The Skeleton Twins navigates the issues of depression and mental illness with an accessible combination of humour and sincerity 
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After ten years apart, estranged twins Maggie (Kristin Wiig) and Milo (Bill Hader) find themselves brought together by an unlikely common goal: suicide. The film opens with Maggie on the brink of an overdose, interrupted by a call from Los Angeles telling her that Milo has attempted to slash his wrists. Hilarious, eh? Admittedly not. But Craig Johnson’s darkly comedic take on some pretty hefty subject matter proves a hit, opening up the world of depression and mental illness in a way that is immediately accessible. 
The events take place in the siblings’ hometown in New York state. Following his hospitalisation, Milo travels from L.A. to spend time recuperating with Maggie, only to find himself embroiled in the drama of her deeply unstable marriage. At the heart of it, both siblings are struggling with what Maggie describes as “feeling constantly disappointed with life”. Milo believes he “peaked in high school”, while Maggie finds herself stalling plans to start a family, turning instead to a string of affairs with French cooking connoisseurs and scuba-diving instructors. While her perpetually optimistic husband, Lance (Luke Wilson), remains completely oblivious to the plight of their marriage, Maggie finds solace in Milo and the two begin to regain the closeness of their childhood. Re-establishing a long lost sibling bond could have been a painfully formulaic watch, but the mutual understanding of each other’s flaws and instabilities provide the pair with a sincerity that transcends clichés. 
The real strength of this film lies in the casting. Wiig and Hader’s chemistry is undeniable, supplying their on&#8211;screen relationship with the kind of brother-sister inside humour that they have established over years of collaborative work. But there’s an edge to their characters’ closeness too, and however hard they try to help each other up, it’s ultimately their shared insecurities that bring them right back down. 
Luke Wilson’s portrayal of the endlessly good-natured Lance is also hard not to love. After all, who can resist a man who clears vast quantities of woodland with his bare hands and scales climbing walls in tight, functional trousers? But it’s his wholesome, big-hearted nature that makes him so wrong for Maggie, and this conflicting element runs quietly throughout. Even Billy (Boyd Hoybrook) is brilliantly cast as Maggie’s scuba instructor lover, excellently treading the line between the mysterious erotic stranger and a creepy outcast with the tendency to caress oxygen tubing. 
Taking a comedic approach to mental health issues could have been a disaster, but here, Johnson really makes it work. The laughably dysfunctional relationships between the key characters and their strained attempts to restore order are far from neatly packaged, but, rather, they are left exposed and unresolved. Far from trivialising the issues, the use of comic actors in the main roles resists sentimentalising their problems, instead providing us with an everyday picture of what living with depression can mean. Some days are funny, and some are brutally sad. The climax of this tension arguably comes in Hader and Wiig’s expertly choreographed lip-synch of Starship’s hit ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’. Aside from the stark truth that this is one of the greatest power ballads ever written, this is also an undeniably uplifting scene: things have almost certainly hit rock bottom but there’s still laughs in there somewhere. 
Leaving the key questions unanswered is what gives The Skeleton Twins its edge. The concluding scenes are slightly disappointing and display a predictability that is absent from the rest of the film, yet the major dilemmas facing the characters are still left largely unresolved. The result is a story that asks questions without offering any real answers, that allows us an insight into depression without trivialising or reducing it. At the heart of it, this film is about life not going quite the way you expected; where it will go from here, that is for us to conclude.
<pre>Image from:http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/09/25/movie-review-the-skeleton-twins/</pre>

The Skeleton Twins: Laughing From Rock Bottom

Director Benh Zeitlin takes on a monstrous project for his new film, tackling the Hurricane Katrina tragedy in a unique and magical way 
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It&#8217;s not often I leave the cinema looking like I&#8217;ve been punched in the face, but on my way out of Beasts of the Southern Wild last week this was most definitely the case. No, I didn&#8217;t trip in the darkness and smash my face into a crushed velvet chair &#8211; this is just one film I challenge any man, or indeed beast, to get through without shedding a tear. 
The story is set in the low-lying Bayou territory of southern Louisiana, an area cut off from the world and existing beyond the rules and laws of mainland society. Through the eyes of the six-year-old lead, Hushpuppy, we are given an intimate look into the lives of the residents there and the close-knit, contained community that has developed. 
However, there are some forces of the outside world that this community cannot escape from, and early on it becomes apparent that a storm, assumed to be Hurricane Katrina, is heading right their way. As the storm approaches, the already disordered existence of Hushpuppy and her volatile father are thrown into yet further turmoil as we watch them struggle through the devastation of the storm and its aftermath. 
Throughout the action, Hushpuppy remains a sturdy and resilient master of survival, an instantly likeable character whose force and presence far surpass her tiny stature. As the world around her crumbles, her relationship with her troubled father grows closer and their defiance and libertarianism even stronger. When at one point they, along with their colourful troupe of fellow survivors, are herded up by social services, we find ourselves urging them to break free of the confinements of the official shelter, to escape the well-meaning staff and return to the paradoxical safety of their home. The fact is the characters of this film cannot exist in the ordered world that lies beyond the Bayou. They do not need help and will resist it to the end. Indeed, the thought of that world being forced on them is almost frightening. 
None of the actors in Beasts of the Southern Wild  are professionally trained; one of the leads was, and still remains, a bakery owner in New Orleans. It is perhaps this very honesty, the unrehearsed nature of the dialogue and rawness of the performances that really provide the true beauty of the film. The action is real, gritty and at times uncomfortable; there is no glossy finish given to the grim reality of the characters&#8217; lives. Instead we are given an unsettling portrayal of poverty and the simple cruelty of life. 
But as close to the bone as it can be, at times this film is as far from reality as you can get. The appearance of aurochs, giant prehistoric hooved creatures that have escaped the ice caps, takes the action into an entirely different, almost magical realist, place. These creatures could be read in many ways, perhaps symbolic of the destruction of the natural world or even as the constant threat of death. But perhaps more poignantly they are the embodiment of Hushpuppy&#8217;s own fears, the looming threats of her future that she must face up to and reconcile with as life as she knows it begins to change irreversibly. 
Benh Zeitlin&#8217;s take on the Hurricane Katrina disaster deserves every prize it has already collected and there will surely be more to come. It combines the rawness and honesty of a life under threat with the magical wanderings of a small child, a lead who is able to find safety and calm in nature even while it destroys the world around her. It is a story of endurance:uplifting, poetic and brilliant.
<pre>Image taken from: http://www.flygirlblog.com/2012/06/beasts-of-the-southern-wild.html</pre>

