Reviews

Well, the movie starts with what was a part of Omaha Beach, called the Normandy memorial now, filled with the graves of Allied soldiers who fought and died in the Normandy invasion. He finds the gravestone, along with his family, of soldier John Miller, and then recalls the fateful day of the invasion in his mind.

There are reminders of the cheesy movie known as "The Longest Day", as the Omaha Beach invasion scene in "Private Ryan" takes full swing. Over 15 minutes of terror, fright, and blood-letting as heavy German resistance with mortars and endless sprays of machine-gun fire rained death on the Allied soldiers who landed on the beach with their landing craft.

The Allies get stopped by the heavy and deadly resistance but finds their way to get through the enemy in the beachhead with Bangalore torpedoes, flamethrowers, and sniper rifles.

When all was over, we see that Daniel Ryan fell dead on the beach, and we get the first words on three Ryans who fell in World War II, but not James Francis. We get word on the parachute mis-drops that were part of the Normandy invasion which meant James Francis Ryan did not know that all of his 3 relatives died in combat, so a rescue mission deep in the German-held front lines of France is in store.

We then get the first scenes of John Miller, who is picked to find a small platoon for the mission. He finds soldiers, and then the mission is on, right into the French countryside.

First skirmish against the Germans is in a small French town in a heavy rainstorm where one of the platoon soldiers, Mr. Caparza, finds a French baby whom a French family wants to liberate. Caparza takes the baby, but because he was mistaken as a Nazi soldier (he was really an American soldier, but he was bald-headed), a French resistance soldier-sniper takes Caparza down with one shot in the chest. The platoon realize this and decided to find the sniper but have to leave Caparza alone and tell him not to move or he would get shot again. Fortunately, the sniper was taken out but Caparza eventually dies on the ground.

More small skirmishes against the Germans were in store upon finding James Francis Ryan. In one lull in the fighting, they almost got the soldier they wanted who was James Ryan but with a different middle name (which was, regrettably, Patrick), so the search continues.

Then, after a German prowler (a half-track) was destroyed in another French open field as the search continued, the platoon finds another platoon that destroyed the tank - it was the platoon with James Francis Ryan. The platoon got their man.

The final thing was for his survivors - the platoon itself and the surviving Ryan, to fight against a small German army that almost outnumbered them, in the town of Ramelle. The firefight had to be creative because they used ammo that was just left - not too much. James Ryan does survive and the firefight ends when the P-51 Mustangs finished off the Germans, but John Miller gets shot and dies in the combat.

James Ryan survives, still looking at his fallen soldier on the Normandy beach memorial, thinking about his duty for country that he had done on this major turning point in World War II.

One of the things I did not like about the flick was the opening car chase scene that may have nothing to do with GoldenEye, and Bond inside a Russian military depot trying to find something related to GoldenEye before he makes his very bold escape.

But when the space station scene at Severnaya, Russia, happens, we are introduced to a new way of creating nuclear war. Not by heat blasts, thermal winds, or radioactive fallout. The new threat was realized in another movie called "The Day After", where a first simulated nuclear blast was an airburst that set off an EMP pulse wave. Car engines die, lights go off, LED displays go black. In short, an EMP used as a weapon can knock out anything run by electricity.

So in "GoldenEye", this title refers to an EMP space weapon that, when fired, threads the needle in about a 10-20km radius...a surgical EMP strike that cripples and knocks out all electricity from everything like computers and televisions and similar devices. 2 such weapons already appeared in space for the simulated test firing on the space station, and the one that was fired was called Petya (the other was Misha).

So, a space station general and Xenia enter the station, arms the weapon to target Severnaya, and then Xenia surprisingly shoots and kills 15-20 station facility members. One member who was alive after being shot did press the panic button just before being shot dead by Xenia. Then they make their escape out of the space station by their chopper before the EMP weapon fires, and steals the GoldenEye.

2 fighter jets were scrambled as well as a Tiger battle helicopter to the space weapons site, but they were no match for the GoldenEye's EMP when the strike hit. The jets and the chopper all went down and crashed due to the pulse. Natalya, who works at the station, was the lone survivor who was able to evade the mass killing but could only watch the first-hand damage to the station when the space weapon was fired and she could not stop it.

The other part of the movie I liked was the army tank chase across the streets of St. Petersburg. You never seen such chases like that in most movies. I was able to see Bond overwhelm several Russian squad cars with the brute size and strength of the tank.

Then, the final scene, where a secret plan to use GoldenEye in Cuba was launched, reveals the character Natalya at her best. Even though she was a 2nd-level programmer, she was able to change the access code to the Misha EMP space weapon, so that it re-enters the atmosphere to burn up over the Atlantic so the weapon is no longer a threat to the world anymore. How can she do that when her enemies who was about to kill her and James Bond tried so hard to make sure that GoldenEye would be shot over London and bring London totally out of business...but regrettably, could not do it?

So, Rocky, knocking out Clubber Lane in Rocky III, is basking once again in the joys of being a heavyweight champion in Rocky IV, but then, Rocky and his friend, former boxing champion Apollo Creed, gets word that the USSR will enter the prizefighting world with their infamous tall guy, Ivan Drago.

As Ivan Drago and his wife and coach enter the USA and decide on a exhibition bout against either Rocky or Apollo, we see evidence of Ivan's devastating punching power. Apollo finally decides to take on that big Russian fighter even though Rocky is telling him this can be dangerous. But Apollo wants to still go at it, and Rocky decides to be his ringside coach.

So, at Las Vegas, the pre-bout festivities include James Brown's rendition of "Living in America", rigged to intimidate Ivan so much that he secretly swears to kill Apollo in the ring. And so, as the exhibition bout starts, Ivan gets his death wish, pummeling Apollo in Round 1, and then, in the middle of Round 2, finishes Apollo off with a killer uppercut that completely finishes him off, leaving him bleeding--and later on, dead--in the ring. Rocky could do nothing to stop Ivan's deadly anger and only could watch his friend wasted fatally in blood.

Rocky decides to avenge Apollo's death by placing his championship belt on Apollo's grave, and leaves it there. All is set for a boxing-style death match in the USSR on December 25 between Rocky and Ivan, where Rocky says no money will be paid.

Rocky's wife strongly reproaches Rocky's decision to fight Ivan, fearing that he could be facing the same death like what Ivan did to Apollo, but Rocky retorts that he has to use his extrovert mentality to overcome Ivan's killer punches.

So, as Rocky heads to the USSR to a place similar to Siberia, he meets up with Apollo's friend, starts his training for the fight (while Ivan does his own training under his coach and his wife) in the country's cold milieu, and after a pause in the training, Rocky realizes that his wife decided to go to Russia to meet up with him, saying "I'm with you no matter what." His training continues.

The training montage was definitely pretty good. Great camera work and inter-cutting as Rocky uses old-school training by things like pulling a sled, or throwing heavy stones, or breaking parts of trees with an ax, while Ivan was focusing on steroids, machines with computer readouts, and destroying sparring partners with his bone-crushing punches.

The fight itself was like a blood sport too. 15 very hard rounds, and it seemed like neither fighter would gain an advantage, but after the bloody punches were over, Rocky became the victor after finally knocking Ivan out in the 15th round. The hostile Russian crowd during the fight realized they could not be that anymore...they respected Rocky's awesome human determination in this non-sanctioned fight.

Well, for Johnny Rico, after graduating from a high school from Buenos Aires (his hometown), joining up with the Federal Service to fight against bugs from the planets making up a fictional system called Klendathu, was not going to be a cakewalk for him.

First, he goes through boot-camp facing Drill Sergeant Zim, and even through the tough training, he gets quickly enamoured by recruit trainee, Dizzy Flores, a tough, rugged military lady who can fight like a man.

Johnny then makes it up the ranks as squad leader, and had dreams that his second love interest, pilot trainee Carmen Ibanez (not knowing yet about Rico's love for Dizzy) informs Johnny that she is going to have a full-time career in the Federal Service fleet, wanting to be a fleet ship commander. Then, everything is stripped when during a live-fire exercise, he accidentally kills teammate Breckenridge, gets flogged 10 stripes with his demotion to private, and decides to leave the boot camp area. But then, word spreads out that a bug meteor from Klendathu impacted Buenos Aires into a fiery holocaust with millions of people dead.

Johnny decides to re-instate himself as a private to fight in the war, even with strong resistance from Sergeant Zim.

Fleet battle station Ticonderoga is the main action point for the first offensive against the Klendathu planet, or Big K. The fleet flotilla does make a massive assault despite bug batteries firing plasma. But then, the arachnid soldiers on the planet were ready for the Fleet soldiers, with over 100,000 casualties for the Fleet after the 1st attack.

Sky Marshal Dienes resigns after the failure of that 1st offensive and a replacement sky marshal sets up the 2nd attack. The Zegema Beach attack is a much better success as the Fleet fighter planes bomb the arachnids dead on the ground, and then the MI (mobile infantry) comes in to kill off the remaining arachnids, including a tanker bug.

A major then informs Johnny that a distress call on Planet P is serious, breaking their rest break during his love scene with Dizzy. On P itself, Johnny's rank is raised to sergeant as the Mobile platoon finds Port Joe Smith, abandoned with bloody baths of dead soldiers. They find General Owen locked up in the port's command post, take him out, and realizing that an arachnid ambush is coming, the platoon makes a counterattack that would soon fail, but a rescue ship saves their day.

Regrettably, Dizzy is badly wounded by a rogue arachnid as the platoon retreats on the rescue ship, and later dies, making Johnny swallow his pride.

