The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Don’t miss these excellent posts on some very engaging and thoughtful topics - from going green at the office to Julian Beever to dystopian film telling us to take action now. Check out our most popular articles of the week on a variety of subjects, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Katoucha’s Body Found: Model Helped African Women Escape Mutiliation

Julian Beever Brings Art to New Orleans Sidewalks

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Nicole:

Heath Ledger Nick Drake Video for “Black Eyed Dog” Hits Web

Top 10 Ways to Go Green in the Office

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Giulia:

Crate & Barrel Goes Green

The Black Comedy Project

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Gina:

Top 10 Dystopian Future Films Telling Us to Take Action Now

Going to “The Edge of Heaven” with Fatih Akin

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Kerry:

Sustainable Songstrees Sue West’s Rural Revival

No Impact Home A Hit At Ecobuild Exhibition

After seeing Lukas Moodysson’s black and white mystery film Container last night as part of Lincoln Center’s Film Comment Selects, I was left in a hypnotic daze contemplating first and foremost consumption here in America. The film is 72 minutes of silent black and white footage, mostly of two characters in various messy grotesque spaces, with a continual narration by Jena Malone. Malone speaks in the first person and talks about a variety of things including celebrity culture, Chernobyl/other disasters, being a woman in a man’s body, a porn star named Savannah, and being pregnant with Jesus. I later learned upon reading, that there are 21 voices or stories that she is telling, all mixed up and all heard over the black and white footage.

While I agree with Moodysson, that this is not a film you can decipher in one viewing, I also think that on the surface (since I’ve only seen it once) he has created one of the most poignant critique’s on the container that is American culture and the consumptive nature of all of us that I’ve seen in some time. The black and white images of excess, garbage, human bodies, and simple discomfort create a visual atmosphere that makes you question all the items in your own various spaces. Malone’s voice is calming and serene, a nice contrast to her words that are disturbing, sad, grotesque, confused and brutally honest.

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Last night I went to the pre-premiere of the Film Comment Selects Series at New York’s Lincoln Center for a screening of George A Romero’s latest venture into zombiedom, Diary of the Dead.

The film focuses on a group of film students who while shooting a film learn that dead people are coming back as zombies and the world is turning into chaos. We follow the group as they try to figure out what’s going on and also as they hurry up and turn the video cameras on to document the experience. As the film progresses it becomes clear that the real villain is not the zombies but is in fact the video camera and people that are determined not to put it down, regardless of the consequences.

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