By “Cinema” Dave

http://cinemadave.livejournal.com

This Labor Day weekend, two movies open with some award merit. Mia Madre was in competition in the 2015 Cannes film festival. The film’s leading lady, Margherita Buy, earned the best actress prize at the David di Donatello Awards in Italy. Life, Animated will be considered for Best Documentary during the 2017 awards season. Both Mia Madre and Life, Animated are entertaining motion pictures in which viewers will share some laughs and shed some tears.

Mostly in Italian language with English subtitles, Mia Madre introduces us to Margherita, an independent filmmaker producing a movie about workers’ rights and entrepreneurship. As she waits for her leading man, Barry Huggins (John Turturro) to arrive from America, Margherita checks her phone for the latest news about her sick mother.

Despite seemingly improving, the mother is terminal. Margherita must balance the demands between work, raising a teenager who is not doing well in her studies and impending grief. The American actor also brings onto the set his own petty neurosis and linguistic confusion.

Despite playing the protagonist’s irritant, Turturro’s appearances are welcome comic relief. In a supporting role, Turturro is allowed a full range of negative behavior, but remains somewhat likeable. Margherita Buy earned her David di Donatella prize for a retrained emotional performance. The audience feels for Margherita and her dilemma, which pays off for Mia Madre’s final scene.

Ripped from last year’s headlines, Life, Animated presents the story of Owen Suskind, an autistic, young man who learned to communicate with people by watching Disney animation. Using home movies, Owen’s parents discuss how the 3-year-old’s behavior changed overnight. Despite getting excellent medical attention and attending the best special needs schools in Washington D.C., Owen is sad and lonely. Feeling inspired, Owen’s father takes a puppet (Iago from Aladdin) and starts a conversation with Owen. A whole world opens up between Owen and his family.

While there is a great deal of joy in Life, Animated, there is also some harsh realities. Both parents are facing their own mortality and Owen breaks up with his only girlfriend.

These pains are universal, which is why these Disney animated movies like Aladdin, Bambi, Beauty and the Beast are magical motion pictures. If an autistic young man can find knowledge through Disney animated movies, perhaps we all should take a cue from Owen.

Happy Labor Day weekend!

By Dave Montalbano

http://cinemadave.livejournal.com

It has been a 27 year wait, but Ghostbusters finally appeared on the big screen full of big screen special effects. Despite the endorsement of the original cast-mates (Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Murray, Annie Potts and Ernie Hudson) and mass marketing, the rebooted film failed to secure first place in its opening weekend, losing out to The Secret Life of Pets.

The reviews have been split evenly and decisively, with 50 percent (mostly female) feeling inspired by the film, while the other 50 percent (mostly male) feeling their childhood has been betrayed. It is true that the Ghostbusters reboot lacks the freshness of Aykroyd’s, and the late Harold Ramis’ vision; however, director and co-writer Paul Feig has created new characters that are both quirky and charming.

Professor Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is about to achieve tenure at Columbia University when an academic skeleton comes out of her past. Erin wrote a book about the paranormal with her old friend, Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), who now works at a low budget institute with techno-nerd Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon). After a series of mishaps involving vomiting ghosts, the three ladies form a unique business partnership.

As the paranormal activities increase, this new enterprise hires a beefcake secretary who can’t type (Chris Hemsworth) and Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), a streetwise cabbie whose uncle (Ernie Hudson) owns a Hearst business. Together, these five individuals confront the cause of all evil in New York City.

The five main characters are the heart and the humor of the film. Kate McKinnon is the most committed to her role and often steals scenes by doing absolutely nothing. Chris Hemsworth is the most broad character. His dancing during the closing credits will keep Chippendale fans in the theater for the final frames.

Like Ghostbusters, The Secret Life of Pets is set in Manhattan. Told from the perspective of domesticated dogs and cats, the audience learns the untold adventures these animated creatures face during the daytime. This film has been the box office champion two weeks in a row. Combined with the much superior Finding Dory, animated talking animals have been the box office monarch for the Summer of 2016.

Twelve years ago, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was released with much hype and remains the biggest grossing documentary ever made. Four years ago, Dinesh D’Souza’s 2016 Obama’s America was released with far less hype and became the fifth highest grossing documentary of all time.

Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party is D’Souzas’s look at the next chapter of American presidential history. After four years of increasing terrorist violence in America and abroad, we learn that D’Souza served jail time for making an illegal campaign contribution. While serving his sentence with murderers and thieves, D’Souza becomes more street smart and learns the rules of the con. D’Souza compares and contrasts the “street con” with the Democratic political machine and presents many similarities.

Like a good history teacher, D’Souza raises many questions. He asks why the Republican Party that was founded on an antislavery platform became perceived as the party of racist, rich, white men?

The first President of the Democratic Party was Andrew Jackson, slave owner. Abe Lincoln’s Republican Party opposed slavery. For almost a century, the Democratic Party opposed the civil rights of African American Individuals through the Jim Crow laws.

