[NFB-Talk] May events 4 All

[Steve Cook]

Hi All, 

Feel free to share this message with everyone! 

Everyone is invited to the below events in May. Below you will find the audio described movies and trivia for this month. Below the Zoom information to join us, you will find a summary for each movie! All events take place at 8:00 PM eastern. 

Friday, May 3, 2024
Audio described movie Poor Things (2023)

Friday, May 10, 2024
Audio described movie Anatomy Of A Fall (2023)

Friday, May 17, 2024
Audio described movie Carrie (1976)

Friday, May 31, 2024
Trivia Night

To make suggestions for upcoming movies or to request a weekly reminder message, send a message to movies at nfbofsc.org

I have created a list serve for the discussion of audio description on all platforms! Places to obtain audio described content including Audio Vault, Blind Mice Mart and any other place you know of. Feel free to announce upcoming events that pertain to audio description content for everyone to attend or in certain areas. To subscribe, send a message to the following Email address with subscribe in the subject line. AudioDescriptionDiscussion+subscribe at googlegroups.com


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Poor Things

In Victorian London,[n 1] the medical student Max McCandles becomes an assistant to the eccentric surgeon Godwin Baxter. Max falls in love with Godwin's ward, Bella, a childlike young woman. Godwin reveals that Bella's body is that of a woman who was pregnant and killed herself by leaping off a bridge. Godwin then replaced the woman's brain with that of her fetus, giving her an infant's mind, and named her Bella Baxter.

With Godwin's encouragement, Max asks for Bella's hand in marriage. Bella accepts, but as her intelligence rapidly develops, she becomes curious about the outside world and herself. She soon discovers masturbation and sexual pleasure. She runs off with Duncan Wedderburn, a debauched lawyer whom Godwin hired to overhaul the nuptial contract. Deciding to let her go, Godwin begins a new experiment with a young woman, Felicity, who matures more slowly than Bella.

Bella and Duncan embark on a grand journey, beginning in Lisbon, where they have frequent intercourse. Bella is mistakenly addressed as "Victoria Blessington" by a fellow hotel guest. When Bella becomes difficult for him to control, Duncan smuggles her onto a cruise ship. Bella befriends two passengers who open her mind to philosophy. Duncan attempts to stunt her growth to no avail. He becomes exasperated and indulges in drinking and gambling. During a stop at Alexandria, Bella witnesses the suffering of the poor and becomes distraught. Wishing to help them, she entrusts Duncan's winnings to unscrupulous members of the crew, who falsely promise to give it to them. Unable to afford the rest of the trip, Bella and Duncan are dropped off at Marseilles and make their way to Paris. Seeking money and accommodation, Bella begins working at a brothel. Enraged, Duncan breaks down and Bella abandons him. At the brothel, she comes under the tutelage of Madame Swiney and begins a relationship with a prostitute, Toinette, who introduces her to socialism.

Now terminally ill, Godwin asks Max to bring Bella to him. Max finds her after tracking down Duncan, who has been institutionalized. Back in London, Bella reconciles with Godwin and renews her plans to marry Max. The wedding is interrupted by Duncan and General Alfie Blessington. The latter, addressing Bella as Victoria, declares that they were married before her disappearance and that he has come to reclaim her. Bella abandons Max to learn of her past life, but discovers Alfie's violent and sadistic nature and realizes Victoria committed suicide to escape him.

Alfie confines Bella to his mansion. He threatens her at gunpoint to submit to genital mutilation and a subsequent rape, demanding she drink a sedative. She tosses the sedative in his face, and after a struggle, Alfie accidentally shoots himself in the foot before passing out. Godwin dies peacefully with Bella and Max at his side. Bella follows in Godwin's footsteps by becoming a surgeon with the help of Max and Toinette and transplants a goat's brain into Alfie's head.

