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: #7 Michael

Michael with John Travolta, Andie MacDowell and William Hurt.  Rated PG and released in 1996.  A decent flick about judging others.  We especially noted the following Hollywoodized tidbits: angels smell good, you can never eat too much sugar, and a cute pie ditty.  I also thought it was an applicable film to watch since it also featured Jean Stapleton who recently passed away in May of 2013 at the age of 90.

2013 Summer Movies: #5 The Errand of Angels

Rated PG for dramatic situations, The Errand of Angels stars Erin Chambers and Rachel Emmers in this 2008 work about sister missionaries.  While the film talks some about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, it's primarily about relationships and how the main character learns to build better relationships throughout her mission.  If we start expecting more from others, we need to look first at how much we are contributing to the situation both positively and negatively and focus more on the positive.  Mica and Hedgehog had seen this before so just Daisy and I watched it this time 'round and we both liked it.

2013 Summer Movies: #1 Stand and Deliver

Stand and Deliver rated PG made in 1988 starring Edward James Olmos, Andy Garcia, and Lou Diamond Phillips.  Educational movie about Calculus and the AP test.  Daisy didn't think that she would like it but she did. Hedgehog said it was good and the teacher was funny.  Mica also liked this film