04 December 2007

Movie Recommendation - Shut Up and Sing

Watched "Shut Up and Sing" last night - a documentary about The Dixie Chicks and how they went from heroes to zeroes in the US Country Scene because of one comment from singer Natalie Haines at a UK concert about President Bush just before the outbreak of war with Iraq.

The best movies I've watched lately have been documentaries, and this is wonderful. As someone who supported the war (though primarily for human rights reasons), I have no problem with what she said. But the reaction of (some of) the US public is truly frightening, and the consequential cave-in by business and the media is something every citizen should be concerned with.

I'm not sure I was more impressed by Natalie's ability to withstand the attacks and death threats or by the way the other two band members supported her and stood together throughout a very long and protracted episode (and how incredibly normal they all are!). Well done Dixie Chicks!

If you value free speech, this one is a great watch.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Ian,
You seem to be proficient with iweb. I've been keeping an iweb blog since September and I am still very ignorant. Do you know why the RSS Feed doesn't seem to work and I can't list with Technorati and other sites? Is that why you discontinued your experiment?
http://www.debimcswain.com
debimcswain@mac.com

Ian Hobson said...

Hi Debi
I did try iWeb for blogging when it first came out. Although it was possible to do comments, it was not easy, and a few other things - especially the difficulty of using just one computer made me stick with blogger.com while doing my site in iWeb. I have found iWeb to be particularly useful for putting together simple sites for quick needs.

iWeb 2 does fix a lot of my complaints (but not all). I suspect it could do what I need - and it SHOULD do what you are asking. But I haven't done much with it yet - too busy. I have found the gallery services provided by iPhoto and iMovie to be very useful though as an adjunct to it.

I helped my partner put together a site using RapidWeaver which contains a blog that is fully synchronised with blogger.com so you can post entries EITHER in RapidWeaver OR blogger, and handle comments seamlessly. This site is very complex and I was amazed how easy it was in Rapidweaver to have a professional site (with the help of a couple of plugins). The cost was very reasonable - perhaps $70 including plugins, but of course, that is more expensive than iWeb which if you have iLife is free!

I suggest you try Apple Discussions which is a free forum and many helpers over under apple.com/support. You could also try sites like MacFixit or macintouch - search on iWeb. Or just generally Google your problem such as "iWeb Tehnorati".

Good luck