Films Viewed in July, August, and September, 2016

Films Viewed in 2016, continued: 

July, August, and September and Women Empowered

Cutie and the Boxer (Dir. Heinzerling, 2013)

This candid New York love story explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko. Anxious to shed her role as her overbearing husband's assistant, Noriko finds an identity of her own.

On its simplest level, “Cutie and the Boxer” is a documentary about a couple who could be sort of the Bickersons of the art world. Lurking just beneath, however, is a painful, powerful portrait of the struggle and sacrifice required to create, and the cost that it can demand. (Bill Goodykoonz, The Atlantic)

Mustang (Dir.  Deniz Gamze Ergüven, 2015)  

Early summer. In a village in northern Turkey, Lale and her four sisters are walking home from school, playing innocently with some boys. The immorality of their play sets off a scandal that has unexpected consequences. The family home is progressively transformed into a prison; instruction in homemaking replaces school and marriages start being arranged. The five sisters who share a common passion for freedom, find ways of getting around the constraints imposed on them.

Mustang tells a straightforward story of female empowerment, but it’s the way it tells that story that makes it deserving of all the accolades it’s received, including an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film. Though the movie has won (superficial) comparisons to The Virgin Suicides, it has a more distinctly female perspective and is too close to its subjects to feel voyeuristic. The trouble begins in the first 10 minutes of the film, when some nasty gossip and a misunderstanding turns innocent fun into a minor sexual scandal, leading the girls’ relatives to increasingly shut down their access to the outside world. The Turkish-born French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven balances out the film’s creeping claustrophobia with quiet (and not-so-quiet) acts of rebellion, unexpected humor, and warmth, and the result is a tender and fresh coming-of-age film that honors the bonds of womanhood and sisterhood without taking them for granted. (Lenika Cruz, The Atlantic)

Margarita with a Straw (Dir.  Shonali Bose, Nilesh Maniyar, 2014)

A rebellious young woman with cerebral palsy leaves her home in India to study in New York, unexpectedly falls in love, and embarks on an exhilarating journey of self-discovery.  

“Margarita, With a Straw” is one of the least hand-wringing movies ever made about a character with significant disabilities. Born with cerebral palsy, our heroine here certainly has her physical limitations and related psychological setbacks, but it’s her adventurous spirit (abetted by supportive family and friends) that sets the tone in Shonali Bose’s winning sophomore feature. Like her first, 2005’s “Amu,” this tale is rather Westernized in the telling, with narrative feet planted in both India and the U.S. That factor, good reviews and the pic’s crowdpleasing nature should guide it from a successful festival run to various format sales in numerous offshore territories, with niche theatrical sleeper status possible. (Dennis Harvey, Variety) 

 

Selections from “Small Poems for the Winter Solstice” by Margaret Atwood

More selections from “Small Poems for the Winter Solstice”

Margaret Atwood

1.
A clean page: what
shines in you is not nothing,
though equally clear & blue
and I’m old enough to know
I ought to give up wanting
to touch that shining.
What shines anyway?
Stars, cut glass, and water,
and you in your serene blue shirt
Standing beside a window
while it rains, nothing
much going on, intangible.

***

To put your hand
into the light reveals
the hand but the light also:
shining is where they touch.
Other things made of light:
hallucinations & angels.
If I reach my hands
into you, will you vanish?

2.
FREE FALL
is falling but at least it’s
free. I don’t even know
whether I jumped or was pushed,
but it hardly matters now
I’m up here. No wings
or net but for an instant
anyway there’s a great
view: the sea,
a line of surf, brown cliffs
tufted with scrub, your upturned
face a white zero.
I wish I knew
whether you’ll catch or watch.

4.
Towards my chill house in this sloppy weather,
hands on the cold wheel, hoping there’ll be a fire;
slush on the grass, past an accident,
then another. Somewhere there’s one more,
mine. In a minuet we just
miss each other, in an accident
we don’t. Dance is intentional but
did you miss me or
not, was it too close
to the bone for you, was that
pain, am I gone? Nothing’s
broken, nevertheless I’m skinless,
the gentlest touch would gut me.
Slowly, slowly, nobody wants a mess.
I float over the black roads, pure ice.

