Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Centurion
- AD 117. The Roman Empire stretches from Egypt to Spain, and East as far as the Black Sea. But in northern Britain, the relentless onslaught of conquest has ground to a halt in face of the guerrilla tactics of an elusive enemy: the savage and terrifying Picts. Quintus Dias (Fassbender), sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort, marches north with General Virilus (West) legendary Nin
Carrie
- ISBN13: 9780671039721
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Make a date with terror and live the nightmare that is...CarrieWhy read Carrie? Stephe! n King himself has said that he finds his early work "raw," an! d Brian De Palma's movie was so successful that we feel like we have read the novel even if we never have. The simple answer is that this is a very scary story, one that works as well--if not better--on the page as on the screen. Carrie White, menaced by bullies at school and her religious nut of a mother at home, gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers, powers that will eventually be turned on her tormentors. King has a way of getting under the skin of his readers by creating an utterly believable world that throbs with menace before finally exploding. He builds the tension in this early work by piecing together extracts from newspaper reports, journals, and scientific papers, as well as more traditional first- and third-person narrative in order to reveal what lurks beneath the surface of Chamberlain, Maine.
News item from the Westover (ME) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1966: "Rain of Stones Reported: It was reliably reported by several ! persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlain on August 17th."
Although the supernatural pyrotechnics are handled with King's customary aplomb, it is the carefully drawn portrait of the little horrors of small towns, high schools, and adolescent sexuality that give this novel its power, and assures its place in the King canon. --Simon Leake
The Freedom Writers Diary : How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them
- ISBN13: 9780385494229
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Beyond Freedom Writers
| More Inspirational Teacher Films on DVD | The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell | More DVDs Starring Hilary Swank |
As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of âunteachable, at-riskâ students. One day she i! ntercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily ! declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaustâ"only to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlataâs Diary: A Childâs Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the âFreedom Writersâ in homage to the civil rights activists âThe Freedom Riders.â
With funds raised by a âRead-a-thon for Tolerance,â they arranged for Miep Gies, the courageous Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California, where she declared that Erin Gruwellâs students were âthe real heroes.â Their efforts have paid off spectacularly, both in terms of recognitionâ"appearances on âPrime Time Liveâ! and âAll Things Considered,â coverage in People magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Rileyâ"and educationally. All 150 Freedom Writers have graduated from high school and are now attending college.
With powerful entries from the studentsâ own diaries and a narrative text by Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary is an uplifting, unforgettable example of how hard work, courage, and the spirit of determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students.
The authorsâ proceeds from this book will be donated to The Tolerance Education Foundation, an organization set up to pay for the Freedom Writersâ college tuition. Erin Gruwell is now a visiting professor at California State University, Long Beach, where some of her students are Freedom Writers.
Conan The Barbarian - Italian Movie Poster: (Size: 28'' x 40'')
- Poster
- Size: 28" x 40"
- Ships in sturdy cardboard tube
Dr. Dolittle 2
- TESTED
The difference this time: Dr. Dolittle has settled into his talk-to-the-animals routine; his 16-year-old daughter (Raven-Symone) is getting to be a feisty handful (it turns out she's coping with a hereditary gift); and his lawyer wife (Kristen Wilson) is representing him in a trial against corporate villains who want to clear-cut a local forest. Naturally, the local critter mafia (their Don is a beaver... fugeddaboutit!) want Dolittle to fight for their cause, and this involves the successful mating of an endangered bear and a domesticated circus bear who's forgotten all the bear necessities of life in the wild. The bears are voiced by Lisa Kudrow and Steve Zahn, and they almost steal the show, but the whole menagerie (with digitally animated "talking") is equally amusing. Adults might wish that the filmmakers had tried harder to make a truly memorable sequel, but this is a movie ! for kids, and they're going to love it without quibbling. -! -Jeff Sh annon
Monday, November 14, 2011
Casino Jack and the United States of Money
- This portrait of Washington super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, from his early years as a gung-ho member of the GOP political machine to his final reckoning as a disgraced, imprisoned pariah, confirms the adage that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. A tale of international intrigue involving casinos, spies, sweatshops and mob-style killings, this is a story of the way money corrupts our polit
elected ! and the millions of dollars it costs may be undermining the basic principles of American democracy. Infuriating, yet undeniably eye-opening and entertaining, CASINO JACK is a saga of greed and corruption with a cynical villain audiences will love to hate.As he proved in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney knows how to transform creative bookkeeping into compelling drama without dumbing things down. In his follow-up to Gonzo, a portrait of rabble-rouser Hunter S. Thompson, Gibney takes on disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff (Stanley Tucci provides his voice in readings). Gibney begins with the Mob-style murder of a one-time associate before backtracking to Abramoff's days as chairman of the College Republicans, where he rubbed shoulders with Karl Rove and Ralph Reed--and impressed Ronald Reagan. Even as a student, however, there were signs of trouble as he laundered money through charities, a pattern he would repeat throughout the d! ecades, always on the lookout for new loopholes. Gibney proceeds through his dealings with the Contras, an Angolan dictator, Saipan sweatshops, and Indian casinos (the debacle in Angola led him to produce the right-wing shoot-'em-up Red Scorpion). Along the way, Abramoff ensnared lawmakers and government officials in his web as they traded political favors for campaign financing. As Bob Ney's chief of staff, Neil Volz, puts it, Abramoff "could talk a dog off a meat truck." When his house of cards finally came crashing down, Reed, Ney, Volz, Tom DeLay, and numerous others fell with him (all but Reed appear in the film). As in his other documentaries, Gibney juices the action with music cues that keep things lively, even if some of his choices are a little too on the nose, like Howlin' Wolf's "Back Door Man." --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Disturbia [Blu-ray]
- UK Import
- Blu-ray
- Region-Free
Beyond Disturbia
| Why We Love Shia LaBeouf | The Soundtrack | Rear Window |
Beyond Disturbia
| Why We Love Shia LaBeouf | The Soundtrack | Rear Window |
Beyond Disturbia
| Why We Love Shia LaBeouf | The Soundtrack | ! Rear Window |
! | ||
Beyond Disturbia
| Why We Love Shia LaBeouf | The Soundtrack | Rear Window |
Living under three months' house arrest, Kale Brecht (Shia LaBeouf, Transformers) passes his days spying on the neighbors. It's all fun and games until things take a horrifying turn for the worse. Kale is convinced his neighbor next door is a serial killer - but he can't prove anything, can't convince anyone and can't leave his house without triggering an alarm. Enlisting the help of his friends, Kale is determined to expose the truth - but have they all taken on more than they bargained for with a cold-blooded murderer on the loose?
With nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, Kale and his friends are in a race for their lives in this electrifying thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.fter his father's accidental death, Kale (Shia ! LaBeouf) remains withdrawn and troubled. When he lashes out at a well-intentioned but insensitive teacher, he finds himself under a court-ordered house arrest. His mother continues to cope, working extra shifts to support herself and her son, as she tries in vain to understand the changes in his personality. The walls of his house begin to close in on Kale as he takes chances to extend the boundaries both physical and emotional - of his confinement. His interests turn outside the windows of his suburban home toward those of his neighbors, including a mutual attraction to the new girl next door (Sarah Roemer). Together, they begin to suspect that another neighbor is a serial killer. Are their suspicions merely the product of Kale's cabin fever and vivid imagination? Or have they unwittingly stumbled across a crime that could cost them their lives?Alfred Hitchcock fans may experience déjà vu upon exposure to this voyeuristic thriller. That's because director DJ Caruso (T! he Salton Sea) and co-writer Carl Ellsworth (Red Eye) use < i>Rear Window as a jumping-off point before cherry-picking from more recent scare fare, like The Blair Witch Project. In the prologue, 17-year-old Kale (Shia LaBeouf, Holes) loses his beloved father to a car crash. A year passes, and he's still on edge. When a teacher makes a careless remark about his dad, Kale punches him out, and is sentenced to house arrest. After his mom (Carrie-Anne Moss, Memento) takes away his Xbox and iTunes privileges, the suburban slacker spies on his neighbors to pass the time. In the process, he develops a crush on Ashley (Sarah Roemer, The Grudge 2), the hot girl next door, and becomes convinced that another, the soft-spoken Mr. Turner (David Morse, The Green Mile), is a serial killer. With the help of the flirtatious Ashley, practical joke-playing pal Ronnie (Aaron Yoo), and an array of high-tech gadgets, like cell-phone cameras and digital camcorders, Kale sets out to solve a major case without leaving hi! s yard (a feat that would prove more challenging for a less affluent sleuth). In the end, it's pretty familiar stuff, but there are plenty of scares once Turner realizes he's being watched, and rising star LaBeouf, who next appears in Michael Bay's Transformers, makes for an engaging leading man--despite his characterâs propensity for slugging Spanish instructors. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Beyond Disturbia
| Why We Love Shia LaBeouf | The Soundtrack | Rear Window! |