Cast
The film stars Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott and Jerrod Carmichael.
Emma Stone as Bella Baxter
Mark Ruffalo as Duncan Wedderburn
Willem Dafoe as Dr. Godwin Baxter
Ramy Youssef as Max McCandles
Christopher Abbott as Alfie Blessington
Suzy Bemba as Toinette
Jerrod Carmichael as Harry Astley
Kathryn Hunter as Swiney
Vicki Pepperdine as Mrs. Prim
Margaret Qualley as Felicity
Hanna Schygulla as Martha von Kurtzroc
Keeley Forsyth as Allison the maid
John Locke as David the butler
Kate Handford as Kitty
Owen Good as Gerald
Damien Bonnard as Father
Tom Stourton as Steward
Raphaël Thiéry as Saveur the butcher
Wayne Brett as Priest
Carminho as Fado singing woman
Jerskin Fendrix as Lisbon restaurant musician

Anatomy Of A Fall

In an isolated mountain chalet near Grenoble, novelist Sandra Voyter decides to reschedule her interview with a female student because her husband, university lecturer Samuel Maleski, plays music loudly in their attic, disrupting the interview. After the student drives away from the chalet, Samuel and Sandra's visually impaired son, Daniel, takes a walk outside with his guide dog Snoop. When they return home, Daniel finds Samuel dead from an apparent fall.

Sandra insists that the fall must have been accidental. Her old friend and lawyer, Vincent, suggests the possibility of suicide, while Sandra recalls her husband's attempt to overdose on aspirin six months earlier, after going off antidepressants. After an investigation, Daniel's conflicting accounts of what happened shortly before his father's death, combined with the revelation that Samuel sustained a head wound before his body hit the ground and an audio recording of a fight by Samuel and Sandra the previous day, Sandra is indicted on charges of homicide.

During the trial, Sandra's defense team claims Samuel fell from the attic window and hit his head on a shed below, while the prosecution posits that Sandra hit him with a blunt object and pushed him from the second-floor balcony. During a courtroom argument with Samuel's psychiatrist, Sandra admits her resentment towards her husband due to his partial responsibility for the accident that led to Daniel's impaired vision.

In the recorded fight, Samuel accuses Sandra of plagiarism, infidelity and exerting control over his life, before their protracted argument turns physically violent. The prosecution claims that all the violence came from Sandra. She counters that while she had slapped Samuel, the rest of the violence heard was her husband beating on himself. After Sandra admits to an affair with a woman the year before Samuel's death, the prosecution argues that Samuel's loud music indicated jealousy over Sandra's flirting with the interviewer, leading to the physical confrontation later. The prosecutor also notes Sandra's pattern of writing personal conflicts into her stories, and how murdering her husband mirrors a minor character's thoughts from her most recent novel. In turn, Sandra protests that one recording does not represent the nature of their relationship, nor do the words of a character in a novel reflect her own inclinations.

A distraught Daniel insists on testifying before closing arguments the following Monday. The judge lays strict ground rules to prevent anyone from influencing his testimony and brings in a court monitor, Marge. Daniel then asks that Sandra leave their house for the weekend so he can be alone with Marge and Snoop. He recalls that when Samuel overdosed, Snoop also fell sick, possibly due to having eaten Samuel's vomit. He then deliberately feeds Snoop aspirin and finds it has the same effect, which aligns with Sandra's testimony. Daniel confides to Marge his anguish, and she advises him that if he doesn't know what is really true, he can instead decide what's true for him.

On the witness stand, Daniel says he can comprehend his father taking his own life but not the murder scenario. He says that when he and Samuel were driving Snoop to the veterinarian, Samuel spoke about the need to be prepared that those he loves will die and to know that his life will go on, which Daniel now interprets as his father's own suicidal thoughts. Sandra is acquitted after Daniel's testimony. When she returns home, Daniel tells her he was afraid of her homecoming and she says that she was too; the two embrace. As Sandra heads to bed, she lingers at a photo of her and Samuel before falling asleep with Snoop.

