Author Archives:Site Admin
4
MayIn the La La Land of Dreams
I haven’t had the time to sit in a darkened movie theater for a few weekends so I watch those nominated films that are available on video or On Demand at home in the comfort of my own easy chair. Or I scramble from theater to theater in those last few weeks, always missing a few movies that seem to only be screened at the art sports in and around Boston. (Luckily, we have a terrific little gem of a theater in the town next door at the Dedham Community Theater and they always have a handful of Oscar candidates on either of their two big screens.)
This past March, somewhere between Manchester By the Sea and Hacksaw Ridge, I found myself with a few hours to spare outside of a New Jersey multiplex. I reclined comfortably in front of a screening of La La Land. I didn’t expect much. I knew it was a musical and I’d heard that it starred that handsome Ryan Gosling. I’d read some mixed reviews online and heard the criticisms, but I was certainly curious and I am a sucker for musicals.
I was pleasantly surprised to find myself smiling broadly during the opening number and I never stopped.
One thing’s for sure – there is nothing like falling in love when you least expect it. And I fell hard for La La Land, dragging my husband Gerry to Legacy Place the next week.
There were some terrific competitors for the Oscars in all of the categories this year. I gritted my teeth through Hacksaw Ridge (war makes absolutely no sense to me), cheered along the women mathematical whizzes in Hidden Figures, and cried with others at the end of Manchester By the Sea. La La Land, on the other hand, was simply a toe-tapping, shoulder-wiggling, sing-along film.
I and others were surprised when La La Land was announced as Best Picture during the Academy Awards. Sure, La La Land was an experience, a kick, and so much fun. So, when a the unbelievable mix-up was announced, I was also only slightly disappointed when the honor was taken back from La La Land and given to Moonlight. Most of sat in shock awe merely wondering how the heck it had happened. What a fiasco!
La La Land was released on DVD on April 26 (our library has two copies), I bought my own copy to shelve among my other favorite musicals at home. I watched the film this past weekend with the commentary turn on. I was surprised by the youthful chatter of writer/director Damien Chazelle and musical composer Jason Hurwitz. I was even more surprised when I realized they were born in 1985 and that they were younger than my youngest child. Chazelle and Hurwitz are 32 years old THIS year. When La La Land was ready for release in 2016, the two young men had already worked on it for six years. If you do that simple math you’ll realize they were 25 when they started their La La Land journey.
Writer and director Damien Chazelle was born in Providence, RI but his family moved to Princeton, NJ where he graduated from Princeton High School as a film buff and musician. It was at college at Harvard that he met fellow Harvard classmate, musician Jason Hurwitz from Wisconsin, when they had both joined a small British-inspired pop band, Chester French. In their sophomore year, they became roommates and abandoned Chester French and pop music for film.
During their years at Harvard they concentrated on filmmaking – Chazelle on cinematography and Hurwitz on musical scoring and composition. Chazelle wrote and directed an 84-minute, black-and-white musical shot in and around Boston – Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. Hurwitz composed the music. Several years after graduation from Harvard, the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2009 to much acclaim.
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench strikes many of the same chords that the 2016 musical La La Land does. It’s a story of a musician and a girlfriend finding their way in a sometimes difficult world and working through romance that don’t always end the way we’d like.
After graduating from college and living in Los Angeles, the city of dreams for aspiring filmmakers, actors, and musicians, Chazelle and Hurwitz tried to sell their concept of La La Land. Studios and producers were reluctant to fund the film. In the meantime, however, they collaborated on Whiplash, a story inspired by Chazelle’s musical education in Princeton, N.J. An 18-minute short version screened at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews and soon received the backing for the full-feature film starring J. K. Simmons. Simmons won multiple awards for his role as best supporting actor in Whiplash (2014.)
And that’s what it took to get the La La Land story and concept in front of some big money. Funders gave the producers a budget of $30 million. Enthusiastic big-name actors Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone signed on. Filming began in 2015 and within forty days the score, six original songs, and the acting was a wrap. After a year of editing, the musical was released in time for the holiday season in late 2016. The rest is history. La La Land was in lights. The brilliant kind. It has grossed nearly $436 million so far.
In their senior year at Harvard, Chester French (the band that both Chazelle and Hurwitz abandoned to concentrate on films and musicals) was courted by some top record labels. Both the aspiring filmmaker and hopeful composer thought they’d blown their chances at fame. Life has interesting twists and turns however. Less than a decade later they defied the odds of Los Angles and ended up with a big dream come true.
Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte’s column in the May 4th issue of the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin.
