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The Chalkwork Family
A high-quality collection of over 2,500 icons in multiple sizes.
Chalkwork is a visually unified set of carefully designed icons. Built to cover some of the most common icon needs of web and software designers, the entire Chalkwork family offers hundreds of computer and internet-related metaphors in a visually consistent style at 3 different sizes in up to 6 file formats, as well as alternate vector versions in 4 file formats.
Chalkwork is licensed under Creative Commons to be free for personal use, and available for a nominal fee for commercial use.
A collection of every Chalkwork bitmap set for one low price. Contains 2,214 icons. View »
Information Management
Icons for publishing and content managements systems. Contains 486 icons. View »
A wide selection of general computer and internet-related icons. Contains 260 icons. View »
Basic Vector
A larger, more detailed vector version of the original Basic set. Contains 75 original icons plus 10 overlays, also includes the full bitmap version of Chalkwork Basic. View »
Flag icons for every sovereign nation on earth, and a few more. Contains 204 icons. View »
Editing Controls
Icons designed for text and graphical editors. Contains 819 icons. View »
Commerce-oriented icons for e-commerce and financial services. Contains 445 icons. View »
Web-related icons for CMS and blog software, dev tools, and more. Contains 31 icons (plus another 176 icons with purchase.) View »
License Agreement & FAQ
The full license terms for any of these icons are available on the Chalkwork license page. You got questions? I have answers.


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The singer (rocking sky-high heels) is spotted boarding a yacht with her daughter and husband Jay-Z
Beyoncé knows how to arrive in style – even while carrying her daughter, Blue Ivy.
The singer – who turns 32 on Wednesday – walked a gangplank in sky-high stilettos while toting her pajama-clad 19-month-old aboard a yacht in Ibiza, Spain.
Beyoncé paired the impressive black shoes with denim cut-offs and a white top and smiled as she and her husband, Jay-Z (not pictured), were greeted by the boat's staff.
The family arrived on the Mediterranean island on Monday for some R&R after Beyoncé's 90-minute performance at the Made in America festival in Philadelphia on Saturday. She returned to the festival on Sunday to see her sister Solange's set.

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Freelancer, Sales and Artistry
Wholesale Field | Sacramento, CA | Part Time
Job Description
Job Description
The Freelance Sales & Artist will drive retail sales and build positive brand awareness through artistry, sales support, training and events working approximately 27 hours a week (more or less), consistently. This position will support retail locations in Sacramento, Elk Grove, and Rancho Cordova.
- Meet and exceed sales goals within assigned territory.
- Drive sales and increase brand awareness through link selling, training, artistry demonstration and events.
- Responsible for ensuring brand standards and objectives are met via regular communication with Sales & Artistry Coordinator and/or Regional Manager.
- Partner with the Regional Manager and Sales & Artistry Coordinator to develop and execute strategic sales and event plan to accelerate brand awareness and meet sales goals within assigned territory.
- Responsible for developing and leveraging positive retailer relationships to maximize store level support related to all areas of driving the business.
- Consistently partner and communicate with Sales & Artistry Coordinator, Regional Manager and Education & Artistry Trainer to effectively grow and develop overall business.
- Support Sales & Artistry Coordinator and Education & Artistry Trainer during new store opening trainings as well as specialized retailer trainings as needed.
- Train retailer teams on Morphe brand heritage, artistry skills, product knowledge and selling techniques to elevate brand awareness and achievement of sales goals.
- Ensure product on gondola and secondary locations is merchandised and fully stocked according to Morphe merchandising guidelines. (Includes but is not limited to: maintaining gondola cleanliness and stock, remerchandising, replacing testers and communicating/assisting with reordering of gondola components as/if needed.)
Set the example as a leader in all aspects of business, artistry, sales, image and Morphe professional standards.
- Minimum of 3 years experience working as a sales & makeup artist in a retail environment.
- A proven track record of achieving personal and territory sales goals.
- Strong artistry, selling, customer service, communication and organizational skills
- Experience working successful cosmetic events.
- Excellent time management skills
- Ability to work in a fast-paced environment.
- Professional attitude and ability to be flexible and handle change in a positive manner.
- Able to work up to 40 hours a week if needed (Wednesday through Sunday) and be flexible to change to reflect the needs of the business including weekends, evenings and holidays.
Additional Requirements
- Ability to lift, push and pull up to 50 lbs.
- Able to stand for up to 8 hours
- Ability to travel up to 25%
- Possess a personal vehicle to be utilized for business purposes
- Possess a personal phone to be utilized for business purposes


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Review: The Stanford Prison Experiment
The formalism fashions effective textural shortcuts to behavioral understanding that the remarkable cast fills in with finesse.3.0
Conducted by a team of researchers led by Philip Zimbardo over a course of six days in August of 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment is a project, like Hannah Arendt's writing on the "banality of evil," that threatens to dispel comfortable human projections of morality and individuality. Zimbardo assembled 24 college boys for a simulation of federal prison conditions, converting a series of campus offices and hallways into a makeshift staging of a correctional facility with little personal space and no sunlight. His team then randomly assembled the students into two groups: guards and prisoners, telling the guards they were selected for their position because of inherent personal qualities that were deliberately vaguely defined, in effect flattering their egos and nurturing a sense of superiority over the people playing the prisoners. Then the volunteers began to enact the rituals of prison life, which quickly morphed into a series of psychological tortures. The "guards" harassed the "prisoners," forcing them to perform physical exercises, punishing them for increasingly nonsensical reasons, personally demeaning them, and effectively breaking down their senses of self through the repetition of their assigned prisoner numbers. These conditions escalated at a terrifyingly rapid pace until the plug was pulled abruptly to halt what had become a real prison in microcosmic extremis. In less than a week, many "guards" and "prisoners" had internalized their new roles, some forgetting they were in a simulation.
Zimbardo's implication, in broad terms, is that certain institutional situations might, in themselves, be inherently diseased, playing insidiously on human capacities for bending to authority in spite of perceptions of violations of common morality. Protocol, for we, a lemming of a species, might be the ultimate religion (and what is religion but merely more protocol?), and we may find that we can do anything when so justified by the sudden, simultaneously freeing, and constricting expansion of the rules of relativism. A small scene in Kyle Patrick Alvarez's The Stanford Prison Experiment is important to the meaning of both the film and the controversial endeavor it dramatizes: The "guards" and "prisoners" were sorted literally by the tossing of a quarter in some instances and they all, left to their own devices, chose to be prisoners, because they resent the law. This detail symbolically suggests a similar sorting as practiced by capitalism, classism, racism, you name it. Who are we? Merely drones playing whatever role's assigned to us? The implications of the Stanford Prison Experiment could partially serve to contextualize the historical tolerance of atrocities, such as the genocides in Germany and Darfur, or the brutal conditions of Abu Ghraib (which Zimbardo has since studied in relation to his experience at Stanford, its imagery clearly informing this film). The Stanford experiment could even possibly elaborate on the mass population's willingness to play into a social game of exploitation that blatantly refuses to serve them, overseen by politicians who exude a blithe contempt for their populace.
The experiment, of course, was also practicing the various manipulations it was attempting to demythologize and decry, and it has been understandably criticized for a basic failure of simulation: Its participants were partially unmoored by a confusion of reality, as they were rewarded (with authority) or punished (with lack of the same) for events that they didn't precipitate. In a real prison, hopefully, most of the prisoners have earned their fate, or at least understand why they're there and what the general sweep of the situation is.
In his film, Alvarez captures this collapse of basic orientation with a frightening sense of confidence. One of the great difficulties of mounting drama is portraying a rapid devolution of sanity, as one can often sense the narrative obligations carrying the characters along toward their prescribed fates. Alvarez achieves something that's reminiscent of Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies: His formalism fashions effective textural shortcuts to behavioral understanding that his remarkable cast fills in with chilling, convincing finesse. Brook's film used an illusion of docudramatic quotidian to muddy the contrivances of its source material's symbolism. Alvarez goes in the opposite direction, calling attention to his stylization, which resembles a 1970s American prison movie, with their often earthy grainy cinematography and harsh naturalistic lighting that nevertheless scans as painterly. This aesthetic isn't just a case of a filmmaker quoting movies he likes, but rather it simulates the pop-cultural associations that might've inspired the volunteers to immediately assume stereotypical prison roles, such as the awful hard-on of a guard, the rebellious cellmate, and so forth. In one case, these associations are especially explicit: One "guard," Christopher Archer (Michael Angarano), imitates the voice of Strother Martin's character from Cool Hand Luke and is soon referred to by everyone as "John Wayne" for his ruthless, unerring ability to immediately take control of the "prison."
The Stanford Prison Experiment shrewdly omits most biographical details of the experiment. Zimbardo's (Billy Crudup) motivations are so vaguely established as to render him a Machiavellian villain. Alvarez and screenwriter Tim Talbot create an experiential portrait of the torment wrought by the conditions of the experiment. Unavoidably, given this approach, the film is often an unpleasantly single-minded experience, reveling in one grotesquerie after another (it feels much longer than 122 minutes). But this ugliness also represents an act of aesthetic purity that puts you on the wavelength of the "guards" and "prisoners" alike. You feel as if you've spent six actual days with these people, and suspense derives, even if you're familiar with the story, from a sense that any kind of awfulness can materialize from the stagnation that Alvarez so vividly captures. The Stanford Prison Experiment manages to evoke just a little of the existential chaos stirred by its namesake.
Cast: Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, Michael Angarano, Olivia Thirlby, Thomas Mann, James Wolk, Tye Sheridan, Jesse Carere, Ki Hong Lee, Keir Gilchrist, Nelsan Ellis, Johnny Simmons Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez Screenwriter: Tim Talbott Distributor: IFC Films Running Time: 122 min Rating: R Year: 2015 Buy: Video
Review: Cristi Puiu's Malmkrog Wages a War Between Language and Cinema
It all has the makings of a game of Clue, but the mysteries here are linguistic.3
Cristi Puiu's Malmkrog is based on 19th-century Russian philosopher and mystic Vladimir Solovyov's prophetic Three Conversations, which, through a series of dialectical maneuvers, addresses such topics as economic materialism, nationalism, and abstract moralism. The film takes place on a snow-covered hillside, where a large pastel-pink mansion sits and Puiu turns the philosophical into drama. Sheltered in the mansion's walls are a small group of aristocrats that includes a politician, a general and his wife, and a young countess. It all has the makings of a game of Clue, but the mysteries here are linguistic. A Christmas gathering stretches on in what seems to be real time, as the party's high-minded philosophical and political chatter takes on an increasingly strained air.
