Week 4 - Still Alice

Losing Her Bearings in Familiar Places

In ‘Still Alice,’ a Professor Slides Into Alzheimer’s

“Still Alice” is a movie that addresses a nightmarish circumstance with calm, compassionate sensitivity. Based on Lisa Genova’s novel and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, it follows the deterioration of a Columbia linguistics professor who learns she has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), along with her husband and three children, must endure a cruel and absurd ordeal that has no real chance of growing easier. With what seems like shocking rapidity — the film’s chronology is appropriately fuzzy — Alice slides from a witty, intelligent, capable adult into a fragile and confused shadow of her former self.


The title suggests otherwise, of course, and one of the tragedies of Alzheimer’s for the friends and family of the afflicted person is that the sufferer seems present and absent at the same time. “Still Alice”examines both the philosophical and emotional aspects of this paradoxical situation, and the principal vehicle for the inquiry is Ms. Moore’s exquisitely nuanced performance. From the early scenes, when brief memory lapses signal that something is wrong, through the subsequent deterioration of her cognitive ability, she conveys both the collapse of Alice’s inner world and the panic it causes. The structure of her face seems to change from scene to scene, as her eyes grow duller, her mouth and jaw slacker. As she did in “Safe,” she finds a way to communicate the pathos of emptiness.

But the film as a whole functions mainly as a scaffolding for this remarkable feat of acting, and also for Kristen Stewart’s excellent work as Alice’s younger daughter, Lydia. The success of the “Twilight”movies has allowed Ms. Stewart’s gifts to be underrated, but her more recent roles (here, in “ Camp X-Ray” and in “Clouds of Sils Maria,”which will open next year) should help re-establish her as an insightful and unpredictable talent.

There are tensions at the beginning between Lydia and her mother — in an early scene, Alice picks apart her daughter’s life choices with relentless, passive-aggressive skill — but Lydia is also frequently the only member of the family brave or honest enough to accept who her mother becomes and to find ways of staying connected to her.

It’s not that the others fail, exactly. Alice’s husband, John (Alec Baldwin), a research physician, works hard to be tender and supportive, as do the other children, played by Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish. The problem is that the film, concentrating on the accurate portrayal of Alice’s condition, leaves the other characters undeveloped, and their social and domestic milieu hastily sketched. The test of realism in a movie like this — the thing that would separate it from a conventional, made-for-television disease melodrama — is whether you can imagine lives for the secondary characters when they aren’t on screen.

“Still Alice” lacks that kind of thickness. It surrounds Alice and her family with the signifiers of a perfect, privileged life: impressive jobs, well-raised children, a Manhattan brownstone and a lovely beach house, neither one too showy. But all of this feels like a too tidy garden that has been planted for the sole purpose of introducing a blight and observing its ravages. The story is sad and sincerely told, but it is too removed from life to carry the full measure of pain that Alice deserves.

“Still Alice” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Strong language and sexual allusions, as well an incurable disease.

Still Alice

Opens on Friday

Written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, based on the novel by Lisa Genova; director of photography, Denis Lenoir; edited by Nicolas Chaudeurge; music by Ilan Eshkeri; production design by Tommaso Ortino; produced by Lex Lutzus, James Brown and Pamela Koffler; released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes.

WITH: Julianne Moore (Alice), Kristen Stewart (Lydia), Kate Bosworth (Anna), Alec Baldwin (John) and Hunter Parrish (Tom).

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/movies/in-still-alice-a-professor-slides-into-alzheimers.html?_r=0

Structure of The Lead :
WHO-Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), along with her husband and three children
WHEN-not given
WHAT-must endure a cruel and absurd ordeal that has no real chance of growing easier
WHY-Alzheimer’s disease
WHERE-in a movie, "Still Alice"
HOW-slides from a witty, intelligent, capable adult into a fragile and confused shadow of her former self

Key Words :

1.nightmarish：惡夢的
2.compassionate：富於同情心的
3.sensitivity：感覺感性
4.deterioration：惡化
5.absurd：荒唐的
6.paradoxical：弔詭的
7.insightful：有見的
8.milieu：環境

9.blight：破滅

10.privileged：特權的

Week 3 - Shanghai Chinese New Year

Shanghai to curtail Chinese New Year celebrations after deadly stampede

Shanghai is toning down Chinese New Year celebrations by cancelling events and limiting people at tourist spots after a stampede killed 36 people seven weeks earlier.

