Knock Down the House Review: A Reminder That AOCs Triumph Almost Wasnt

Table Of Content

• 'Challengers' Heats Up: How Zendaya's Star Power and a Sexy Love Triangle Could Give Gen Z Its Next Movie Obsession
• The Pringles x Crocs Collab Is the Crossover We Didn’t Know We Needed — Until We Did
• Steve Carell Joins Tina Fey in Netflix Comedy Series ‘Four Seasons’
• Sundance Film Review: ‘Knock Down the House’
• Paul Auster, Prolific and Experimental Man of Letters and Filmmaker, Dies at 77

Nothing is given to us—even now Ocasio-Cortez is the target of establishment fundraising campaigns from both sides of the aisle to get her out of office—so everything, then, is there for the taking, if only we try. Her words offer a pragmatic kind of hope, moving in its simple premise that the oppression of the status quo automatically ordains the few who are willing to challenge it with purpose. If Americans, down on their luck in a country ruled by wealth, are looking for a champion, they have it. But Lears started filming AOC before she was AOC, and in the context of those other candidates who ran people-funded campaigns like her—and lost.

'Challengers' Heats Up: How Zendaya's Star Power and a Sexy Love Triangle Could Give Gen Z Its Next Movie Obsession

More than 500 protesters have been arrested in the campus anti-Israel protests which have gripped universities from Massachusetts to California in recent days. To watch these highly organized, outside protestors (sic) arrive on campus in vans, construct an encampment, and overtake the Quad just days after it was vandalized with hateful and threatening messages was deeply disturbing,” the statement reads in part. In the wake of the arrests, during which 28 people were taken into custody, university president Gregory L. Fenves issued a statement to the Emory community that swiftly disavowed the “highly organized outside protesters” whom he blamed for the violence. Dozens of anti-Israel protesters were arrested at Emory University Thursday in a violent clash with cops, including at least one professor seen being wrestled to the ground and handcuffed in an online video.

The Pringles x Crocs Collab Is the Crossover We Didn’t Know We Needed — Until We Did

There was not, to my ear, a key reason to reintroduce Hicks, so it may be that prosecutors are seeking to set her up as a key witness. She has been on the team for several years, and she typically sits with Christopher Conroy, another prosecutor, behind the main table. After the hush-money payment became public, Ms. Daniels’s lawyer at the time, Michael Avenatti, provided NBC News with an email from an assistant to Mr. Farro confirming the transfer. Mr. Cohen had used his Trump Organization email address in the communications, but said at the time that company funds were not used. Mr. Farro spent 15 years at First Republic Bank, where he was a senior managing director, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Steve Carell Joins Tina Fey in Netflix Comedy Series ‘Four Seasons’

Their geographic diversity, gender and race — in what became a historic midterm for women and people of color — was meant to illustrate “a group that would make a national movement,” Lears said. Lears selected four subjects for the feature that would ultimately blossom into her film Knock Down the House, premiering on Netflix this week. She trained her lens on Cori Bush, a woman of color who thought Missouri’s seats in the House of Representatives should reflect its diverse populace. She followed Nevada’s Amy Vilela on her tireless crusade to overhaul healthcare after insurance complications resulted in the death of her daughter.

"The record player was still there when we bought the house, so that was really cool." "I think the biggest thing that stood out to me was the architecture of the home because mid-century modern homes are so rare for the area," she said. "We looked past how bad it was because we knew that we could really transform it ourselves. This house has so much potential and we felt very special to be the people to see that." One of the film's most vivid moments comes when a devastated Vilela, faced with election day tallies that eliminate her long-odds bid, falls to her knees and bursts into tears. The attention surrounding Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, has raised the profile of "Knock Down the House.'' It won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival, where Netflix acquired it for $10 million - the biggest documentary sale ever at the festival. It's six months before the primary that turned Ocasio-Cortez into a liberal phenomenon.

“The eyes of the nation and the world are trained on criminal court cases in New York County, whether it’s organized crime, Wall Street cases or federal cases,” Mr. Pigott said. But just down the street on Foley Square sits Manhattan’s most elegant courthouse building, New York’s Supreme Court, with its sweeping flight of 32 stone steps leading up to a series of imposing Corinthian columns. Trump cracks a small smile as Graff speaks glowingly of her time working for Trump. She says she never had the same day twice and called Trump “fair” as a boss. In the past few minutes, we again heard the name of Hope Hicks, Trump’s spokeswoman during the 2016 campaign and in the White House.

The approach allows the women’s messages to take centerstage and show their determination; Bush has already filed to run again in 2020. And no one can contextualize Ocasio-Cortez better than Ocasio-Cortez. Ticking off all the reasons why no Democrat dared to oppose Crowley in the primaries in 14 years, she concludes that the only possible challenger who could defeat him is “an insurgent outsider candidate that’s a woman of color from the Bronx.” Then she grins. “This is not about electing me to Congress,” says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just before her debate versus longstanding New York Rep. Joe Crowley. The style of Lears’s on-the-fly handheld camerawork reinforces her assumed position as embedded reporter, rather than the well-trained film-maker she is. The scene in which Ocasio-Cortez receives the news that she has beaten the odds to win her district is the kind of footage any documentarian would kill for, and yet Lears must be strategic about how she shoots it.