That tension is heightened by the obstacles that Puiu uses to discombobulate his audience. Malmkrog is the Transylvanian village where the film takes place, yet the characters, who speak primarily in French, talk of being in Russia. And as they discuss imminent war and the potential outcomes of violence, it's as if the film appears to exist outside of time and place. Doorways and mirrors obfuscate who's involved in a conversation, and the characters move through the mansion as though compelled by spirits of the past, with cinematographer Tudor Vladimir Panduru often lighting all those drawing rooms using only natural light sources. Malmkrog exudes a painterly expressiveness that's a far cry from the cold, handheld aesthetic that typically defines the look of Puiu's work and the Romanian New Wave as a whole.
The film's first scene lasts nearly an hour and is a magnificent example of staging. The camera glides left and right, with each movement matched by a change in composition that the actors match as though dancing to the music behind their endless words. This balletic circularity, slow but constantly surprising, recalls Max Ophüls's fixation on the oneiric, circular properties of time. In a surprising moment of violence, a number of characters die on a staircase, only for them to come back to life a scene later, and without comment from anyone. When Nikolai (Frédéric Schulz-Richard), the mansion's wealthy owner and Malmkrog's central figure, looks up the staircase, it's as if he recalls what previously occurred there. The moment echoes one from Letter from an Unknown Woman where Joan Fontaine's Lisa stares up the very staircase up which Louis Jourdan's Stefan and another woman ascended years earlier.
Whenever Nikolai, who makes the domineering Stefan from Ophüls's 1948 masterpiece seem meek by comparison, utters lines like "prayer is a soap for the soul," he carries himself like the Sherlock Holmes of moral arbitration. But he's closer to a 19th-century Ben Shapiro: a pompous rat obsessed with facts and logic, who won't let a woman finish a point for fear that he won't be able to counteract it with a cogent counter-argument. It's not always clear to what extent Puiu is satirizing this type of behavior, given the spectacle of the man's endless pontificating, and that the other characters only rarely undercut his words with references to his verbosity. Puiu clearly believes in Nikolai enough to make him the mouthpiece for Solovyov's philosophizing, which makes it harder to buy to what extent these people are being sent up, and how much Puiu wants the viewer to eat up his words wholesale.
With our perspective held hostage in one place, memory and imagination blur into one. When Ingrida (Diana Sakalauskaité) reads from a book, the account of a vicious battle between Cossacks and bashi-bazouks, the effect is rapturous. In this claustrophobic endurance test, Puiu transports the viewer through language to a scene with the epic scope of the film's runtime. He focuses on listening faces, themselves teleported to a different space.
Like his characters, Puiu wages his own war of discourses, in his case between language and cinema. Whenever Malmkrog seems to have settled into a formal rhythm, the filmmaker flips it, using a different device to interrogate how people talk, and to what extent they listen. One heightened dialogue exchange culminates with the main characters staring out of the window in complete stillness. Then Nikolai starts to move, unstuck from this tableau, and seemingly from time. The boundaries of reality keep getting pushed at, to the point that one almost expects the mansion's walls to fall and reveal a film set. Later, he glides away from a tea reception to observe the servants, who silently rearrange the house and conceal their own power structure through glances and outbursts of violence that are hidden from the wealthy class. They are like spirits, pulling out chairs for aristocrats who don't acknowledge them, clearing out items like empty champagne glasses that hint at the echo of a past time.
The creeping dread of history repeatedly overwhelms character and viewer, particularly during General Edouard's (Ugo Broussot) screed on the world's necessary "Europeanness," which becomes a Buñuelian account of fascist tendencies and culminates in the film's most shocking moment. His wife, the imperious, frizzy-haired Madeline (Agathe Bosch), obsesses over the authority behind language: who may speak, and how. This is the sneaky vessel for a larger discussion on power and control. Living in a religious nation, Nikolai posits, one must first understand what Christianity is, and define national identity from that. The characters situate this in the context of war, and a globe that's shrinking in the face of technological progress.
But with each scene, Puiu strips away the layers of his ornate style, so that by hour three, all that's left is the close-up. With Nikolai's straight face berating Olga, evangelizing on resurrection, the sophistication of the dialogue rarely matches that of Puiu's aesthetic form. As Malmkrog becomes less ostentatious in style, the redundancy of its philosophizing becomes almost impossible to ignore, having made its conclusions about the inability of the intellectual class in combating fascism through language by the 100-minute mark. Puiu's assaultive mass of a film speaks to modern times in its depiction of aristocrats indulging in comfortable platitudes as the world edges toward the precipice of chaos, but the Romanian auteur doesn't entirely make the case for sticking around to listen.
Cast: Agathe Bosch, Frédéric Schulz-Richard, Diana Sakalauskaité, Ugo Broussot, Marina Palii, István Téglás Director: Cristi Puiu Screenwriter: Cristi Puiu Running Time: 200 min Rating: NR Year: 2020
Review: For Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man, the Cruelty Is the Point
The thrill of the film's craftsmanship is inseparable from its main character's abuse.1.5
Elisabeth Moss brings unexpected shades to the flimsiest of roles, and she makes it look so easy. Even if you go into writer-director Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man blind, you will know what Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) did to his wife, Cecilia Kass (Moss), simply from the way she moves one of his hands from her belly. Across a taut and nerve-wracking opening sequence, Cecilia orchestrates what becomes increasingly clear is an elaborate escape. If it's easy to overlook the hoariness with which the camera lingers at various points on some object that portends things to come, that's because Moss never stops conveying the agony of the years-long abuse that Cecilia has endured, through the surreptitiousness of her gait and the way paralyzing bolts of fear shoot through her body.
That kind of talent only helps a film like The Invisible Man that doesn't really care about abuse beyond its function as a plot device. After escaping Adrian's clutches, Cecilia goes to live with a childhood friend (Aldis Hodge) and his daughter (Storm Reid). Or, rather, struggles to live, as leaving the house is too hard for Cecilia to bear. Cecilia never really stops talking about the control that Adrian exercised over her, even after she learns that he committed suicide, thus freeing her to finally put her life back together. But there's a frustrating friction to such scenes, between an actress sincerely committed to expressing her character's pain and a filmmaker interested in trauma only as far it whets our appetite for how a psychopathic tech magnate who specialized in optics could possibly torment his wife from beyond the grave.
With his directorial debut, Insidious 3, Whannell effectively goosed an otherwise insipid haunted-house attraction with clever twists on a franchise's trite dependence on the jump scare. But it was Upgrade, which saw him freed of franchise responsibilities, as well as longtime collaborator James Wan, that felt closer to a coming-out party for the filmmaker. And it practically announced him as a master, if not of horror, then of evasion, for the way his acute sense of movement is so thrilling in the moment that it can make one overlook his rickety storytelling. Upgrade is a film that's less suspicious of the not-so-brave new world of tomorrow that anti-authoritarian tech bros are rapidly ushering in than it is in awe of what their toys can do. Its meditation on vengeance is closer to justification: that it's okay that a bro turned half-machine is going on a violent rampage because of what was done to his wife.
The Invisible Man, another distinctly male fantasy set in a more recognizable present-day San Francisco, has even less to say than that, though it seeks to also entertain us with all that a techie can do with one of his toys. And that it does, as in an impressive early scene inside James's house where Cecilia walks out of the kitchen while making breakfast and a long shot unobtrusively captures a knife falling off the counter and the flame on one of the gas burners being turned to high. The frisson of unease to this and several other scenes, of a man hiding in not-so-plain sight as he mounts a spectacular show of gaslighting, is close to unbearable. And when the titular menace is finally glimpsed, if only intermittently, the straight shot of action-infused momentum that marks the sequence as he lays waste to a small army of police officers inside the hallway of a mental institution feels like a release, for Cecilia and the audience.
But to what end does Whannell really fashion all this style? In one scene, and only one scene, the film tells us that Cecilia is an architect, not to illuminate all that she's capable of as a creative, but to allow for the moment where she shows up to an interview at an architecture firm and discovers that the samples of her work were removed from her portfolio. That scene, some 30 minutes into The Invisible Man, is the moment where the film starts to provoke a certain queasiness, where it becomes clear that Cecilia only exists, for Adrian and for Whannell, to be terrorized, to be held up in the air, to be flung across a room, to be punched, to not be believed, to be thought of as insane. And to be raped. That this violation happens off screen proves that Whannell has foresight, that he's aware of the controversy that surrounded Hollow Man upon its release in 2000. But that we must be told that it also took place at an indeterminate time, almost as a matter of course, feels like an icky attempt at not having to actually grapple with the implications of the crime by casting doubt on it.
Out of sight, out of mind. That feels like Whannell's mantra. Indeed, by the time it gets around to the business of Cecilia being believed, the film starts to collapse under the weight of an increasingly absurd series of plot reveals for the way she turns the tables on the invisible man to feel like anything but an afterthought. Even then, when her tormentor is right there out in the open, it's still clear that Whannell only thinks of violence in terms of how it can be paid back. Which is to say, he's consistent. Through to the end, you can't get off on the thrill of this film's craftsmanship without also getting off on the spectacle of more than just Cecilia brought to the brink of destruction. Like its style, The Invisible Man's cruelty is the point.
Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Harriet Dyer, Michael Dorman, Benedict Hardie Director: Leigh Whannell Screenwriter: Leigh Whannell Distributor: Universal Pictures Running Time: 125 min Rating: R Year: 2020
Review: Guns Akimbo Squanders a Nifty Setup with Excruciating Humor
Writer-director Jason Lei Howden's humor might have been tolerable if his film was at least reasonably imaginative.1.5
For much of Jason Lei Howden's Guns Akimbo, Miles (Daniel Radcliffe) is in his jammies, because getting dressed is difficult when your hands are nailed to pistols. Eating and using the bathroom are no easy feat either. With this, the film hits on an amusing setup for physical comedy, as Miles can do little but stumble about as he strives to drive a car or use his phone with his nose. He also must avoid being shot by Nix (Samara Weaving), his designated opponent in a kill-or-be-killed online competition called Skizm. But the film ultimately fails to capitalize on its concept and gets smothered by its smug, abrasive tone.
Miles is a coder for a video game titled Nuts Bust 2, one of too-many examples of the film's groan-inducing comedy. He's also a bizarrely self-aware depiction of an internet troll, as Miles admits via narration that, in order to feel worthwhile, he seeks out arguments in comment sections and reports "offensive content." When he goes to Skizm's chatroom to tell the viewers off, he runs afoul of the organization's facial-tattooed leader, Riktor (Ned Dennehy), who at one point says, "I'm going to do a poo-poo in my pantaloons," because why not? Those guns for hands and his forced participation in Skizm are Miles's punishment.
Most of Guns Akimbo's dialogue squanders an intriguing concept through truly excruciating attempts at humor, oscillating between snide comments, gay panic jokes, and capital-A attitude-laden one-liners. In one scene, Miles remarks that the world looks "so HD" because, with gun-hands, he can't go outside with his face in his phone.
The humor might have been tolerable if the film was at least reasonably imaginative. Radcliffe really digs into Miles's sniveling bafflement and the expressive Weaving clearly has a lot of hammy fun as the unhinged Nix. But too much of Guns Akimbo consists of unremarkable car chases and gun fights that hardly feel transformed at all by Miles's unique predicament. We watch a lot of people fire a lot of guns against a lot of concrete backdrops, except Howden deploys a hyperactive camera style that's always zooming around the characters in slow motion or fast forward. He appears to be going for the Neveldine/Taylor style of films like Crank and Gamer, except he's not nearly as inventive and most of his flourishes outright distract from the action choreography, sometimes obscuring it altogether.
Worse, Guns Akimbo strains to be self-aware, with Miles assuring audiences via narration that this isn't one of those stories where he wins back his ex-girlfriend, Nova (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), in the end. And it's weirdly self-congratulatory for a film that visibly revels in torturing Weaving's character and eventually has Nova kidnapped for the big climax anyway. The film has even less to say about the sort of obsessive spectatorship that makes up the story's backdrop, as though simply depicting reality-TV audiences and internet users as assholes is some profound statement. Luckily, unlike Miles, viewers have a say in the matter. They aren't bolted to the couch and the remote isn't nailed into their hands; they're free to quit watching at any time, or simply opt not to watch this obnoxious film at all.
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Ned Dennehy, Rhys Darby, Grant Bowler, Edwin Wright Director: Jason Lei Howden Screenwriter: Jason Lei Howden Distributor: Saban Films Running Time: 97 min Rating: R Year: 2020
Review: The Assistant Is a Chilling Portrait of Workplace Harassment
The film is designed so that we feel as starved for rudimentary human emotion as its main character.3
With The Assistant, writer-director Kitty Green offers a top-to-bottom portrait of incremental dehumanization, and, on its terms, the film is aesthetically, tonally immaculate. The narrative is set in the Tribeca offices of a film mogul, but it could take place in a branch of any major corporation throughout the world without losing much of its resonance. Offices encourage professional functionality as a way of divorcing people from themselves, leading them to make actions without a sense of complicity. What starts small—throwing co-workers under the bus, neglecting friends due to punishing work hours—can blossom over time into people enabling atrocity under the guise of "doing what they're told."
With this psychology in mind, Green fashions The Assistant as a pseudo-thriller composed entirely of purposefully demoralizing minutiae. The film opens with a young woman, Jane (Julia Garner), being picked up from her apartment for work so punishingly early that it's almost impossible to tell if it's morning or night. By 8 a.m., she's been making copies, printing documents, reading emails, and tending to office errands for hours. Other employees gradually drift in, talking obligatorily of their weekends off—a privilege that Jane isn't accorded.
In these early scenes, Green conjures a peculiar, very palpable dread, her precise, anal-retentive compositions suggesting what might happen if David Fincher were to adapt Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener." This dread springs from two places, as the visual palette is silvery and moody, evoking a potential corporate thriller, though the film refuses to move beyond the expository stage and gratify this expectation, and so we fear that we may be trapped with Jane in her tedium. We are, and this is by Green's moral schematic.
The Assistant is designed so that we feel as starved for rudimentary human emotion as Jane. No names are uttered throughout (the name Jane, which brings to mind the anonymity of a Jane Doe, is only stated in the credits), while the film mogul is only evoked via male pronouns (he's never seen but often referenced and occasionally heard over the phone, usually in a torrent of rage against Jane for her inability to talk down his wife, who knows of his infidelity). Jane brings another assistant the wrong sandwich, and he treats her cruelly; it never occurs to him, or anyone else, to thank Jane for the tasks she performs for everyone in the office. At best, Jane's co-workers regard her with a kind of pitying befuddlement, as if she's not quite real. When Jane eats, it's quickly and without pleasure, and she's always alert to being watched. No one speaks of their personal lives. Green springs one perceptive, poignant detail after another, especially when the mogul compliments Jane via email just as she thinks he's reached his limit with her. This is, of course, a major tool of the master manipulator: praise when least expected, and only enough to keep the person in your sphere of influence and at your mercy.
Increasingly unsettling details seep into this deadening atmosphere. Jane finds an earring in the mogul's office, which is repeatedly seen from a distance through its open door and becomes a chilling symbol for the mogul himself, suggesting his unshakable presence even in absence. There are jokes made about his couch, which Jane cleans. Young, beautiful women are brought into the office at late hours, and are referenced by both male and female employees with contempt. Growing fearful for one of the women, Jane tries to complain to an unsympathetic H.R. officer who sets about gaslighting her. It becomes evident that we're watching—from the perspective of a powerless yet ultimately complicit person—a parable about rich, insulated predators like Harvey Weinstein, and Green's grasp of Jane's indoctrination into this perverse world is impeccably believable.
Yet The Assistant also feels too narrow, too comfortable with its thesis. The rendering of the mogul as an unseen specter is effective but also dime-store lurid in the tradition of mediocre horror movies, and this device also conveniently absolves Green of having to wrestle with how a Weinstein type might live with himself. George Huang's similarly themed 1994 film Swimming with Sharks, which is mostly inferior to The Assistant, benefited from such a friction, as its own Weinstein surrogate (played by Kevin Spacey) had a magnetism that complicated and enriched the script's anger. There's also something insidious about Green's evasion, as the mogul's absence elevates him, mythologizes him, which reflects how people low on the power ladder see powerful exploiters. But Green physicalizes this idea without standing outside of it, challenging it, or contextualizing it; she traps us in a monotonous hell and leaves us there. Her fury with Weinstein and his ilk contains an element of awe.
Cast: Julia Garner, Matthew Macfadyen, Makenzie Leigh, Kristine Froseth, Jon Orsini, Noah Robbins, Stéphanye Dussud, Juliana Canfield, Alexander Chaplin, Dagmara Dominczyk, Bregje Heinen Director: Kitty Green Screenwriter: Kitty Green Distributor: Bleecker Street Media Running Time: 87 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: Benh Zeitlin's Wendy Is a Half-Hearted Spin on Peter Pan
Wendy veers awkwardly and aimlessly between tragedy and jubilance, never accruing any lasting emotional impact.2
Like Beasts of the Southern Wild before it, Wendy unfolds through the eyes of a child. Benh Zeitlin's sophomore feature puts a new spin on Peter Pan, and not only because it takes on the perspective of a 10-year-old Wendy Darling (Devin France). The film's modern-rustic settings and costumes and relative lack of fantastical elements—notwithstanding the presence of a majestic, glowing sea creature, referred to as "mother," who may hold the secret to reversing time—also play a large part in re-envisioning J.M. Barrie's classic. But Zeitlin's brand of magical realism strains in its conflicting desires to both demystify Neverland (never mentioned by name in the film), chiefly by grounding it in a rather prosaic reality, and imbue the story with all the enchanting qualities we've come to expect from fantasies of everlasting childhood. Like its version of Peter (Yashua Mack), Wendy wants to fly, yet, because of its self-imposed restrictions, it never quite gets off the ground.
Across this tale of a child lurching toward adulthood, there's a sense of wonder and awe to the sea creature's brief appearances, and to Wendy's initial encounters with the free-spirited Peter, who playfully eggs her on from atop the train that regularly roars across the barren, rural locale that houses her family's rundown diner. But Wendy's whimsical flourishes, from Dan Romer's incessantly rousing score to Wendy's breathy and all-too-mannered voiceover, brush awkwardly against the film's dour conception of a Neverland drained of all its magic and grandeur. Despite this, Zeitlin strives to capture an unbridled sense of childlike exuberance as kids cavort around the rugged cliffside vistas of the remote volcanic island that Peter calls home. But lacking any of the mystical features typically associated with them, Peter and his cohorts' behaviors appear overly precocious to the point of ludicrousness; it's almost as if they're performing a twee, optimistic rendition of Lord of the Flies.
Unlike Quvenzhané Wallis, whose magnetic presence imbued Beasts of the Southern Wild with a pervasive warmth and soulfulness, Mack is an unfortunately listless presence as Peter. Several years younger than Wendy and her twin brothers, Douglas (Gage Naquin) and James (Gavin Naquin), Peter appears, more often than not, like a six-year-old playing dress-up. His utter lack of charisma and gusto renders him an ill-fitting avatar for boisterous youthfulness, while his occasionally domineering, yet still unimposing, demeanor hardly makes him out to be the inspirational figure that the film ultimately wants him to be. Not only does he allow one boy to drown at one point, he chops off the hand of another to prevent him from aging.
