Another Harvest Moon

I was alerted to this film in the comments section of a recent post. 

And I just have to say, it's about freakin' time someone made a movie about life in a retirement home/assisted-living facility. 

Also, it looks like the movie deals with quality-of-life issues, withholding treatment, and the right to die. I'm very curious to see it, and I hope others go to the movie and have lots of conversation afterwards. 

Never trust a corpse

I meant to catch this movie at the Seattle International Film Festival, but just didn't get around to it. So I'm excited to see this review at NPR.org; it gives me hope that wider release is on the way, and I might get a second chance.

I Sell the Dead recounts the exploits of two grave robbers as one of them is about to face the guillotine for his crimes. The horror film is supposed to be more comedy than gore, which is why I'm interested ... not to say that it isn't ghoulish and frightening. 

During SIFF, it played at a midnight showing, and from what I can glean, that pretty much characterizes the type of movie this is: fun, startling, a little gross, not too serious, dealing with the undead. What more could you want in the witching hour? 

It is directed and written by Glenn McQuaid and stars Dominic Monaghan and Larry Fessenden.   

Here's the trailer. 

Palliative Care Grand Rounds, Volume 1, Issue 3

Welcome to volume one, issue 3 of Palliative Care Grand Rounds!

Here you will find an overview of what's been happening in the cyberworld regarding palliative care, death, dying, end-of-life care, and all sorts of related topics for the past month. 

Entries in this series are rotating throughout palliative-care-oriented blogs and are hosted on the first Wednesday of each month. Next month's series will be hosted by Thaddeus Pope at Medical Futility on May 6th. 

There is a lot here, so if you want to read a bit at a time and come back later to read some more, that might be a good way to approach it. I do realize it looks overwhelming :)

That said, let's jump right in ... 

This month, a study was released in JAMA telling us that terminal cancer patients who are self-defined as religious are nearly three times as likely to seek life-sustaining measures near the end, and are also less likely to prepare for death—in terms of advance directives, living wills, healthcare advocates.

Also this month, Washington's Initiative 1000 went into law, legalizing physician assisted suicide. One stipulation of the law is that hospitals and individual practitioners can choose to opt out of the legislation. The has the potential to cause massive confusion. As a Washington-based nurse practitioner, risaden of Risa's Pieces, has an excellent post on his thoughts on this law, what he has encountered related to it, and how it compares to Oregon's law.  

Taking a harder look at the risks of skiing without a helmet, and the signs of serious head trauma in the wake of Natasha Richardson's death—a sad reminder that death by falling is the third most common cause of accidental death. 

60-Second Psych in Scientific American takes a look at whether the suicide of Nicholas Hughes, the son of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, was due to hereditary causes. Children of mother's who kill themselves are more likely to commit suicide ... but is that correlation or genetics?

If the Rapture occurred, what would happen to your bank account? That's right, the Christian Rapture. Well, Mark Head thinks that in the event of the Rapture, in the midst of God's eternal glory, you will still be worrying about what is happening to your financials down on earth, So, for a $40 fee, he has a service that sets up an email that can be sent to your relatives with your bank account information. (And you can totally trust Mr. Head with your financial information.) "Christians on call" for the site log on to it to keep it going. If no one logs on for three days, it is assumed Rapture has taken place, and the emails are sent out. I guess you'd want to pick your most heathen-y relatives, just to ensure they're left behind to receive the email. How do you start that conversation?

This piece is a real doozy. How you go from normal life and a simple spinout in snowy conditions to freezing to death, or nearly freezing to death. And what it's like to freeze to death. Fascinating. Well-written. From Outside magazine online. 

A story about taking care of Sean, a former Fortune 500 company worker with early onset Alzheimer's, from the blog Confessions of a Young Looking Social Worker. 

A geropsychiatrist writes about two old goats—one figurative and one literal—both using the same meds to good purpose. Funny!

A touching piece that comes very close to my interests. A medical librarian writes about her mother-in-law's good death from cancer—thanks largely to the help of good hospice care—and the bittersweet satisfaction that brought the family. 