Revellers, many of them young women, were trampled to death on New Year’s Eve after flocking to the historic riverfront, known as the Bund, a popular tourist destination.

Police on foot patrol and driving golf cart-like vehicles kept an eye on tourists who flocked to the Bund on Wednesday, the eve of the traditional festival.

Large stretches of the Bund remain closed off to the public by a temporary wall put up by the city shortly after the accident.

“Shanghai is safe. That was just a chance accident,” said one tourist from the southern province of Fujian, taking a group photo with family and friends near where the crush occurred.

In the wake of the accident, the Shanghai government has cancelled at least five events during the week-long holiday, including a food fair and traditional bell-ringing at the Longhua temple.

The city has also announced it will restrict the number of visitors at more than 70 tourist spots, including the viewing platform of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and the flagship Shanghai Museum.

Restrictions on numbers have not been announced for the Bund, where the crush also injured 49 people. However, police and security guards were limiting access to an elevated promenade along the riverfront through just a few designated points.

“This kind of accident is common in China, everyone going in one direction without thinking,” said another tourist from central Henan province, who gave his surname as Chao. “The government is giving it lots of attention now.”

An investigative report blamed police and city officials, who were aware of overcrowding but failed to act and communicate the risk to higher-level authorities.

In January, the city announced that 11 officials would be punished, with four removed from their posts.

China’s State Council, or cabinet, has called on local governments nationwide to control large gatherings at tourist spots during the Chinese New Year.

At the Yu Garden, another tourist site located on the site of Shanghai’s former old city, metal barriers and security guards loudly blowing whistles kept the crowds in check.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1718053/shanghai-tones-down-chinese-new-year-celebrations-after-fatal-stampede


Structure of the Lead:
WHO-Shanghai
WHEN-seven weeks earlier
WHAT-is toning down Chinese New Year celebrations
WHY-a stampede killed 36 people
WHERE-Shanghai
HOW-by cancelling events and limiting people at tourist spots

Key Words:
1.tone down：緩和
2.stampede：踩踏
3.reveller(s)：擺設酒宴者
4.flock to ：湧向
5.province：省
6.flagship：旗艦
7.elevated promenade：高架長廊

Week 2 - Sydney

Sydney Siege Inquest: Hostage Katrina Dawson 'Killed By Police Bullet Ricochet,' Gunman Shot Cafe Manager

A hostage who died during the siege of a local café in Sydney’s Martin Place last month was killed by the ricochet of gunfire from a police officer's gun, a lawyer told an inquest on Thursday. Police stormed the Lindt Café after a nearly 16-hour standoff with a gunman who had taken 18 people hostage on Dec. 16.

Katrina Dawson, 38, died after she was hit by six fragments of a police bullet, or bullets, one of which struck a major blood vessel, Jeremy Gormly, the lawyer assisting the state coroner reportedly told the Glebe Coroner's Court. Another hostage, Tori Johnson, was killed by gunmanMan Horan Monis who ordered the 34-year-old café manager to kneel before fatally shooting him in the head at close range, Gormly reportedly said.

Details of the deaths of Dawson and Johnson came on the opening day of the coroner's inquest in Sydney, aimed at seeking to establish how the two hostages and the gunman died and whether their deaths could have been prevented. Authorities had previously refused to disclose whether the hostages were killed by Monis or were caught in police crossfire.

"Rarely have such horrifying events unfolded so publicly," Coroner Michael Barnes told the court, according to The Associated Press. "Overlaying the intense personal suffering on display were fearsome themes which called up wider and more far-reaching threats that understandably terrified many, even among those who only saw it from afar."

Two police officers fired 22 shots as they stormed the cafe after Johnson was shot. At least two police bullets or fragments reportedly hit Monis in the head and 11 others struck his body.

"Questions concerning the use of police marksmen, whether to wait or act immediately and other options have been discussed in public; I anticipate evidence on all those matters," Gormly reportedly said.

Monis, a 50-year-old, self-described Muslim cleric, had ordered and consumed a chocolate cake and tea before moving to another table near the door, and later brandished his shotgun and claimed that he had a bomb in his backpack. He later forced several hostages to hold up a black flag with a declaration of faith to Allah and the Prophet Muhammad.Monis later made statements to a camera in front of the black flag and demanded that a flag of the Islamic State group be delivered to him.

