Monday, December 7, 2009

Biographies “Artists poised for Turner Prize decision - Channel 4 News” plus 3 more

Biographies “Artists poised for Turner Prize decision - Channel 4 News” plus 3 more

Artists poised for Turner Prize decision - Channel 4 News

Posted: 07 Dec 2009 04:44 AM PST

Updated on 07 December 2009

By Channel 4 News

From sculptures made of coal to a council flat filled with blue crystals - some of Britain's most avant-garde artists will hear tonight which of them has won the prestigious Turner Prize.

Now in its 25th year, the Turner Prize is awarded to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the last twelve months.

Out of four nominations Birmingham-born Roger Hiorns is the overwhelming favourite to win the £25,000 award. He is up against Lucy Skaer, Richard Wright and Enrico David.

Read biographies and see the nominations here.

Channel 4 News will be broadcasting the results live from the Tate Modern at 7pm tonight.

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Family tragedy drives prosecutor - Coshocton Tribune

Posted: 07 Dec 2009 04:44 AM PST

CINCINNATI -- Twenty-five years have come and gone since Anita Vizedom passed up a chance to bake Christmas cookies with her cousins.

That decision saved her life. And sent her on a lifelong quest for justice.

Vizedom's tenacious work over the last eight years as an assistant Hamilton County prosecutor has earned her a reputation as a voice for victims of violent crime.

She has no qualms about speaking out in court and calling criminals "wicked."

"Someone needs to speak on behalf of the victims and their families," she said during a rare relaxed moment in her office. "They never deserved what happened to them. They are truly innocent."

That description fits her family. An encounter with evil changed her loved ones' lives forever a quarter century ago on the day after Thanksgiving.

Late that night, a former boarder by the name of Rhett DePew -- "I don't like to call him a person," Vizedom declared -- broke into her cousins' small Butler County home. He stabbed three of them to death and set the house on fire.

"I remember my mom getting the call at our house in Hanover Township and me running down to the basement to get my sister," Vizedom said. "She was listening to music."

She still remembers the tune. It was Elton John's "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues."

On their way to the hospital, Vizedom and her family passed her cousins' house.

"It was," she recalled with a shiver, "still on fire."

Among the dead that night were her 27-year-old cousin, Theresa Jones, and Jones' seven-year-old daughter, Aubrey.

The fire and the knife wounds also claimed the life of 12-year-old Elizabeth Burton.

Beth, as the future prosecutor called her younger cousin, was 12. Vizedom was 13.

"We were close," Vizedom said. And not just in age. They played on the same softball team and attended the same junior high. They had the same hair color. They looked like sisters. Even down to the matching cowlicks.

The killer -- whose death sentence was overturned and changed to life imprisonment in 2005 -- spared Jones' younger daughter, Megan. That night, she had just celebrated her first birthday.

The murders "caused a humongous ripple effect that's still being felt throughout our entire family," Vizedom said. "There is no healing. There is no closure. This is not something you can ever get over."

The tragedy changed her forever. Encountering "real, absolute evil in the world" robbed her of her innocence. "It still amazes me," she noted, "some people think there's no such thing as evil or something like this can't happen."

The University of Cincinnati Law School graduate carries these thoughts, feelings and memories with her, along with criminals' bulging case files, as she strides into court.

"She really wants to get the bad guys," said Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman.

"She's one of our best," said her boss, Prosecutor Joe Deters.

"She's passionate about victims," said Common Pleas Judge Charles Kubicki Jr., "without letting that get in the way of her professionalism so the guilty get punished."

Her passion won one of this year's four Hope in Heels awards. The honor, to be presented Dec. 4 by five members of the Monfort Heights-based Besse family, recognizes advocates for victims of violent crimes.

"This tall," -- Vizedom stands five feet, eight inches -- "thin woman is so beautiful, she could be a model," remarked Marie Besse, the award's founder. "But, in the courtroom, she's a tenacious bulldog."

Vizedom's tenacity in the case of Michael Williamson won her the award. Williamson raped three girls, ages 10, 12 and 13, over three years. He did so, his attorney claimed, to keep the girls away from their "out of control" mother.

