Entertainment

Summoning mothers to their power to fight climate change and inequality

Published

2 years ago

March 11, 2024

Press Room

Summoning mothers to their power to fight climate change and inequality

On the Shelf

Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “the Apocalypse”

By Emily Raboteau
Henry Holt: 304 pages, $30

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As the Northern Hemisphere slowly emerges from the dark days of winter, we welcome the extra hours of daylight. In Emily Raboteau’s New York City neighborhood, a different kind of daylighting may happen; the enormous proposed civic project to daylight Tibbetts Brook, from where it was buried underground, will provide flood control and create natural beauty. (Similar projects, in which paved-over streams are brought back to the surface, are occurring in various places in California.) For Raboteau, it’s an exciting project but also a reminder that her Bronx neighborhood is living on borrowed time. In Raboteau’s book of essays, “Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against ‘the Apocalypse,’” her care for her neighborhood and her maternal care for her children are connected as she faces an uncertain climate future.

The rising sea levels that threaten the California coast will have a greater impact on New York City, submerging the areas near Raboteau’s house. Daylighting Tibbetts Brook spotlights how climate change lives in the same ecosystem as race and class and the continuing effects of colonization. During our March interview via video chat, Raboteau reminds me, “The Lenape called [Tibbett’s Creek] Mosholu.

“[The project’s] messy,” Raboteau continued. “If it comes to pass, it will be the most expensive [$130 million] green action in New York. [But] should we be spending that much money on this climate mitigation act that is in a sense an act of reparation? Or should we be spending it to think about a managed retreat for the poorest people, in the low-lying areas, who know we’re living on borrowed time now?”

In New York, anxiety about an uncertain future and economic pressure are expressed in art. One of the essays follows Raboteau’s travels to document a local artist’s warning signs about the coming catastrophe in multiple New York City locations. She journeys to see many of the city’s public art projects — including a gorgeous photo essay on murals commemorating birds likely to be extinct soon — and other calls to action to mitigate climate change. The birds, it turns out, are also a way for Raboteau to distract herself from chronic pain — both physical and metaphysical — her body’s response to the weight of our changing world.

As the result of that wandering, she comes into contact with a broad swath of people, documenting their environmental fears but also their suspicion that such art projects are signs of gentrification and additional economic disparities. Raboteau calls our attention to the ways in which environmental pressures will create even more social inequality between those who can afford to move, and those who are rooted by economic necessity and lack of access to alternatives.

Living on land that has seen multiple generations of inhabitants creates another pressing question for Raboteau, whose book of connected essays is about moving through our new 2020s reality as a mother. She is deeply conscious of a challenge posed by Jonas Salk, who insisted that our obligations to future generations should be our biggest priority — not just the ancestors of the two sons she and her husband, writer Victor LaValle, are raising.

She’s aware that many of us don’t think beyond our immediate present. “[It requires] thinking about ourselves in the past as we consider the future generations, like that edict of the Iroquois law thinking seven generations ahead. That’s very abstract and challenging for us.”

As a scion of her Black ancestors, and the mother of a new generation, Raboteau keeps photos in her workspace to remind herself that she is the result of her family’s past struggle. “It’s a story commonly told in the Black tradition, and it was told to me by my dad at some point: ‘Your great-grandfather was a slave so that his child could be a preacher so their child could be a teacher so that their child could be a politician so that you could be an artist.’ I like being reminded that you are actually the fruit or the flower of a long process of ancestry that toiled so you could do this.”

Raboteau writes poignantly about her recently deceased father, scholar Albert Raboteau, whose work on the religious traditions of slaves is seminal in the field of Black studies. He came from an area of Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and today, Raboteau’s family has left due to its aftereffects. While environmental catastrophe has scattered her people, so too have the effects of racism and poverty.

“When [my father] was in his mother’s womb, his father, who was a grocery store clerk, was murdered by a white man. This was in 1943 and the man was never tried and certainly never prosecuted for the crime. So my grandmother fled the Jim Crow South to save the life of my dad, who was not yet born, and his older sisters and they went to Michigan.”

