Monday, February 16, 2015

ALZHEIMER'S - Book & Movie 'Still Alice'

"In ‘Still Alice,’ a neuroscientist-novelist explores what it’s like to live with Alzheimer’s" PBS NewsHour 2/10/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Confronted by her own grandmother’s illness, writer and neuroscientist Lisa Genova started her exploration of Alzheimer’s with one question:  What does it actually feel like to have the disease?  Her resulting novel, “Still Alice,” was adapted into a film that has been nominated for an Academy Award.  Jeffrey Brown interviews Genova about why she turned to fiction.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  A new film, and the book that inspired it, are getting high praise this awards season for the spotlight they cast on the toll of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Jeffrey Brown looks at the film and its subject, part of our occasional feature, 'NewsHour Goes to the Movies.'

JULIANNE MOORE, Actress:  Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of young children.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  When we first meet Alice Howland, she’s 50 years old, an accomplished professor of linguistics, but something is beginning to happen.

JULIANNE MOORE:  I hope we convince you that by observing these baby steps into the — into — I — I knew I shouldn’t have had that champagne.

JEFFREY BROWN:  We watch as Alice loses words, gets lost in familiar places, forgets appointments.  Eventually, she’s diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

JULIANNE MOORE:  Why won’t you take me seriously?

JEFFREY BROWN:  It’s an up-close and sometimes raw portrait shown from the perspective of someone with a disease that today affects more than five million Americans, including 200,000 who experience early onset.


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