Women's History Month: Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke as Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller

Our coverage of Women's History Month continues with abstew on "The Miracle Worker" (1962)

Born: Helen Adams Keller was actually born with the ability to see and hear on the day of her birth in June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. It wasn't until she contracted an illness, most likely scarlet fever or meningitis, at the age of 19 months that she became both blind and deaf.

Johanna Mansfield Sullivan (she would always be known as Anne or Annie) was born April 14, 1866 in Massachusetts. After the death of her mother in 1874, Annie and her brother Jimmy were sent to an almshouse where she lived for 7 years. It was there, in 1880 (the year Helen was born) that she became blind after an untreated bacterial eye infection called trachoma.

Oscar winning performances after the jump...

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"There's a name for you ladies..."

... but it isn't used in high society outside of a kennel."

Great Moments in Screen Bitchery #40, Joan Crawford in The Women

(I thought it high time to revive this series)

Review: Divergent

This review originally appeared in my column at Towleroad

Erudite. Dauntless. Abnegation. Amity. Candor. Doesn't have quite the same ring as "Charisma. Uniqueness. Nerve and Talent" does it? But it's with the awkwardly titled five factions of DIVERGENT's world that we begin. In some future Utopia young citizens must choose their faction (a fancy word for tribe) on their 18th birthday after taking an aptitude test that reveals where they truly belong. They have the option of any faction but most, we are led to believe, choose either the tribe they grew up in or the tribe of their aptitude and these are often the same. Nature vs. Nurture and all that, you know.

Our heroine Tris (Shailene Woodley) lives with her parents in Abnegation, the "selfless" tribe that runs the government -- your first clue that this is total science fiction! They also feed the homeless (aka the "factionless"), dress like monochromatic fashion-forward Amish and eschew mirrors. Beatrice is played by Shailene Woodley and her parents are Ashley Judd and Tony Goldwyn (Scandal) - our first clue that this is actually a Dystopia*; how long could any of them survive without mirrors?

Tris is ready to jump and we continue after ours...

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"Crowd Control"

Pumpkin: A lot of people come into restaurants

Honeybunny: A lot of wallets.  

Pumpkin: Pretty smart, huh?

Honeybunny: Pretty smart.

I'm ready let's do it. Right now. Right here. Come on.

Pumpkin: All right, same as last time, remember. You're crowd control. I handle employees. 

Box Office: Divergent's Not Dead

Amir here, with the weekend's box office report. As expected by every single person not living under a rock, Divergent took the top spot, affirming the unfortunate bankability of YA adaptations. Critically and commercially, it fell somewhere much closer to Twilight than The Hunger Games, but the target demographic seems content and that's all that matters to the studio. I'm sure a sequel is already underway, though my level of interest in finding out whether the source novel actually has sequels or not also falls somewhere much closer to my interest in Twilight than The Hunger Games, no. Sorry. I’ll pass on all of them.

BOX OFFICE
01 DIVERGENT $56 *new* 
02 MUPPETS MOST WANTED $16.5 *new*
03 MR PEABODY & SHERMAN $11.7 (cum. $81) this franchise's history
04 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE $8.6 (cum. $93.7)
05 GOD'S NOT DEAD $8.5 *new*
06 NEED FOR SPEED  $7.7 (cum. $34)
07 GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL $6.7 (cum. $12.9) 
08 NON-STOP  $6.3 (cum. $78.6) Amir's Review 
09 THE LEGO MOVIE $4.1 (cum. $243.3) Nathaniel's Review
10 TYLER PERRY'S SINGLE MOM'S CLUB $3.1 (cum. $12.9)

Muppets Most Wanted turned out to be an ironic title for a film with such a tepid reaction. It’s a shame considering what a real delight the last Muppets outing was and that the reviews for this aren’t half bad. This one will probably just make a profit because I suspect it will have the legs to stick around for a few weeks without massive drops. You know what will definitely make a profit though and probably already has? God’s Not Dead ! Like you, dear reader, I had not heard of it until this weekend and, like you, I have not rushed to see it. The box office numbers have been astounding though, with $8m already in the bank in three days for the indie on less than 1000 screens, so someone somewhere must have heard about it. Agree or disagree with the film’s beliefs/mythology, we have to concede that no film since 12 Years a Slave had managed to so succinctly describe its entire plotline in the title.

The critical darling of the hour, The Grand Budapest Hotel, earned $6.7m, a weekend gross that Moonrise Kingdom never achieved throughout its run. It’s still a very real possibility that it will end up as Wes Anderson’s most successful hit. On the limited release side, six new films opened on Friday, the buzziest of which are Jodorowsky’s Dune and It Felt Like Love. If you are one of the extremely lucky people who live near those theatres, you might want to keep an eye out.

My weekend consisted of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Arabian Nights, Majid Majidi’s Baduk and George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story, and I’m happy to report I have nothing to complain about with that trio.

What did you watch this weekend?