December 21, 2005

• WEDNESDAY MOVIE

  Murderball

  These are no ordinary wheelchairs and no ordinary gladiators inside them. Given the Audience Award for best documentary of this year’s Sundance Festival, it’s the hellbent, gut-wrenching, tender, and glorious story of members of Team USA who play quadriplegic rugby. The photo shows Mark Zupan, a Texan who was thrown from the back of a truck where he had passed out drunk at age 18 when his buddy crashed, causing him to fly 60 feet into a stream where he clung to a branch for 13 hours before being rescued. Zupan is the captain and driving force behind the team, but the stories of the others are told as well, some of them much more damaged than he. The film takes the team through its preparation for the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece in 2004, highlighting their intense competition with Team Canada, which is coached by a former American teammate. Along the way, we learn how they manage their daily lives – eating, driving, dressing, even sex – and what kind of spirit it has taken them to rise above their terrible disadvantages. Besides creating their own heroism, they bring inspiration to other disabled groups, notably Iraq war survivors, and the story is told of one young former athlete whose bitterness is lifted when he sees what is possible and begins to save the money for his own chair. If you can watch this movie and not be inspired, you haven’t met with any adversity in your life. Mark Zupan is 30 now and still close friends with the boy who drove the truck that night when he broke his neck. He has a girlfriend, drives an SUV, graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in civil engineering – and shines. Bask in the glow.
  

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  Deep Thought: “Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, mankind should be thinking about getting more use out of the weapons we already have.”
  Today I am grateful for: Buttonholes
  Guess the Movie: “Y’all beat the hell out of that woman, but you didn’t kill her. And I put a bullet in her head, but her heart just kept on beatin’. Now, you saw that yourself with your own beautiful blue eye, did you not? We’ve done a lot of things to this lady. And if she ever wakes up, we’ll do a whole lot more. But one thing we won’t do is sneak into her room in the night like a filthy rat and kill her in her sleep. And the reason we won’t do that thing is because… that thing would lower us.” Answer: Kill Bill, Volume I, 2003. Winner: la_chatte_gitane. (Actually she guessed Vol. II, but close enough.)
  Raising the Issue of Impeachment
  by John Nichols
  As President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations regarding Bush’s authorization of spying on the international telephone calls and emails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has begun a process that could lead to the censure, and perhaps the impeachment, of the president and vice president.
  U.S. Representative John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who was a critical player in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations into presidential wrongdoing, has introduced a package of resolutions that would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the Administration’s possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment. (Rest of article here.)

  • 5:29 pm
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