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All About My Mother Movie Streaming. Movie Title: All About My Mother Average customer review: All About My Mother is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download All About My Mother

“Todo Sobre Mi Madre,” or “All About My Mother,” revolves around the life of an organ transplant coordinator, Manuela, who was briefly shown in one of Almodovar’s most recent movie “The Flower of My Secret”. After the death of her only child, Manuela sets off from Madrid to Barcelona to find both his father and the traveling troupe who performs “A Streetcar Named Desire,” throughout Spain.

Argentinian actress Cecilia Roth is both excellent and convincing as Manuela. Her performance for an actress not from Spain is original, since most of Almodovar’s leading startlets are Spaniards. Marisa Paredes as Huma, a fading starlet, reminded me of her performance in “High Heels,” wher she played a similar character. However the two emerging standouts in this film are Antonia San Juan as Manuela’s drag-queen friend (fact: although she looks like a man, San Juan is actually a woman) and the beautiful Penelope Cruz, who plays a HIV-positive pregnant nun (only Almodovar can bring us such characters). Cruz, who radiates natural beauty and style has become Spain hottest export to Hollywood since Antonio Banderas. Keep an eye out for her in the near future.

The visual arrangement of colors, patterns, and clothes brings the film so much beauty it is unbearable not to watch and adore it. Almodovar’s camera illusions, especially watching a grieving Manuela run to her injured son, Esteban, after he is struck by a car (the camera looks like if the victim is watching his mother run in the rain) and the trick of watching Esteban write in his journal (we see his pencil move through a glass that is supposed to be his pad) is amazing. Only the pure genius that Almodovar is could have thought of this.

This happens to be Almdovar’s best film in the past 10 years. Truly, if you are an artist, an admirer of Spanish culture, or just love art films, then this film will fascinate you. A true gem in the evolution of Spanish cinema.

A flashy, sophisticated swirl of color, design, and art nouveau excess courtesy of the city of Barcelona frame a melodramatic core of prima donna antics and suffering mujeres. These women are way past a nervous breakdown–Cecilia Roth’s raw emotions set the tone for much of the film; the transgender Antonia San Juan provides the madcap Almodovar wit of his earlier movies. Penelope Cruz stands out–a dark beauty who gives a haunting, fragile performance as an HIV-infected, pregnant nun. Throw in Marisa Paredes as an aging diva with ruby hair touring in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire and the stage is set for Almodovar’s tribute to suffering womanhood, replete with wistful references to All About Eve. Not as consistently enjoyable as some of his earlier work but perhaps more mature and sad, more resigned to the vicissitudes of love and death. It’s amazing that Almodovar–the greatest Spanish director since Bunuel–could have remained true to his sensibility and have won an academy award. He’s Bunuel with none of the bitterness–Bunuel with a smile and a wink at the absurd.
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Dead Calm Movie Streaming. Movie Title: Dead Calm Average customer review: Dead Calm is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Dead Calm

What do you get when you mix in an amazing Australian director, a rising Australian actress, a prominent New Zealander actor, and a villainous American actor? The result is “Dead Calm,” an intense thriller that will leave you adrift in suspense for 90 minutes.

The story, which revolves around an Australian couple taking a vacation to recover from the death of their young child in an automobile accident, might sound like the perfect movie to relax to on any evening, however it isn’t. While sailing Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and the South Pacific, the young couple played by Nicole Kidman (”Days of Glory”; “Batman Forever”) and Sam Neill (”Renaissance Man”; “Jurassic Park”) pick up a castaway played by Billy Zane (”Titanic”; “Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight”) who is the sole survivor of a sinking ship.

After hearing his story Neill’s character decides to go to the ship and check it out firsthand. That was his big mistake. Soon Zane hijacks the yacht and Kidman, leaving Neill to sink in the ship he fled. The sinister motives for Zane’s departure from the ship are later discovered as the movie progresses, however it is Kidman’s and Zane’s chemistry and performance that make this movie one of the best suspense thrillers I have ever seen.

As usual, Zane, is the ideal villain. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was this film that led to Hollywood’s decision to cast him as a villain in almost every film he has done since “Dead Calm”. He was brilliant in “Titanic”, and the most sinister and witty horror villain since Freddy Kruegger in “Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight” However, his performance as the deranged castaway in this film mixes his ability to use his intense sex appeal with his professionalism to the fullest extent.

Director Philip Noyce (”U2: Rattle & Hum”) happens to be one of Australia’s most gifted actors. Along with Stephen Norrington (”Blade”) these gifted Australian directors give Hollywood a new reason to head “Down Under” when searching for top-notched directors for their films.

