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Reviews Written By: A126KX6FVI4T66

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	My Left Foot
	"kind of a gritty movie"	2009-11-14
A poor Irish family has more room for the cripple than most rich families ever make. A man who paints with his left foot and learns to talk at 19 is someone who is entirely different than ordinary people. What is inside his head is not reflected by how he is able to move his body. Once he learns to type there seems to be no stopping him? Daniel Day-Lewis has been one of my favorite actors since I saw The Last of the Mohicans (Director's Expanded Edition). Bringing to life this special person makes him a special actor. It seems strange that out of such a gritty grinding poor place should come a picture of courage and endurance for us all.
	The Dive From Clausen's Pier : A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries (Paperback))
	"a diet of self pity with a frosting of moderate sin"	2009-11-13
"Kilroy was here?" My reaction of this book was when does anything real happen after the guy breaks his neck? The nasty self-pity trip here makes me sick. Like hitting yourself on the head, so good when you stop reading this! If they are giving literary prizes for this sort of novel, we should look to changing the fellows doing the judging.
	The Eye of the World
	"long drawn out sword and sorcery"	2009-11-06
Three young men are pursued by a kind of troll guided by eyeless half men that are the tools of the bound evil one. There is some destiny at work for five young people from a small farming community as they fight their way across the country toward Tar Valon and the Aes Sedai who protect the world from the dark ones and the creature of the Blight who serve the evil one. Plagued by nightmares in which the evil taunts them, all three farm boys rapidly become hardened warriors. The final battle at the eye of the world turns out to be just the beginning for Rand who is to become the Dragon Reborn of legend.
	X-Men 3 - The Last Stand [Blu-ray]
	"Do mutants really exist with strange powers?"	2009-11-01
They recently discovered a family of people whose genes keep them from having heart disease. People who bleed or have cleft palettes are well known from inbreeding as recessive genes. There are bald people, blue eyes and red hair and other strange variations in complexion and even size, but what is the closest to a beneficial mutation? That evolution hasn't stopped is well known, but it usually takes things like ice ages for the results to become apparent. A war between types of humans has been found in the archaeological record between Neanderthal and anatomically modern humans from about 40000 bc to 20000 bc. What made the superficially weaker humans able to survive when the stronger Neanderthals couldn't? The X-men comics have always attracted the social misfits and geeks among us who think that ordinary people mistreat them. A lot of the misfits end up in prison because they use violence as a means to fight back. Those misfits who only want to live peacefully and try to get along aren't always very successful. This movie about all out war might be the future when global warming makes pressure on our current population and forces those who have abilities to actually use them to survive. Until then the misfits or mutants try to blend in? So much for movie special effects and fantasy...
	Mystic River (3 Disc Deluxe Edition)
	"clearer than the book"	2009-11-01
Sean Penn's acting actually makes the petty crook come alive better than in the book. Three boys just messing around on the city streets in a poor suburb are targeted by predatory adults. One of them gets into the car which the policemen who aren't. Their lives are forever changed by that one moment. The boy who gets in and his two friends become grown ups in a strange way:one a cop, one a crook and the other just a struggling confused fellow who drinks way too much. The death of the 19 year old daughter of the crook brings out old time troubles that had been mostly forgotten, like a murder and that time locked in the cellar. What results is a tragedy where again the third guys gets in another car with two predators. Who the real killer is comes as a big surprise to everyone.
	X-Men - The Last Stand (Widescreen Edition)
	"Do mutants really exist with strange powers?"	2009-11-01
They recently discovered a family of people whose genes keep them from having heart disease. People who bleed or have cleft palettes are well known from inbreeding as recessive genes. There are bald people, blue eyes and red hair and other strange variations in complexion and even size, but what is the closest to a beneficial mutation? That evolution hasn't stopped is well known, but it usually takes things like ice ages for the results to become apparent. A war between types of humans has been found in the archaeological record between Neanderthal and anatomically modern humans from about 40000 bc to 20000 bc. What made the superficially weaker humans able to survive when the stronger Neanderthals couldn't? The X-men comics have always attracted the social misfits and geeks among us who think that ordinary people mistreat them. A lot of the misfits end up in prison because they use violence as a means to fight back. Those misfits who only want to live peacefully and try to get along aren't always very successful. This movie about all out war might be the future when global warming makes pressure on our current population and forces those who have abilities to actually use them to survive. Until then the misfits or mutants try to blend in? So much for movie special effects and fantasy...
