{"id":6486,"date":"2005-12-11T00:12:43","date_gmt":"2005-12-11T00:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/film-notes.html"},"modified":"2005-12-11T00:12:43","modified_gmt":"2005-12-11T00:12:43","slug":"film-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/film-notes.html","title":{"rendered":"Film Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Couple of recent viewings…<\/p>\n

Last night, Mad Hot Ballroom<\/em><\/a>, the documentary that follows a couple of schools as they work with children competing in the city-wide 5th grade ballroom dancing competition. Like Spellbound<\/em>, it focuses on how this kind of competition embodies the American dream and hope of success, particularly for immigrants. The ballroom dancing brings another element into the picture – how that activity teaches values that these children would not be learning anywhere else, because our culture doesn’t value them: respect, restraint, attentiveness and a sense of formality. <\/p>\n

Taken as a whole, I think I liked Spellbound<\/em> better for one simple reason: the interviews with the children. 5th graders can only say so much and are only so articulate, and most of these children came from similar backgrouns. The Spellbound <\/em>young people were a bit older, more articulate, and came from wildly diverse backgrounds – there was more to interest than simply the suspense of the competition.<\/p>\n

Tonight the 1946 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice.<\/em><\/a>  Film Noir? Well, yes, but time really is not kind to the careful, yet ironically over-dramatic emoting of Lana Turner and John Garfield. Hume Cronyn, as an attorney, breezes in with a natural, theater-honed manner that’s far easier for the modern viewer to take – almost a relief. Relief punctured by the pretty wretched "I get it now!" ending of Garfield on his way to the gas chamber, which I’m trusting was not part of Cain’s novel. No, if I’m going to raise some Cain, give me Double Indemnity<\/em> any time. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Couple of recent viewings… Last night, Mad Hot Ballroom, the documentary that follows a couple of schools as they work with children competing in the city-wide 5th grade ballroom dancing competition. Like Spellbound, it focuses on how this kind of competition embodies the American dream and hope of success, particularly for immigrants. The ballroom dancing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFilm Notes - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/film-notes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Film Notes - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Couple of recent viewings… Last night, Mad Hot Ballroom, the documentary that follows a couple of schools as they work with children competing in the city-wide 5th grade ballroom dancing competition. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}