For my latest DVD/Blu-ray column, over at ShockYa, I take a look at documentaries about dust (yes, dust!), urban farms, and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks; Maria Bello and Michael Sheen’s well-meaning Beautiful Boy; as well as the inherent falseness of a movie about a fat kid who wears continually pajamas to high school. Oh, and I also shine a light on which straight-to-video Samuel L. Jackson movie works in an Office Space in-joke. Again, it’s all over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.
Daily Archives: October 19, 2011
Margaret Humphreys Talks Oranges and Sunshine
Having one of the defining events of your life adapted into a major motion picture while you’re still alive (and working on those same issues) is weird, discombobulating stuff. Such is the case, though, for Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys, whose work in uncovering the forced deportation of thousands of British children is the basis for the new film Oranges and Sunshine, starring Emily Watson and directed by Jim Loach. Almost single-handedly, Humphreys brought authorities to account and drew worldwide attention to an extraordinary (and extraordinarily recent) miscarriage of justice, in which disadvantaged children as young as four years old were told that their parents were dead, and then sent to children’s homes in Australia, where many suffered appalling abuse. I recently had the chance to speak with Humphreys one-on-one, and the conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa.