In an apparent gambit to head off a legal challenge, the charity that operates a nursing home for entertainment industry workers said it has "no plans" to issue eviction notices to more than 100 residents.
On the face of it, the announcement makes it seem as though the Motion Picture & Television Fund, operator of the Woodland Hills facility, is backpedaling on its decision to close the nursing home. In fact, it doesn't change the reality that the retirees will soon have to find a new place to live.
"Nothing in the board's plan has changed in terms of the decision to close the hospital and long-term care facility by the end of the year," said Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for the fund.
The announcement struck some as little more than a legal maneuver to forestall the filing of an anticipated lawsuit by residents' families, alleging that the charity has broken its commitment to provide lifetime care.
Residents and their families said they were first told by nursing home administrators that they would begin receiving notices of "intent to relocate" 60 days after the closing was announced in mid-January. The charity's board said it could no longer afford to operate the hospital and nursing home because of rising costs and declining reimbursements.
But such arguments failed to convince residents and families, who believe the fund's board had reneged on its promise of "taking care of our own." They've mounted a campaign to keep the home afloat and retained law firm Girardi & Keese to fight the board's decision.
On Friday, Jim O'Callahan, an attorney at Girardi & Keese, said a fund representative told him the charity's board would present a proposal by the end of the month aimed at addressing the residents' concerns.
"We would hope and expect that their proposal would address the concerns that we've articulated, which is to keep people in their home and ensure that the fund addresses its historical goals and aims," O'Callahan said.
Fund spokeswoman Davis, however, said there was no proposal.
So far, about 11 of the 100 residents have been relocated to other homes. Fund officials say they are in the process of identifying suitable homes for the residents and have assigned "care teams" to assist them. Some residents, however, have complained that there is a shortage of available beds at quality homes and that social workers have been pressuring them to move out against their wishes.
-- Richard Verrier
Photo: A view of the nursing home operated by the Motion Picture & Television Fund. Photo credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times
'Battlestar Galactica': 'Daybreak, Part 1'
The following post discusses "Daybreak, Part 1," Friday's episode of "Battlestar Galactica."
What follows are my thoughts on the episode, which begins the show's series finale.
I hope to interview executive producer Ron Moore and other people associated with the show about the finale next week. That material will be posted after Part 2 of the finale airs on March 20.
There's more info on this site about "Battlestar Galactica":
Look here for a discussion of "Islanded in a Stream of Stars," the March 6 episode. Look here for an interview with Michael Taylor, the writer of "Islanded in a Stream of Stars." "Battlestar Galactica" will be the subject of a panel discussion at the United Nations. For more on that, look here. Look here for an interview with Bradley Thompson and David Weddle regarding "Someone to Watch Over Me," the Feb. 27 episode of "Battlestar Galactica.""Battlestar" fans should be sure to keep an eye on "CSI." At leasttwo people associated with the Sci Fi show will make appearances in anupcoming episode of the CBS drama. For more on that, look here. Look here for an interview with Jane Espenson regarding "Deadlock," the Feb. 20 episode of "Battlestar Galactica." Look here for an interview with Ryan Mottesheard and Espenson regarding "No Exit," the Feb. 13 episode. Look herefor an interview with Michael Angeli, the writer of "Blood on theScales," the Feb. 6 episode. Look here for an interview with Mark Verheiden, the writer of "The Oath," the Jan. 30 episode.Look herefor an interview with executive producer Ronald D. Moore, who wrote anddirected "A Disquiet Follows My Soul," which aired Jan. 23. Look here for interviews with Moore and with the writers and the director of "Sometimes a Great Notion," which aired Jan. 16. Look here for a recent interview with actor Tahmoh Penikett, who plays Helo on "Battlestar."
OK, on to some thoughts on the first hour of "Daybreak."
True to form, the Old Man is going to roll the hard six.
Adama is going to take the grand old lady out in style. With an all-volunteer crew, they're going to jump the Galactica into the heart of Cavil's evil empire, to find out once and for all who or what Hera is and what the hell it all means.
True to form, Gaius Baltar, when forced to make a choice, didn't make the altruistic decision. By staying with the fleet, he cements his position as its de facto leader, or at least its pretender to the throne. How can he deny Caprica Six the moment she has sought -- the moment when, together, they might know the truth of the Opera House visions and finally get some answers about what it all means?
Because he's the kind of man who would hit his father with a newspaper and scream at him for ruining Baltar's hot date. As Skulls said, "The more things change…"
True to form, Anders searches for the perfect connection, the illuminating moment of action. Even as a Cylon tethered to the Galactica's innards, his quest is the same -- to forget himself and be the still point inside the "perfection of creation."
What's the Old Man's plan? What will he even do if he gets Hera? How is one old bucket going to take on the Cylon mothership?
We only have to wait a week to find out. Grrrrr…..
What if you went to the theater and they told you, after the first act, to get out and come back a week later to see Act 2 and Act 3? You would grind your teeth into dust and grumble.
Truth be told, I don't feel as though I can judge this first hour of the three-hour finale until I've seen the whole thing. The final 15 minutes were admirably taut. The rest was evocative, yet there were some pieces that were obviously meant to be seen within a greater whole.
What was the "one hour" duty that Adama was being asked to do? Does that refer to the decommissioning of the Galactica or something to do with that assignment?
What was the purpose of showing a drunk Lee trying to get a pigeon out of his house?
The scenes that showed the characters' lives "before the fall" were perhaps meant to highlight what had changed -- or what had not changed -- over time. Were we supposed to gather that Lee was a lost cause back then, a hard-partying pilot with little direction? (He couldn't be the driver who killed Roslin's family, could he? Surely not.) If so, we got so little context with the pigeon scene that it was hard to know what that was all about.
Well, at least we know what happened to Racetrack.
I don't mean to be facetious. And I have a feeling I may love "Daybreak" once I've seen the whole thing together. But I think it was the kind of finale that was meant to be seen all together. Networks have their needs, however, and so we're seeing "Daybreak" over two weeks instead of all in one night. It's frustrating, but there it is.
In terms of mood, "Daybreak" certainly did have an "end of the line" feeling. It is all coming down to a few more moves on the chessboard. The board is green, the ship is ready to jump.
And there's only one place for this thing to go. Ron Moore said in an interview last July that the finale has a relatively simple "through line."
It's actually worth quoting that part of the interview, I think.
MR: And speaking of the series finale, you’re happy with how that came out?
RDM: Very pleased with it. It came together all at once and it was a strange experience. In the writers’ room, we spent the first day [of breaking that episode] in a lot of difficulty, a lot of frustration. We sort of knew what the plot was, we knew the action story, we knew the plot of the finale. We spent that whole first day just struggling with the mechanics of the plot, how you got from A to B. We were spinning our wheels. I went home and I was in the shower and I had this “Duh†moment â€" the show was never about that. That’s not why I love the show. It’s not about the plot.
I went into the writers’ room the next day and wrote on the big dry-erase board, “It’s the characters, stupid,†and the writers laughed and we all sat back and said, “Who gives a [expletive] about the plot? Let’s just talk about these characters.â€
MR: And what happens to these people.
RDM: Who are these people, how do we want their stories to end, what is it really about? Once we did that, it all broke free. And then it was, “OK, this is what the finale is about.†And the plot was simple, the finale has a fairly simple through-line to it. But it’s really not about that. It’s really about these people you’ve taken this journey with and what the end of their stories are going to be.
*****
"How can they wrap it all up in two hours?" my husband asked as Part 1 of "Daybreak" ended. It's a reasonable question. And it depends on what you mean by "it." Will we get answers to every single lingering question? I'm guessing not, and I'm betting fans' mileage will vary in terms of how satisfying the "question-answering" part of the finale will be.