“Dead Calm” represents Australia’s prominence in world cinema when it comes to intelligent thrillers produced at half the costs associated with a major Hollywood Thriller nowadays. If you’re looking for an intense thriller, you’ve found it.

When Dead Calm’s promotional editor warns you to “Try to Stay Calm,” believe me when I say you’re not up to the challenge. If this one doesn’t shock you, you better get your girlfriend to check your pulse.

The story is simple: Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill hit the ocean for some quality time together to forget the auto accident that claimed their only child. Kidman is barely there at first–she was driving when their son was killed and suffers from overpowering sorrow and guilt. When the couple floats up on a disabled ship with only one surviving passenger–Billy Zane–they take him aboard, unaware that they’ve just taken in an angel of death. From this point on the terror mounts relentlessly as Kidman and Neill struggle to deal with Zane and the hellfire he brings with him. Eventually separated, the husband and wife must dig deep within themselves just to stay alive.

The great cast makes what could have been a routine B-movie work. Kidman is particularly outstanding as the emotionally vampirized young wife who slowly evolves into a strong woman who can rescue her man when she needs to. Neill, one of the industry’s most underrated performers, is stalwart and professional as always. Zane gives Anthony Perkins a run for his money as the psychotic young man who can only destroy what he doesn’t understand–everything.

A marvelous dish of cold chills, Dead Calm is highly recommended to anyone who loves a good, intelligent scare.
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Stream Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii Online. Movie Title: Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii Average customer review: Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii

Well, it seems PINK FLOYD: LIVE AT POMPEII director Adrian Maben has got himself a case of George Lucas disease. The new DVD release of the so-called “Director’s Cut” of that film is completely re-edited, with a slew of new material, and it completely ruins the mood of the film. Thankfully, they included the original version of this haunting movie on the disc, as well. There’s a drastic difference between the two.

Here’s the deal:
The original version of the film, released in 1972, was 61 minutes long, and consisted only of performance footage from the Pompeii amphitheatre and a Paris studio, plus some extra footage of Pompeii. This was shot in full-screen 4:3 and is presented as such on the DVD.

Maben went back into the Abbey Road studios while the band was putting together DARK SIDE OF THE MOON in 1973 and shot some documentary footage of the band recording and talking. The new footage was spliced in between some of the original performances for the film and the result was released in 1974 in America; it was maybe 70-something minutes long. Unfortunately, this edit has not made it to the DVD.

Now, this new version uses more footage from Abbey Road, some B&W
footage of the band in a studio in Paris, new shots the director took of Pompeii, a whole bunch of archival footage of space exploration, and new titles that look made for a straight-to-video release instead of the Godard-esque ones we had with the original (Willy Kurant was one of the cinematographers.) This is about 91 minutes long, and has been inexplicably matted to a 16:9 format.

I must say the new footage seems extremely out of place. It doesn’t match visually with the old footage, looking very straight-to-video. Much of the editing of the original is broken up with splices to new stuff the director just couldn’t keep out (”Hey, Pink Floyd is “spacey”— I’ll put in computer-generated shots of planets!”); the result is more a series of thematically related music videos than a unified movie. What really gets me is that there’s an interview on the DVD with the director where on multiple occasions he touches on why the original and almost-original versions of the film were so special, and then he proceeds to destroy that with his new version.

In the original, the ruined Pompeiian setting gave the movie a
palpable sense of silence and isolation; in the new version they’re not much more than a pretty background. The original version held its shots long enough to give the viewer an opportunity to absorb the spacial setting for himself; now we’re treated to the short attention span version of things. And why was this this thing masked to 16:9 for the new version? Having a dad who’s worked on satellites and space probes my whole life has given me an appreciation for space footage on its own merits; but using simulated flyovers of Mars’s surface to accompany Pink Floyd is worthy of a fan’s website, not a feature film… please, let the spirit of “Laserium” rest in peace.

