'1939 Redux': Series digs beyond the classics of 'Hollywood's Greatest Year' -
via latimes.com
Writer. Some travel.
CRITICAL MASS: It’s Up and away at the Oscars
By Philip Martin Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
The hall was long, but not wide and so the only option was a go route. I looked back and saw the ball over my left shoulder and I twisted my torso and my feet slipped and the floor slid up and cracked me in the back of the head. The ball skipped harmlessly down the hall.
I looked up into the white glow of glass globed light as a purple iris closed down my field of vision. I heard my friends far off and then there was a second or two of blackness before I swam up and broke the surface to find Father Hoppe standing over me.
He slipped, one of my fellow servers helpfully explained. He wasn’t running. Nor was he playing with yonder miniature plastic football.
Father grunted kindly, and I got to my feet and dusted myself off and that morning I was the thurifer for the 11 a.m. Mass. I swung the holy smoke gently, censing the congregates. Normally I liked its acrid perfume, but that morning it made me a little sick to my stomach. I felt sleepy. At home that afternoon I laid down on the floor and fell asleep in front of the TV.
A couple of years later, I had my legs cut out from under me as I was shooting a lay-up in a junior high school basketball game. I hit my head again and once again I saw the purple ring begin to close over my vision. But this time I fought theblackness off, and willed myself not to go under. A teammate pulled me up and I wobbled to the bench and Coach McAllister patted me on the back and said something encouraging. I’m told I went back in a few minutes and played well for the rest of the game but I don’t remember it.
Those weren’t the only times I got hit in the head as a kid, there were baseballs and one time I walked into Steve Cherry’s practice follow-through and caught the toe of his five-iron with my left temple. It raised a golf-ball sized knot on my head that was more scary than painful. In a stupid act of bravado during a practice near the end of my football career, I lowered my shoulder and rammed my helmet into a linebacker’s chest-and crumpled comically at his feet.
None of these experiences could have been good for me; and I suspect that on at least a couple of these occasions I was genuinely concussed. And I don’t imagine my experience is much different from those of other guys who grew up like me, playing sports and sometimes running down waxed hallways in our Sunday shoes. We all got knocked in the head sometimes.
But concussions seem much more serious now than they did back in the day; we understandmore and more how the damage accrues. I remember reading that Mike Webster, the nine-time Pro Bowl center on those Pittsburgh Steeler teams that won four Super Bowls in 1970s, would sometimes have to shock himself into unconciousness with a taser just to get some sleep. Webster spent the last years of hislife living in train stations and in his truck, living on dry cereal and potato chips, a broken tortured madman who couldn’t remember whether or not he was married.
After Webster died in 2002 from heart failure at the age of 50, a neuropathologist from Nigeria performed an autopsy on him. He removed Webster’s brain, and noted that it looked completely normal. But Bennet Omalu had a hunch, and so he requested and received permission to do a microscopic inspection of Webster’s brain.
It took awhile. Weeks of slicing and staining slivers of Webster’s brain. But he finally found it. Gobs of something called tau proteins, in the wrong place, overrunning parts of the brain responsible for emotions, moods and cognitive control. Omalu discovered that Webster was suffering from a neurological disorder called dementia pugilistica or chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Webster was “punch drunk.” And Webster wasn’t the only former National Football League player who was determined to be suffering from CTE after his death. Omalu foundevidence that two other Steeler offensive linemen who died in an untimely fashion, Justin Strzelczyk and Terry Long, were suffering from CTE. (Strzelczyk died in 2004 after he crashed his car into a tanker truck while driving against the flow of traffic while trying to avoid police; Long committed suicide by drinking antifreeze.)
He also examined the brain of Andre Waters, the former Philadelphia Eagles player who shot himself in 2006, and found that Waters’ brain tissue had degenerated to the point that he was like an 85-year-old man in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. After former Houston Oilers linebacker John Grimsley shot himself in 2008, he too was disagnosed with CTE. So was Tampa Bay Buccaneer offensive guard Tom McHale, who died of an apparent accidental drug overdose a few months later.
