Millionaires versus billionaires – The NBA lockout begins. Medical residents get short shifts. Do patients get short shrift? Fire up the BBQ it’s time to be patriotic! KPCC film critics Andy Klein and Tim Cogshell join Larry to review the week’s new film releases including Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Larry Crowne, Terri, The Perfect Host, Monte Carlo, 35 and Ticking, The First Beautiful Thing, Vincent Wants to Sea and more. TGI-FilmWeek! Now and then: film and urban history collide.
Millionaires versus billionaires – The NBA lockout begins
Unable to reach a collective bargaining agreement between team owners and player representatives, the National Basketball Association has locked out its players as of 9 pm last night. The NBA says that 22 of its 30 teams are unprofitable and the league lost an estimated $300 million last season. But is the NBA trying to solve its financial woes at the expense of the players? Unlike NFL teams who share television revenue equally NBA teams negotiate their own TV deals individually. Is it time to restructure the revenue sharing? Will the players and owners resolve their differences in time for the first tip off in the fall?
Guest:
Michael McCann, Sports Illustrated Legal Expert
Medical residents get short shifts. Do patients get short shrift?
Patient advocates have long complained that long shifts for residents put patients at risk. Today a new set of rules limiting first-year residents, also called interns, to 16-hour shifts was put into place by the private nonprofit Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The rules are intended to prevent medical errors resulting from sleep deprivation. Second- and third-year residents will still be permitted to work 28 hours at a time. Critics of the new rules say they don’t go far enough. They cite research showing that doctors become so tired during long shifts that their performance deteriorates. In 2009, a poll of 1,200 American households published in the journal BMC Medicine found that 81 percent of respondents thought patients should be informed if their doctor has been working for more than 24 hours. Eighty percent said they would they would want a different doctor. Supporters of longer shifts say residents gain valuable experience through longer hours and learning to manage fatigue is an important part of practicing medicine. They say patients are protected because residents are closely supervised. Do you agree with these new rules? Or do you think stress and fatigue are an important component of medical training and shortening these shifts will have a negative effect on medical training?
Fire up the BBQ it’s time to be patriotic!
Independence Day, in case you didn’t know, is a federal holiday intended to commemorate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 and freedom from British rule. But for many of us, it’s just a lovely three-day weekend, full of fireworks, BBQ and beer. Usually, there’s an abundance of patriotic displays as well. But the amount of actual patriotism practiced or felt varies. To some on the left side of the political spectrum, “patriotism” is a bad word. Such critics would never call themselves “patriots,” arguing that many terrible things – big and small – have happened in the name of nationalism. Folks on the right may be more inclined to value devotion to country and related symbols. Of course, there are people of all stripes who consider themselves fiercely patriotic, but who may do or say things that red-white-and-blue-patriots would deem disrespectful or highly unpatriotic. (Think: war protests, criticizing the President, burning the flag.) What about you? Do you consider yourself a patriot? What does that mean? Is it patriotic or unpatriotic to question the government? Does the 4th of July add anything to or take anything from your sense of pride in country?
FilmWeek: Larry Crowne, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Terri, The Perfect Host, Monte Carlo, 35 and Ticking and more
FilmWeek: KPCC film critics Andy Klein and Tim Cogshell join Larry to review the week’s new film releases including Larry Crowne, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Terri, The Perfect Host, Monte Carlo, 35 and Ticking, The First Beautiful Thing, Vincent Wants to Sea and more. TGI-FilmWeek!
Guests:
Andy Klein, film critic for KPCC and Brand X Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC and Box Office Magazine
Live tweeting this week's reviews:
Now and Then: Film and urban history collide
How did Harold Lloyd turn New York and Los Angeles “into his very own romper room?” During the Golden Age of Comedy, Lloyd’s pictures sold more tickets than any other comic actor of his time. In Silent Visions, a new book by John Bengtson, the film historian explores the settings found in Lloyd’s comedy classics and matches them with archival photos and vintage maps to produce an array of now-and-then comparison photographs that illuminate Lloyd’s genius.
Guest:
John Bengtson, author of Silent Visions: Discovering Early Hollywood and New York Through the Films of Harold Lloyd (Independent Publishers Group). Bengtson is a business lawyer and film historian whose previous books include Silent Echoes and Silent Traces.