In an effort to assess where we stand, here's a list of questions that Moore told Alan Sepinwall would be addressed this season. Let's see what is still left on the list (what do you know -- after I published my "Daybreak" post, I went over to Sepinwall's site and saw that he'd also posted an assessment of where we stand with the list of questions. His take on the episode and what's been answered so far is here):
AS: The identity of the final Cylon, we will find this out?
RDM: Yeah. [Mo here: Answered -- Ellen.]
The origin and nature of the Final Four and how they're different from the rest of them?
Yes. [Answered.]
The origin of the rest of the skinjobs?
Yes. [Answered.]
What happened to Earth and what happened to the 13th Colony?
Yes. [What happened to Earth -- Answered. What happened to the 13th Colony -- partly answered or fully answered? The 13th Tribe, the Cylons, left Kobol and settled on Earth -- does that cover it? Tell me in comments if you consider the second part of the question fully answered.]
Who, if anyone, is orchestrating all of this?
Basically, yeah. I don't know if it's going to be wrapped up in a neat bow. The show has an answer for it, whether it's a satisfying answer, I don't know. [Not answered yet]
Will "All this has happened before and it will happen again" be explained in some way?
Yes. [I'd call that partly answered -- there have clearly been Cylon and human wars for hundreds or thousands years. Do you consider this question answered?]
The opera house?
Yes. [Not answered yet.]
What happened to Kara when she went through the Maelstrom?
Pretty much. [Not answered yet. I'm guessing she was a beneficiary of the kind of "organic memory transference" technology that the Final Five used, but we don't know for sure.]
Identity and nature of the "head" characters?
Yes. [Not answered yet. I'm guessing they're Cylon projections of some kind.]
Tigh and Six's baby, and whether that means Cylons can breed?
Yes. That's not a "yes" to whether they can breed -- the question will be answered. [Answered.]
The fate of Boomer and whether there are other 1's, 4's and 5's floating out there?
Yes. [Answered. Boomer, as well as Cavil, Simon and Doral (at least one of each), are all aboard the Colony.]
Roslin's health?
Yes. [Not fully answered, but it's not looking good.]
*****
Of course, you may have other outstanding questions you wish to see addressed. Feel free to share them in comments. But all in all, if the bigger questions listed above are dealt with in fairly satisfying ways, I think the finale should work for me.
At this stage, I'm hoping for a mixture of reasonably complete answers to those "mythology" questions, if you will, and the kind of character-based conclusion that, say, "The Shield" gave us. That show left us with many, many things to ponder -- so many lines and moments and scenes and ideas from that show's last two episodes were stuck inside my head for weeks.
But the show stopped at a stopping point and told me where these people that I cared about ended up, you know? And that's what I want here.

Having spend so much time with these characters, I want to see where they end up on their emotional journeys. And it certainly looks as though that's one of the big things Moore is aiming to provide. It's what we have been getting a lot of in these last few weeks.
And in "Daybreak," before we get to the end, we saw the beginnings, or most characters' pre-attack lives. As I write this, and as I watched the episode (twice), I began to think more and more about what those flashback scenes were showing us.
And this being "Battlestar," there's no definitive answer to that.
Was Kara's life "better" before the apocalypse? It sure seemed to be. Her life since the Cylons attacked has been little but pain and struggle and grinding duty. Yet in spite of all that, she's come to know that she is something special, and that she is unique in all the universe.
Was Lee's life "better" before? Surely not. The contrast between the pre-attack Lee and the post-attack Lee could not have been more stark. The Lee we've seen in this fourth season has a spine and drive and knows where he stands. He doesn't have time for Baltar's games and the kind of "woe is me" complaining he used to engage in. Lee has found out what kind of leader he can be, what kind of man he is, and he appears to have achieved much more than he would have in his old life.
Before the Cylon attack, Anders was a jock being asked the kind of questions that professional jocks always get asked. Post-Nebula, however, he's hooked into something far more profound than a good game of Pyramid. His true nature as an architect of a whole generation of Cylons has come to the fore, and the connections he shares now, even in his Hybrid state, have to be better than being asked for the 200th time about his team's stats.
