Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

5 September 2003

Bus 174

Ônibus 174

2002, Brazil

director: José Padilha

Bus 174 is a documentary about a June 2000 bus-jacking in Rio de Janeiro that escalated into a long, public standoff with police. When an armed man took control of a city bus in broad daylight, local news agencies swarmed, capturing nearly all of the incident on video tape. Documentarian José Padilha has shaped the large amount of footage into a clear and well-rounded retelling of what happened. It may sound like a special episode of Cops, but Bus 174 is far more inquisitive than a reality TV show. In the movie's opening minutes, Padilha uses aerial photography to look down on the city as a whole, and later he does the same thing figuratively, widening his gaze to draw attention to social problems in Rio of which the hijacking is just a single dramatic symptom. The movie detours from the hours-long standoff to ask all the right questions about urban violence, and it reveals details about the hijacker's life — and the lives of other young homeless people who were involved in a previous drive-by slaughter — to link the treatment of homeless children with the incident on bus 174. Padilha weaves all of this into a suspenseful narrative that manages to satisfy the rubbernecking instinct while still contributing to our understanding of the consequences of poverty. The dichotomy runs deep: while it faults police for allowing the standoff to become a media circus, the movie in its current form would not have been possible without all those cameras.

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