text:
not seen that one
the film that bummed me out the most was probably lilya 4 ever.brokenchairs, CrispinAlexander, golden_blue, spiritofjazz, lameosaur, and soup200 this'd this
^ this
came here to say this
it is unrelentingly bleak. and you know it's never going to let up either, right up to the excruciating montage of her with the clients.
Oops. *Maybe.
To be honest my abiding memory of Lilya4Ever is that it's a bit of a rubbish film. Utterly, utterly one-note and it would have worked better to do a documentary about child trafficking rather than turning it into a single-issue story that was no story and all issue. It really didn't work for me.
Once Were Warriors is possibly the bleakest film I can think of.
- Silkyskillz11, OceanStorm, and harman_kardon this'd this
- the-breacher this'd this
- brusma, badmanreturns, and moousee this'd this
^this to OP tho it's more of a TV thing than a film
Bleakest movies suggestions:
I remember Children of Men being bleak
Is that the one I mean?
And Surviving- but I love that film.
Children of Men has a massively redemptive ending
and is basically a big redemption narrative (for the human race!) so denied, soz
Fucking depressed me
- ChintzyLacroix this'd this
The Land Before Time.
Never Ending Story.
Requiem for a Dream. Again, massive amounts of love.Darcy this'd this
- JaguarPirate and lameosaur this'd this
It's brilliant.
And makes me want to kill myself.
that one with paddy considine in
I wanted to cry/kill myself after
the one where his brother gets hanged by bullies in the barn?
can't remember what it's called without checking but tis a great film and very bleakDarcy this'd this
- untrue, meowington, and DaveMK this'd this
- meowington, thewarn, roastthemonaspit, Gringo, shattered_ghoul, moousee, the_dazzled, Yesiamaduck, and berksy this'd this
sorry 'bout that
not strictly the ending but still a bit dumb of me posting that on heres1m0n this'd this
Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel
not the Nicolas Cage version
I fucking love the werner herzog version
precisely for the hilariously happy ending, it's so bonkers...
I think we watched that at school when I was about 16
yeah, pretty pretttyyyyyyyy depressing.
Nil By Mouth
isn't all that cheery.harman_kardon this'd this
Was gonna be my answer
Couldn't actually finish watching it because my partner couldn't take it any more - not one ray of light in that film
god awful film
really can't stand British social realism.the_UCA_coil this'd this
You gotta laugh, ain't ya sweetheart? Else you'd cry.
Secrets and lies! We're all in pain! Why can't we share our pain? I've spent my entire life trying to make people happy, and the three people I love the most in the world hate each other's guts, and I'm in the middle! I can't take it anymore!
Haven't seen it
or anything other than Nil by Mouth that would qualify as British social realism within the context of this thread to be honest, but Nil by Mouth is one of my favourite films, so SHUT IT.
oh, ok
no, that's fine then. You gotta see (and enjoy) *one* social realist film in your life.
Nil By Mouth is brilliantly acted, well-shot, tautly-directed and has an effective script
but it's completely fucking loathsome - if you can get over that then fair enough
for me, at least.DarwinDude this'd this
^^^ 100% this.
Especially when his step father is forcing that young prostitute to act like a dog.
- Gorkys_Forever this'd this
had to turn it off
unwatchablericey this'd this
It gets less and less bleak the longer it goes on! :D
Or more and more bleak, as you realise how idyllic their lives used to be...
Yeah (although it's not really a movie), or
When the wind blows
Henry: Portrait of a serial killer
The Vanishing
Not seen them, but I imagine Nil By Mouth and the War Zone are up there too.
Man, that's rough.ideserve2 this'd this
- manbearpig this'd this
I fucking hate it. But yeah, there's no letting up at all :'(
- shattered_ghoul, plasticniki, and lyserge this'd this
Would like to pre-empt anyone suggesting 'The Death Of Mr Lazarescu'
by saying that there's PLENTY of humanity in that movie, and despite the bleakness its power teeters agonisingly and exquisitely between nihilistic and redemptive - any other movies like this? (First person to say Pan's Labyrinth gets a slap because that movie is a pile of overrated, contrived, badly-scripted, badly-acted bobbins)
I love Pan's Labyrinth.
Cheers.ChintzyLacroix, colonelbingobongo, brusma, kilgore-trout, dorftrottel, prunes, NathanielMeyer, berksy, and shimmetry this'd this
I knew this would happen
Negativity gets resulttttsssss
Just remembered the bleakest movie I've seen. It's called
The Death of Mr Lazarescu. You probably haven't heard of it though.
I saw this REALLY bleak film
but you probably haven't seen it because I made it myself and then destroyed all traces of its existence.
I know I've earnt this by slagging off everyone's favourite Spanish fantasy war movie
but my post was predicated upon the DiS massive knowing about TDOML, rather than not knowing
Anyway, be a sport and answer the question!
If only you knew how much I love you, prunes
and how trifling this disagreement shall seem after we elope
great film...
bleakly funny too.
- manbearpig and Balonz this'd this
Let's all watch Threads together
They've got the WHOLE THING on Google Video!
I'll get the popcorn, you guys get the fizzy drinks!!!!
I spent a recent-ish friday night on my own watching all the various
parts of The War Game on youtube.
That was fun!
Fucks sake
Just skipped through it to see if it was the film I watched at school. It was.
I skipped straight to the scene where someone is puking behind a mattress.
A short film about killing has to be a contender.
There was some hope, though...
In Poland, it was instrumental in the abolition of the death penalty.
The War Zone
Mysterious Skin left me feeling wretched too, but is still amazing.
The Warzone
None more bleak. NONE.
Dear Zachary
:'(Antpocalypsenow and Teeej this'd this
Someone hasn't seen Africa Addio aka Africa Blood And Guts
oh no they haven't
mind you I haven't seen DZ so mea culpa etc
haven't seen it
but i think The Bridge might be the winner of that one...
- JaguarPirate and blisters this'd this
Twin Bleaks
28 Bleaks Later
Eight Legged Bleaks
The Seventh Seal
I can't remember if the story is all that depressing but man, does it ever *look* bleak
I'll see your ''Seventh Seal'' and raise you 'Andrei Rublev''....
Especially the horse sequences:this'd this
Lingering, speculative shots are Tarkovsky's fortay.
...and when a director gives your mind a chance to excavate...they're usually the most bleak and disturbing moments in a film.
nuh ... whaa ..
Persona isn't bleak
it's SEXY
i'd say the silence/cries & whispers/scenes from a marriage for bleakest bergman - there's one shot in the movie cut of the latter which is a rare exterior shot in the middle of the movie where nothing is happening on a quiet swedish street, and it is just incredibly effective at evoking ennui etc.
doesn't scenes from a marriage have a semi-happy ending though?
not uplifting or anything but not as bleak as it could (should?) have been
anyway Through a Glass Darkly is probably the bleakest one I've seen
oh yes. true...my lasting impression of it is that its bleak tho. through a glass darkly is another good suggestion. i guess you can tell how depressed bergman must have been in that early '60s periodthis'd this
a serbian film
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and her lover is pretty grim.
Watch The Baby of Mâcon...even worse
And it features the staple of most 'bleak'' films....a massive rape scene.
Yeah...especially the formalist aesthetic and the Renaissance inspired compositions.
Also, the centre love affair in Cook thief....
P.s. I find the relentless cruelty of the Gambon caricature much more bleak then, say, Winstone in Nil By Mouth (who has a redemptive quality)
It's that Lynchian trick of displaying shades of a character....rather then a fully formed individual. I thought Cook thief was an elaborate Beano strip.
but, then again, maybe not ''bleak''
Just *makes sick gargle at the back of throat*
most bruno dumont movies.
virgin stripped bare by her bachelors/woman is the future of man
not bleak*est* perhpas
the latter two are actually quite human/jolly, dealing w/ socialable but neurotic, lovestruck creatives (and are ostensibly comedies) but (i find anyway) there's an really dark unrelenting loneliness (esp. in virgin stripped bare...)
same for l'humanite
lots of fassbinder is bleak but pretty funny too. there are some semi-amusing scenes in beware of a holy whore! which are archetypally bleak
Synecdoche, New York
The funeral speech and the last 5 minutes ;( ;(shes_so_high and berksy this'd this
I love that film so much
I find something quite life-affirming and uplifting about it overall though and I'm not sure why
came in here to post this
it's also one of my favourite ever films.
Wouldn't call it THAT bleak
It's at least as much about the process of solipsism as it is about *modern existential isolation* - good film though, aye
The funeral speech was really funny, not really bleak.
things can be funny and bleak though
synecdoche was hilarious and depressing pretty much the entire way through
Granted, but the humour (and the humanity) offsets the bleakness a little
and as I said, it's in part a study of self-obsessed artistic bleakness *itself* - this is the guy who wrote Adaptation, remember
hilarious + depressing is pretty much what I was trying to cover upthread with that Lazarescu outburst, which I now regret :'(
dunno, I think in a lot of ways the humour add to the bleakness
like the bit with on his daughter's deathbed. or maybe that is depressing rather than just bleak, if there's any distinction.
not sure how saying it's a study of self-obsessed artistic bleakness means it's any less bleak - it's not like it's a spoof or anything?
that film's not only a total downer
but I also thought it was kind of a mess and not particularly well thought through. Strong contender for the award for most overrated film of the 2000s.Sibley this'd this
Haven't even watched any of his films yet
but pretty sure it's one of Béla Tarr's
- prunes this'd this
- this'd this
it is excellent yes
satantango is pretty soul crushing at times
(and not just because it's 7 hours long)
- oneforghost this'd this
Job Interview with a Vampire?
Not sure if this works.marckee this'd this
- Smyth2, JustJay, Cementimental, soup200, ricey, liquidcalm, and jontosh2001 this'd this
- unfamiliar and thewarn this'd this
Sweet Home Alabama
the worst thing is, i'm only half kidding
Hidden (Cache)
Hidden is bleak?
The two Haneke I've seen have both been fairly bleak I suppose, but but that final shot of Hidden! The White Ribbon is a fucking masterpiece, but it's not so much bleak as grandly despairing, everyone's problems intercutting everyone else's and the whole lot falling into glorious damnation. Best film of the past 10 years too (well, since Mulholland Drive)
amazing films...
but not actually his bleakest. Save that for The Seventh Continent.
Without a doubt the bleakest thing I've ever seen.
Also 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance & Benny's video, which are the other two films that make up Haneke's self-named 'emotional
glaciation' trilogy. They are all brilliant films too...Haneke by my reckoning is some distance the best film maker working today.
I saw this recently.
