May 19, 2017

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Entertainment May 19, 2017

DVD Obscura: The New Indie and International Movies You Need to Watch

New Indie

It’s been loved, it’s been hated, it’s been praised, it’s been criticized, it won Best Picture, it didn’t win Best Picture: In the final analysis, though, La La Land (Summit/Lionsgate) is not a film to be ignored. You can nitpick its choices and what it has to say about jazz and whether or not the leads should have been cast in a musical, but there’s no denying that an attempt to mount a large-scale original musical movie (with strong indie roots, no less) qualifies as a daring experiment, no matter what you think of the final outcome. I was dazzled and continue to be enthralled by this sweet and sad movie; it’s a wonderfully heartbreaking musical, and it ranks among the great L.A. movies in the history of this oft-filmed city. Give it a look and make up your own mind.

Also available: Frank Langella stars as an old man taking a road trip to euthanasia in the comedy Youth in Oregon (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), also featuring Billy Crudup, Christina Applegate and Mary Kay Place; Lovesong (Strand Releasing Home Entertainment) charts a friendship that grows amorous before breaking apart, hauntingly performed by Riley Keough and Jena Malone; Sandra Oh and Anne Heche beat the crap out of each other in the bold satire Catfight (Dark Sky Films); the indie comedy Punching Henry (Well Go USA Entertainment) features an impressive ensemble, including Sarah Silverman, Doug Stanhope, Tig Notaro, Clifton Collins Jr. and J.K. Simmons.

New Foreign

You’ve never quite seen a real-time romance like Paris 05:59 Théo & Hugo (Wolfe Video); for one thing, it starts in an underground sex club where our leads get to know each other very well before they even learn each other’s names. But this charming film segues from explicit to intimate, as they spend the wee hours exploring the City of Lights while dealing with a potential health emergency, getting to know each other in waiting rooms and on buses. Smart, sexy and passionate, this lovely French import doesn’t hold anything back.

Also available: The comedy The Mafia Kills Only in Summer (Icarus Films) spans 20 years of Sicilian history, and of one small-town boy’s efforts to win the girl of his dreams; Three (Well Go USA Entertainment), from legendary director Johnnie To, sees a cop, a criminal and a surgeon cross paths in a tense race against the clock; in the waning days of WWII, a Hungarian man puts on a Nazi uniform to find his family in the moving Walking with the Enemy (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment).

New Doc

As politicians demonize our neighbors to the south and bloviate about building a wall, the powerful documentary All of Me (Strand Releasing Home Entertainment) puts a human face on those who risk their lives to cross the Mexican border in the hopes of improving conditions for themselves and their families. As migrants travel on a train known as The Beast, a group of women called the Patronas makes food and tosses it to the helpless each day as the train rushes by, bringing hope and love to circumstances that are utterly dire. It’s a gorgeous and inspirational look at people bringing their best selves to dark times.

Also available: The insect world is ready for its close-up in the eye-popping Microcosmos (Kino Lorber), now available on Blu-ray.

New Grindhouse

A hit at festivals, but barely released theatrically in the United States, the provocative British chiller The Girl with All the Gifts (Lionsgate) takes two narratives you never thought you wanted to see again – the “chosen one” YA heroine and the zombie apocalypse – and breathes fresh life into both. Young Sennia Nanua is the titular child, the first zombie who shows human tendencies and who might signal an end to the crisis. Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton and Paddy Considine lead a terrific ensemble in this smart, exciting genre film.

Also available: Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive Trilogy (Arrow/MVD) displays the director’s skill at both viscerally outrageous visuals and genuine dramatic impact; the walking tree is the monster in Japanese horror cult classic From Hell It Came (Warner Archive Collection); you’d best watch your step in Chupacabra Territory (Maltauro Entertainment), as four explorers learn the hard way in this found-footage freak-out.

Kenny Lin is the Sword Master (Well Go USA Entertainment) in this remake of the Hong Kong classic Death Duel from producer Tsui Hark; Clarence Williams III is your Cryptkeeper in the legendary horror anthology Tales from the Hood (Scream Factory); House: Two Stories (Arrow/MVD) brings the chills with tongue firmly in cheek as it takes us through a very haunted domicile; Ben Wheatley executive-produced Tank 432 (IFC Midnight/Scream Factory), in which barricaded soldiers and hostages must decide if they’re better off inside the wall or out in the post-apocalypse.

New Classic

Tampopo (The Criterion Collection) will make you hungry for ramen, to be sure, but there’s more on writer-director Juzo Itami’s mind in this brilliantly hilarious comedy. Partially a parody of spaghetti Westerns (it’s definitely got noodles on its mind) but also a loving examination of the human obsession with food, this hilariously episodic film follows a widow who is trained in the art of soup by a nomadic trucker and his comrades. Interspersed throughout are wild and bawdy sketches involving gourmet gangsters, eating lessons and much more. Delicious in every way possible, Tampopo ranks among the great international comedies, and after a long absence from American DVD, this new release looks great and overflows with tasty extras.