Footage of classic period Pink Floyd is so rare and few, that Live in Pompeii is a real treat. It was filmed in 1971, at the peak of their musical genius and creativity (not to devalue the musical and conceptual brilliance of the masterworks Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall, but musically they reached their peak in the period between Meddle and Dark Side Of The Moon), and shows the classic line-up - Roger Waters (bass), David Gilmour (guitar), Richard Wright (keyboards) and Nick Mason (drums) - young, energetic, creative and unpretentious. At this point in time, pre-Dark Side Of The Moon, they weren’t yet settled in a niche; they haven’t yet made it into the consensus, and they kept experimenting and trying new things, messing about with synthesizers and recording techniques. In this DVD we see them both in the studio and in performance, as they keep exchanging instruments and experimenting, and that’s what makes it much more interesting and alive than the Dark Side and The Wall concerts, let alone anything made after the split from Waters in 1983, in which point they were just bleating out their old hits again and again in the same way. Only just managing to break free from the influence of their originator, Syd Barrett, the Pink Floyd are still, in Live In Pompeii, in a transition and struggling to find their voice, yet at the same time not certain of the relevance of their music. Nick comments in one of the many interviews thrown in between the songs - `We might have become a relic of the past… to many we represent that childhood of ‘67, the underground scene…’ - and at this point, there’s little in their music that signals of their great break into the mainstream in 1973. In between the performances, we get to see little bits of the Floyd in the studio, in the first stages of creating their masterpiece, Dark Side Of The Moon. It’s a fascinating historic relic and an engrossing look at history in the making.

The musical parts of the video concentrate on Pink Floyd’s most experimental instrumental numbers - in fact, only two vocal numbers were included, excluding old stage favorites like Fat Old Sun, Remember A Day and Astronomy Domine and recent numbers like Fearless and San Tropez - which allows it to give us a real look at how they were experimenting with their sound at the time, and to see them live, undubbed, is priceless. Take the epic instrumental A Saucerful Of Secrets from 1968; as Mason keeps the savage and steady beat, Gilmour is sitting on the ground with his Fender in his lap, gently running a slide up and down it, barely touching the strings. Wright pounds chaotic and nearly random notes on his piano, while Mr. Waters, his bass laid aside, plays percussionist and strikes the cymbals fierce and hard. He then walks off to the gong, and starts beating the hell out of it. Wright moves over to his organ and Waters picks up his bass, and they pick up the rhythm. Not synths involved. On Roger’s own Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, he doesn’t play bass at all; he just barely struggles with the lead vocals, and occasionally beats the gong.

The instrumental classics Careful With That Axe Eugene and One Of These Days we get to see the full ability of the Floyds’ instrumental prowess, as they settle into hard and driving grooves with persistent drums and deep, powerful basslines. Careful With That Axe Eugene is shot by night, with images of bursting volcanoes juxtaposed with an ecstatic Roger Waters shrieking out the song’s only vocals. The effects and editing may be dated, but the atmosphere is still mesmerizing. Synthesizers, whatever Floyd’s criticizers may have been saying at the time, are used subtly and tastefully. In one of the interviews David and Roger discuss the suggestion that the synthesizers may have taken over their music, claiming rightfully that they’re in total control of their music, and that electronic devices can ever only be means and equipment and never a replacement for the artist’s creativity. Furthermore, they say, it’s immensely important for a musician who wants to be in control of his music, to know all about the equipment, recording and editing. The film really does show Floyd to be a group of very conscious creators, who need to know and understand the final outcome of their efforts - it especially shows in the studio segments. This is and important trait that contributed a lot to Floyd’s greatness.

A surprising and wonderful touch is the short number Mademoiselle Nobbs, a classic 12-bar blues. As Roger strums an acoustic guitar and David plays a soulful harmonica, Richard helps by holding the microphone for the lead vocalist - a lovely dog, who sings her bit in the finest blues tradition, in a soulful and heartfelt duet with Dave’s harmonica. It sounds to me like the talented mutt is the same one who contributed her voice to the number Seamus from the 1971 Meddle album, and if you thought the dog’s voice on that track was overdubbed, seeing Mademoiselle Nobbs live will change your mind. The concert is bracketed by the epic classic Echoes, which was split in half - a technique adapted on record only in 1975 on Wish You Were Here. Echoes remain, whether on record or live, one of Floyd’s most wonderful and impressive numbers, and show their instrumental skill and creativity to the fullest. Strangely enough, this is the only song in the films that allows Dave and Rick to have their voices heard, while on their albums at the time they sang on most of the tracks.

Incredibly rewarding for Floyd fans, even those who are not as enthusiastic about the early material, is the extra footage added in 1973, which shows Floyd working on their upcoming masterpiece Dark Side Of The Moon. We get a chance to see David laying down the final layer of Brain Damage, dubbing the lead guitar part over the nearly complete song; we also get a glimpse of Waters messing about with the synthesizers while working on the classic electronic piece of musical paranoia On The Run, as well as Richard recording the vocals for Us And Them.

