Reviews Written By: A1HY0S5YU5TNJ7provided by Amazon.com |
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 | Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 Lens (350D) (Black) | |
 | "Perfect . . . Almost." | 2008-09-01 |
| I bought this camera nearly a year ago, and I've liked just about everything about this lens. Its size, its image quality, everything. In fact, for my money, it's superior to the XTi since its image quality is better in low light situations. As to why, well, with the XTi, you're fitting 10 megapixels on the same-sized image sensor as the XT, which will create a noisier (grainier) image. The XSi has some advanced hardware that counteracts this tendency. Having said this, however, there is ONE item I wish the XT had--3200 ISO. In fact, neither the XT nor XTi nor XSi, have this high ISO (they all go up to 1600). I like to take pictures with natural light, and having a 3200 ISO will be helpful in extremely dark situations, like the wedding I just went to recently where the dance floor was essentially without light (and I was shooting with a f/1.8 lens). So, if you see yourself taking a lot of photos in low light, you might as well get the Canon 30D body for $650 (the price as of now--Sept 2008). One final item: I have NO idea why this camera as of Sept 1, 2008 costs $698 with the 18-55mm lens. I bought mine almost a year ago for $450 for the exact same combo! If the price doesn't go down, buy a Nikon D60 (cheaper) or Canon XSi (same price as the XT and way more advanced). Or, best yet, buy a Canon 30D and buy the lens separate. With a Canon 30D and a Canon 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 lens, you can essentially handle anything short of pitch-black scenes. | ||
 | Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only - Black) EOS 350D | |
| "Perfect . . . Almost." | 2008-09-01 |
| I bought this camera nearly a year ago, and I've liked just about everything about this lens. Its size, its image quality, everything. In fact, for my money, it's superior to the XTi since its image quality is better in low light situations. As to why, well, with the XTi, you're fitting 10 megapixels on the same-sized image sensor as the XT, which will create a noisier (grainier) image. The XSi has some advanced hardware that counteracts this tendency. Having said this, however, there is ONE item I wish the XT had--3200 ISO. In fact, neither the XT nor XTi nor XSi, have this high ISO (they all go up to 1600). I like to take pictures with natural light, and having a 3200 ISO will be helpful in extremely dark situations, like the wedding I just went to recently where the dance floor was essentially without light (and I was shooting with a f/1.8 lens). So, if you see yourself taking a lot of photos in low light, you might as well get the Canon 30D body for $650 (the price as of now--Sept 2008). One final item: I have NO idea why this camera as of Sept 1, 2008 costs $698 with the 18-55mm lens. I bought mine almost a year ago for $450 for the exact same combo! If the price doesn't go down, buy a Nikon D60 (cheaper) or Canon XSi (same price as the XT and way more advanced). Or, best yet, buy a Canon 30D and buy the lens separate. With a Canon 30D and a Canon 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 lens, you can essentially handle anything short of pitch-black scenes. | ||
 | Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only - Silver) - EOS 350D | |
| "Perfect . . . Almost." | 2008-09-01 |
| I bought this camera nearly a year ago, and I've liked just about everything about this lens. Its size, its image quality, everything. In fact, for my money, it's superior to the XTi since its image quality is better in low light situations. As to why, well, with the XTi, you're fitting 10 megapixels on the same-sized image sensor as the XT, which will create a noisier (grainier) image. The XSi has some advanced hardware that counteracts this tendency. Having said this, however, there is ONE item I wish the XT had--3200 ISO. In fact, neither the XT nor XTi nor XSi, have this high ISO (they all go up to 1600). I like to take pictures with natural light, and having a 3200 ISO will be helpful in extremely dark situations, like the wedding I just went to recently where the dance floor was essentially without light (and I was shooting with a f/1.8 lens). So, if you see yourself taking a lot of photos in low light, you might as well get the Canon 30D body for $650 (the price as of now--Sept 2008). One final item: I have NO idea why this camera as of Sept 1, 2008 costs $698 with the 18-55mm lens. I bought mine almost a year ago for $450 for the exact same combo! If the price doesn't go down, buy a Nikon D60 (cheaper) or Canon XSi (same price as the XT and way more advanced). Or, best yet, buy a Canon 30D and buy the lens separate. With a Canon 30D and a Canon 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 lens, you can essentially handle anything short of pitch-black scenes. | ||
 | Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 Lens (Silver) - EOS 350D | |
| "Perfect . . . Almost." | 2008-09-01 |
| I bought this camera nearly a year ago, and I've liked just about everything about this lens. Its size, its image quality, everything. In fact, for my money, it's superior to the XTi since its image quality is better in low light situations. As to why, well, with the XTi, you're fitting 10 megapixels on the same-sized image sensor as the XT, which will create a noisier (grainier) image. The XSi has some advanced hardware that counteracts this tendency. Having said this, however, there is ONE item I wish the XT had--3200 ISO. In fact, neither the XT nor XTi nor XSi, have this high ISO (they all go up to 1600). I like to take pictures with natural light, and having a 3200 ISO will be helpful in extremely dark situations, like the wedding I just went to recently where the dance floor was essentially without light (and I was shooting with a f/1.8 lens). So, if you see yourself taking a lot of photos in low light, you might as well get the Canon 30D body for $650 (the price as of now--Sept 2008). One final item: I have NO idea why this camera as of Sept 1, 2008 costs $698 with the 18-55mm lens. I bought mine almost a year ago for $450 for the exact same combo! If the price doesn't go down, buy a Nikon D60 (cheaper) or Canon XSi (same price as the XT and way more advanced). Or, best yet, buy a Canon 30D and buy the lens separate. With a Canon 30D and a Canon 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 lens, you can essentially handle anything short of pitch-black scenes. | ||
 | CANON 50mm/f1.8 Canon Camera Lens | |
 | "Excellent for the price" | 2008-08-06 |
| I bought this because every single camera site I've been to said to buy it. And for $80 (which was what I'd paid for it), how can I lose. Now, I've had it for a few months, and what can I say except that it's excellent. Razor-shape images, fast-fast f.18 aperture, and on my 1.6x sensor, roughly 80mm shots--which are perfect for portraits. I don't understand why people say it's built crappily, but again, it's $80, and unless you're a photojournalist who abuses her equipment, why worry about its build quality? A warning, however: 50mm on a cropped-sensor camera, again, will translate into a 80mm focal length, which might be too narrow for most close-up shots outside of portraits. If you want to take any sort of street shot, I'd suggest getting a fast zoom or something like the Tamron 17-50mm. | ||
 | When We Were Orphans : A Novel (Vintage International (Paperback)) | |
 | "Unremarkable writing, daffy plot, weak recycled protagonist" | 2008-07-30 |
| Another disappointment from Kazuo Ishiguro, and the fact that it was nominated for the Booker Prize shows how imbecilic literary fiction prizes are these days. There were many annoying things within this novel, and chief among which is the protagonist Christopher is a passive idiot. Of course, Stevens from Remains of the Day was a passive idiot too, but Stevens was SUPPOSED be an idiot whereas Christopher is supposed to be a celebrated detective. This guy can't solve some kid stealing lunch money much less the most celebrated cases in early 20th-century England! I started getting mad--I always do when I read crap novels--when Christopher is searching for the house his parents supposedly were jailed in. Why he assumes his parents are there is beyond me--it's explained, but it's a VERY weak explanation--and why he would assume they would still be there despite a passage of 20-odd years and the fact that it's in the middle of a war zone is jaw-droppingly idiotic. Along the way, in the middle of the war while searching for his parents, Christopher just happens to be come across his great childhood friend Akira. Think about this for a second. Shanghai has, what, 10 million people, and Christopher, after yearning to see his childhood friend for so long, just happens to come across this guy on the street. Give me the break!!! Contrivance works sometimes--notice the reemergence of the protagonist's childhood enemy in The Kite Runner--but you'd better have a decent plot to hide such contrivance. This novel, sadly, doesn't have a decent plot. In fact, I'm not even sure what the hell Christopher was doing in Shanghai as a detective. What crime was he trying to solve? It's explained very anemically, and the only investigation he does is finding some drunk cop from the old days. He does no interviews, collects no evidence, nothing. And