February 2008

Blind Dating:  A blind man enters the world of dating with mixed success and lots of surprises.  This movie was not released in theaters.  Read more information on Blind Dating.

The Ultimate Gift is a tale of one man's tumultuous journey toward personal growth and fulfillment.  Surrounded in life, and death, by avaricious family members fueled by a sense of entitlement, billionaire Red Stevens (James Garner) wants to bequeath at least one member of his extended family "the ultimate gift":  something he perceives as immensely more valuable than material wealth....  Far from a straightforward gift of cash, land, or stock, Red's bequest comes in the form of a series of mysterious recorded instructions, the first of which requires Jason [Red's arrogant grandson] to hop on a plane for Texas the very next morning without a hint of the trip's purpose or the nature of the gift that awaits him....  Unbeknownst to him, his journey toward claiming the ultimate gift has only just begun.... [I]n the end, Grandpa Red's "ultimate gift" of life lessons profoundly and permanently improves the quality of Jason's life... [and] has a very positive affect on the larger community.  This very powerful film is funny, heartbreaking, and intensely thought-provoking. --Tami Horiuchi

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, New Yorkers from all walks of life felt compelled to overcome their sense of powerlessness by volunteering to help out in the recovery effort.  Many deep and unexpected -- even unlikely -- relationships developed out of this.  Using cinema verite footage, interviews and archival photographs, we follow several characters through a series of events reuniting them after the closing of the site.  Through their stories we present a portrait of the city within a city that was Ground Zero, and examine how an extremely diverse group of people transcended politics and culture in an effort to heal their city and themselves.  This 60-minute character-driven documentary is a vibrant, moving, sometimes funny, sometimes painful portrayal of hope and healing in the wake of disaster.

Available from 2007 Eleventh Hour Films for $19.99 for home use (higher for organizational use).

The last time we saw Evan Baxter (Carell), he was being tormented by rival Bruce Nolan onscreen, live from their Buffalo TV station.  But as time passed and Evan has made up with Bruce, he's gone onto bigger and better things.  Newly elected to Washington D.C. as a congressman, Evan has left Buffalo, New York in pursuit of a greater calling.  But that calling isn't serving in the illustrious ranks of America's politics, but being summoned by the Almighty himself (Freeman), who has handed Evan the task of building a new ark, much as Noah did before.  With time passing by and his family belittled by Evan's newfound realization, Evan will have to do the work that God has given him in what promises to be an unusual adventure for a man who just wanted to serve his country, might actually be serving humanity.  Rated PG.

Slobby Ben (Rogan) and up and coming career girl Alison (Heigl) meet at a bar, and end up having a one night stand.  Eight weeks later, Ben is shocked when Alison meets him and reveals that she is pregnant.  Despite having little in common, the two decide that they have to at least try to make some kind of relationship work for the baby's sake.  Rated R.  Caution:  Only the Theatrical "rated" version has description!  Do not order the UNRATED version, director's cut, nor HD DVD.

Bearing absolutely no resemblance to the 1980s TV series that helped to propel Michael Mann into big-time filmmaking, Miami Vice is the kind of serious, and seriously stylish, crime drama that Mann does better than anyone else...  [O]nce Mann shifts into high gear with a plot to foil a powerful drug kingpin ... and his ruthless middle-man ..., Vice pays off with the kind of smart, realistic action that Mann's fans have come to expect...  [T]his is an above-average crime thriller that demands and rewards close attention, with a climactic shoot-out that's pure Mann, worthy of the brooding drama that precedes it. --Jeff Shannon

NOTE:  The unrated "Director's Cut" does not have audio description.  This is the one typically found in rental stores.

One of the most shocking events in modern American history gets a skilled and respectful treatment in United 93.  The movie begins by following the four terrorists who hijacked the plane that never reached its target on 9/11/2001 ... cuts to and fro among air traffic controllers and the military as ... the focus turns to the captive United Flight 93... [T]he movie is more relentlessly gut-wrenching than suspenseful (though the dawning realization of the air traffic controllers has an effective creeping dread).  But writer/director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) manages to keep the scale of the events human; there are no glamorous heroics, only terrifying confusion and desperate, hopeless bravery...  United 93 is the cinematic equivalent of a war memorial, commemorating lives lost in a moment of horrible, harrowing conflict. --Bret Fetzer