One final question - what’s the matter with Rick’s beard, and why is it fading in and out of existence throughout the movie? Because other than that, the illusion of a live concert is maintained most of the time, albeit one where the crowd is either centuries dead or carved in stone. The conception of the video, as well as the music, shows Floyd as what they were - one of the most original and creative (some might say pretentious, maybe) bands of their time, just one step before entering the pantheon of timeless music forever.
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Blood Feast Streaming. Movie Title: Blood Feast Average customer review: Blood Feast is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Blood Feast

This is one of those few movies where everything that everyone says about it is precisely true: Utterly barebones production, flatly pathetic acting, stilted and pointless dialogue, and lots and lots of ultra-phony gore. Of course, this is pretty undisputedly the first real gore film, so horror fans pretty much have to see this. And, even if it weren’t so important historically it would be worth seeing anyway, cause it’s pretty damn cool either way.

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Fortunately, in making the first gore film they didn’t go halfway. Sure, there are tons of films which are gorier then it now, it’s still gory enough that if it were redone, shot for shot with realistic, modern effects, it wouldn’t be allowed an R rating in a million years. You got flaying, leg severing, heart extracting, tongue ripping, brain, um, snatching etc. And, while the gore effects are incredibly dated, they aren’t quite as cheap and old as I would have imagined. The blood itself actually holds up fairly well, and looks better than much of the stage blood you’d see over the next 20 years or so. It’s actually red! It is also delightfully shameless, perpetually leering at the simplistic effects in a way that makes Fulci look almost reserved by comparison. For example, fairly late in the film there is a 42 second pan over a flaying victim. (i.e. someone just covered with fake blood) 42 seconds may not sound that long when I just say it, but when you’re actually watching it it’s pretty damn funny, and seems to go on forever. It’s also got some odd quirks, such as how virtually all the violence is performed in utter silence, with no sound effects, only music. It manages to make these scenes somehow poignant, in spite of the overall laughable nature of the project.

The film only gets 3 stars because much of the terrible acting and dialogue grows somewhat tiresome after a while. There are only a few topics: The cops whine about how they can’t catch the mad butcher who is killing women, and stealing their body parts, and the civilains whine about there’s a killer out there, and then reflect happily on the party they plan to have that Saturaday. (Turns out that the guy who’s catering the party, Fuad Ramses, is the killer, and is gonna feed them the parts he stole. What a coincidence.) The directing is also amusingly flat. The camera hardly ever moves, nor do the actors. They just stand there, statue-stiff, delivering there lines. It’s also got a fun soundtrack, with endless thumping tympani and cheesy organs and such. Lotsa people are irritated by it, but I find it quite amusing.

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Yeah, you know if you wanna see this or not. So do it.

Grade: C

“Blood Feast” is the most famous work of exploitation auteur Herschell Gordon Lewis. Released in 1963, it is considered the first slasher film, the one that spawned all of the imitators: “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “Friday the 13th”, etc. Despite (or because of) its questionable acting and really fake blood, it is a classic.

Something Weird Video has given “Blood Feast” a great tribute with its DVD version. A beautiful print of the film was used, all of the garish colors are presented in their full glory. It contains one of the most interesting audio commentaries on a DVD that I have ever listened to. Director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David F. Friedman provide insights into everything you’ve ever wanted to know about “Blood Feast” - the casting, the special effects, the creation of Lewis’ signiature music score, and much more. There are so many great anecdotes shared on the commentary: how Pine Sol was used to get rid of the smell of the sheep tongue (used for the infamous tongue removal scene) since it was being stored in a refrigerator and the power went out, how they had to spend money on a freeze frame at the optical effects lab because an actress pretending to be dead couldn’t hold her breath (you can see her failed attempts in the collection of nearly 50-minutes of outtakes included on the DVD), a pizza parlor was used for the scene where the maniacal Fuad Ramses cooks a human leg in an oven, and how they first realized the film was going to be a phenomenon when they got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to its Peoria, Illinois drive-in premiere. P.S. - Bonus for trivia buffs: Robert Sinise, the editor of “Blood Feast”, is the father of actor Gary Sinise.

The DVD of “Blood Feast” is a must own for fans of the film and film buffs thanks to the great quality of the film to DVD transfer and the extras included by Something Weird Video.
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Stream Eating Out: All You Can Eat Online. Movie Title: Eating Out: All You Can Eat Average customer review: Eating Out: All You Can Eat is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Eating Out: All You Can Eat

“Eating Out: All You Can Eat”

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Worth The Wait

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Amos Lassen

The “Eating Out” movies have become part of the gay lifestyle and now we have “Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat” and it warrants a coveted place on your shelf right next to 1 and 2. Sometimes a sequel can overdo itself but this one is all new and all fun. Granted it is totally predictable but this does not stop it from being a fun film with some great one lines. Granted some of the language will make you sit back and say “I didn’t hear that” (but you did!), this doesn’t stop it from being a funny film.