That claim enraged Vizedom.

In court, she called Williamson's actions "absolutely disgusting, nauseating."

Behind the scenes, she regularly visited the three victims at their foster home. She saw to it that the traumatized young women would not have to testify.

She also saw to it that Williamson got a sentence of 80 years to life.

Vizedom, 38, said she was "just doing the job I love."

The award comes with a $1,000 prize. Vizedom, a Cheviot resident, plans to donate the money to care for the city's first police dog, Charlie.

"I love animals," said Vizedom, the owner of a hound named Piggy.

But, she hates bad guys. Especially murderers.

"There is so much fascination with killers," she said, wincing as if she'd just bitten into a rotten tomato.

"Biographies are written about them. But, you don't need to read those books," she added, slashing the air with her right index finger.

"Here's all you need to know about these guys: They're bad. They're evil. And, they need to be taken out of society. That's it."

She finds society's "sick fascination" with killers "appalling. You never see biographies about victims or their families."

And she never sees fright flicks on the big screen.

"I've never been to a horror movie," she said. "If I'm in another room and the TV is on and a commercial for one of those movies comes on, I hold my hands over my ears until it's over. I have no idea why it's entertaining to see people in fear of being murdered. I don't want to hear the screams."

She paused and lowered her voice.

"Because," she whispered, "I'm sure there were screams that night."

She knows her cousin Beth fought back. "From what little I've read of the reports -- and it never will be a lot -- I know she had lots of defensive wounds.

"That's not surprising," Vizedom added. "I knew Beth. She would have done everything she could to help herself as well as her sister and her sister's children that night."

Again and again she revisits that night when she was supposed to be with her cousins baking cookies for Christmas. That family tradition, so sweet and so innocent, so filled with fun and happy memories, ended with the lives of her three cousins.

"We still mark that day," Vizedom said. But the new tradition is based on sadness.

"Here's what I do," she said.

"I get depressed."

But not for long. Vizedom refuses to dwell on the tragedy. "I finally have in my mind a vision of their lives," she said, rather than their deaths.

In her dreams, her cousins "are alive. I talk about them and to them.

"In some way," she added, "I still have a relationship with Beth. I have her picture up in my house."

She thinks about her cousin as a grown woman of 37. She wonders what clothes she would be wearing. What color would her hair be? Would she be married? Would she have kids?

"Would she still have this cowlick?" she asked tugging at a wayward lock.

As she gets ready to question a piece of evil on the witness stand, she quickly glances over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the victim's family.

For a split second, she can sense the spirit of her cousin.

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Family tragedy drives prosecutor to be voice for victims - Lancaster Eagle Gazette.com

Posted: 07 Dec 2009 03:25 AM PST

CINCINNATI -- Twenty-five years have come and gone since Anita Vizedom passed up a chance to bake Christmas cookies with her cousins.

That decision saved her life. And sent her on a lifelong quest for justice.

Vizedom's tenacious work during the past eight years as an assistant Hamilton County prosecutor has earned her a reputation as a voice for victims of violent crime.

She has no qualms about speaking out in court and calling criminals "wicked."

"Someone needs to speak on behalf of the victims and their families," she said during a rare relaxed moment in her office. "They never deserved what happened to them. They are truly innocent."

That description fits her family. An encounter with evil changed her loved ones' lives forever a quarter century ago on the day after Thanksgiving.

Late that night, a former boarder by the name of Rhett DePew -- "I don't like to call him a person," Vizedom declared -- broke into her cousins' small Butler County home. He stabbed three of them to death and set the house on fire.

"I remember my mom getting the call at our house in Hanover Township and me running down to the basement to get my sister," Vizedom said. "She was listening to music."

She still remembers the tune. It was Elton John's "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues."

On their way to the hospital, Vizedom and her family passed her cousins' house.

"It was," she recalled with a shiver, "still on fire."

Among the dead that night were her 27-year-old cousin, Theresa Jones, and Jones' 7-year-old daughter, Aubrey.

The fire and the knife wounds also claimed the life of 12-year-old Elizabeth Burton.

Beth, as the future prosecutor called her younger cousin, was 12. Vizedom was 13.

