Rear Window, remake
A shame, but this straight-to-tv movie staring Christopher Reeve (after his accident) is nothing but a vehicle for him to talk about disability issues. Â The whole story gets completely bogged down in this educating. I’m all for teaching people about disability issues, that’s a real passion of mine. Â If you’re going to use a fictional story to do that, though, it has to be gentle, in the background, and not overwhelming the plot. Â This feels more like a documentary on quadriplegia than a fiction movie. The original Alfred Hitchcock Rear Window has the main character in a wheelchair with a broken leg, and his immobility is used to up the ante on the fear. Â Similar to my comments on Bone Collector and MonkeyShines, it isn’t surprising that...
Read MoreLeap of Faith
Leap of Faith is another older one, it came out in 1992.  The movie is really a thought experiment, a what-if proposition.  What would happen if a sleezy, fake faith healer actually cured someone? So the cure of the disabled character, a teenage boy named Boyd, was already pretty much built in.  The movie used disability as a plot device, but plenty of films have done that.  I can’t really fault them for using it that way, since that is where they started, but the whole what-if is pretty ridiculous.  What happened in this movie could never happen in real life. Unfortunately this derails me into religion, which is certainly another hot topic.  I am a spiritual person, but I don’t believe that God arbitrarily hurts some people and heals others.  I do...
Read MoreWork
I’m currently taking law classes and this semester is Tort Law, which is all the negligence, slip and fall, accident stuff. Â It’s a lot more than that too! Â A huge subject. Â As I read my textbook last night I felt rather furious about how suing for injuries works. Â If you get injured, then you find someone to blame, and you try to get money from them. Â Kind of makes me feel sick. I know we punish people in this society with money, with taking away money, but I wish there was a better way. The thing that upsets me is the whole thing is designed to squeeze as big a payout as possible by playing on people’s pity (for a disturbingly accurate portrayal, see the beginning part of the movie A Civil Action). Â It is a huge step backwards for disability...
Read MoreCosmo Profile
Just stated reading my Cosmopolitan magazine this month and imagine my delight in discovering that the “true story” section this month features a beautiful quadriplegic woman! This section is for “shocking” true stories, so of course it played a little bit on that drama with the title, “Her Bachelorette Party Left Her Paralyzed.” The article was good, though. It was interesting to me that she is less than a year post-injury and seems to have a very rational perspective on the whole thing. I suspect that part of that is simply the experience of being in the media. Profiles like this need you to be one thing or another, they don’t allow for the natural variety of one’s emotions and experiences. What I mean is, for...
Read MoreAbilities
I’m currently taking law classes in a paralegal program and it leads to some very interesting things to ponder and discuss. My class this semester is on Tort law and last night we talked about assault and battery. Battery is when you physically touch someone in an unwanted way (i.e., hit him), but assault is when you make someone afraid that you will soon touch them in an unwanted way (i.e., threats, telling someone that you are about to hit him). In order for it to legally be assault, the person being threatened has to believe that there will be imminent harm. Part of that condition is that the person who puts you into apprehension has to be capable of committing the act they are threatening. The teacher literally said, “For example, a...
Read MoreProgress Trackers
At proofreaders; available for pre-order
What Is Meant To Be
Second draft
Homework & Homicide (working title)
Second Draft
Book Montage
RFW winner October 7, 2011