The blog Palliative Care Success discusses a NEJM article that shows high-spending regions of the country are more likely to recommend hospitalization for an 85-year-old patient with an exacerbation of end-stage congestive heart failure. They were also three times as likely to admit this patient to intensive care, and 30% less likely to discuss palliative care with the patient and family. The post suggests Advanced Palliative Care Organizations (APCOs) can help reduce the number of people dying in hospitals and reduce the number of days patients spend at the hospital near the end, but APCOs are limited in how many physicians and other professionals they are drawing. 

The relationship between palliative care and the church, the spiritual role of palliative care ... but also the palliative care needed by a dying church (in this particular community) are all addressed in this beautiful blog entry written by a former pastor and Tampa-based hospice worker. 

Losing a laptop becomes an opportunity to explore advance directives as a metaphor for being prepared for the death of technology with backup and storage. 

Fran Johns, one of my favorite bloggers, has a beautiful piece on the therapeutic and restorative qualities of pulling Oxalis. Fran is part of the slow-blogging movement and does not update often, but when she does, it is always something amazing. Be sure to bookmark her site. 

At The Mom and Me Journals dot Net, Gail Rae writes about donating some of her mother's items to a garage sale. The need to de-clutter leads her to rid the place of her deceased mother's items as if they are just things, but one special piece, a tiara, needs an important home. 

Dethmama finds welcome relief from her work as a hospice nurse in the form of a new puppy named Olive. She has also posted a long-awaited sequel to a great story, Hospice Hitwoman and the C.Y.A., about a family who is anxious to see their loved on pass away, before the right time even. 

At the Pallimed blog, Dr. Drew Rosielle discusses a study that shows most people do not understand the actual details of resuscitation, and many would choose to not have chest compressions, shocks IVs through the groin, even though those are sometimes regular parts of resuscitation. Dr. Rosielle also has an excellent post on JAMA's series on palliative care of latinos. 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Seth Grahame-Smith has reworked Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to include zombie battles. You can find a fantastic (in every sense of the word) excerpt here. 

If you want some death at the movies, check out Sunshine Cleaning, an irreverent and touching comedy about two sisters who open an industrial cleaning business—specifically cleaning up after dead people. The film stars Emily Blunt, Amy Adams, and Alan Arkin. 

Is it ethical for a wife to use a deceased spouse's sperm for artificial insemination? The Health Monitor at Radiography Schools takes up this issue and contrasts it with other sperm-donor controversies of late.

Is there such a thing as a style for your illness? Dana Jennings writes about getting a buzz cut to develop a tough, "Prison Break"-esque style for his prostate cancer treatent. For him, the haircut is a "visible bulwark against the tide of emasculating side effects caused by the treatment of prostate cancer."

Thanks to all who sent in suggestions! I'm sure there is even more out there I couldn't get to. And if you're interested, here's where you can find issues 1 and 2. 

Solace

Much of our communication is nonverbal.

I'm not going to throw out any percents here ... but I don't think anyone would argue that a lot of times, the way we get a message from Point A to Point B has nothing to do with language.

This film, which was forwarded to me by filmmaker Bill Kersey, is a poignant example of just how powerful silence can be.

The film's official description: " The story of a man, his grief and his guitar is told through music and a lyrical montage of still images."

Both sweet and moving, it's only three minutes long, and definitely worth your time.

Cherry Blossoms

I was looking through my archives, and I don't think I ever posted about this film. 

So ... I'm a bit of a sentimental sap, but I cry watching this trailer. 

It's playing in Seattle for just a week, and I'm going to be out of town for six of those days. I'm hoping I can figure out how to get there that last day. 

I love the conflicting views of what makes a satisfying life—the hedonistic husband who is happy with his daily pleasure of having a loving relationship with his wife versus the epicurean wife who wants to have the big, grand adventure of seeing Mt. Fuji. The music. The acting. You expect the husband to be the one to go, and then it's the wife. That moment when he's on the bed, and he has laid her clothes out next to him. And then he packs up her clothes so he can take "her" to Mt. Fuji with him finally. 