Now, the last offensive in the flick focuses on getting back to Planet P to capture a brain bug that may be responsible for the failed Klendathu offensive. Well, fortunately, even though the Fleet offensive sustains heavy losses and Carmen and his pilot instructor escape from an escape pod from the Jolly Roger command ship that gets destroyed by bug plasma, right into Bug City, they could not escape one arachnid, but Johnny finally rescues the two out of the way.

The brain bug is finally caught, but it was a close call for Carmen and Johnny.

The way the movie starts is unlike any other I have seen. The end of "Dirty Harry" involves last kill-off by Harry Callahan's .44 Magnum pistol, and we see the actual gun with a red background in the beginning. The gun fires at you at the end of the introduction and you are shocked by the gun's power, preceded by probably one of the most famous lines by Harry in "Dirty Harry"--which in turn was the final line of that movie, which ended with "Don't you feel lucky?..."

So, basically, the movie covers the San Francisco Police Department but in a very ugly way. The force's motorcycle-driving personnel, who had usually only a few years on the force, had already formed a death squad where they do this M.O.--make a traffic stop on hardened criminals with their police bikes that the courts cannot prosecute, and then kill these criminals off with usually a .357 magnum.

Sometimes, the killing of these hardened criminals involves automatic weapons and explosives and not a sneaky traffic stop. Hence the pool scene where I guess a member of a SF mob--probably a mob boss--was having a very private party there. Suzanne Sommers made a cameo appearance in that scene. But here comes the unknown rookie bike cop, armed with a black bag and parts of a automatic UZI that he fits together, going up to the party to spoil it. He opens the bag, and sets off a smoke container (which in turn sets off a delay fuse for a plastic explosive inside), and throws it into the water as a distraction. Then, he fires automatic bullets into the pool party crowd, killing 10 of them but 5 more survive, but they all get dead when the plastic explosive blows up, creating a very big geyser of water as well as a loud boom. And then silence. The pool party is fatally over. The cop had done his dirty job, goes down the hill, gets on his Harley, and speeds away without getting caught because he was a cop.

This scene was probably the first turning point in this movie--you are shocked with that unjustified killing by a cop who went beyond the laws of deadly force. Callahan would have liked it that way but he would not have too much guts to do that.

When Harry Callahan sees the evidence in the first of these death-squad-like killings that put hardened criminal Antoine Ricca to death in a limousine at point-blank range, Lt. Briggs is very quick to target Callahan as probably the killer of Ricca, but backs off a little bit. Harry's sidekick police officer, Early, soaks up a little bit of what Harry's thoughts about the SFPD using beyond-the-law tactics.

Just near the end of the movie, Callahan then faces a few of the unknown rookie bike cops in his apartment garage, who tells him the reason why they did their unjustified killings. Callahan then retorts that he is against their ways, they speed off, and then, those cops make a sneaky revenge later.

They almost kill Callahan with a mail bomb in his apartment mailbox, probably as revenge for what Callahan said to them, but Callahan was smart--detecting a suspicious red flashing dot inside the box and he knew what to do...take the mailbox apart and then, he revealed a plastic explosive armed with a timer. He pulls it out carefully and stops the timer before the bomb would blow. The movie does not tell you if Harry was part of the SFPD Bomb Squad but by the way he disarms the bomb, you find out that Harry is very insidiously smart. He is not just a regular cop that you would guess he would be.

Basically, this movie features a pianist who survives the Nazi holocaust in Poland and somehow survives that long ordeal to become a great pianist again.

It starts off at a radio station in Warsaw, where the vintage concert pianist, Wladislaw Szpilman, was playing the Nocturne in C-sharp minor (opus posthumous) by Chopin, in a professional radio recording session. Suddenly, the first bomb in the Nazi blitzkrieg against Warsaw makes a near miss at the studio in the middle of the piece. Wladislaw decides to hang tough and continue playing until a second bomb shortly afterwards makes a direct hit at the recording studio, knocking out their session for good.

Wladislaw survives and runs back to his family and realizes that extremely drastic changes are coming for them. The first part is that Poland lets the Nazis take over Warsaw unchallenged after the first bombs fell. Then, immediate restrictions on Warsaw's Jewish families by the Nazis in Warsaw affect Wladislaw's family as well, forcing them to do things like wear the star of David on their wrists.

Then, the ultimate restriction takes place as the Nazis' close off Warsaw, build a new wall and make what is called The Warsaw Ghetto, forcing Wladislaw and his family to move inside the ghetto.

Their family tries to survive that but after a Nazi raid on an apartment across the street from their flat that led to every family member being executed, they know that the continued Nazi crackdowns are not over.

Then, most of Wladislaw's family is forced into a new flat, and eventually, hoarded off to the Treblinka death camp, but Wladislaw is spared from going to Treblinka with a help of a Jewish ghetto police officer who was his friend.

The surviving Wladislaw families then become slave laborers, including Wladislaw himself, but then, a few of Wladislaw's friends make plans to fight back against the Nazis. Wladislaw then finally makes a ruse to get out of the ghetto undetected, which he does. His helpers then let him move to a new flat by one of his friends...outside the ghetto.

Suddenly, Wladislaw witnesses the first uprising and he realizes now that the Polish can fight against tyranny. The first uprising fails, but this leads to other stronger anti-Nazi uprisings later on. When Wladislaw had to flee his temporary flat to a flat just near the temporary German police headquarters, everything went well until new Polish uprising skirmishes cause the Nazis to fight back and eventually destroy part of the flat by a Panzer tank, forcing Wladislaw out again and end up in hiding.

He does find a abandoned house that he squatters, but then confronts a German officer who would have killed Wladislaw but he said to him that he was a pianist. That officer then allows Wladislaw to stay in the attic as the house turns into a temporary SS logistics post as the Russian Red Army advances towards Poland with distant artillery fire that Wladislaw hears.

The firing eventually stops, and the Germans in that post then have to pull out, as well the officer, and he gives to Wladislaw his raincoat and leaves. As Warsaw is liberated on V-E day, Wladislaw makes the mistake of wearing that Nazi coat as he goes out, and almost gets shot dead by a Polish army platoon but he counters that he is Polish, getting his life spared.

We then see the Treblinka death camp being liberated, and the German officer who helped him now is detained with hundreds of Wehrmacht soldiers at a temporary area just near the camp. One of the Wladislaw family members who survived the camp then rails at that officer.

Finally, the movie ends with him performing the "Grande Polonaise" over an orchestra, an example of his resilience.

Here, the movie starts in the Waratah Championships, a setup for the big Pan-Pacific Ballroom Championships later on. Scott Hastings had already danced a great Viennese waltz with former partner Liz Holt, and then, as the scene shifts to samba, Scott Hastings starts out great with Liz, and then, in the middle of the samba version of "Tequila" in the background, Scott explodes and does his overkill-laden solo trick steps way beyond what Liz could follow. Les Kendall, Scott's dance coach, explains the reason why Scott wanted to free himself--in the start of the samba, Les said that he was "boxed-in" by Ken Rallings and Tina Sparkles, which caused Scott to release a freedom type of dancing anger. Liz tries to keep up with Scott's unacceptable solo dance showmanship but then, Australian Dance Council chairman, Barry Fife, penalizes that couple major points causing Ken and Tina to win the Waratah title. Liz then finally cuts off her dance partnership with Scott after the competition at the next scene in the Kendall Dance Studio.

Then, a new beginning dance partner, Fran, accosts Scott at the studio and make a ruse to be new partners and practice their routine in light of the upcoming Pan-Pacific Dance Championships. Fran's flamenco dance ability is given away a bit when she demonstrates a short tap sequence. Learning from the dancesport debacle in Waratah, Scott is still stubborn and decides to strongly bend the dancesport rules with "new steps" for the Pan-Pacific championships to try to impress Barry Fife. Barry is not happy about it and decides that Scott's "new steps" will never, ever be in the books in competition as long as Fife remains in power in Australian dancesport.

In the middle of the movie, Tina Sparkle decides to retire from her partnership from Ken Railings, doing their final honor dance at a pre- competition social ballroom dance party, while at the same time, Scott and Fran, do a theatrical dance in quasi-silhouette to "Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps." This is where the disapproval of their partnership increases. Les Kendall now warns Scott that if you dance with Fran, you will never win the Pan-Pacific competition, but then suggests to Scott that if you partner up with Tina, you will have a 100 percent shot of winning the Pan-Pacific title.

But then, Fran and Scott are caught by Fran's flamenco music family, forcing them to dance a paso doble, and then, eventually, Fran's father then teaches him the authentic Spanish paso doble. The solo focusing of the paso is the beginning of the recipe for almost total disaster on the start of the Pan-Pacific championships. In the appetizer paso doble heat in the competition floor, Fran does dance with an unknown lady, and then, as Scott arrives to face the forced partnering of Tina Sparkles with him for the Latin championship round, Scott decides at the last minute to dance with Fran in the second paso doble around with several professional Latin dance couples dancing. Barry Fife, already there, catches Fran and Scott in the action and orders the music powered down, and disqualifies both dancers for good. Fran and Scott, however, refuses to leave the floor and instead, with the help of Fran's family, dance a spectacular Spanish flamenco dance with strong paso feel, shocking the audience, and even Barry Fife himself. In the end, the audience comes out to the dance floor to get their chance to dance, and the guess is that even if disqualified--you can shock a crowd if you do a great unique dance, and that's what Fran and Scott did. They won their hearts, even if it is not a championship trophy!

The whole story of Rafael Infante's dancing dream starts in the still conformist country of Cuba, in the town of Santiago. He is waiting for his visa to leave Cuba and enter the United States from a letter from John Burnett, who runs a ballroom dance studio in Texas.

After the conformation of the visa, news of Rafael's acceptance spreads across his friends and with some magic, the salsa song "Good-bye Santiago" wails across a salsa party as the friends say good-bye to Rafael, wondering if Rafael will ever return to his homeland.