Her father died of dementia in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. Her grief began before he died, as her sharp solastalgia for the man he was before illness mirrored her feelings about the changing Earth and all that has already been lost. “We see that solastalgia grafted on the landscape, but there’s also a kind of bittersweet element in parenting [in watching children grow and change].” She now sees her father’s image on the ancestor wall. “The wall reminds me to think about what’s come before, where we fall in this lineage and what we owe the next generation.”

During a research trip to the Arctic, she found herself sleeping in a tribal council office under an ancestor wall like the one in her office. It was a reminder of all that has already been lost, and just how perplexed she is by feelings of climate rage and grief.

“I was encouraged to speak to elders in that community who remembered the land, what it was like before the warming began, and I asked one elder, ‘What do we do with our anger?’ And he said, ‘That’s easy. We take care of each other.’”

Taking care of each other means moving toward collective action. It’s one way of combating the individual sense of being powerless. Raboteau is working with multiple groups across New York City that are combining social and economic justice with climate action. Tied to New York because they’re dependent on the income she and her partner earn in the city, they stay. She writes that her children, like many urban kids, suffer from the asthma associated with rising carbon levels. But the solution to stay and fight only works up to a point, Raboteau says. “I learned from my grandmother’s story the lesson of the fugitive. If something’s gonna kill you, you run when it gets to that point.”

Climate crisis is not the only variable she must parent her children through. As the mother of two Black sons, the murder of George Floyd added to her already vigilant state. During the Black Lives Matter protests, she noticed graffiti near her building: “All mothers were summoned when he called out for his mama.”

“There’s something metaphysical when it hits your heart like that,” she says. “[George Floyd] called out to his mother in the last moments of his life. It was an appeal for mercy. Not just air but mercy. It hit a lot of us, whether we’re mothers or not. You’re part of this pain and you have the power to be merciful and caring. It moved me to tears because it summons mothers to our power.”

Summoning mothers to their power is a way forward in climate survival strategies and in fighting for equality. Although Raboteau is quick to point out that you don’t have to be a mother — or a parent — to feel the same impetus and passion. “Saidiya Hartman says that ‘care is the antidote to violence.’ I don’t want to suggest that motherhood is the only doorway to which you arrive at care because certainly it isn’t. But for many of us, like me, motherhood has been a complete alteration of my experience in the world, like the shattering of your identity. There’s a loss there too; I feel a little nostalgia about myself as a person without kids and the freedom that came with it. But motherhood has been very politically activating.”

To replenish her energy, Raboteau finds great pleasure in gardening, another reminder of her family roots. Putting our hands in the dirt and bringing forth beauty is a way to acknowledge previous generations unable to access both bread and roses in the struggle to survive. Gardening has created community, and Raboteau feels a deep connection to others. She says joy and beauty are part of the struggle.

She tells me of one such moment in the South Hebron Hills. “When I was in Palestine, I spoke to one mother through a translator. She had had a hard life. She’s a Palestinian woman. Her home is more or less a tent that could be bulldozed by the IDF. But she had filled an abandoned tire with dirt and she grew roses. She found the time to do that, and I found that act really remarkable. This isn’t for sustenance. This isn’t to eat. It’s not growing olives to sell. It’s just for the pleasure of having bright pink.”

Pink connotes dawn, the promise of coming daylight. It reminds us that daylight often looks like hope.

Movie Reviews

MOVIE REVIEWS: “Mercy,” “Return to Silent Hill,” “Sentimental Value” & “In Cold Light” – Valdosta Daily Times

Published

10 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

“Mercy”

(Thriller/Crime: 1 hour, 39 minutes)

Starring: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Rated: PG-13 (Violence, bloody images, strong language, drug content and teen smoking)

Movie Review:

“Mercy” is a science fiction movie based on one of the more common themes of moviedom lately, artificial intelligence (AI). This crime thriller cleverly creates an intriguing story using technology and the justice system, yet it fails to be consistently interesting and intelligent throughout. The conclusion is less significant than the initial setup, as the concluding scenes become typical action sequences.