It is about as bleak as anything I've ever seen, but the problem is it's almost bleak-by-numbers so it gets very tiresome and boring after a while. So, as a result it loses impact.
I thought it was tedious bollocks
omg wtf
literally wtf
god I'm being an arse on this thread
maybe the bleakest film ever is an overhead shot of one young man posting incessantly to a single DiS thread, until everyone else leaves
or maybe it's The Plague Dogs, which I haven't seen, but which by some accounts makes Watership Down look like fucking Thomas the Tank Engine
Plague Dogs is amazing. Reallllly bleak, not sure quite how/why it got made
or what happened to our animation industry, it's SO well made.
Not seen the film, but I read the book as a child.
Fucking hell.
Agree with the OP.
I don't watch these films as a rule. My brother was like "You should really watch Irreversible. It's horrible etc." No thanks.
Kind of a subthread for most utterly pointless film: The Virgin Suicides. God it was so boring. Who were main characters that I was supposed to feel any kind of relation to or warmth for? It was like a boring documentary that never developed. xXx 2: Return of X was more worthwhile.
i love The Virgin Suicides
I dunno, this is gonna sound pretentious but I think it works really well as a sort of paean to youth and lost innocence. Plus I just really like that kind of dreamy hazy emo thing it has going on, and the Air soundtrack is a stunner.Antpocalypsenow, TheWza, and cherrycola this'd this
Midnight Cowboy
I need some happy things after seeing that film.
i cried at the end
that and planes, trains and automobiles are the only two films that reduced me to tears
funnily enough both end with two buddies being there for each other. wonder what that says about me.
I watched Threads.
I haven't seen it before.
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
Went to see it at the ICA a few years back without knowing much about it. People started walking out after about 90 seconds when the 6-year-old got raped. For the first time. Of many. They carried on walking out all the way through. Can't say it was really worth sticking with it to the end. Bleak, awful and more bleak.
Leaving Las Vegas
The Elephant Man
oh the elephant man
when they break into his room :'(
that bit
fucking hell.
forgot about The Elephant Man
so sad :(
the seventh continent (michael haneke)
no doubt in my mind
that was supposed to go at the end.
Cementimental already said Come and See
but it is so bleak that it's worth mentioning again, many more times
plus Stroszek totally rulesCementimental this'd this
late entry for Tyrannosaur?
OK, it's not *that* bleak, but:
a few savage beatings,
a rape,
genital mutilation,
a murder,
a cancer death,
a dog kicked to death,
a dog battered to death then beheaded,
a kid gets disfigured
and sophie from peep show goes to prison.
and the whole thing looks a bit grey. great film though.
tokyo story
maybe not bleak but i've never felt sadder after a filmthis'd this
When I saw that at the (local art house) cinema.
Some twat started laughing near the end when Shukichi goes back home, alone, and talks to his neighbour.
I was so, so angry.
This Is England '86
Just horrible. That bit in particular. Genuinely wish I hadn't watched it.
OK my notional depressing animation marathon
Watership Down
When the Wind Blows
Grave of the Fireflies
Barefoot Gen
The Plague Dogs
+ maybe Night on the Galactic Railroad to recover a bit with some beautiful dreamlike strangeness mixed with the ;___;
this isnt so bleak - but do you guys like piotr dumala ?
franz kafka
crime & punishment
The Last Picture Show
Five Easy Pieces gets pretty bleak too - it has a few comic relief scenes, but they get fewer & further between as the story progresses, and the ending is pure descent-into-hell.this'd this
ill vote for tinker tailor soldier spy
Bleak in that you're trapped in that cinema for 2 hours
- Cementimental this'd this
Can't believe nobody has mentioned The Road
Bleak bleak bleak. But no socially bleak. I find socially bleak movies hard to sit through, especially when it involves rape. I think rape is worse than murder in many cases.berksy this'd this
good call
not a fucking patch on the book, of course. you read it? Cormac McCarthy is in a class of his own. got to get past the lack of speech marks and sitch first (and in other novels like 'The Orchard Keeper', archaic Amercan colloquialisms like 'sitch'), but it's worth it.
it's a decent adaptation, but it loses the sheer sprawling wonder of McCarthy's untouchable descriptive skills. as with any of his books, it's heavy on atmosphere, which means on film, the human element has to be especially well interpreted: for the record, I think Mortenson and the kid do a fine job. but yeah...McCarthy actually captures/conjures a landscape beyond the powers of any camera. he's that good.
I hope I'm not sounding horribly pretentious here!
No you're not at all!
I've read The Road and of course, No Country For Old Men and I enjoyed them so much. You're very right about the atomosphere and tension that McCarthy conjures - the sheer humanity of it all brought a tear to my eye in many scenes throughout the book and the movie.
Great story though, it just struck me as being so realistic.
I particularly love the very end of 'The Road'
"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
breathtaking. he breaths life into his words like no-one else I know of. the way he writes about the natural world makes it seem vividly alive. and mankind's place in McCarthy's depictions of the world surrounding it is never less than profound.
true about it being realistic...there's no fat, no excess in it. I'm sure many people find it gruelling, especially since there is no really happy ending like folks have been conditioned to expect. but if you're that way inclined, like everyone posting in this thread, the beauty makes it all worthwhile.
"and mankind's place in McCarthy's depictions of the world surrounding it is never less than profound"
clumsily written. what I mean to say is that the mankind is always at the mercy of the world in his novels. especially 'The Road'.
bleak, nasty, unpleasant.
I sat in small arts cinema watching it with one other person. I remember retching when i first saw the forced shit eating.
Was Irréversible ever properly released on DVD in the UK?
Want to get it but it seems difficult to find for reasonable prices.
I got it in HMV with no trouble.
This was several years ago though. You can have my copy if you want, not really the sort of thing I want to watch repeatedly.
Was released and then again as special edition I think.
Tartan went out of business though I think so I guess had the rights to it or something.
another for Grave of the Fireflies
the sadness is compounded by the fact that there are few things happier than little girls in Gibli films.
when I saw said film, I realised that my previous bleakest, 'Dancer in the Dark', is actually horribly manipulative and heavy handed. The sadness in GotF is graceful and natural, and balanced out by the sweetness that persists even after the story takes its saddest turn.
DitD is just Lars Von Trier out to wrench the most severe reactions from the viewers. Saying that, it works...in the pivotal moment, I felt like I'd been winded...horribly sad.
can't get enough of that stuff, though. this thread makes me feel like an uncultured whelp, whole worlds of unbearable bleakness that I really ought to have explored.
also, Mysterious Skin
anyone? like with Grave of the Fireflies, it's the sullying of innocence, the juxtaposition of the innocent and the horribly adult.
the final scenes are properly crushing. the guy who plays Brian is amazing.
one of my favourite films
and yeah, the ending (in particular) is just emotionally brutal. Both the leads are amazing really.
Haven't seen Grave Of The Fireflies yet, half-tempted to watch it tonight though.
I didn't know what to think
before watching. with regards to the subject matter, and how it would work in a film. but it's dealt with sensitively without balking at the real darkness of the issues at hand.
my favourite thing about Grave of the Fireflies
is that it was released in Japan as a double bill with My Neighbour Totoro. How did that work?
I think because it was the early days of Studio Ghibli it was just to save on marketing costs, you can still buy reprints of the posters that have both films on them (i want one)
ddo you watch 'its always sunny in philadelphia'?
21 Grams
I remember coming out of the cinema gobsmacked then wanting to hang myself from the nearest tree, requesting to listen to Strange Fruit as the last song I ever hear. Great film though.this'd this
I saw that film on a date.
Dead romantic, me.
Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble
opening night...like the fassbinder. i suppose what i find *really* bleak is when characters like gena in that movie gain the pirandelloean awareness that they are just really a actor; even spiritual anguish or w/e is an re-enactment of the signifier for 'spiritual anguish' along a clearly-defined set of preconditions maybe
also, in her shoes
Ozu's "Tokyo Twilight"
Someone mentioned Tokyo Story, and that's a pretty sad film alright, but this one makes Tokyo Story look like Mary Poppins.
My favourite Ozu film for sure.
Night of the Living Dead.
A film that begins in pretty grim fashion and then gets progressively worse minute by minute; resulting in one of the most devastatingly hopeless ending scenes in cinema history. Wonderful film.thewarn, the_UCA_coil, and Cementimental this'd this
Snowtown is a fine addition to the bleak canon
Incestuous rape, torture, dog murder, paedophilia.
Horrible film: http://bit.ly/pkbqBz
Also, I thought Tyrannosaur was a pile of shit. A compendium of awful working class cliches and monotonous violence. No insight whatsoever. (Quite well acted though)
I saw it at the end of a 4-film day at the LFF last year. Had to go for a long walk afterwards, really stayed with me.
Has anyone suggested
Eraserhead yet? That film is the definition of bleak. Depressing characters, dark, colourless cinematography, miserable setting, weird freak child, just completely, totally bleak.
Turtles Can Fly :(
Grave of the Fireflies :(
Threads :(
I tried explaining The Room to some friends of mine
They hadn't seen it, so i told them it was about the heartbreak and subsequent descent into madness of a man betrayed by his fiancée, ending with his total mental breakdown and eventual suicide. And it has cancer plotlines, that's always bleak.
Aside from that what springs to mind is Twelve Monkeys. The ending always makes me feel futile and helpless and alone :[
They made us watch Threads at school
As part of a science lesson.
Weeeeeeell, I'm going to say
Winter's Bone.
And it makes you feel really cold too.
some great films mentioned on this thread...
some that haven't been mentioned so far...
everything ever made by Michael Haneke but particularly The Seventh Continent, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance & Benny's Video.
Even Dwarves Started Snall - Herzog (not his best but his bleakest imo)
The Barbarian Invasions - Denys Arcand
Julien Donkey-boy - Harmony Korine
Happiness - Todd Solondz (by far his best film too)
Safe - Todd Haynes
A Short Film About Killing & Dekalog 1 - Krystof Kieslowski
No Man's Land - Danis Tanovic
For some reason I also find Easy Rider very bleak and not just the ending...the whole thing just has a dark undercurrent running through it.


