MOVIE REVIEW: The Class


A couple weekends ago, the wife and her husband went on a date to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany to see Entre les murs (The Class) , a film nominated as best foreign film at the recent Oscars ceremony. It is in French, with subtitles.

Here’s the description from Rotten Tomatoes: “Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, master French director Laurent Cantet’s THE CLASS is an absorbing journey into a multicultural high school in Paris over the course of a school year. François Begaudeau–an actual teacher and the author upon whose work the film was based–is utterly convincing as François, an openminded teacher in charge of a classroom of youngsters from a wide variety of backgrounds.”

The movie IS utterly convincing, so much so that the style of the film makes one think it’s a documentary. Evidently, the Parisian inner-city school system experiences the same difficulties as a multicultural school in the United States. There’s the well-intended, optimistic and creative teacher; there’s a fairly large classroom of kids with sometime competing needs; there are the teaching colleagues who try to be supportive if they’re not burned out themselves; and there’s the administration, looking for a balance between being firm and fair.

It doesn’t have a big plot or much histrionics, rather like life itself. That it is a well-done film really is not the issue; 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, 8 of 10 starts on IMDB. The question: is it enjoyable? The movie is SO realistic that it felt a bit claustrophobic. Particularly for my wife, who is a teacher in an urban setting, it felt much too much like the truth. But we’re still thinking about the film.

I’d be curious to hear from anyone else who has seen this film, especially if you’re a teacher or have taught in the past: Kelly, Greg, SamauraiFrog, this means you.

ROG

#1- the Beatles. #2 – the Beatles…


On the Billboard charts of April 4, 1964, 45 years ago this week, a phenomenal thing took place. Not only was the #1 single by the Beatles – Can’t Buy Me Love, which would stay on the top of the charts for five weeks – but the whole top five was dominated by the Fab Four. The week before, the Beatles had 10 singles on the Top 100 charts, 12 the following week and 14 the week after, crushing Elvis Presley’s record of nine on December 19, 1956. and it was facilitated by this one fact: the Beatles were a bust when they were first released in the United States.

For instance, She Loves You was a reissue of a failed September 1963 release on Swan Records. From Me To You managed to get all the way up to #116 in 1963 on VeeJay. My Bonnie, a 1962 Decca release, originally failed to chart at all.

But when the Beatles, now on Capitol Records, hit #1 with I Want To Hold Your Hand the week of February 1, 1964, followed by their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, those records on those other labels began to chart as well. No label would have put out more than a couple songs by an artist at once – Can’t Buy Me Love ascended to the top as I Want To Hold Your Hand descended for Capitol, but the other companies wanted to take full advantage of Beatlemania.

I was always a little bothered by the Beatles’ #1 as a collection, for it fails to register the quality and quantity of Beatles hits in that first period. Please Please Me (likely) and Twist and Shout (almost definitely) were blocked from getting to #1 only by another Beatles song.
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MIT DEN BEATLES Whole Category on JEOPARDY!, Show #5644 – Thursday, March 5, 2009

$200 The Beatles honed their chops playing clubs in the Reeperbahn, a red-light district in this German port city
$400 One of 2 official Beatles German-language releases, “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand” was the lads’ take on this 1964 smash
$600 Astrid Kirchherr & Klaus Voormann are characters in this movie dramatization of the Beatles’ time in Germany
$800 To please their rabid German fans, the boys re-recorded this hit as “Sie Liebt Dich” in 1964
$1000 While making “Let It Be”, the Beatles recorded “Geh Raus”, a German-language spoof of this No. 1 hit
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The Beatles Complete on Ukulele.

Math Professor Figures Formula for Beatles Success
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JEOPARDY! Questions
Hamburg
I Want To Hold Your Hand [on Past Masters #1]
BackBeat [which no one on the show got; I saw the movie and own the soundtrack]
She Loves You [on Past Masters #1]
Get Back [which I’ve never heard! Anyone out there own this? Anyone even HEARD this?]

ROG

Comedy Today

As I’ve long admitted, I can’t tell a joke to save my life, though I can be funny when the situation generates it. April Fools’ Day just does not play to my strength. I do enjoy bad jokes, though. And none are worse than the daily meditations I get from David Pogue, the techie guy from the New York Times. I think I follow him on Twitter just so I can groan. Recent examples from his Twitter feed (Pogue):
The algebra teacher confiscated a kid’s rubber band, believing it to be a weapon of math disruption.
and this one
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
and this:
I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something for it.

From other sources, more terrible humor:

Dan was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. When he found out he was going to inherit a fortune when his sickly father died, he decided he needed a wife with which to share his fortune.

One evening at an investment meeting he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away.

I may look like just an ordinary man, he said to her, but in just a few years, my father will die, and I’ll inherit $65 million.

Impressed, the woman obtained his business card and three days later, she became his stepmother.
***
Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church’s morals, kept sticking her nose in to other people’s business. Several members did not approve of her extra curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.

She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town’s only bar one afternoon. She emphatically told George (and several others) that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing.

George, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away. He didn’t explain, defend, or deny.. He said nothing.

Later that evening, George quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred’s house, walked home…and left it there all night.
***
A woman had just returned to her home from an evening of church services, when she was startled by an intruder. She caught the man in the act of robbing her home of its valuables and yelled: ‘Stop! Acts 2:38!’ (Repent and be Baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven.)

The burglar stopped in his tracks. The woman calmly called the police and explained what she had done.

As the officer cuffed the man to take him in, he asked the burglar: ‘Why did you just stand there? All the old lady did was yell a scripture to you.’
‘Scripture?’ replied the burglar. ‘She said she had an Ax and Two 38s!’

Ncevy Sbbyf Qnl
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And speaking of fool, I go into the NCAA men’s basketball pool generally having seen no more than two games prior to March Madness – this year it was 4 of the 6 overtime periods Syracuse played vs. Connecticut; that’s it.
Yet I always have a chance going into the final weekend. As it turns out, NO ONE in my pool picked the ultimate champion. They all went for Louisville or Pitt or Syracuse or, like I did, Memphis.
My other Final Four picks (Syracuse, Louisville, Memphis) dried up, but Villanova, who essentially played at home the first two rounds, then beat Duke and Pitt to be my one pick in the Final Four; Final Two, actually.
So the Saturday games will tell the tale. I have a one-point lead. If ‘Nova wins, then I win. If UNC beats ‘Nova, then I end up in the middle of the pack, but if UNC and Connecticut both win, I’ll be hanging out in the lower regions of the pool. Go Wildcats!

ROG

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