Just beautiful ...

Must Read After My Death

After his grandmother's death, Filmmaker Morgan Dews discovered a mass of audio recordings, home movies, photographs, and written journals detailing the turbulent lives of his grandmother's family in the 1960s. Using these materials, Dews has created a movie that the film's site says "affords fly-on-the-wall access to one family's struggles amid an America on the verge of dramatic transformation."

Thanks to Christian Sinclair for the link. (You're practically filling my blog this week!)

Most unusual are dictaphone recordings left by Dews' grandparents in which they offer shockingly honest comments about the state of their marriage and family. You can see some of that in the YouTube clip.





Also, you don't have to wait for this film to hit theaters or come to rental. If you're interested in Must Read After My Death, simply go to the film's website, and you can purchase a copy for play on your computer for only $2.99. Pretty neat.

I plan to watch it, although I haven't gotten around to it yet. And fair warning, I'm notoriously bad at actually watching movies that I plan to watch.

Measuring Your Own Grave

In the December 22nd issue of The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl writes about a MOMA retrospective of Marlene Dumas, a Dutch painter born in South Africa.

The exhibit is titled "Measuring Your Own Grave" and includes many paintings that deal with subject matter not traditionally glorified by art, including death. Her works have an interesting play of lifelessness and life—with the palette of mostly blacks, whites, grays, and only subtle punches of fleshy peaches and blues.

I share this one, called "The Kiss," which depicts a dead body, face down. It is in part a tribute to the Hitchcock's iconic image of Janet Leigh, dead in the shower in Psycho. As a Hitchcock fan, I was immediately drawn to this one.

A partial answer to the question of why such morbid subject matter: "Dumas matters as one of a number of now middle-age painters who dealt with the apparent dead end of painting after modernism ... when you can do whatever you like, why do anything?" In this artistic context, it's not too difficult to see death calling out to an painter as one of the few moments that still holds meaning, or if not meaning, at least interest.

Heath Ledger's Golden Globe

You all know by now that last night, Heath Ledger won the Golden Globe for best supporting actor in a motion picture.

I haven't seen all of the performances nominated, but I'm a big fan of Ledger's work in The Dark Knight.

Have you seen the movie? Did he deserve to win? How much of the win is based on the fact that he died before the movie came out?

Here's video of the moment of the win.



I think the clip of "his work" was pretty cheesy, and if it was meant to be a tribute, it was a pretty half-hearted one. They should have just let it sit as a standard win and let the moment be what it was. It took away from the emotion of the standing ovation for me. But I am glad that he won the award.

Oh no, Marley!

Sorry for the spoiler ... but I'm not sure it's actually a spoiler. (What dog movie/book doesn't start with a puppy and end with a death?) But it's not often that I get the chance to post something both lighthearted and on topic.

I can't remember where I found this photo, but it's been cycling around the Internet. Someone just couldn't resist scrawling out the poor doggie's fate.

Twilight Star Draws Crowds at Hot Topic Stores Across America

Hot Topic, the teenage, faux goth store, has been running a series of events across the nation with the stars of the Twilight movie. Some of the appearances include just supporting cast from the film; others feature Robert Pattinson, who plays the lead, Edward Cullen.

Most of the events featuring Pattinson have gotten out of control and quickly escalated to the point at which they became safety concerns and either had to be canceled or had to have their rules about lines/when people could begin waiting, etc., changed for the benefit of everyone there. Clearly, it's a phenomenon bigger than anything mall-chain store Hot Topic is equipped to handle.

Now, anyone who ever was a teenage girl or who has ever lived with a teenage girl knows that nothing can match the frenzy of a young woman in freakout mode over some obsession—especially if her budding hormones are involved.

But I just find this particular freekout so interesting: The movie hasn't even come out yet. This actor has done very little of note for American audiences. He played Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter films, a dashing but small role. He's handsome ... but so are many young men in Hollywood. And he has received a lot of media coverage lately, but at least from what I've seen, most of it has been visual, and I've seen very few interviews with him speaking more than a few words at a time.