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Jan 20, 2008
Bullfighter and the Lady (1951)
Here's a word I don't use lightly or often enough, but it applies. "Masterpiece."
Tonight TCM showed the restored, 124-minute version of Budd Boetticher's 1951 epic Bullfighter and the Lady, a thrilling piece of gritty melodrama (produced by John Wayne!). When Republic Pictures released the movie, they had cut more than 30 minutes out of it. Towards the end of Boetticher's life, the film was restored to its original full length, thereby realizing the filmmaker's true intentions. I have not seen this movie before in any duration, so cannot account for what the studio removed for the release version. But suffice to say, this two-hour cut is an American masterpiece- one of the most breath-taking commercial pictures from the golden age of the studio system.
While perhaps Boetticher is better remembered today for the string of gritty westerns he made with Randolph Scott (The Tall T, Ride Lonesome), he was a bullfighter before entering the movie business, and got his big break as a technical advisor for Tyrone Power's matador epic Blood and Sand (1941), and spent a decade directing B noirs and thrillers, before getting the opportunity to venture to his surrogate home of Mexico to make this motion picture.
32 year-old Robert Stack plays Johnny Regan, an American upstart in Mexico who takes bullfighting lessons from aging matador Manolo Estrada (Gilbert Roland) in order to impress a young lady (Joy Page) whose suitor was injured in the ring. Throughout the film, Regan creates much heartache and misunderstanding (unintentionally or not) because of his ignorance of Latin culture in general. He is truly a stranger in a strange land who too often lets his bravado make up for lack of experience.
Boetticher and cinematographer Jack Draper create an ambiance that is by turns docu-realistic and dream-like. The deep focus chiaroscuro photography, with rich tones and long shadows, and the striking composition, turn nearly every shot into a separate work of art. The excellent footage within the ring is properly gritty. With so many scenes of natural light (in the ring, on the streets, in pastures), and where sequences often play without any English translation, one quickly forgets this is a movie, and believes we are really there in the crowds next to the camera.
This story of twentieth century bullfighters perhaps finds its cinematic equivalent in, of all things, sword and sandal epics, where these matadors are gladiators in an arena who play with their lives for sport. The scene with the glowing, sweaty, rippling bodies of the matadors in the steamroom recall similar moments of beefcake eroticism in any big-budget toga movie you can think of. A clever framing device of shooting the matadors in low angles against the sky recalls the striking composition of Sergei Eisenstein (and many outdoor scenes here surpass what he attempted in Que Viva Mexico), and makes the modern-day matador look like a warrior out of mythology.
Perhaps the most telling scene is when they visit an older man whose book on bullfighting remains unfinished because he failed to answer the question of why matadors do what they do. That answer is not revealed explicitly here, but to see Robert Stack's open-faced radiance after being in the ring is to suggest that the appeal of such a dangerous vocation is that one truly feels alive after dancing with death. In a film about male virility, this inference may not be far from the truth. (In fact, the two-shots where Stack and Page exchange longing glances are extremely erotic.)
Budd Boetticher returned to the arena later in his career for the 1972 documentary Arruza about the famed matador, and is likewise hard to find. Having scanned all of the titles in his filmography, I sheepishly confess to having seen only three of his forty features. This is why I love this job-- there is always new work to discover. In an age where more obscure films are being resurrected on DVD each week, the work of Budd Boetticher is a perfect candidate for rediscovery by a new generation. As for Bullfighter and the Lady in specific, this cries for a Criterion release (in its full version of course) with a documentary of this auteur as a bonus. In the meantime, this masterpiece plays again on TCM February 6. Warm up the VCR.
Jan 19, 2008
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman
It may not be much of a stretch to say that this is Sidney Lumet's best film in 20 years (after Running on Empty), considering that he has done a string of mediocre films in the meantime, but I mean it as high praise. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a crackerjack movie about a heist that typically goes wrong. Brothers Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke) Hanson, each up to their elbows in debt, plot to rob their own parents' jewelry store, in a supposedly quick and neat operation where they would make some quick cash, and their parents would get everything back with insurance, anyway.
The second scene in the film shows how the robbery goes horribly wrong, and then several times we continue to flash back to a few days prior to the robbery, and see how things unfold from a different character's point of view. At first, I was concerned about this broken narrative device (the last thing we need is another heist movie suffering from "Quentin Tarantino's Disease", which ripped off The Killing in the first place), but as we revisit certain moments, they have another layer of doom and deceit.
Sidney Lumet directs with his usual sense of mannered economy, delivering a terrific character-driven movie (a la Serpico or Dog Day Afternoon) featuring top-notch performances, in another scenario where lives blur horribly out of control. Ron Fortunato's ashen cinematography, and the simple framing, compliment the bleak, empty worlds of disappointment and broken dreams that all of the characters inhabit, not just the hard-luck brothers. Hoffman and Hawke are outstanding as the siblings whose idiotic plot spirals into tragedy. I was reminded of Hoffman's character in the superb, overlooked Owning Mahoney as an emotionally bankrupt numbers cruncher who thinks he can get away with a preposterous plan. And while I've always liked Ethan Hawke, I have even more respect for him as an actor now. One of the more introspective young stars of the "Gen X" pack in the early 90's, this performance as a sallow-cheeked fortysomething loser is a transformation. Albert Finney is fine as always as the father, yet for most red-blooded males, the true revelation of the movie would be Marisa Tomei, whose nude scenes are already making the rounds on the net. Her role as Gina, married to Andy but also screwing Hank on the side, is heartbreaking. Her bedroom scenes with either brother always have post-coital talk where either sibling promises to take her away from this crummy existence. And because we already know the disastrous outcome of the brothers' get-rich-quick plan, these moments are hardly erotic- even scenes of love are undercut with bitterness and sorrow.
Kelly Masterson's screenplay is an intricately written study of a family unit that was already doomed. I'm not sure I quite buy the ending, despite how credible it would seem with grief-stricken people going out of control, yet it still needed another scene or two to round things out, especially since the story is otherwise so beautifully detailed. At the age of 83, Sidney Lumet has made a terrific comeback film. Like those geriatric directors John Huston, Robert Altman and Clint Eastwood, who would try on different projects while they still have their breath, we can only wonder what he'll do next.
Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei
Jan 15, 2008
Christopher's Movie Matinee (1968)
Today I received an e-mail from my friend Mike who was at the Jazz Conference here in town last week, and told me that among the guests was Darius Brubeck- yes, the son of pianist Dave Brubeck. Upon the mention of his name, I was reminded of his earlier "Canadian connection"-- he was one of the musicians who worked on the score for Mort Ransen's nearly forgotten counterculture epic, Christopher's Movie Matinee. The film became stuck in my mind all day, enough to be christened tonight's "film of the day".
My sole viewing of this curiosity piece was at a rare public screening at Cinematheque-- almost exactly ten years ago. The film was introduced by local musician Chris Whiteley, who also worked on the joyful soundtrack. This 1968 documentary is candid look at a handful of long-haired teenagers, following them through their daily existence. While this film is not as dated as other counterculture films of the period, it does however stand as a document of the naivete that in general is the essence of youth, but in specific, these spacey young hippies make observations about the real world that exists outside of their cocoons. One well-fed bespectacled youth, in a friendly argument with an old man on a bus, compares himself with the black population as to how the world looks down upon hippies!
The subjects of this movie in a sense are representative of Canadian cinema of the 60's to the early 1970's: youthful, naive, yet free. Films like Claude Jutra's A Tout Prendre, Don Owen's Nobody Waved Goodbye and Don Shebib's Goin' Down the Road pointed their cameras into the streets to tell stories that were at once Canadian yet universal, and yet freely experimented with form. While not as radical as The French New Wave, Canadian films of this time were surely more playful, recalling some of the freewheeling style of the British Kitchen Sink movement. Not yet daunted by self-consciousness or deluded by tax credits to create ersatz Americanized movies, our films of this period were fresh and alive.
While this unscripted picture is interesting most for a look back at the counterculture period (especially those glimpses of the pre-yuppified Yorkville, where the streets are teeming with young people), and seeing how these kids react in whatever situations the camera finds them (I love the one guy going on about how he loves little kids' drawings because they're beautifully abstract), there is another interesting layer... which happened accidentally. This documentary becomes a movie within a movie, as the organic process of creating this film as it happens becomes a self-referential theme, and ends with the realization that the NFB has pulled the plug on the project, leaving the kids to ask the question of what is going to happen to the movie. This fatalistic ending is also emblematic of the flower power movement: something that ended much too quickly before really getting started.
Jan 11, 2008
First Lady of the Late Late Show
In 1954, tall, slender Finnish emigre and struggling actress Maila Nurmi went to a masquerade party dressed in long black hair and gown, and caught the attention of TV producer Hunt Stromberg Jr., and quickly got the novel idea to cast this starlet for a show to jazz up the schedule in the midnight hour. Soon, Vampira was born, as the swinging-est beatnik chick from beyond the grave, caked in white makeup, wiggled her 17-inch waist down a hallway of dry ice and cobwebs, introducing poverty row chillers with a trademark blasé delivery and tongue-in-cheek approach... at once campy and kittenish. Although "The Vampira Show" lasted one season (1954-55) and was only shown on one TV station (KABC in Los Angeles), this late-night filler became a cultural icon whose influence left a mark in fantasy movie fandom for half a century, and counting.
In short order, TV stations across the country began having their own horror hosts, and for the next three or four decades (until those rotten informercials killed the insitution of the late show), they would still fill running time in the wee hours of the morning by having some local celebrity in ghoulish make-up introducing and poking fun at the movies. For cinema insomniacs, a host (or hostess) introducing the late night movie offered a surrogate companion in the witching hour. As such this piece of pop culture is much like the drive-in... a beloved piece of movie-going iconography that forged a sense of community... and equally in dire need of revival today.
Vampira's legacy remains intact today, ironically, considering that no known copies of her show exist (only a recently-discovered kinescope of a promo offers to contemporary viewers any hint of the experience). It has been reported that Maila Nurmi was blacklisted, thereby harming her chances of getting substantial roles after her hit show. This is why she begrudgingly accepted an assignment from the great Edward D. Wood Jr. to star as the "ghoul woman" in his infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space, shambling around his cardboard graveyard set with arms outstretched. And thanks to the posthumous interest in the career of Mr. Wood, Vampira has a new legion of fans. Any subsequent roles were mere walk-ons: in Albert Zugmsith's daft The Beat Generation, wearing short bleached hair and holding a rat, she was a beatnik poet rambling about square parents, and in Bert I. Gordon's colourful but cardboard fantasy The Magic Sword, she was an old hag. Whether as Vampira or Maila Nurmi, her all-too-brief screen moments stole the show.
Maila Nurmi initially patterned the Vampira character after Morticia in Charles Addams' cartoons, and when Vampira the actress had already faded from view, Carolyn Jones modelled herself from the Vampira image for the Morticia role in "The Addams Family." And then of course, in the 1980's, she began a comeback to horror hostess for KHJ-TV. But when she bowed out of the project, the show was reworked into "Elvira Mistress of the Dark", featuring Cassandra Peterson uncannily reviving the Vampira legacy by introducing cheesy movies, albeit with a lot more cleavage and more overacting. After an unsuccessful lawsuit against the Elvira show for copying her image, she faded from the spotlight again, only to be seen as a lively interviewee in countless documentaries of Ed Wood after the release of Tim Burton's mighty biopic. (In fact, she also appeared in I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, an unreleased and highly bootlegged adaptation of an Ed Wood screenplay, starring Billy Zane.)
In Passport Video's otherwise dreadful DVD presentation of Plan 9 From Outer Space, there is an interesting interview with Maila Nurmi, discussing the differences in character between Maila Nurmi and Vampira, as though the latter was a real person. In this moment she is separating the personalities of Maila Nurmi and Vampira, which is something that pop culture has seldom achieved. But this eccentric interview nonetheless proves that the character of Vampira has taken on a life of her own.
The life of Maila Nurmi, beatnik Hollywood fringe dweller, friend and (it is said) one-time lover of James Dean, would make for an interesting movie alone with her unusual screen presence, and on-again off-again flirtation with stardom, and we can hope that Kevin Sean Michael's documentaryVampira: The Movie, which makes the rounds this year, does justice to such a bizarre career.
Her passing yesterday at the age of 86 is another closing of the door to our collective pop culture. She was one of the last surviving people who had company with that Grade Z Genius Ed Wood- and while perhaps she would rather be remembered for her legacy on the small screen, this brief screen appearance ensures that her image will endure for generations to come.
Below: view the original promo to "The Vampira Show".
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•All the patients in the study underwent the operations by the same surgeon, which reduced the analytical error.•More patients with glioma intracranial dissemination were collected in the study.•More clinical factors were included into analysis in the study.•We presented immunohistochemical data that is rarely reported in similar studies.
Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery – Elsevier
Published: Mar 1, 2018
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Patalsu Peak Frozen Trek
We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the rains or the ice or make them other than they are. This is nature that we cannot refuse. So why don't we explore these place as they arrives. Patalsu Trek is an icing on the cake on the Winter camp.
Incredible views of glacial valleys, The pure white landscape, the panoramic views from the summit and the view of the valley from the top are hard to replicate from anywhere else., It is a moderate grade trek and recommended for experienced as well as beginners.
Difficulty Level: Easy
Maximum Altitude: 3500 Metre Approx.
Total Trekking distance: 12 Km Approx.
Trek Starts from: Manali
Trek Ends in: Manali
Route: Manali-Solang-Patalsu-Solang-Manali.
Tour Plan:
Day 1: Tour starts from Manali, pick up from Manali to Swill start trek from the last motorable point crossing the Solang Palchan village and next the uphill trek past Solang village all the way to to midpoint/Camping Site. Will reach at our camping site by 1 pm tents will be already pitched there so sit relax and enjoy the nature. Lunch will be served there bon fire in the night followed by the dinner.
Day 2: Early Morning wakeup call followed by early morning breakfast, packed lunches will be issued for day long trek to Patalsu top and by evening will come back to Solang Village then droping at Manali.
Gradient:-Mild but on Snow trek will be under 2-3 feet of fresh snow.
Note:-Second day of the trek will be long and tiresome.
-Don't carry extra weight Ideal weight of your backpack should be 2-5 kgs.
-Please do not litter, we are very particular about disposing the garbage. Do not carry unessential weight as you have to carry it yourself while Trekking.
-All Treks will be led by Mountaineering and 1st Aid Certified TREK Leaders along with Cooking and Supporting Staff.
-Also there will be a Special arrangement of Porters and Horses Terrain specific.
Tour Ends here.
Special Instructions:
Must have :Torch,Trek Poles.
Price Details:
Total Cost: 3850/Person @ min 04Person
-Meals (Day01-Lunch, Snacks, Dinner, Day02-Breakfast, Lunch & Snacks).
-01 night Tented Accommodations.
-Guided Tour
-Expenses of personal nature like drinks and mineral.
-Expenses due to bad weather, Land Slide, Road block and any other natural reason beyond our control.
• Shirts / T-shirts • Trousers / Track Pants • Windproof jacket (preferably Gore-Tex) • Fleece / Full-sleeve Woolen sweater • Thermal inner wear (upper & lower) • Woolen cap • Mittens (Woolen gloves) • Scarf • Woolen socks (extra pairs to be carried) • Raincoat / Poncho • Towel • Water bottle • Cap / Hat • Sunscreen Lotion • Lip Balm • Torch / Flashlight (with extra batteries) • Medicines, if requiring any specific medication • A small backpack.
We understand that when you think of going out somewhere there are a few very important things that comes to your mind.
The first and foremost is Safety! here are the others:
Safety: All our tours are chosen keeping in mind your safety and comfort. We make a 24 hours emergency number available to you and keep the group members together at all times.
Personal Freedom: Our group size is no more than 12 people as we believe that personal freedom is of prime importance on every trip. And there is a great deal more personal freedom small and medium trips.
Space for personal interest: We strive for a balance between planned activities and free time.. so that you can experience the destination in a way that fits your personal interest.
Comprehensive Tour Information: You will be given comprehensive tour document before your trip.
Expert Tour Leaders: We make available expert/certified and knowledgeable tour leaders.
Only Pleasant Surprises: Our Tours are detailed and clear. They state the service offered, how many meals and activities included. So there are no unpleasant surprises in store for you.
Booking Slot: Dec-March
Total Packages Available: 5
Minimum Booking duration: 01 days
Maximum Booking duration: 03 days
Book Online:


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One Dozen Assorted Roses for Romance
Rest assured it's roses that will make their day special. Especially when it's our rose bouquet in a rainbow of colors to express the full spectrum of your affection. But to really bring out the bloom of romance, add our exclusive Lotsa Love® ultra-plush bear. There's no better way to say, "I love you."
About Lotsa Love®
Lotsa Love is an exclusive plush collection by 1-800-flowers.com, creators of the most lovable plush you've ever hugged! Irresistibly cuddly and made with lotsa love. A perfect gift for all ages.
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Hunter High (HHS) Class of 1999 Alumni List
Help us Update the Hunter High 1999 Class List by adding any names missing from the list below:
Registered Alumni
1999 Class List
Know Hunter High Class of 1999 graduates that are NOT on this List? Help us Update the 1999 Class List by adding missing names.
Star Wars Ep. I: The Phantom Menace was the top movie in theaters in 1999, with a lifetime gross of over $474,363,310. Among TV shows in 1999, ER was the most popular of the year.
Hit Songs From 1999
So AnxiousGinuwine
Tell Me It's RealK-Ci and JoJo
Please Remember MeTim McGraw
That Don't Impress Me MuchShania Twain
What's It Gonna Be?!Busta Rhymes feat. Janet
IrisGoo Goo Dolls
I Will Remember You (Live)Sarah McLachlan
Black BalloonGoo Goo Dolls
SmoothSantana feat. Rob Thomas
Hit Movies From 1999
Hit TV Shows From 1999
Reunions and Hunter High School News
More 1999 alumni from Hunter HS West Valley, UT have posted profiles on Classmates.com®. Click here to register for free at Classmates.com® and view other 1999 alumni.
The students that went to school at the West Valley high school called Hunter High School and graduated in '99 are on this page. Register to add your name to the class of 1999 graduates list.
If you are a former student of HHS in West Valley, Utah, register now to add your name.


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Fancy your chances at a hole-in-one in Wellington's most exclusive mini-golf course?
Join us for The Wellington Club's first mini-putt tournament.
Teams of four will compete around the Club floors for the coveted Club mini-cup.
Come along for an evening of fun, frivolity and friendly competition.
Make up your own team, or enter solo to be added to one of the Club teams.
While only one team will be victorious, there will be spot prize for the most golf-appropriate outfit.
Glass of bubbles on arrival, as well as canapes throughout event.
Friday, September 7 at 6pm
Meet at Wellington Club reception, Level 4
$40.00 per person


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Capital Direct Does Commercial!
Hey there everyone! Its the beginning of the final quarter of the year. We constantly want to share with you valuable information to help grow your business. Our Partners tend to forget that we also service Commercial transactions! Conventional Lenders tend to only loan on properties with the loan amount minimums of 1 million and above. Here is a key issue to keep an eye out for your commercial clients.
The Affordable Housing Act, Also Known as Prop 10.
Prop 10 allows government to dictate pricing for privately owned single-family homes, controlling
how much homeowners can charge to rent out their home – or even just a room. It may even lead to bureaucrats charging homeowners a fee for taking their home off the rental market. Prop 10 requires California taxpayers to pay the proponents of the initiative's legal bills if homeowners, tenants or voters challenge the law in court. Even if the proponents lose in court, taxpayers will still be on the hook to pay their legal bills.
We understand one of the biggest challenges for you as Realtors with selling commercial Properties is having your clients get the financing needed for propeties with deferred maintence! Of if the property owners have tax liens or need to cash out quick!
Count on us to help you close before the end of the year! Send us your scenarios, lets build relationships and close deals!
We make loans happen, even when no one can.


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In 2006, a Long Island high school teacher pleaded guilty to third-degree rape and endangering the welfare of a child.
Danny Cuesta admitted to preying on a 15-year-old sophomore who attended the school where he taught Spanish. He lured her into a private school office to "make copies," took her to motels for sex, and posed as her personal "tutor" as an excuse to visit her at home.
Cuesta's victim—known in court filings as "Melissa"—spent four days on the stand; two other girls came forward to testify that the teacher had assaulted them, too. Cuesta was sentenced to 15 months in jail.
Then, Melissa sued Cuesta, the school district, and school officials, seeking damages for, among other things, "repeated sexual injury and assault," "nightmares and sleep deprivation," "emotional distress," "alienation of affections," and "loss of enjoyment of life."
Soon, lawyers for the school district started poking around Melissa's Facebook feed. Melissa's account was mostly locked to outsiders, but some pictures were visible: Melissa hanging out with her boyfriend, Melissa working at a veterinary hospital, Melissa rock climbing, Melissa out drinking with friends.
They even found a second Facebook page, a joint account run by Melissa and her boyfriend. Melissa's blithe Facebook activity didn't exactly square with her contention, in a deposition, that she suffered from "serious trust issues with everyone" and was "struggling" in her relationship with her boyfriend.
Nor did it support her claim of "loss of enjoyment of life," which one judge has defined as the loss of "watching one's children grow, participating in recreational activities, and drinking in the many other pleasures that life has to offer." Rock climbing is a recreational activity; drinking with friends is one of life's pleasures, after all.
Last month, the court ordered Melissa to hand over every photograph, video, status update, and wall message ever posted on her Facebook accounts so that the school district may search for more clues that Melissa is secretly thriving.
In this time of social media–assisted public shaming, we're trained to fear the nasty note that lies dormant in our feed for days, months, or years before it jumps off the platform and kills our reputations. But Melissa's case represents an even trickier type of social media snare: the post that makes you look too good for your own good.
These days, victims of workplace discrimination or horrific accidents or sexual assaults who seek damages for emotional distress or loss of enjoyment of life can now expect their online profiles to be scraped for evidence that they very much enjoy their lives—or at least, that they appear to on their Facebook pages.
Consider the case of Kathleen Romano, who was working at her desk at the Stony Brook University Medical Center in 2003 when her office chair collapsed. Romano sued the chair's manufacturer, Steelcase, alleging that the chair had been defective and that its collapse caused her severe back injury, confined her largely to her home, and led to a loss of enjoyment of life.
After clicking around Romano's social media properties, Steelcase's attorneys noticed that Romano's Facebook profile photo showed her smiling—outside her home. And her MySpace postings were peppered with suspicious emoticons: smiley faces.
"We figured something smells here," a Steelcase lawyer said later. "We wanted to see what else was in there."
In 2010, the court granted Steelcase access to private corners of Romano's social media presence to dig for more smiles; 12 years after the chair incident, Romano's suit remains in litigation. Civil cases built on injury victims' tales of woe have since been undermined by Facebook updates showing the alleged victims kayaking, riding a motorcycle, or performing a keg stand.
Even the most banal of Facebook sentiments can now be used against you in a court of law. A former general manager of a Burbank, California, Home Depot sued the company for gender discrimination in 2011, claiming that she'd been wrongly fired and experienced anguish, anxiety, and isolation from friends as a result.
So Home Depot dredged up dozens of posts on her Facebook wall from friends wishing her a happy birthday. Would a truly isolated woman get so many birthday wishes on Facebook? The case was settled out of court.
Facebook is a particularly lush resource for fending off civil suits. But peppy social media postings have been used as ammunition in all kinds of cases.
In 2004, a 19-year-old Connecticut woman lost control of her car while driving drunk and killed the friend sitting in her backseat; she served a year in prison, then got hauled back to court in 2009 for violating the terms of her parole. Facebook photos of the woman drinking beer at a Yankees game and partying at the Waldorf weren't key to her second conviction, but the judge leaned on the images during sentencing.
"Where is the remorse?" he asked. "Every one of these pictures looks like you have forgotten about what happened." (He locked her up for three more years.)
In their murder case against Casey Anthony, Florida prosecutors proffered Facebook photos of Anthony smiling and dancing at a club following the "disappearance" of her daughter, Caylee, a hint that Anthony's state of mind at the time conformed to that of a killer, not a caretaker. (That one didn't stick.)
And last week, Paul Nungesser sued Columbia University, accusing the school of being "an active supporter" of a campuswide "harassment campaign" against him by allowing Emma Sulkowicz, who has publicly accused him of raping her, to lug her dorm mattress around campus as a way to keep the allegations alive. Nungesser claims that he didn't assault Sulkowicz, and in his suit produces flirty and friendly Facebook messages that his lawyers say demonstrate how "Emma's yearning for Paul had become very intense" and how "when Paul did not reciprocate these intense feelings … Emma became viciously angry."
(Sulkowicz previously told Jezebel that she had strategically played nice in messages following the alleged assault in a bid to get Nungesser alone and confront him about the incident.)
Most social media users aren't feigning friendliness in such a calculated sense. But social media sites can subtly promote sunny sentiments, which can be a problem for parties who need to prove that they are lonely, sad, and suffering.
A controversial study published last year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America tinkered with the Facebook feeds of hundreds of thousands of users and found that "emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness."
In other words, a user's emotional performance on social media may be more influenced by the platform's dynamics than by her own feelings. And on Facebook, relentless positivity is the dominant affect.
In a 2012 paper published in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law, Kathryn R. Brown distilled recent research on social media psychology and found that users selectively screen photos to present themselves as "attractive" and "having fun," and that they tune their personae to come across as "socially desirable," "group-oriented," and "smiling." (But you didn't need a study to tell you that.)
Meanwhile, "individuals are unlikely to capture shameful, regrettable, or lonely moments with a camera."
As my Slate colleague Katy Waldman noted in 2012, people don't like people who post negative things on Facebook. If people who have experienced trauma aren't posting sad emoji all the time, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're over it; it might just mean that they're savvy.
On Facebook, "the self-presentation, the photos, the things you say, the types of things you post about—they're all very positive," says Jeffrey Hancock, a professor in the information science department at Cornell University. "How are you doing? Here's my baby. Happy birthday! The vast majority of Facebook is certainly more positive than your actual life is."
But Hancock cautions that projecting positivity to friends is nothing new. "If you think about how we present ourselves in 'real life,' when we talk to people, we talk about the good times we're having and the good feelings we're feeling," Hancock says. "It is a very old and very deep human phenomenon."
It's no stranger in the courtroom, either.
"In the old days, [a party] would try to disprove loss of enjoyment of life by photographs and written records," like "a credit card statement that shows a trip to Disneyland," says Ann Murphy, a law professor who teaches evidence at Gonzaga University School of Law.
Sometimes, attorneys "would hire a private investigator as well, who might see the plaintiff out gardening or having a party." Facebook just made the PI's job "a lot easier."
Still, Facebook posts and tweets can enjoy a particular veneer of credibility in court. They're contemporaneous observations, straight from the horse's mouth, permanently recorded for posterity, and easily verifiable.
In a 2012 paper published in the Connecticut Law Review, Allison Pannozzo notes that some legal scholars have argued that "evidence from email and [social media] has a greater chance of unfairly prejudicing and misleading a jury," because these postings deceive from two directions: The ease of social media encourages exaggerations and falsifications, but the "faux intimacy" fostered by the platforms convinces jurors that they're believable—that Facebook posts are just like "utterly personal expressions written in private diaries."
"It's becoming so standard when you're involved in a lawsuit for the other party to say, 'give us all your social media activity' " from a certain period of time, says Kathryn Brown, the author of the 2012 Vanderbilt paper (and now a labor and employment attorney). And judges oblige, partly because "the average judge is, honestly, someone who's older and might not be aware of the nuances of social media," Brown says.
But in recent years, a couple of courts have started taking a more nuanced view. In one 2013 decision, U.S. Magistrate Judge A. Kathleen Tomlinson of the Eastern District of New York restricted discovery of a plaintiff's social media activity to posts that made a direct reference to her emotions and potential stressors.
"The fact that an individual may express some degree of joy, happiness, or sociability on certain occasions sheds little light on the issue of whether he or she is actually suffering emotional distress," Tomlinson wrote, citing Brown's paper. After all, "a severely depressed person may have a good day or several good days and choose to post about those days and avoid posting about moods more reflective of his or her actual emotional state."
How much our social media activity reflects our offline life is hard to know. In an early Canadian case where social media was offered as evidence of a plaintiff's emotional state, Fotini Kourtesis sued a man who rear-ended her car as she drove to work in the winter of 2000.
Kourtesis, who was 18 at the time of the crash, claimed the accident left her with chronic pain and a loss of enjoyment of life. She could no longer dance with her family like she used to, she said, or wrestle with her brother as she once did.
When the court was shown Facebook pictures of Kourtesis dancing and being lifted into the air by her brother, post-accident, she testified that the triumphant scenes had been carefully posed for the camera. But the judge ruled that it didn't matter whether the pictures were faked because "even if posed, the photographs were taken in an active social life setting" and constitute evidence that Kourtesis "enjoys life."
Does fake-dancing for Facebook now constitute a life pleasure on the level of actually dancing? Does a "Happy Birthday" posted to Facebook signify as strong a social connection as a ringing phone or a knock on the door? More and more, the courts say yes.
Part of the difficulty posed by these cases is that our basic understanding of what it means to cultivate a relationship or experience the breadth of life's pleasures is evolving rapidly, even as these early cases continue to inch through the courts. Romano's chair collapsed the year MySpace launched; Kourtesis was rear-ended by that car before Facebook existed.
Now, a bedridden accident victim can put on a brave face with the help of an Instagram crop; a worker who's lost her job can afford to share an emoticon with a friend; a young woman who can't dance like she used to still looks lithe in a Facebook upload.
Social platforms offer seemingly endless evidence that we're all enjoying our lives, online. It would be a mistake for courts to assume that that's all there is.