Spike Lee scored his biggest hit to date with Inside Man, an unconventional thriller with fascinating details in the margins of its convoluted plot.  The screenplay (by first-timer Russell Gerwitz) could've used a few more rewrites... That makes Inside Man more fun to watch than to think about afterwards ... but it's curiously involving, especially as NYPD Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) struggles to outsmart a high-stakes bank robber (Clive Owen) who, along with a well-trained crew of accomplices, has seized control of a Wall Street bank, turning what initially looks like a hostage crisis into a personal crusade to expose some mysterious evil secrets. ... With the benefit of his most stellar cast to date (including Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor), Lee seems more interested in character details than well-crafted suspense, but that doesn't stop Inside Man from being engrossing, subtly amusing, and quirky enough to qualify as a welcomed break from the formulaic thrillers that are Hollywood's bread and butter. --Jeff Shannon

At its core, Munich is a straightforward thriller ... innocent people are killed, the bad guys got away with it, and someone has to make them pay.  But director Steven Spielberg uses that as a starting point to delve into complex ethical questions about the cyclic nature of revenge and the moral price of violence ... The opening portrays the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes by PLO terrorists at the 1972 Olympics with scenes as heart-stopping and terrifying as the best of any horror movie.  After the tragic incident is over and several of the terrorists have gone free, the Israeli government of Golda Meir recruits Avner (Eric Bana) to lead a team of paid-off-the-book agents to hunt down those responsible throughout Europe, and eliminate them one-by-one ... and the deeper moral questions of right and wrong come into play... --Daniel Vancini  (There are many scenes without voices, which makes this an ideal film for description!)

Cinderella Man is a wholesome slice of old-fashioned Americana ... dramatizing the legendary Depression-era comeback of impoverished boxer Jim Braddock...  Russell Crowe['s] portrayal of Braddock is simultaneously warm, noble, and tenacious without resorting to even the slightest hint of sentimental melodrama...  [H]is supportive wife (Renée Zellweger) and three young children, and his loyal manager (Paul Giamatti) all are forced to make sacrifices leading up to Braddock's title bout against heavyweight champion Max Baer (Craig Bierko) in one of greatest boxing matches in the history of the sport.  Boasting the finest production design, cinematography and editing that Hollywood can offer, this is a feel-good film that never begs for your affection; it's just good, classical American filmmaking, brimming with qualities of decency and fortitude that have grown all too rare in the big-studio mainstream. --Jeff Shannon

Cult comic actor Steve Carell--long adored for his supporting work on The Daily Show and in movies like Bruce Almighty and Anchorman--leaps into leading man status with The 40 Year-Old Virgin.  There's no point describing the plot; it's about how a 40 year-old virgin named Andy (Carell) finally finds true love and (well, you know...).  Along the way, there are very funny scenes involving being coached by his friends, speed dating, being propositioned by his female manager, and getting his chest waxed...  --Bret Fetzer
(NOTE:  Description is only on the "rated" version)

Jamie Foxx's uncannily accurate performance isn't the only good thing about Ray.  Riding high on a wave of Oscar buzz, Foxx proved himself worthy of all the hype by portraying blind R&B legend Ray Charles in a warts-and-all performance that Charles approved shortly before his death in June 2004.  Despite a few dramatic embellishments of actual incidents ... the film does a remarkable job of summarizing Charles's strengths as a musical innovator and his weaknesses as a philandering heroin addict who recorded some of his best songs while flying high as a kite.  Foxx seems to be channeling Charles himself, and as he did with the life of Ritchie Valens in La Bamba, director Taylor Hackford gets most of the period details absolutely right as he chronicles Ray's rise from "chitlin circuit" performer in the early '50s to his much-deserved elevation to legendary status as one of the all-time great musicians.  Foxx expertly lip-syncs to Ray Charles' classic recordings, but you could swear he's the real deal in a film that honors Ray Charles without sanitizing his once-messy life. --Jeff Shannon

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ ... ("Passion" in this context meaning "suffering") [is] a quite literal, in-your-face interpretation of the final 12 hours in the life of Jesus, scripted almost directly from the gospels (and spoken in Aramaic and Latin with a relative minimum of subtitles) and presented as a relentless, 126-minute ordeal of torture and crucifixion.  For Christians and non-Christians alike, this film does not "entertain," and it's not a film that one can "like" or "dislike" in any conventional sense. ... Rather, The Passion is a cinematic experience that serves an almost singular purpose:  to show the scourging and death of Jesus Christ in such horrifically graphic detail ... that even non-believers may feel a twinge of sorrow and culpability in witnessing the final moments of the Son of God, played by Jim Caviezel in a performance that's not so much acting as a willful act of submission, so intense that some will weep not only for Christ, but for Caviezel's unparalleled test of endurance. --Jeff Shannon

Darker than its popular comic-book predecessor Spider-Man, Daredevil was packaged for maximum global appeal.  It begins when 12-year-old Matt Murdock is accidentally blinded shortly before his father is murdered.  Later an adult attorney in New York's Hell's Kitchen, Murdock uses his remaining, superenhanced senses to battle crime as Daredevil, pitted against dominant criminal Kingpin and the psychotic Bullseye, who can turn almost anything into a deadly projectile.