It seems to be based on media hype and the fact that he is the human personification of this literary character that so many young women have fallen in love with.

So what is it about this character? In many ways he is written as the perfect boy. He is supposed to be gorgeous to a fault—beautiful to draw in human prey, since he is a vampire after all. At one point in the first novel, he gets irritated at his love Bella for saying that she feels more for him than he does for her. Once he meets the girl, his life quickly becomes all about protecting and loving her.

But I also wonder, is there some allure in Edward being a dangerous vampire? Does it make life seem more important and virile that he reminds all of these teenage girls of their potential for mortality?

Whatever it is, I am starting to feel sorry for young Mr. Pattinson and the road he seems destined to travel as this object of strange, fixated obsession by people who know nothing about him.

November Poll: Can Vampires Be Highbrow?

In honor of the official Twilight freakout that is about to descend upon America, I ask a question about the "undead": vampires.

It is possible to have a highbrow work of art based on vampires? I've never read Bram Stoker's Dracula, so maybe that's the one ... but it just seems like there's something about the monster meets eroticism meets hunting human beings that lends itself to being a little tacky.

I've been struggling all week to come up with a poll question related to vampires that wasn't totally lowbrow, and finally, I decided to give up and ask you all if it's even a topic that reaches beyond the lowbrow. Again, I'm not concluding; I'm not voting; I'm just asking.

Okay, so if you're a big fan of vampire stories, don't hate me for asking this question.

I've read one of the Anne Rice books. I've read the first Twilight novel. I've seen the movie version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. And they strike me as definitely genre fiction, made more to appeal to a certain class of readers/viewers than simply to be great works on their own merit.

And I'm not against monster stories. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of my favorite books of all time. It's beautifully written—the Gothic style, the grand questions about whether man "should" just because he "can."

So sound off. Tell me I'm crazy and wrong and just haven't read/seen the right thing.

A Necessary Death

The link for this video came from my friend Amelia.



It's a movie that poses as a documentary about suicide. Thankfully, not an actual documentary.

The filmmaker seeks to follow a person from the initial instinct of wanting to commit suicide to the day that they commit the act.

It's an interesting premise because, being a piece of fiction that pretends at nonfiction, it lets us explore the ethical issues that would be involved with such a documentary—why wouldn't the filmmaker stop the suicide? should suicide be entertainment? should the filmmaker try to help the suffering person?—without anyone actually being ethically complicit in the act.

And clearly from this YouTube clip, we can see they're advertising it as though it is a documentary. So, the film's producers want the confusion to exist.

I still have concerns that they're turning suicide into entertainment. Meta though the film may be, the act of suicide and the conversation around it become the main narrative thrust that push this movie forward. But it hasn't screened in Seattle yet, and I don't want to judge too harshly something I haven't seen. So, I'll keep an open mind until I've had a chance to view it.

Here's a link to the film's website.

ghosts have unfinished business

Why is it, that no matter whether the depiction is serious or light-hearted, every time we see a story about ghosts, the assumption is that they're hanging around because they have some unfinished business to take care of?

Here's a preview from Ricky Gervais' new film Ghost Town.


And here's from the classic horror film The Sixth Sense.


Why can't ghosts ever just be here because they're here? And where do these movies assume they go once the business is done? With all the mystery surrounding afterlife and whether ghosts even exists, it's interesting that everyone is so certain the storyline purpose of a ghost is unfinished business.

Death is the road to awe

A poetic line from lovely film I watched last night called The Fountain, with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. The movie deals with death and what comes after. It suggests we should embrace death as a chance to learn and experience, rather than fearing it.

In a way, learning not to fear death is the ultimate journey to learning to have joy in life. I think that's the message of this film ... and I think that's, on one level, what this line "Death is the road to awe" is saying. And indeed, once the main character of this film learns to embrace death, he reaches a different plain of reality and enlightenment. (I know I'm making it sound peagan and freaky, but it really is beautiful.)

