Documentry Film "Life, Animated" opens today

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Film follows Owen Suskind, son of reporter Ron Suskind from when he was 2, to becoming non verbal at age 3 to a the verbal young adult he is today, The central role of Disney charactors in Owen's progression is explored.

Los Angeles Times review

A.V. Club review

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The film will be shown on the A & E network Saturday at 8PM

The film has been nominated for an Oscar

Documentarian Roger Ross Williams on Oscar Nomination for ‘Life, Animated’

It is an absolutely amazing documentary, probably one of my favorites. I can't find the words to accurately express just how much I think of it. <3

Watched it last Monday on BBC 4 ("Storyville"- British version), it was a truly wonderful documentary (one of the best ever) and I'm not surprised that it's been nominated for many awards. There is always something out-there that can unlock the voices and potentially of nonverbal individuals with autism; Carly Fleischmann wasn't the first, and Owen Suskind certainly isn't the last. I think his ASD classification would be somewhere in between "late onset" regressive autism and the very rarely diagnosed "childhood disintegrative disorder" (Heller's syndrome), although today in my analysis he would functioning at the "moderate" end of the autistic spectrum.

I really loved the part (don't know if it was shown in America) when he was imitating parrot Iago's voice line (Gillbert Gotfried) from the Aladdin scene where he encourages Grand Vizier Jafar (Jonathan Freeman, who was also excellently re-vocalizing Jafar's lines) to subvert the order of the Sultan of Agrabah by marrying Princess Jasmine. Oh and last thing, Jafar ABSOLUTELY petrified me as a child and it took me years to overcome my classically conditioned fear of him (he was my former all-time animated arch-enemy as diametrically opposed to my later animated hero Marvin the Martian) since transforming into that giant, vicious cobra! It was the main reason (now one of my all time favorites) why I once hated the film Aladdin.