	Farmer Boy (Little House)
	"don't make me read another word!"	2009-10-31
Except for the historical accuracy of pre-1900 farm life, this book is just really hard to read with the baby wording and situations that may be autobiographical, but could be made at least readable. I don't know exactly why I hate reading this one, but it just turns my stomach. Maybe it is the complete acceptance of an outmoded set of values that would have allowed a set of bullies to kill a school teacher in rural New York ( and admitted by the author that the previous school teacher died from his beating). I don't think the values assumed in this novel are ones that one would want to raise up in your children.
	Farmer Boy
	"don't make me read another word!"	2009-10-31
Except for the historical accuracy of pre-1900 farm life, this book is just really hard to read with the baby wording and situations that may be autobiographical, but could be made at least readable. I don't know exactly why I hate reading this one, but it just turns my stomach. Maybe it is the complete acceptance of an outmoded set of values that would have allowed a set of bullies to kill a school teacher in rural New York ( and admitted by the author that the previous school teacher died from his beating). I don't think the values assumed in this novel are ones that one would want to raise up in your children.
	Farmer Boy CD
	"don't make me read another word!"	2009-10-31
Except for the historical accuracy of pre-1900 farm life, this book is just really hard to read with the baby wording and situations that may be autobiographical, but could be made at least readable. I don't know exactly why I hate reading this one, but it just turns my stomach. Maybe it is the complete acceptance of an outmoded set of values that would have allowed a set of bullies to kill a school teacher in rural New York ( and admitted by the author that the previous school teacher died from his beating). I don't think the values assumed in this novel are ones that one would want to raise up in your children.
	Mary White
	"A narated historical biography"	2009-10-28
The famous award winning small town Midwest newspaper publisher and author loses his daughter in a riding accident when she hits her head on a tree while riding her horse after waving at a boy who was sweet on her. The whole piece seems to be about how difficult and idealistic this teen age girl was who was just about to graduate from high school. She breaks her arm cranking her model T Ford and that sets off a chain of parental disciplines. For the most part with excellent grades and very good behavior, she is a model daughter who is head strong and at her Dad's teaching, very idealistic about discrimination, the elderly, unions and human rights in general. The time period is the active one of post world war one when horses still were used on a great many roads and farms in the Midwest. I liked the movie, but it was kind of sentimental.
	Mary White
	"A narated historical biography"	2009-10-28
The famous award winning small town Midwest newspaper publisher and author loses his daughter in a riding accident when she hits her head on a tree while riding her horse after waving at a boy who was sweet on her. The whole piece seems to be about how difficult and idealistic this teen age girl was who was just about to graduate from high school. She breaks her arm cranking her model T Ford and that sets off a chain of parental disciplines. For the most part with excellent grades and very good behavior, she is a model daughter who is head strong and at her Dad's teaching, very idealistic about discrimination, the elderly, unions and human rights in general. The time period is the active one of post world war one when horses still were used on a great many roads and farms in the Midwest. I liked the movie, but it was kind of sentimental.
	Nighthawks
	"The red army faction/ Baader-Meinhof Group comes to New York?"	2009-10-27
In the 80's international terrorism was new and so was Sylvester Stallone. You can't say the movie is very good, it is just a pioneer of American cops fighting terrorism on their home turf. The mid-set taught by the British agent is that used by them pretty unsuccessfully against the IRA, and here doesn't work very well either. The target here is the UN community in New York and the financial community on Wall street. The world trade buildings were a part of the international trade community in New York, so it appears no one took the movie very seriously? Here two young undercover / decoy detectives are drafted against their will into a terrorist unit. The end results in the movie are good.
	Nighthawks
	"The red army faction/ Baader-Meinhof Group comes to New York?"	2009-10-27
In the 80's international terrorism was new and so was Sylvester Stallone. You can't say the movie is very good, it is just a pioneer of American cops fighting terrorism on their home turf. The mid-set taught by the British agent is that used by them pretty unsuccessfully against the IRA, and here doesn't work very well either. The target here is the UN community in New York and the financial community on Wall street. The world trade buildings were a part of the international trade community in New York, so it appears no one took the movie very seriously? Here two young undercover / decoy detectives are drafted against their will into a terrorist unit. The end results in the movie are good.
	The World Is Not Enough
	"really less than realistic"	2009-10-25
What got me was the handling of weapons grade plutonium with bare hands. Mostly you have to have a clean room with something like leaded glass and a waldo to handle this kind of radiation hazard. If they did what the film showed, they would be dead very quickly. Other than that it is an ordinary bond film. But this kind of mistake in technical things makes me wonder how much other stuff is totally fake as well? Somebody is may believe they can handle weapons grade stuff like this and die? Don't try these stunts at home type of thing...Only after the cold war is over could anyone believe this?