Also available: Once censored by authorities, Josef von Sternberg’s Anatahan (Kino Classics) tells the true story of U.S. sailors and Japanese locals in the final weeks of World War II; Rod Taylor and crew return from Mars to find a devastated Earth in the sci-fi staple World Without End (Warner Archive Collection); an early thriller from the great Claude Chabrol, Ophélia (Olive Films) stars Alida Valli in this Hamlet-inspired family mystery; Ladies of the Jury (Warner Archive Collection) features the great Edna May Oliver in a pre-code courtroom comedy-thriller that feels like a 1930s Legally Blonde.

One of the last silent serials ever produced, the newly-restored The Mysterious Airman (Sprocket Vault) debuts on DVD with seat-of-the-pants aviation footage (and low-budget thrills aplenty) still intact; Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig (Arrow Academy/MVD) stars the director’s muse Helmut Berger as the decadent “mad” king; Ride the High Country (Warner Archive Collection) put Sam Peckinpah on the map as one of the Western’s greatest auteurs; while you’re watching the new Hulu series, catch up with director Volker Scholondorff’s feature film of The Handmaid’s Tale (Shout Factory), starring Natasha Richardson and Robert Duvall.

One of French New Wave giant Jacques Demy’s American movies, the musical The Pied Piper (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) stars pop legend Donovan in the title role, opposite Jack Wild, John Hurt and Roy Kinnear; Nazi soldiers have 36 Hours (Warner Archive Collection) to convince American officer James Garner that the war has ended, so that he’ll divulge secret information; Elio Petri’s dark comedy Property Is No Longer a Theft (Arrow Academy/MVD) is both a tale of economic revenge and another of the director’s blistering social satires; there’s still no crying in baseball as A League of Their Own (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) celebrates its 25th anniversary with a new Blu-ray.

The Mephisto Waltz (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) is aiming at Rosemary’s Baby‘s brand of posh horror, but it generates some of its own genuine shocks; before The Waltons, there was Spencer’s Mountain (Warner Archive Collection), both based on Earl Hamner Jr.’s autobiographical novel; 1933’s The Vampire Bat (The Film Detective), starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas and Dwight Frye, comes to Blu-ray following a restoration by the UCLA Film & Television Archive; bunnies, jet engines and Sparkle Motion have never been the same since Donnie Darko (MVD), now available in a new 4K restoration.

Francis Coppola’s underrated Rumble Fish (The Criterion Collection) is a gorgeous piece of teen expressionism, and if you’ve never seen it, you’re missing out on a modern classic; the legendary Daughters of the Dust (Cohen Media Group), which inspired a good chunk of Beyoncé’s Lemonade, gets a full restoration for its 25th anniversary, along with a commentary featuring director Julie Dash.

Polish director Walerian Borowczyk’s only film made in his native land, Story of Sin (Arrow Academy/MVD) puts a surreal twist on the crime melodrama – and if you’re a Borowcyzk fan, Olive Films has released four new titles featuring his short films as well as features like Blanche, Theatre of Mr. & Mrs. Kabal and Goto, Isle of Love; Texas oilman James Garner sweeps Wall Street’s Lee Remick off her feet in the frothy comedy The Wheeler Dealers (Warner Archive Collection); the anthology film The World’s Most Beautiful Swindlers (Olive Films) features international filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Ugo Gregoretti and Hiromichi Horikawa.

New TV

Whether it’s because of rights issues or other factors, made-for-TV movies remain very much under-represented on DVD and Blu-ray, with several classics (like Frank Perry’s adaptation of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory) still unavailable. All the more reason to celebrate the release of a title like The Migrants (CBS/Kino Lorber), an Emmy-nominated film written by playwright Lanford Wilson, adapting the Tennessee Williams story. Cloris Leachman, Ron Howard, Sissy Spacek and Cindy Williams star in this saga of an impoverished Dust Bowl family eking out an existence as migrant farm workers during the Great Depression, and it’s a network prestige item that well deserves another look.

Also available: The Oscar-nominated Australian thriller moves its tale to southern California in Animal Kingdom: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment), featuring Ellen Barkin as the fearsome materfamilias of a crime organization; National Geographic explores our own world’s imperiled environment in Before the Flood and imagines the colonizing of a neighboring planet in Mars (both from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment).

Toby Jones, Andrea Riseborough and Kim Cattrall lead an exceptional cast in the BBC’s acclaimed treatment of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution (RLJ/Acorn); Veep: The Complete Fifth Season (HBO Home Entertainment) proves there’s still room for political satire in a world that would seem to have surpassed mockery; the story of the Asian superstar’s life continues in Legend of Bruce Lee: Volume Two (Well Go USA Entertainment); an Australian family finds a home in a remote area of New Zealand in the acclaimed drama 800 Words, Season 2, Part 1 (RLJ/Acorn).