In Road to Perdition, Tom Hanks plays a hit man who finds his heart.  Michael Sullivan (Hanks) is the right-hand man of crime boss John Rooney (Paul Newman), but when Sullivan's son accidentally witnesses one of his hits, he must choose between his crime family and his real one.  (Reportedly, audio description is only available on the widescreen edition, and it is not mentioned on the packaging.)

Set in Paris in the 1890s, this version is unlike previous film versions.  Everyone and everything is encouraged to shatter boundaries of time and texture, colliding and careening in a fast-cutting frenzy.  Viewing this film, you are reminded of the cinema's power to renew itself while paying homage to its past.

MORE !!!

• WGBH Home Video Catalogue
• AudioVison Canada

This remarkable book is the first to focus on disability arts.  Drawn from over 50 of the author's speeches, it eschews the historical charity based, patrician assumptions about disabled people and the barriers and prejudices that have kept them invisible in education, the arts and every day life.  Instead, it offers readers the excitement and diversity of disability arts and the artistic expression of formerly excluded sectors of society, such as people with learning disabilities and survivors of the mental health system.  It is concerned not with their medical impairments but with the insight and originality of their art works that are beginning to fill a space on the canvas of arts history that has too long been blank.

Bodies in Commotion is the first book to explore the lively intersection of performance studies and disability studies, provoking new ways of looking at body, space, spectatorship, and identity.  In this groundbreaking collection, leading critics, artists, and activists take on topics that range from theater and dance to multimedia performance art, agit-prop, American Sign Language theater, and wheelchair sports.  The multiple perspectives illustrate how disabled bodies are "bodies in commotion" -- bodies that dance across artistic and discursive boundaries, challenging our understanding of both disability and performance. Bodies in Commotion exposes for the first time the mutually interpretive qualities of these two emerging fields, making this a unique, dynamic new resource for artists, activists, and scholars.

In the early '90s, Lefens, a painter, goes to the Metheny School for students with cerebral palsy and other disabilities to show slides of his work.  As this intensely moving memoir shows, he becomes obsessed with finding ways to help students, who are in wheelchairs and have no use of their arms or hands, learning to express themselves, devising methods that allow them the freedom to paint.

This clearly written, thought provoking manual includes over 50 exercises and improvisations designed to stimulate and challenge students -- disabled and non-disabled -- at all levels of dance.

Point of Contact brings together contributions by leading writers, artists, and scholars to provide a broad look at the intersection of disability and the arts.  The essays, poetry, memoirs, and fiction offers an invaluable overview of disability culture, aesthetics, and identity, and provides insight into the way disabilities are affected by and affect contemporary culture.

Norden (communication, Univ. of Massachusetts) analyzes the film industry's depiction of physically disabled characters from the era of silent films to the present.  He criticizes several conceptual approaches, including the tendency to present narratives from an able-bodied person's perspective, as in The Elephant Man (1980), which is drawn from the attending doctor's memoirs.  Especially illuminating are discussions of how films portraying a disability are perceived by people with that disability.

This volume addresses disability in theatre, and features all new work, including critical essays, interviews, personal essays, and an original play.  It fills a gap in scholarship while promoting the profile of disability in theatre, examining the issues surrounding disability in many well-known plays, including "Children of a Lesser God", "The Elephant Man", etc.

Plimpton and Smith (founder of Very Special Arts) present interviews with artists who lead creative and fulfilling lives despite severe handicaps.  In telling their stories, they concentrate on their aspirations and achievements rather than on their disabilities, demonstrating the power of art to help people overcome tremendous odds.

Through an analysis of various disabled performance artists and companies, this book investigates core issues affecting both "everyday" and "art-framed" performances.  It addresses performances as social and cultural interventions, and as acts on the edges of representational categories and embodied presence. Disabled performers challenge established aesthetic norms every time they enter the public domain.

This groundbreaking work explores how children and adults who have been blind since birth can both perceive and draw pictures.  John M. Kennedy, a perception psychologist, relates how pictures in raised form can be understood by the blind, and how untrained blind people can make recognizable sketches of objects, situations, and events using new methods for raised-line drawing.  According to Kennedy, the ability to draw develops in blind people as it does in the sighted.

The development of the National Theatre of the Deaf is recounted here by Baldwin, an advocate of the hearing-impaired.  Spanning a period from 1959 to the present, the book begins with the author's serendipitous meeting with a deaf actress, Phyllis Frelich, and their collaboration on the breakthrough play, Children of a Lesser God.

