Henry: The Inevitable Verdict of Life

Henry is an emotionally touching short film by Quebec actor Yan England, which is a 2013 Oscar Nominee for Best Live-Action Short Film. The film is about an 84-year-old concert pianist suffering from Alzheimer’s, whose life is thrown into turmoil when his wife mysteriously disappears. The aging musician is tossed between feelings of hope and suffering as he searches in vain for his lost love, while reminiscing about their past together.

Henry, which England financed out of his own pocket, is an ambitious attempt to portray the world of worsening dementia from the inside. Gérard Poirier plays the pianist, Henry, and Louise Laprade portrays his wife, Maria. The 29-year-old England says the film was inspired by the experiences of his own grandfather, who developed Alzheimer’s disease and died three years ago at age 96.

Henry: The Inevitable Verdict of Life (Official Trailer)

Henry: The Inevitable Verdict of Life (Full Version, Fr.)

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The Walk of Death: Nik Wallenda Walks Across Niagara Falls

The Wallenda family likes challenges, and Nik Wallenda had plenty of them tonight when he attempted to do what nobody had ever done before: A high wire walk directly over the precipice at Niagara Falls and 190 feet above the churning torrent below. Although he was tethered to the wire to prevent falling to a near-certain death, the seventh-generation funambulist still had to contend with wind, water and an unfamiliar wire when he attempted the high-wire walk from the U.S. to Canada.

In 2008, Wallenda broke a high-wire record when he walked and bicycled on a tightrope high above the buildings in Newark, New Jersey. Today he embarked on a far more arduous trek: walking across a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Confronted by all these life-threatening perils, Nik Wallenda, descendant of the legendary circus act The Flying Wallendas, successfully tightroped 1,800 feet in the dark of night over treacherous waters and rocks across Niagara Falls and managed to make it all the way across.

About a dozen other tightrope artists have crossed the Niagara Gorge downstream, dating back to Jean Francois Gravelet, aka The Great Blondin, in 1859. However, no one has walked directly over the falls, and authorities haven’t allowed any tightrope acts in the area since 1896. It took Wallenda two years to persuade U.S. and Canadian authorities to allow it, and many civic leaders hoped to use the publicity to jump=start the region’s struggling economy, particularly on the U.S. side of the falls.

Read more about Nik Wallenda’s daredevil walk in The New York Times here.

Nik Wallenda Walks Across The Niagara Falls

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The Walk of Death: Nik Wallenda Walks Across Niagara Falls

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