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Business May 19, 2017

Episode 772: Small Change

Technology changes.

Giordano Poloni/Getty Images/Ikon Images

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Giordano Poloni/Getty Images/Ikon Images

Here is a thing we hear approximately every day: The world is changing faster than ever before. Robert Gordon doesn’t buy it.

He’s an economist who has spent decades studying technological change and economic growth in America. He argues that, contrary to popular belief, the world is not changing faster than ever before. In fact, it’s not even changing as fast as it was 100 years ago.

He recently made this argument in a book called The Rise and Fall of American Growth. In the New York Times, Paul Krugman called it a “magisterial combination of deep technological history, vivid portraits of daily life… and careful economic analysis.”

On today’s show, we talk to Gordon. His argument has profound implications for everything from how the next generation will live to whether robots really are about to take our jobs.

Music: “Burning In Me,” “Feels So Good” and “Nerd Disco.” Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts or PocketCast.

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Health May 19, 2017

Health Care Industry Drives Job Growth At The Expense Of Efficiency

As the debate over health care continues in Washington, one thing not in dispute is that health care industry employment has been going up steadily over the past decade. In Ohio, health care industry jobs now outnumber those in manufacturing. The jobs are good news to state and local economies, but some analysts also say it’s a reflection of the high costs and complexity of health care.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The number of health care jobs in the U.S. keeps growing. Take Ohio. Health care positions there now top those in manufacturing. Now, on one hand, those jobs are good for local economies, but on the other hand, analysts say that kind of job growth isn’t so great if it’s because of the inefficiencies of a complex health care system. NPR’s Don Gonyea reports.

DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Just east of downtown Cleveland sits a 160-acre campus of one of the most highly regarded hospitals in the world, the Cleveland Clinic. Toby Cosgrove, the CEO, points skyward to a massive piece of abstract art hanging from the ceiling in the lobby. It looks vaguely heart-shaped.

TOBY COSGROVE: Well, actually it’s a model of a iceberg.

GONYEA: OK.

COSGROVE: And the reason I like it and I think it’s appropriate for health care is there’s so much going on behind the scenes that you don’t see. For every doctor here, there are 18 employees that are supporting that individual.

GONYEA: Cosgrove talks about the shifting Ohio economy.

COSGROVE: Unfortunately we have lost a lot of the manufacturing, which were great jobs in the United States.

GONYEA: But he also notes the growing health care industry. The Cleveland Clinic alone has more than 50,000 employees nationally, most of them right in northeast Ohio.

COSGROVE: You see people like neurosurgeons on the one end of things.

GONYEA: And the bus drivers who shuttle people around the sprawling campus.

COSGROVE: So it’s a wide variety of employment.

GONYEA: And Cosgrove says there’s easily an equal number of spinoff jobs, everything from local restaurants to suppliers to housing. Now across town to the smaller public hospital known as the MetroHealth System – it has more than 7,000 employees, but that number is also growing. Derek Dodds has been a respiratory therapist there for 23 years.

DEREK DODDS: You know what? I think I was part of the influx into the health care system because I grew up in Youngstown.

GONYEA: Youngstown is known for its steel mills, nearly all of which are gone now.

DODDS: When I went to college, I was looking for something that would be – that I would be guaranteed to really get a job once I graduated, and the health care field is there.

GONYEA: This hospital’s finances have been helped by Medicaid expansion in Ohio, but President Trump and Republicans have proposed big cuts to Medicaid. Dodds says that worries him.

DODDS: Now it’s almost like the wild frontier again where you don’t know what’s going to be happening.

GONYEA: MetroHealth officials say the hospital is on solid financial ground these days. Obamacare has meant more people have insurance, but they’ve also found cost efficiencies. Many, many health care workers never set foot in a hospital or clinic. Meet 50-year-old Shanese Alexander.

SHANESE ALEXANDER: I go from home to home, taking care of patients.

GONYEA: She does the kind of job that’s been one of the fastest growing in recent years.

ALEXANDER: Different things like maybe a little light housekeeping, make them something to eat, making sure that they take their medicine, keep their doctor’s appointments and things like that.

GONYEA: She won’t say what she’s paid, but her union, the Service Employees International Union, is pushing to raise wages to $15 an hour. Alexander agrees that health care overall needs to be more efficient, but she hopes the work she does isn’t targeted for cuts.

ALEXANDER: That would mean a lot to people without service. Sometimes we’re the only people that they see.

