I recently introduced the 2008 French film “The Class” at a film festival just outside of Chicago and seeing the film again confirmed that it didn’t get quite the plaudits it deserved.  Rather a strange statement when you consider that the film, directed by Laurent Cantet, (scheduled to be released Aug. 11 on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.  But reading the reviews made me think that critics and audiences had misjudged the film as a French Blackboard Jungle and not what I think it is – easily one of the most important European films of the last decade and an exquisite meditation on colonialism.

“For once, we were recognized as full members of the community”.  So said one of the young actors from the cast.  Based on a book by teacher, Francois Begadeau, the film details a year in a Paris public school.  What’s singular and unnerving is that director Cantet, cast Begaudeau as himself (he’s a rousing actor) and selected the titular group from amongst real-life immigrant teenagers.  For over a year, Cantet employed a method not unlike the English director, Mike Leigh, starting with no formal script but building the characters and the plot points through elaborate improvisation exercises.  (more…)

What is going on here? Hmmmm…the dd|a team is up to something. Are these mug shots? I wonder what it could mean.

Stay tuned……………………………………….

The Film Forum in NY is doing a retrospective of Otto Preminger’s work and I have to say that it’s a dubious enterprise. Watching The Man with the Golden Arm once again confirmed to me that his reputation of the maverick and auteur, rests very heavily on a series of poses and presumptions that his films made as being outre, modernist pieces of film art. The reality, for me, is that Preminger, with very few exceptions (like Laura), was firmly of the second rank of directors aping everyone from his fellow Germans, like Von Stroheim to William Wyler to Orson Welles.  (more…)

This is Part II of the post from Wednesday regarding UNMC’s Science Café. Part I is here. Continuing below is the other half of Dr. Singh’s six astonishing examples of recent and mind-blowing developments in our understanding of the brain and the mind.

4 – Anosognosia or “denying your weakness” is a fascinating and disturbing revelation. A patient who was paralyzed on one side of his body denied that he was paralyzed. On being asked to clap his hands, the patient proceeded to wave one hand in the air, as if clapping both together. Subsequent enquiry led the patient to affirm that he did clap and heard it too! Another accidental discovery resulted, by way of a treatment that also produces rapid eye movement. While the patient experienced rapid eye movement, he stopped denying his paralysis! As soon as the rapid eye movement ceased, he reverted to a denial of his paralysis. (more…)