Winter at the Gimp Compound

The holidays and the new year went well for me, though my computer needed some repairs that kept me from writing here for about a month. Hap...

Praying with Lior

I've heard good things about a new documentary film, Praying with Lior , only opening now in a few cities and playing primarily at Jewis...

Update: Casting director fired from "Shelter" flick

According to the AP : A casting director for the horror thriller "Shelter" has been fired after West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin...

Hollywood casting call for that "inbred" look

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (bolded italics are mine): The announcement -- which was sent out in a news release and posted on the ca...

The Speed of Dark

Back in June of 2005, anticipating the 15th anniversary of the ADA, I wrote about "The Excuse of Architecture" and cited a New Mo...

The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory

Disability is all about adaptation. That's not news to me. As performance artist Neil Marcus has said, "Disability is an art—an ing...

Movie review: Living in Oblivion

Well, a mini-review. Because kactus is right , Peter Dinklage's rant toward the end of this film is both hilarious and great righteous a...

Movie review: Notes on a Scandal

Along with Testament , Penny mentioned in comments of an earlier review of mine that Notes on a Scandal , the 2006 psychological drama that...

Movie review: Testament

In the comments to my review of the movie Tiptoes , Penny mentions a 1983 movie called Testament for it's portrayal of a child with Do...

Movie review: Tiptoes

Imagine the movie North Country cast with Brad Pitt playing Charlize Theron's role of the woman suffering sexual harassment at work. No...

The Case against Perfection

A new book by Michael J. Sandel, called The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering , explores the moral issues cr...

Movie review: Emmanuel's Gift

I didn't expect to like this 2005 documentary , the story of Ghanaian Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, born without a tibia in his right leg and o...

The Sparrow

I've been reading The Sparrow , by Mary Doria Russell . It's a captivating novel about a Jesuit-funded mission to contact newly-disc...

Blind Rage and the legacy of Helen Keller

It wasn't until I began reading Georgina Kleege's Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Heller that I realized my own ambivalence to the dea...

Teaching "The Elephant Man"

Conspicuously missing from yesterday's slumgullion: Stephen at Planet of the Blind briefly reviews the movie by David Lynch and how it ...

Books for the new year

Happy New Year everyone! Like every book lover I know, I've got a towering (and growing) pile of books waiting to be read. I thought I...

The real Diane Arbus and "Fur"

The subtitle for the new biopic "Fur," starring Nicole Kidman, is "An imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus." Negative rev...

Michael J. Fox and his political ads

It's been the topic of discussion everywhere this past week. Michael J. Fox's ads for three Democratic candidates aired supporting ...