As Rafael goes to the USA, he is met up by a professional ballroom dancer, Ruby Sinclair at an intercity bus station, and then, finally takes him to the ballroom studio to meet John Burnett.

Later on, as Rafael is introduced to his new home, Ruby and one of his dance partners practice a cha-cha routine, and Rafael is astounded by their cha-cha dancing. Rafael then realizes Vanessa's cha-cha solo dance practice and that her cha-cha does not resemble the traditional cha-cha done in Cuba.

Rafael, later on, releases his new talent as a mechanic, spotting John Burnett's old truck that never has been driven for a while, and his strong interest in fishing, which he explains to John. John returns his favor, saying that he loves fishing as a hobby. Later on, Rafael eventually does overhaul repairs on his truck and made it like new, shocking John.

Ruby, at the same time, at the ballroom studio, is waiting on his old dance partner, Julian Marshall, as the Open Professional Dance Championships in Las Vegas is days away and some studio participants practice for this big dance competition.

I can spot Rafael's crush on Ruby at a studio dance party where he grabs her into a rolling-in turn during a social swing dance and zips up a loose zipper on her dress in the middle of her dance. With that, this leads to their first date at a dance club at Titon's and I liked Johnny Palanco's "La Receta" as they tried to do their first dance. All went well before Rafael accepts an invitation from a Cuban female stranger to dance, and their date spirals down to an insulting end.

Ruby almost does not accept Rafael's apology for the botched date, but as the story goes on, their second date at Titon's involving a mambo round is much better, enhancing Rafael's and Ruby's relationship. Rafael meets with Patricia, partnering up with John for the theatrical arts category, and spotting an opportunity, lifts Patricia in the air. John then complains that his back is giving away too much and Patricia finding out that Rafael took ballet. So with that, Rafael and Patricia will compete in Las Vegas while John watches.

Ruby now realizes that Rafael has a partner, and Ruby realizes that because she is now with her son Peter, he and Julian have to win the dancesport event so they can have a great professional ballroom dance career.

In the fishing scene, Rafael almost discounts Rafael's American ties as a Cuban citizen and almost rejects him completely, but not until the height of the Las Vegas championships does he forgive Rafael and says out loud to him that you are actually an American citizen, not a Cuban citizen that he thought he was....

After making it to the final round after doing a great semi-final samba heat, the final Latin dances in Julian and Ruby's championship face-off with 5 other couples (samba, cha-cha, rumba, and paso doble) has several domestic disputes but they go well. Their last dance, the rumba, is interrupted by Ruby's daydreaming of Rafael, which almost ruin their chance of winning 1st place, but all of this resolves, and when the dancing was over, they still got 1st place. The win was like magic...thanks to Rafael!!

The showcase salsa dance between Rafael and Ruby at a post-championship dance party was amazing. Amazing moves, and finally, looks like Ruby had incarnation with Rafael even though Julian and Ruby will have their success later on. So that's what the movie is basically about.

Mick O'Brien (Sean Penn) usually wants things his way. He is right in the heart of Chicago's slums where street gangs will slug it out with drugs as well as guns, but the only problem is his sweetheart played by Ally Sheedy.

So, in the first gang retaliation scene, Mick O'Brien gets several enforcers of Paco's street gang in a ambush and drive-by shooting, killing off several of Paco Moreno's gang buddies, but then, Mick realizes that the police are coming. He realizes that during his escape from his pursuit by police cars, he evades a quasi-police roadblock but then his car then hones in into Paco's child brother and slams him hard and the boy immediately dies from what is technically a vehicular homicide..as he crashes and his car bursts into flames..but he survives.

So he ends up in custody, ends up in court--Mick--on multiple counts of 1st degree murder by association, eluding police and reckless vehicular homicide--but the judge tells him that he is spared because he is a juvenile. If he was not, he would have been sent to prison for the rest of his natural life, but the judge remands him to the Rainford Juvenile Detention Center.

As soon as he gets into this detention center, he meets Gene Daniels, a sort of semi-warden at Rainford. Later on, as Mick O'Brien is introduced to something like a juvenile version of Alcatraz...although mainly a minimum-security facility, he eventually meets up with several other inmates who are ready to explode to fights or rioting like Mick. As Mick approaches his cell block..and his individual cell...he is greeted by a taunting line just like it happens at the first day of military boot camp.

He then befriends quickly Horowitz, one of his cellmates, an avid anarchist-like scientist who informs O'Brien that Horowitz knows several members of Paco's street gang. The whole prison scene, is not terribly Alcatraz-like, but more of something a bit out of the Joilet Correctional Center scenes in "The Blues Brothers", with a security fence surrounding the detention grounds.

Ramon Herrera then tells Mick about his gargantuan rap sheet he had-- long enough to even dwarf even some of the famous rap sheets by mobsters. He says to Mick that the killing of Paco's child was likely intentional and worthy of possible retaliation by cellmates who have ties to Paco's gang.

Paco's surviving gang members then plan their revenge for the death of the Paco's kid, targeting Mick's girlfriend. Before this happens, Paco's gang members who are in the facility--this Mick doesn't know, set off several taunt actions against Mick. Then, Ally, on the way home to the store in the Chicago's streets at night under the "El", are ambushed by Paco and his surviving gang sidekick. And Paco, then gets his revenge, trapping Ally under the "El" tracks and raping her in the height of an oncoming CTA train thundering over them. Fortunately, we do not see most of the actual rape. Afterwards, Paco was about to kill that lady by orders of the other attacker but he refuses. Then an approaching Chicago police car stops their actions--a police officer shoots his attacking friend dead, and Paco has no escape, arrested, and finally, sent to Rainford as Ally Sheedy recognizes the character Paco in a police lineup.

A cellmate then informs Mick about the sexual assault of his sweetie, and then Mick plans a bold escape from Rainford, and then, with a help of a truck going outside of the facility, was able to go back to the girlfriend's apartment. Mick and his sweetheart finally embrace each other and Mick strongly consoles her for that horrible incident she faced.

Ramon Herrera then comes in and tells Mick that his escape is over, and is whisked back to a van to sent him back to Rainford. The warden then came close to giving him an extension-of-time penalty for the escape but he forgives and lets Mick serve the rest of his sentence.

But now, Ramon Herrera then quickly tells Mick to go to his room in private because Ramon is fearing major revenge by the guy who raped Mick's girlfriend...Paco Moreno, who would be transferred immediately to Rainford.

This sets up the big fight by Mick and Paco. Paco during lights out makes a ruse that allures Ramon, knocks out Ramon, sends him back to the room, and locks him up. At the same time, Mick burns the only picture he has of his sweetie so he can focus on Paco. Then, Paco goes into Mick's cell but Paco is waiting for him and hits him from behind, starting this final fight. The cellmates then come out and see this no-holds barred fight ensue. As the fight explodes to its climax, it is almost like the "Rumble" in West Side Story, but this rumble is in prison. Like the "rumble", two hard-headed guys, one with a knife. In the end, Mick wins the fight but spares Paco's life before he could drive the knife right into his chest. He drags Paco's injured body right in front of Ramon, goes back to his cell and that's it. The cellmates are then ordered back to their cells because the fight is over, and orders "lights out", and that was it. Mick got his revenge against Paco, but Mick was not too bold to kill Paco off...

Well, here it is....John Rambo, who ends up in a prison labor camp for creating a rampage in a suburban city after hiding from police officers after being caught by police for loitering in the first Rambo movie, "First Blood", has a second assignment.

His very strong Green Beret experience will mean a great asset. Of course, in the original First Blood, strong mention of his experience in the American elite special forces in Vietnam is key for him when he gets freed from the prison camp and sent right back to Thailand in a sort of one-man mission--to free American POWs from a prison camp that most people said was empty after the Vietnam War was over.

With help from Murdock, John goes into that jungle again, meets up with one of her helpers, Co, an intelligent Vietnam lady, and then finds one of the POWs. Then, at daybreak, they escape but mercenaries are on John's tail out for a kill. John manages to use a bazooka to destroy an enemy gunboat, but could not keep up with the rest of the Vietnam platoon at the extraction point at a hill where a USA helicopter finds him and the POW. Sadly, Murdock suddenly tells the helicopter to go back to base probably because Murdock thinks one POW is not enough to convince him.

The Vietnam soldiers then capture Rambo and the POW, and Rambo is subject to the worst torture ever in his military career. First, he is in a bath full of leeches, and then forced interrogation, and then, an electric shock cage featuring about 700-800 volts of current...thanks to Col. Podovsky, a top brass who is on the side of the soldiers who captured both Rambo and the POW. Podovsky then warns Rambo that his POW- rescuing mission is espionage and must stop..or his freed POW gets killed. The turning point is when Rambo, forced to speak under duress to a radio, says to Murdock that he had enough.

Rambo then knocks out several of his interrogators, knocks another one right into the electric shock cage and shocks him, and makes his escape. Sadly, in the middle of the escape, while trying to rest in the forest, the evil Vietnamese general shoots Co in the chest, and Co dies.

So, he decides to go all-alone to free the rest of the POWs. As soldiers come in for Rambo's kill, Rambo kills some of them with arrows...and then kills more with arrows laced with incendiary bombs. Finally, Rambo kills the evil Vietnamese captain of the platoon with another arrow...

So the only gauntlet left is Podovsky. One of the helicopters w/o Podovsky but with soldiers on the side of him inside drops an incendiary satchel barrel at him...but Rambo dives into the jungle waters as soon as the bomb explodes. The soldiers then saturate the water with machine gun fire but Rambo explodes out and takes out one soldier out of the chopper and commandeers it.