Such events position Wendy as a twisted take on Peter Pan, but these moments are never given room to breathe. Rather, they're uniformly undermined by the film cutting back to the idyllic adventures of children, in lockstep with Zeitlin's relentless pursuit of galvanizing his audience through a gleefully idealized vision of the world. This jarring intrusion of darker elements into the story makes for bizarre clashes in tone, leaving Wendy to veer awkwardly and aimlessly between tragedy and jubilance, never to accrue any lasting emotional impact. When Peter buoyantly declares that "to grow up is a great adventure," one is left to wonder not only why the boy who never grows up would, out of nowhere, embrace this worldview, but why Wendy, or any of the other children, would want to follow such a troubling figure on that journey.
As Wendy stumbles into its final act, where adult pirates attempt to use Wendy as bait to catch the giant sea creature, it becomes even more convoluted, contradictory, and murky in what it's trying to say about growing up. Wendy eventually begins to stand up to and question Peter, both for his mistreatment of her brother and his harshness toward the adults Peter has excommunicated to an impoverished community on the outskirts of the island. But no sooner does she chide Peter than she's back on his side, cheering him on as he fights off an admittedly cleverly devised Captain Hook. It's as if she, much like the film, can't seem to settle on whether Peter's a hero or a borderline psychopath, or if childhood is a magical time to live in permanently or a necessary step on the way to adulthood. Rather than meaningfully subverting audience expectations, Wendy instead plays like a half-hearted twist on the familiar tale that ultimately doesn't change the moral at the core of countless other Peter Pan adaptations: childhood is magical, and growing up is scary but inevitable.
Cast: Tommie Lynn Milazzo, Shay Walker, Devin France, Stephanie Lynn Wilson, Ahmad Cage, Gage Naquin, Krzysztof Meyn, Gavin Naquin, Romyri Ross Director: Benh Zeitlin Screenwriter: Benh Zeitlin, Eliza Zeitlin Distributor: Searchlight Pictures Running Time: 112 min Rating: PG-13 Year: 2020
Review: Philippe Garrel's The Salt of Tears Forecloses Feeling for the Sake of Fantasy
Garrel illustrates the absurdity behind the myth of the complementary couple without humor or wit.1.5
Two strangers, a man and a woman, meet at a bus stop in Paris. He's from the countryside and has come to the city to live out his father's dreams, which in Philippe Garrel's The Salt of Tears means taking an entrance exam for a top carpentry school. He insists on seeing her again, and they meet for coffee after his test. They want to make love but have nowhere to go; he seems upset that she can't host, and ends up taking her to his cousin's place. She isn't comfortable with all his touching, perhaps afraid that if he makes love to her right away he'll have no reason to come back. Indeed, she seems more invested in the future of their encounter, what it can become, than in the encounter itself, whereas he sees no reason for her to stay if she won't put out. By the time he kicks her out, she's already in love.
The strangers' names are Luc (Logann Antuofermo) and Djemila (Oulaya Amamra), but they might as well be called Man and Woman. That's because The Salt of Tears unfolds like an archetypal narrative of heterosexual impossibility where Luc is the everyman and Djemila is interchangeable with Geneviève (Louise Chevillotte), Luc's subsequent fling, or whatever woman comes next. He seems fond of collecting rather than replacing lovers. In the course of his brief encounters, which are nevertheless always long enough for the women to get attached and promptly burned, Luc is inoculated from heartache. His only emotional allegiance seems to be to his father (André Wilms), which tells us a thing or two about heterosexuality's peculiar tendency to forge male allegiances at the expense of women, who circulate from man to man, father to husband, husband to lover, like some sort of currency.
We've seen, and lived, this story a million times—in real life and in cinema. You, too, may have waited for a lover who never showed up after making meticulous plans for an encounter, wrapped up in the sweetest of promises, like the one Luc makes to Djemila when he says, "For the room, I'll refund the whole amount." It's then that she takes the train to see him. At a hotel, she puts on her prettiest nightgown, powdering her face in preemptive bliss. But Luc never shows up. And when Djemila goes to the hotel lobby to ask for a cigarette from the night porter (Michel Charrel), we see that the scenario, the woman who waits, is quite familiar to the man as well. "I've seen women wait for their men all their lives," he tells her.
And yet, despite so much identification, and despite the fact that some of the best films ever made, from Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage to Rohmer's A Summer's Tale, are precisely about masculine cowardliness and feminine despair, why is it that The Salt of Tears makes no room for genuine emotion to emerge? Which is peculiar given that Garrel so recently, with In the Shadow of Women and Lover for a Day, documented the impossibility of monogamy with not only a no-nonsense sensibility but also profound gravitas. Maybe the failure of the film is in Garrel's use of melodramatic music during transitional scenes, a device at odds with the detached style of the rest of the film. Maybe it's in the overtly fable-like structure that reduces the characters to not just archetypes, but cutouts. Maybe it's in the omniscient voiceover narration that punctuates the film with such disaffection and irregularity.
Garrel illustrates the absurdity behind the myth of the complementary couple with the same cynicism that permeates his previous work but none of the humor or wit. He thus elevates The Salt of Tears to the status of a work to be enjoyed only intellectually, as if, like Luc, he, too, had learned to foreclose feeling for the sake of some fantasy of self-preservation or pride.
Cast: Logann Antuofermo, Oulaya Amamra, André Wilms, Louise Chevillotte, Souheila Yacoub, Martin Mesnier, Teddy Chawa, Aline Belibi, Michel Charrel, Stefan Crepon, Lucie Epicureo, Alice Rahimi Director: Philippe Garrel Screenwriter: Jean-Claude Carrière, Philippe Garrel, Arlette Langmann Running Time: 100 min Rating: NR Year: 2020
Review: Greed Is an Unsubtle Satire of Global Capitalism's Race to the Bottom
The film takes occasional stabs at comic grotesquerie, but it's brought back to earth by an insistent docudrama seriousness.2.5
A morality tale about a piratical fast-fashion clothing entrepreneur, Greed takes occasional stabs at comic grotesquerie. Each time, though, it's brought back to earth by an insistent docudrama seriousness. That uneven mixture of tones, not to mention its easy and somewhat restrained shots at obvious targets, keeps writer-director Michael Winterbottom's film from achieving the Felliniesque excess it strives for.
Steve Coogan plays the discount billionaire villain as a more malevolent variation on the smarmy selfish bastard he's polished to a sheen in Winterbottom's The Trip films. Sir Richard McCreadie, nicknamed "Greedy" by the tabloids, is one of those modern wizards of financial shell games who spin fortunes out of thin air, promise, hubris, and a particularly amoral strain of bastardry. He made his billions as the "king of the high street," peddling cheap, celebrity-touted clothing through H&M and Zara-like chain stores. Now somewhat disreputable, having been hauled before a Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the bankruptcy of one of his chains, the tangerine-tanned McCreadie is stewing in semi-exile on Mykonos.
While McCreadie plans an extravagantly tacky Gladiator-themed 60th birthday for himself featuring togas and a seemingly somnolent lion, the film skips back in time episodically to show how this grifter made his billions. Although specifically inspired by the life of Philip Green, the billionaire owner of Top Shop (and who was also investigated by Parliament for the bankruptcy of one of his brands), Greed is meant as a broader indictment of global capitalism's race to the bottom. Cutting back from the somewhat bored birthday bacchanal—Winterbottom does a good job illustrating the wallowing "is this all there is?" dullness of the ultra-rich lifestyle—the film shows McCreadie's ascent from Soho clothing-mart hustler to mercantilist wheeler and dealer leveraging a string of tatty bargain emporiums into a fortune.
Linking the flashbacks about McCreadie's up-and-comer past to his bloated and smug present is Nick (David Mitchell), a weaselly hired-gun writer researching an authorized biography and hating himself for it. Thinking he's just slapping together an ego-boosting puff piece, Nick inadvertently comes across the secret to McCreadie's success: the women hunched over sewing machines in Sri Lankan sweatshops earning $4 a day to produce his cheap togs. The Sri Lanka connection also provides the film with its only true hero: Amanda (Dinita Gohil), another of McCreadie's self-hating assistants, but the only one who ultimately does anything about the literal and metaphorical casualties generated by her boss's avarice.
With McCreadie as a big shining target, Winterbottom uses him to symbolize an especially vulgar manifestation of jet-set wheeler-dealers who imagine their wealth has freed them from limitations on taste and morality. That means giving McCreadie massive snow-white dentures, having him yell at the lion he's imported sending him storming out on the beach to yell at the Syrian refugees he thinks are spoiling the backdrop for his party. He's the kind of man who, when his ex-wife (Isla Fisher) calls him out for cheating by using his phone to look like he's reciting classical poetry by heart, shouts proudly and unironically, "BrainyQuote!"
Greed isn't a subtle satire. But, then, what's the point of going small when the target is the entire global clothing supply chain, as well as the consumerism and celebrity worship ("adding a bit of sparkle to a $10 party dress," as McCreadie puts it)? Despite his deft ability to authentically inhabit numerous geographical spaces without condescension (the scenes in Sri Lanka feel particularly organic), Winterbottom often has a harder time summoning the kind of deep, gut-level emotions needed to drive home an angry, issue-oriented comedy of this kind. But even though he isn't able to balance buffoonery and outrage as effectively as Steven Soderbergh did with his Panama Papers satire The Laundromat, Winterbottom at least knew to pick a big enough target that it would be nearly impossible to miss.
Cast: Steve Coogan, Isla Fisher, Shirley Henderson, David Mitchell, Asa Butterfield, Dinita Gohil, Sophie Cookson Director: Michael Winterbottom Screenwriter: Michael Winterbottom Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics Running Time: 104 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: With Saint Frances, the Rise of the of the Abortion Comedy Continues
It has almost enough genuine charm and heart to compensate for the moments that feel forced.2.5
Even for American liberals, abortion has long been a touchy subject. "Legal but rare" is the watchword of cautious Democratic candidates, and popular film has long preferred to romanticize the independent women who make the brave choice not to terminate a pregnancy (see Juno). With Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child and, now, Alex Thompson's Saint Frances, we may be seeing the emergence of something like the abortion comedy. The very concept of such a thing is probably enough to make a heartland conservative retch, which Thompson and his screenwriter and lead actress, Kelly O'Sullivan, no doubt count on.
