out for a side table for the sitting room (which we did indeed find) however on perusing one of my favourite shops, I could not leave this gorgeous Suffolk Puff quilt behind. Made with many 1930's feedback fabrics, it was a must-have for my collection and in fabulous condition. Drool!
If you've been reading my blog for some time, you'll know how fond we are of Bridport. It's such a friendly town and we now know many of the shop owners and street market traders by name and have a good old natter. Nothing is better than a Saturday mooching the street market and nearby vintage shops then heading to The Stable for pizza and cider. I rarely come away empty handed though some weeks are better than others, of course. As usual, textiles are my favourite and I've added some nice bits to my stash in recent times.
Hmm, more fabrics, a gorgeous pin cushion and I can never leave behind an old tape measure which is in inches only.
My style and tastes have evolved a little of late. I still love the flowery 1940's vintage look but I've also become fond of faded country house textiles, many of which have come from across La Manche from France. I'm building up my stash of such fabrics and have been trying to add some reds. These fabrics are sadly very costly when you do find them so I only tend to have them in small but precious amounts. I couldn't resist the vintage red leather baby shoes I found on a stall at Bridport's street market. Too cute!
I don't just go out buying fabrics to look at, of course, I really do use them! You may remember that I started a hexagon English Paper Piecing project a while back. I enjoyed whiling away the evenings making the little rosettes and finally, the piece was large enough for a cushion front. I set to, making the cushion cover on my old Singer Featherweight, making my own covered piping for the first time in many years and (yikes!) deciding to insert a zip alongside it.
It was one of those days when everything just went right and after a morning's work, my cushion was completed. The idea was for it to look as if it had been made from a section of an old patchwork quilt. I'm quite chuffed with it. Of course, I have a new EPP project on the go already! More of that soon.
Back to treasure hunting, the recent flea market at Shepton Mallet was absolutely heaving. I wonder if this fair is going to become a victim of its own success. It now attracts a lot of dealers which makes it rather less fun for the everyday punter. The organiser is obviously happy and the entrance fee is going up from £3.50 to £4.50 at the next fair in April. Hmm!
I am happy if I come home with a handful of vintage fabrics and even more so, if like last time, I can add a vintage quilt to my collection (do you see how it's now becoming a collection!) Last time, I was lucky enough to find this rather divine feedsack grandmother's garden quilt at a lovely thrifty price. The Furry Inspector wasted no time in getting on with his job as soon as I walked through the door and laid out the quilt for inspection.
No, Charlie Boy, it's not for you. Awww mum!
I decided to give it a bath which I'm not sure I'll do again in a hurry! It was incredibly heavy when wet and of course, it is not easy to get them dry at this time of year. Anyway, it is now fresh and clean and just needs a couple of seams fixing and one patch mending.
Well, that's it for today, lovely readers, I have a date with a paintbrush for the rest of the day!


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EAP Training
As a Drug Free Workplace Coordinator, please print and distribute a newsletter and sign-in sheet for each quarter.
Give each employee and supervisor a copy of the newsletter then, have them complete the sign-in sheet, which along with your signature, will certify that the employees have completed the training.
Repeat the process for your supervisors/managers with the appropriate supervisor training newsletter and sign-in sheet for each quarter.
Four trainings must be completed annually by employees and supervisors for certification. Remember, supervisors must complete both employee and supervisor requirements.
Fax the completed sign-in sheets to Archbold Employee Assistance Program at 229.228.2215, and we will issue your documents of completion each year. If you prefer, you may also mail the original sign-in sheets to us at:
Archbold Employee Assistance Programs, P. O. Box 1018, Thomasville, GA 31799-1018


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Easier to use products through auto-settings and better visibility.
Improve productivity with technologies that enhance efficiency and save you money.
Optimize your operation through advanced welding processes, training and weld data monitoring.
AGCO's Jackson plant is the site of a growing trend, an American company expanding existing facilities and adding jobs in the United States. The company is ramping up and building out as it adds to its production line. The welding professionals on staff wanted to streamline the welding process, monitor sequencing and mine the information at the point of the weld. The Miller Axcess E with Insight platform offered the weld process monitoring capabilities that AGCO executives were looking for to increase productivity and ensure product quality.
AGCO is based in Duluth, Georgia and is the world's largest manufacturer focused solely on producing products for the agricultural industry. The company manufactures a wide range of equipment, including tractors, combines, hay tools, sprayers, forage equipment, tillage, implements and related replacement parts. AGCO produces equipment under the trusted brand names of Challenger, Massey Ferguson, Fendt and Valtra. AGCO delivers everything from simple utility machines for the part-time farmer, to highly specialized, high-horsepower equipment for today's professional farm operations.
AGCO's attention to design and manufacture of its products has garnered worldwide recognition and awards for its products. The company recognizes its biggest reward is in the growing legion of modern farm operations that invest in AGCO products around the world.
