Change Your Image
tedcloak
Reviews
A Double Life (1947)
Takes me back
I saw "A Double Life" half a dozen times or so during its first run, as an usher at the old Rio Theater in Appleton, Wisconsin. I just happened to think of it tonight, even including the title, for the first time in years.
A distinct memory: A "typical" police-beat reporter presses the detective to say "Kiss of Death"; he finally agrees: "Okay, kiss of death," and all the reporters run for the payphones.
I think this was the first time I ever saw Ronald Coleman in a movie, although I was familiar with him and his wife Benita as Jack Benny's neighbors, heard occasionally on Benny's radio show.
Bloodletting: Life, Death, Healthcare (2004)
Documentary comparing health care systems in Cuba and Los Angeles
Lorna Green accompanied a health care union team from L.A. to Cuba, to study the Cuban national health care system. Her job was to document the Cuban system as it actually exists, and she does that very well, covering local neighborhood clinics, hospitals, and even a psychiatric institution. After her return, circumstances affecting her family resulted in her deciding to film a very personal account of her mother's and brother's experiences with the health care mess in the U.S. The contrast, while underplayed, is very illuminating: Cubans simply assume that doctors and nurses and hospitals will be there for them, while working class Americans must live in dread of getting sick or injured.