What is Net Neutrality?
According to a 2015 article from NPR, net neutrality is described as the following:
“Net neutrality?
Right, it’s that brain-flexing term that refers to the idea that phone and cable companies should treat all of the traffic on their networks equally. No blocking or slowing their competitors, and no fast lanes for companies that can pay more.
In fact, the term itself was so nerdy that it’s been “re-branded” as Open Internet.
You might have thought things were kind of settled with net neutrality after the Federal Communications Commission passed hotly debated rules in February that redefined its authority over Internet service providers.
But the new regulations could be undone: The cable and telecom industries have taken the FCC to court.
It’s the third time in less than a decade that the FCC’s attempts to regulate Internet access have been challenged in court. Three judges at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether the rules get to stay.”
Or, you may prefer the “Save the Internet” description listed in their Net Neutrality 101:
Net Neutrality is the internet’s guiding principle: It preserves our right to communicate freely online.
Net Neutrality means an internet that enables and protects free speech. It means that ISPs should provide us with open networks — and shouldn’t block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks. Just as your phone company shouldn’t decide who you call and what you say on that call, your ISP shouldn’t interfere with the content you view or post online.
Without Net Neutrality, cable and phone companies could carve the internet into fast and slow lanes. An ISP could slow down its competitors’ content or block political opinions it disagreed with. ISPs could charge extra fees to the few content companies that could afford to pay for preferential treatment — relegating everyone else to a slower tier of service. This would destroy the open internet.
Interested? These links will bring you to more detailed information about net neutrality:
“Am I the Only Techie Against Net Neutrality?” by Josh Stiemle
29
AprPaul Meets Bernadette
Paul Meets Bernadette by Rosy Lamb
Visual humor sweetens an artful tale about a fish who suddenly sees everything a new way — thanks to a charismatic companion.
Paul is a fish who used to go around in circles. He made big circles and little circles. He circled from left to right and from right to left. He circled from top to bottom and from bottom to top. What else was there to do? Until one day Bernadette drops in and shows Paul that there is a whole world out there, right outside his bowl, with so many things to see. A banana-shaped boat! A blue elephant with a spoutlike trunk (be quiet when she’s feeding her babies)! A lovely lunetta butterfly, with tortoise-shell rims! Simple saturated paintings play off this charming ode to an active imagination — and the way that life changes when a bewitching creature opens your eyes.
Review by Amazon.com
29
AprThe Boys in the Bunkhouse
The Boys in the Bunkhouse by Dan Barry
Nominated for the 2017 Hillman Prize and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award
With this Dickensian tale from America’s heartland, New York Times writer and columnist Dan Barry tells the harrowing yet uplifting story of the exploitation and abuse of a resilient group of men with intellectual disability, and the heroic efforts of those who helped them to find justice and reclaim their lives.
In the tiny Iowa farm town of Atalissa, dozens of men, all with intellectual disability and all from Texas, lived in an old schoolhouse. Before dawn each morning, they were bussed to a nearby processing plant, where they eviscerated turkeys in return for food, lodging, and $65 a month. They lived in near servitude for more than thirty years, enduring increasing neglect, exploitation, and physical and emotional abuse—until state social workers, local journalists, and one tenacious labor lawyer helped these men achieve freedom.
Drawing on exhaustive interviews, Dan Barry dives deeply into the lives of the men, recording their memories of suffering, loneliness and fleeting joy, as well as the undying hope they maintained despite their traumatic circumstances. Barry explores how a small Iowa town remained oblivious to the plight of these men, analyzes the many causes for such profound and chronic negligence, and lays out the impact of the men’s dramatic court case, which has spurred advocates—including President Obama—to push for just pay and improved working conditions for people living with disabilities.
A luminous work of social justice, told with compassion and compelling detail, The Boys in the Bunkhouse is more than just inspired storytelling. It is a clarion call for a vigilance that ensures inclusion and dignity for all.
Review by Amazon.com
29
AprA Single Man
Welcome to sunny suburban 1960s Southern California. George is a gay middle-aged English professor, adjusting to solitude after the tragic death of his young partner. He is determined to persist in the routines of his former life. A Single Man follows him over the course of an ordinary twenty-four hours. Behind his British reserve, tides of grief, rage, and loneliness surge―but what is revealed is a man who loves being alive despite all the everyday injustices.
When Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man first appeared, it shocked many with its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in maturity. Isherwood’s favorite of his own novels, it now stands as a classic lyric meditation on life as an outsider.
Review by Amazon.com