alfiecycling

This movie was very gripping,engaging and stressful to witness what was done to this brilliant woman who had a real talent for invention.

At one point I was hoping to ask Joy,"which lever do I pull to have an anvil land on your toxic family members and parasitic business scum"?

Joy goes through so many trials and tribulations I thought she would either die of stress or wave the white flag. But lo and behold, she perseveres and eventually wins. God Bless Joy for having the fortitude to not be crushed by her naysayers.

The acting was outstanding, which isn't surprising when looking at the names in this A-list cast. Wonderful cinematography and soundtrack.

This movie has just the right delicate balance of comedy and social commentary.That's why.

My favorite scene, because of my musical background, is when the two are about to enter a dilapidated saloon in Ecuador and hear " modern jazz music" from within only to find out that it is not being played traditionally. Quite literally, Laughed MAO!

A terrific story and cast here, folks. Also,as a fan of the Ugly Betty series, I was delighted to see America Ferrera looking very pretty. Watch it. If you don't like it well...I'll eat my recently dry-cleaned toupee.

this contains spoilers ! if you dig the music of the 70's and punk in particular you will enjoy this. I certainly did.

This tells the story of the founding of the famous NY club CBGB and PUNK magazine. Hillel Kristal borrowed money from his mom to buy the Palace Bar in the Bowery.This after two bankruptcies...LOL. His daughter , Lisa, dropped out of college for lack of funds. So she is hired, fired then rehired by her father, Hillel aka Hilly.

It has a superb cast and the CBGB set is spot on.

Hilly and Lisa are played by Alan Rickman and Ashley Greene. I loved their performances. They are actually quite funny here.

Hilly : "You gotta spend money to make money." Lisa : "You gotta have money to spend money to make money. And since you spend all the money you make,you don't have any money to spend. So you might wanna think about saving the money you make instead of spending the money you make"...Way to go Lisa ! Also, Ashley's New Yawk accent is right on the money.

Freddy Rodriguez plays Idaho, a violin bowing homeless junkie that Hilly takes under his wing.

We see a NY style shakedown of Hilly thwarted by his new found biker buddies, the Titans of Hell.

We see The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, The Dead Boys and, towards the very end, The Police all auditioning for Hilly to get a gig at CBGB.

We also see Blondie and Iggy Pop singing, I Wanna Be Your Dog. And Patti Smith perform,Because The Night.

I love this movie and have watched it numerous times because of where it takes me. Just before the closing credits Hilly says that he opened the club because he thought country music was gonna be the next big thing...and it was ...in Nashville.LOL.

During the ending credits we see the real Talking Heads accepting their induction into the Rock'N' Roll Hall Of Fame and what they do to honor Hilly is so moving.That is a MUST SEE !

The only negative I can talk about is the movie spends too much time on The Dead Boys. Apparently Hilly saw something in them and invested a lot of money to manage them and nearly lost his club to this band that eventually crashed and burned.

Clouds Of Sils Maria was a pleasant journey with two familiar faces, Juliette and Kristen. Maria and Valentine's relationship is built on loyalty... like a married couple.

The name Maria means " bitter" and was well chosen, at least in this chapter of her life. Whereas Valentine means "strong" , also well chosen because she is a well grounded and strong young woman that still has a couple of decades to go before she too may become bitter. When the women are rehearsing dialogue for an upcoming play, I sometimes had difficulty in discerning reality from the play i.e., the scene became a tad cloudy. Plus I really enjoyed the tricks it played on my mind. { SPOILER ALERT }

Off hand I can't recall a movie where a main character leaves so abruptly 80 minutes into the movie, but that is what happens and that caused me as a viewer both slight anxiety and the need to solve this riddle. It is the type of movie that needs to be watched more than once in order to understand all of its nuances. So I will see it again soon.

Spoiler Alert...for several of Alexander Payne's movies.