The theory is that CTE is caused by repeated blows to the head-subconcussive blows as well as those severe enough to cause concussions. Omalu and others have found evidence of CTE in the brains of college and high school players, as well as NFL players. Not everybody who gets hit in the head a lot will incurCTE; a lot of boxers don’t go punchy-Jack Dempsey retained a high degree of mental acuity until his death at 87; Joe Louis suffered from a dementia that likely had nothing to do with his boxing career (and was controlled by medication)-but a lot do.
It’s often difficult to reconcile our love for sport with sport’s obvious consequences. I am a boxing fan, but I can’t condone the sport’s inherent violence. It is not a decent thing and no civilized society should abide it.
Football is harder for me to write off-but I understand there may well be no way to make the game safer than it already is without fundamentally changing the game. Helmets only work up to a point-they protect the skull from fracturing but don’t do anything to prevent the brain from crashing into the skull.
Last month, on the heels on an internal NFL study that found retired NFL players suffered from some sort of dementia at a rate five times higher than the general population, Congress announced it would be looking into things. In a recent New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell alleges football is as bad as dogfighting in that it exploits and destroys its participants for the sake of entertainment dollars.
I know what to believe, and I know it’s not what I want to believe. I’m just glad I don’t have a son in a three-point stance, looking to knock heads with someone else’s son.
Perspective, Pages 72 on 11/08/2009
-->-->Executive Administrative Assistant
CATHOLIC HEALTH INITIATIVES St. Vincent Health Sys ...
AR
[20564278]Assistant Professor in Organic Chemistry (R98818)
UALR The University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UA ...
AR
[20564287]Communication Specialist - Admissions & Financial Aid (R97948)
UALR The University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UA ...
AR
[20564283]Today's Most Popular StoriesADVERSTISMENT
• E-mail item
• Print item
• Comments
• iPod friendlyLITTLE ROCK — Nobody wants to be Amelie forever. Not even Audrey Tautou, whose film career got vertical lift by portraying a wide-eyed gamine with a unique sense of justice in the 2001 French charmer. In Coco Before Chanel, Tautou picks up where she left off in 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things - where she’s cast as a Turkish Muslim working illegally as a hotel maid in a London the tourists don’t see - by taking viewers along a rougher route than sunny Amelie ever treads.
In Coco Before Chanel she shows grit as Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who, in 1893, along with her sister Adrienne (Marie Gillain), gets off to a rough start in life by being dumped at an orphanage by her father. Growing up tough and self-sufficient, she works at a raucous provincial saloon as a seamstress and singing waitress.
Not the least bit hesitant about sleeping her way to success, she takes up with a wealthy baron (Benoit Poelvoorde), an affair thatcracks open the door to the glamour of Paris. With the baron’s support, she has time to explore an interest in designing stylish hats. Then she becomes enamored of English industrialist/polo player Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola). He encourages her to pursue her gift for creating simple, elegant clothing that transforms the corseted fashion industry and parallels the loosening of social and cultural restrictions on women in the early 1900s.
Brittle and bold, Coco’s appeal is rooted in her defiance. Anne Fontaine’s gorgeous period piece, which concludes around the time of World War I when Chanel is on the verge of becoming Chanel, is not about fashion. Nor is it about the other characters, who don’t get much ofa chance to develop personality or presence. It’s about how a woman uses fashion to free herself - and other women - from cultural constraints and forge a fabulous future. But that’s another story.
Coco Before Chanel87Cast: Audrey Tautou, Benoit Poelvoorde,Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain Director: Anne Fontaine Rating: PG-13, for language and sexual situations Running time: 105 minutes
This article was published today at 5:40 a.m.MovieStyle, Pages 42 on 11/06/2009
Comments
To report abuse or misuse of this area please hit the "Suggest Removal" link in the comment to alert our online managers. Read our Terms of Use policy.
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.
