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October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and the Towson University fall film series marks the occasion with Jim Sheridan's "My Left Foot." It tells the tumultuous story of Irish author Christy Brown, who managed to write best-selling books despite cerebral palsy that left him with control only of his left foot (he used his little toe to type). Based on Brown's autobiography of the same name (he died in 1981), it's a robust, stirring, bracingly unsentimental account of a person overcoming disability. As Brown struggles for self-fulfillment, his senses are sharpened and his faculties are made keener, suppler and more aggressive. He becomes a champion of artistic temperament and defiant selfhood.
Like nearly all of Sheridan's movies, "My Left Foot" is a zesty odyssey. Part of what makes the picture great is that it's never abstract or conventionally "inspirational." It doesn't commit the error of separating Brown's affliction from the rest of his brawling, exuberant existence or of setting him up as a homogenized role model.
Sheridan's method is to meld the concrete and the "mythic" - that's how he keeps opening up vistas within vistas. "Films resemble senchai," he wrote in 1989, "Irish mythic tales with happy endings." Portrayed with surging lustiness and humor by Daniel Day-Lewis, Brown is a 20th-century hero with a stature fit for epic fable. His hunger for art, poetry and love inspire him to transcend circumstance.
Director Sheridan places exactly the right stress on every incident in Brown's life story. By the time Sheridan brings his overriding theme into focus at the end - the isolation any sensitive human being feels when communication breaks down, whether in a city crowd or a cramped tenement - the articulation of that theme hits home with soul-warming satisfaction.
And by structuring the film in flashbacks, and framing it with Brown's appearance at a cerebral palsy benefit and his first date with the nurse who will become his wife, Sheridan is able to end with a romantic flourish. Brown takes a rose between his toes and offers it to his newfound love. It's a beautiful summary emblem of his passion. The red rose fleetingly suggests Cyrano's white plume - except that Brown woos his lady successfully.
If you go: The Towson fall film series unspools at 7:30 p.m. Mondays in Van Bokkelen Hall Auditorium, Towson University, 8000 York Road. Admission is free. Go to tow son.edu/emf.
' Christmas Carol' at the B&O: Some pundits have been dismissing Robert Zemeckis' forthcoming 3-D "motion-capture" version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," sight unseen, as an excuse for Walt Disney Studios to print money with a Christmas perennial. But I think we're overdue for a cinematic rediscovery of Dickens' classic about the miserly Scrooge rediscovering his bonds with his fellow man thanks to three spirits who visit him on Christmas Eve. So far, the only big-screen production to catch this one-of-a-kind ghost story's mingling of terror, comedy and conviviality was the British version from 1951, with Alastair Sim as Scrooge.
The Zemeckis of "Back to the Future" may have just the right temperament for it, and his cast includes Jim Carrey as Scrooge, Colin Firth as his nephew and Gary Oldman as Bob Cratchit. This weekend, Disney's "Christmas Carol Train Tour" stops at the B&O Railroad Museum (901 Pratt St.) offering preview clips, demonstrations of the film's techno-wizardry, interactive games set in Dickensian London and exhibits from the Charles Dickens Museum. Hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. today and Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.
Columbia Film Society: The Columbia Film Society kicks off its series of nine weekend screenings at the Smith Theater at Howard Community College with the funny, moving two-character study "Goodbye, Solo," about the relationship between a Senegalese cabbie and a grizzled white Southerner in Winston-Salem, N.C. Showtimes are 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and the schedule also includes such masterpieces as "Everlasting Moments" and "The Class." Season tickets are $35. Go to www.columbiafilmsoci ety.org.
Experiments at the Charles: Guest programmer Karen Yasinsky takes over the Charles Theatre's revival series next week with an adventurous program of experimental animation that promises to showcase "magicians of the single frame" in works ranging from Lewis Klahr's cut-out animation of motifs from Alban Berg's opera "Lulu" to Adam Beckett's creation of a madly increasing wurst population in "Sausage City." Also: Robert Breer's "69" ("A dream of Euclid," raved critic Donald Richie) and "Fuji" ("A magical color dream of a voyage," said pioneer programmer Amos Vogel), and James Geiser's "The Secret Story," a fairy tale based on deteriorated toys and dolls from the 1930s. There's no Saturday show for this program. The only showtimes are Monday at 7 p.m. and Thursday at 9 p.m. Go to www.thecharles.com.
