SXSW: Fighting for ALS Care in "No Ordinary Campaign"

by Abe Friedtanzer

There are many diseases and medical conditions that may be known by name to a large percentage of the public without there being any true understanding of what they are. One of the most prominent is ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disease with an unpromising life expectancy for those diagnosed. As the stirring new documentary No Ordinary Campaign explores, there is much that can be done to combat ALS, but there are important changes required within the system to help offer hope to those who are currently facing a death sentence.

At the center of No Ordinary Campaign is Brian Wallach, who met his wife Sandra while working on President Barack Obama’s campaign and was diagnosed with ALS at age thirty-seven...

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Barack Obama's Top 10 Lists

Okay top 14 and top 10. President Barack Obama, who has gifted us with his favourites lists in previous years and revealed the taste (no surprise), and is now involved in the movies as a producer has released his favourites list for this accursed year, writing:

Obama visiting with a "Crip Camp" activist

Like everyone else, we were stuck inside a lot this year, and with streaming further blurring the lines between theatrical movies and television features, I’ve expanded the list to include visual storytelling that I’ve enjoyed this year, regardless of format.

His top 10 (sorry, 14) movies and top 10 tv shows after the jump...

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Doc Corner: 'The Way I See It'

By Glenn Dunks

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that the grand ideal of America is a lie. It may then seem like the right time for a film such as The Way I See It, which appeals to the country’s more idealised image of itself through the (figurative and literal) lens of the man who was there to witness first hand one of its most historic moments. And yet watching Dawn Porter’s film is a bit like watching a fantasy film. All the money in the world may be able to create the most realistic dragons and wizardry, but it’s a total lie. This film is a fallacy of American idealism invented in the daylight among the most vile and hateful bigotry. Do I sound pessimistic? Well, I am.

If Porter’s film, as subtle as a sledgehammer, attempts to immortalize this myth of democratic optimism and goodness then she needn’t have bothered...

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President Cinephile

It's hard not to miss President Obama on a public daily basis these past few years given the current hellscape but it's especially hard to not miss him on a personal level when he reminds us that he is genuinely into cinema. I mean how many US Presidents would even see movies that don't even crack a million at the box office like Transit and Diane, and movies from other countries and all genres. And the rest of his list: Atlantics, Parasite, Booksmart... The good taste!

Next up are my favorite movies and TV shows of 2019. Of course, there’s also American Factory, a film from our own production company, Higher Ground, that was recently shortlisted for an Oscar. Here’s the full list: pic.twitter.com/PEcgwotcxm

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 29, 2019

We also had to draw attention to a few official responses from those included...

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Stage Door: Hillary and Clinton

We're seeing a lot of theater in the run up to the Tonys. Here's new contributor J.B.

For the last twenty years or so, and probably longer, well-crafted stories about women in politics told on stage or screen have frequently been described with words like “timely” or “vital.”  These stories, in many cases, are ones we haven’t heard before, and to the extent we as a society want our art to imitate life (and indeed, vice versa), they are, now more than ever, ones we need to hear.

It is for this reason that Hillary and Clinton, a well-crafted story about the quintessential woman in American politics now playing at the John Golden Theater in New York, feels like such an anomaly. The play, written by Lucas Hnath and directed by Joe Mantello (his SEVENTH production on Broadway in just the last three years), takes place in a hotel room during the thick of the 2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary and offers an imagined glimpse into what exactly the titular characters (played by Tony-winners Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow, respectively) may have been thinking, feeling, and communicating to each other at that precise place and time in history...

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