RED NOTICE (2021):

RED NOTICE (2021):

"An Interpol agent tracks the world's most wanted art thief."

Red Notice is free on Netflix, so I figured why not? It's a pretty good action-heist flick. There's a police officer John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson), a conman Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) and a thief called The Bishop. (Gal Gadot). Each one is trying to get the golden eggs of Cleopatra. Pretty formulaic structure here though.

John Hartley is trying to catch The Bishop and sets up the action scenes. Gal Gadot comes in and sets up the sexy/heist scenes. She's always one step ahead. Ryan Reynolds is comic relief who makes fun of Dwayne Johnson's character as he's fooled through Russia, Spain, Egypt, and other exotic locales. He really enjoys seeing Agent Hartley in a bind, and makes it harder for him at every turn.

It's not a bad movie, it's just a little formulaic. Ryan Reynolds is in full wise-cracking mode. You want Gal Gadot? Well, you get Gal Gadot: Sweet talk, and krav maga. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is as game as ever to bonk some heads, and not afraid to laugh at himself. Plus, there's a few surprises in store. If you can stomach the setups, watch this one...there's a couple big twists. No spoilers!

ReelAbilities Columbus 2013:

ReelAbilities Columbus 2013:

When I went to Reelabilities 2013 this weekend, the first movie I saw was “Aphasia”, in the McConnell Arts Center. It’s an American film (2011) about Carl McIntyre, an actor and salesman who has a stroke, and suffers from aphasia, the inability to read, write, or understand spoken language. The film follows his year and a half trying to regain these skills. It’s a very comedic film, but not without it’s touching moments, such as when Carl first suffers the stroke, his kids jump on him and his wife yells at him to get up and stop messing around.
   
Also, the film shows Carl’s frustration of having to learn words again. Oddly, the first words he seems to learn quickly are curse words, which is sometimes played for comedic effect. (They must be stored in a different part of the brain…or linked to his frustration.) Such as when he goes to a fast food joint and tries to order a “Frozee”, but ends up seeming to order…something else! He also has trouble distinguishing between yes and no at first, which means he ends up with much larger orders sometimes and says yes when he means no.

    In his therapy,  he begins to show “cognitive flexibility” which is why he can relearn words by getting around to them in his brain. For example to say “when” Carl at first has to say “Chicken” which surprises his therapist. “Chicken?” she asks. Then, Carl says “Chicken! Eggs! Hen! Www-when!” The surprising thing for me was how much I empathized with Carl’s aphasia. Having learnt another language (And sometimes having difficulty with my own…but haven‘t we all had those?), it’s frustrating when you can’t convey what you want, and embarrassing when you say something completely different.

     This is a short film, 40 minutes long, that embraces the entire gambit of human emotions, and the human struggle to adapt to worlds which we don’t understand. Ultimately, Carl realizes when he’s watching himself on TV that: “There are two mes. The then and the now. And the now me is the only version of me this little boy [his son] will ever know.” And spoiler alert: He does finally get that Frozee!

   This is a great film for anyone who has struggled to communicate. Or likes to laugh. Funny story: as I came into the theater, people there must’ve thought I was with the Dancing Wheels, a disabled dance group that was there earlier that evening. They showed me into the theater, and then I got on this big metal lift, and I almost ended up on stage. I didn’t know! I thought it was just really good handicapped seating! But, then I told them I wasn’t a dancer, and they took me back down into the audience. Communication breakdown even between non-aphasiacs!

     The second day was when I saw “Renn Wenn Du Kannst” and “Yo Tambien” in the Wexner Center. These were the two films I’d planned to see originally. “Yo Tambien” (Me too.) is about a man called Daniel with Down Syndrome who falls in love with his able-bodied coworker Laura in Seville’s Department of Disability Services. Daniel is wonderfully arrticulate, and discusses philosophy, and art, and his disability with her. Laura is more of a “wild child” who has a dislike for rules, and is new in town, so Daniel is her first connection.

     However, just as Daniel is Laura’s first connection as a friend, Laura is taught how to love again by Daniel’s example. There are hints that Laura was abused as a child, and is estranged by her family. Likewise, Daniel’s mother can be a little to overprotective of him, and thinks he’s somehow being taken advantage of. Daniel also has a friend, Pedro, a dancer, who falls in love with a woman with Down Syndrome in his dance class. This serves to show how the concept of normative relationships doesn’t always function correctly.

    In both cases, it is the able-bodied people who do not approve of the relationships. But, they don’t want or need their approval. In Daniel’s case, people think he’s being bamboozled. In Pedro’s case, people think: He has Down Syndrome, how can he know what love (or sex!) is? These are the kind of presumptions the disability community has to work against! It’s not able-bodied vs. disabled. We need more stories like this that show us that. Also, it did remind me a lot of my trip to Spain, as I suspected it would. The fast, colorful language, the classical architecture and wild countryside, and Daniel’s family was always drinking wine. What a great Spanish presentation of the Independent Living and Disability Rights movements!  

