[NFBWATlk] Movies & More

[Steve Cook]

Hi All, 

January 2024 starts our 4th year of hosting audio described movies and trivia! We are still having new people join us and saying they did not know about this! 

We hope you will join us for the below events. All are invited and feel free to share with everyone! 

If you have any suggestions for upcoming movies, please send them to movies at NFBofSC.org. All of the below events take place at 8:00 PM Eastern.

Friday, January 5, 2024
Oppenheimer audio described movie

Friday, January 12, 2024
Absolute Power audio described movie

Friday, January 19, 2024
All the Light We Cannot See Part 1 audio described

Sunday, January 21, 2024
All the Light We Cannot See Part 2 audio described

Friday, January 26, 2024
Name that Tune 
Rules:
Each  song clip will only be played twice. 
Your team has 30 seconds to give an answer. If no answer is given at the end of the time, you forfeit the points. 
If your team names the artist and the song title being played you will receive 2 points. If your team only names the artist or the name of the song, you will receive 1 point. 
If your team only names one of the two items, the other teams are allowed to steal and take 1 point. 
If the team that steals misses, they lose the point.
Each team will receive a daily double during the game. 
If it is not your team’s turn, mute yourself.

NFB of SC Zoom

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Oppenheimer

Run time: 3hours
Rating R

In 1926, 22-year-old doctoral student J. Robert Oppenheimer grapples with anxiety and homesickness while studying under experimental physicist Patrick Blackett at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Upset with the demanding Blackett, Oppenheimer leaves him a poisoned apple but later retrieves it. Visiting scientist Niels Bohr recommends that Oppenheimer instead study theoretical physics at Göttingen.

He completes his PhD there and meets fellow scientist Isidor Isaac Rabi. They later meet theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg in Switzerland. Wanting to expand quantum physics research in the United States, Oppenheimer begins teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology. He marries Katherine "Kitty" Puening, a biologist and ex-communist, and has an intermittent affair with Jean Tatlock, a troubled Communist Party USA member who later commits suicide.

In December 1938, nuclear fission is discovered, which Oppenheimer realizes could be weaponized. In 1942, during World War II, U.S. Army Colonel Leslie Groves recruits Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb. Oppenheimer, who is Jewish, is particularly driven by the Nazis' potentially completing their nuclear weapons program, headed by Heisenberg.

He assembles a scientific team including Rabi and Edward Teller in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and also collaborates with scientists Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and David L. Hill at the University of Chicago. Teller's calculations reveal an atomic detonation could possibly trigger a catastrophic chain reaction that ignites the atmosphere and destroys the world. After consulting with Albert Einstein, Oppenheimer concludes the chances are acceptably low. Teller's proposal to construct a hydrogen bomb is swiftly rejected. He attempts to leave the project, though Oppenheimer convinces him to stay.

Following Adolf Hitler's death in 1945, some Project scientists question the bomb's relevance, while Oppenheimer believes it will end the ongoing war in the Pacific and save Allied lives. The Trinity test is successful, and President Harry S. Truman orders the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing Japan's surrender. Though publicly praised, Oppenheimer is haunted by the mass destruction and fatalities, and urges restricting further nuclear weapons development, which Truman curtly dismisses.

As an advisor to the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Oppenheimer's stance generates controversy, while Teller's hydrogen bomb receives renewed interest amidst the burgeoning Cold War. AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss resents Oppenheimer for having publicly humiliated him by dismissing his concerns about exporting radioisotopes, and for recommending negotiations with the Soviet Union after they successfully detonated their own bomb. He also believes that Oppenheimer denigrated him during a conversation Oppenheimer had with Einstein in 1947.

In 1954, wanting to eliminate Oppenheimer's political influence, Strauss secretly orchestrates a private hearing before a Personnel Security Board concerning Oppenheimer's Q clearance. However, it becomes clear that the hearing has a predetermined outcome. Oppenheimer's past communist ties are exploited, and Groves' and other associates' testimony is twisted against him.

Teller testifies that he lacks confidence in Oppenheimer and recommends revocation. The board revokes Oppenheimer's clearance, damaging his public image and limiting his influence on nuclear policy. In 1959, during Strauss' Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Commerce, Hill testifies about Strauss' personal motives in engineering Oppenheimer's downfall, resulting in the Senate voting against his nomination.

In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson presents Oppenheimer with the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation. A flashback reveals that Oppenheimer and Einstein's 1947 conversation never mentioned Strauss. Oppenheimer instead expressed his somber belief that they had indeed started a chain reaction that would destroy the world.