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Nothing makes me happier than when I get an email, text message, or phone call from someone asking me for restaurant or food recommendations. Not that I know it all (though I have been around a block or two), it's that the chance to pass along a great food experience to people I care about just makes me feel incredibly fulfilled.Read More
I may be a child of the 70's, which means I grew up on casseroles, odd fruit salads, and canned vegetables, but my taste has always grasped for fresher ingredients. And while I love a nice, thick, juicy steak, I also find that I gravitate more toward utilizing fruits and vegetables to compose a really good-tasting dish. I like the challenge.Read More
In Boston last week for a design conference (shout out to HOW Design Live!) I recharged my batteries with a ton of creatives, and also enjoyed a good amount of the culinary delights Bean Town has to offer.Read More
'm not sure why we relegate our pumpkin consumption to the holidays, but who am I to question centuries of tradition? I will enjoy the orange gord any which way I can get it during this narrow window. That includes pumpkin spice latte and pumpkin spice Cheerios. Don't judge me.Read More
My friend Connie does not like a runny egg. She's adamant about avoiding raw egg yolks (she would hate the Sukiyaki my boss made me that one time) but isn't happy about viewing over-easy or soft-boiled eggs either - and my Instagram/Facebook feeds are FULL of them.Read More
It pretty much goes without saying most people, generally, want to be "like everyone else." It makes them feel connected to those in their immediate sphere. It helps them feel they are part of a tribe. With some exception, this is especially true during the formative years of childhood - at least it was for me. And for someone who wanted to fit in so badly, I couldn't have pushed people further away with my need to belong.Read More
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
While that may very well be true, getting stronger sometimes really sucks. Big time.
Two weeks ago I'd come through about six months of getting stronger - at least I felt I was on the tail end of it. The shady darkness was retreating and I could see glimmering patches of sunlight. What had been most recently "killing me" was easing up a bit, loosening its choke hold somewhat. I felt cautiously optimistic.Read More
I do apologize. Truly. I hadn't meant for my first blog post of 2017 to be quite so ... naughty. The food world in general is rightly fixated on healthy foods after two months of holiday gluttony, and I was planning on sharing the joys of braising vegetables - comforting still, yet less guilty.Read More


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On Feb. 27, the United States Congress passed a temporary funding resolution to avoid a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Five observations follow.
1. The repetition of the same action under the same circumstances while expecting different results is a form of insanity. This is not the first time that Republicans have tried to stop President Obama and Congressional Democrats by using the power of the purse. House Republicans have tried to tie spending freezes or cuts to debt ceiling increases on multiple occasions, and have tried to defund Obamacare in a similar fashion. In each case, including the October 2013 government slowdown, the Republicans have ultimately been blamed by the American people for threatening to incite what many of them have been propagandized to believe will be a disaster. (Whether they deserve such blame is another matter, but that they get it is clearly true.) Yet the Republicans continue to threaten to defund various departments and programs without having the courage and determination to hold such a stance long enough to force the changes they are supposedly seeking. And the insanity is set to continue; the current funding resolution is for one week, at which point this is set to happen again.
2. If one is going to talk radical, eventually one must either act radical or lose credibility. The idea of brinkmanship is to push dangerous events to the brink of disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome. But a threat is worthless if it is not credible, and the Democrats had the above cases to suggest that the threat is not credible. As such, they did not budge. This was a strategic victory for them; not only did the Republicans cave on shutting down the Department of Homeland Security, they did not even use the less radical tactic of abolishing the filibuster rules in the US Senate followed by passing the bill they wanted in both houses of Congress.
3. The Republicans are trying to create the appearance of doing something while doing nothing. Given the first and second points above, it is clear that this method of achieving the political goal of stopping President Obama's executive actions concerning immigration policy will not be successful, and that the Republicans are unwilling to use other methods available to them which are more likely to succeed. This leaves the more cynical, and therefore more likely to be correct, answer that Republicans do not actually want to solve this problem. It is in their rational self-interest, to the detriment of Americans as a whole, to leave this problem unsolved so that it can be used as a political issue to blame Democrats for leaving the Mexican border unsecured and allowing immigrants to enter illegally, which can motivate certain voter demographics to vote Republican. (Again, whether this is a correct stance on immigration is unimportant; for the voters in question, emotions tend to trump reason and reality.)
4. If one believes in free markets and voluntary competition, then having a government monopoly on security is nonsensical. Many Republicans will at least pay lip service to the ideas of free markets and voluntary competition among most providers of goods and services, even if they frequently act in opposition to such ideas once elected. But to quote Gustave de Molinari, "If there is one well-established truth in political economy, it is this: That in all cases, for all commodities that serve to provide for the tangible or intangible needs of the consumer, it is in the consumer's best interest that labor and trade remain free, because the freedom of labor and of trade have as their necessary and permanent result the maximum reduction of price. And this: That the interests of the consumer of any commodity whatsoever should always prevail over the interests of the producer. Now in pursuing these principles, one arrives at this rigorous conclusion: That the production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition. Whence it follows: That no government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity. …True economists are generally agreed, on the one had, that the government should restrict itself to guaranteeing the security of its citizens, and on the other hand, that the freedom of labor and of trade should otherwise be whole and absolute. But why should there be an exception relative to security? What special reason is there that the production of security cannot be relegated to free competition? Why should it be subjected to a different principle and organized according to a different system? On this point, the masters of the science are silent, and M. Charles Dunoyer, who has clearly noted this exception, does not investigate the grounds on which it is based." But one cannot find a Republican in a position of power today who will oppose the Department of Homeland Security, the US military, or any other such agency on logical, free market grounds.
5. The path to liberty is anti-political. Many libertarian-leaning voters continue to support politicians as a means of advancing liberty. But once in office, those politicians are all but unaccountable for their actions until the next election, which they may or may not care about winning. And as shown above, they may engage in insanity, hollow brinkmanship, selfish posturing, and/or unprincipled policies. The solution to the problem of immigration is to have respect for private property rights and freedom of association, both of which require anarchy. Attempting to use the political process to solve a problem that is caused by the very presence of such a process is an exercise in futility.