"We were close," Vizedom said. And not just in age. They played on the same softball team and attended the same junior high. They had the same hair color. They looked like sisters. Even down to the matching cowlicks.

The killer -- whose death sentence was overturned and changed to life imprisonment in 2005 -- spared Jones' younger daughter, Megan. That night, she had just celebrated her first birthday.

The murders "caused a humongous ripple effect that's still being felt throughout our entire family," Vizedom said. "There is no healing. There is no closure. This is not something you can ever get over."

The tragedy changed her forever. Encountering "real, absolute evil in the world" robbed her of her innocence. "It still amazes me," she noted, "some people think there's no such thing as evil or something like this can't happen."

The University of Cincinnati Law School graduate carries these thoughts, feelings and memories with her, along with criminals' bulging case files, as she strides into court.

"She really wants to get the bad guys," said Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman.

"She's one of our best," said her boss, Prosecutor Joe Deters.

"She's passionate about victims," said Common Pleas Judge Charles Kubicki Jr., "without letting that get in the way of her professionalism so the guilty get punished."

Her passion won one of this year's four Hope in Heels awards. The honor, to be presented Dec. 4 by five members of the Monfort Heights-based Besse family, recognizes advocates for victims of violent crimes.

"This tall," -- Vizedom stands five feet, eight inches -- "thin woman is so beautiful, she could be a model," remarked Marie Besse, the award's founder. "But, in the courtroom, she's a tenacious bulldog."

Vizedom's tenacity in the case of Michael Williamson won her the award. Williamson raped three girls, ages 10, 12 and 13, over three years. He did so, his attorney claimed, to keep the girls away from their "out of control" mother.

That claim enraged Vizedom.

In court, she called Williamson's actions "absolutely disgusting, nauseating."

Behind the scenes, she regularly visited the three victims at their foster home. She saw to it that the traumatized young women would not have to testify.

She also saw to it that Williamson got a sentence of 80 years to life.

Vizedom, 38, said she was "just doing the job I love."

The award comes with a $1,000 prize. Vizedom, a Cheviot resident, plans to donate the money to care for the city's first police dog, Charlie.

"I love animals," said Vizedom, the owner of a hound named Piggy.

But, she hates bad guys. Especially murderers.

"There is so much fascination with killers," she said, wincing as if she'd just bitten into a rotten tomato.

"Biographies are written about them. But, you don't need to read those books," she added, slashing the air with her right index finger.

"Here's all you need to know about these guys: They're bad. They're evil. And, they need to be taken out of society. That's it."

She finds society's "sick fascination" with killers "appalling. You never see biographies about victims or their families."

And she never sees fright flicks on the big screen.

"I've never been to a horror movie," she said. "If I'm in another room and the TV is on and a commercial for one of those movies comes on, I hold my hands over my ears until it's over. I have no idea why it's entertaining to see people in fear of being murdered. I don't want to hear the screams."

She paused and lowered her voice.

"Because," she whispered, "I'm sure there were screams that night."

She knows her cousin Beth fought back. "From what little I've read of the reports -- and it never will be a lot -- I know she had lots of defensive wounds.

"That's not surprising," Vizedom added. "I knew Beth. She would have done everything she could to help herself as well as her sister and her sister's children that night."

Again and again she revisits that night when she was supposed to be with her cousins baking cookies for Christmas. That family tradition, so sweet and so innocent, so filled with fun and happy memories, ended with the lives of her three cousins.

"We still mark that day," Vizedom said. But the new tradition is based on sadness.

"Here's what I do," she said.

"I get depressed."

But not for long. Vizedom refuses to dwell on the tragedy. "I finally have in my mind a vision of their lives," she said, rather than their deaths.

In her dreams, her cousins "are alive. I talk about them and to them.

"In some way," she added, "I still have a relationship with Beth. I have her picture up in my house."

She thinks about her cousin as a grown woman of 37. She wonders what clothes she would be wearing. What color would her hair be? Would she be married? Would she have kids?

"Would she still have this cowlick?" she asked tugging at a wayward lock.

As she gets ready to question a piece of evil on the witness stand, she quickly glances over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the victim's family.