Cast
Actor Cillian Murphy at a press conference for The Party at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival in 2017
Portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, first director of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Cillian Murphy plays J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist and director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.[8]
Emily Blunt as Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer, Robert Oppenheimer's wife and a former Communist Party USA member.[9]
Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves, a United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) officer and director of the Manhattan Project.[10]
Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a high-ranking member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).[10]
Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist, Communist Party USA member, and Robert Oppenheimer's romantic interest.[11]
Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, a Nobel-winning nuclear physicist who worked with Oppenheimer at the University of California, Berkeley.[12][13]
Casey Affleck as Boris Pash, a U.S. Army military intelligence officer and commander of the Alsos Mission.[14]
Rami Malek as David L. Hill, a nuclear physicist at the Met Lab, who helped to create the Chicago Pile.[11]
Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr, a Nobel-winning physicist, philosopher and Oppenheimer's personal idol.[15]
Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, a Hungarian theoretical physicist known for being the "father of the hydrogen bomb".[11]
Jason Clarke as Roger Robb, an attorney and future U.S. circuit judge who served as special counsel to the AEC at Oppenheimer's security hearing.[16]
Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer, Robert's younger brother and a particle physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project.[17]
Tom Conti as Albert Einstein, Nobel-winning German theoretical physicist known for developing the theory of relativity.[18]
James D'Arcy as Patrick Blackett, Oppenheimer's college professor and Nobel-winning physicist at Cambridge University.[19]
David Dastmalchian as William L. Borden, a lawyer and executive director of the JCAE.[20]
Dane DeHaan as Maj Gen. Kenneth Nichols, a U.S. Army officer and the deputy district engineer of the Manhattan Project.[21]
Alden Ehrenreich as a Senate aide to Lewis Strauss, a fictional character who is an aide during Strauss's nomination for United States Secretary of Commerce.[22][23]
Tony Goldwyn as Gordon Gray, a government official and chairman of the committee deciding the revoking of Oppenheimer security clearance.[24]
Jefferson Hall as Haakon Chevalier, a Berkeley professor who became friends with Oppenheimer at university.[25][26]
David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who worked as a consultant on the Manhattan Project.[22]
Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development.[27]
Scott Grimes as Counsel to Lewis Strauss[28]
Kurt Koehler as Thomas A. Morgan, an industrialist and former chairman of the board of the Sperry Corporation who was one of the panel members at Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing.[29][30]
John Gowans as Ward V. Evans, a chemist and academic who served as one of the panel members at Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing.[31]
Macon Blair as Lloyd K. Garrison, a lawyer who helped to represent Oppenheimer at his security clearance hearing.[32]
Gregory Jbara as Sen. Warren Magnuson, Chairman of Senate Commerce Committee.[32]
Harry Groener as Sen. Gale W. McGee[32]
Tim DeKay as Sen. John Pastore[32]
Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg, a German Nobel Prize-winning physicist who worked in the country's nuclear weapons program during World War II.[33][34]
Alex Wolff as Luis Walter Alvarez, a Nobel-winning physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project.[35]
Josh Zuckerman as Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, a physicist who became Oppenheimer's protégé at Berkeley.[36]
Rory Keane as Hartland Snyder, a physicist, who collaborated with Oppenheimer to calculate the gravitational collapse of a dust particle sphere.[31]
Michael Angarano as Robert Serber, a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project.[12]
Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer, Frank's wife and Robert's sister-in-law.[37]
Guy Burnet as George C. Eltenton, a chemical engineer in the U.S. with ties to the Soviet Union.[38]
Louise Lombard as Ruth Tolman, a psychologist close to Oppenheimer during the development of the atomic bomb.[39]
Tom Jenkins as Richard C. Tolman, Ruth's husband and General Groves' chief scientific adviser on the Manhattan Project.[40]
Olli Haaskivi as Edward Condon, a nuclear physicist who helped with the development of radar and briefly took part in the Manhattan Project.[17]
David Rysdahl as Donald Hornig, a chemist who worked on the firing unit at Los Alamos.[41]
Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge, a physicist who was the director of the Manhattan Project's Trinity nuclear test.[42]
Jack Quaid as Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist who worked in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos.[43]
Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe, a German-American Nobel-winning theoretical physicist and the head of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos.[44]
James Urbaniak as Kurt Gödel, a mathematician known for his theorems that revolutionized mathematics and had far-reaching implications for philosophy and computer science.[32]
Trond Fausa as George Kistiakowsky, a Harvard professor who took part in the Manhattan Project.[45]
Devon Bostick as Seth Neddermeyer, a physicist who discovered the muon and advocated for the implosion-type nuclear weapon used in the Trinity Test.[46]
Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi, an Italian Nobel-winning physicist and creator of the Chicago Pile.[38]
Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and spied for the Soviet Union.[28]
Jessica Erin Martin as Charlotte Serber, head technical librarian at Los Alamos.[47]
Ronald Auguste as J. Ernest Wilkins Jr., an African American nuclear scientist, mechanical engineer and mathematician who worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project.[47]
Máté Haumann as Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist who conceived the idea of nuclear chain reaction in 1933, and later in July 1945 at the Chicago branch of the Manhattan Project circulated the petition to President Truman against unannounced use of atomic weapons on Japan.[48]
Olivia Thirlby as Lilli Hornig, a Czech-American scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project.[49]
Jack Cutmore-Scott as Lyall Johnson, a security officer at Berkeley who worked at the Manhattan Project.[32]
Harrison Gilbertson as Philip Morrison, a physics professor who worked on the Manhattan Project.[37]
James Remar as Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War under President Truman.[32]
Will Roberts as George C. Marshall, a United States general who served as a key figure in the country's atomic weapons program.[47]
Pat Skipper as James F. Byrnes, U.S. Secretary of State.[32]
Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States who made the decision to drop the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.[50]
Hap Lawrence as Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th President of the United States.[32]