AGCO has over 2,600 independent dealers worldwide with distributors in 140 countries. With factories located around the globe, AGCO is a leader in new technology. In Jackson, the company is expanding the facility, increasing productivity, monitoring the specs, and streamlining the welding process.
The company has recently transferred production of high-horsepower wheeled tractors sold in North America from Beauvais, France to Jackson, Minnesota. The factory was increased in size by 75,000 square feet to accommodate the larger Challenger high-horsepower row crop tractors coming off the assembly line.
AGCO Welding Engineer Dave Dehrkoop is responsible for the weld-engineering group at AGCO's Jackson plant where there is a laser-like focus on integrating smart machinery, technology and innovation into the everyday function of the production line. There is a demand on world-class design included in every aspect of the machines produced by AGCO, from new engines to function control to complete redesigns. Quality is a cornerstone of production. It stands to reason there would be an emphasis on precise welding.
"AGCO uses the AGCO Production System as an all-encompassing philosophy relative to the way we run the business here. Five-to 10-person teams that actually work the same way a small football team or basketball team would work, look at opportunities for change that help support our focus of continuous improvement," says Dehrkoop, "Instead of four or 10 people trying to solve a problem, now you've got hundreds, even thousands of people looking to improve the business, looking for opportunities and then implementing those throughout the factory."
The welding department took a look at how they could improve productivity and quality. The welding needs are wide-ranging, from 22-gauge steel all the way upwards of 3-inch. Material type ranges from standard carbon steel, such as A36, all the way through HSLAs or stainless type materials. In some cases they weld dissimilar materials such as a stainless to a carbon steel or a galvanized carbon steel. The prevailing welding process is MIG welding utilizing the Miller Accu-Pulse™ Pulsed MIG process.
"Not only is Accu-Pulse an ideal process for manual welding, it has benefits on the automated side of the business as well," says Dehrkoop, "it allows the operator to account for some of the inconsistencies of a manual operation, and it also allows us to get better travel speeds, less heat input and its ability to respond to variation in stick out."
Ted Nelson is a weld engineer technician for AGCO. Nelson worked his way from the factory assembly floor into fabrication where he spent 12 years on the welding side of the Jackson facility. Today he oversees the welding programming and sequences for new and existing products.
"We try to hold our tolerances a lot tighter compared to common structural welding codes. We like to see no visible defects at all in anything that's coming out of the shop," says Nelson, "We're monitoring the size of each weld to ensure it is to print without any variations."
The demands of more and more complicated designs, exotic steels and precise welding requirements called for more direct feedback to the operator from the point of the weld. The more complicated the component, the more feedback was needed on weld sequence, heat, travel speed and the most critical task of all—whether or not the weld was done correctly.
The AGCO team took notice of the amount of valuable information provided by the Miller Axcess E with Insight system. The comprehensive welding data includes: missing weld detection, detection of under- and over-welding, identification of potential defects, sequence monitoring, cell downtime and production costs. It also provides productivity and quality information related to the welding process, visibility into the welding process through historical data, and convenient reporting functions that allow the management team to identify opportunities to streamline processes and assess the overall performance of the welding operation.
"We knew Miller's Axcess E is a proven system; combined with Insight, weld data monitoring allows you to monitor the actual heat input going into the weld, the weld size, the weld length, and the sequence that you put the weld down," says Dehrkoop. "It also allows you to track some of the basic background signature information and historical data that would go along with welding large and complex products."
AGCO invested in Axcess E with Insight technology in order to govern the welding process. The Insight monitoring system is integrated into the proven Axcess welding power source platform. It has the ability to verify that each weld is produced within acceptable limits for current, voltage, wire feed speed, and duration. The technology allows users very specific feedback on heat input and weld length, along with weld size, all critical when working with structural members and structural welds. The focus for AGCO is on axles, wheel motors, subframe components—anything that's going to have a high impact on the business. The ability to support critical, precise welding with a range of materials in one cell was a key selling point.
"For example, a boom structure is more like a crane, so I've got very thin material," says Dehrkoop. "Heat input has a great amount of impact on how that material flexes. So there I've got low alloy. Then, on the other side of that, when you get into some of your heavy plate steels, I've got a lot larger weld, which means a lot more heat shrink that's the cause of component distortion. By using the Axcess E, we're able to control that."
The added benefit of the Axcess E with Insight over the previous weld systems at AGCO includes added program profiles that the company didn't have before. The welders find the ability to adjust and make better welds because of the control of the puddle makes a significant difference in enhancing productivity.
The Axcess E with Insight provides information flow that allows continuous productivity improvement. It gives managers specific information that can be used to diagnose or detect issues and allow a correction to be incorporated.
"When you look at trying to understand what happened with a particular weld and diagnosing that, you can "armchair quarterback" what you think happened without actually being down there on the floor. I can pull up the history of a specific event and look at a specific weld on a specific part and get a good understanding of what is going on," says Nelson. "I can determine if I have a repeatability issue, or was there something that specifically happened on that one occasion, and then try to correlate across groups of data to get some statistical information. Am I always having problems with joint 53? If I'm always having a problem with joint 53, Insight Centerpoint allows me to very quickly isolate the issue. For instance: was it the fixture that's starting to wear, do I have some type of a part fit-up issue, do I have some other type of an issue with the actual physical equipment, the plugging of the nozzle or something else?"