5.
No way clear,
I write on the lines across this yellow
paper. Poetry. It’s details
like this that drag
at me, and the nasty little bells
on the corners I pass on my way
to meet you: singing of hunger,
darkness & poverty.

8.
You think I live in a glass tower
where the phone doesn’t ring
and nobody eats? But it does, they do
and leave the crumbs & greasy knives.
If the front room dogsmells
filter through the door
dirty fur coats & the insides
of carnivore throats. Neglect
& disarray, cold ashes drift
from the woodstove onto the floor.
Cats with their melting spines festoon
themselves in every empty
corner. Who’s fed them? Who knows?
What I want you to see
is the banality of all this, even
while I write the doorbell
pounds down there, constant assaults
of the radio, one more
blameless crushed face, another
pair of boots drips in the hall.
There’s no mystery, I want to tell
you, none at all, no more
than in anything else. What I do
is ordinary, no
surprise, like you
no trickier than sunrise.

10.
Of course I’m a teller
of mundane lies, such as: I’ll try
never to lie to you. Such as:
that day after today the earth will
tilt on its axis towards the sun
again, the light will turn stronger,
it will be spring and you’ll
be happy. Such as:
I can fly. I wish I could believe
it. Instead I’m stuck
here, in this waste of particulars,
truths, facts. Teeth, gloves & socks.
I don’t trust love
because it’s no shape or colour.

13.
I’m in your hands, you say, meaning
something quite different: a way
of passing choice. Nevertheless
you’re what I got handed,
not wanting it, like those cards
printed with the finger alphabet
the deaf & dumb nail you with in the bus
stations. An embarrassment, but more
than that: some object
made of glass, lucid & simple
and without a name or known
function. I can learn you
by touch & guesswork
or not. Meanwhile I hold you
in my hands, true, wondering what
to make of you and what you’ll make
of me. A gesture
of the hands, clear
as water. The letter A.

Selections from “Small Poems for the Winter Solstice” by Margaret Atwood

Eco-Films on Different Platforms: April, May, and June 2016 Screenings

Eco-Films on Different Platforms: April, May, and June Screenings

April

Blockbuster: The Martian (dir. Ridley Scott, 2015)

Despite a narrative focused on bringing astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) home from Mars, The Martian places ecology at its center. As Watney explains in a video blog entry in the film, "In the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option: I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this." Because of this focus on scientific solutions, The Martian is the best example of ecocinema I've seen in the theatre this year. As an expert botanist, Watney draws on his knowledge of the natural world in order to survive on what seems like a lifeless planet. Watney even declares, "Mars will come to fear my botany powers." Watney recognizes the need to draw on nature rather than technology for survival and constructs a livable space using natural elements and bi-products instead of artificial (and perhaps toxic) chemicals.

Independent Documentary:  

The Garden (dir. Scott Hamilton Kennedy, 2008)

The contemporary South Central Los Angeles urban farm explored in Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s Oscar-nominated documentary The Garden (2008) encourages sustainable practices, but as scholars have lauded, the documentary also engages effective narrative strategies and presents powerful messages regarding environmental injustice and racism. With its condemnation of environmental racist attitudes of Los Angeles council members and activists, The Garden spends the time to document the history of the fourteen-acre urban farm and illustrate its benefits to South Central LA community members. The garden provides not only food and communal income. It also serves as a sacred space in which community members gain self-worth as they commune with the plants they grow 

May

Disney's Live Action Remake:  

The Jungle Book (dir. Jon Favreau, 2016)

In this reimagining of the classic collection of stories by Rudyard Kipling, director Jon Favreau uses visually stunning CGI to create the community of animals surrounding Mowgli (Neel Sethi), a human boy adopted by a pack of wolves. The appearance of a villainous tiger named Shere Khan (voiced byIdris Elba) forces Mowgli's guardian, the panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), to shepherd the child to safety in the "man village." Along the way, the boy meets an affable, lazy bear named Baloo (Bill Murray), as well as a snake with hypnotic powers (Scarlett Johansson) and an orangutan (Christopher Walken) who wants to harness the power of fire. Lupita Nyong'o, Giancarlo Esposito, and Garry Shandling also lend their voices to this adventure tale.

