This animated short takes us in to a corporate boardroom where characters representing different body parts are seated around a conference table, including two eye characters, a couple hands and feet. Walking to the front of the room to make a presentation is the boss, a talking foot who points to a chart showing a downward arc representing steadily declining productivity.
The foot informs those gathered that some of them will lose their jobs.
We see an eye character with its belongings packed in a box as it bids farewell. A tongue waves goodbye as it heads for the door.
Later we see two hands picketing, carrying placards with messages urging that their jobs be saved.
A voiceover then provides sobering context to this termination of body parts, informing us that multiple sclerosis “attacks the nervous system, causing body parts to shut down without warning.”
The narrator notes that the disease is most likely to strike people in their 20s and 30s, but we can fight back by contributing to the U.K. MS Society.
Darren Robbie, a.k.a. Chopsy, of Aardman Animations in the U.K.–a lead animator on the feature film Chicken Run–directed this 35-second PSA which has gone viral and hopes to raise awareness of, and cash to combat, a much misunderstood and potentially devastating disease. The client-direct PSA–with Chopsy and Terry Brain serving as animators–was launched during MS Week (5/23-29).
Angelina Jolie Had To “Breathe Again” For The Role Of Maria Callas
Angelina Jolie never expected to hit all the notes. But finding the breath of Maria Callas was enough to bring things out of Jolie that she didn't even know were in her.
"All of us, we really don't realize where things land in our body over a lifetime of different experiences and where we hold it to protect ourselves," Jolie said in a recent interview. "We hold it in our stomachs. We hold it in our chest. We breathe from a different place when we're nervous or we're sad.
"The first few weeks were the hardest because my body had to open and I had to breathe again," she adds. "And that was a discovery of how much I wasn't."
In Pablo Larraín's "Maria," which Netflix released in theaters Wednesday before it begins streaming on Dec. 11, Jolie gives, if not the performance of her career, then certainly of her last decade. Beginning with 2010's "In the Land of Blood and Honey," Jolie has spent recent years directing films while prioritizing raising her six children.
"So my choices for quite a few years were whatever was smart financially and short. I worked very little the last eight years," says Jolie. "And I was kind of drained. I couldn't for a while."
But her youngest kids are now 16. And for the first time in years, Jolie is back in the spotlight, in full movie-star mode. Her commanding performance in "Maria" seems assured of bringing Jolie her third Oscar nomination. (She won supporting actress in 2000 for "Girl, Interrupted.") For an actress whose filmography might lack a signature movie, "Maria" may be Jolie's defining role.
Jolie's oldest children, Maddox and Pax, worked on the set of the film. There, they saw a version of their mother they hadn't seen before.
"They had certainly seen me sad in my life. But I... Read More