    Now on to Renn Wenn Du Kannst (Run If You Can)! This film is from Germany, and follows Ben, a quadraplegic about to complete his MA (Boy, I’ve been there!) who falls for one of his assistants friends, a woman who plays cello, but has crippling stage fright to where she can only perform solo. Now, here’s what I thought was cool: In the opening scene, Ben in ordering his assistant around and cleaning up his apartment, but the moment his aide leaves, his thesis which he just PRINTED, flies out the window. I nearly cursed at loud as Ben does!

    You see, when Annika (His aide/Ben’s love interest, in a sort of love triangle!) has stage fright, she can run away, as she does many times during performances in the movie. Ben can’t run away from his fear which is that he will no longer be able to maintain relationships after his accident. Indeed, in the course of the movie, Ben kind of laughs off the notion that Annika could possibly love him. But, then of course, she does, but neither find that they can perform sexually under the weight of their traumas.

    Ben’s story is that he was in an auto accident that killed his disabled girlfriend as well as left him quadriplegic. Since then, he has developing a joking attitude (He calls his attendant Christian…Nurse Christiane!) and stays away from people, since he can’t run from his fear. As Ben jokes with Christian: “I was not put on Earth to have sex with women. I was put here to look at their backsides.” I must admit, I often take myself out of the game so to speak, before I even know if I’ll succeed. For many of the same reasons; and the fact that it was in German made it hit home closer for me.

    The film wonderfully juxtaposes the need for order (Classical music; cleaning the apartment; the Master’s thesis.) against fear and non-logical impulses. Though all three in the end remain friends, it is left unclear whether they will go their own separate ways. There is a small scene where Ben’s mom comes to visit, and she starts cleaning and Ben tells her to get out! That to me was pretty powerful, as a cultural analyst. This is Ben’s territory! Only he and his aides can order it!

     And hey, as a non-native German-speaker I learned a few new slang words! As usual the European scenery was great…but in a different way than Spain’s. The city of Bottrop, as presented here is large and modern, dominated by high-rises and steel. Actually, Ben climbs the Bottrop Tetrahedron and sits on top of it. Something he told “Christiane” was his “unattainable dream”. A wonderful film dealing with interability relationships…but certainly not as afraid to dive into pain as Yo Tambien. Yo Tambien was more colorful; more Spanish…for lack of a better adjective!

     Afterwards, a speaker read her academic paper on the presence of able-bodied/disabled actors in the media. And even gave some cursory background into the disability rights movement in Germany…by commenting that Germany’s movement is based on “self-determination” (Which she never called by the German Selbstbestimmung.)

   The trouble is, in the USA, it seems to be based on “Independence”. So, whatever differences both movements have based on those words are (to me.) completely rhetorical. I don’t get the difference…but the main argument seemed to be that media presence within the “community” is growing. This year was the opposite of last year’s for me: I came prepared to speak this time, but never quite got the opportunity to ask questions!
 
   All in all, a good ReelAbilities Festival, with some great intercultural discourse on inter-and-intraability relationships. And I got to see one more film than I originally thought! (“Aphasia”) I’m glad VSA Ohio invited me to take part. Each film dealt with the same issues, more or less. But each had a different cultural lens which with to examine our common humanity through stories about disability! ReelAbilities 2013 was a very fun, and very educational time!
     

 

THE 99 (2011) REVIEW:

THE 99 (2011) REVIEW:

Narrator: “It is said that the light of one heart can illuminate all the darkness in the world.”

Once in a while Netflix completely surprises me and shows me something that I really like. In this case, it’s the animated superhero show The 99. The 99 is a 26-episode series written by Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, that focuses on a group of heroes who are powered by magical gems called Noor stones. Supposedly, there are 99 stones. Each stone grants it’s user different powers. The first one to be found is a paraplegic man with the power to send out pain waves/healing waves from his hands: John Weller.

   The others found all have different abilities and powers, and all have Arabic names given to them once they join the 99. I suspect it has to do with the 99 names of Allah…well, and 99 Noor stones. Of course, I myself am an Agnostic, but I love discussing multiculturalism! As for the superheroes: There is (mainly) Jabbar The Powerful, (Superstrength and invulnerability) Darr The Afflicter (John), Mumita The Destroyer (Superstrength and agility.) Noora, The Light, (Light-based  powers and  empathy.) Jami The Assembler (Super engineer.) Those are the main three from what I see. Although the series plays off of Islam, the show itself is more about universal values of good and evil, and happens all around the world (Hong Kong, St. Louis, Hungary, and Jakarta, to name a few…) just  like the X-men and the mutants.
     
