Barack Obama gave a speech to the American Medical Association yesterday in an attempt to get the organization’s members on board with his plans for healthcare reform. The president’s appearance alone may have been good for his cause, given that it was the first such address to the AMA in 26 years, but many doctors are apparently still skeptical of the government’s ideas and how they’ll actually work.
Meanwhile, the issue of healthcare reform continues to be a difficult topic in Congress, and the road to legislation is sure to be long and filled with much debate. So, to help Washington in the process, or at least to keep the politicians sane with a little entertainment, we’ve come up with a little healthcare movie marathon.
The ten films selected are admittedly more left-leaning in their potential influence, but that’s not necessarily a political move on our part. We simply chose titles we like, and maybe it just so happens that we like movies that show charity as good, greed as evil and healthcare as a right that all humans should be afforded.
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Last night’s Oscars threw me for some loops, especially the winners for Best Foreign Language Film (The Lives of Others beating out Pan’s Labyrinth?) and Best Cinematography (Pan’s Labyrinth over Children of Men?). Alan Arkin’s Best Supporting Actor win was just a mildly pleasant surprise, especially since I was the only one in a family pool of 11 to pick him. Melissa Etheridge winning in the Best Original Song category with her piece for An Inconvenient Truth, beating out three nominations from Dreamgirls, was pretty clearly a political move (not necessarily a partisan move, but political, nonetheless). But does anyone really care about the Best Original Song category?
As I was scanning other blogs and sites this morning, I found a few post-Oscar pieces especially worth looking at. Pajiba writes in today’s post that although they’re not interested in big awards shows…
Mostly, we just provide this post so that our readers have a space to bellyache, though it’s hard to get too worked up about anything in last night’s show. In fact, the biggest complaint we have was that the 79th Oscar telecast offered so little to kvetch about.
Pajiba’s post and some of its comments (there are lots and they’re kind of fun to sift through) also brought up some suggestions on how to make the Oscars program shorter. Not surprisingly, everyone has an opinion.
GreenCine Daily also has a day after post worth checking out. And HairyLime on Spout wrote a “Post Oscar breakdown” that was followed by a couple interesting comments. Let us know what you liked, hated, and were bored or surprised by on Oscar night.
I just read Marie-Claire’s entertainment guilt “confession,” (in the form of a comment on our blog) and loved it. I can completely imagine myself in the same scenarios.
But it got me thinking about Munich, the film that sat unwatched on Marie-Claire’s coffee table for more than a month. I have a relationship with Munich that’s different from Marie-Claire’s. I’ve actually seen it twice. (OK, I know Paul and some others who have very little affection for the film are cringing at the thought. Get this: It was actually up for trial in the spout.com Worst Movie Ever group. Harsh. But I digress.) The first time I saw Munich was in the theater, with my dad, brother, and uncle, who were all home for the holidays. We went pretty much because we wanted to go the movies and it was the best thing showing that none of us had yet seen.
The second time I saw Munich, just recently, I rented it because my boyfriend, Jason, and I had been talking a lot about Israel and I wanted him to see the movie as additional fodder for our conversations. Of course, it isn’t a documentary, but I still think it provides an interesting look at some history of the Jewish state, the people’s deep sense of pride, and their efforts to protect their community from getting walked all over. Jason and I ended up having a really good discussion about the difficult political and cultural situations they’re finding themselves in, yet how violence begets violence, and doesn’t solve problems.
So this is what I ended up wondering about, in regards to the “entertainment guilt” concept: Do the films we end up seeing as a result of an “I-should-really-see-this-even-if-I’m-not-in-the-mood” attitude end up feeding more interesting thought and discussion than the films we tend to feel like seeing? If so, should we discipline ourselves to watch these more difficult films as a part of our continuing education? Can anyone think of a purely fun, entertaining, easy-to-watch film that spurred some great discussion? I’m sure there must be some, but I can’t think of any right now…
