jeffs What We Watched in 2024: January 8 - Jean selected Cinco días sin Nora/Nora's Will (2008, Mexico), available on Kanopy, Netflix, and TubiTV. January 22 - Dahlia selected A Man Called Ove/En man som heter Ove (2012, Sweden), available on Crackle, TubiTV, and Kanopy. February 5 - Miriam selected 12 Angry Men (1957, United States), available on TubiTV and Kanopy. February 19 - Sue selected Flashdance (1983, United States). March 11 - Mark selected Carousel (1956, United States), available for rental at Amazon ($4.29 or $3.79), YouTube ($3.99), AppleTV ($3.99), and Vudu ($3.99). March 25 - Judith selected Cabaret (1972, United States), available for rental at Amazon ($4.19 or $3.79), YouTube, AppleTV, and Vudu ($3.99). 50th Anniversary article. 8 Academy Awards! April 8 - No class due to TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE!!!!!!! Visible in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York... April 15 - Alice selected My Fair Lady (1964, United States). April 29 - Linda selected the current Oscar nominee winner Anatomie d'une Chute / Anatomy of a Fall (France, 2023), available to Hulu subscribers, and for rental at Amazon ($5.99 $3.99), YouTube ($6.99 $3.20), AppleTV ($5.99), and Vudu ($5.99 $3.99). "Sandra, her husband Samuel, and their son Daniel live a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps. When Samuel is found dead, the police question if he was murdered or committed suicide and Sandra becomes the main suspect. What follows is an investigation into the circumstances of Samuel's death and an unsettling journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel's conflicted relationship." May 13 - Group consensus selected Doubt (2008, United States), featuring Meryl Streep. May 27 - The musical Gigi (1958, United States) closed out our themed series we called "Six Months of Classic Musicals and Legal Dramas". June 10 - Eddie the Eagle (2016, UK). From Peggy. Inspiring tale based on a true story. Available to Max subscribers or an AppleTV rental. Lovely and supremely interesting article about 'where is he now': "The Eagle lives quietly in the village of Woodchester in a modest, debris-filled home with his wife, Samantha, and their daughters Ottilie and Honey." Also "The Monster Raving Loony Party named Edwards its Minister for Butter Mountains. ... His lone initiative: Exempt ski jumpers from paying taxes." Also, he topped the charts in Finland with his hit pop single "Mun Nimeni On Eetu", toured Finland as a rock star and performed before a screaming crowd of 70,000 people (which is the entire population of Finland), in Helsinki. Eddie (jumper turned Finnish singer) is immensely popular in Matti Nykänen's homeland, Nykänen being the greatest ski jumper of all time who is the only person in history to win all five major jumping medals. Like Eddie, after his jumping career, Nykänen also became a Finnish pop singer. Now isn't that something. Fortunately - unlike Nykänen - Eddie was not sentenced to Finnish prison on two separate occasions for stabbing his wife. Bonus: The Actual Olympic Footage. The film's events about British Olympic officials plotting against Eddie were fabricated. However, because of Eddie's popularity in 1988, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) changed the rules after this Olympics so that an Eddie could never enter again. Now you have to be in the top 30% or top 50 globally (which ever is less) to take part in the Olympics at all. This locks out smaller and less funded countries teams from the "competition" completely. In short, it's rigged and as fake as TV wrestling. The post-Eddie Olympics is not about amateurs, it is about money. The film ignored the reality of what went down with the IOC and instead curiously defamed the British Olympic Committee. Eddie's greatest legacy is changing the "Olympics", through what is widely known as the "Eddie the Eagle Rule", to make sure it would never ever again allow "someone like him" to compete and break records for his country. Since 1988 we have never again had an event in the spirit of the original Greek Olympics or its modern reboot. What is now called Olympics is defamatory to the name of this event and is simply a shameful corporate debacle. The modern post-Eddie "Olympics" and the IOC are shameful frauds. June 24 - The Great Dictator (1940). Chaplin's deeply personal and heartfelt film where he expresses his personal, and very serious viewpoint, which was correct. There was a bad guy that stole Chaplin's signature look, which would be distressing to anyone. At the time, 1940, before the US entered the War, there was some controversy. https://www.kanopy.com/en/video/127225 July 8 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, France). A non-American musical. Different from old time American musicals. https://www.kanopy.com/en/video/154447 July 22 29 - The Monk and the Gun (2023, Bhutan). From Pawo Choyning Dorji, the creator of Yak in the Classroom, and a student of pioneering Buddhist lama and renowned filmmaker Khyentse Norbu: The chaos of democracy unfolds as the great buddhist King who created the National Happiness Index has abdicated in favor of self-rule (true story here). A greatly respected ascetic lama, distraught over the news, needs some guns to "make things right again". A trusting monk will get him those guns, in a country where guns almost don't exist. What on earth will happen?? https://www.kanopy.com/en/video/14328512 Trivia: The gun trader is played by a teacher/writer/artist/composer affiliated with lama Khyentse Norbu's Buddhist schools. August 12 (No study on Tisha B'Av) 19 26 September 9 - The Holdovers (2023, United States) - Paul, a classics teacher at a exclusive prep school, is chosen to stay on campus during the Christmas break of 1970 to look after the few students with no home to go to for the holidays. He befriends Angus, an intelligent troublemaker, and Mary the cafeteria manager whose son was recently killed in the Vietnam War.