Tag: Audio Video
Movie Review: ‘Mountain Patrol: Kekexili’
by Ben Keene | 04.14.06 | 2:33 PM ET
The menacing howl of the wind across a barren plateau 13,000 feet above sea level. The sharp cry of vultures circling over the carcasses of hundreds of chiru (Tibetan antelope) slaughtered for their downy fur. The crackle of flames leaping from a rusty Land Rover abandoned by suspected poachers. These are the sounds of Mountain Patrol: Kekexili, the latest dramatic release from National Geographic World Films, which opens in select theaters this weekend. I was invited to an advance screening Wednesday and was both entertained and educated.
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Yahoo! Buzz“United 93”: Editors, Writers and 9/11 Family Members Speak Out
by Michael Yessis | 04.10.06 | 7:21 AM ET
The movie “United 93” opens in less than three weeks, and it’s certainly on a lot of people’s minds. Families of those on the flight that went down in a Pennsylvania field on 9/11 were given a private screening Saturday in Newark, New Jersey. Los Angeles Times writer Scott Martelle reports that the families lauded “Universal Studios and director Paul Greengrass for what they felt was a realistic re-creation of events whose true details can only be guessed at.” At Slate, the editors have posted an interesting internal e-mail discussion about the controversy over the “United 93” trailer, which at least one New York City theater pulled last week. Meanwhile, at Time, someone (I don’t see a byline) has written a story that covers several 9/11-related movies in the works, goes behind the scenes of “United 93,” and delivers another positive review of the movie.
Theater Pulls Trailer for 9/11 Film ‘United 93’
by Jim Benning | 04.04.06 | 10:39 PM ET
At least one New York movie theater has pulled the trailer for the new 9/11 movie, “United 93,” after one movie-goer who saw it apparently broke down in tears. The film chronicles events aboard the ill-fated United Airlines flight that crashed in a Pennsylvania field despite a heroic passenger revolt. It’s expected to open at the Tribeca Film Festival later this month. In January, we pointed out a New York Times story about the making of the film, then called “Flight 93.” Director Paul Greengrass told the paper, “One of the reasons why Flight 93 exerts such a powerful hold on our imaginations is precisely because we don’t know exactly what happened.” Be that as it may, I won’t be lining up to see the movie. Count me among the many who say it’s way too soon.
Spain: Home of the World’s Coolest Architecture
by Michael Yessis | 03.10.06 | 12:22 AM ET
Slate recently posted a slide-show essay about innovative architectural developments in Spain. The presentation includes great shots of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, Granada’s Museum of Andalusia and Barcelona’s Santa Caterina Market. New York’s Museum of Modern Art also currently has a great multimedia exhibition on its Web site, featuring audio commentary and images of more stunning Spanish buildings.
In: Televised Emergency Plane Landings. Out: Televised Car Chases.
by Michael Yessis | 12.21.05 | 12:31 AM ET
This evening, the American cable television viewing public was once again riveted by an emergency plane landing. In September, it was a Jet Blue flight in Los Angeles. This time, a Midwest Airlines flight with landing gear problems and 86 passengers on board touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport as cameras rolled. CNN has the story—and the landing footage.
Airplane Lands. Nation Rejoices.
by Michael Yessis | 09.22.05 | 4:30 AM ET
Yesterday’s emergency landing of a New York-bound JetBlue airliner in Los Angeles was a post-post-modern experience, passenger and New York Observer editor Alexandra Jacobs told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Translation: Passengers watched the live national television coverage of their crippled jet circling the skies over Southern California on their personal TV screens within the plane. The good news of the landing caused Cooper, who has been covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, to smile for possibly the first time in weeks. If you haven’t seen the video of the amazing landing, Crooks and Liars has it.
‘Amazing Adventures of a Nobody’: Seeing America On $5 a Day
by Michael Yessis | 09.20.05 | 4:21 AM ET
Two days ago, Leon Logothetis set out from New York City to travel across the United States on a mere $5 a day. He’s being followed by a film crew, which is tormenting Logothetis by staying in luxury hotels and eating gourmet food. Logothetis calls himself a “nobody,” and is counting on the goodness of strangers to help him find food and places to sleep. I don’t think he’s going to have much of a problem. As Ramon Stoppelenburg proved a couple years back, people will bend over backwards to help out a traveler on an extremely limited budget, particularly one with a gimmick and a well-crafted Web site.
Sandra Tsing Loh: “I really do not enjoy turbulence”
by Michael Yessis | 08.09.05 | 12:09 AM ET
If Valium and Bloody Marys aren’t enough to get you through an airplane flight, don’t miss Sandra Tsing Loh’s most recent Loh Life commentary, Plane Geometry. It’s hilarious.
Portzline Debuts “Bookstore Tourism” Podcast
by Michael Yessis | 08.03.05 | 9:49 PM ET
It’s newsy, but it’s the kind of news we like. Larry Portzline, who created Bookstore Tourism and wrote a book about it, discusses how to kickstart your own local bookstore tour and spreads the word about an upcoming trip planned by the Southern California Booksellers Association. Portzline also has a Bookstore Tourism blog.
Dancing Machine*
by Michael Yessis | 02.19.05 | 12:58 AM ET
The video of Matt Harding dancing "very badly" in various locations around the world has become an Internet phenomenon. Once you see it, it's easy to understand why.