Cast






>From left to right: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Antoine Reinartz, Samuel Theis, Jehnny Beth, and Messi.
Sandra Hüller as Sandra Voyter[5]
Swann Arlaud as Vincent Renzi[11]
Milo Machado-Graner as Daniel Maleski[11]
Antoine Reinartz as the prosecutor[11]
Samuel Theis as Samuel Maleski[11]
Jehnny Beth as Marge Berger[11]
Saadia Bentaieb as Nour[11]
Camille Rutherford as Zoé Solidor[11]
Anne Rotger as the President[11]
Sophie Fillières as Monica[11]
Messi as Snoop[11]

Carrie

Sixteen-year-old Carrie White is a shy teenage girl who lives with her fanatically religious and unstable mother, Margaret, and is a loner and bullied by her peers. When Carrie experiences her first period while in school, she panics, having never been told about menstruation. Her classmates laugh at her, as well as throwing tampons and sanitary pads at her, until the gym teacher, Miss Collins, intervenes. Margaret tells Carrie that her period was caused by sin, and locks Carrie in a "prayer closet" to pray to God for forgiveness. At school, Miss Collins reprimands Carrie's tormentors, punishing them with exercise detention, threatening to suspend them and stop them going to prom if they refuse. Carrie's longtime bully, Christine "Chris" Hargensen, eventually refuses and gets banned from the prom.

Plotting vengeance against Carrie, Chris and her boyfriend Billy Nolan break into a farm and kill pigs to drain their blood into a bucket, which they place above the school's stage in the gym. Meanwhile, another girl named Sue Snell, a remorseful classmate, asks her handsome and popular boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to invite Carrie to prom. Carrie believes the proposition is a prank, but he insists that it is genuine. Carrie discovers she has telekinesis. Despite Margaret's protests, she prepares for prom. Margaret sees Carrie's telekinetic powers and denounces her as a witch.

During prom, Chris and Billy hide under the stage while the other conspirators switch the ballots to ensure that Carrie wins the Prom Queen title. As Carrie stands onstage with Tommy, finally beginning to feel accepted by her peers, Sue realizes Chris and Billy's plan, and tries to intervene. Miss Collins spots Sue and, thinking that she is up to no good, throws her out of the prom. Chris and Billy douse Carrie in the pigs' blood before sneaking out of the school. The empty bucket hits Tommy in the head, and he faints. The crowd is left shocked, speechless, and sympathetic to Carrie's distress, but Carrie hallucinates that everyone is mocking her, believing it was their plan all along. She telekinetically seals the exits and the students are attacked by a fire house, injuring several, including Norma. Miss Collins is crushed by a falling basketball backboard, and Carrie electrocutes her principal and teacher, one of the two bursting into flames, setting the gym on fire. She exits the burning school and seals the doors behind her, trapping staff and classmates. As Carrie walks home, Chris attempts to run her over, but Carrie causes the car to swerve; it rolls and Carrie ruptures the gas tank, the explosion killing Chris and Billy.

After Carrie bathes herself at home, Margaret reveals that Carrie was conceived when her drunk husband and Carrie's father, Ralph, raped her, an act that Margaret shamefully admits she enjoyed. She then stabs Carrie in the back with a kitchen knife. Carrie sends knives flying toward her, killing her; then, she destroys the house and perishes.

Some time later, Sue, who was the sole survivor of that night, has a nightmare in which she goes to lay flowers on the charred remains of Carrie's home. Upon the remains stands a "For Sale" sign, vandalized in black paint with the words: "Carrie White burns in Hell!" Suddenly, Carrie's bloody arm reaches from beneath the rubble and grabs Sue, who wakes up screaming as her mother tries to comfort her.

Cast
Sissy Spacek as Carrie White
Amy Irving as Sue Snell
William Katt as Tommy Ross
Nancy Allen as Chris Hargensen
John Travolta as Billy Nolan
Betty Buckley as Miss Collins
P. J. Soles as Norma
Sydney Lassick as Mr. Fromm
Stefan Gierasch as Mr. Morton
Priscilla Pointer as Mrs. Snell
Piper Laurie as Margaret White
Edie McClurg as Helen Shyres