Detective Chris Raven (Pratt) of the LA Police Department is a huge supporter of the city’s new judicial courtroom. Crimes are now judged by an AI program (Ferguson) in the Mercy Court. The court is run by an artificial program that makes decisions based on all of the evidence before it without any prejudice. Detective Raven is all for this system until he is convicted of killing his wife. Now he must use all of the data, including the AI‘s ability to tap into everyone’s electronic devices, security cameras, and even into government files, within reason, to prove he did not murder his wife.

Mercy is an interesting movie. It entertains throughout, even when the story gets sloppy and characters’ actions are irrational. This mainly occurs during the final scenes. The movie tries too hard to insert unneeded narrative twists. This is disappointing because the story is interesting. What makes it fascinating is that it happens in real time. This is the most brilliant facet.

All the other theatrics are unnecessary. Director Timur Bekmambetov (“Profile,” 2018; “Wanted,” 2008) and “Mercy’s” producers should have just kept the ending simple, no plot twists or superfluous action sequences.
Grade: C (This flick needs some mercy. Let the trial begin.)

“Return to Silent Hill”

(Horror: 1 hour, 46 minutes)

Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson and Robert Strange

Director: Christophe Gans

Rated: R (Bloody violent content, strong language and brief drug use.)

Movie Review:

“Return to Silent Hill” is about one man’s quest to return to the love of his life. The problem is she has moved on to the afterlife. Meanwhile, audiences lose part of their life watching this movie, which is unlike any of the two prequels in this series. This one is a psychological horror that bores.

Artist James Sunderland (Irvine) decides to return to Silent Hill, a place where many people died during a devastating illness that nearly enveloped the entirety of the city’s population. What is left there is a horror show of freakish creatures, all with violent intent. Still, Sunderland searches for the love of his life, Mary Crane (Anderson).

Think of this movie as a slow suicide, where a guy goes back to retrieve his dead girlfriend. To do so, he must travel to the modern land of the dead that Silent Hill has become. This one is a type of swan song by the main character, and the movie becomes less scary while lackluster romantic notions wander aimlessly.

Grade: D (Do not return to see this.)

“Sentimental Value”

(Drama: 2 hours, 13 minutes)

Starring: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning

Director: Joachim Trier

Rated: R (Language, sexual reference, nudity and thematic elements)

Movie Review:

“Sentimental Value” is a Norwegian film that won the Grand Prix in France’s Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Motion Picture. It is a solid drama filled with symbolism and family connections. It is brilliant performances by a talented cast under the direction of Joachim Trier (“The Worst Person in the World,” 2021).

This screenplay is about Gustav Borg (Skarsgård). He is a father, grandfather and a famed film director. He stayed away from his two daughters, actress Nora Borgwhile (Reinsve) and historian Agnes Borg Pettersen (Lilleaas), while he was creating works as a filmmaker. The director comes back into the lives of his daughters after the death of their mother. Their reunion leads to a rediscovery of their bond at their family home in Oslo.

Stellan Skarsgård is always a solid actor. He takes his roles and makes them tangible characters that seem like you know them, even when they’re speaking a foreign language. That is the quality of his act and why he gets nominated for multiple awards each season.

“Sentimental Value” is a valuable movie filled with enriching sentiment. It is an enjoyable film for those who value a good drama. The acting and original writing alone make the movie worth it. “Sentimental Value” starts in a very simple way, but everything in between, even when low-key, remains potent. Joachim Trier and writer Eskil Vogt have worked together on multiple projects such as “The Worst Person in the World” (2021). Their pairing is once again worthy.

Grade: A- (Any motive valuable movie.)

“In Cold Light ”

(Crime: 1 hour , 36 minutes)

Starring: Maika Monroe, Allan Hawco and Troy Kotsur

Director: Maxime Giroux

Rated: R (Violence, bloody images, strong language and drug material)

Movie Review:

“In Cold Light” sticks to a very straightforward story, primarily taking place over a short period. The problem is the story leaves one in the cold. Audiences have to guess what is being communicated because this movie uses American Sign Language (ASL) without subtitles. For those moviegoers who do not know ASL, they are left deciphering characters’ actions and facial expressions during some pivotal scenes.