Bridget (O'Sullivan) is a white Chicagoland millennial who, like so many of her generation, finds herself still living the life of a twentysomething at the age of 34. Messy and a little irresponsible—qualities that could be largely chalked up to the inert decade of post-college poverty she's endured—she struggles to admit in conversation with her ostensible peers that she works as a server at a greasy diner. In the film's opening scene, a tidy encapsulation of the tragicomedy of being an underachieving hanger-on in bougie social circles, she's brought to the verge of tears when a yuppie dude she's chatting with loses interest in her after her age and employment come up. She immediately pounces on Jace (Max Lipchitz), the next guy who talks to her, after he casually reveals that he, too, works as a waiter.
Fortunately, Jace turns out to be an indefatigably cheerful and supportive 26-year-old who comes across as perhaps a tad too perfect until the precise moment in Saint Frances that the filmmakers need him to come off more like a Wrigleyville bro. At some point during their initial hook-up, Bridget gets her period, and the couple wakes up fairly covered in blood. (Bridget's nigh-constant unexpected vaginal bleeding and the stains it leaves will serve as both metaphor and punchline throughout the film, and it works better than you may think.) Amused but unphased by the incident, Jace will also prove to be a supportive partner when Bridget chooses to terminate her accidental pregnancy later in the film, even though Bridget remains openly uncertain about whether or not they're actually dating.
In the wake of her abortion, Bridget is taken on as a nanny for Maya and Annie (Charin Alvarez and Lily Mojekwu), a mixed-race lesbian couple who need someone to look after their unruly daughter, Frances (Ramona Edith Williams), while Maya cares for their newborn. Frances is a self-possessed kindergartner whose dialogue sometimes drifts into "kids say the darnedest things" terrain, even though it can be funny ("My guitar class is a patriarchy," she proclaims at one point). But O'Sullivan's screenplay doesn't overly sentimentalize childhood—or motherhood for that matter. One important subplot involves Bridget's mother's (Mary Beth Fisher) reminiscing that she sometimes fantasized about bashing the infant Bridget's head against the wall, a revelation that helps Maya through her post-partum depression.
Maya and Annie live in Evanston, the Chicago suburb where Northwestern University is located, and Bridget counts as an alumna of sorts, though in conversation she emphasizes that she was only there for a year. She clearly views the town as the epicenter of her shame; underlining this is that the couple's next-door neighbor turns out to be Cheryl (Rebekah Ward), an insufferable snob who Bridget knew in college, whose "lean in" brand of upper-class feminism doesn't preclude her from treating her erstwhile peer like an all-purpose servant. Frances's smarmy guitar teacher, Isaac (Jim True-Frost), also embodies the moral ickiness of the privileged, as he takes advantage of Bridget's foolhardy crush on him.
Bridget's relationship with Frances and her parents changes her, but the film isn't making the point that she learns the majesty of child-rearing and the awesome responsibility of parenthood. It's that Bridget finds strength in intersectional and intergenerational solidarity, emerging from the isolating cell she's built herself out of quiet self-shame. If that approach sounds academic, it's true that at times Saint Frances is staged too much like dramatic enactment of feminist principles—a public confrontation with an anti-public-breast-feeding woman ends up feeling like an after-school special about conflict mediation—but it has almost enough genuine charm and heart to compensate for the moments that feel forced.
Cast: Kelly O'Sullivan, Charin Alvarez, Lily Mojekwu, Max Lipchitz, Jim True-Frost, Ramona Edith Williams, Mary Beth Fisher, Francis Guinan, Rebecca Spence, Rebekah Ward Director: Alex Thompson Screenwriter: Kelly O'Sullivan Distributor: Oscilloscope Laboratories Running Time: 106 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: Disappearance at Clifton Hill Is a Well-Sustained Trick of a Thriller
What distinguishes the film from much of its ilk is Albert Shin's ongoing taste for peculiar and unsettling details.2.5
Throughout Disappearance at Clifton Hill, director Albert Shin nurtures an atmosphere of lingering evil, of innocence defiled, that shames the ludicrous theatrics of Andy Muschietti's similarly themed It movies. Set in Niagara Falls, Ontario, the film opens with its finest sequence, in which a young girl, Abby (Mikayla Radan), runs into a frightened boy in the woods. One of the boy's eyes has been gauged out, and he wears a bloodied white bandage over it. (Perversely, the square shape of the bandage and the red of the coagulated blood make it seem as if he's wearing a broken pair of 3D glasses.) The boy gestures to Abby to keep quiet, and soon we see pursuers at the top of the hill above the children.
Much of this scene is staged without a score, and this silence—a refreshing reprieve from the tropes of more obviously hyperkinetic thrillers—informs Shin's lush compositions with dread and anguish. Just a moment prior, Abby was fishing with her parents (Tim Beresford and Janet Porter) and sister, Laure (Addison Tymec), so we feel the shattering of her sense of normalcy. The boy is soon scooped up, beaten, and thrown in the trunk of a car, never to be seen again.
Years later, the thirtyish Abby (now played by Tuppence Middleton) has yet to settle into herself, as she's a loner who haunts the nearly abandoned motel that her deceased mom used to run. By contrast, Laure (Hannah Gross) has married a sensible man (Noah Reid) and has a sensible job as a security manager at the local casino, which looms above the town surrounding Niagara Falls like an all-seeing tower. The casino, run by the all-controlling Lake family, is in the process of acquiring the sisters' motel. Looking through old pictures, Abby finds a shot that was taken the day she ran into the kidnapped boy, and she becomes obsessed with solving the case, descending into the underworld of her small, foreboding community.
Shin and co-screenwriter James Schultz's plot, and there's quite a bit of it, is the stuff of old-fashioned pulp. But what distinguishes the film from much of its ilk is Shin's ongoing taste for peculiar and unsettling details. A local conspiracy theorist, Walter (David Cronenberg), is introduced bobbing up and down in the water behind Abby as she investigates the site of the kidnapping, emerging in a wet suit from a dive to look for potential valuables. It's a hell of entrance to accord a legendary filmmaker moonlighting in your production, and it affirms the film's unease, the sense it imparts of everyone watching everyone else.
When Abby's sleuthing leads her to a pair of married magicians, the Moulins (Marie-Josée Croze and Paulino Nunes), they memorably turn the tables on her smugness, using sleights of hand to intimidate her and illustrate the elusiveness of certainty. And one of Shin's greatest flourishes is also his subtlest: As Abby surveys the hill where the boy was taken in the film's opening scene, a bike coasts across the road on top, echoing the movement of the kidnappers' car decades prior, suggesting the ongoing reverberations of atrocities.
Shin does under-serve one tradition of the mystery thriller: the unreliable protagonist. Abby is understood to be a habitual liar, a fabulist who's either a con woman or a person wrestling with issues of encroaching insanity. Given the luridness of the boy's disappearance, and the way it conveniently meshes with Abby's unresolved issues, the notion of the mystery as a terrible, self-entrapping fabrication is credible and potentially revealing and terrifying—suggesting the wrenching plight of the doomed investigator at the heart of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. But for Shin, Abby's fragile mental state is ultimately a red herring, relegating Abby to an audience-orienting compass rather than a true figure of tragedy. Which is to say that Disappearance at Clifton Hill isn't quite a major thriller, but rather a well-sustained trick.
Cast: Tuppence Middleton, Hannah Gross, Marie-Josée Croze, Paulino Nunes, Elizabeth Saunders, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Eric Johnson, David Cronenberg, Andy McQueen, Noah Reid, Dan Lett, Tim Beresford, Mikayla Radan Director: Albert Shin Screenwriter: James Schultz, Albert Shin Distributor: IFC Midnight Running Time: 100 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: With Onward, Pixar Forsakes Imagination for Familiarity
While Onward begins as a story of bereavement, it soon turns to celebrating the payoffs of positive thinking.2
Pixar specializes in tales of people, animals, and artificial intelligence coping with loss: of a spouse (Up), of human contact (the Toy Story films), of love (WALL-E). But like a lot of Hollywood dream-workers, Pixar's storytellers also believe in believing. And faith in something, anything, is essential to the studio's latest feature, Onward, as the heroes of this comic fantasy are two teenage elves who go searching for the magical gem—and the self-assurance—needed to briefly resurrect their departed and sorely missed father.
Ian and Barley Lightfoot's (Tom Holland and Chris Pratt) 24-hour quest is lively and sometimes funny but seldom surprising. Writer-director Dan Scanlon and co-scripters Jason Headley and Keith Bunin have assembled a story from spare parts of various adventure and sword-and-sorcery flicks, and topped it with a sentimental coda about the value of a male role model. Mychael Danna and Jeff Danna's drippy score pleads for tears, but viewers who sniffle are more likely to have been moved by personal associations than the film's emotional heft.
Blue-haired, pointy-eared Ian and Barley live with their widowed mom, Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), in a neighborhood that's a cross between Tolkien's Shire and a near-contemporary California suburb. A prologue explains that "long ago the world was filled with magic," but enchantment succumbed to a diabolical adversary: science. The invention of the light bulb is presented as this toontown's fall from grace. What's left is a Zootopia-like cosmos where such mythic creatures as centaurs, mermaids, cyclopses, and, of course, elves live together in stultifying ordinariness. Most stultified of all is Ian, who meekly accepts the torments of high school. He's nearly the opposite of brash older brother Barley, a true believer in magic who crusades to preserve the old ways and is devoted to a mystical role-playing game he insists is based on the world as it used to be. (A few of the film's supporting characters appear by courtesy of Wizards of the Coast, the game company that owns Dungeons & Dragons.)
It's Ian's 16th birthday, so Laurel retrieves a gift left by the boys' father, who died before the younger one was born. The package contains a magical staff and instructions on how to revive a dead soul, if only for 24 hours. It turns out that Ian has an aptitude for incantations but lacks knowledge and, crucially, confidence. He casts a spell that succeeds but only halfway, as it summons just Dad's lower half. A mysterious crystal could finish the job, so the brothers hit the road in Barley's beat-up but vaguely magical van with a gear shift that reads "onward." Barley is certain that his role-playing game can direct them to their shadowy destination.
Like most quest sagas, Onward is an episodic one, but it doesn't make most of its pitstops especially memorable. The supporting characters are few and most are easily forgotten, save for a once-terrifying but now-domesticated manticore, Corey (Octavia Spencer), and Mom's cop boyfriend, Colt Bronco (Mel Rodriguez), who may be a centaur but strikes his potential stepsons as embarrassingly bourgeois. Both join a frantic Laurel on her sons' trail.
Onward doesn't have a distinctive visual style, but it does showcase Pixar's trademark mastery of depth, light, and shadow. As in Scanlon's Monsters University, the fanciful and the everyday are well harmonized. That's still a neat trick, but it's no more novel than Ian and Barley's experiences. Animated features often borrow from other films, in part to keep the grown-ups in the crowd interested, but the way Onward recalls at various points The Lord of the Rings, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Ghostbusters feels perfunctory and uninspired. And it all leads to a moral that's at least as hoary as that of The Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan. While Onward begins as a story of bereavement, it soon turns to celebrating the payoffs of positive thinking. That you can accomplish whatever you believe you can is a routine movie message, but it can feel magical when presented with more imagination than Onward ever musters.
Cast: Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Ali Wong, Lena Waithe, Mel Rodriguez, Tracey Ullman, Wilmer Valderrama, Kyle Bornheimer, John Ratzenberger Director: Dan Scanlon, Jason Headley, Keith Bunin Screenwriter: Dan Scanlon Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Running Time: 103 min Rating: PG Year: 2020
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text:
Dodgers president and owner predict a dynasty
- Walter%27s group bought the Dodgers for %242.15 million last year
- Walter%2C Kasten engineered mega-trade with Red Sox in 2012
- Group nearly purchased the Houston Astros instead
PHOENIX -- It was a dirty, low-down trick. And it was brilliant.
Los Angeles Dodgers president Stan Kasten, sitting in the bar at the owners' meetings last August with club CEO Mark Walter, saw Boston Red Sox president Larry Lucchino on the other side of the room.
Kasten needed to talk to him privately. Yet, he had a problem: A couple of reporters in the bar. In need of a distraction, he called us over and introduced us to Walter.
Soon, Kasten quietly stole off, leaving us with Walter, who laid out his vision for the Dodgers.
One hour passed, then another as Walter discussed making the Dodgers the greatest team in all of baseball. Finally, Walter went to bed. The bar closed. We called it a night.
Little did we know the Dodgers and Red Sox were putting the finishing touches on the biggest trade in the history of both franchises. Ten days later, it was finalized. Nine players switched teams - including former All-Stars Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett - and the Dodgers assumed a record $250 million in salaries.
Nothing like getting hoodwinked.
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"We thought we actually had the deal done before the (July 31) trade deadline," Kasten told USA TODAY Sports, "but it got revived at the owners' meetings. When you guys were drinking with Mark, I was doing the deal with Larry."
Says Walter, a bit apologetic: "You know what kind of luggage I am? I was with you. So when people ask, 'What was Mark's role in that trade?' people will say, 'He was an anchor, but he kept people missing.'"
Not be fooled again, I made sure Kasten and Walter stayed together when they sat down for an interview with USA TODAY Sports on their first day together at the Dodgers' spring-training complex last week.
"You're learning," Kasten says, fresh off an offseason that saw the Dodgers lavish $147 million on prized free agent pitcher Zack Greinke, running their future salary commitments to over $500 million in less than a year owning the club.
On this afternoon, drinking nothing stronger than soda pop to wash down the hot dogs outside their private suite at Camelback Ranch, they divulged:
They nearly purchased the Houston Astros, and received the Astros' private financial statements as prospective buyers, before the Dodgers became available.
"Stan warned me the Dodgers might cost $900 million," Walter said.
Kasten: "Damn, I wish you hadn't told him that."
It wound up costing $2.15 billion.
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Walter doesn't interfere with Kasten or the front-office staff, but when asked whether he ever sends trade proposals , Kasten roared with laughter.
"Endlessly," Kasten says. " In every method of communication known to man. This man is creative, with a capital, C, that's all I'm going to say."
Says Walter: "I told you , 'You have to start thinking outside the box."'
Kasten and Walter can't believe someone was idiotic enough to let Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax part ways with the organization, and they've done everything in their power to make sure he never leaves again.
"I'm not public-relations oriented," Walter says, "but why would anybody have alienated him? You mean there was a rift between him and the Dodgers? He's not just a great guy, but a corporate asset.
"So I asked, 'Well, how do we get him back? You sit down and talk to him. If you're not a jerk, he likes you. And the fans are so crazy about him."
Walter hates to lose, and when annoyed, will text Kasten. Kasten really hates to lose, and paces. It makes it almost impossible for them to watch a game together.
"There was a point when the Colorado Rockies were on the verge of having the worst pitching staff in the history of Major League Baseball," Walter said. "We couldn't score off them. I was like, 'Really? So what does that say? They're the worst pitchers, and we can't hit them, so that makes us the worst batters?'
"I don't mind losing, but come on, can't we get a hit now and then?"'
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They believe the Dodgers will become a dynasty, and when asked whether it's possible for anyone to duplicate the Atlanta Braves' era when they won 14 consecutive division titles with Kasten as president, they weren't shy.
"It's going to be done again," Walter said, "this time on the West Coast. Oh, sorry."
Kasten, briefly taken aback by the bravado, said: "I'm saying, 'Yes.' But that's all I'm going to say."
They were one hour late in their introductory meeting with prospective fellow owner Magic Johnson thanks to L.A. traffic. Johnson had one major question, and agreed that afternoon to be a partner.
"Magic looks at Mark right away," Kasten said, "and he says, 'Do you want to win?'
"Mark says, 'Why would you want to go through this kind of thing if you didn't want to win?'
"That's what sold Magic right away. It's important to all of us. We just want to do this right."
Walter and Kasten weren't smug in noting they ended up with the Dodgers and not the Astros.
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Still, how would you feel, going to to buy a Smart Car, and driving off the lot with a Bentley?
"It would have been different," Kasten says , "but they're the fourth biggest market in America, and the biggest market with only one (baseball) team. They had a brand new (regional sports network). They have a lot of things going for them.
"But we both agreed that if something comes up with the Dodgers, we have to look at that much more seriously than anything we were doing."
They feared they might have to pay $900 million. They later realized that if they had to raise it to about $1.3 billion, it might be a bargain.
Instead, they paid $2.15 billion, the most ever for a sports franchise, leaving owners wondering whether they should be ridiculed or committed.
"When you got into the due diligence, and saw the opportunities and what upside there was," Kasten says, "that's why 24 groups signed up."
Walter and Co. reached an agreement with outgoing owner Frank McCourt, agreed to share future earnings on any land development around Dodger Stadium, and looked like geniuses when they reached a TV rights deal with Time-Warner that guarantees at least $7 billion.
The Dodgers have a payroll of about $230 million this year, the highest in baseball history. They're shelling out in excess of $100 million for stadium improvements, nearly tripling the size of their clubhouse for the players.
MLB:Strasburg still trying to perfect sinker
"You know who doesn't complain?" Kasten says. "The Dodger fans. And that's who we really care about. Having a strong Dodger franchise is good for baseball."
Walter: "L.A. doesn't want a crappy team."
The fans have already purchased 28,500 season tickets, Kasten says, the highest total in franchise history, up from 17,000 last season. Kasten ponders whether they must cap the total at 31,000 to assure fans can still buy single-game tickets.
"They're investing in us," Kasten says, "because of the cumulative impact of all we've done.
"If we do our jobs, the fans will come out. It's nothing more complicated than that. I just never thought it would happen this fast."
Pardon Walter for being a bit confused. He lives and works in Chicago, and is a Cubs season-ticket holder. He had no idea season tickets could possibly be available.
"I'm getting some numbers early on," Walter says, "and I say, 'What do you mean these tickets aren't sold?' You've got to stand in line to get a Cubs season ticket. It's like, 'How the hell does that happen? Chicago is just one-third of the size of L.A.' We're going to change that."
Certainly, success isn't guaranteed overnight. The Dodgers have won only two playoff series in the last 25 years, and the San Francisco Giants, winners of two of the last three World Series, are in their division.
" I'd love to be in a World Series this year," Walter says, "but we're going to win over time. I don't want to be in the World Series this year, and never again. I want us to be a team that people are not looking forward to playing unless they want to play the best."
This is why Walter persuaded Kasten to pull off the trade with the Red Sox. They coveted first baseman Adrian Gonzalez for months. When the trade deadline passed, Walter convinced Kasten not to give up.
"We had to worry about that waiver wire, making sure who would go through," Walter said. "All they had to do was scrub one of the players, and it would have screwed up the whole deal. Well, I guess we could have had the same result, and might have saved $20 million.
Kasten: "Yeah, but that's never been a big thing with him. He's never given me that as a mandate."
Walter: "To save $20 million?"
Kasten: "Well, job No. 1 is making the team better. We'll worry about the other part, later."
It's this philosophy that has Dodger fans acting as if Koufax and Don Drysdale are back on the mound, Roy Campanella behind the plate. They walk up and shake the hands of Kasten and Walter. And they thank them for McCourt's departure.
There will be tests along the way, mistakes made. You can never please everyone, as they learned when they received a letter a few weeks ago.
Yes, someone actually complained about the Dodgers bringing Koufax back into the organization.
"Overall, this has been just great," Walter said. "I can't ask for anything more. Come on, is there anything better than a hot dog and beer on a hot, summer day at a baseball game?"
Perhaps not, but that hot dog will taste better, and that beer will go down smoother, if a few victories happen to go along with it.
Yeah, you might want to keep an eye on these two.


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have (one's) druthers(redirected from if you had your druthers)
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have (one's) druthers
To have one's choice or preference; to have things the way one would like them to be; to have one's way. Usually formulated as "if I had my druthers…." Primarily heard in US. I tell you, if I had my druthers, I'd spend the rest of my life living in Paris. If the president had his druthers, we'd be paying taxes for the privilege of breathing!
have one's druthers
Have one's choice, as in If I had my druthers I'd go to London first. The noun druthers is a contraction of "would rather." [Slang; late 1800s]


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The Nangate Open Cell Library is a generic open-source, standard-cell library provided for the purposes of research, testing, and exploring EDA flows. This library is purposely non-manufacturable.