-->-->Today's Most Popular StoriesADVERSTISMENT
http://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh=v8/38dd/17/da/%2a/p%3B218869488%3B0-0%3B0%3B41991482%3B4307-300/250%3B33779823/33797701/1%3B%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://oascentral.arkansasonline.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/arkansasonline.com/entertainment/movies/story/L45/1616372373/Middle/ArkOnline/Kroger_300x250News/Kroger_300x250News.html/544831743955717665456f414442416d?http://" target="_blank">http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N5282.152845.0696384499421/B3813970.3;sz=300x250;ord=1616372373?">
![]()
![]()
• E-mail item
• Print item
• Comments
• iPod friendlyLITTLE ROCK — If you missed the brothers Brent and Craig Renaud’s latest documentary Warrior Champions: From Baghdad to Beijing at the recent Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, you’ll have another chance Thursday at its theatrical “World Premiere” at the Lakewood 8 Theater in North Little Rock. (See the note at the end of this column for details.)
Warrior Champions is easy enough to synopsize: It follows four Americans - who served in Iraq and were seriously injured - as they attempt to qualify and compete in the 2008 Summer Paralympic Games in Beijing.
Melissa Stockwell, the first American female amputee in the Iraq war, lost her left leg when a roadside bomb exploded as she was leading a convoy in Baghdad in 2004. She ran the New York City Marathon less than a year later. She’d never swam competitively before deciding to try out for the U.S. team.
In 2003, Scott Winkler was unloading an ammunition truck during a firefight near Tikrit when he was paralyzed from the waist down. After a couple of years of depression, he was introduced to adaptive discus and shot put during a paralympic sports clinic in 2006. Less than a year later he was breaking world records.
Kortney Clemons was preparing a wounded soldier for evacuation by helicopter when a bomb blew off his right leg and killed three of his fellow medics. Fitted with a carbon fiberprosthesis with a flat-spring foot, he became a national champion sprinter a few months after learning to run on the device.
Carlos Leon escaped serious injury during his tour of duty as a Marine, but weeks after returning home he broke his neck in a diving accident. Now he’s the world record holder in the adaptive discus.
The Renauds turn their cameras on these subjects and allow them to speak, and act, for themselves. And certainly the camera influences their behavior - Winkler, in particular, seems eager to perform, to come across as a tough-minded survivor who simply won’t let his bad luck keep him from overcoming and inspiring. But even his occasional preening takes on an air of poignancy,as time and time again the Renauds’ straightforward, patient camerawork reveals more than their subjects say - or probably even know about - their lives.
More than once the film recalled William Wyler’s 1946 classic The Best Years of Our Lives, particularly the subplot involving double-amputee sailor Homer Parrish, played by Harold Russell - an Army paratrooper who’d lost his hands when a bomb went off while he was making a training film.
Homer returns to his Midwestern home, to an aggrieved family and next-door neighbor sweetheart Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell) who promised to wait for him. But Homer doesn’t want to saddle her with a handicapped husband, and in the movie’s most memorable scene he calls her into his bedroom and sloughs off his harness and his mechanical hooks.
“This is when I know I’m helpless,” he tells her. “My hands are down there on the bed. I can’t put them on again without calling to somebody for help. I can’t smoke a cigarette or read a book. If that door should blow shut, I can’t open it and get out of this room. I’m as dependent as a baby that doesn’t know how to get anything except to cry for it. Well, now you know, Wilma. Now you have an idea of what it is. I guess you don’t know what to say. It’s all right. Go on home. Go away like your family said.”
But Wilma doesn’t leave. Instead, the movie ends at their wedding, where Homer deftly slips a ring onto her finger with his hooks. In the end, it’s Wilma’s hands that are shaking.
In an era where commercially successful documentaries are possible (if unlikely),the temptation toward firstperson polemicizing and prescriptive didacticism must be tempting. Cameras confer authority to subjects that aggressively address it, baring their teeth and unpacking the contents of their unshakably certain souls. Reality television and Michael Moore have proved that there’s an audience for declarative exhibitionism.
Yet the Renauds resist this trend, providing their audiences with nothing more than a silent eye opening on scenes of everyday eloquence. Short of covert surveillance, they get as close to the nub of authentic human operations as possible, working with small handheld cameras to give us a surrogate through which we might witness a rawer and less contrived experience than we usually see in theaters and on television. They practice a conservative brand of cinema verite, trusting inthe competence of their audience to appraise the evidence they submit.
