The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Everything I Know About Climate Change, I Learned in the Fifth Grade by Martin Musatov

When Torture Is Condoned, Is FISA That Shocking? by Wendy Cohen

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Nicole Hughes:

Baltimore Woman Turns Tragedy Into Art

Why Don’t We Do More to Stop Global Warming?

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Andy Kondrat:

Foods You Should and Shouldn’t Buy Organic

Paper or Plastic? The Environmental Impact

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Jon Popham:

The Energy Independence Bill: A Filibuster Odyssey

“Bruno” Fools Mossad Agent

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Gina Telaroli:

While Iran Tests Missiles, Test These 5 Iranian Films

Mao’s Out, Time to Capitalize On the Olympics

Iran is all over the news.. Headlines about the testing of missiles are on the front page of most major publications. And of course the candidates differ on how to deal with Iran. Should we engage in civil discourse with them or not? How evil are they, how dangerous? These are the questions on the tips of the article’s tongues.

Instead of delving into the politics of Iran and the US (for a strikingly honest look at that you should head on over to TomDispatch), I want to delve into the people of Iran And what better way to do that than taking some time to look at the cinema of Iran. Here are 5 films that are not only amazing artistically, but also highlight those who get left out of big alarmist news stories, the citizens:

1) The Wind Will Carry Us : Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, one of the best filmmakers not in Iran but in the world, this is a simple story of family and community. The film looks at a man who goes to a rural community for family reasons and in turn immerses himself in the community. It’s a beautiful film and as Jonathan Rosenbaum says, it explores “who owns this world and who deserves to.”

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I was at the Nantucket Film Festival about a week ago to screen Meerkat Media’s film Every Third Bite. While there I only caught one film at the actual festival (it seemed a better use of my time to enjoy the outdoors). The film I saw was Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian. I’ve always been a fan of Anderson and usually enjoy his intelligent and uncommon approach to commonplace genres. Perhaps it’s been a while since I saw one of his films and in that time my viewing preferences have changed, but I found Transsiberian to be somewhat disappointing in a few ways.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. This week we celebrated some of our own favorite top 10 bloggers who work night and day to provide us up-to-date info on films, literature, and feminist news. Don’t miss these exciting and informative blogs, as well as some of our most popular stories of the week.

Katie:

“La Misma Luna Under the Same Moon,” Not the Same Old Movie

Top 5 Eco-Friendly Gadgets for Under $50

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Nicole:

Top 10 Literary and Book Blogs

NBC11 First Wind Powered TV Station

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Giulia:

Top 10 Feminist Blogs

Horton: The New Mascot for Pro-Life

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Gina:

Top 10 Film Blogs

Top 10 Films I Would See If I Was At SXSW

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Kerry:

Our Pharmaceutically Fouled Water Supply

Top 7 New Sins Against God’s Green Earth

Here on Takepart, I blog a lot about films and so do the rest of the ladies on the Takepart blog team. We’re just little fish in the big pond of film blogging though, thus I present to you the Top 10 Film Blogs. The order is somewhat random, I mostly tried to mix things up and show you a variety of the different types of film blogs that are out there.

Did I miss one? Let me know and leave the left out blog in the comments!

1. GreenCine Daily : http://daily.greencine.com/

A great blog about indie cinema, classic cinema, foreign cinema etc… They are always covering the latest festival and films that aren’t always in the mainstream. More than that, they have reviews, interviews, previews and lots of good old regular views on films, directors and all the other folks who help to bring us great cinema. Give a read and also be sure to check out their sister site, http://greencine.com - an awesome online rental service.

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One thing I’ve always had trouble with is my joint identity as a female and as a cinephile. Many films and directors I like, even love, often treat women in ways that either objectify them or seem to promote the mistreatment of them. But my anger at this is usually brought back down by the little voice inside my head screaming “but it’s such a good movie.”

On that note, yesterday, I noticed that Radar Online posted their take on the “decade’s most misogynistic movies.” Their picks ranged from Mona Lisa Smile and Wedding Crashers to She Hate Me and 13 Going on 30 and while in many cases I agree with their assessment, the list still troubles me. The fact is, despite their misogynistic nature, a lot of folks, women and men alike, went to see these films - and to me then, the questions becomes why? As long as people go to the theater, Hollywood will continue to make these films.

Of course, some might argue that people only see what’s put out there, what they have access to. With that, I present with an opposite list of sorts - “some of the decade’s more feminist movies” if you will - or to be less political about it all, films from this decade that portray real women, dealing with real issues, often showing how awesome, strong, complex and special women can be.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is now here to give you the very best of Katie, Nicole, Giulia, Gina and Kerry! If you worry about missing your favorite bloggers’ posts as they push their way down the page each and every week - Never Fear! Check out our most popular posts of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Woody Guthrie: This Grammy Is Your Grammy / This Grammy Is My Grammy

Rambo Fights for Burma’s Freedom + 5 Steps You Can Take To Help Burma In 5 Minutes

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Nicole:

“Yes We Can” Obama Music Video a Unique Celebrity Endorsement

Top 10 US Grant, Scholarship and Fellowship Awarding Foundations

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Giulia:

Ba-Da-Bling Commercials Pulled in New York

“Safe Sex or No Sex” Shirts Get Teens Suspended

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Gina:

10 Internet Videos Featuring Celebrities Advocating For A Cause

Close Up: An Introduction to Iranian Cinema and Cinematic Rainbows

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Kerry:

Sheryl Crow’s Apocalyptic Peak-Oil Song

Solar Powered Soldiers Wear Uniforms with Built-In Batteries

When folks speak of Iran, they mostly speak of terrorism or nuclear power/weapons and this is quite sad, as despite controversial headlines, Iran stands at the forefront of world cinema. The films that have been coming from Iranian filmmakers for the past 20 years are the films that are inspiring the folks who are determining the future of cinema. There is a passage in Hamid Dabashi’s “Close-Up : Iranian Cinema, Past Present and Future” that says it all:

“Iranian cinema took the world by surprise simply because the world got a glimpse of our cinema only after it had decided the character of our culture through the prism of the Islamic revolution. These disabling circumstances and our liberating vision did not quite add up.

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Every Monday morning we are told what movies made the most money over the weekend. Has anyone ever asked themselves why? Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum makes a great point in his book “Movie Wars” when he writes:

“It’s a fashion supposedly decided by public interest, yet for roughly the first eight decades of this century (the 20th), there is little evidence that such interest even existed, even in an embryo. If a newspaper in the thirties, forties sixties or even seventies had started to list the top ten grossers every week, its readers would have suppossed the editors had rocks in their head. So why, then, did the readers of the eighties suddenly start to become interested in facts and figures that formerly had captured the interest only of people working in the industry?

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One of the things I love about the internet how it allows people to actively engage in debates and share information. For example, Jeannette Catsoulis wrote a review in The New York Times about the film Opera Jawa.Jonathan Rosenbaum head critic at the Chicago Reader, read her review and decided to blog about his distaste with it. Then GreenCine Daily linked to Rosenbaum’s post in their discussion of Opera Jawa. Following which, a New York City movie blog, The Reeler, also wrote about Rosenbaum’s piece. And now I am writing about it!Not to mention all the folks who have commented on all of the above posts/articles,

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