We first meet cute (but somewhat nerdy) Casey (Daniel Skelton) when he moves to West Hollywood to live with his aunt Helen (Mink Stole). We then follow him on his sexual adventures and misadventures as he tries to get a date with very good looking Zack (Chris Salvatore who has a great physique and beautiful body parts). The film is both a romance and a comedy at the same time and some of the jokes are ridiculously dirty yet also very funny. (Think of how you talk and camp with the guys).

There are several really hot men here as well as tow foul mouthed women and one outspoken aunt. Rebekah Kochan plays Tiffani, a fag hag and a sexy slut whose mouth needs some Ivory soap. She convinces Casey to pretend to be her ex (Ryan–Michael Walker) while cruising the web so that he can capture his attention and Casey uses Ryan’s picture and a made up profile. Zack falls in cyber love with Ryan and that is fine until the real Ryan appears and all hell breaks loose. Aunt Helen and Harry (an older gay male played by Leslie Jordan) try to make Casey realize that it is not too late to go after Zack and the real Ryan steps in to help arrange a meeting between the two.

Here is a gay film that uses gay actors in the leading roles and this comedy, as crazy as it is, provides laughs throughout. Using the age old formula of mistaken identities, director Glenn Gaylord (what a great name) and writer Phillip J. Bartell have fashioned a film that can be watched over and over again. I am telling you know that this is one gay film you do not want to miss and if you do you will probably be in the minority

Eating out 3 was not what I expected. I assumed it was another run of the mill gay featurette, and boy was I wrong. Its filled with laughs, hunks, and alot of drama. A great film for any gay couple to sit down and watch with popcorn
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Stream Smart People Movie Online. Movie Title: Smart People Average customer review: Smart People is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Smart People

Smart People is a great dramedy–a mixture of comedy and drama. It goes for the Smart Laugh, not the Big Laugh. Mark Poirier, the son of a MIT professor, wrote a Smart script, and Smart Director Noam Murro very smartly cast some of the smartest actors around: Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Dennis Quaid. I loved it, because I am also very Smart, but it didn’t do as well at the box office or with the critics (except it was the Number One DVD at Netflix for a while) as it deserved. That Smarts.

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I think the problem with this movie is that like the characters, Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) and his daughter Vanessa Wetherhold (Ellen Page), it doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Thus, for a large portion of the audience, it is over their heads, and they feel like it is condescending, supercilious, and they feel patronized. As Lawrence’s adopted brother, Chuck Wetherhold (Thomas Haden Church) says of Vanessa: “You’re a monster!”

And that is an understatement. In another scene she says to her father, “Theresa Sternbridge practically runs a soup kitchen and she’s always seen posing in photos with crack babies and dying, old, crusty ladies. And do you know why? She scored in the 45th percentile on her SAT. People like you and me don’t need to compensate.”

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Although Chuck sees that Vanessa, and her role model father, are both monsters, in spite or because of their intelligence, he still loves them and tries to help. Did I mention that Chuck is a screw up, down on his luck, and an opportunist who sees a win/win situation for himself when his brother has a seizure and cannot drive. He will have a place to stay, and 3 squares, for driving his brother around–albeit very unreliably.

Though he is not the greatest driver, he really has a lot of intelligence about people. For instance, at a Christmas Dinner, where Vanessa’s brother James Wetherhold (Ashton Holmes) complains about the rubbery ham (Vanessa used a recipe downloaded from the Internet written in the archaic French of Louis the XIV, and translated by her, maybe not as well as she thinks (a great example of her over achiever approach to cooking); when former student and now doctor Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker) drops in unexpectedly Chuck explains “These children haven’t been properly parented in many years. They’re practically feral. That’s why I was brought in. To keep them from killing each other.”

All of the characters have a story arc, where they have an epiphany, and reach a greater awareness; but the Father/Daughter dynamic between the professor and his precocious progeny is perhaps the most complicated. He takes her for granted and is even less involved with his son James, while she idolizes him and emulates his self absorbed and condescending approach to other, less worthy, people.

———————

Lawrence Wetherhold: I don’t think you’re very happy Vanessa.

Vanessa Wetherhold: Well, you’re not happy. And you’re my role model.

=============================

She tries to sabotage his relationship with Janet, but he is more than capable of sabotaging it all by himself. However, with a little help and coaching from brother Chuck, perhaps he will prevail after all.

By the way, fabulous performance by Thomas Haden Church, comparable to his character and performance in Sideways. Chuck was one of my favorite characters.

That Ellen Page really nailed her role goes without saying. Her only danger now is being forever typecast as the wise-beyond-her-years waif. What other young actress could convincingly play someone stressed out about getting a perfect SAT score?