When the Civil Rights Act was created 52 years ago, it did so with a majority of Republican congressmen, though it was signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Democrat. This historical fact is downplayed in the recent HBO drama – All the Way starring Bryan Cranston as LBJ. From this point of American History, we learn that young Hillary Rodham was a “Goldwater Girl,” the presidential alternative to President Johnson’s reelection efforts in 1964.

Writing graduate papers about abortion-advocate Margaret Sanger and becoming streetwise thanks to the writings of Saul Alinsky, the story of Hillary Rodham-Clinton is simply told. Unfortunately, the simplicity of Hillary’s America mars the journalistic impact of the thesis. Though valid, the historical recreations featuring Ida B. Wells, President Woodrow Wilson, and Bill Clinton feel as broad as a Saturday Night Live skit.

Tonight Hillary Clinton accepts her nomination to be the first female President of the United States. Take the time to see Hillary’s America for an alternative point of view. Pay attention to the upcoming Presidential debates and then vote your conscience.

Dave and Ernie Hudson

By “Cinema” Dave

www.cinemadave.livejournal.com

It has been a 27 year wait, but Ghostbusters finally appeared on the big screen full of big screen special effects. Despite the endorsement of the original cast-mates (Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Murray, Annie Potts and Ernie Hudson) and mass marketing, the rebooted film failed to secure first place in its opening weekend, losing out to The Secret Life of Pets.

The reviews have been split evenly and decisively, with 50 percent (mostly female) feeling inspired by the film, while the other 50 percent (mostly male) feeling their childhood has been betrayed. It is true that the Ghostbusters reboot lacks the freshness of Aykroyd’s, and the late Harold Ramis’ vision; however, director and co-writer Paul Feig has created new characters that are both quirky and charming. 

Professor Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is about to achieve tenure at Columbia University when an academic skeleton comes out of her past. Erin wrote a book about the paranormal with her old friend, Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), who now works at a low budget institute with techno-nerd Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon). After a series of mishaps involving vomiting ghosts, the three ladies form a unique business partnership.   

As the paranormal activities increase, this new enterprise hires a beefcake secretary who can’t type (Chris Hemsworth) and Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), a streetwise cabbie whose uncle (Ernie Hudson) owns a Hearst business. Together, these five individuals confront the cause of all evil in New York City.
The five main characters are the heart and the humor of the film. Kate McKinnon is the most committed to her role and often steals scenes by doing absolutely nothing. Chris Hemsworth is the most broad character. His dancing during the closing credits will keep Chippendale fans in the theater for the final frames.   

Like Ghostbusters, The Secret Life of Pets is set in Manhattan. Told from the perspective of domesticated dogs and cats, the audience learns the untold adventures these animated creatures face during the daytime. This film has been the box office champion two weeks in a row. Combined with the much superior Finding Dory, animated talking animals have been the box office monarch for the Summer of 2016.

By Emily Rosen M.S., M.A.

ERosen424@aol.com

www.emilyrosen424.com

 Should I write about the woman sentenced to 20 years in prison for having shot in the air at her abusive husband?

Should I write about Syria, Iran and Russia and the U.N.’s attempt at showing new “muscle?”

Should I write about Ted Cruz, Obamacare, the debt ceiling and the government shutdown?

None of the above, while I am sitting in the hospital ICU watching my 87-year-old husband fight for life, and with a mind more lucid than it’s ever been, making his own quality of life decisions.

Yesterday, it was hospice care. This morning, he was dictating his obituary until he took a last-ditch test that, surprising to everyone concerned, indicated that he would actually be able to ingest some food and that he, therefore, had a chance of some kind of recovery.

He is now infused with hope. HOPE is good, even when it denies reality.

Illness in old age carries with it the extra burden of existential questioning about the value of life, the probing of one’s belief system, and the actual challenge that calls for the decisiveness of action or the passiveness of inaction. When is enough, too much? When does a person let go and accept the inevitable; when does he or she fight, struggle and submit to a mountain of indignities, probings, heroic measures that can never return him/ her to full youthful vigor, but MAY POSSIBLY keep him breathing and alert to pleasant physical surroundings and the warmth and caring of those who love him?

It helps to realize that other people have been faced with these kinds of conundrums for ages and, until it happens to YOU, there are no resolves that are binding.

So we go for the “one day at a time” model that seems to work, even as days turn to weeks and months. This gives us time to count blessings, probe each other’s minds, reminisce, look at old family pictures and mostly sharpen our sense of humor. Laughing has been the best medicine for both of us – laughter and total honesty about all aspects of the situation.

And then there are the tender moments that only many years of marriage (59) and the prospect of “an end” can elicit – different indeed from the passionate erotica of “new love.”

And when my husband assures me not only of his love, but of his conviction that I have been a perfect wife for him – adding, “Even better than Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe,” I know I have done much better even than having my hands enshrined in The Hollywood Walk Of Fame at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

And the beat goes on.