Ishiguro describes him as if he were Holmes or something! Bottom line: a weak effort on Ishiguro's part. He seems to be repeating himself. Jennifer, Christopher's adopted daughter, has suicidal tendencies much like the Japanese woman's daughter in A Pale View of the Hills. Never mind that Jennifer, from her childhood, seems a very vivacious girl with a happy disposition. No, Ishiguro had to make it sad, and what's sadder than a young woman who wants to kill herself? Worst, all his recent male characters seem to be variations of Stevens, the repressed, passive butler in Remains of the Day. Stevens worked because the story NEEDED a Stevens. This story needed a lot more dynamic a protagonist. And the prose is the perfectly understated, narcoleptic prose of his other novels--even though this is ostensibly a detective story set in a major war. Imagine Lars von Trier directing Terminator, and you'd see why such prose is so totally out of place in writing such a story. Bottom line: Ishiguro is starting to look like a guy with a one-trick pony--and he's seriously flogging it for all it's worth. | ||
 | The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, ISBN 0743527100 | |
| "AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME!" | 2008-07-12 |
| Thomas Harris is the real deal, and this is the second time I've read Silence of the Lambs. I loved everything about the story, including: - The well-drawn characters, esp. the heroine: Clarice Starling, the FBI trainee from a poor background. How Harris describes her--her hillbilly idioms, the chip on her shoulder, her perception of sexism from her colleagues--is flat-out brilliant. The other characters are equally well-defined, like her boss Crawford with his dying wife and, of course, Dr. Lecter. - The original, interesting prose. Harris writes prose that's both unique yet utterly unpretentious (unlike, say, Dennis Lehane with his "silkworm[s] of smiles," etc.). For example, in describing a guy nervous about asking Clarice out on a date, Harris writes, "Pilcher polished his teeth, his tongue moving behind his lips like a cat beneath the covers." Brilliant! - The excellent dialog. Again, like the prose, unique yet not contrived. There are so many zingers in the novel, and the dialog adds to the character of the person speaking. Roger Ebert commented about this line in the movie--which was, of course, taken from the novel. In looking over a dead body, Clarice notices the body wore glitter polish on her fingers, and she says, "Looks like town to me." Here, not only is the expression interesting, it shows Clarice's poor background growing up. - Structure. Though Harris doesn't write in super-short prose of, say, James Cain or even Ira Levin, you're never bored in this novel. From beginning to end, you just trust that Harris knows what he's doing--and he does. So . . . overall, 5 stars out of 5. I would recommend this book along with all his other novels, even Hannibal Rising--which, while not his best effort, is still light-years better than any novel by such atrocious writers like Dennis Lehane and James Patterson. | ||
 | Silence of the Lambs | |
| "AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME!" | 2008-07-12 |
| Thomas Harris is the real deal, and this is the second time I've read Silence of the Lambs. I loved everything about the story, including: - The well-drawn characters, esp. the heroine: Clarice Starling, the FBI trainee from a poor background. How Harris describes her--her hillbilly idioms, the chip on her shoulder, her perception of sexism from her colleagues--is flat-out brilliant. The other characters are equally well-defined, like her boss Crawford with his dying wife and, of course, Dr. Lecter. - The original, interesting prose. Harris writes prose that's both unique yet utterly unpretentious (unlike, say, Dennis Lehane with his "silkworm[s] of smiles," etc.). For example, in describing a guy nervous about asking Clarice out on a date, Harris writes, "Pilcher polished his teeth, his tongue moving behind his lips like a cat beneath the covers." Brilliant! - The excellent dialog. Again, like the prose, unique yet not contrived. There are so many zingers in the novel, and the dialog adds to the character of the person speaking. Roger Ebert commented about this line in the movie--which was, of course, taken from the novel. In looking over a dead body, Clarice notices the body wore glitter polish on her fingers, and she says, "Looks like town to me." Here, not only is the expression interesting, it shows Clarice's poor background growing up. - Structure. Though Harris doesn't write in super-short prose of, say, James Cain or even Ira Levin, you're never bored in this novel. From beginning to end, you just trust that Harris knows what he's doing--and he does. So . . . overall, 5 stars out of 5. I would recommend this book along with all his other novels, even Hannibal Rising--which, while not his best effort, is still light-years better than any novel by such atrocious writers like Dennis Lehane and James Patterson. | ||