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Author Archives: actioncommunitytheatre
Summer ACTivities Diary
ACTion Community Theatre meets at the Terry O'Toole Theatre on Tuesday evenings 7 – 9pm and Sunday 3 – 5pm afternoons. Advertisements
Jacqueline's Wilson's 'Hetty Feather' adapted for the stage by Emma Reeves
2019 'Hetty Feather' Auditions!
ACTion is absolutely delighted to have won permission to stage best-selling children's author Dame Jacqueline Wilson's tale of plucky Foundling-child, 'Hetty Feather' – brought thrillingly to life on stage by award-winning script writer, Emma Reeves! ROLL UP, ROLL UP and … Continue reading
Rehearsals: Miracle on 34th St.
ACTion Community Theatre is super-delighted to announce that we have secured the amateur rights to stage 'Miracle on 34th Street' for our December 2018 Christmas production! Based upon the classic 1947 Twentieth Century Fox screenplay by Valentine Davis and adapted for … Continue reading
AGM & Easter High Tea
Sunday 8th April 2.30pm ~ 6.00pm All members are invited to attend the Annual General Meeting 2018 on Sunday afternoon at 2.30pm. Please come along and show your support for ACTion by helping to elect your Committee for 2018/19. [If … Continue reading
'Peachy' Auditions!
Thank you everyone who came along to the auditions for 'James and the Giant Peach' today. Having selected a small cast show, due to a falling-off in members' availability, we've had 31 auditionees, including several new members interested in joining … Continue reading
Auditions: Sunday 4th March
ACTion Community Theatre Sunday 4th March 3 – 5pm 'The snow is almost gone, The show must go on!' Open auditions for 'James and the Giant Peach' are going ahead this afternoon.


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The First Reads Festival is a marathon of readings of full plays written by our playwrights and selected to be a part of The PG Evolution a development process. Scenes from these plays have been featured throughout the Volumes. Prior to this table read all the plays were a part of Required Reading and now we are presenting them to be heard for the first time in full.
Actors from our casting pool have been cast and will sit around a table and read the plays for the benefit of the playwright. The audience will be invited to observe this process and be an active participant by filling out The PG Evolution Play Analysis Questionnaire to help the playwright continue to develop their work.
11:00 am- The Gaming Project
by Wendy Herlich
Featured Actors: Bryn Packard, Christopher Buchanan, Fenton Li, Jackson Perrin, John Roque, Nancy Nagrant, Nina Covelesky, Siho Elsmore,Tim Torre, Ysabel Jasa
An American mother desperate to connect with her son meets a Chinese gamer struggling to vanquish her demons. It's only a video game. But who is playing?
2:00 pm Irregulars
by David Gill
Featured Actors: Evan Edwards, Joan Wool Rubinstein, Joe Ford, Hakim McMillan, Kim Reinle, Marie Elena' O'Brien, Todd Butera
ir·reg·u·lar: 1. not even or balanced in shape or arrangement.*
(*see also the Horne-Piccolo Family of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn)
4:30pm- Pittsburghese
by Paul Pakler
Featured Actors: Diane Quinn, Paul Pakler, Marie Elena' O'Brien, Thea Brooks
Amy, who's this nice lady, hires this actor guy, Matt, to give her lessons to help her talk good at her daughter's fancy wedding. And it's funny and sad and yinz'll cry like whenever the Steelers finally got one for the thumb. So, yeah, see it, n'at.
6:00 pm Home to the Sea
by Jonathan Calindas
Featured Actors: Alex Castro, David Michael Kirby, David Meyers, John Racioppo, Rhonda Dodd, Roy Flores, Tamara Torres
Mark is teaching a computer to think. Margaret is living with dementia. Ellie is just trying to make sense of it all. A meditation.
8:30 pm Cell Memory Theory
by Mike Lesser
Featured Actors: Ashley "Ajax" Jackson, Heidi Armbruster, Jeaniene Green, Sue Berch
Ann is a survivor. But will the transplanted cells that saved her ultimately destroy her second chance at life?
To help support this and other PGE programs, we request a minimum suggested donation of $10.
Snacks and beverages will be provided.
Please RSVP below to let us know you are attending:


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As a voluntary aided school the Governors run the school on behalf of Salford Diocese.
The Governors are made up of various groups including:
- Foundation Governors (representing the Bishop)
- Parent Governors
- Staff Governors
- LA representatives
They are elected to Office for a number of years. Responsibilities include:
- Appointing and dismissing staff
- Setting the Admission policies
- Establishing and monitoring the curriculum
- Health and safety
- Safeguarding
and many other areas
Governors normally hold three full governing body meetings and year plus a number of further subcommittee meetings
The current members of the governing body are: (July 2018)
|Father D O Driscoll
|Foundation Governor
|Mr S Thornton
|Assoc. Governor (Health and Safety)
|Mrs J McKenna
|Foundation Governor (Safeguarding)
|Mrs D Stevens
|Foundation Governor
|Mrs M Rogers
|Foundation Governor
|Mr P Mortell
|Foundation Governor
|Mrs M Lohan
|Foundation Governor
|Mrs C Harrison
|Vice Chair
|Foundation Governor
|Counc. J Hunt
|LA Governor
|Mrs S Masset
|Parent Governor
|Parent Governor
|Mrs B Beach
|Staff Governor
|Mrs S Burgess


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Windspitting Punk
Swingin' Utters
Give me just a second to grasp your two-bit theories as that's more than enough time I need to see through their innate queries you're telling me to shape up or ship out but I'd never shape myself to something so offending
As you ...
And your kind
One day you sweetly sigh and say to yourself "Music's my religion and I'm Born again" Next week your muse has got some corporate cash and all of a sudden the tunes are crap keep your politics to yourself, kid to me you're just spitting wind a Windspitting punk with high-brow views a p.c. fool who's saying nothing new again and again what about the kids, piss-poor people and the broke or the sluts with overflowing pockets? or the cursed fucks, pointin' pistols at the pope. are they just martyrs fallen from your graces.


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Advertisingy u no do it?
Advertising (learn more)Advertise virtually anything here, with CPM banner ads, CPM email ads and CPC contextual links. You can target relevant areas of the site and show ads based on geographical location of the user if you wish.
Starts at just $1 per CPM or $0.10 per CPC.
Can Google Shopping ads exclude few competitors when showing mine.
Discussion in 'Google AdWords' started by azhar Iqbal kayani, Sep 13, 2018.


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Plays and Screenplays > Candle in the Wind
Candle in the Wind
[This] translation of Candle in the Wind into English is long overdue, for the play is yet another testimony to [Solzhenitsyn's] faith in the human spirit and his concern for the future of mankind […] Solzhenitsyn has always been greatly interested in the theater: after graduating from secondary school in 1936 he applied to enter a drama institute in Rostov in order to train as an actor, but was rejected on medical grounds owing to a chronic throat ailment […] Candle in the Wind was written in 1960 while Solzhenitsyn was working as a teacher of mathematics and physics at a secondary school in Ryazan'. It was initially accepted for production by the Vakhtangov Theater and the Komsomol Theater in Moscow, but was then rejected. Like The First Circle, which he was writing concurrently, Candle in the Wind reflects Solzhenitsyn's professional background as a mathematician and his interests in science and technology. However, whereas in The First Circle Solzhenitsyn is concerned with the misuse of scientific research under Stalin's totalitarian regime, in Candle in the Wind he deliberately chooses an unspecified international setting in order to express his fears about the consequences of an increasingly technological society for humanity in general.
-- from Keith Armes's introduction to his translation of Candle in the Wind, University of Minnesota Press, 1973
Additional Resources
- From The New York Times- "Hypthosis: We Need Science Also as a Conscience", 1973 September 9
- 1945 (A dramatic trilogy)
Available Formats
Candle in the Wind
Published in 1973 by University of Minnesota Press


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StemGenex Announces Steven A. Brody, M.D., Ph.D. Chief Scientific Officer
Sep 08, 2016, 06:00 ET
LA JOLLA, Calif., Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- StemGenex, a world leader offering access to autologous adipose-derived stem cell treatment, recently announced it has named Steven A. Brody, M.D., Ph.D. Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Brody is an internationally recognized physician-scientist specializing in regenerative and restorative medicine, bioidentical hormone therapy, and genomic methods to enhance health.
"We are enthusiastic about collaborating with Dr. Brody because of his wide range of research and clinical administration of scientific advancements that will change the future of medicine as we know it," said Dr. Andre Lallande, Medical Director. "His lifelong commitment to developments in reproductive medicine and laboratory innovations make him an excellent choice for Chief Scientific Officer."
In this new role, Dr. Brody will research the scientific basis of clinical procedures and laboratory techniques, objectively analyze clinical outcomes and lead compliance and regulatory initiatives.
"Stem cell therapy is the future of medicine. It has the potential to both repair and regenerate damaged tissues and organs," said Dr. Brody. "Clinical research and growth is vital in providing the highest quality and most effective therapy for patients."
Among its science and research initiatives, StemGenex sponsors five clinical studies registered with the National Institutes of Health for Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Osteoarthritis. These have been established to evaluate the quality of life changes in individuals following adipose-derived stem cell treatment. Each clinical study has been approved by an independent institutional review board to ensure proper oversight and protocols are being followed.
"We consider clinical research a core competency and a significant advantage compared with adult adipose stem cell therapy and treatment centers offering unregistered studies," said Dr. Lallande.
Prior to joining StemGenex, Dr. Brody was Medical Director of Lifespan Medical Institute in La Jolla. He previously held positions of Director of Reproductive Endocrinology at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego and served in the military as Lieutenant Commander (surgeon) in the U.S. Public Health Service.
Dr. Brody received his medical degree from Washington U. School of Medicine and has trained at Yale-New Haven Hospital, the National Institutes of Health, Stanford University School of Medicine and Baylor College of Medicine.
A prolific researcher, Dr. Brody has authored a number of influential articles and has written two medical textbooks. He partnered with the 2010 Nobel Prize recipient in Medicine, Dr. Robert G. Edwards, to co-author the textbook, "Principals and Practice of Assisted Human Reproduction."
In recognition of his work, he was chosen San Diego's "Doctor of the Year" by the San Diego Medical Journal and Metropolitan Magazine.
About StemGenex
StemGenex is committed to helping people with unmet clinical needs achieve optimum health and better quality of life through the healing benefits of their own stem cells. StemGenex provides access to stem cell therapy options to help individuals suffering with inflammatory and degenerative illnesses. Board Certified Physicians administer safe and effective adult adipose-derived stem cell therapy, a minimally invasive procedure using an individual's own stem cells to treat diseases including Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Osteoarthritis.
For more information, visit www.stemgenex.com, or contact Jamie Schubert, Director of Media and Community Relations, email@example.com, 800-609-7795
Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160907/405367
SOURCE StemGenex