Nangate has developed and donated this library to Si2 for open use. The library is intended to aid university research programs and organizations such as Si2 in developing flows, developing circuits and exercising new algorithms. In its first release the Open Cell Library contains 38 different functions ranging from buffers to scan flip-flops with set and reset. All the different cell functions come in multiple drive strength variants end up with more than 100 different cells in the library.
The library was generated using Nangate's Library Creator™ and the 45nm FreePDK Base Kit from North Carolina State University (NCSU) and characterization was done using the Predictive Technology Model (PTM) from Arizona State University (ASU). The FreePDK Base Kit is supported by Professors Rhett Davis and Paul Franzon and their research teams and is also available for download.
Because the library was generated using a non-optimized Open PDK, it was not created to be an optimized library for any real-life applications.
of this library against any other library makes no sense and any use
for comparisons are hereby prohibited. The use of this library for
commercial tool benchmarking is also prohibited.
The library will be enhanced over time based on user suggestions and requests. If you have suggestions for development of the library then please submit them to the project New Feature Request tracker. Report bugs in our Library Bug tracker and join the Library Discussion Forum to solicit help and suggestions from other library users.


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We found 1 items that match your search.
Shut The City Down flier
Original flier used to publicize and invite CUNY and high school students to the March 23, 1995 rally at City Hall and the unpermitted march on Wall Street planned for after the rally. Included here is a separate document that was distributed among [...]
Item Type: Text (Flier / Leaflet (1 or 2 page handout))
Subjects: Activism, Austerity, Financial Aid, Politics, Relationships with Communities, Student Organizations, Tuition


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November 27, 2019 Update: After extensive consideration, we have decided to close Inspiration Software effective November 27, 2019. This was not an easy decision, and we thank you for the support you hae given us over the years. We are no longer providing customer service and tech support for Inspiration 9, Kidspiration 3, Webspiration Classroom and WebspirationPRO.
Using visual thinking methodologies, Kidspiration provides a cross-curricular visual workspace for K-5 learners. Students combine pictures, text, numbers and spoken words to develop vocabulary, word recognition, reading for comprehension, writing and critical thinking skills.
Kidspiration works the way students think and learn and the way teachers teach. As students make visual connections, they build fundamental skills in reading, writing, math, science and social studies. Kidspiration offers activities in all curriculum areas, so students use visual learning naturally and confidently.
Kidspiration helps students:
- Develop strong thinking skills
- Strengthen reading and writing skills
- Build conceptual understanding in math
Kidspiration® supports success across the curriculum
Develop Critical Thinking Skills
Strengthen Reading and Writing Skills
Build Conceptual Understanding in Math
Educator Developed Resources Support Curriculum Integration
Easy Navigation and Simple Operations Support for Every K-5 Learner
Teacher Options Keep Students Focused on Learning
Support for ELL and ESL Students
Kidspiration Whiteboard Support
Develop Strong Thinking Skills
With Kidspiration, students use graphic organizers to express thoughts and explore ideas and relationships. They create graphic organizers including webs, concept maps and Venn diagrams to clarify thoughts, organize information, apply new knowledge and build critical thinking skills.
3,000+ symbols in Kidspiration's Symbol Library provide visual support for concepts taught in K-5 language arts, social studies and science. Students can also import symbols from other sources. Symbol Search helps students search and find just the right symbols to express their thoughts and ideas.
Symbol Maker sparks creativity and anchors meaning. Students use familiar paint tools to create and personalize their own symbols to use in their graphic organizers.
Kidspiration's SuperGrouper® supports students as they sort, group and classify objects and ideas. A favorite for students and teachers alike, SuperGrouper containers are used to synthesize and analyze ideas.
Strengthen Reading and Writing Skills
With Kidspiration, students create, organize and explain ideas and information visually. They develop stories and descriptions using engaging visual tools and explore new ideas with thought webs and maps. Using Kidspiration, students combine pictures, text and audio to develop comprehension, organize ideas and create stories.
Integrated Picture and Writing Views connect students' visual thoughts with written expression in a single click. In Picture View, students develop thought webs and other graphic organizers. In Writing View, they expand their ideas into written expression. As they visualize, plan and organize, students build essential skills and confidence in reading and writing.
Visual continuity between Picture View and Writing View links images with written expression. When students click from Picture View to Writing View, they see symbols from their graphic organizers, reinforcing the connection between words and their meaning.
Kidspiration pairs symbols and words to build and strengthen literacy. Emerging readers and early learners use Kidspiration symbols and graphic organizers to communicate stories they've heard and ideas they develop. Older students use symbols to explain more complex ideas, show relationships and demonstrate understanding.
Kidspiration Word Guide supports vocabulary and reading comprehension with easy access to nearly 13,000 words. It includes sight vocabulary from the Dolch and Fry word lists and aligns with TESL vocabulary to support ELL and ESL students. Each entry includes definitions, recorded speech for pronunciation, synonyms and antonyms, parts of speech and sample sentences. Word Guide pairs 1,400 words with images to enhance word recognition and comprehension.
Audio support includes longer recording time to encourage students to express and document their ideas. Teachers enjoy greater flexibility when recording instructions and comments. For ESL and ELL learners, teachers can record instructions in native languages to enhance student understanding. With the Listen tool, students can hear any text read aloud, strengthening word recognition and comprehension.
Ready-made reading and writing activities support phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, word recognition and comprehension as they build students' writing and literacy skills.
One-click transfer to word processors lets students easily export their work to applications such as Microsoft® Word, Scholastic Keys® and Appleworks® to expand upon projects and assignments.
Build Conceptual Understanding in Math
Kidspiration extends the proven principles of visual learning to mathematics with visual math tools. Combining the hands-on learning power of manipulatives with all the added benefits of computer interactivity, Kidspiration's math tools help K-5 learners grasp essential and sometimes challenging math concepts.
Visual Math Tools
Kidspiration's five visual math tools focus on the core conceptual foundations of counting, place value, computation and geometric thinking.
Kidspiration Color Tiles™
Students use Kidspiration Color Tiles to count and compare, explore properties of number and operations, and develop computation strategies. With Kidspiration Color Tiles, students learn to solve area and perimeter problems and model number patterns and the four basic operations.
Color tiles are squares with no quantity limit, so students work with numbers large and small and visually grasp math concepts.
- Tiles are easy to drag and drop and can "snap" together automatically as students manipulate them to build models and patterns.
Kidspiration Pattern Blocks®
Students use Kidspiration Pattern Blocks to investigate the properties and attributes of shapes through composition and decomposition. They produce patterns and tessellations, explore similarity and congruence, experiment with symmetry and represent fractions.
Pattern blocks are moveable, stackable geometric shapes with side lengths and angles that snap together automatically. It's easy for students to make shapes and patterns. With Kidspiration Pattern Blocks, students build a foundation for spatial reasoning as they focus on concepts rather than the details of re-sizing or alignment.
With the Rotate tool, students experiment with rotating shapes and explore how different shapes stack and fit together.
Using a line displays and reinforces the concept of symmetry.
Kidspiration Base Ten Blocks®
Students use Kidspiration Base Ten Blocks to understand place value and strengthen number sense. With Kidspiration Base Ten Blocks, they count, compare, group, partition and create equivalent representations of whole numbers and decimals. Kidspiration Base Ten Blocks also introduce students to procedures for operations on multi-digit numbers.
Kidspiration Base Ten Blocks are units of ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. Students "make and break" blocks to compose and decompose multi-digit numbers.
The Place Value Mat provides a visual structure for students to compare, order and generate equivalent representations of numbers. This visual framework helps students understand procedures such as carrying and borrowing.
Kidspiration Fraction Tiles™
Students use Kidspiration Fraction Tiles to compare and order fractions and to understand equivalent fractions. They find common denominators, translate between improper fractions and mixed numbers, and model basic operations with fractions.
Kidspiration Fraction Tiles are stackable, pre-sized rectangles in fractions from 1 to 1/12.
Tiles can snap together automatically to help students compare fraction values, build wholes and see the concept of equivalent fractions.
Fraction labels turn on and off to meet activity requirements.
Kidspiration Fraction Boxes™
Students use Kidspiration Fraction Boxes to represent fractions visually to build a strong conceptual foundation for future work with fractions. Students compare, order, simplify and find equivalent fractions. They use Kidspiration Fraction Boxes to model basic operations with like and unlike denominators. Kidspiration Fraction Boxes also introduce students to improper fractions, mixed numbers and representing word problems.
Kidspiration Fraction Boxes are a dynamic fraction building tool using denominators up to 36. To build fractions, students set the number of parts and use colors and patterns to represent "parts of a whole" clearly. Students align boxes to model numbers greater than one and to compare fractions.
Students change denominators with a simple click to find equivalent fractions and identify common denominators.
Students move tiles within the fraction box or to another box with a compatible denominator to show equivalency.
With the Subtraction tool, learners represent subtraction operations visually and logically.
The right features and functions make Kidspiration math tools easy to use
Kidspiration Math SuperGrouper® helps students count, sort and show operations visually. Teachers and students label Math SuperGroupers as a conceptual building block for word problems.
Math Text Boxes document math operations using words, numbers and structured frames. The Math Text Box supports writing fractions, division problems and vertical math notations.
The Step Workspace shows progression of work with a sequential work area to document steps while problem-solving.
The Cross-Out Stamp gives students a visual indicator to use when they mark, take away or remove items.
- Multiple pages in a document streamline workspace management.
Educator Developed Resources Support Curriculum Integration
Kidspiration includes curriculum content, teacher tools and standards-aligned lesson plans in language arts, math, science and social studies developed specifically for grades K-5, along with 150+ activity templates.
The templates give teachers classroom-ready resources and provide a launching pad to customize and create lessons for individual learners, small groups and the whole class.
Tutorials provide a fast, effective way to introduce teachers to visual learning with Kidspiration so they're successful from the start.