Like nearly all of Sheridan's movies, "My Left Foot" is a zesty odyssey. Part of what makes the picture great is that it's never abstract or conventionally "inspirational." It doesn't commit the error of separating Brown's affliction from the rest of his brawling, exuberant existence or of setting him up as a homogenized role model.
Sheridan's method is to meld the concrete and the "mythic" - that's how he keeps opening up vistas within vistas. "Films resemble senchai," he wrote in 1989, "Irish mythic tales with happy endings." Portrayed with surging lustiness and humor by Daniel Day-Lewis, Brown is a 20th-century hero with a stature fit for epic fable. His hunger for art, poetry and love inspire him to transcend circumstance.
Director Sheridan places exactly the right stress on every incident in Brown's life story. By the time Sheridan brings his overriding theme into focus at the end - the isolation any sensitive human being feels when communication breaks down, whether in a city crowd or a cramped tenement - the articulation of that theme hits home with soul-warming satisfaction.
And by structuring the film in flashbacks, and framing it with Brown's appearance at a cerebral palsy benefit and his first date with the nurse who will become his wife, Sheridan is able to end with a romantic flourish. Brown takes a rose between his toes and offers it to his newfound love. It's a beautiful summary emblem of his passion. The red rose fleetingly suggests Cyrano's white plume - except that Brown woos his lady successfully.
If you go: The Towson fall film series unspools at 7:30 p.m. Mondays in Van Bokkelen Hall Auditorium, Towson University, 8000 York Road. Admission is free. Go to tow son.edu/emf.
' Christmas Carol' at the B&O: Some pundits have been dismissing Robert Zemeckis' forthcoming 3-D "motion-capture" version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," sight unseen, as an excuse for Walt Disney Studios to print money with a Christmas perennial. But I think we're overdue for a cinematic rediscovery of Dickens' classic about the miserly Scrooge rediscovering his bonds with his fellow man thanks to three spirits who visit him on Christmas Eve. So far, the only big-screen production to catch this one-of-a-kind ghost story's mingling of terror, comedy and conviviality was the British version from 1951, with Alastair Sim as Scrooge.
The Zemeckis of "Back to the Future" may have just the right temperament for it, and his cast includes Jim Carrey as Scrooge, Colin Firth as his nephew and Gary Oldman as Bob Cratchit. This weekend, Disney's "Christmas Carol Train Tour" stops at the B&O Railroad Museum (901 Pratt St.) offering preview clips, demonstrations of the film's techno-wizardry, interactive games set in Dickensian London and exhibits from the Charles Dickens Museum. Hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. today and Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.
Columbia Film Society: The Columbia Film Society kicks off its series of nine weekend screenings at the Smith Theater at Howard Community College with the funny, moving two-character study "Goodbye, Solo," about the relationship between a Senegalese cabbie and a grizzled white Southerner in Winston-Salem, N.C. Showtimes are 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and the schedule also includes such masterpieces as "Everlasting Moments" and "The Class." Season tickets are $35. Go to www.columbiafilmsoci ety.org.
Experiments at the Charles: Guest programmer Karen Yasinsky takes over the Charles Theatre's revival series next week with an adventurous program of experimental animation that promises to showcase "magicians of the single frame" in works ranging from Lewis Klahr's cut-out animation of motifs from Alban Berg's opera "Lulu" to Adam Beckett's creation of a madly increasing wurst population in "Sausage City." Also: Robert Breer's "69" ("A dream of Euclid," raved critic Donald Richie) and "Fuji" ("A magical color dream of a voyage," said pioneer programmer Amos Vogel), and James Geiser's "The Secret Story," a fairy tale based on deteriorated toys and dolls from the 1930s. There's no Saturday show for this program. The only showtimes are Monday at 7 p.m. and Thursday at 9 p.m. Go to www.thecharles.com.
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