Schindler is the largest supplier of escalators and the second largest manufacturer of elevators worldwide. …
Category: movies
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of the greatest movies of all time. A 1986 masterpiece by John Hughes.
Click PLAY or watch a clip on YouTube.
On the convertible 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California:
Cameron: Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself.
Ferris: A man with priorities so far out of whack doesn’t deserve such a fine automobile.
Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck) is truly the star of the show.
Girlfriend Sloane Peterson, Mia Sara, married and divorced Jason Connery, son of Sean Connery.
top 10 sports documentaries
Hoop Dreams tops the list on this list of the Top 10 Sports Documentaries of All Time.
My personal favourite documentary style movie is Touching the Void. It’s the 4th highest grossing documentary of all time.
This one I’ve not yet seen.
Click PLAY or watch an Endless Summer preview on YouTube.
The Kings Speech – a review
… Colin Firth plays King George VI who, to overcome his stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist played by Geoffrey Rush.
The two men become friends as they work together, and after his brother Edward VIII abdicates, the new King relies on Logue to help him make a radio broadcast on the day that Britain declared war on Germany, beginning of World War II. …
I finally saw the slightly controversial film.
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
… a major box office and critical success. On a budget of £8 million, it earned over $400 million internationally. …
… The film was also nominated for 12 Academy Awards, the most of any film that year, and won four: Best Picture, Best Director (Hooper), Best Actor (Firth), and Best Original Screenplay (Seidler). …
Kudos to Colin Firth. He was excellent. An actor I’ve always criticized in the past as being a one trick pony, type cast as the opposite of Hugh Grant.
I’m sure you’ll agree that Geoffrey Rush was even better. Shame he didn’t win Best Supporting Actor.
I’m happy this film won for Best Picture as my bias is to see it go to an EPIC film. For example, The English Patient. By the same logic I’m still mortified that Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture. (Not EPIC)
The Millennium Trilogy – a review
The Millennium series … bestselling novels originally written in Swedish by the late Stieg Larsson. Originally, ten books in total were planned, but only three were completed. The novels in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, were first published in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively. …
The primary characters in the series are Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth is an intelligent, eccentric woman in her twenties with a photographic memory and poor social skills. Blomkvist is an investigative journalist with a history similar to Larsson’s.
An unlikely success.
Clearly Larsson was no skilled author. He breaks most of the rules on what makes a successful novel. Yet the series kept me engaged throughout. If a 4th novel is ever released, I’ll buy it too.
I liked that the books are unapologetically Swedish. But never have I read any books with so much unnecessary (infuriating) detail. If I had a krona for every coffee in those 3 books, … I’d have a lot of kronor.
A skilled murder mystery writer – Ian Rankin, for example – could make one excellent novel out of the 3 simply by eliminating every factoid and character unimportant to the actual story.
Why did any publisher accept those manuscripts?
Salander is a truly weird and fascinating character. Very original.
Also well done were the endings of each. I could not guess in advance on what would happen.
The exotic setting appealed to me, too.
I guess I recommend these books, if there is anyone out there who has not yet read them. No doubt you’ve already heard warnings about the scenes of violent sex.
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
Scandinavian TV and movie adaptations have already been released.
In the American movies, Daniel Craig will play Mikael Blomkvist, Rooney Mara Lisbeth Salander. The 3 films are slated for release in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
Detective Inspector John Rebus
When visiting Scotland I got into Rebus. Happily, Warren is a bit of a fan, too, collecting those that have been televised or turned into movies.
Detective Inspector John Rebus is the protagonist in the Inspector Rebus series of detective novels by the Scottish writer Ian Rankin, ten of which have so far been televised as Rebus. The novels are mostly set in and around Edinburgh. …
Rebus can be said to belong to a long tradition of paternal Scottish hard men. A natural leader whose gruff exterior and fierce will to succeed in his field belies a benevolent nature. …
In the Rebus television adaptations he was played by John Hannah in the first two series, but in the later series the role was taken over by Ken Stott to much acclaim. …
Hannah is a terrific actor, but I’d say Stott is much truer to the Rebus of the novels.
Leave a comment if you’ve an opinion on the two actors.
in defense of Ayn Rand
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs.”
– Attributed to Paul Krugman.
Atlas Shrugged had that effect on me.
… explores a dystopian United States where leading innovators, ranging from industrialists to artists, refuse to be exploited by society.
The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, sees society collapse around her as the government increasingly asserts control over all industry (including Taggart Transcontinental, the once mighty transcontinental railroad for which she serves as the Vice President of Operations), while society’s most productive citizens, led by the mysterious John Galt, progressively disappear. …
I’ve given Atlas Shrugged to a number of teens. It’s an important book …
Kids need to learn that all men are not created equal, rather that all men should have equal opportunity.
Kids need to learn that we should promote and encourage greatness.
Kids need to learn that authority organizations can ruin their lives ... OK, they already know that.
Now I find myself defending Ayn Rand alongside fans as odious as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. That does hurt.
The new Ayn Rand movie adaptation Atlas Shrugged Part 1 got nuked and ridiculed on the Slate Culture Gabfest audiocast.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
I’m going to see it. Unfortunately the producer of the Ayn Rand adaptation said:
… that he is reconsidering his plans to make Parts 2 and 3 because of scathing reviews and flagging box office returns for the film.
“Critics, you won,” …
I hope he joins Gault and makes the two sequels.
Blockbuster bankrupt
I recall years ago the CEO of Blockbuster (at the time driving local video stores out of business) mocking an upstart called … Netflix.
Just like Borders, Blockbuster could not adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace.
… Bloomberg News is reporting that the video chain will be making the filing official on Thursday morning. …
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who bought about one-third of Blockbuster’s bonds, will join with a group of creditors in swapping their debt for all of the video-rental company’s stock, …
If creditors get all of Blockbuster’s stock, current shareholders will be wiped out. …
If you have an unused Blockbuster gift card sitting around, use it now.
Which will be the next dinosaur to declare bankruptcy?
One of the big four music labels (I wish), perhaps Sony Music. Amazon will be happy to eat their lunch.
Precious – the film
I finally saw the critically acclaimed and award winning movie.
Life is hard. Life is precious.
In 1987, obese, illiterate, 16-year-old Claireece P. “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) lives in the ghetto of Harlem with her dysfunctional and abusive mother, Mary (Mo’Nique).
The acting is excellent, especially Mo’Nique. But everyone in the film is believable: Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz, Paula Patton. Everyone.
It feels more like a documentary than a film.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
Recommended. But know that it’s a very harsh slice of life from a very harsh environment. I wouldn’t blame you a bit for NOT wanting to see it.
The Social Network … really?
It’s a good movie.
No question. Everybody agrees.
The acting was good. I was especially impressed with Justin Timberlake.
But if it wins the Academy Award for Best Picture, this will be the weakest to do so since Shakespeare in Love.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
They got a main plot line of the movie wrong. Mark Zuckerberg’s had the same girlfriend since the early days of Facebook. He didn’t invent the site to pick up chicks.
Rick McCharles 