Ava Bly (Monroe) attempts to start a legit life after prison. Her life changes when Ava’s twin, Tom Bly (Jesse Irving) is murdered while seated next to her. As her brother’s killers pursue her, Ava must evade law enforcement, which contains some crooked cops led by Bob Whyte (Hawco).

For a brief moment, this movie hits its exceptional moment when Oscar-recipient Helen Hunt enters the picture as a motherly Claire, a crime boss who seems more like a social worker/psychologist. Her long scene is wasted as it arrives too late.

French Canadian director Maxime Giroux’s style has potential in his first English-language film, but it does not fit a wayward narrative. A rarity, this crime drama has characters commit many dumb actions at once.

Moreover, Giroux (“Félix et Meira,” 2014) and writer Patrick Whistler forget to let their audiences in on their story. They allow much to get lost in translation, especially during heated conversations between Monroe’s Ava and her father, Will Bly, played by Academy Award-winning actor Troy Kotsur (“CODA,” 2021).

Grade: C- (Just cold and dark.)

More movie reviews online at www.valdostadailytimes.com.

Entertainment

Paramount-Warner Bros. deal stirs fears about what it means for CNN

Published

12 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Paramount-Warner Bros. deal stirs fears about what it means for CNN

As the media industry took stock of Paramount Skydance’s startling acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, one question lingered on the minds of many in the news business and beyond: What will this mean for CNN?

The iconic 24-hour cable news network is among the various Warner Bros. assets that would be scooped up by Paramount in a deal announced Thursday that could transform the media landscape.

Paramount has undergone a swift transformation under Chief Executive David Ellison following his family’s acquisition of the company last summer. These changes reached CBS News almost immediately with the appointment of Bari Weiss, the controversial Free Press co-founder, as its new editor in chief.

Bari Weiss moderated a town hall with Erika Kirk, widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

(CBS via Getty Images)

Weiss’ tenure so far has been rocky.

Her decision to pull a “60 Minutes” story about conditions inside an El Salvador prison that housed undocumented Venezuelan migrants from the U.S. received widespread criticism and accusations of political motivation. The network said the story was held for more reporting, and the segment eventually aired.

There was more upheaval last week at the news magazine, when “60 Minutes” correspondent and CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper announced that he’d be leaving to spend more time with his family.

And earlier this year, a veteran producer at “CBS Evening News With Tony Dokoupil” was fired after he expressed disagreement about the editorial direction of the newscast.

Now, the concern is that similar changes could be in store for CNN, which has long been a target of President Trump’s ire. He has personally called for the ouster of hosts at the network who have questioned his policies.

CNN Worldwide Chief Executive Mark Thompson tried to quell some of those fears, particularly inside his own newsroom.

In an internal memo dated Thursday and obtained by The Times, Thompson urged employees not to “jump to conclusions about the future” and try to concentrate on their work.

“We’re still near the start of what is already an incredibly newsy year at home and abroad,” he wrote in the note. “Let’s continue to focus on delivering the best possible journalism to the millions of people who rely on us all around the world.”

Chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide Mark Thompson and media editor for Semafor, Maxwell Tani, speak onstage.

CNN declined to comment beyond Thompson’s memo.

Ellison has said his vision for a news business is one that is ideologically down the middle.

“We want to build a scaled news service that is basically, fundamentally in the trust business, that is in the truth business, and that speaks to the 70% of Americans that are in the middle,” he said during a Dec. 8 interview on CNBC, shortly after Warner said it had chosen Netflix as the winning bidder for its studios, HBO and HBO Max. “And we believe that by doing so that is for us, kind of doing well, while doing good.”

Ellison demurred when asked whether Trump would embrace him as CNN’s owner, given the president’s past criticisms of the network.

“We’ve had great conversations with the president about this, but … I don’t want to speak for him in any way, shape or form,” he said.