GONYEA: Health care economists say the goal should be to continually find ways to make the industry, with its layers of administrative jobs, more cost effective. Katherine Baicker studies the health care economy at the Harvard School of Public Health. The jobs are great, she says, if…

KATHERINE BAICKER: If we have a lot of people employed in health care because we’re delivering a lot of health because people are living longer healthier lives, that’s a wonderful thing.

GONYEA: But she stresses it’s important to remember these jobs are funded by taxpayer dollars or insurance premiums.

BAICKER: We want people to have jobs, but we want those jobs to be producing a higher standard of living. If we have a lot of people employed in health care in a way that’s driving up health insurance premiums and the cost of services but isn’t producing health, then we’d be much better off if those people were employed somewhere else.

GONYEA: Compounding this is the reality that the population in places like Ohio is aging, which means more people are going to need more care. That would help justify the jobs, but the industry still has the challenge of delivering services more efficiently. Don Gonyea, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAURA GIBSON SONG, “HANDS IN POCKETS”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Sports May 19, 2017

Nashville Goes Nuts For Hockey And The Predators

A decade ago, the NHL’s experiment with hockey in Nashville, Tenn., was in trouble. Now “Smashville” fans are in love with the Predators, who are playing in their first Western Conference finals.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The biggest shock during this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs hasn’t come from a traditional hockey powerhouse. It’s been the Nashville Predators. Heading into last night’s game against the Anaheim Ducks, the Predators had won 10 consecutive playoff games at home. The Ducks managed to break their streak, winning 3-2, but a lot of credit for the Predators’ amazing run is going to the team’s fans and the electric atmosphere on the team’s home ice. Here’s Chas Sisk with member station WPLN.

CHAS SISK, BYLINE: Two hours before a playoff game against the Anaheim Ducks, and the party is already underway on the plaza outside Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

(SOUNDBITE OF BANGING, CHEERING)

SISK: This is Smashville, and Predators fans are kicking things off by taking a sledgehammer to a junk automobile, painted over with the Ducks logo and color scheme.

(SOUNDBITE OF BANGING, CHEERING)

SISK: Jay Mayfield is one of the people working out his aggression. He lives two hours away in Chattanooga and says he’s been a Preds fan since the team’s inception in the late 1990s.

JAY MAYFIELD: When I tell friends who are from up north that I’m a big hockey fan and I live in Tennessee, none of them really believe me or process that it’s true.

SISK: They have good reason. In Tennessee, winter ice is considered a crisis, and playing the game – well, let’s just say that’s not required.

Can you skate?

MAYFIELD: I can’t skate to save my life.

SISK: But this is hockey with Nashville flair, and Mayfield loves it, the fans spewing out of the country music bars just across the street, Grammy winners like Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood singing the national anthem, pro wrestlers leading the cheers.

MAYFIELD: The entire experience is very distinctly Tennessee. It’s not something you’re going to see, and it’s not something you’re really going to see in D.C. or Pittsburgh or Cleveland or anywhere else.

SISK: This spectacle is a major reason why the Predators sold out all 41 of their home games this season, which is a big deal. A decade ago, attendance here was so poor, the team stood on the verge of relocating, either to Canada or Kansas City. Now, some experts say the Preds are the best show in the NHL. Its fans are among the loudest. And at home, the team is practically unbeatable.

TERRY CRISP: They thoroughly believe that when they make that noise and that chant and what they do, it boosts them, and they’re dead on right.

SISK: Terry Crisp is a former NHL player and coach. He’s been a broadcaster for the Predators since their inaugural season in 1998. Back then, Crisp had to tutor fans on the rules of hockey. Now, he says, they’re as engaged as followers up north.

CRISP: But when you’re sitting on the bench and you just finished a shift or you’re just going to go on for a shift and they start that uproar and they start that noise coming, the hair in the back of your neck rises. You get goosebumps everywhere. And they definitely pick you up.

SISK: Like other Sun Belt teams, the Predators have worked to spread the game through youth hockey teams and building rinks. Team officials say they now have a generation of fans who grew up on the team. But the Preds’ real age is location. The team plays in the heart of Nashville’s honky-tonk district, a place where people have come for decades to cut loose. Danny Shaklan is the Predators’ VP of marketing.

DANNY SHAKLAN: The party doesn’t start when the puck drops. The party starts, like, three hours earlier.

SISK: For Game 3 against the Ducks, the Predators brought in players from the city’s pro football team, the Tennessee Titans, to get the crowd riled up. As fans watched on the video monitors, a lineman stripped his shirt and shotgunned a beer. The game itself was tight, with the score tied late in the third period. Then the Predators amped up the pressure. Play-by-play man Pete Weber with ESPN 102.5 The Game in Nashville made the call.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PETE WEBER: Fifty seconds left, and the puck is knocked down. Josi scores.

SISK: Another home victory in the books, for the Nashville Predators and their growing cadre of fans. For NPR News, I’m Chas Sisk in Nashville.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRONTIDE’S “SANS SOUCI”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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