Then, Rambo, on that commandeered chopper, manages to use the armed weapons on that aircraft to take out over 100 enemy soldiers, and land just near the area near the prisoners are, and release 4-5 more prisoners from that camp. The POWs are now in the chopper, the chopper is about to head back to base....but with one last problem.

Podovsky with his fully-armed Soviet-made military chopper is out for revenge against Rambo. Podovsky fires incendiary missiles at Rambo's chopper, and spray machine-gun fire but the POWs were able to knock out Podovsky's sidekick gunner. Podovsky responds with a direct missile hit on Rambo's chopper on one of the side engines, forcing to land on the water. Then Rambo plays dead as the rotors continue to spin as the helicopter remains stationary. Podovsky's helicopter then very slowly approaches towards the other chopper face-to-face for a final coup-de- grace shot to finish off Rambo, but Rambo hears the chopper, does a pretend sleep (Podovsky does not know this) and immediately bursts out with a rocket launcher, breaks one of the windshields and immediately fires a shot at him..and just before Podovsky could fire..his chopper blows up...and Rambo wins.

Rambo then brings the crippled chopper back to base and then Murdock's sidekick then congratulates him, but Rambo's distrusting anger explodes as he beats him bad with his M-16. Then he goes to the computer facility inside the base to release more anger, spraying hundreds of M-16 rounds destroying the computer equipment. Then, jettisoning the M-16, he bursts into Murdock's office, and Murdock gets a taste of his own medicine by Rambo's continued anger, making him see the Rambo knife up-close. He doesn't kill him but he makes him afraid...and then, Rambo leaves him alive, warning him that he better find more POWs that he did not find yet besides the several Rambo found...or worse will be in store for Murdock. Finally, a colonel who saved him in the first Rambo movie says that you don't need to return to prison...you are pardoned for the rescue of the POWs, but Rambo says that he still wants to celebrate his new victory alone.

Well, this is the most classic of all World Series games in the 1970s. The introduction was cheesy...you see the California freeway, the interchange. Later on, as the 1920's ragtime music starts, it turns into an opening montage, which features narrator Kurt Gowdy as himself, and some of the few highlights of the 1974 series.

Then, as Game 1 starts at Dodgers' Stadium we see the A's Reggie Jackson who wanted to start even though his hamstring was hurting. The first time he goes up to bat, he blasts the 1st home run in this series, shocking the Dodgers a bit but not too much. Gowdy then mentions the talents of A's Ken Holtzman--pitching and batting. For instance, he hits a base-hit off LA pitcher Andy Messersmith. But what makes Game 1 exciting was LA's Joe Ferguson of the Dodgers, who turned a routine sacrifice fly that put out A's Reggie Jackson into an exciting double play that sent A's Sal Bando out also as Bando ran to the plate from 3rd tagging up after the sacrifice. Joe was able to catch the fly on a run (waving off Jimmy Wynn who was about to catch it), and fire a perfect long throw right into catcher Steve Yeager's glove, and as soon as Steve caught that long catch, Bando collided into Yeager but Yeager was able to hold on to the ball, rendering Sal Bando out, robbing the A's of a run. But the A's prevailed in Game 1, 3-2.

Game 2 (also at Dodgers stadium) has narrator Gowdy mention that there were "18 strikeouts between 2 pennant-winning teams"...keeping the score low. One big turning point was Joe Ferguson's homer that made A's pitcher Vida Blue blush sadly, and Dodgers' manager Tommy Lasorda rants about the whole thing for the camera. Herb Washington for the A's, a designated runner, tries to get the A's lead back after they trail 3-2, but was picked off by Mike Marshall of the Dodgers, and the game ends with the 1st Dodger win of the series. Same result as in Game 1, 3-2.

Game 3 moves the location to Oakland Coliseum (which will be the place for Games 4 and 5), and when the game starts, Gowdy focuses on the heavy hitters who were in the Coliseum stands, such as A's president, Charles Finley. We saw the beginning of the end of the Dodgers' domination in the Series at that point; in the first innings, the A's set off an offensive surge of RBI-producing base hits creating a 3-0 lead. Then, the A's pitcher Catfish Hunter tries to keep the A's from having their lead taken away but a Dodger homer sends him to the showers. As the game moves on, I saw Bobby Wynn advance to first, and Tommy LaSorda just ranting about to the camera, wanting good to come out of this. But then, what would been a good line drive instead is a come-backer catch to Dick Green as Wynn was about to race to second base; Wynn realizes he has to go back to first but Green fires a rocket to Epstein, tagging Wynn out for a 4-3 double play to end the L.A. inning. LaSorda could only watch this hurting shock in vain as Wynn hammers one of his fists down at the base in anger. But the A's pull off another final score tally like in the past 2 games--3-2, as the first stadium fireworks explode to announce the A's victory.

Game 4 was an amazing show of pitching and batting by the A's Ken Holtzman, keeping the Dodger batters from scoring in the first innings, and then, in the middle of the game, Ken blasts a rocket deep into the center field into the stands for his first personal home run in the series! I thought pitchers were not too famous for hitting blasts, until now.

The setup for the 5th game which marked the eventual confirmation of the 1974 World Championship crown--and the resultant three-peat by the A's--starts with a Ray Fosse solo blast which sets off more stadium fireworks. With the score 2-0, the Dodgers in the middle of the game do mark an offensive counterattack that erases the A's shutout with RBIs by Paciorek and then Lopes, to tie the game. But then, the tie is destroyed by more stadium fireworks from a solo A's blast by Joe Rudi in the bottom of the 7th, getting their team's lead back. A Dodgers' 8th inning offensive surge was effaced by a relay from Jackson to Green to Bando that robbed a triple from LA's Bill Buckner as he was trying to slide at 3rd base. Then, the A's Rollie Fingers was the finisher in the 9th inning. After putting out 2 Dodger batters, LA's Bob Joshua was the last stand between the A's and their championship. Then on the last pitch, Joshua batted a come-backer-grounder right at Fingers, and then doing the underhand throw to first baseman Epstein for the final out of not only the game...but also the Series. Final score is 3-2. Rollie Fingers then gets mobbed by the rest of the A's that stormed onto the field, stadium fireworks explode in earnest, and just like 1972--spectators also stormed onto the field, and you probably end up with how the A's could pull off such an amazing three-peat in just 18 World Series games. With that, Fingers gets the 1974 World Series MVP and the A's win that series 4-1.

Well, Harrison Ford (who plays character John Ryan) was a pretty good actor and was in a good spot to be in as Acting Director of Intelligence, this Washington job for him was going to be at a major challenge.

It starts off early in the movie when Panamian boaters were smuggling a boat towards probably Columbia when the Coast Guard stopped them and forced them to a search.

Then, the President of the United States (played by Donald Moffat) is informed about this and blames the Cali Cartel in Colombia for a growing threat of widespread drug-related violence that could spread to the United States, in his briefing.

Then, even though there are verbal warnings about not allowing a guerrilla war involving any of the U.S. military to curb the threat of the Cail Cartel, the wheels of this secret small-scale war start to move in toward such an action. One sniper who is good is picked to join with a U.S. paramilitary army to go on what was supposed to be a secret mission to take some of the teeth out of the Colombia's Cali cartel. Then, someone from the outside goes on...the order is confirmed by Jim Greer (played by James Earl Jones), who has to stay on the outside, fighting a terminal stage of pancreatic cancer.

The first part of the guerrilla war shows the paramilitary band being parachuted into Colombian territory, and then taking out a supply plane by explosives, and then, going deeper into the Columbian jungle to take out one of the Cali cartel's drug factories also by explosives. No casualties.

But Miguel Sandoval (played by Ernesto Escobedo), a Cali leader, swears revenge for this. After a security convoy with John Ryan inside goes into the heart of Bogota to try to meet up with Ernesto, the convoy is greeted by Cali insurgents who fire gunshots and rocket propelled grenades at the convoy. They take out 2 convoy cars, and when American security personnel in the surviving convoy cars fire back, they do kill about 10 Cali insurgents but most of them are killed by the insurgents, and John Ryan, fortunately, survives the guerrilla attack.

When John Ryan comes back to the states, a secret order is placed on the American guerrilla soldiers--to use a cellulose-encased laser guided bomb on one of the mansions who have ties to Escobedo. With spectacular special effects, the bomb does its work demolishing the house, but it was not a surgical strike--scores of people were killed even though the target was a yellow jeep parked in front of the mansion.

And you think the movie ends just like that...but then, focus lies on Greer finally succumbing to death by cancer, and you see the funeral scene where he is given full military honors, and about the same time this was happening---the American guerrillas do abort a mission to take out 200 Colombian mercenaries and about to get out, they were still attacked by surprise by them. One dies, several of them are captured as POWs, and the sniper who was supposed to take the enemy out could not shoot any of them, and decides to hide in the bush.

John Ryan realizes too late about the surprise attack, and decides to take a big risk to get them out. He goes overseas into the Colombian jungle himself, with help of a Colombian insider, and was able to find the lone sniper almost exactly where the surprise attack happened, and the sniper blames Ryan for causing the paramilitary fiasco, and quickly says to the sniper--"It's my fault!" Then, more wheels are turning as the mission goes into trying to find the POWs, but John Ryan faces several hurdles in trying to rescue them. He has to get through the dangerous Felix Cortez, which he does, with the help of Ernesto Escobedo. Then Ernesto was going to kill off John but was saved by the sniper. Then blaming Ryan for the killing of Ernesto, Felix orders the surviving armed bodyguards to search and kill John, but John and the insider, along with the sniper, was able to free the several prisoners (which were located at the Lindo Coffee Factory), and go up to the roof where an awaiting helicopter was going to move them to safety. All three make it up there even though Felix Cortez and his armed bodyguards were targeting them for death as they ran to the chopper, but the sniper and the insider was able to kill some of the armed gang members off. The sniper was even able to kill the most ruthless Cortez just before the helicopter moved away from danger.

