March 30, 2012

Film Review: Bully

Courtesy of the Weinstein Company

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Bully

WEINSTEIN COMPANY

90 minutes

The so-called bullying crisis in American schools has never seemed so endemic. In Emmy Award-winning director Lee Hirsch’s new doc, kids are punched, strangled, and relentlessly taunted in all the familiar (offline) places—school bus, playground, cafeteria—driving children as young as 11 to suicide. Weaving together the stories of five families deeply affected by bullying, Hirsch explores who, if anyone, is to blame. While he talks to both frightened parents and maddeningly resigned school administrators, the best segments come in the frank and often intensely insightful conversations with the kids themselves. Side note: The soundtrack is excellent, with songs by Grizzly Bear and the Magnetic Fields and a cover of “Teenage Dirtbag” sung by Scala & Kolacny Brothers, a Belgian women’s choir.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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