Some people might mistake what they’re doing for something less than art. And maybe the Renauds wouldn’t disagree with that, but the truth is their films are built from carefully weighed and candled moments, chosen for their particular heft and how they relate to what’s gone before and what will come after. They bead these moments together into a narrative that tells us something about how we are. And what we might be.
Warrior Champions: From Baghdad to Beijing will screen at 7 p.m. Thursday and tickets are $100; it’s a fundraiser to raise scholarship funds for the Clinton School of Public Service. You can buy tickets at http://www.clintonschool.uasys.edu/donation/donate.asp or call (501) 683-5200.
E-mail:
This article was published today at 5:41 a.m.MovieStyle, Pages 42 on 11/06/2009
Comments
To report abuse or misuse of this area please hit the "Suggest Removal" link in the comment to alert our online managers. Read our Terms of Use policy.
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.
Barron violates anti-doping policy, suspended one year
By DOUG FERGUSON
Associated PressPosted: November 2, 2009
SHANGHAI – Doug Barron, a 40-year-old journeyman who lost his PGA Tour card three years ago, became the first player to be suspended by the Tour for testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance.
Barron has been suspended for one year. He played eight full seasons on the Tour, with his best finish a tie for third at the Byron Nelson Championship in 2006.
Doug Barron“I would like to apologize for any negative perception of the Tour or its players resulting from my suspension,” Barron said in a statement released by the PGA Tour on Monday. “I want my fellow Tour members and the fans to know that I did not intend to gain an unfair competitive advantage or enhance my performance while on Tour.”
Barron could not be reached for comment, and his agent did not immediately respond to a voicemail.
The news was greeted with shock at the HSBC Champions, a World Golf Championship event in China that has attracted several of the world’s best players.
“I’m surprised to hear that,” British Open champion Stewart Cink said. “I know him a little bit. He’s taken medicine in the past for a lot of different reasons. I would think that has a lot to do with it.”
Barron played a full Nationwide schedule last year, making only five cuts in 17 starts to earn $33,446. He played four times on the Nationwide Tour this year, and his lone PGA Tour start came at the St. Jude Classic, where he missed the cut.
The Tour, which announced the suspension about two hours before the World Golf Hall of Fame induction ceremony, said it would have no further comment.
Under its doping policy, the tour announces a suspension but does not disclose what substance a player used.
That left players wondering what Barron took that was on the list of banned substances, although they were skeptical it was anything to give him any kind of an advantage.
The last time Barron made news was in 2006 at what is now the Transitions Championship outside Tampa, Fla., where he removed his shirt to play a shot out of the water on the 16th hole at Innisbrook. He exposed an ample belly on television, drawing jokes from players.
“I don’t believe it,” Rod Pampling said. “Doug Barron? Look at the man. Tell him to take his shirt off and ask anyone, ‘Do you believe he’s on performance-enhancing drugs?”’
The Tour did not start random testing until July 2008, which includes its second-tier Nationwide Tour. Barron’s most recent tournament was in September at the Mexico Open, co-sanctioned by the Nationwide Tour, where he missed the cut.
Jerry Kelly said he has known Barron for years and also said he had several health issues.
“My big question is whether he was doing something to make himself feel better and did not get the therapeutic use exemption,” Kelly said. “I mean, this guy had health problems. I was shocked when I heard, but I also understand knowing that he was trying to feel better.”
The Tour stated clearly that Barron was the first player to be suspended – not necessarily the first to receive a positive test. The Tour is not required to suspend or announce any punishment for recreational drugs.
Pat Perez was stunned to hear a player had been suspended, although he thought the fact it was a player who had not been on the PGA Tour in three years would ease the perception of golfers.
“It’s not like it’s a top-20 player who was trying to take steroids to catch Tiger,” Perez said. “In a way, it matters. And in a way, it doesn’t. He’s not really on the PGA Tour.”
Related Links:
