Tag: Review

Review: Taken 2
The movie Taken is my favorite action movie ever. Today, the sequel premiered. While I’ve been eagerly awaiting this release for the last few months, I also had concerns.

For a blockbuster hit, the original Taken was a relatively low budget film. After its initial success, more money was pumped into the sequel. Part of what I love about the original is its simplicity. It doesn’t have all of the bells or whistles of some action movies. There aren’t ridiculously extreme circumstances. We don’t see cities destroyed. It’s simply about a highly trained man on a mission to save his daughter who has been kidnapped into an all to real underworld of human trafficking. After some intial plot development, the original Taken was all action. There weren’t any corny jokes, they didn’t slow us down with some love story subplot. It was just Liam Neeson killing bad guys. (more…)
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October 6, 2012
Why the Dark Knight Rises sucked
I realize that this movie came out over a month ago, but I finally saw the Dark Knight Rises this weekend. As I was sitting in the theater, throughout the movie, I found myself thinking, “This isn’t very good…Actually, this is pretty stupid..”

I understood that the movie wasn’t going to be realistic. It’s an action movie. But even if the movie is unrealistic, I still expect people to do things that seem somewhat logical. Throughout this movie, characters continually did things that made no sense and this really ruined the film for me. There were some areas where it was just too difficult to suspend belief. (more…)
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August 27, 2012
That’s why I’m here: new book about Stefanie Spielman, faith, and love
In March of 2009, after having fought an off and on battle with cancer for over a decade, the disease had spread to the brain of Stefanie Spielman. The new treatments which needed to begin had affected her even more severely than the numerous rounds of chemo therapy which she had endured over the years. It left her drained and dizzy.

Her husband Chris had to take on more responsibilities around the house, things which had usually fallen on Stefanie, like paying bills, cooking meals, and helping to organize the schedules of their four kids. The family prepared to have a celebratory dinner after the radiation had finished, but this was cut short when Stefanie suffered a fall. After doing a few tests at home, she was taken to the hospital. The cancer had spread to her spine.

In the new book, “That’s why I’m here,” Chris Spielman writes that it was at that point he was faced with the harsh reality that she was going to die from cancer. In a poignant moment, before Chris left the hospital to return home, from her hospital bed, Stefanie said, “You’ve proven to me you can do it.” (more…)
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April 25, 2012
Once Upon A Secret: the insightfully fascinating book by a JFK intern/mistress
Late October. 1962.

America is in a panic as the U.S. and the Soviet Union appear to be close to the brink of nuclear war. The early morning hours of October 28 would prove to be the final hours leading up to the peaceful conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But in the days and hours which led to that safe conclusion, there was tension. In our nation’s capital, some were readying fallout shelters, while others wanted to get as far away from Washington as possible in the actual event of war.

But for a young woman named Mimi, she lay “sleeping like a baby, wrapped in soft linens, in a bedroom on the second floor of the White House.” (more…)
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February 8, 2012
New Book “You Are Not So Smart” explains why our sense of self and the world isn’t what we tell ourselves it is
Photo from Flickr Creative Commons

For the last couple months, I have been eagerly awaiting the release of the new book “You Are Not So Smart” by David McRaney, author of the fantastic blog of the same name, YouAreNotSoSmart.com. (more…)
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October 27, 2011