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Carol Burnett Plays a Pretty Convincing Kristen Doute
The comedy legend had a little fun at the #PumpRules comedian's expense on #WWHL.
If anyone knows a thing or two about making people laugh, it's comedy legend Carol Burnett. So when she stopped by Watch What Happens Live on Thursday, she was recruited by Andy Cohen to show off her flair for all things funny. Andy asked Carol if she would reenact the "infamous" Kristen Doute and Ariana Madix argument over their passion for sketch comedy from last season on Vanderpump Rules.
Carol's only bit of direction from Andy? "You're playing Kristen. She's a little wacky," he said. "Some call her a little bitchy. OK? So that'll be fun. I know you like to play that." Carol was down. "I love to play bitches," she said, and she wasn't lying. Check out the Carol as Kristen and Andy and Ariana, above. We promise it's worth it.
And you can press play on the original moment, below.


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THROUGHOUT MY CHRISTIAN JOURNEY I have striven to live an authentic Christian life, one that reflects the love of God and the life of Christ, his Son. A significant theme of my life has been hope healing and wholeness. That state of being whole embraces my entire being – body, soul and spirit. It also incorporates the expression of my Christian faith into all parts of life, to the best of my ability.
For me to be writing my story for my blog is a significant accomplishment. It comes at the end of a traumatic journey through the mire of intense psychotherapy with many lengthy admissions to a psychiatric hospital, dealing with a major mental health disorder. That journey culminated in my returning to work as a social worker, then – on my recent retirement – returning to my love of writing. That part of my story is told in my autobiography – Peace and Freedom Are My Names.
Over the years I have tried so hard to fit into fundamental evangelical churches, but never felt that I belonged. The teaching of most churches is far removed from that of the Lord Jesus Christ; each one adds their particular brand of theology to the simple yet profound Gospel message. Just over two years ago I became aware of a devastating situation that made me realise I could no longer even try to belong to a church. That series of incidents has led to my exploring the Gospel afresh, returning to the teachings of Christ and learning to live as he wants us to live. That in turn led to my changing the emphasis of this blog to Authentic Christian Living. My desire is to stir people up in their faith in God and to encourage all to be Christ in the community – among the poor, the homeless, those with mental illness, the broken hearted and those who live with the consequences of child abuse. In other words, to demonstrate what Authentic Christian Living really means.
Over the years I have had two careers: writing and social work. It was through my writing that I became a social worker. My social work career is now having an impact upon what I write. Both aspects of my life's journey embrace my heart's desire to share my love of God with those with whom I come in contact, and through my writing.
Name: Irene Frances – formerly Irene Frances Oliver
Age: Recently re-retired
Children: Debi, Tania & Darren
Daniel, Nathan, Matthew; Alexandra Kate (With Jesus), Monique & Sabrina; Imogen & Bethany.
Faith: Committed Christian
Most Important: Vibrant faith in God my Heavenly Father, His Son – the Lord Jesus Christ – and the empowering ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit.
Interests: Writing, reading, cryptic crosswords, coffee and good conversation with friends.


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Why Are Sports Physicals Necessary?
Sports physicals play an important role in helping ensure student athletes are healthy enough to safely participate in the activities they enjoy. Disorders or injuries that may interfere with your child's ability to engage in physical activity can be detected and addressed during this routine exam.
Most organized athletic programs require participants to receive a sports physical before they play. Even if this isn't the case, it's a good idea for your child to have a sports physical on an annual basis to help identify potential health concerns early and receive important preventive treatments as necessary, such as inhalers to breathe more easily or allergy medication to combat respiratory irritants.
Sports physicals may vary according to a child's age, sport, and overall health, but most physicals involve:
- Reviewing personal and family medical history
- Measuring height and weight
- Performing a brief physical exam to gauge heart rate, vision abilities, posture, and other important health characteristics
Sports physicals at Grand Ave Urgent Care
If your child is due for a sports physical, don't wait days for an appointment at an overbooked primary care center. Simply visit Grand Ave Urgent Care in Laramie, Wyoming, at your convenience. Our team is led by experienced medical practitioners who frequently provide sports physicals to kids and teens. We take the time to thoroughly evaluate each patient and, if necessary, can quickly provide digital X-ray imaging or bloodwork onsite.
Contact Grand Ave Urgent Care today to learn more about our sports physicals and how we can help your child safely enjoy his or her favorite sports. Our fully equipped walk-in clinic is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.


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Everyday Data-Driven Decision Making REGISTRATION successful!
Thank you for registering for our Everyday Data-Driven Decision Making workshop. Additional details are below.
Date: February 16, 2018
Time: 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Location: Rocky Top Student Center on the Quinnipiac University York Hill Campus
305 Sherman Ave, Hamden, CT 06518
A continental breakfast, lunch, and light afternoon snack will be provided.
Free parking will be available on-site.
2018-02-16 09:00:00 2018-02-16 15:00:00 America/New_York Everyday Data-Driven Decision Making Rocky Top Student Center on the Quinnipiac University York Hill Campus, Room RTSC 303, 305 Sherman Ave, Hamden, CT 06518 Quinnipiac Corporate Training email@example.com
questions or requests?
If you have any special requests or are looking to register multiple people at your company, please contact us directly.


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Join Matthew and Sabrina Schlesinger as they talk about all things marriage! Listen in as they dive into practical and spiritual topics that will help you as a couple…to grow in love, grow in your communication, and grow in your intimacy.
Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and GooglePlay and listen to us every week while you are on the go.


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Specify the URL in the address bar of internet browser as: https://metasko.com/ and click on Register button available at the top right side of page. The Register window appears as below.
Write the username, email address, and password. Select the option as tasker. Click on Create new account button and the home page appears as below.
You can see the list of tasks that are requested by different requesters. The following details of each task are displayed:
- Title of task
- The username who submitted this task
- The date and time when task was submitted or created
- The description of task
- The price that requester is ready to pay for task
- The category of task
- The date till which the task should be completed


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Cosmetic surgery is one fast growing industries around the world. In fact, some of the countries like
Rhinoplasty or "nose lift" as we commonly called it, is the most common reconstructive surgery performed around the world. We have heard so many stories about disgruntled patients, unexpected outcomes or unsuccessful nose jobs. Finding the best, qualified and expert doctor should be the first concern a client should take before going with the procedure. Furthermore, a client should know that there are several risks in taking this kind of operation. But if in the first place, a client has selected the best surgeon to perform the procedure, then there is nothing to worry about and at the same time, revision rhinoplasty would be avoided in the future.
So if you are considering having rhinoplasty surgery, do not jump over immediately to what a friend recommends to you, or on what you heard from your favorite actress when she thanked her 'sponsors'. Do your research. Check the surgeon's background, qualification and experience to assure you of a reliable nose job you ever wanted.


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The Onts: Secrets of Dripping Fang, Book One
Dan Greenburg
Harcourt, 2005 (2005)
Read an Excerpt
Reviewed by Lyn Seippel
he Shluffmuffin twins live in the Jolly Days Orphanage without much hope of being adopted since Cheyenne has allergies that keep her sneezing and sniffling and Wally's feet are foul smelling no matter how often he washes them. The Mandible sisters come to the orphanage looking for children to adopt and strangely enough Wally and Cheyenne are the two they want. They prefer a stinky footed boy; and sniffles and sneezes are just what they are looking for in a daughter.
he Mandibles live in Dripping Fang Forest in a very nice house with bars on the windows. They have rules that must not be broken, but each child has a fabulous room and the twins' first dinner is chocolate everything. The sisters obviously want the pair to be happy. So why is Wally worried enough to break the rules that must not be broken on the very first night they are there? Wally is the
glass half-empty
twin while Cheyenne always looks on the bright side of things.
ven after he tells her that the Mandible sisters are actually giant ants it takes a lot to convince Cheyenne that they should run away. The Jolly Days Orphanage wasn't jolly at all and a walk through the Dripping Fang Forest could be fatal.
he Onts
is the first book in the
Secrets of Dripping Fang
. The twins are sympathetic, in spite of - or maybe because of - their flaws. The situations in which they find themselves are creepy but lack the horror you might expect to find in the Dripping Fang Forest. The reader soon realizes that the twins are a resourceful pair who will be able to overcome whatever they face there.
Note: Opinions expressed in reviews and articles on this site are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of BookLoons.
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