I've been a big fan of A.Payne since About Schmidt, so it's no surprise that this movie knocked my socks off. the cast is pitch- perfect, like it was in Sideways,The Descendants and About Schmidt. For some reason , betrayal is a common thread throughout all these movies including Election.I can't help but wonder why.

in "Nebraska", spousal cheating is not the primary storyline as it was in The Descendants. visually it is in black and white but i swear i can see some subtle browns. also, several of the rural landscapes are reminiscent of Andrew Wyeths' watercolors. Will Forte's performance is the surprise here because of his SNL comedy work. He's very good as the devoted son who takes his father to Lincoln Ne. to collect a prize of one million dollars.which the son knows is a scam. Bruce Dern and June Squibb are the perfect old couple.She is constantly nagging the old man. Stacy Keach is, as always, amazing in his "soft-spoken-but-I- mean- business" delivery. Angela McEwan's performance floored me... she is so amazing in her 2 short scenes.She plays a woman that runs the local newspaper. Missy Doty has a small role towards the beginning and is a treat to watch...she and MC Gainey were awesome in Sideways.

Rolfe Kent is not the composer on this one...Mark Orton is. He does a great job with his choices of instrumentation; fiddle and guitar, harp and vibes, etc.. it isn't till near the end we find out why Woody is so hell-bent on winning the million dollars...he wanted to leave his two sons something.very touching scene, indeed.

look for the tombstone that reads " PAYNE ' in the cemetery scene...

Spoiler Alert !!

It's a pleasant horror movie, that is to say, it isn't very scary.

Basic outline is; the Solomons', a family of four, move into a house in North Dakota that is scary looking from the get-go that was previously owned by the Rollins family who most towns-people think just moved.

this movie has a very good cast.

there appears to be a deliberate act to unify a story-line using symbolism and biblical names.

in this movie we see many ravens and they usually represent death and darkness.

we also see many Sunflowers. the Sunflower in Greek mythology symbolizes unrequited love. a water nymph named Clytie was in love with the Sun God Apollo. She eventually was turned into a Sunflower and watched him traverse the sky every day. the head of the Rollins family was John and he must not have loved his wife and kids if he killed them.

the head of the Solomon household is Roy. Roy can mean King , as in Roi in French. So here we have, King Solomon, the wise man. He, unlike John the previous farm owner, loves his wife and kids and is trying 'to keep his family together.

Jessica , the daughter of Roy and Denise, is also a biblical name meaning , God Beholds.

the Messenger ghosts have a strange way of reaching out to her... they scare the hell out of her.

Their toddler son, who is traumatized from a serious car accident back in Chicago and doesn't speak, is Ben , and that means , son of my sorrow. he and Jessica are the only two people that can see the ghosts.

the most glaring flaw in the plot is, why would the messenger ghosts terrify Jessica if their intention was to lead her to the truth ? there are nicer ways to accomplish that. they instead should have terrorized their father, who killed them, and was working for Roy and living in the their barn.

the special effect of the concave spoon reflecting the child ghosts was cool. but the pitchfork through the walls was not.so it balances out.

I do enjoy listening to commentaries as a rule this one unfortunately had too many people talking. the solution may have been two separate commentaries as some DVD's wisely do. BTW, Dustin is a little too obsessed with his own nipples. but in all fairness, he was good in the movie. and to hear Kristen say, "Sushi in Regina" had me LOL.

Lastly, the music score by Joseph LoDuca is perfect and very much influenced by Krzysztof Penderecki's , "Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima," a revolutionary piece of music in 1960.

Wow! I just found out that today, January 20, 2014 is the 10th year anniversary of the release of this fine movie by Showtime. I really love this movie and have watched it numerous times.The actress Kristen Stewart shines in it.

The main character is a young teenage girl named Melinda Sordino. Sordino is Italian for " mute," and Melinda can mean, among other things,a Linden tree. Ironically, the quasi "mute" Melinda is the very person doing all the narrating throughout the movie. A poignant story of a teenage girl's ordeal and recovery. Many other character's in the movie have similar type names, for example; Heather is a friend that unfriends Melinda because Melinda is too depressed. And Ivy who unfriends her because of a misunderstanding. In fact, Melinda refers to cliques as "clans" which is from the Latin for sprout.And the author Nathaniel Hawthorne is mentioned in her English class and Hawthorne is a hedge bush of the rose family.

Hawthorne's book, The Scarlet Letter is mentioned as being full of symbolism.Which this story seems to also be full of.

I can't figure out why the author,Laurie Hals Anderson, of Speak uses so many horticultural references.But interestingly enough,right after Melinda is sexually assaulted by Andy,who is a popular teen, Melinda stays in his Jeep Wrangler after he leaves her. She looks through the windshield as she's weeping and sees a large majestic tree. Is the tree a " mute witness" to the crime?" We see the rape in a series of flashbacks by Melinda.