Joseph Campbell teases this message out of the riddle of the Sphinx from Oedipus. The riddle says "What is it that walks on four legs, then on two legs, and then on three?" The answer, of course, as Oedipus deduces, is man. Four legs as a crawling child; two legs as an adult; three legs as an old man with a cane.

Campbell tells us "The riddle of the Sphinx is the image of life itself through time—childhood, maturity, age, and death. When without fear you have faced and accepted the riddle of the Sphinx, death has no further hold on you ... The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life's joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life but as an aspect of life."

The Fountain, in a way, is a visual representation of coming to terms with the Sphinx's riddle. There's nothing to fear in the inevitability of death, and once that is realized, the real beauty of life opens up.

Dark Knight Already Breaking Records

Fandango is reporting that 90% of their weekend ticket sales are going to The Dark Knight.

AP is reporting that the film has already set a record for midnight debuts, bringing in 18.5 million in its midnight shows alone. (The previous record was $16.9 million for Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith.)

Are people going in for some public grieving, is this morbid fascination, or is it the hype over how good the movie is and how good Heath's performance is?

The Dark Knight Extends 'til Dawn

This from the New York Times:

"In a frenzy, fans have bought so many late-night tickets for the July 18 opening of the next Batman movie that theaters in places like San Diego, Chicago, and even Eagan, Minn., are scheduling 6 a.m. screenings for those who can’t get in at midnight or 3 in the morning."

It seems likely, they're going to see Heath Ledger's last on-screen performance. It'd be easy to read this news as morbid, as vultures picking over the dead, but I find it exciting and uplifiting in a way.

Ledger's death was shocking and tragic. Mainstream America didn't realize he was struggling with depression, anxiety, extreme insomnia and was lost in a mix of prescription drugs. His death was sudden and sad. This film provides an opportunity for people to sit together in a dark room and appreciate him and his talent, silently, as a group. It will be cathartic. It will be public grieving. Which I have said before, I am a big fan of.

I'm sure, given the nature of entertainment reporting nowadays, the hoopla surrounding this film will get disgusting and overbearing. But for now, I love that people are flocking to see Heath Ledger's last role. It makes me much happier than having them buy his action figure. At least they'll get an experience out of this. He was an amazing talent. He was outstanding in Brokeback Mountain, and also, something a lot of people forget about, Billy Bob Thornton's son who commits suicide in Monster's Ball. Wow! Knocked my socks off.

I think The Dark Knight is something we all should see in the theaters, because we should be together to mourn the loss of this great young actor.

Life and Death for Fictional Characters

OK: Spoiler alert for Indiana Jones, Sex and the City movie, Harry Potter, Lost if you're not caught up.

A few weeks back, we had a lot of discussion about narrative and fictional characters. I'd like to come back to that theme to talk about a trend I've noticed in recent years. We seem to be unwilling to kill off our beloved fictional characters.

When the Harry Potter series finished last summer with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, there was massive speculation about whether book seven would end with his demise. Would Voldemort do him in? Would the two finish off each other in a final showdown? Would Harry lose to he who must not be named and would evil wizardry win the day? Well, no one really thought that would happen; it was a childrens' book after all. In a 2006 interview, about a year before the book was released, J.K. Rowling said she might kill Harry. So fans did open the novel wondering whether Harry Potter would still be alive when they closed it. But despite a good scare near the end in which Harry has a near-death experience, Harry survives the battle with Voldemort and goes on to marry his long-time love.

Similarly, before the recent Indiana Jones sequel came out in theaters, many fans wondered if this would be the movie in which Indiana Jones finally died. It has been 19 years since the release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Harrison Ford is now 65 years old, old for an action star. The series seemed to be introducing a new generation of archaeologist/adventurer in Shia LaBeouf's character. And on top of that, one of the remarkable things about Indiana Jones as a hero has always been his fallibility—he's never seemed invincible or naturally strong. He comes across as an everyday man who is put in extreme circumstances that push him to his limits and force him to act in amazing ways. It would have fit his character arc very well for audiences to see him die on screen. But he does not die either.