Critics Consensus from Rotten Tomatoes: As lovely to behold as it is engrossing to watch, The Jungle Book is the rare remake that actually improves upon its predecessors -- all while setting a new standard for CGI.

June

YouTube Sensation: Under the Dome (dir. Chai Jing, 2015)

Jing Chai’s Internet sensation Under the Dome is universally heralded by reviewers in the U.S. and Europe. Each reviewer first notes how the online sensational feature-length “Ted”-like talk drew more than 200 million views from Chinese audiences in the few days before being taken down by Chinese government censors. But as Steven Mufson of The Washington Post notes, the documentary also “alters the way we see the world around us.” As a high-tech Silent Spring, Under the Dome applies a rhetoric and structure similar to that of Davis Guggenheim and Al Gore’s an An Inconvenient Truth (2006) with one major difference, its exclusive focus on pollution in the cities of Mainland China.

Selected "Overlooked" Films and Videos Viewed in 2016: Coming of Age, January-March

January:

Dope (dir.  Rick Famuyiwa 2015). Stars,  Shameik Moore,  Tony Revolori,  

Kiersey Clemons 

From Rotten Tomatoes: A critical hit and audience favorite out of the Sundance Film Festival,

 in DOPE, Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is carefully surviving life in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles 

while juggling college applications, academic interviews, and the SAT. A chance invitation to an 

underground party leads him into an adventure that could allow him to go from being a geek, to 

being dope, to ultimately being himself. (C) Open Road

February:

Big Hero 6 (dir. Don Hall,  Chris Williams 2014). Stars: Ryan Potter, 

 Scott Adsit,  Jamie Chung

From Rotten Tomatoes: With all the heart and humor audiences expect from Walt Disney 

Animation Studios, "Big Hero 6" is an action-packed comedy-adventure about robotics prodigy 

Hiro Hamada, who learns to harness his genius-thanks to his brilliant brother Tadashi and their 

like-minded friends: adrenaline junkie Go Go Tamago, neatnik Wasabi, chemistry whiz Honey 

Lemon and fanboy Fred. When a devastating turn of events catapults them into the midst of a 

dangerous plot unfolding in the streets of San Fransokyo, Hiro turns to his closest companion-a 

robot named Baymax-and transforms the group into a band of high-tech heroes determined to 

solve the mystery. (C) Disney

March:

Diary of a Teenage Girl (dir. Marielle Heller 2015). Stars: Bel Powley,  

Alexander Skarsgård,  Kristen Wiig

From Rotten Tomatoes: Like most teenage girls, Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) is longing for love, 

acceptance and a sense of purpose in the world. Minnie begins a complex love affair with her 

mother's (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend, "the handsomest man in the world," Monroe Rutherford 

(Alexander Skarsgård). What follows is a sharp, funny and provocative account of one girl's sexual 

and artistic awakening, without judgment. (C) Sony Classics

Robin's 2016 in Pictures

January

Lions in Winter Literary Festival

Snow Day

February

Ukulele Orchestra  

Jason Marsalis and the Vibe Quartet

March

Central Illinois Feminist Film Festival

Monterey Jazz Festival

April

Allie Murray's Dance Competition in Cincinnati

May

Florida Visit: Dali Museum, Beach, and Birds

June

New Harmony, Illinois  

Eastern Illinois Writing Project Summer Institute

Corpse Flower

July

Family Visit

Summer Institute Doudna Tour

August

Garden Delights

Air Show

September

Lang Lang

Herencia de Timbiqui

October

EIWP Institute Day

Illinois Association of Teachers of English Conference with Amber Laquet and Donna Binns

Nathan and Julie Gunn



November

Embarras Valley Film Festival

New Charleston Trail Hikes

Havana Cuba All-Stars

Florida Thanksgiving

December

More to Come!

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