Thursday , March 28 2024

Leo Sopicki

Writer, photographer, graphic artist and technologist. I focus my creative efforts on celebrating the American virtues of self-reliance, individual initiative, volunteerism, tolerance and a healthy suspicion of power and authority.

Anthem Film Festival: ‘Deep Web’ Explores Silk Road, Looking for the Dread Pirate Roberts

Before seeing 'Deep Web', like most people, I believed Silk Road was a criminal enterprise -- a gigantic drug network and online cartel run by a drug lord known as the "Dread Pirate Roberts." It turns out that this was a highly distorted picture.

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Anthem Film Festival: Slavery Is Alive and Well (And May Be Living Down Your Street)

Slavery has become more subtle and is not just something that happens far away in third world countries. 'The Return' takes us into the world of a Filipino house maid held captive for years by an upper class family in Orange County, California.

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Anthem Film Festival: Laughing Though the Pain

Between films focusing on dysfunctional futures, police excesses, brain damage, political oppression, climate fraud, cancer, and unjust imprisonment, Anthem Film Festival director Jo Ann Skousen worked in a few films that inspired giggles and guffaws. Thank you, Jo Ann.

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Anthem Film Festival: Lenny Bruce, Gilbert Gottfried, and Penn Jillette vs. the Outrage Mob in ‘Can We Take a Joke’

We are reaching peak crazy. There are two possible outcomes. We get trampled or the rest of us wake up and start fighting the people who are trying to stifle free speech.

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Politicon: It Takes a Village to Raise a Democracy, with Bill Nye, Sarah Palin and Gary Johnson

Many political events, TV channels, and magazines claim to be non-partisan and “fair,” but few achieve it or even mean it. Politicon, billing itself as the unconventional political convention, actually means it and achieves it. The result is a stimulating and entertaining event for political junkies.

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E3: Games that Don’t Go Boom, but are Fun Anyway and Have Bacon

E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, invaded the Los Angeles Convention Center and environs from June 12-16, and left craziness and delight in its wake. I’ve never been a great fan of the shoot’em up games, so I searched the humongous displays in the Los Angeles Convention Center for build’em ups. I found two: a relative newcomer, 'Farming Simulator', and the newest iteration of a classic, 'Sid Meier's Civilization'.

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