Rumors popped up before the release of the Sex and the City movie that one of the beloved characters from the well-known TV show would die when the story hit the big screen. Early speculation especially centered around Samantha, who suffered breast cancer in the TV show. Producers and writers decided to keep all of the characters alive and well.

There are also TV shows like Lost that frequently blur the lines between life and death. Claire seems to recently have died, but she didn't even get a death scene. Instead, she just left her baby behind and got up and walked into the woods. Now she is with her father, Christian Shephard, who has become some type of Angel of Death on the show. Charlie visited Hurley, even though Charlie had drowned. Boone keeps finding ways to come back. So does Mr. Friendly. There are flashbacks and flash-forwards, so that even once a character has died in the present, we still see them as part of the show in flashbacks, and they may still exist in the present but have died in the future (as with Locke). Death is not treated as a permanent goodbye on Lost.

I wonder if this zeitgeist has something to do with our country being at war. We're under such stress and and see so much turmoil and death in reality, we don't want to feel it with our fictional characters. We want our fictional characters to have happy endings. And now that the economy has taken a turn for the worse, it's all the more motivation for things to work out in the land of not-so-real.

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo

"The vertigo we understand now is his and all of ours simultaneous attraction to and fear of death."

It's the 50th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, one of my favorite movies of all time. The line above is from Jack Beatty, senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly. He's describing the titular emotion experienced by both Hitchcock's main character, played by Jimmy Stewart, and by Hitchcock's audience. You can hear that comment and more great discussion of the movie on this episode of On Point.

Indeed, it's quite an experience to watch this film. It's no ordinary thriller, and it will send your mind and your emotions reeling. I love this movie. It's smart. It's suspenseful. It's erotic. And I don't care how many times you watch it, you won't understand the ending.

There Will Be Blood

If you haven't seen this movie yet, and don't want any details spoiled, you may not want to read this post. And you may also want to go see this movie. Soon! Really! It's good. Rent it! Or buy it! ... My boyfriend and I watched There Will Be Blood last night—and what a film! I'm a bit hesitant to say this about a movie I just saw, but it has to be one of the top 10 movies I've seen in my life. The parallels to silent film. The eerie soundtrack. Daniel Day Lewis's performance—his voice like an old radio star. All of the ambiguities—are Paul Sunday and Eli Sunday two different people, does E.W. Plainview know that Henry Plainview is a fake, what is the significance of the last line "I'm finished."

But my blog is about the way we communicate about death, so I want to bring up one particular genius maneuver on the part of P.T. Anderson. There are several incidents throughout the film that make you think you are going to see blood: a couple of deaths occur in oil wells that have the potential to be bloody; when Daniel Plainview is baptized and has the metaphorical blood of Christ poured over him, for a second you think it might end up being real blood; when Daniel kills his impostor brother with a shot to the head. But none of these bring blood. It is only in the last scene, when Daniel beats Eli Sunday to death that you actually see blood. And then Daniel Plainview simply declares "I'm finished." On one level, those words could be coming from the director himself. Anderson could be saying to the viewer, I promised you in the title "There Will Be Blood," now there is blood ... and now "I'm finished."

Bravo!

Heath Ledger's Joker Doll Selling Out

Leave it to America to translate our public grief in to mass consumption. The New York Post reports that Heath Ledger's Joker doll is selling out at Toys "R" Us stores across the city. There is no mention of what is happening in other markets throughout the country, but a Toys "R" Us spokesperson is quoted as saying, "There are none left in the warehouse, either." The article also mentions that the figures are already appearing for sale on eBay for higher than their original $9.99 selling price. Folks must be assuming this will become a collector's item because of Ledger's death. And I imagine it's the current must-have toy for any big Batman fan. I'm not someone who has ever been into action figures, but it is pretty cool looking. Although I can say from trying to unload some Gone with the Wind memorabilia recently, now that eBay makes things so easy to sell, I wonder how much of a long-term market there really is for stuff like this, even when you factor in the high-profile death of a pop-culture figure.