Sarah Jessica Parker was smart and sassy, yet she was also a bit damaged, and had a lesson to learn. Great scene when Janet first meets Chuck.

Dennis Quaid wore a fat suit and had a shuffling walk, like he had something stuffed up inside him. He looked very different than previous roles, and created a quite convincing persona. He really conveyed his utter disregard for those below him on the bell curve of intelligence. He was very annoying, as his role called for that, but gradually, perhaps, he would come around. One sub plot was about him getting a book published, and as you could imagine by the dry academic title, there was little chance of that happening. But when he submitted it under a title suggested by his daughter Vanessa, YOU CAN’T READ!, it finally was accepted.

—————

Bloomberg: I got to the third section where I noticed a certain marketable tone, the surly smarter-than-thou @$$#0[3 tone.

===================================

Their strategy was that it would be attacked on NPR and three weeks later he’d be interviewed defending it on Charlie Rose. Kind of like when you have a lemon, make lemonade.

Last but not least, Ashton Holmes as James Wetherhold and Camille Mana as Missy Chin, one of Lawrence’s students, were both good in their small but pivotal roles. James had good reason to stay away from the toxic environment he called home as much as possible, but when he was there, he made a quiet impact.

This was the first big screen role for Camille Mana, but I recognized her from the UPN sitcom One on One where she played Lisa Sanchez. She is very smart, having graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in economics after only 6 semesters, and I predict great things for her.

In Smart People she keeps popping up as the thorn in her professor’s side, and if he wasn’t so self absorbed, perhaps he would remember her name. She and James even hook up, and you almost wish the focus had been on them a bit more. However, they function as a reminder that other people have lives just as interesting if not more so than the self absorbed professor and his equally self absorbed daughter. When James gets a poem published in The New Yorker, Lawrence is surprised to learn that he writes poetry. Perhaps he should listen to what other people have to say once in a while.

I really liked this film because I could relate to the Smart People, and how hard it is for them to be humble. Yes, I too have a reputation for not suffering fools gladly, but after years of isolation, I would suffer them more than gladly. Though I may have an extremely high IQ, there are many different kinds of intelligence, and I wish that I had a little more intelligence about people. Perhaps I can get a high score on an intelligence test, but sometimes I can be a complete idiot.

OTHER NOTABLE ROLES OF SMART PEOPLE CAST MEMBERS

Sex and the City - The Movie (Special Edition) (2008) …. Sarah Jessica Parker was Carrie Bradshaw

Juno (Single-Disc Edition) (2007) …. Ellen Page was Juno MacGuff

Spider-Man 3 (2007) …. Thomas Haden Church was Sandman / Flint Marko

An American Crime (2007) …. Ellen Page was Sylvia Likens

What We Do Is Secret (2007) …. Ashton Holmes was Rob Henley

Normal Adolescent Behavior: Havoc 2 (2007) …. Ashton Holmes was Sean

Hard Candy (2005) …. Ellen Page was Hayley Stark

A History of Violence (2005) …. Ashton Holmes was Jack Stall

Sideways (Widescreen Edition) (2004) …. Thomas Haden Church was Jack

Spanglish (2004) …. Thomas Haden Church was Mike the Realtor

Far From Heaven (2002) …. Dennis Quaid was Frank Whitaker

Postcards from the Edge (1990) …. Dennis Quaid was Jack Faulkner

Great Balls of Fire! (1989) …. Dennis Quaid was Jerry Lee Lewis

Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) …. Sarah Jessica Parker was Janey Glenn

Footloose (1984) …. Sarah Jessica Parker was Rusty

———————-

Vanessa Wetherhold: You should really make your bed. It sets the tone for the day.

Chuck Wetherhold: But, how do you know what tone I was trying to set?

=========================================

Dr. Lawrence Wetherhold’s (Quaid) got an impulse problem. When his car’s impounded at Carnegie Mellon, where he teaches Lit, he climbs over the fence to get his briefcase. The resulting brouhaha gets his license suspended for the next six months. He does meet Dr. Janet Hartigan (Parker) whose life was changed by taking Wetherhold’s class many years ago–major shifted from English to Medicine.

Enter Chuck (Haden-Church) his adopted brother. Being between very odd jobs, Chuck is the only family member with time to squire Lawrence around.

Lawrence’s daughter Vanessa (Page) is studying like mad to get into Stanford with a perfect SAT. Between cramming sessions, she hides romance books from her Dad, who’d probably die of horror if he knew she read them.

James (Holmes) the elder son is already in school and unbeknownst to his Dad, is a poet. His poem got accepted by “The New Yorker” before Lawrence even found out.