 | Silence of the Lambs | |
| "AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME!" | 2008-07-12 |
| Thomas Harris is the real deal, and this is the second time I've read Silence of the Lambs. I loved everything about the story, including: - The well-drawn characters, esp. the heroine: Clarice Starling, the FBI trainee from a poor background. How Harris describes her--her hillbilly idioms, the chip on her shoulder, her perception of sexism from her colleagues--is flat-out brilliant. The other characters are equally well-defined, like her boss Crawford with his dying wife and, of course, Dr. Lecter. - The original, interesting prose. Harris writes prose that's both unique yet utterly unpretentious (unlike, say, Dennis Lehane with his "silkworm[s] of smiles," etc.). For example, in describing a guy nervous about asking Clarice out on a date, Harris writes, "Pilcher polished his teeth, his tongue moving behind his lips like a cat beneath the covers." Brilliant! - The excellent dialog. Again, like the prose, unique yet not contrived. There are so many zingers in the novel, and the dialog adds to the character of the person speaking. Roger Ebert commented about this line in the movie--which was, of course, taken from the novel. In looking over a dead body, Clarice notices the body wore glitter polish on her fingers, and she says, "Looks like town to me." Here, not only is the expression interesting, it shows Clarice's poor background growing up. - Structure. Though Harris doesn't write in super-short prose of, say, James Cain or even Ira Levin, you're never bored in this novel. From beginning to end, you just trust that Harris knows what he's doing--and he does. So . . . overall, 5 stars out of 5. I would recommend this book along with all his other novels, even Hannibal Rising--which, while not his best effort, is still light-years better than any novel by such atrocious writers like Dennis Lehane and James Patterson. | ||
 | Shutter Island : A Novel | |
| "Boring beginning, great middle, horrible cop-out/rip-off ending" | 2008-07-01 |
| This is my first Dennis Lehane novel, and I read this because I know this is the next Scorsese/DiCaprio movie. The story starts off VERY slowly--two US marshals investigate the disappearance of a crazy woman who'd killed her three kids. This woman is in the loony bin on Shutter Island, where the story takes place exclusively. So the beginning unfolds, and I can say this much: Dennis Lehane is not a great writer. His dialog is often witless and overly long, and his prose quite pedestrian. When he tries to be poetic, he is often pretentious and nonsensical, like writing "he had a silkworm of a smile." And structurally the story would've been better if he'd sped up the pace a bit. Then the middle act is absolutely terrific when we find this giant conspiracy, and Teddy and his partner Chuck (the protagonist and his sidekick) have to escape the entire island because of this giant conspiracy. Yes, Lehane's prose is still pedestrian, but you can write inelegant prose and the novel can still pack a wallop. So I was very excited reading this middle part. *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** Finally, though there's the climax, and when Teddy gets to the lighthouse and confronts the mad doctor, and the mad doctor starts babbling away, I was like, You got to be kidding me?!! This is A TOTAL RIP-OFF of the 1920s movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari! I was like, No, it can't be. At some point, we would see the mad doctor truly IS the mad doctor, and he's just trying to trick Teddy into thinking he's insane. But noooooo, Teddy really is insane, and everything in the story is just his delusion. Even cheesy action movies like Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall don't stoop to: "Ohhh, everything's just a dream." I mean, this is grade-school storytelling! Cop-out ending + ripping off a famous movie = a crappy novel. I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because Lehane had me fooled it was a great novel in the middle. | ||
 | Shutter Island: A Novel | |
| "Boring beginning, great middle, horrible cop-out/rip-off ending" | 2008-07-01 |