Dr. Ramzi Razem serves as the mentor (The Professor X, if you will.) of The 99. One thing I liked about the show was how well it depicts in my mind, how people would react to being superheroes. John doesn’t just get on a plane and fly off with them! No! He tells them to get out of his house and go away until his powers go out of control and they chase him down! Although John is a little bitter in the beginning, and generally has a negative view of his chair (Except when The 99 upgrade it into a sort of armored Permobil powerchair!) I tend to think that’s due to his tough-as-nails persona and background, rather than pity.

    In fact, I have to say, for all it’s cheesiness, I really liked The 99’s depiction of John’s disability. He sort of moves extra-consciously…with a click before he moves from his powerchair of course. And although I never realized it…that’s how I move too. I sort of have to think “Okay, turn here; then straight ahead.” but of course it’s all habit. Early episodes have some nice examples of John’s POV, all punctuated with clicks from his chair. Little things like this I notice. I’m always somewhat pleased when I see disability in mainstream superhero media!

     Of course, opposite Ramzi and The 99 is Raghul. Raghul is the Magneto to The 99’s X-men. A nice plot twist occurs when John becomes suspicious of why Ramzi brought them to The 99 Mansion, and gave them codenames. Why do superheroes need secret identities, anyway? (I know, to protect their loved ones.) It turns out that they had been working for Raghul, and the man they were told was Raghul was Ramzi! Nice twist on the secret identity theme. Anyway, Ramzi reasons that since they already have codenames and a secret base, he might as well use them for Good.

     The base of The 99 is in Selville, Spain, on the ruins of a 13th century Islamic library. I like how the show is based in Arabic/Islamic mythology and culture, and explores themes of ethics, social justice, and multiculturalism, in much the same way as X-men does…but just as X-men is not specific to any religion…The 99 has a different cultural/historical setting which adds to the backgrounds of the characters and Good vs. Evil narrative of the show.

Though Islamic culture is important to the show, the religion is never explicitly  discussed. Though I felt like maybe it’s time we have strong Islamic superheroes? I felt like it was a missed opportunity. It’s time we had a serious intercultural dialogue in that respect. If Nightcrawler can discuss Christianity, why not John Weller discuss Islam? Though I really like that the show went for (to me.) something new, to show how people act on cultural values; and for including a bit of disability culture as well.

The only thing I didn’t like about this series was…the animation. Until Beware The Batman proved me wrong, I’ve always kinda thought 3D animation was inherently clunky and awkward…and it’s still pretty bad here. Often, it feels more like a product of the late 90s than modern animation…but the action and themes covered are good, even though animation is lacking! If you’re looking for more disabled superheroes, or just a new show to watch about superheroes, I highly recommend The 99 for its cultural settings, sneaky plot twists, and cool superheroes! I’d rate this 3.5/5 stars, but just for animation issues! Give it a watch! I was pleasantly surprised!

ReelAbilities Film Festival 2013 Preview

ReelAbilities Film Festival 2013 Preview:

Well, I always love the ReelAbilities Film Fest in Columbus! You get to see movies dealing with disabilities and even discuss it afterwards, which is a rare opportunity to make one’s viewpoint as a person with a disability heard. It’s even better, because they always have international entries. So, I get to do some intercultural analysis as well.

     This year they have two entries from Germany, one from China, one from Portugal, one from Israel about a disabled soccer (Football to international viewers.) team. Other entries deal with Down Sydrome, (Yo Tambien, Spain.) and Aspberger’s (The clayamation feature Mary and Max, from Australia.) Longtime viewers of this blog know how important it is to me to promote strong, human portraits of disabilities. And I think ReelAbilities gives us all the opportunity to look at those kind of portraits. The festival begins Oct. 4 and ends on the 7th.

I will go to at least one showing…probably on the 6th, as I am close by the Wexner Center for The Arts. They will show “Yo Tambien” (“Me too”, from Spain.) and Renn Wenn Du Kannst (Run If You Can, from Germany.) Renn Wenn Du Kannst is about a paraplegic man in love with his nurse aide’s love interest. Since I speak German, I definitely want to go when one of the German movies is playing.

The Spanish film will probably remind me of Spain, which is a beautiful country. But, anyway, I rarely see disability films in an international context, so ReelAbilities is a real treat for me.
 
If you’re in the Columbus area, you can catch all the times by going to: columbus.reelabilities.org. Tickets are $5 at the door. If you’re an international reader, let me know of some good films with disabilities in them, and I will submit some requests. If you’re too far away to attend, I’ll provide analysis of the films after I see them to give you a taste. Regrettably, I think I’ll only be able to go to the one screening this year. But, we’ll see.
 
As usual, it should be a fun time, and give me a chance to share my human experience with others who have disabilities. We’ll have some guest speakers, one of whom I know is the poet from last year’s festival. In any case, it should be fun to see some disability stories with a little bit of international flavor! Maybe I’ll see YOU there!