Vilela also recalled in an interview with HuffPost “the dismissiveness [toward] women, especially in politics” that she experienced. She also chose them because she wanted to document candidates who were running for deeply personal reasons ― partially because their “charismatic presence” would make for a compelling film but also because of logistical reasons. Naturally, Knock Down the House was received with rapturous applause at its premiere at Sundance, where the choir was ready to hear its sermon with ecstatic delight. But such is the seductive emotional power of the film, so sympathetic are its subjects, that it’s hard to imagine it won’t melt at least a few conservative hearts. They say Democrats have to fall in love with their candidates.

Michael Cohen

But Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche said his client’s actions were “run-of-the-mill” business. Nondisclosure agreements are common among the wealthy and famous, he said, and influencing an election is no crime. The week also brought more accusations that Mr. Trump had violated a gag order prohibiting him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and jurors. Justice Juan M. Merchan has not ruled on the prosecution’s request to hold Mr. Trump in contempt, and said he would hold another hearing next Thursday to address allegations of new violations. The Town of Islip in March granted owner Miguel Garzon authorization to demolish the existing building, despite opposition from local historians who still hope to find a last-minute savior to buy or relocate the building. The Brentwood Historical Society is working on a digital replica of a historic Brentwood home, even as the Town of Islip has given its owner permission to demolish the decaying mid-19th century structure to build an office on the site.

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She went to West Virginia’s coalmining belt, where Paula Jean Swearengin ran on a platform of cleansing the pollution that had choked out their community. And she took a special interest in a bartender from the Bronx named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a far-leftist with new ideas and an electrifying presence with which to sell them. The second week of Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial was dominated by four days of testimony by David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, who detailed his efforts to safeguard Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Donald John Trump, mouth-breathing narcissistic xenophobe he may be, does (and I really hate admitting this) somewhat live up to the “anyone can do it! A complete novice from outside the political class bankrolled (and steamrolled) himself into the White House.

He called Mr. Cohen, who spent time in prison on charges stemming from the matter, a criminal who “can’t be trusted.” He said Stormy Daniels was “biased” and had profited from her story. Prosecutors sketched a secret scheme to influence the 2016 election. They said Mr. Trump directed men in his inner circle to suppress negative stories about him and then agreed to cover up the payment to Ms. Daniels after taking the White House. Preservation Long Island listed the Shutt House among seven Long Island properties on a list of endangered historic places this December, a move that Cubie, preservation and advocacy director at the nonprofit, said sometimes helps save historic sites. Froebel has created 3D models of historic Long Island structures before, including a cottage from Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center in Brentwood and a Flanders boarding house. "Imagine having a house back in the day and you could play music everywhere in it from a record player," he says.

Lears follows AOC and three other insurgent, nothing-to-lose female candidates “primary”-ing longtime incumbents from the left. (Her daughter passed away after being refused treatment for not having the right insurance.) All four were “selected” (though it’s a little fuzzy how) by the groups Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress as part of a push for diversity in political representation. Ocasio-Cortez and three other women who challenged congressional incumbents in the 2018 midterm elections — Cori Bush, Paula Jean Swearengin and Amy Vilela — were among the scores of new candidates who entered politics after the 2016 elections.

It also limns, both through AOC’s story and those of the other three progressive challengers tracked here — Cori Bush, Amy Vilela and Paula Jean Swearengin — an extraordinary juncture in American politics when the landscape terraformed in a way that we still haven’t finished mapping. Ocasio-Cortez’s story became the movie’s spine, in part because the couple was also based in New York — their shoestring budget didn’t allow them to travel to the other candidates as much. (They filmed for a year before getting outside financing, via Kickstarter; only after Ocasio-Cortez won her primary in June 2018 did they feel confident about securing industry backing.) Their son, now 3, also accompanied them on the road. “We didn’t have child care, so that was my job,” Blotnick, 39, said. The women’s stories emerge piecemeal in “Knock Down the House,” which follows them on the campaign trail up to election night and, in one case, beyond. Some are more sharply delineated — what makes them run and why — than others.

Firefighters Knock Down Early Morning House Fire In Warrington - Patch

Firefighters Knock Down Early Morning House Fire In Warrington.

Posted: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

The newly minted congresswoman first realizes she has won upon hearing a ruckus while outside the bar where her victory party will be held, and so the shot frantically follows her as she runs inside before cutting to a second camera catching her entry from the front. We share in the overwhelming energy of the room, getting a vicarious taste of the triumph. Nearly everyone who watches the news has seen by now the electric moment captured by news cameras when Ocasio-Cortez realizes, with elated shock, that she’s won the primary. It might be strange to come away from a documentary about Ocasio-Cortez with the fact that she is not extraordinary, but I think she would understand what I mean. ” Ocasio-Cortez says in front of the camera, long before she even gets on the ballot in April 2018. Because the alternative is no one.” It’s an unadorned distillation of the progressive movement’s people-powered momentum post-Trump, whose defeat of the Democratic Party ignited a battle for its soul, one that longtime activists and organizers were ready to wage.