Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story
The documentary’s title comes from the way they played onstage. Guitarist Mick Ronson wasn’t just a backing musician or even a sideman but almost a partner in the glittering extravaganza that was a David Bowie concert in the early ’70s. Ronson, who comes across as a working-class bloke amid the eye shadow and androgyny, had already traded rock for a gardening job before Bowie recruited him. Beside Bowie includes interviews with friends, relatives and associates.
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Viceroy’s House
The 1947 partition of Britain’s Indian Empire into two rival nations, India and Pakistan, displaced and killed millions of people. In this glossy Anglo-Indian production, “Downton Abbey’s” Hugh Bonneville plays Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, tasked with guiding the subcontinent to independence and trying to keep animosity between Hindus and Muslims at bay. Gillian Anderson co-stars as his socially conscious wife, Edwina. A Romeo and Juliet Hindu-Muslim love story provides romantic interest.
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The Weight of Honor
The statistic is daunting: 2.8 million service members were deployed in the Afghan and Iraqi wars from 2001-2012. Some have marveled over the relatively low American fatalities, but the survival rate was due less to battlefield tactics than to improvements in battlefield medicine. Stephanie Seldin Howard’s documentary points out that the Veterans Administration was unprepared for the homecoming of so many seriously maimed veterans; the burden of caregiving has often fallen on the wives of veterans.
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Brannigan
“I wouldn’t try it unless you want to sing soprano,” says John Wayne in a signature line from Brannigan. In this 1975 action flick (out now on Blu-ray), Wayne stars as Chicago Police Lt. Jim Brannigan on special assignment in London. Speaking tersely and waving a six-gun, he’s chasing a Windy City mobster kidnapped by rival criminals and raising eyebrows all over Scotland Yard for his barbaric Yankee police procedures. The London car chases are fun.
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