| This is my first Dennis Lehane novel, and I read this because I know this is the next Scorsese/DiCaprio movie. The story starts off VERY slowly--two US marshals investigate the disappearance of a crazy woman who'd killed her three kids. This woman is in the loony bin on Shutter Island, where the story takes place exclusively. So the beginning unfolds, and I can say this much: Dennis Lehane is not a great writer. His dialog is often witless and overly long, and his prose quite pedestrian. When he tries to be poetic, he is often pretentious and nonsensical, like writing "he had a silkworm of a smile." And structurally the story would've been better if he'd sped up the pace a bit. Then the middle act is absolutely terrific when we find this giant conspiracy, and Teddy and his partner Chuck (the protagonist and his sidekick) have to escape the entire island because of this giant conspiracy. Yes, Lehane's prose is still pedestrian, but you can write inelegant prose and the novel can still pack a wallop. So I was very excited reading this middle part. *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** Finally, though there's the climax, and when Teddy gets to the lighthouse and confronts the mad doctor, and the mad doctor starts babbling away, I was like, You got to be kidding me?!! This is A TOTAL RIP-OFF of the 1920s movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari! I was like, No, it can't be. At some point, we would see the mad doctor truly IS the mad doctor, and he's just trying to trick Teddy into thinking he's insane. But noooooo, Teddy really is insane, and everything in the story is just his delusion. Even cheesy action movies like Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall don't stoop to: "Ohhh, everything's just a dream." I mean, this is grade-school storytelling! Cop-out ending + ripping off a famous movie = a crappy novel. I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because Lehane had me fooled it was a great novel in the middle. | ||
 | Shutter Island | |
| "Boring beginning, great middle, horrible cop-out/rip-off ending" | 2008-07-01 |
| This is my first Dennis Lehane novel, and I read this because I know this is the next Scorsese/DiCaprio movie. And having read this novel, I think this will be the first and LAST Dennis Lehane I'll read. The story starts off VERY slowly--two US marshals investigate the disappearance of a crazy woman who'd killed her three kids. This woman is in the loony bin on Shutter Island, where the story takes place exclusively. So the beginning unfolds, and I can say this much: Dennis Lehane is not a great writer. His dialog is often witless and overly long, and his prose quite pedestrian. When he tries to be poetic, he is often pretentious and nonsensical, like writing "he had a silkworm of a smile." And structurally the story would've been better if he'd sped up the pace a bit. Then the middle act is absolutely terrific when we find this giant conspiracy, and Teddy and his partner Chuck (the protagonist and his sidekick) have to escape the entire island because of this giant conspiracy. Yes, Lehane's prose is still pedestrian, but you can write inelegant prose and the novel can still pack a wallop. So I was very excited reading this middle part. *** SPOILERS AHEAD *** Finally, though there's the climax, and when Teddy gets to the lighthouse and confronts the mad doctor, and the mad doctor starts babbling away, I was like, You got to be kidding me?!! This is A TOTAL RIP-OFF of the 1920s movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari! I was like, No, it can't be. At some point, we would see the mad doctor truly IS the mad doctor, and he's just trying to trick Teddy into thinking he's insane. But noooooo, Teddy really is insane, and everything in the story is just his delusion. Even cheesy action movies like Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall don't stoop to: "Ohhh, everything's just a dream." I mean, this is grade-school storytelling! Cop-out ending + ripping off a famous movie = a crappy novel. I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because Lehane had me fooled it was a decent novel in the middle. | ||
 | Firestarter | |
| "Absolutely Amazing--though a bit structurally unbalanced" | 2008-07-01 |