First Amendment scholars have raised concerns about press freedom and free speech rights under the Trump administration, particularly after last month’s arrest of former CNN journalist Don Lemon and the Federal Communications Commission’s pressure on late-night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.

Press freedom groups have long asked questions in other countries about how authoritarian regimes use their power and “oligarchical alliances to belittle, silence, and punish independent journalistic voices, or to steer media ownership toward … a preferred version of the truth,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a 1st Amendment scholar and distinguished professor in the college of law at the University of Utah, in an email.

“We see them asking at least some of these questions about the U.S. today,” she wrote.

Apprehension about the merger also extends beyond its implications for CNN and the media business.

Lawmakers such as Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have raised concerns about how the consolidation of two major Hollywood studios could affect industry jobs and film and television production — which has significantly slowed since the pandemic, the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023 and corporate cutbacks in spending.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the deal an “antitrust disaster” that she feared could raise prices and limit choices for consumers.

“With the cloud of corruption looming over Trump’s Department of Justice, it’ll be up to the American people to speak up and state attorneys general to enforce the law,” she said in a statement.

Already, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has said the merger isn’t a “done deal,” adding that he is in communication with other states attorneys general about the issue.

“As the epicenter of the entertainment industry, California has a special interest in protecting competition,” he posted Friday on X.

The deal is subject to approval by the U.S. Justice Department. Bonta and other state attorneys general are expected to file a legal challenge to the mega-merger on antitrust grounds.

Ellison addressed some of these concerns in a statement Friday.

“By bringing together these world-class studios, our complementary streaming platforms, and the extraordinary talent behind them, we will create even greater value for audiences, partners and shareholders,” he said. “We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: ‘Goat’ – Catholic Review

Published

22 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

NEW YORK (OSV News) – “Goat” (Sony) is an animated underdog sports comedy populated by anthropomorphized animals. While mostly inoffensive, and thus suitable for a wide audience — including teens and older kids — the film is also easily forgotten.

The amiable proceedings center on teen goat Will Harris (voice of Caleb McLaughlin). As opening scenes show, it has been Will’s dream since childhood to play for his hometown team, the Vineland Thorns.

The inhabitants of Vineland and the other areas of the movie’s world, however, are divided into so-called bigs and smalls, with professional competition dominated, unsurprisingly, by the former. Though Will stoutly maintains that he’s a medium, those around him regard him as too slight and diminutive to go up against the towering bigs.

Despite this prejudice, a video showing Will more or less holding his own against a famous and arrogant big, Andalusian horse Mane Attraction (voice of Aaron Pierre), goes viral and inspires the Thorns’ devious owner, warthog Flo Everson (voiced by Jenifer Lewis), to give the lad a shot. Though Will is understandably thrilled, his path forward proves challenging.

Will has idolized the Thorns’ sole outstanding player, black panther Jett Fillmore (voice of Gabrielle Union), since he was a youngster. But Jett, it turns out, is not only frustrated by her situation as a star among misfits but scornful of Will’s ambitions and resolute in helping to deprive her new teammate of playing time.

Given such divisions, the Thorns’ fortunes seem destined to continue their long decline.

“Roarball,” the invented game featured in director Tyree Dillihay’s film, is essentially co-ed basketball by another name. As produced by, among others, NBA champion Stephen Curry, the movie — adapted from an idea in Chris Tougas’ book “Funky Dunks” — is an unabashed celebration of hoop culture both on and off the court.

Viewers’ enthusiasm may vary, accordingly, depending on the degree to which they’re invested in the real-life sport.

Moviegoers of every stripe will appreciate the fact that the script, penned by Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley, shows the negative effects of self-centeredness as well as the value of teamwork and fan support. Plot developments also showcase forgiveness and reconciliation.

Will’s story is, nonetheless, thoroughly formulaic and most of the screenplay’s jokes feel strained and laborious. Still, while hardly qualifying as the Greatest of All Time, “Goat” does provide passable entertainment with little besides a few potty gags to concern parents.

The film contains brief scatological humor and at least one vaguely crass term. The OSV News classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.