Then, back at home, John laments the botched paramilitary mission to the President at the Oval Office and is about to angrily rant at him for not knowing about the scores of American dead for a war that most people should not need to know. Then, with his rant frustrated and not allowed by the President, he decides to testify towards the Senate Oversight Committee about that "lost" paramilitary war to get back some redemption that he can earn--even though he cannot get all of it.

When everyone in the 1970s was introduced to the film "Shaft", it gave a great example of the African-American action hero--a cop or ex-cop who is destined to take out the bad guys. All of this inspiration from "Shaft" comes in "A Low Down Dirty Shame". Like "Shaft", "Low Down" has a cop or ex-cop, as well as action-packed sequences, like gunfights and fist fights, and this modernization from the former flick made "A Low Down Dirty Shame" make its positive impact.

But there are a few twists. Keanon Ivory Wayans plays the role of Shame, who is actually an investigator who has ties to the DEA and retired as a cop. And instead of the common .38 revolver, his favorite service weapon is the 9mm Beretta. He has his sidekick, a friend named Peaches (played by Jada Pinkett at that time before she became Jada Pinkett-Smith). Shame runs his own private investigation business.

So, as the story unfolds, a DEA mole named Sonny invites Shame to take on a mission to capture Ernesto Mendoza, a Mexican narcotrafficker who had a strong romance interest with character Angela Flowers, who was attempting to try to beckon Mendoza to turn himself in.

The start of this focused on Shame's remembrances with Angela in the past. He mentions that she wears Covenant perfume, and basically goes on the mend to find her exactly. He does find her in one of the apartments with a bit of a police trick, and calls Sonny to try to get her to turn Mendoza in to the authorities, but regrettably, Angela said that she was on the run because a potential hit by a drug gang is imminent. This is when Sonny drops the ball but not at her...Angela was tipped, and Shame knows this. They escape the apartment as the drug gang comes in to try the death wish attempt...they confront the armed gang, and was able to escape with their lives.

At Ernesto Mendoza's compound, the gang comes back home along with Sonny, and Ernesto gets upset. Sonny then rails at Ernesto that what he did will put Ernesto in trouble...and Shame was the main fly in the ointment for all of the trouble. Ernesto then does a knife slash on one of the gang members--the one who messed up the hit on Shame and Angela, and orders Sonny to get Shame.

Then, Shame arms himself to the death to try to reverse the tide. He starts by forcing a low-level member of Ernesto's drug gang, Luis, to tell where Mendoza is. Little did Luis did not know that he ran into a White Supremacist rally to find that out. With that psychological torture, Luis was able to tell Shame where he was--at a nightclub. And he does. He likes to do tricks to get what he wants.

Another scene I liked was the confrontation between Sonny and Angela at the shopping mall. Sonny had his gun drawn at him after Angela found the drug money. She is forced to step away and Sonny realizes that the money was real. Then, taking out of a page from the "James Bond" movies, Angela undresses her top, and reveals a full-figured black bra. But Sonny was smart, deciding not to take Angela's trick, but despite that, another ugly surprise..Angela then displays a gun from her back but Sonny did not even realize it...he gets hit several times as Sonny was about to use his gun to fire him back. Then a coup-de-grace shot by her finishes him off. So she killed Sonny so she can get the money.

The final fight between Mendoza and Shame was something. Shame finally brings Mendoza down after a fight that resembled a dirty street fight and Muay Thai martial arts....and arrests him but the loud bang from a bullet kills Mendoza...but it was Angela who did it, not Shame. Now, she is going to kill Shame but from behind, Peaches, with her karate skills, was able to finish off Angela before Angela could kill off Shame.

Then, you hear Peaches' love for soap operas as the movie is about to approach the final credits. So basically, when I flash back, Peaches loves television so much--that's the reason why she loves soap operas.

It is good that Quentin Tarantino in the original Kill Bill (vol. 1) used flashbacks, especially the one about O-Ren Ishii's background. Now, in the sequel to this action movie, Beatrix Kiddo, who already had killed 2 assassins and went back home from her Japanese trip, is out to take out 2 more in Kill Bill Vol. 2, because the assassination squad was a quartet of 4 killers. Flashbacks in vol. 2 are almost as similar in number as Vol. 1. One flashback focuses on the squad entering the church--then you hear the machine gun fire, but you don't see what happens. Why? Tarantino did not want to have a cliché of the assassination of the 9 innocent victims of the wedding party...so focus was on an exterior shot, not interior because the give-away of the assassination squad church killing already had happened in Vol. 1.

There are several new things that should point out during this sequel.

Pai Mei was something like a drill instructor in Shaolin kung-fu when he subjected Beatrix to the difficult martial art. So there is an allusion to the "Mortal Kombat" movie that featured an almost similar Shaolin monk character...and some of the other Chinese martial art flicks of the B-variety, especially in the Bruce Lee era.

And then, there was Budd's house. Elle, who is a cross between a pirate and a secretary, comes in with the mob payment to Budd for the burying alive of Beatrix Kiddo..a treasure chest of, I guess, $250,000 in cash. But an ugly surprise came as Budd was going deep into that cash in the box...a black mamba snake bolts out and bites Budd about several times. Budd then tries to fight back at Elle but the venom from the bites quickly do its work and he collapses. Budd slowly falls to his death as Elle explains the facts about the black mamba--which could remind one person about the king cobra snake, which can be as deadly in its bites as the former mamba. So basically, Elle killed Budd so she can run off with the mob money. Then, as Elle calls Bill to lie about Budd's death, saying that it was an accident--Beatrix rushes into Budd's compound and it is a duel to the death--a cat fight filled with martial arts moves. The last part of the fight is in 2 stages. Stage 1 is the flashback where Elle mentions why she killed master Pai Mei..she poisoned the fish that Pai ate, and also--because Pai Mei slashed one of Elle's eyes with his sword. Then Stage 2 comes in, and with Beatrix saying to Elle, "You have no future", the final fight is now with samurai swords...but the fight was brief, Beatrix stops Elle's sword with a holding defense...and targeting Elle's remaining good eye, executes a very fast chicken-beak move (likely inspired by Pai Mei), pulling out that eye and rendering Elle completely blind as she goes crazy, haphazardly destroying things around the house. To add to the insult, she crushes Elle's pulled good eye with her foot, and she even manages to tame the black mamba's provoking stance so that the snake would not bite her...as she leaves Budd's house for good. Elle doesn't die but to Beatrix, the eye take-out is almost like what death looks like, so Beatrix does her job...she did not need to further finish off Elle.

The final conflict in Bill's mansion was something. Just before the vital point coup-de-grace strike on Bill's heart (which would be called "kyushu" in kyokushin karate), the setup for this was several gauntlets that Beatrix had to go through. One of them was Bill's pistol, and then a surprise pistol shot with a truth serum dart that went right in one of Beatrix's legs. Fortunately that serum did not kill her as Bill interrogates her, and finally, Bill lets him take out the truth serum dart. Then, Bill tells Beatrix by verbal intimidation that because she did not kill her child, she will be sentenced to death by Bill himself. Then after a brief samurai sword fight--this set-up that 5-point Pai Mei strike. Bill falls to the lawn and dies after Beatrix's last words to him..."You look ready." Once Bill was gone, I knew that Beatrix's death wishes were in the books...the 4 assassins have all gone to heaven, and Beatrix's baby, B.B., a toddler, is now the new inspiration for Beatrix to get her life back to normal.

The heart of the lively music by John Williams, who would be featured in both the main "Superman" theme, and "Can You Read Your Mind?" (which would be the famous "Love Theme"), starts right in this first of the movie sequels focusing on this world-famous superhero.

It all starts in outer space in a fictional planet called Krypton, and inside a part of the planet, the Krypton Council, made up of about 20 members, which included Jor-El and his wife, face their reality that the planet is going to be locked into its gravitational pull to the sun, eventually causing Krypton and everything within it to be destroyed. Upon orders of the Krypton council, as we see Krypton's first stages of destruction, a baby from Jor-El's wife is to be encased in a special satellite that will be launched out of Krypton and will have its homing beacon as the satellite goes through deep space through the solar system to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.

Then, the final stages of Krypton's destruction show things like endless new crevasses which causes some members of the council to fall to their deaths, and the others dealing with crashing ceilings and exposure to higher and higher temperatures, even with the successful launch of the satellite.

Of course, Krypton blows up completely, and focus now runs on the satellite carrying the sole survivor of the Krypton explosion that does crash to earth, but the baby survives. A family then takes that baby (which was Kal-El before it was Superman) and starts to rear them.

From there, Superman quickly grows up, showing such super strengths as lifting up a car, and then, the revealing of Clark Kent is now in place as Superman meets up with Margot Kidder, who plays "Lois Lane", at the Daily Planet newspaper. From there, in the wilderness, Superman finds his own Krypton crystal glow stick in the nighttime sky, and throws it at a large distance into the ground, and then an spectacular explosive metamorphosis of that stick turns into Superman's home--the Crystal castle, in homage to Krypton.

Later on, we see the first fruits of a villain that will force Superman into a challenge--Lex Luthor, who is a maniac who wants a conquest in the real-estate world. He wants to rule the California coast by creating an earthquake in the San Andreas fault by a nuclear missile impact--and after the earthquake's destruction, going on to create what he calls the "Costa del Lex", or Lex's Coast.

To confuse Superman, Lex orders that not one--but two--nuclear missiles be fired, and to make the challenge harder, he forces Superman to hold a Krypton ball with chain that causes him to be weak. After recovering, Superman does stop one of the missiles and sends it into space, but realizes that he cannot stop the second missile as it impacts the San Andreas fault. At the same time, Lois Lane was in her car just near the fault line trying to do a reporting assignment, and then, at a gas station, she realizes the quake is starting and has to get out just before the gas station explodes. Superman then goes right into the heart of the fault line and recovers it but not completely. Then, he does several life-saving miracles during the quake not realizing that Lois Lane gets hit by a fault track aiming a direct hit towards her car. The car ends up swallowed in a ditch and added rocks and mud and dirt eventually consume and kill Lois. Superman does arrive but it was too late to save her.

Superman then takes out the doomed Lois, leaves her on the ground, gets loudly resentful at his loss, and then, with his super-powers, does a "turn-back-the-time" technique by flying all the way to the troposphere, and then, does a supersonic fly-by hundreds of times around the earth to get back to when Lois Lane was alive (about 3-4 hours), and then, circumvents the earth in another direction about 30 times to bring the earth back to normal time. With this, Lois comes back to live a second life.

Lex Luthor is then flown to prison for his deeds, and that was it.

But I recall that the earthquake recognized Superman's weakness--sometimes he focuses on saving other people more than people that he usually are friends with.

Ross Webster now becomes sort of a offshoot of the evil Lex Luthor in the Superman and Superman II.

With that, Ross in Superman III focuses on Gus Gorman (a computer expert played by Richard Pryor) to defeat the powers of Superman by modifying all of his regular behaviors of what Superman stands for---good, kindness, and sincerity.

The attack on Superman was three-prong. First, Ross forces Gus Gorman to alter the weather satellites on a computer mainframe system, so that the altering will cause a major tropical storm in Colombia that would destroy the country's coffee crop and terribly destroy the world markets that depend on that valuable crop.

Gus does his evil deed but was informed that Superman countered this super-storm over Columbia by his common super-strengths (like turning a twister upside down or blowing strong winds with his mouth to dry up the flooded crops), which made Ross mad.

Then, the second prong is to find Superman's chemical qualities, which included of course, Kryptonite, made of course from the planet Krypton, which detonated completely by the super-heating sun in the first Superman movie. Gus gets back to a mainframe computer station and does find the exact chemical qualities in the Krypton, and then, a Krypton rock is sent to Superman, and then, Superman becomes two parts--one angry and drunk--called "bad Superman", and the other part, called "good Superman." This leads to the final battle in a garbage dump between the two different Supermans...finally, a choke hold by the good Superman ends the bad Superman for good.

The third prong attack on the good Superman (with the "bad Superman" now gone) focuses on Gus's design of a supercomputer somewhere in the desert Southwest. Ross then beckons Superman in the final conflict, and Superman knows that he has to be stopped before the supercomputer rules Ross's goal of world conquest that could lead to worldwide chaos and destruction.

This third prong attack was in 2 stages. In stage 1, as Superman comes towards the location of the cave from the outside, he is greeted by plenty of surface-to-air rockets (part of the computer's exterior defense system) that aims toward him, but Superman does evade the destructive missiles as Ross, along with two lady assistants, uses the supercomputer as some time of video game as they were destined to kill Superman. When those regular missiles were ineffective, there was a call to fire the MX--a much bigger surface-to-air missile, which does hit Superman and he falls to the ground near the cave. At the same time, Gus Gorman goes into the cave and sees his computer creation come to life. Gus then is greeted graciously by Ross, to join in the computer's bells and whistles to try to finish off Superman.

Superman does get up and go right into the supercomputer cave, and tells Ross that this game is over. This leads to Stage 2 of Ross's attack, when Ross then stops Superman with the computer's Krypton laser pulse--the chemical Gus made. As Superman is stunned in terrible pain and collapses, Gus then runs into the main power switch and pulls the plug, turning the whole computer off.

This buys time for Superman, but suddenly, the computer goes on again, and Gus realizes that the computer wants to be something like a monster. It had gone completely mad, and one lady assistant is entrapped by the device and becomes an evil cyborg. Superman leaves the cave and comes back with a closed special acid canister that is inert. He then stops the cyborg, but then the mad computer was about the eat at Superman with shock hits and is about to fatally entrap him; at this point, he opens up the acid canister, and the acid does its work. It eats away and then destroys the whole supercomputer from the inside out--starting with small--and then big--explosions.

The supercomputer is now rubble with twisted and bent steel, and Superman comes out from the destruction, was able to find Gus alive (he hid somewhere to evade the carnage), and takes Gus back alive, out of the cave, to his original workplace. Superman says that the other people will be brought to justice, including Ross.

From all of the seriousness of this flick, there is a lighter part of this movie where Lois Lane is introduced to a brand new writer for the Daily Planet, Lana Lane. She appears brighter in appearance than the original Lois.

The way I see Uma Thurman play "The Bride" in this action-packed, martial arts movie was not exactly clear-cut. But thinking about all of the Charles Bronson's "Death Wish" movies, I think "Kill Bill Vol. 1" was a definite allusion to the "Death Wish" movie saga.

The gist of the story focuses mainly on The Bride, who survived a mob hit by several members of an assassination squad which included Cottonmouth, which killed 9 members of a wedding party at a church, with the Bride being a sole survivor.

After waking up from the near-death attempt by this killing squad, she recalls all of the names of the five people involved, including Cottonmouth.

Then, the focus goes right into The Bride's main death wish as revenge for the murder attempt on her by this squad--more specifically, to make a hit on the character, Cottonmouth, also known as O-Ren Ishii. The rising tension of this focus on three main thoughts by The Bride.

1. The Bride narrates a bit of the past on O-Ren, who grew up in a nasty Japanese culture of the Yakuza mob, and was able to kill off some of her family members by surprise when they caused O-Ren trouble in the past. Then the Bride said that she went up to the ranks to become one of the top assassins, and then was accepted into the 5-person death squad later on who almost killed her.

2. Next, the Bride then heads off to Okinawa to meet up with Hattori Hanso, at his sword-smith's place, and even with her not-so-perfect Japanese, she was able to get from Hanso the weapon that will also be a focus for the sequel, Kill Bill vol. 2--a long sword hand-made by him called a katana, which was used in both samurai and ninjitsu martial arts in Japan.

3. Then, just before the showdown at the House of Blue Leaves as the Bride comes to Tokyo, where O-Ren was, the Bride narrates the main people in O-Ren's mob, like Charlie Mo and his Crazy-88 fighters, and Gogo, O-Ren's bodyguard. Also mentioned is Boss Tanaka, who mentions O-Ren's translator, Sophie, about being a half-prostitute during a mob council, just before O-Ren quickly decapitates Tanaka for mentioning that..to tell how evil O-Ren is.

To set up the end of O-Ren, The Bride kidnaps Sophie, presents her to O-Ren, and then, slashes one of Sophie's arms off to provoke O-Ren to the Bride's final series of fights. With that, the Hattori Hanso sword is her angel as she kills off about 15 fighters, almost get killed by Gogo's markiri (spike-laden meteor attached with chain) but still gets a chance to finish off Gogo, and kills off or maims 80 more fighters, including Charlie Mo.

Then, the final duel between O-Ren and The Bride takes place. O-Ren sees the Hanso sword the Bride has, and says that sword was a fluke. As the fight starts, O-Ren's katana was good enough to slash the Bride to a near kill...but the Bride then gets up, and then, the Bride finally slashes one of O-Ren's legs. O-Ren then says sorry for persecuting the Bride, and then the fight continues, and then, the Bride finally kills off O-Ren with a slash that cuts off half of her brain. O-Ren realizes, as she falls and dies, that the Hanso sword was real after all.

Then, the Bride stands in a redemption prayer pose as snow falls in what was O-Ren's big yard of the house.

The final part focuses on the Bride's warning to Sophie--if you do not tell all of the information on the rest of the assassination squad, Sophie will end up like what happened to Cottonmouth. The Bride then takes a jet out of Tokyo and revises the death list, marking off Cottonmouth to indicate that she was killed, and targeting the main person on her death list for the movie's sequel--which is Bill.

It was 1970. Apollo 13's mission was to repeat what the astronauts at Apollo 11 did---go to the moon and go back successfully.

The blast-off was normal and the series of separations just before they reached space were also good. As they reached about 80,000 miles or so into space, one of the astronauts tries to stir the fuel tanks with just a press of one button. Little did they realize that this action would mean a precarious event is going to hit not only the spacecraft of Apollo 11--but also threaten the lives of the astronauts inside it.

It started with a main explosion of a fuel tank, and then, subsequent shakes and booms. There are reports of fuel tanks having undervoltage, and not until about 10 minutes later, does astronaut Jim Lowell (played by Tom Hanks) visually realize that at least one oxygen tank is spewing out oxygen. He is the first to realize that there was a major leak in one of the fuel tanks of the command module.

They now realize that they have to follow Mission Control commands in Houston, because Lowell is telling the two other astronauts that they have to shut down the power to the command module, or the "Odyssey", as they call in the movie. And Lowell is the first to tell those other Apollo 11 astronauts probably one of the most famous quotes..."We've just lost the moon." Not just the other famous quote, "Houston, we have a problem!" Later on, Mission Control specialists tell the astronauts that they need to shut down the command module's power, which they do, and they had to move the LEM--or the lunar extraction module (or "lunar module" for short), which is nicknamed "Aquarius." Then, now that the landing of the moon had been scraped, the astronauts had to make a controlled burn around the moon in a slingshot action almost similar to that burn-around you may have seen in the movie "Armeggeddon." Yes, using lunar gravity to speed-up the trip back to Earth.

The burn is successful, but they need to save much needed power, so they shut down power to the LEM, which includes shutting down heat to it, so that means they have to freeze a little bit in order to have a safe trip for a good geodesic entry towards Earth.