Absolute Power

Run time: 2 hours
Rating: R

In Washington, D.C., master thief Luther Whitney breaks into the mansion of billionaire Walter Sullivan. He is forced to hide upon the arrival of Sullivan's wife Christy, on a drunken rendezvous with Alan Richmond, the President of the United States. Hidden behind the bedroom vault's one-way mirror, Whitney watches as Richmond becomes sexually violent; Christy, in self-defense, wounds his arm with a letter opener. Richmond screams for help, and Secret Service agents Bill Burton and Tim Collin burst in, see Christy about to stab the President, and fatally shoot her. Chief of Staff Gloria Russell arrives, and they stage the scene to look like a burglary gone wrong. Whitney is unnoticed until he makes his getaway, pursued by the agents, but he manages to escape with millions in valuables as well as the incriminating letter opener.

Detective Seth Frank heads the murder investigation. Though Whitney, known to authorities as a high-profile burglar, becomes a prime suspect, Frank does not believe he is a murderer because he was never a violent criminal. Burton asks Frank to keep him informed on the case and wiretaps Frank's office telephone. Just as Whitney is about to flee the country, he sees Richmond on television publicly commiserating with Sullivan – a close friend and financial supporter of the president – on his loss. Incensed, Whitney decides to bring Richmond to justice.

Whitney's estranged daughter Kate accompanies Frank to Whitney's home in search of clues. Photographs of her indicate that Luther has secretly been watching her as she grew up. Fearing for her father's life, she agrees to set him up, arranging a meeting at an outdoor café. Frank guarantees Whitney's safety, but Burton learns of the plan through the wiretap, and both Collin and Michael McCarty – a hitman hired by a vengeful Sullivan – prepare to kill Whitney. The two snipers, each unaware of the other, try to shoot Whitney when he meets with Kate. Whitney escapes disguised as a police officer. Whitney later explains to Kate exactly how Christy was killed and by whom.

Suspecting that Kate must know the truth, Richmond decides she must be eliminated. When Whitney learns from Frank that the Secret Service is surveilling Kate, he races back to D.C. to protect her. Collin rams Kate's car over a cliff edge. Whitney arrives too late, but Kate survives. Collin tries again to kill her at the hospital with a poison-filled syringe, but is killed by Whitney.

Whitney replaces Sullivan's chauffeur and tells Sullivan what truly happened the night his wife was killed. He gives Sullivan the letter opener with Richmond's blood and fingerprints and drops him off outside the White House. A shocked and enraged Sullivan then enters the building to confront Richmond. Later on television comes the shocking news from Sullivan that Richmond allegedly committed suicide by stabbing himself to death with the letter opener. Meanwhile, Frank discovers that a remorseful Burton has committed suicide and uses the evidence Burton left behind to arrest Russell. Back at the hospital, Whitney reconnects with his daughter.

Cast
Clint Eastwood as Luther Whitney
Gene Hackman as President Alan Richmond
Ed Harris as Seth Frank
Laura Linney as Kate Whitney
Scott Glenn as Bill Burton
Dennis Haysbert as Tim Collin
Judy Davis as Gloria Russell
E. G. Marshall as Walter Sullivan
Melora Hardin as Christy Sullivan
Kenneth Welsh as Sandy Lord
Penny Johnson as Laura Simon
Richard Jenkins as Michael McCarty
Mark Margolis as Red Brandsford