The 1957 classic American musical "West Side Story" has been staged by countless community and school theater groups, but none more ambitious than the 2000 production by MacMurray College, a small school in Jacksonville, Illinois.  Diane Brewer, the new drama head at the college, determined to add an extra element to the usual demands of putting on a show by having deaf students perform half of the parts. "Deaf Side Story" presents a fascinating narrative of Brewer and the cast's efforts to mount this challenging play.

In detailed biographical entries, this volume highlights the accomplishments of 150 outstanding deaf individuals, including several Nobel Prize laureate scientists, an Academy Award winning actress, poets, writers, world-class dancers, and a cadre of painters and sculptors.  Emphasis is on their contributions to the arts and sciences, and particular attention is given to how being deaf influenced their world view and their direction as well as how they overcame attitudinal barriers.

Bragg, a deaf person born of deaf parents in Depression-era New York City, tells how he realized his dream of becoming an actor and pays tribute to his family, deaf friends and others to whom "sign language was a perfectly normal and acceptable way of communicating." The richness and variety found in signing and in the deaf culture permeate his montage of stories.

This is an account of a search for ways to teach dance to the profoundly deaf in a variety of schools and settings.  Naomi Benari describes the methods and games she devised with the children to heighten their awareness of rhythm, music and the breath inherent in every dance movement.

This one-of-a-kind guide eases your way through the often confusing world of using a sign language interpreter.  Written by a practicing professional, includes solid, practical advice on translating dialogue, placement, interpreting for children, safety, and more.  For both novice and experienced theater interpreters.  It is a must for anyone interested in the exciting world of theatrical interpretation.

This book shows how some dyslexics can be highly gifted musicians.  It is important, however, that they should not be put off from studying music just because - at least in the early stages - many of them find it difficult to read and remember the symbols of musical notation.

This special edition includes:  Final Fair House Accessibility Guidelines, Design Guidelines for Accessible/Adaptable Dwellings, and Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board - Amendments to Final ADA Guidelines.

"Works so well that you wonder why there aren't lots more books like it . . . Deaf children will welcome this joyful story that talks, without condescension, about the fun they have.  Hearing kids, too, will want to learn some of the sign language, and with the help of an adult, they can practice the hand alphabet shown at the back of the book." — Starred, Booklist

"As in Moses Goes to a Concert (1998), this joyful picture book tells a story in written English and also in American Sign Language (ASL). This time the focus is directly on how deaf children learn at their special public school--in the classroom, on the playground, and on the school bus. The warm line-and-watercolor illustrations show the diversity of Moses' city classroom, the fun the children have together, and the special way they learn." — Booklist

"PreS-Gr. 2. Having previously tailed young Moses to a concert (1998) and to school (2000), Millman now accompanies the deaf youngster and his hearing family to the circus. Moses uses American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate with his parents and little sister, and children looking at this book can easily follow along. The richly detailed double-page spreads and the simple, descriptive text make room for boxed sequences showing Moses demonstrating signs for children to learn.." — Booklist

Based in 19th century Vienna, Beethoven Lives Upstairs is a story of the idiosyncratic but creatively brilliant Beethoven who is struggling with his deafness as he composes his Ninth Symphony.  This item is available in print, audio cassette (with music), and teacher's notes.

In this new edition of her well-established book, Elaine Streeter helps parents and carers to learn not only how they can add to a child's fun, but also how they can engage a child in interactive communication at a level the child can make sense of - one of the most rewarding things anyone can do.

Based on the belief that every child has a right to participate in a variety of art experiences appropriate to the child's needs and interests, this resource guide offers visual art activities developed specifically for children with autism, Asperger Syndrome and other pervasive developmental disorders who are served in a variety of settings.

Wings To Fly is a comprehensive nuts and bolts handbook which describes concrete, proven techniques and lesson plans to make drama accessible to people with disabilities of all ages. It is written for use by professionals in education, recreation, theatre, and therapy settings.

"Today, as a decade ago, Silver's book represents a landmark in the development of art therapy." — Art Therapy, Journal of the American Art

Recent research has shown that art therapy can be particularly effective for children with autism and related communication disorders.  This book presents a new model of practice, which primarily focuses on communication difficulties.  The authors describe how negative behaviors and subsequent tension may be alleviated when the autistic child is involved in interactive art making with the therapist.

This handbook shares many years of invaluable experience, providing teachers and parents with a wealth of hands-on activities and proven techniques to stimulate learning and help students realize their full potential.

This book has been written to help both the regular education, and art and special education teachers, both pre- and in-service, better understand some of the issues and realities of providing education and remediation to children with disabilities.  The book is also offered as a model of a concept that has governed the author's personal and professional career of over thirty years - the concept that we must live, learn and develop through art - that art belongs at the core of the public school curriculum.