Then more problems. Readings on the LEM indicate that the carbon dioxide levels are rising to toxic levels...meaning that the astronauts could suffocate in minutes. Mission Control finally finds a bizarre procedure to knock those high levels of C02 back to the non-danger zone. It was tense as the astronauts started to cough. But eventually, the astronauts finally fix the problem...they can breathe again.

Now, the geodesic re-entry is in 2 steps--very difficult. First, they do the retro-burn about 70,000 miles towards earth and their trajectory towards earth eventually goes quite good. Now, because the command module only has the heat shield, and power to the module can only have several amps, they had to separate first the Odyssey (the LEM) and the Aquarius (the service module). After Aquarius goes away from the command module, Lowell realized the big damage in the Aquarius' fuel tank.

Now, the second step for the good geodesic re-entry to earth depends on the command module's heat shield as they head towards splashdown. A failure of the heat shield would mean incinerating death for the 3 astronauts. Temperatures on re-entry outside can be as high as 2000 to 3000F. The whole world was on pins and needles as the command module heated up as the craft went through the earth's atmosphere...but then, as the craft splashed down with already-opened parachutes in the ocean and word spread that the craft survived re-entry, Lowell was the real hero.

As well as the two other astronauts! And even more--Lowell's mother was overjoyed about the near-disaster now coming to an end for Apollo 11 for good!!

The opening parts of the movie gets into the final parts of Karate Kid I, especially that final blow by Daniel LaRusso (played by Ralph Macchio)--a crane kick at a Cobra Kai opponent in the finals of the All-Valley Under-18 Karate Championships...and the aftermath, when the Cobra Kai finalist gets so mad at his 2nd place trophy that he destroys it and is about to take on LaRusso's sensei, Mr. Miyagi by way of Cobra Kai sensei, John Kreese. John Kreese's two punches directed at Miyagi both miss and instead hits the glass windshield of a car, causing both of his hands to get bloodied...and the most shocking ending...Miyagi reiterating part of Kreese's creed of the Cobra Kai dojo...doing a knife-hand killing stroke that misses 2 inches towards his neck, and then...squeezing his nose and just drops him to the ground and leaves.

Now, as the movie goes on, Miyagi realizes that his father is dying and has to go to Okinawa. LaRusso graciously accepts going with him because he had strong interests in understanding this Japanese region. He almost gets denied a plane ticket but Miyagi gives the ticket to him at the gate just in the nick of time.

As they arrive in Okinawa and get out of the airport, they run into Chozen, thinking that he would be a good man. But as Chozen does a quasi-death grip as he shakes LaRusso's hand, you now realize that this guy, who was now the number-one karate student to master Sato, is a very dangerous guy. As the Japanese taxi takes LaRusso and Miyagi to Sato's office, it is even worse. Sato is almost akin to the Japanese yakuza, or mob group. Sato allows Miyagi to see his father, but then warns Miyagi--judgment day will soon happen in a form of a karate fight to the death. Sato almost accomplishes his feat until the mother of the dying father intervenes and tells Sato and Miyagi that he needs both of them.

The father eventually dies as both Sato and Miyagi hold both of his hands, and Sato lets him mourn for three days. At the same time, LaRusso runs into a new Japanese love interest, Kumiko, who is an O-Bon dance instructor. As LaRusso's and Kumiko's love for each other increases, this causes Chozen to be so jealous that he is swearing fatal revenge against LaRusso for this love. One of his tactics was extorting LaRusso to break 6 pieces of ice in a nondescript Okinawan bar...which he does with Miyagi's help.

However, a typhoon in the island changes Sato's mean ways partially. He lets LaRusso's request for the O-Bon dance in the beach's castle stand (which would be the last scene in the movie) and Kumiko takes full advantage in her solo dance of her own. But a very nasty surprise which would interrupt her beautiful dance bursts out in the form of Chozen. In an impromptu zip line, he hones in towards Kumiko and wraps her from behind at knifepoint. Chozen then forces LaRusso to a karate death-match, and LaRusso had to go into the fray, and releases the girl from the knife. This final karate fight of the movie is dirty and rough, but then, with the help of the audience, the "drum technique" by LaRusso knocks out Chozen for good, and he eventually wins the fight and gets Kumiko back.

In the least, the world of ninjitsu had been glamourized in a lot of movies. Yes, there are movies like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" , the "American Ninja" series, "3 Ninjas", and even "Beverly Hills Ninja", but "The Octagon" goes deep into the heart of these "ninjas"--mindless silent assassins who use deceptive martial arts in order to kill or maim their victims.

This is how Chuck Norris uses his past competitive karate skills (away from the cinema world) to the fullest in the movie. I like how he uses his fast kicks in a scene where, upon applying to go into a ninja training camp, is forced to demonstrate his ninjitsu skills with a bunch of westerners under Doggo's supervision. In the final fight scenes, I realized that the spinning back kick and the roundhouse kick would be his biggest human weapons in the flick.

Chuck Norris himself plays a former student and classmate of a ninjitsu school, who turns out to be Seikura. On a ninja training course where someone who snatches the flag on the finish line gets a chance to earn getting one of the most famous ninja weapons--the broadsword (or "katana" in Japanese), Seikura gets livid because he really wanted the broadsword. Seikura was about to kill him but then gets blocked by the ninja instructor, and the instructor considers Seikura a permanent pariah of this school and quickly expelled, telling Chuck Norris that you cannot trust him anymore--and you can consider Seikura extremely dangerous to you for the rest of your life.

But the atmosphere of Seikura's ninja training camp is shocking. Here, Seikura had no choice but to run a ninja training school of his own after being outcasted...in a remote area of Central America. It is shocking that this training camp embraces and invites Westerners who are interested in being trained in ninja techniques to be used for covert international terrorist missions.

Chuck now is informed that this camp is run by his student who is now dangerous...and Seikura's ninja camp is making more people dangerous upon their graduation. Chuck now realizes that to stop this continued carnage of Westerners being turned into covert international terrorists, not only does this ninja camp have to be stopped at its core--he also has to kill off Seikura himself.

Of course, Chuck can't do this alone. He receives help from a female student who had graduated from the ninja camp; another student graduate from the camp called A.J., and of course...his expert martial arts wits to go past the gauntlet of plentiful ninjas in the camp who mark him for maiming and death as he infiltrated the compound.

In the least, a few of the main characters, especially Louis Gossett Jr., who plays Colonel Sinclair. The movie, I think, is the worst of the movies in the Iron Eagle saga but it is not completely bad.....

Now, Colonel Sinclair, who thinks he is retired from active duty from the United States Air Force, is called upon to do a top-secret mission. Col. Sinclair almost retorts at the idea to get back to classic dogfights in the air but slowly accepts the mission. And like the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers, this mission involves rivalry..but on an international scale. A joint mission.

A combined squadron of several American fighter pilots and Soviet Union fighter pilots, with the help of the Soviet premier, is told that a renegade Middle Eastern country, which is like Bilyad (fictionally made in the first Iron Eagle), is making things even worse for world peace that both of these countries are trying to make.

The fighter pilots who are called to this mission are warned that this country had already built a nuclear weapon facility in a remote desert near the Caviar Gorge. The facility's personnel had made this facility like an impenetrable fortress with 50-millimeter automatic anti-aircraft cannons and a surface-to-air missile canopy with a nearby building compound that houses the guidance system for the surface-to-air missiles.

The facility's personnel is determined to launch its intercontinental ballistic missiles from this facility and target missiles at both the USSR and the USA if they perceive even the slightest of military threats.

I like the part when Col. Sinclair figures out (with the help of the Soviet officer in charge of the Soviet fighter pilots) how to take out the anti-aircraft defenses around the facility, and how the fighters would have to fire Maverick missiles right into the ventilation shafts (Sinclair calls them "ducts"), which are protected by cannons, that lead directly to the facility to ensure its explosive destruction of it.

My favorite quotes in the movie was "What is point zebra?...Enemy air space...the point of no return!"

The movie was very definitely blockbuster; better than "Return of the Jedi", and better than most of the classic Vietnam War movies I had seen, including "Deerhunter" and even "Platoon". "Avatar" literally blows all of those movies away.

There are several particular parts that I adored in the flick.

First, I liked the downfall of Hometree. The way the Sky People destroyed Hometree was amazing enough. Just hearing the word "destroy" means one big thing--special effects.

Seeing the 3-prong approach to the Hometree destruction--first by the tear gas canisters that stunned the Na'vi, and then the incendiary bombs that looked like small Napalm bombs, which was a reminder of the Vietnam war, and then, the final destruction by missiles...means that this is going to be something out of a Las Vegas style implosion...plenty of explosives to penetrate and weaken the Hometree columns. So, I guess that means get ready for some big fireworks!! And there were!

I liked the sixth-sense attitude when the avatar good-guy soldier, Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) warned the Na'vi that they will blow the columns of Hometree.

After the fireworks of the Sky People gunships destroying the Hometree columns were over, I can see the columns in flames. Then I see the flames increase in size and then, the crackles begin. I knew in that moment that Hometree had met its fate--it was coming down--big time! The tree does comes down and kills one of the Na'vi leaders, and the Sky People got what they deserved..a destruction of a big piece of the Na'vi culture. When the Sky People gunship personnel turned for home after their accomplished mission, they had a very slight sense at that point to target "The Tree of Souls", which was unscathed.

The stockade escape was another scene I like. Especially the way Trudy Chacon (played by Michelle Rodriguez) set the escape up. After Trudy frees Grace (played by Sigourney Weaver) and run outside to commandeer a helicopter, the Sky People ranger gets word of the escape and fires his automatic weapon at the escapees. At this point, the only problem was that their was a filmmaker's miss on the bullet hit to Grace's chest. There is no obvious squib explosion to tell you that Grace got hit by the Ranger until Grace says, as soon as she saw the bullet wound, "This is going to ruin my day!" And Trudy did not even know that Grace's wound would eventually worsen her condition to terminal.