Beasts of the Southern Wild: A Unique Spin on Hurricane Katrina

Britain&#8217;s growing class of the educated yet unemployed are turning to postgraduate studies and valueless internships 
  
Last week I found myself in a pub talking (against my will) to a self-proclaimed entrepreneur, an inebriated online trader of printer cartridges who poured at least 50 per cent of his drink into his shoes. He was a strange sort, a drinker of WKD for one. But what made this particular gentleman more memorable still was what he revealed to me &#8211; that he was abandoning his entrepreneurial endeavours and returning to university, all because “he couldn’t think of anything else to do.” 
Hearing someone take on a second degree with such indifference is quite a rarity these days. And not without reason. Studying for a postgraduate degree is a financial commitment not for the faint-hearted. 
Tuition fees for one year of postgraduate study vary from as little as £3,000 to as much as £30,000. And they’re rising still. Data collected by The National Society of UK Tuition Fees puts the average figure around the £6,500 mark for the academic year 2011-2012, a 24 per cent increase on figures for 2010-2011. To add to the joy, funding for courses is also decreasing. Even <a href="http://www.direct.gov.uk">Directgov</a> admits “there’s a lot of competition for postgraduate funding”. Well that&#8217;s good to know. 
For the majority who don’t receive funding there are other options &#8211; taking out a career development loan for one. Far less attractive than your bog standard student loan, the interest rates on a career development loan are around 9.9 per cent, cheap by comparison with unsecured lending but by all other counts pretty darn high. With the prospect of such unappealing repayments, it is unsurprising more and more postgraduates are choosing to split their studies part time and working alongside them. And that&#8217;s only if the course allows it. 
So considering the ever growing monetary burden of a second degree, why did UCAS report a record number of postgraduate applications this year? It’s pretty simple really: the sticky black web of the job market. With so many highly qualified, capable graduates flooding the scene, making yourself stand out has become key. It’s no longer a case of being an interesting person. You&#8217;re a cage fighting poet who restores WWII tanks in your spare time? Not good enough. 
The key to dodging the unemployment bullet is now a master’s, heck why not a PhD too. As the number of unemployed new graduates rises, the value of the undergraduate degree decreases. For those of us who took the decision to study an arts subject this is magnified further. I might as well state on my CV, “I know this degree has no practical application but, let me tell you, I had a GREAT time.” 
Employers have the pick of the bunch and they’re going to make the most of it. When faced with so many tantalisingly over qualified potential employees, why wouldn’t they? Unfortunately that leaves the rest of us with GCSEs, A-Levels and degrees that just aren’t quite enough. Whether we&#8217;re being priced out or not, the pressure on new graduates to gain further qualifications is growing. 
So what for those who decide against further financial drain? How else can we stand out from the crowd? Ah yes &#8211; the internship. That old fruit. With so few jobs and so many unemployed, we find ourselves part of a growing culture that encourages unpaid work under the guise of professional development. Organisations need staff but they can’t afford them, people need jobs but can&#8217;t get them. The result is an influx of unpaid interns. 
Traditionally an internship provided a structured training programme that more often than not offered paid employment at its conclusion. An internship benefitted both intern and employer, providing training and development to prepare both for eventual employment. For some lucky people this is still the case, but for most, it has evolved into long hours slaving under the iron fist of a sweaty browed, tight-trousered buffoon who can’t be bothered to do his filing. 
Instead of a scheme of structured development, days are spent going on cupcake runs (yes, really) for borderline sociopaths who address themselves in the third person and would struggle to pick out your face let alone your name. And don&#8217;t even entertain the idea of employment at the end of it; this is purely for the pleasure of “experience on your CV”. Such a system is not only exploitative but also brazenly elitist, because few young people &#8211; not even entrepreneurial printer cartridge vendors &#8211; could realistically maintain financial independence without an income. 
For now we seem to be a little stuck &#8211; stuck in a murky pool of unemployment quick sand with the only way out ending in almost certain financial ruin. And there doesn&#8217;t appear to be any sign of that changing. Until the government takes steps to change the pitiful higher education funding system and put an end to internship programmes that both exploit and exclude, young people will continue to fight a losing financial battle. 
So we are faced with a decision: take the crippling financial hit and undertake further studies? Or face the job market without, driving out applications for months, even years, until someone opens a (menial administrative) door for you? Personally I’m opting for the latter. Right now, the thousands I have already amassed in undergraduate debt will be quite enough. For me, unlike my sticky-shoed friend, there’s no going back.
<pre>Image from: http://06880danwoog.com/2009/08/24/the-library-listens/</pre>

Rosie Martin