Later on, when she begins her freshman year at Merryweather High, her lovable bohemian art teacher, Mr. Freeman, instructs the class to pick a slip of paper out of a damaged globe that will have their year long art project on it. Melinda picks one that has the word " tree." She tries to put it back but Mr Freeman says not to because that is her " destiny, you can't change your destiny."

Also, she turns inwards and starts to cut class and hideout in a utility room at her school.And then she, like the trees and shrubs around her, starts to recover after the cold winter and she finally begins to regain her strength and courage. This may explain why the author used the tree as a symbol for Melinda.

The story line does not suffer from several plots interweaving like we see so much of but rather all the focus is on this young teen and her nearly year long recovery from her trauma.

She befriends a very nice classmate named Dave Petrakis. Perhaps more symbolism here because the name Petrakis refers to a rock or maybe even a bedrock. And he is supportive of her while never really knowing what happened to her.

The cast is finely tuned and hums like (fill in your favorite set of wheels).

Kudos to the composer Christopher Libertino for a fantastic musical score. His use of a chamber orchestra and piano near the end takes that scene to lofty heights.

Happy 10th Year Anniversary, Speak.

It wasn't until I watched SWATH on DVD in the comforts of my home that I was able to truly appreciate it.

Factoring in all disciplines involved with movie-making, SWATH is a winner on all counts.

Many scenes reminded me of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema's Victorian Age paintings, in both their composition and use of soft color hues.

The 7 Dwarfs were a real treat.My favorite dialogue went as follows. Duir: "six dwarfs against an army "? Coll: "I like them odds."

The Evil Queen Ravenna and her brother, Finn, have what appears to be a very peculiar relationship, that is, they behave almost like a married couple.

Snow White and Eric The Huntsman develop a solid bond that's almost cosmic, i.e., always meant to be.

This story is an allegory of how important it is to have a benevolent King or Queen. Which is why I really enjoyed seeing how all the characters on the side of good, grow to love one another.

Being a lifelong Beatles fan, this review is difficult to compose. I was in grammar school when they were making gold records and I, like many of my contemporaries, felt the beauty of their music. So when it comes to films, they were nowhere near as successful. Let It Be is without question their worst movie. But is, however, a film that should be salvaged one fine day.

Ringo temporarily quit during the White Album sessions and a few months later, George temporarily quit during the Let It Be sessions. That speaks volumes about the toxic problems they were experiencing and it shows in this reality-style film.

Obviously their impromptu rooftop concert that ended with John's witty repartee, should not be missed.

What does one say about a movie that's really good but could have been a great?

First off. Why was it really good? Well because The Runaways were the first all female rock band that wrote their material and played their instruments. The fact they were charismatic eye candy was a bonus for us males - so God bless'em for that. That makes this an important movie.

This type of genre tends to fall flat on its face, especially for musicians, when an actor is cast that can't play their respective instrument or mime the vocals. So when Joan Jett (played by the very gifted Kristen Stewart)is playing the guitar and singing, it appears authentic. Didn't hurt that Kristen resembles Joan Jett either.

Dakota Fanning is another gifted actress. Only difference is she exudes a wholesomeness that should have banned her from playing the role of Cherie Currie. But she handled it like a true pro. Folks. we're talking," Sex, Drugs, Booze and Rock N Roll." Plus, she sings amazingly well on these tracks.

Casting Elvis Presley's granddaughter as Cherie's twin sister Marie was a great choice. The role was small but gave her the opportunity to mix- it-up with the pros and shine.

Now.How could it have been made great? Well,simple; more emphasis on the other band members, especially Joan Jett. The story line leaned too heavily on Cherie's family life leaving me wanting to know more about the other group members family life. I still don't know diddly-squat about Lita Ford's life. We actually get to see Sandy West's Mom's horrified reaction after Kim Fowley comes to their home. And as for Joan's family life? Well forget about it. Not a peep.And I don't recall the bass player, Robin, played by Alia Shawkat from the sitcom Arrested Development having any dialogue! We see they played in Japan. But did they play at CBGB's ? It desperately needed that kind of balance.

It would also have been nice to show a photo of the real-life Runaways in 1976 that morphs into how they look today, just before the ending credits. Cliché? absolutely. Relevant? Very much so.

BTW, the peeing on a guitar scene did happen according to Joan and the group it happened to was ( drum roll,please ) RUSH !