| What can I say about Stephen King? That he is the most amazing writer I've read since Mark Twain? Or that he creates characters and dialog that are so true-to-life and inventive? That his prose soars like a Gulfstream? Yes, these and a lot more. I've read King as a teenager, and now in my 30s, I decided to read some of the earlier novels I've bypassed before. Firestarter is the first of these novels, and when I read it, I nearly cried at some of the scenes. I just couldn't believe how well-written they were. Case in point: when the dad and the girl goes to the farmer's house, and the dad's trying to convince the farmer what his girl could do, and when the bad guys show up. That one brilliant scene--the dialog, the realistic action, etc.--encapsulates everything that is brilliant about Stephen King. John Grisham can't write such a scene. Neither can Michael Crichton or Dennis Lehane or, God help us, James Patterson. The story itself, though, suffers a lot in comparison to King's preternatural writing talent. The government is experimenting on college students (yeah, right!) to give them extrasensory powers, and two people have a kid, and that kid can throw fireballs. Haha. Of course, the easiest thing the parents could've done is to alert the papers from the get-go, but noooo, they had to wait--well, the dad does anyway because the wife gets offed before the novel even begins--until it was too late. So logically, Firestarter, like all of King's novels, are on very shaky ground. And structurally, King can shrink it a bit--esp. the overly long denouement. So a point off. But it doesn't matter. You don't read Stephen King for tight structure and high concept--that would be Dan Brown and Ira Levin--but for his prose, dialog, and character development, which are, again, amazing. You read Stephen King for the interaction between the dad and his little girl, and smile and curse the brillaint villain John Rainbird, the modern-day Injun Joe. So read this book, and witness truly one of the great talents in the English language. | ||
 | Gone with the Wind (4-Disc Collector's Edition) | |
| "Great entertainment--if you can overlook the rancid racism" | 2008-06-02 |
| I thoroughly enjoyed Gone with the Wind as entertainment and spectacle. The epic romance, even if it is about two rather shallow people (but what hilariously shallow people!). The lavish sets and sweep of the story are both to be commended. I can see why this movie is so remembered. However, I am not African American, and I try to imagine what it would be like to see it through their eyes. The movie glorifies the slave-holding South ("the land of plenty and grace"!), and every black person--except the uppity black carpetbagger--is docile, happy-go-lucky, and stupid. Yes, stupid. The movie shares its era's perception that blacks aren't genetically up there with the white folks and runs with this idea for all it's worth. Crissy, especially, is the personification of every racist stereotype imaginable: brain-dead, cowardly, hysterical, likes to sing, etc. Incredibly, the movie even thinks giving black Americans the right to vote is a mistake since they are easily misled by Yankees--as shown in that "You'll vote for your friends" scene. And, of course, the Klan is glorified as a means of taking back Southern pride from uppity blacks and Yankees as shown by Ashley and Scarlett's second husband going after the people in the "shanty town." And truly, do we really need to worry about the spoiled desires of two white people when millions of blacks were suffering through the worst humiliation and pain in the history of this country? Excusing the blatant racism in this movie as "it's a product of its time" will only get you so far. So, yes, this is a good movie--but you might as well make an epic romance about the marital problems of two spoiled German Protestants during, say, the Holocaust. And only because the people suffering here are black and not white can this movie get away with it. | ||
 | A Pale View of Hills (Vintage International) | |
| "A Boring View of Boring Hills" | 2008-05-21 |
| I've read Remains of the Day before this, and I thought that book a masterpiece. This novel, however, is troublesome and vastly overrated. First of all, it's quite boring, the characters not very well-defined. Of course, some people might say this is purposeful--that the narrative is supposed to be unreliable. Well, yeah, that's true, but just because the narrative is unreliable doesn't mean it should be boring. Remains of the Day was vastly entertaining--witness the butler's visit to the English countryside where he is mistaken for a lord!--but this novel just plods along. Ishiguro never visited Japan before writing this novel, and it shows. Despite being ethnically Japanese, he writes Japanese characters as flat and nebulously defined. Finally, the big revelation in the end that Etsuko and Sachiko might be the same person. Well, I didn't buy it simply because there are two parallel stories going on--Etsuko's home life with her husband and her father-in-law, and her friendship with Sachiko, who was husbandless and living in a shack. If Ishiguro's INTENTION was to show that they're the same person, it sure is a hamfisted way of doing it. My interpretation is Sachiko was disappointed with Frank, and Etsuko adopted Machiko at some time in the story. Whoopie do da!--the novel's still boring. | ||
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