The following scene where Sully takes Grace to the Tree of Souls for the so-called Na'vi's incarnation towards their deity, Eywa, was perhaps the most moving part of the movie--and the most pathetic. Very good scene. Here, the Na'vi priestess attempted to let the synapses of the tree go through Grace's body to try to resurrect her. The synapses light up as the Na'vi genuflect and chant, and then fade away. The chanting ends. Unfortunately, Sully was informed that the resurrection did not work and Grace passed away; the reason was that her injuries were terminal. The Eywa incarnation is like the Act 1 Incarnation Scene in Verdi's "Aida" where the Egyptian high priestess honors the Egyptian deity, "Phtah". Moreover, it is also a reminder of the same scene in "Star Trek III: The Search of Spock", where there was a successful incarnation that resurrected Spock to life.

What had introduced me to "The Hurt Locker" was the scene in a former Michael Moore movie, "Fahrenheit 9-11", where 2 army personnel inside Iraq try to probe sand to check for an improvised explosive device under a tree, or IED, until suddenly...the device explodes with the two guys being hit by it at near point-blank range! They survive.

And that brave director, Kathryn Bigelow, who got a least one Oscar for "The Hurt Locker," helped to imagine us going deeper into war-torn Iraq, where a step on any bump in the sand or any anomaly in the sand, or if a military vehicle like a Humvee passes under them, means that they could fall into the deadly trap of the newest type of land mines since World War II.

Trailers for "The Hurt Locker" focused on a bomb tech (the main character of the film) wearing a designed suit whose job is to defuse those newest and tricky explosives that still make news in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. In "Armageddon", we hear the word "remote detonation", which literally means you detonate a bomb by remote control (in "The Hurt Locker", the bomb tech calls this "remote det" for short) and this correlates with the first explosion of "The Hurt Locker" when the bomb tech cuts several detonation cords (which in the movie he calls "det cord") in a suspected improvised explosive, and then, 100 meters away, a guy holds the remote control in a form of a cell phone in his hand. 3 of the watch-outs who protected the bomb tech quickly realize that he is the initiating system for the bomb. They say to the bad guy, "Drop the phone! Drop the phone!", but the guy refuses. The tech hears those audibles and realizes that he has to get out fast...with his gear as heavy as carrying a large backpack already filled up. You probably know that the bomb will blow up and it did....The tech runs, runs, and then, the bad guy presses the button and remote-detonates the bomb and then, Kathryn focuses on the photo speed as the sandy geyser from the detonation ensues....starting at slow speed (probably 4 times), and then to regular speed as the bomb tech gets engulfed by the blast wave and smoke from the explosion. I am wondering why Kathryn keeps slow photo speeds in the film to a minimum.

The scene where a bomb tech tries to defuse a suicide bomber reminds me of a quote from the movie "Speed." The suicide bomber, I guess, according to that past movie, has "enough dynamite in his chest to blow a building in half." The bomber did not want to set off his explosives and did not wish to die, but he warned the tech...he had a timer. The bomb tech warned his lookouts to set a 75-meter perimeter away from the bomber. The tech saw the timer and regrettably had about 3 minutes to defuse the bombs. He used a bolt cutter to cut some of the locks but because of the case-hardened steel, he could could only cut only one of the locks, and it was too late for the tech. The tech had to let him go and run and let him, regrettably, blow himself up, and he did. I learned a lesson at that point...that sometimes, in defusing bombs, in a few cases, you have to make a tough choice of not defusing when the situation warrants.

The only miss is that the finale--the scene involving the tech and the suicide bomber--had no gradual buildup towards the finale, but I can accept it gracefully, because Iraq can still become a pretty unpredictable place. Overall, I give the movie 3 1/2 stars if I were Roger Ebert.

In the 1980s, Josh Harris had seen the computer/electronic age bud with the Commodore computer keyboard, the IBM chip, dot-matrix printers, large VDT screens, and of course, 8-track tapes and hi-fi stereo systems like Zenith's Allegro and a defunct brand, Electrophonic, that were about to be dead. Reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes and its boom boxes, and filmstrips, Kodachrome, the Polaroid camera, and the traditional video projector were also popular then.

Realizing the Internet's major effect on computers, Josh began to take advantage in the Big Apple, founding Jupiter Communications, and later on, a hipster-friendly Internet TV company called "Pseudo", which was well-adored with New York's hip crowd. However, his overt display of his alter-ego, "Luvvy", eventually caused the company's downfall after 10-15 years of its run.

Not giving up easily with that debacle, Josh found an abandoned tenement loft in New York, and launched his most radical project ever, called "The Quiet Bunker." As the partyers enter in the first minutes inside the compound, they are almost like cattle...milling around the beds, the firearm range, the bar area, and are searching the bunk beds to find the perfect bed for them.

As more partyers enter, there is a type of noise level resembling the 4th of July. More people are in the firearm range shooting guns, and some residents are starting to become scared of the bangs. But some others start to be impervious to the gunfire and are using anti-fear techniques like free-love and friendship with all of the mates inside this unusual hangout.

As the millennium approaches, the fake cops and security guards start to become a bit more belligerent, violent, and sadistic. The music grows louder, and the bar starts to serve more alcohol than cocktails.

Meanwhile, half the participants are scared of those video surveillance cameras, and those who got out of the interrogation room are afraid of their emotions and afraid that they could be sent to that dreaded room again.

More gunfire explodes as the whole bunker scene turns into the most climatic scene of anarchy. People start to pillage the place with brute force, tear down papers and make messes on the floor with juices and beer; there is even more explicit sex, and even more screaming explodes into wildfire. Then finally, the NYPD comes in and tells them that the party--is over!!!

The partyers were escorted from the compound 6-8 hours after the millennium struck, citing several things: a very dangerous cult getting out of hand, forced confinement without giving the partyers additional food and water, and Josh allowing the partyers to resort to criminal mischief and a litany of disorderly, lewd, and dangerous acts, which included mob action and of course, the firing of guns, and not having a general permit to hold such a party.

Then, Josh Harris found three other partyers hiding from the police after the partyers were ordered vacated. He then gives the heave-ho signal to them--he simply wants to emotionally suffer the bunker's end in private!

With his "bunker project" flatlined, Josh had decided to hold the "After the vacating of the bunker" party with 25-30 of his bunker party participants on a boat on a New York river. He went to one of his love interests, Tanya Corrin, who appeared as the host of "Cherry Bomb", and proposed a strong relationship. As she said yes, Josh Harris started his new project that came out of the defunct "Quiet" experiment.

He and Tanya decided to retrofit their condo with 50 to 60 surveillance cameras, paying homage to the movie concept from "Enemy of the State." Josh's and Tanya's project of having their entire relationship on cameras was extremely shocking. I see their private talks, bathroom conversations, sex in the bedroom, and even domestic violence!! Then, as the crash of April 2000 wipes out over half of Josh's financial assets, they separate from reality, causing Tanya to say that this romantic relationship is over.

As Tanya leaves the camera-ridden house, Josh is left alone in the apartment to suffer for a long time not only the loss of Tanya, but also the pain of nearly being homeless. Finally, he had enough and he himself leaves the house for good, leaving the cameras behind.

After temporarily owning an apple farm away from NY, Josh goes back to Manhattan, to contact MySpace company, for his pitch...he was telling that company about his strong tech-savvy accomplishments in the 1980s decade of the computer world, to try to make his own Internet company...Josh's. Regrettably, MySpace said no, citing Josh's strange behavior that was revealed when Pseudo-TV was on the air. Josh ended up even more worthless.

With the "Luvvy" ego completely destroyed in his life and Josh on the ropes to severe penury, he resorted to a Marcus Garvey tactic; moving into exile.

His exile was under raps for awhile until Josh Harris was spotted in another country--Africa. Josh said his newly ascetic behavior cleansed him from all of the toxic cravings that ruined his business, his love interest, and his sanity, and he declares that he had seen the effects of the exponential growth of the Internet in the form of social networks like Facebook, Linkedin and MySpace, where any person joining such networks, regrettably, have to give up privacy in return for trying to create their own fame.

Of course, the Oakland A's squared off against the Cincinnati Reds in a 7-game marathon.

The shots of the several World Series games taking place at Oakland's Alameda County Coliseum will bring the A's fans who were there in the World Series of 1972, 1973, and 1974, closer to the era of Charles Finley, who became a sort of "Bill Veeck" of this Oakland stadium--just like Bill Veeck was to Comiskey Park with the Chicago White Sox. We find out that in the A's sojourns in the 1972 series, as well as 1973 and 1974 series later on, Finley's gimmicks at the Coliseum ranged from the gentle--like the ballgirl on the field (she was known as Debbie Fields)--to the noisy---like fireworks exploding in the air after an A's homer.

This film is going to be really a delight and perhaps a memorable archive for even the Cincinnati Reds fans, because the grand finale game, Game 7, which took place at Riverfront Stadium, was taking place at perhaps the development of the Cincinnati Reds' "Big Red Machine". Partially, this is because the great Pete Rose played for the team in this series. Sadly, Riverfront Stadium is no more...it had been torn down and replaced by a newer stadium, The Great American Ballpark.

I am guessing that the ending of the film, just as soon as the A's got the final out at Cincinnati that gave the Athletics the 1972 world championship, where a barbershop quartet and a piano accompanist performed "Sweet Marie" as the credits roll, was probably requested by A's third baseman, Sal Bando, but this is speculatory, because Sal is short for "Salvatore" in Italian.