As a final note, the commentary is not to be missed. It has Joan Jett, Kristen and Dakota dishing out morsels of interesting background info. It too is rated R because of Kristen's penchant for whimsical profanity

The character Brett Hanson has a history that unfolds at first in a series of flashbacks then orally to his two companions, Martine and Gordy.

Martine, the daughter of an inter-state truck driver, is a lonely 15 year old girl looking for love and acceptance.

Gordy is a lonely white young geeky computer repairman that believes himself to be Native American.

Gordy owns a gas guzzling beast of car from the 1970's that transports the three of them towards the unknown in post Katrina, Louisiana.

The color palette is predominantly, blues , yellows and their progeny, greens. How the color yellow pops up from time to time was a nice addition to the original story. Here are a few examples:

Gordy buys a yellow throwaway camera that is "preferably past its expiration date." Then, at the riverside, slams the camera against the wet rocks before he takes photos of Martine doing a few ballet positions. The resultant photos are unpredictable and look bleached, abstract and surreal. Perhaps a commentary on how he and people in general process and interpret reality differently.

During a heavy downpour, Brett borrows Gordy's yellow tent to use as a wrap instead staying in the comforts of the car with his two companions.

A yellow fire hydrant causes a lot of grief for Brett and his wife, May.

May's hair is dyed yellow.

Brett has become the quintessential glass-is-half-empty sort of man that expects to be let down every day. So when he hands his wife, May, a yellow manila envelope I was able to guess its contents.

And finally, a yellow handkerchief.

A few random memorable quotes

Gordy: I was kinda apologizing. I was sorta saying, " your life's equal to mine."

Brett: No accidents.

May: Do you realize you punish those who love you more.

Martine: ...I think because I trust sad people.

Life handed these four people lemons and they in turn made lemonade.

Kudos to everyone involved for making this endearing movie. I enjoyed the musical score...it was quite haunting.

Spoiler Alert !!

Joe is a powerful and haunting movie. During the first viewing I was overcome with dismay at the sight of the Jones' family living in such squalor. Joe's life is better simply because he doesn't have to live in an boarded up and abandoned house like they do.But he is a lonely man that lives with his bulldog and frequents a local bordello. The bond that develops between Joe and Gary Jones, a teenage boy with a strong work ethic, is very touching. We slowly learn about all their problems and how difficult it is to solve them. the father,Wade Jones, on the other hand, is a violent and sinister man.

Towards the end of the movie a bell went off in my head when the father said, "30 dollars." Instantly I thought of Judas Iscariot and his 30 pieces of silver. during the second viewing I started to notice all the biblical names and inferences that the author apparently used in his word palette. Here is what i came up with.

Joe Ransom is a bearded man; all biblical figures are.

ransom refers to "Redemption" by either a slave or a prisoner.

Joe did 29 months in the penitentiary.

Penitentiary deals with "Penance."

Joe is a name derived from "St. Joseph," husband of the Virgin Mary and stepfather to Jesus and was a carpenter. Joe work deals with poisoning trees.

His bulldog is named, "Faith."

Joe has Faith kill another dog because, the dog "has the Devil in him." "Faith can kill the Devil."

Joe's job is to poison trees. Joe and Gary meet on a Friday, as in Good Friday. He picks up the snake near a tree ( Serpent and Tree )and says this to Gary," this Snake can kill you."

Gary's father's nickname is G-Dawg. Dog is God backwards i.e., Satan is the opposite of God.

G-Dawg kills a wino by the riverside by hitting him on the side of the head with a piece of steel exactly 10 times( 10 commandments) and then kisses him in the forehead when he dies ( Judas kissed Jesus as a act of betrayal and is the Kiss of Death )

G-Dawg takes his daughter, Dorothy, to betray and pimp for 30 dollars to a local hooligan named Willie Russell. Dorothy means Gift Of God. Willie means Penis.

The migrant families' last name is Jones. Jones means , Son Of John...as in St. John the Baptist.

Gary it turns out means,"Spear," as in the spear that pierced Jesus while on the cross. These clues were fun to figure out but no where near as difficult as the clues in Nick Cage's classic National Treasure movies and Knowing.

The musical score is spot on with its dark foreboding cellos.

Kudos to all the actors , many of whom were Austin TX. locals.

p.s. Joe tells Willie to " look at the Moon " while Joe has a revolver pointed at Willie's head and is preparing to shoot. There may be significance in that.