World Hum Featured in Podcast
by Jim Benning | 01.27.05 | 10:11 PM ET
Of all the adjectives one might use to describe World Hum, high-tech is not one of them. So I was delighted to be featured this week as the subject of an audio interview on a decidedly more tech-savvy blog, Gadling.com. Launched by Erik Olsen, whose resume includes stints at the Department of Interior and ABC News, the travel blog features Olsen’s take on what he calls “engaged travel.” As Olsen explains on the site: “Engaged travelers throw themselves (sometimes literally) into action when they travel. Whether sea kayaking in Micronesia or learning how to cook risotto in Italy, Gadling travelers are adventurers.”
The interview with me is included in a 41-minute podcast, which sounds something like a hip public radio show: It’s The Savvy Traveler meets the blogosphere. I’m included in the third and final segment. Olsen also talks up his favorite blog items and articles in travel magazines. Listeners can easily skip sections of the show. It’s an intriguing new format.
The Return of the Amazing Race
by Michael Yessis | 03.11.02 | 8:23 PM ET
Eleven duos begin an around-the-world race tonight at 10 p.m. as the American television network CBS debuts the second installment of its reality/travel show The Amazing Race. Practical Nomad author Edward Hasbrouck, who wrote excellent morning after reviews of each of last season’s episodes from the standpoint of a do-it-yourself traveler, will do so again this year at his website.
The Magnetic Pull of a Purple Umbrella
by Michael Yessis | 03.06.02 | 1:31 AM ET
It was raining in Japan and Karin Muller lacked an umbrella. The omission was conscious. Muller was already hauling enough in her backpack, and she wasn’t afraid of a little water. So when a generous pension owner gave her a four-pound purple “wooden paper ceiling,” she tried to “lose it.” But whenever she tried to leave it on a train, she says in a Savvy Traveler audio postcard concerned Japanese locals wouldn’t let her get rid of it.
Interview with Robert Young Pelton
by Michael Yessis | 03.05.02 | 2:29 PM ET
Kojo Nnamdi, host of the Public Radio program Public Interest, interviewed Robert Young Pelton last week. Pelton, the author of The World’s Most Dangerous Places, spoke about several of his adventures, including his recent experiences in Afghanistan where he famously interviewed American Taliban John Walker Lindh for CNN.
The Meaning of Borders
by Michael Yessis | 02.26.02 | 11:47 PM ET
Richard Rodriguez and Ruben Martinez discuss borders and the significance of cultural mixing in interviews with public radio’s The Savvy Traveler. “We are much less innocent about borders—about the durability of lines between countries,” says Rodriguez, an essayist for the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and author of the new book Brown: The Last Discovery of America. “Growing fearful about that lack of durability, we realize the world has been very complicated long before we began to notice it.”
Interviews with Bud Greenspan, Andrew Solomon and Suzanne Vega
by Michael Yessis | 02.22.02 | 11:55 PM ET
The Savvy Traveler jumped on the Olympic bandwagon last week, talking with documentary filmmaker Bud Greenspan about life on the road and his decades-long infatuation with the Games. “Since I’ve been doing this I’ve probably got seven or eight million miles under my belt,” says Greenspan. “I spend as much time on planes as I do on the ground sometimes.” Previously, Savvy Traveler writer-at-large Tony Kahn spoke with Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, and the show’s host, Diana Nyad, tracked down musician Suzanne Vega, who comes from a family of traveling musicians.
“This is My Motherland, But it Seems Just Beyond my Grasp”
by Michael Yessis | 02.11.02 | 2:51 PM ET
After two years in Asia, Anne Marie Ruff returns to her childhood home in Minnesota and finds that the familiar seems more foreign than, say, Inner Mongolia. “Maybe by immersing myself in the strangeness of the world,” she says in an audio piece for public radio’s Savvy Traveler, “I will have made myself a stranger to my own country.”
“I’m Going Down to Lebanon, Tennessee / From Where I Stand, It’s as Good a Place as Any”
by Michael Yessis | 02.07.02 | 2:59 PM ET
Those are the opening lines of Ron Sexsmith’s song “Lebanon, Tennessee,” and they burrowed so far into Peter Jon Lindberg’s head that he hopped in his car and drove there. Along the way, he meditates on music’s ability to democratize, mythologize and inspire. “Songs turn our Nowheres into Somewheres-until all those Winslow, Arizonas (‘Take It Easy,’ the Eagles), and Slidell, Louisianas (‘Joy,’ Lucinda Williams), are inseparable from the melodies they inspired,” Lindberg writes in the February issue of Travel + Leisure. “‘It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw,’ sang Simon and Garfunkel, and from the glory in that line, they could have been singing about Valhalla.”
Super Bowl Fever Hits Thailand
by Jim Benning | 02.05.02 | 2:19 AM ET
Rolf Potts found himself in southern Thailand for Super Bowl Sunday. In an audio report for public radio’s The Savvy Traveler, he grapples with the prospect of missing yet another quintessentially American big game. “My expat neighbors don`t even sympathize,” he says. We sympathize.
How to Tell a Travel Story
by Michael Yessis | 01.26.02 | 1:28 AM ET
Mary Lou Weisman offers a detailed lesson on the best ways to tell your travel tales in a Savvy Traveler audio postcard. “If you’re not willing to get out there in the middle of the living room and actually show how you tripped over the gondolier’s oar, fell into the canal, and came up with a bit of prosciutto behind your ear,” she says, “then forget it.”