And Baltar. Seeing that scene of him with his father explains a lot. The apple sure doesn't fall far from the tree. Baltar's dad looked to be a smart, snarky guy who thoroughly enjoyed stirring the pot and making trouble. It's no wonder Baltar turned out to be a very similar man (with an added helping of craven selfishness).
I found the Baltar story line left me full of questions -- questions that have been arising for some time. If I'm honest, I'd have to say that the character feels fairly defanged at this point.
After all, if none of the characters we know buy Baltar's act any more, how are we supposed to take his cult seriously? Most people with any brains see him as a sham, so how can we take his followers as anything but misguided people at best or fools at worst?
When one of his followers talked about how much support he has in the fleet, I was frankly surprised. Maybe I need to watch all of Season 4 again, but at this stage, I'm not sure why his cult is so influential and how it got that way. I was under the impression that he had sway over a fringe group, and I can see how maybe that fringe group may have -- maybe -- attracted more followers in the post-Earth chaos.
But it's not as though his wireless broadcasts and sermons were really offering people anything concrete or all that galvanizing in terms of an ideology or plan. Still, he now he appears to be a pretty big cheese in the fleet once again -- and that just seems odd, given that he was the puppet ruler under the thumb of the hated occupiers on New Caprica. I know Baltar's supposed to be the politician with more than nine lives, but his current cult-leader career feels like one iteration too many.
Perhaps I'm not stating it well, but my general feeling is that there used to be much higher stakes in story lines involving Baltar. Stakes that felt more real. James Callis is a very good actor, and I can see why the show want to keep him in the mix, but I wonder if the wily Baltar has outlived his usefulness at this point. And who knows, now that he's chosen to stay behind, we may not see much of him next week (however most of my predictions -- about anything, ever -- turn out to be wrong).
You'll notice that I haven't said a word about Laura Roslin's story line. It's hard to know what to say. I've been avoiding talking about her flashbacks.
If what's come before this point in the review isn't particularly coherent, I apologize. And if what I say now is self-indulgent, I apologize in advance.
When I write a critique of something, I can't help but bring myself to it. And I feel like I've already told you a lot about what matters to me, or what's interesting to me, every time I've written about "Battlestar Galactica."
I write about the show a lot because it touches something deep in me. "Battlestar" has frequently gotten to me on an emotional level, but tonight…
I found it very hard to get past the scene in which Laura is told about the death of her family in a car crash. A few days ago, someone I love was killed in a car crash. Two cars briefly touched, and then in an instant, for no reason, my cousin, Kevin Gray, was dead.
So.
I spent Friday afternoon and evening with my extended tribe, the Keating-Murray-Gray-Sullivan-Ryan-O'Brien clan, at Kevin's wake. I wasn't sure I'd be in any shape to write anything tonight -- I thought about just turning the whole discussion of the episode over to you, because I'm sure you'll all have interesting things to say.
I think I'll just go that route now.
Over to you, readers. Thanks.
Obama spokesman 'enjoyed' lashing of CNBC host
The White House's chief spokesman on Friday said he enjoyed watching 'The Daily Show' host Jon Stewart give a lashing to CNBC's Jim Cramer over how he and the business network have covered the collapsing economy.
Shopping Lists Replace Price Tags At Art Sale
These tough economic times have forced many artists to get creative about survival. Bartering paintings for goods is one way of coping when cash is in short supply. An exhibition that began in Philadelphia and opened in New York this weekend puts art up for barter.
CULTURE: Ethiopian Film Takes Top Honours at FESPACO
OUAGADOUGOU, Mar 14 (IPS)Filmmaker Haile Gerima’s Ethiopian movie "Teza" has won the Golden Stallion of Yennenga at the 21st Panafrican Festival of Cinema and Television (Fespaco) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
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