	The World is Not Enough
	"really less than realistic"	2009-10-25
What got me was the handling of weapons grade plutonium with bare hands. Mostly you have to have a clean room with something like leaded glass and a waldo to handle this kind of radiation hazard. If they did what the film showed, they would be dead very quickly. Other than that it is an ordinary bond film. But this kind of mistake in technical things makes me wonder how much other stuff is totally fake as well? Somebody is may believe they can handle weapons grade stuff like this and die? Don't try these stunts at home type of thing...Only after the cold war is over could anyone believe this?
	Woman of the Year
	"he married a man: or a woman who was as good as a man?"	2009-10-24
So you meet this beautiful dame and it is clear she is out of your class, but dumb as you are you go after her anyway. And she appears to yield and you get married, only for you to find you are playing in the band behind her work. Everything goes on the rocks through the rapids in a leaky boat for you and her. I doubt this is a new story: trying to marry a princess if you were just a boy from town must be very like this. She has more languages than the UN and you speak sports, and know the team doctors for the profession football teams. She can't boil water and you are lost at an embassy party for a visiting head of state, who went to the Swiss boarding school in the same town as she did. So what do you talk about after the bedroom? This movie implies that there is some French Republican compromise that can save such a marriage: only Ring Lardner could get away with this sort of comedy fantasy? I loved it still knowing that it was just pie in the sky!
	Searching for Bobby Fischer
	"chess is just a game: more than that and you lose something"	2009-10-22
With chess computers that can beat anybody with a database of all the best games ever played and very deep look ahead ability, humans and chess seem a side issue. Autistic children are a plague of the modern generation: a mathematician who was trained from a very early age in proving and problem solving gave up a fields medal. Teaching you children to be hawks or lions doesn't make them good monkeys as this movie points out. But still it rewards the hawk over the lamb... The ethics of bringing up a child just for one game or one narrow hope in life is probably wrong. Some people find themselves unable to bear losing or admitting they can make mistakes; that stops their learning process in a rut. I liked the movie: it was well acted and well writen.
	Secondhand Lions - New Line Platinum Series
	"Upside down at 90 in the barn"	2009-10-21
Sometimes there really is buried treasure at the end of the story about the mad uncles. In this case the treasure was their stories about the French foreign legion and Africa. A boy with a less than truthful mother finds not one but two father figures in his great uncles. I really enjoyed this movie and the lion Jasmine.
	Smoke Signals
	"the two tonto road trip"	2009-10-21
Sons and fathers on the reservation where there is no future, but a very bad past. Most Native Americans are the survivors of a documented past and a stolen land. We have two young Indian boys who become men when the one who saved Thomas and fathered Victor dies in exile in Arizona. The actors mostly talk with a Canadian accent/ cadence. Since the reservation gambling Native Americans have gained some wealth and maybe a future, but this movie deals with the isolation and desolation along with alcoholism that has plagued them in the 20th century. A culture or cultures on the trail of rebirth needs films like this for identity.
	P.D. James - A Certain Justice
	"a long drawn out set of movies"	2009-10-20
We have to murders and two murders, but the drama is so long drawn out that the interest in the dry mystery sort of wains over time. The strange fellow who murders his prostitute aunt and is gotten off by the female barracuda lawyer for criminal defense who thinks winning is as important as justice. She alienates just about everybody around her from her daughter to the cleaning lady. Her murder is the first and the cleaning lady is the second. The investigator solves both murders, but is only able to bring the cleaning lady's murder to conclusion. I didn't particularly like this mocking of the criminal justice system.
	Cover-Up
	"terrorism in the holyland"	2009-10-19
The terrorist group black October takes responsibility for the bombing of a US Naval base in Israel. The hero meets his previous lover and his best friend while covering the story for an LA newspaper. As a semi-famous best selling writer as well as reporter he seems to have methods of getting to the truth that something was stolen under the cover of the suicide bombing attack. Finding out what that "package' was results in people trying to kill him. The bottom of the mystery is interesting, but we get the feeling he just never gets paranoid enough to solve it without some miracle escapes? I liked the action, but I think the script has the Dolph Lundgren character looking like a dope right up to the end.