For a split second, she can sense the spirit of her cousin.

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Devastating in Its Implications - Nymag.com

Posted: 07 Dec 2009 06:10 AM PST

As the controversy over The Da Vinci Code makes clear, a vast majority of Americans—among them our president—regard the divinity of Jesus as a fact, not a theory. So what's a theory? Global warming, of course. And it's a theory that needs more study, preferably carried out by the unbiased scientists at ExxonMobil and their past or future colleagues in the Bush White House.

On the other hand, someone who would treat as fact the self-serving yammerings of Al Gore must be an environmentalist wacko, right? So let's have a good laugh at An Inconvenient Truth, a feature-length lecture directed by Davis Guggenheim (there's a limousine-liberal name for you!) in which the failed presidential candidate (lampooned a few weeks ago on the libertarian-tinged South Park, where he raved about a creature called "ManBearPig") drones on about cracking ice shelves and disappearing permafrost and soaring temperatures and rising sea levels. It's obviously just a tedious, 96-minute presidential-campaign commercial, right?

That, in any event, is how much of the mainstream media is likely to characterize this new documentary of Gore and his traveling global-warming slide show: Anything else would invite charges of liberal bias. But the fact is—the fact is—that only a brainwashed audience (and their brainwashers) could portray anything in An Inconvenient Truth as even remotely controversial. Gore has all the graphs and charts and time-lapsed photographs and peer-reviewed scientific studies he needs to underscore his message about where the planet is heading—and sooner than we think. So be afraid. Be very afraid.

In An Inconvenient Truth, Guggenheim weaves together the ex-vice-president's speeches before a series of packed houses all over the United States and abroad. Casually dressed, Gore is less stiff than during his last presidential run, and he has learned not to drone. But he is still clearly in his element as a pedant. After introducing himself as the former next president of the United States (a joke that made at least one viewer wince at the thought of what might have been), he shows an image of the planet as it looked in the first pictures taken from space. Then he shows a picture of the planet as it looks now. Then he graphs the differences to show the acceleration of global warming. He debunks the theory that these changes are "cyclical": Scientists have studied all the environmental cycles since the last Ice Age, he says. These are off the charts.

Guggenheim puts Gore on a pedestal, no doubt. There are biographical interpolations in which Gore discusses the death of his sister from lung cancer and the near-death of his son, and they're extremely moving. But they do edge the film a little closer to the realm of campaign biographies. That said, his spiritual journey is a great deal more compelling—and transparent—than George W. Bush's supposed revelation after decades of alcoholism and (alleged) drug abuse. Gore has real gravitas now, and not just because he has gained a bit of weight.

It's worth dwelling on the mocking responses to Gore and his book Earth in the Balance (and, for that matter, to my friend Bill McKibben's seminal The End of Nature in the late eighties) because everything Gore is saying should be old, old news. But the people on the other side will do and say anything. Perhaps the most amazing statistic in An Inconvenient Truth is that of 900-plus peer-reviewed studies in recognized journals, not one has challenged the idea of global warming, whereas more than 53 percent of articles in the mainstream media have presented it as a theory or been careful to include the demurrals of a tiny handful of bought-and-paid-for scientists or politicians. In the course of Gore's lecture tour comes the unsurprising news that Bush aide Philip Cooney routinely red-penciled the conclusions of impartial government scientists; when exposed, he resigned and took a job with ExxonMobil.

But it won't be long, Gore suggests, before other industries find it in their economic interest to sound the global-warming alarm. The insurance industry will have to pay for all the damage from hurricanes and floods as a consequence of Gulfstream disruptions. The auto industry will register that unless it makes cars more fuel-efficient, it won't be able to sell them to anyone but Americans. There's no spinning the images he presents of earth's dwindling ice caps or, more poetically, the absence of snow on Kilimanjaro.

An Inconvenient Truth is one of the most realistic documentaries I've ever seen—and, dry as it is, one of the most devastating in its implications. See it with your kids—and watch closely to see who attacks it and on what grounds. I differ with Gore only on his optimism. "Political will is a renewable resource," he says. There's no accounting for people's nutty faith.

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