Lawrence is interested in the doc, but he can’t quite get over the loss a couple of years past, of his wife. Her clothes still fill his closet and clearly her memory still haunts him. Chuck and Vanessa try to work on cleaning up Lawrence’s life while nearly messing up their own.

Slowly, the characters in the film begin to deal with their own griefs, mistakes, and begin to come to grips with themselves and each other. They’re not the most likable or the best fit, but what family is? They’re definitely interesting–and you do see character development in the major players.

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Bike-O-Vision Cycling DVD Journey #19 Hawaii’s Big Island Streaming. Movie Title: Bike-O-Vision Cycling DVD Journey #19 Hawaii’s Big Island Average customer review: Bike-O-Vision Cycling DVD Journey #19 Hawaii’s Big Island is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Bike-O-Vision Cycling DVD Journey #19 Hawaii’s Big Island

Incredible Bike-O-Vision journey throughout the Big Island Hawaii. The beauty of this Pacific island is so different with active volcano smoke plumes amidst the jungles, and volcanic rock along the sand beaches. Really amazing. A less visited Hawaiian island than others that have become more commercialized over the years, it’s natural remote beauty really shines through in this video. As an regular cyclist I’d been waiting for this DVD as I have all the other rides and they’ve been great. They’re excellent compliments to my indoor workouts because the visual perspective of the roads coming at you make you want to push forward. They work for me. I get over an hour’s worth of visual ride and it makes my time fly.

I watch this DVD while on the treadmill and it certainly makes the time go faster. There is some beautiful scenery here. Some of the sections are a little less visually appealing - long shots of roadway - but overall impressive for what it is. The music is better off muted, and some of the cutaways to the landscape rushing by takes away from the effect, but these are niggling complaints. I imagine this would be great for an exercise bike - the speed is a little quicker than I jog. Highly recommended.
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Watch The Brain Fitness Program Online. Movie Title: The Brain Fitness Program Average customer review: The Brain Fitness Program is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download The Brain Fitness Program

I donated to PBS and got the set of Brain Training items. This dvd is just the PBS program all over again. It is NOT a brain training program with exercises you can do, etc. It’s talking heads plugging how great their program is. It’s marginally interesting on first viewing but I can’t see wanting to watch it again. Just watch it on PBS and save your money.

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The actual brain program this dvd touts is very expensive and available on the website. It came w/ my donation and it’s very well made, but is truly boring, as the other reviewer stated, I dread doing it (and in fact, haven’t in a week or more). It’s focus is auditory not visual which is ok but it’d be better if it had both. I haven’t done it enough to give a thorough review of it or it’s benefits.

After watching the program on PBS, I thought the DVD would have the brain exercises, which it didn’t. I was disappointed.
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Watch The Lady Vanishes Online. Movie Title: The Lady Vanishes Average customer review: The Lady Vanishes is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download The Lady Vanishes

There’s one thing that movies can do better than any other artistic medium. It’s having you experience something from a character’s point of view, and then having every other character in the movie say it never happened. Your empathy as a viewer is at its highest pitch: you saw what happened with your own eyes, and so you see it through the character’s eyes as well, but then everyone denies it. This is the central scene on the train in THE LADY VANISHES. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in my opinion, is more cinematic than this. When the idea is used to trick the viewer (as in THE USUAL SUSPECTS), it’s not as good (although still it’s pretty good, because again it uses film in the most empathetic way possible). And when the trickery is fair–as in THE SIXTH SENSE–it can be superb. I rank THE LADY VANISHES right up there with VERTIGO, PSYCHO, and REAR WINDOW, as Hitchcock’s greatest gifts to us, the moviegoers of the world. I would even add SHADOW OF A DOUBT to this pantheon. The thing I admire most about Hitchcock is that he was attracted to stories that showed what film could do as an art form. His best movies, in their different ways, display this for us. The movies I’ve mentioned would not be as good as novels or plays–and this is saying a great deal. It’s a test, as a matter of fact, of what separates the film as an art medium from other artistic forms. The two directors who knew this best were Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney. It would be so terrific if someone were to come along someday who could be said to be their equal. Bottom line: THE LADY VANISHES is one of the best movies you will ever see, but please, it works at a slower pace than today’s movies, so let it sink in for you, don’t be in a hurry, EXPERIENCE it!