Teacher Resources Online provides additional lesson plans and activities.
Easy Navigation and Simple Operations Support Every K-5 Learner
Sophisticated technology makes Kidspiration's capabilities easy and barrier-free for K-5 learners. Kidspiration's visual workspace invites students to explore, think and create naturally, intuitively and independently.
Visual Toolbars are colorful and intuitive for easy navigation so students experience success right from the start.
A Talking Interface supports each toolbar function with clear audio, so students who are emerging readers can navigate easily and fluidly.
Pop-up menus for symbol libraries, fonts and text sizes are easily accessed making the selection of the perfect image and font a fast and easy task.
Teacher Options Keep Students Focused on Learning
When creating or modifying templates, teachers have options to keep student learning on task.
- Lock items in places so students won't accidentally move or delete necessary symbols or SuperGrouper shapes in a design activity.
- Limit symbol libraries by making only specific libraries available for a project.
- Add instructions that only appear in Picture View allowing students to work in Writing View without the transfer of nonessential instructions.
Password-protected controls on the Teacher menu prevent students from changing teacher preferences.
Support for ELL and ESL Students
For ELL and ESL learners in grades K-5, vocabulary building is critical for reading and writing proficiency, the core of academic success. Kidspiration uses proven visual learning strategies to build students' vocabulary and English comprehension with the integrated Picture and Writing Views, the Word Guide, longer audio recording capacity and expanded symbol search and libraries. ELL and ESL students will also benefit from Kidspiration's emphasis on developing and using independent strategies such as pictorial representation of thoughts and concepts, and sight vocabulary lists in Word Guide which align with Fry's Instant Word List, Dolch Word List and TESL vocabulary. Read more about how Kidspiration supports ELL and ESL students.
Kidspiration Whiteboard Support
Shape and handwriting recognition in Kidspiration make it possible to sketch symbols and links as well as write text directly on whiteboards such as Promethean® ACTIV boards® and SMART Technologies SMART Boards™. Toolbars may be moved to the bottom of the screen for easy access by all students.


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PPG Industries Named Supplier of the Year
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Tuesday, December 1, 2009
MetoKote Corp., Lima, OH, which operates 33 coating facilities around the world, presented its inaugural Suppler of the Year Award to PPG Industries. PPG, Pittsburgh, PA, supplies paints, coatings and other materials from more than 140 manufacturing facilities in more than 60 countries.
MetoKote also recently hosted Ohio Governor Ted Strickland at its Lima coating complex—Strickland toured the facility and spoke to its employees about his education-reform plan.
See also: MetoKote Corporation
Related Enterprise Zones: Materials/Coatings


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Home | Add To Cart | Checkout
Tabitha here again...
Take a look at our "Vintage Afghan Collection", volume 1, containing six (6) books from 1930 - 1952...
(Before I forget... remember to claim your FREE vintage pattern book just for visiting... more details below...)
Here's What Others Have To Say About Our
Vintage Crochet Pattern Collections:
What's The Cost For This Collection Of Rare, Vintage Pattern Books?
Rare pattern books are, well... very difficult to find.
So, unfortunately, the original copies in our library are not for sale. They're just too scarce and almost impossible to replace, especially in near mint condition like ours. If you were fortunate enough to stumble across a copy, you could expect to pay at least $20, even up to $100 EACH... but... we're making these collector's items available for immediate download AND on compact disk at a price even the most frugal crochet enthusiast can afford...
Plus... Get Three FREE Bonuses If You Order By Midnight ...
With our volume 1 release plus your FREE bonuses, that's 171 pages and 126 vintage patterns dating from 1930 to 1952 valued at $164.71 for only $39.97! That's only twenty cents for each pattern!
You'll have access for immediate download and receive your CD in about three business days by first class mail. International orders will take a bit longer.
Now, Here's The FREE Vintage Pattern Book I Promised...
People often ask us what the books look like inside. Well, we're working hard to make photos of all the finished projects available on the site (not a small task :-)... But for now, I'll GIVE you a full copy of one of my unreleased favorites "10 Prize Winners From 1949", so you'll have a sample of what's behind the cover of these rare resources.
Once Again, Here's What You'll Be Downloading In Just A Minute (AND Receive On CD In About 5 - 7 Business Days)...
Your Satisfaction Is My Promise, Or I'll Gladly Return Your Investment...
I've spared no expense to be sure the pattern books you'll receive in digital format (both downloadable and on CD) are the highest quality possible. If you've taken a look at the first few pages of the pattern books by signing up using the form above, you know what I'm talking about.
In the unlikely event you receive your vintage pattern books and they are not all you thought they would be, just let me know by email, phone or fax and I'll be happy to refund your investment... no strings attached.
Purchase Online with Credit Card by Secure Server
- or -
Order By Mail with Check, Money Order or Credit Card. You will will receive your order in 5 to 7 business days.
Pat & Tabitha Gibbons
P.S.: I can't wait to get your feedback on these rare patterns. Don't forget to claim your free monthly pattern by signing up in the yellow box on the home page. Click here now to get Afghans Collection Vol. 1, plus your free gifts.
P.S.S.: I've held back a very special, unadvertised bonus will be included on your CD. This bonus will change with each new collection.
© Stony Brook Vintage Sewing
133 Route 130N


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Episode 8
Season 6 Episode 8 | 1h 13m 47s
Two romances get complicated. Molesley and Spratt try out new jobs. Thomas takes a fateful step. Mrs. Patmore provokes a scandal. Isobel puts her foot down. Watch Downton Abbey online and across PBS streaming platforms.
Aired: 02/21/16
Expires: 06/30/20Video has closed captioning.
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The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) works in collaboration with 24 specialty Member Boards to maintain the standards for physician certification. Our focus is on improving the quality of health care to patients, families, and communities by supporting the continuous professional development of physician specialists. We achieve our mission as an organization by helping physicians achieve their potential as providers of quality health care.
The mission of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) is to serve the public and the medical profession by improving the quality of health care through setting professional standards for lifelong certification in partnership with Member Boards.
For more than 80 years, we've evolved the standards for medical specialty practice and certification to support advancements in medicine, science, and technology. As a community of learners and leaders, we periodically evaluate and update our professional and educational standards to reflect the changes in medical specialty practice and health care delivery processes.
Physicians meet these standards in order to become board certified. Maintaining the following competencies keeps their certification active throughout their career and forms the foundation of the ABMS Program for Maintenance of Certification (ABMS MOC®):
The standards guiding the ABMS Program for MOC are patient-centric with a greater emphasis on professionalism, patient safety, and performance improvement. They help physicians become active participants in the evaluation of their own practices. Physicians can see how their practice compares to those of their peers, how it differs from published best practices, and how their own practice evolves over time, progressing toward the ideal practice.
The standards also include guidelines which help the ABMS boards select learning programs and improvement activities, create assessment and evaluation systems, and pioneer effective new pathways for physicians to learn the latest innovations in their specialty.
Quality improvement is vitally important to our nation's health care. Patients place an unprecedented level of trust in their physicians. They expect that the certifications held by their physicians represent a current demonstration of their knowledge and skills. The ongoing process of MOC assures that level of quality and trust.
The ABMS Program for MOC has grown to respond to the needs of patients by tapping into and extending the deep reservoir of duty and compassion of our physician specialists. Both patients and the profession benefit as the MOC competencies become deep-rooted into medical practices as well as our nation's educational, accrediting and certifying activities.
ABMS' role is to be a leader, contributor, and influencer for quality improvements within the U.S. health system through continuous medical education of physicians. ABMS works with organizations across the continuum of medical education and practice, coordinating activities with existing initiatives such as meaningful use, performance improvement and patient safety, operational efficiency, commitment to caring, and practice quality.


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Goal! Hector Villalba scores from just outside the box. Assisted by Franco Escobar.
LIVE YOUR COLORS: Download the free MLS app - The official MLS app gets a major update for 2020, making it easier than ever to keep up with your favorite club, check standings, watch videos and much more.


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A family crisis arises when a respected tailor suddenly leaves home.
Lee Man Sool (Shin Goo) is a master tailor who has been trying to preserve the dying art of making custom men's suits from scratch through his family-owned business, Laurel Tree Tailor Shop, which has been in business for almost 100 years. However, Man Sool one day departs without notice, leaving only a note behind for his wife, Choi Gok Ji (Kim Young Ae); twice-divorced daughter, Lee Dong Sook (Oh Hyun Kyung); Dong Sook's daughter, Kim Da Jung (Pyo Ye Jin); and son, Lee Dong Jin (Lee Dong Gun). Man Sool knows that his old-fashioned tailor shop is a dying business and asks his family to sell it for him while he is away because he doesn't have the heart to do it himself.
Man Sool's old apprentice, Bae Sam Do (Cha In Pyo), who now runs a fried chicken business with his wife, Bok Sun Nyeo (Ra Mi Ran), is devastated by the news of his old master's disappearance and wants to return to the tailor shop, but Sun Nyeo is still smarting over his past failed tailor businesses and forbids it.
Man Sool's employees, seamstresses Na Yun Sil (Jo Yoon Hee) and Geum Choon Daek (Lee Jung Eun), want to keep the business open until the master tailor's return, but Yun Sil keeps having bad experiences every time she runs into Dong Jin.
When Dong Jin's wife, Min Hyo Joo (Goo Jae Yee), divorces him after he is unseated as the president of her father's company, Meesa Apparel, by Hyo Joo's stepbrother, Min Hyo Sang (Park Eun Seok), and stepmother, Han Eun Sook (Park Jun Geum), Dong Jin decides to return to his father's tailor shop.
Meanwhile, Yun Sil's friend, Kang Tae Yang (Hyun Woo), is dumped by his longtime girlfriend, television announcer Choi Ji Yeon (Cha Joo Young), while Dong Sook is determined to help washed-up singer Sung Tae Pyung (Choi Won Young) get back on his feet.
Can Dong Jin help preserve his father's business in the face of ready-made competition from his former in-laws? "Laurel Tree Tailors" is a 2016-2017 South Korean drama series directed by Hwang In Hyuk.