2013 Summer Movies: #17 Gifted Hands the Ben Carson story

Cuba Gooding Jr. stars as Ben Carson, the world renowned neurosurgeon, in this biopic from 2009. The film is not rated but would probably warrant a PG for for violence and some language.  Ben Carson worked on controlling his temper and with his religious convictions overcame his outbursts.  With the support of his mother he overcame his beliefs that he was dumb.  He went on to Johns Hopkins and became one the most famous brain surgeons of our time.  

In the film his mother eventually realized the hold and constraints that the  tv viewing had on her boys.  She limited the tv that he and his brother could watch to two tv programs a week.  When they asked what they would do with the rest of their time she told them she wanted them to read two books a week and  to give a report on each book.  

Carson went on to study music and art in addition to reading numerous books. I though this was an excellent example of how to balance reading and tv to some extent.  One of the shows they watched both before and after the tv restrictions was a quiz game show.  At first they didn't know the answers back when they watched tv everyday.  They started handily answering the questions during the nights that they did watch the quiz show after the switch to more reading time.   Thank you to one of my aunts for suggesting this wonderful movie!  

2013 Summer Movies: #16 Something The Lord Made

Mos Def and Alan Rickman star in this true life story of  Dr. Thomas and Dr. Blalock who started cardiac surgery in 1944 on a baby suffering from blue baby syndrome.  Through their research, they introduced cardiac surgery to the world (over a million heart surgeries are now performed each year in the US alone) and they also saved countless lives through their research and work on traumatic shock.  Although Vivian Thomas performed almost all the lab work on the shunt process in hundreds of operations on dogs, he was only able to coach Dr. Blalock during the actual human surgeries since he was a lab technician and was not awarded an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins until 1976.

The film was made in 2004 and is not rated but would probably get a PG rating for surgical work on both dogs and humans and some language. 

 This was a wonderful film that not only tells Blalock and Thomas's story; it touches briefly on the story of Vivian Thomas's brother, Harold Thomas, and his fight for equal pay for school teachers.  His attorney?  Thurgood Marshall.  They won.  For more information there's another blog post at: http://gdhslawblogwill.wordpress.com/tag/thurgood-marshall/

2013 Summer Movies: #15 Iron Jawed Angels

Iron Jawed Angels came out in 2004 and follows the story of Alice Paul and the NWP (National Woman's Party) after they broke off from the NAWSA (National American Women's Suffrage Association).  Paul's group picketed President Wilson and endured attacks from the public and politicians in their fight to get a Federal amendment giving women the right to vote.  They were arrested on false charges and send to Occoquan Workhouse where they were brutally treated.   The abuses they suffered in the workhouse led to newspaper stories about the abuses and the  suffrage cause.  The press helped the women's cause by revealing the abuses and garnering public sympathy and support for the amendment.

It's not the children's storybook version of the 19th Amendment but it's a powerful story of how hard and how long women from all classes worked for this right to have representation in American government.  The movie is not rated (NR) since it was made for tv but we estimate it would have received a PG-13 for the prison brutality and forced feeding scenes.  Ironically, we started watching this film (it took a few days to finish it) on the 93rd anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment back on August 18, 1920. 

Utah gave women the right to vote in 1870.