This is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, along with “The 39 Steps”. After purchasing the Criterion Collection version of the latter movie, I was completely impressed with the technical “magic” of the Criterion people. Picture and sound were much cleaner than my VHS copy of the movie! I purchased the Criterion transfer of “The Lady Vanishes” expecting the same level of quality. I was sorely disappointed. The picture is great, no “static”, etc. But the sound is very poor, no better than my VHS tape copy. It fades in and out, especially during dialogue and then blares forth at other times. I felt, frankly, cheated after paying the premium price that Criterion DVD’s command. Count me unhappy.
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Osama Movie Streaming. Movie Title: Osama Average customer review: Osama is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Osama

This 2004 Golden Globe award winner for Best Foreign Language film, directed by Afghani Siddiq Barmak, is a stunning indictment of the repressive, fundamentalist Taliban regime and its treatment of women. Filmed on a shoestring budget, the film is a composite of a number of true stories, coalescing into one. It is harrowing look at a feudal sort of government that equated women with little more than chattel. Forced to be totally dependent on men, the question arises as to what would be their fate, if all the men in their world were to no longer be there for them.

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This is the issue that confronts one particular woman, a widowed doctor, who treats patients in secret. Unfortunately, the hospital, if one can call it that, has not paid her for some time, and she can no longer work there. Moreover, it has become too dangerous for her to travel the streets, as she is a lone woman forbidden to travel the streets without the accompaniment of a member of the male sex. As her household consists solely of three generation of women, having lost her husband and her brother, circumstances are dire indeed.

She must devise some plan of getting or earning their daily bread, if they are to survive. She turns to her young timid daughter, a girl on the cusp of womanhood. She decides that her beautiful daughter must disguise herself as a boy and go out into the world to help earn some food for the family, or they will die. Thus, the daughter is transformed into a boy called Osama. The mother then takes Osama to see a kindly former comrade of Osama’s late father, who now runs a small dusty shop. There, Osama is left to work, stirring cauldrons of steaming milk, scenes that are positively medieval.

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Passing as a boy, Osama is obliged to do those things that a male is expected to do. So, when the Taliban police come to the shop looking for boys for indoctrination at a mullah run school, Osama has no choice but to go. Thus, begins the downfall of Osama. Despite the best efforts of Espandi, an enterprising street urchin who has befriended Osama and knows her secret, Osama is to continue a harrowing journey that only one of her sex may travel.

This is an intriguing film that, despite being somewhat choppy and disjointed in the telling, provides a birds-eye view at what life was like for women under the Taliban. The beautiful imagery of the film is a strong counterpoint to the harshness of Taliban rule. It is a mercy for women that the Taliban is no longer in power. This film certainly brings home the absolute cruelty of that regime towards women.

Though the director uses non-actors for the roles in the film, each one of them does a yeoman’s job with the given role. Arif Herati, who plays the role of Espandi, has a great deal of screen presence. Marina Gobahan, who has the starring role of Osama, is excellent as the timid and shy girl who reluctantly cross dresses as a male in order to help her family. Her terror of being killed and her fear of the Taliban is palpable throughout the film. Her eyes are most expressive, world weary and infinitely sad. It were those very eyes that drew the director to cast her in the role of Osama. This is a film that will leave its imprint on the viewer.

The DVD offers little by way of special features, though it does offer a moderately interesting interview with the director that runs about twenty minutes in length.

OSAMA is a stark and grim film that highlights the oppressive regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Based on a true story, this film follows the life of a 12-year-old Afghan girl and her mother. After the Taliban shut down the hospital that the mother works at she is desperate to find work but her efforts are bleak because she cannot go out in public without being escorted by a male. With no men in her family and no one else to help her the girl is transformed into a boy to help support the family. Aside from escorting her mother through the streets she finds work in a small foods shop. Each time she ventures outside she fears her life because if she is caught the Taliban will do serious harm to her. In addition, she fails to fully personify a boy since she speaks with a high voice, wears feminine slippers, and doesn’t know the proper prayer rituals. But soon enough she is forced to join a Taliban school. During sessions of religious and military training her secret is close to being revealed. The only other boy who knows the truth names her Osama in an effort to try to ward off suspicions from the other boys. After her disguise is revealed and the Taliban has arrested her she is sure to suffer an unspeakable sentence for imitating a boy. Her future is bleak and desperate. There is no happy ending in this film, and the audience is left with a sad feeling of despair and shock. Surely we’ve all heard the atrocities committed by the Taliban since 9/11/01, but OSAMA enables the viewer to get a powerful glimpse of the horrendous events in Afghanistan under the Taliban. This is the first film to come out of this impoverished country since the end of the Taliban regime, but I hope it’s not the last. There are a multitude of stories of Taliban victims that deserve to be heard. These people should not suffer alone. Putting a human face on this tragedy often results in the outside world understanding the horrors that happened. OSAMA is an excellent film that succeeds on many levels, and is highly recommended.
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