However, Gormly reportedly said that it did not appear that Monis had any contact with ISIS before the siege.

http://www.ibtimes.com/sydney-siege-inquest-hostage-katrina-dawson-killed-police-bullet-ricochet-gunman-shot-1798700

Structure of the Lead:

WHO-Katrina Dawson
WHEN-Thursday,Dec. 16

WHAT-was killed
WHY- Police stormed the Lindt Café after a nearly 16-hour standoff with a gunman
WHERE-a local café in Sydney’s Martin Place
HOW-by the ricochet of gun fire from a police officer's gun

Key Words:

1.hostage：人質

2.siege：包圍

3.standoff：對峙

4.crossfire：交火

5.overlay：覆蓋

6. marksmen：狙擊兵、槍手

7.brandish：揮舞、舞動

Week 1 - Eric Garner

A Search for Justice in the Eric Garner Case

The Staten Island grand jury must have seen the same video everyone else did: the one showing a group of New York City police officers swarming and killing an unarmed black man, Eric Garner.

Yet they have declined to bring charges against the plainclothes officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who is seen on the video girdling Mr. Garner’s neck in a chokehold, which the department bans, throwing him to the ground and pushing his head into the pavement.

The imbalance between Mr. Garner’s fate, on a Staten Island sidewalk in July, and his supposed infraction, selling loose cigarettes, is grotesque and outrageous. Though Mr. Garner’s death was officially ruled a homicide, it is not possible to pierce the secrecy of the grand jury, and thus to know why the jurors did not believe that criminal charges were appropriate.

Op-Ed Columnist: Michael Brown, and Now Eric GarnerDEC. 3, 2014

What is clear is this was vicious policing and an innocent man is dead. Another conclusion is also obvious. Officer Pantaleo was stripped of his gun and badge; he needs to be stripped of his job. He used forbidden tactics to brutalize a citizen who was not acting belligerently, posed no risk of flight, brandished no weapon and was heavily outnumbered.


Any police department that tolerates such conduct, and whose officers are unable or unwilling to defuse such confrontations without killing people, needs to be reformed. And though the chance of a local criminal case is now foreclosed, the Justice Department is right to swiftly investigate what certainly seem like violations of Mr. Garner’s civil rights.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton responded quickly to Wednesday’s development, as they did in July, when anguish and anger flared. Mr. de Blasio went immediately to Staten Island to meet with elected officials, clergy members and other community leaders, and he issued a statement urging that New Yorkers outraged by the grand jury’s failure express themselves in peaceful ways.



rotests in New York City on Wednesday unavoidably echoed those in Ferguson, Mo., where an officer escaped indictment for fatally shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. Protesters in both places have every right to deplore both outcomes, as well as the appalling frequency of fatal encounters between black men and the police.

New Yorkers, at least, have a mayor and Police Department that have not fully squandered their credibility with the public. Mr. de Blasio’s and Mr. Bratton’s vows to retrain the police force top to bottom in defusing conflict, to reduce unwarranted arrests and restore community trust, remain credible, if far from fulfilled.

Those who seek justice should remain hopeful, if skeptical and wary. Indeed, if not for a bystander with a cellphone, the police officers’ version of events would have been the prevailing one: that Mr. Garner “resisted arrest” and had to be subdued.

Mr. Garner, who was 43, and left a wife and six children, cannot speak for himself. But the video, at least, speaks for him. It’s a heartbreaking, damning exhibit, showing Mr. Garner’s final moments alive, and his final words: “I can’t breathe.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/new-inquiry-needed-on-eric-garners-death.html?_r=0

Structure of the Lead：
WHO-New York City police officers
WHEN-not given
WHAT-swarming and killing an unarmed black man, Eric Garner
WHY-not given
WHERE-New York
HOW-girdling Mr. Garner’s neck in a chokehold


Keywords：
1. plainclothes officer：便衣警察
2. gird：圍住
3. pavement：走道
4. infraction：侵害
5. grotesque：奇怪的
6. outrageous：不像話的、蠻橫的

7. secrecy ：保密、隱私

8. be stripped of ：被剝奪...
9. anguish：悲楚、煩悶、煎熬

10. subdue：制伏、壓迫