The benefits of Axcess E with Insight were quickly apparent. Not only was the company seeing the weld process data it desired, but the information was paying for itself in shorter training curves, better productivity and use of fewer consumables.
"If we look at the benefits of the Axcess E relative to the business and just from the productivity, you're getting a return on investment in less than a year just because the process and the machine is just so much more efficient, because you've dialed that in. You've honed that program specifically for that part," says Dehrkoop. "Little things like weld spatter and having to grind off the weld spatter or touching up a part; sometimes that's lost in the process. So, as a whole, you've got a system that nets a lot of gain to the business."
The company has seen a sharp reduction in over-welding thanks to Axcess E with Insight. With the system, AGCO operators are able to control weld size as they're actually laying down the weld. The system alerts the operator when a weld is either too long or too short. As a result, the company has seen significant reduction in the amount of wire and gas used while also improving quality.
"Our welds are to print, and are high quality welds. But at the same time, you're eliminating some waste of excess wire and gas use, thanks to Axcess E with Insight," says Dehrkoop.
On the floor, training the operators is far different than it was before Axcess E with Insight. The system allows trainers to easily work with a brand new operator or an experienced operator moving to a new cell. The process of educating new employees takes fewer training hours and the new operator is producing much sooner than in the past.
"It greatly reduces training time," says Nelson, "because we have already determined the correct sequence, it's simply a matter of showing them how to put the parts together in the fixtures, and then the weld sequence itself is already there for them, so it helped greatly reduce the amount of training time."
The Axcess E with Insight can provide a visual Human Machine Interface (HMI) for operators to follow. Using either digital photos or CAD drawings, the operators are guided through the fabrication of a part on a weld-by-weld basis. This approach ensures welds are in within limits for current voltage wire feed speed and weld duration. The system monitors each weld independently while governing the sequence. This gives longtime welders the benefit of peace of mind that the weld was done to spec. The operator receives real-time information on the weld as it's laid down. The information flow and the point and click function of the system keep the operators focused on welding and parts moving down the line. The Axcess E with Insight system gives production and plant managers the power to review operator productivity and performance, understand production rates and costs, as well as troubleshoot issues such as why a welding cell is experiencing downtime or why potentially faulty welds are being produced.
"It has helped us determine whether we need to change the sequence or whether we need to change a fixture or even if it's an engineering issue, bad joint fit-up or bad joint design," says Nelson, "I think it's really helped narrow down the root issues and keep us from chasing our tails, so to speak. I think it's really helped reduce the time in identifying and correcting those types of issues by helping us understand where we need to look."
AGCO's Dehrkoop says the fact that he has the ability to know exactly what is happening inside the welding cells is a great benefit for management. He knows his operators have the tools they need to get the job done accurately whenever they spark a torch, ensuring the job is done right the first time, and that AGCO ultimately delivers the high quality products their customers expect.
"By having the Axcess E technology," says Dehrkoop, "I know I'm getting a good weld, the right weld, every time."
The Axcess E with Insight provides not only "best in class" welding technology, it provides the type of valuable information that helps AGCO stay ahead of the other competitors in the highly competitive global agricultural equipment-manufacturing segment. By delivering tangible benefits for operators, engineers, and plant management, the Axcess E with Insight has been able to help AGCO reduce cost, increase productivity and enhance overall quality.
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Washington, Cheadle win early NAACP Image Awards
LOS ANGELES -- Kerry Washington and Don Cheadle are among the early winners at the NAACP Image Awards.
Washington picked up the trophy for supporting actress in a motion picture for "Django Unchained" at the 44th annual ceremony Friday.
Washington was also presented with NAACP President's Award, which is given in recognition of special achievement and exceptional public service.
Don Cheadle won the trophy for outstanding actor in a comedy series for his role as a slick management consultant in "House of Lies."
Denzel Washington won as outstanding actor in a motion picture for "Flight," while Viola Davis won as outstanding actress in a motion picture for "Won't Back Down."
The Image Awards are presented annually by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the group's members select the winners.


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This could be pretty cool. Microsoft's remarkable Photosynth software now is playing nicely with Virtual Earth. From their press release:
Photosynth software analyzes digital photographs and generates a 3-D model by "stitching" the photos together. These models, or "synths," can now be viewed using Silverlight technology across multiple platforms. Virtual Earth brings together features, functionality and content that help consumers, businesses, citizens and governments bring location to life. It helps businesses and governments share location-based information, build better connections with consumers or citizens, and helps organizations make better operational decisions. With the integration of Photosynth into Virtual Earth customers will be able to create detailed 3-D views of anything from places to products and from hotels to homes.
Greg Sterling has some good ideas on how companies could best use this, covering ideas such as real estate and retail stores.