	Le Divorce
	"divorce French style"	2009-10-18
They are just ,oh, so, calm about sexual affairs, where and American husband and an American wife are near driven around the bend? The movie kind of makes fun of the French who never talk about money, but have it so on their minds? The Americans never talk about sex, but in this movie the old diplomat does the young American girl in high quality French style? I thought the movie was really terrible in several ways... Sort of like the Russian cart driver who beats his dead horse, taking the French too task for being decadent is very strange. They actually got revolution all wrong at the end of the 18th century and have really never recovered their leadership in culture since the early 20th? After all California seems to be leading in both culture and wine these days.
	The Devil Wears Prada
	"What price success?"	2009-10-14
The young journalist Andy gets a job as an assistant to a fashion dictator and starts to learn about fashion and how to get ahead in the world of New York. Anne Hathaway is beautiful in her before and after roles, but fashion is a very strange mix of art and snobbery that travels better among the rich of the east than the poor of the west. People always feel that they have to dress the role of their current movement, so changes in dress follow the change in times. Taste is another matter and probably can't be dictated by plastic goddesses? The Quaker plain clothes and plain speaking for me. I liked Hathaway, but despised this movie.
	I Remember Mama
	"San Francisco in 1910 with street cars and horses"	2009-10-11
Uncle Chris is a terror to the children? The old world temper of the aunts makes them laugh at the marriage of one to an undertaker. But the picture is of a family of three girls and one boy surviving in a new country with a mother figure to guide them. I liked the movie which is to me overly sentimental. The reading of books by the boarder is a very good touch.
	I Remember Mama
	"San Francisco in 1910 with street cars and horses"	2009-10-11
Uncle Chris is a terror to the children? The old world temper of the aunts makes them laugh at the marriage of one to an undertaker. But the picture is of a family of three girls and one boy surviving in a new country with a mother figure to guide them. I liked the movie which is to me overly sentimental. The reading of books by the boarder is a very good touch.
	Defiance [Blu-ray]
	"a griping story of war in Russia for Jews"	2009-10-10
The Jews in Russia had Russian on the backs and German's hunting them down. The forest became like Robin hood's Sherwood forest: a refuge in both cold and hunger from the killing storm of the war. The three brothers become a leadership of tough love for a Jewish few who escape they're persecutors. The movie has a lot of action and too much blood a death, but is well acted and realistically set.
	Rascal
	"a year of the Raccoon and his boy"	2009-10-10
A young boy growing up in a farming community without a mother runs somewhat wild while building a canoe in the living room. The capture of a baby raccoon changes his outlook on life in 1918 while WWI is going on. The introspection of the boy is probably that of the later man, but the descriptions the forest and streams near his home town is very detailed. The contrast between what a raccoon can do (they seem to resemble monkeys in their intelligence) and what he can't seem to be taught not to do is important. The cage, collar and leach are the beginning of the end for this friendship; I don't think that raccoon are going to be domesticated any time soon. I enjoyed this short novel and think it is a very good book for young people.
	The Flame Trees of Thika
	"growing up in Kenya in 1914"	2009-10-07
The dvd is a sequence of of mini-series episodes from British TV. The representation of African life in newly settled Kenya is fairly accurate from other novels and movies that I have seen. By the British settlers Kenya was looked at as part of the British Empire. The young girl growing up here has stories a lot like American frontier stories about dealing with the natives and the wild life. I enjoyed the descriptions and pictures of the life and the building of the house with the grass roof. The bullying of the natives by the white settlers was somewhat played down, but the clash of cultures was really there.
	Game of Death
	"A mob boss tries to muscle in"	2009-10-06
The first scene is a rare fight between Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee. Late in a reenactment of the last scene of "Fist of Fury" that actor Bruce Lee is playing is shot in the face. He stages his death and sets out to exact his revenge. His girl friend is kidnapped sparking the final showdown. This movie has many later martial arts stars in it and is the last Bruce Lee movie as he died under mysterious circumstances during the filming.
	Brother Cadfael - Leper of St. Giles
	"nice mystery"	2009-10-04
As much as I enjoyed this movie and the acting I have several points: 1) the wedding and funeral church music although beautiful dates to 14th century not 12th? 2) the costumes seem closer to a later period as well This period is the early Norman 12th or 13th century, before much of the clothing technology of the middle east had reached England and Europe. Trumpet sleeves in women dresses,and pointed toe men shoes with men in short tunics and hose is what the web suggests, with common folk mush less embellished. Well, the result was a good representation of at least later England. The plot of an arranged marriage for wealth seems to be much what one would expect, but courtly love too was a later invention of the epic poems sung by troubadours. The murders are for wealth and for revenge, but well thought out.