This film suffers from the same problem as Allen's "Curse of the Jade Scorpion" in that he casts himself as a romantic leading man again. While living with one young woman who could be his granddaughter as far as an age comparison, he vies against Treat Williams as his romantic antagonist for Tea Leoni (she is the age of a daughter for him). Cary Grant was having problems pulling this off when he was in his 60s, Allen's age, and Woody Allen has never been a romantic leading man the likes of Cary Grant. Plus picking as a rival the urbane and handsome Williams further widens the credibility gap. Allen really needs to abandon playing these roles and hire someone else to do it and place himself squarely behind the camera. If he wishes to cast himself in a non-romantic role or (horror of horrors) a romance vehicle with someone nearer to his own age, then he can step in front of the camera once again. What is especially distressing is that he is still as fine a writer and director as can be found in the film world. He is squandering that talent promoting himself as a romantic leading man. If he'd gotten rid of the romance angle, there is a genuinely funny idea here which could have been exploited for laughs. This is that he has a film director make an entire movie while suffering from psychosomatic blindness and no one guesses because the other film people are so "blind" in turn to the eccentricities of a brilliant, renowned film director. If Allen had run with this idea and gotten rid of his love interests, it could have been hilarious.

The brilliant satiric writer, the late Paddy Chyefsky, wrote "Network" which swept up some major Oscars back in the 1970s. In addition to having a killer script, that film also had career best performances by Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch plus top drawer performances by Robert Duvall, William Holden and Ned Beatty. Spike Lee chose to adapt that movie for this movie except make it Afriocan American/black based. He wrote it himself. Although he is a brilliant director, he is not the writer that Chyefsky was and probably should have hired someone who was on that level as his writer. That is the major problem with this film. It is missing the devastating, precise bite of the satire in "Network" and it doesn't have the absolutely knockout cast that "Network" did to deliver those lines either. I can never understand why directors choose absolutely brilliant films to remake. It seems to me that it would be wiser to pick a film that wasn't well made the first time. At least the viewers wouldn't be comparing the two throughout their viewing as I found myself doing here. For anyone who doesn't know the plotline of "Network," the plotline of both it and this film is what happens when a network puts on a new show that is deliberately made to be as in poor taste and as atrocious in concept as can be. It becomes a huge hit, as it does here, as it did in "Network" and before these two films as it did in "The Spring Time for Hitler" show in the "The Producers." This film does have marvelous music throughout, which is true of every Spike Lee film. You can't go wrong with any of the soundtracks from his films.

The film where this music is used is itself problematic. It is a black remake of "Network" which doesn't entirely work. What did work though, as usual in a Spike Lee film, was the absolutely fabulous music. He seems to always use Stevie Wonder for at least several cuts and did so here as well. Wonder's music goes especially well with Lee's films, perhaps because of the raw power and beauty he brings to his songs. However, my major discovery on this soundtrack was the relatively new artist, India Arie. She cut many tracks for this film as a prelude to her CD release of "Acoustic Soul." In some songs you could swear you are listening to a female Stevie Wonder and that is a compliment! I find a lot of rap music just too harsh and abrasive to listen to long term so it was refreshing to get a new black artist in soul instead of in rap or hip hop. So many of the great soul artists are from decades ago so I was grateful to see a new major artist emerge on the soul music scene.

Much as I loved Lisa Jewell's "Ralph's Party," this, her 3rd novel, is infinitely better. I can even put my finger on what makes this novel so special. It is the way Jewell captures the essence of unfinished issues between sisters. Ana's sister Bee dies, a suicide no less, years after Ana last saw her. Bee was a huge pop star at one point but could never move beyond her "one hit wonder." As Ana starts looking into Bee's life, she discovers that much more may have behind Bee's subsequent decline in life other than the failure to record a 2nd hit song. She even discovers an adolescent boy who she initially suspects may have been Bee's son. However, Jewell takes no such easy resolution. Thankfully, she spares us a secret baby plotline. Ana meets a wonderful cast of supporting characters in her quest, people who intersected with her late sister's life. She also must resolve living within the confines of her agoraphobic mother's home and too much under her mother's influence. Moving into Bee's London apartment is her first big step to break that unwholesome situation. Jewell is perhaps the brightest light among all the UK women writers who have distinguished themselves in the last few years in the fiction which has come to the USA.

I got this from my public library and am glad I did not buy it myself. Although it is enjoyable and well written, watching it once is enough. I had no idea that episodes were missing from this set but I found it plenty long enough as is. I am a lawyer so perhaps that is why I am not as enthusiastic as many others are about this series. Let's just say this is fantasy romantic comedy based law as opposed to terribly real world law. What really works in this series though is the well written human interest material about some very interesting characters in their 30s. It is set in Boston. Ally works in a firm owned by someone her own age. The firm takes only high retainer cases of rich clients. The actor who does the best job as a lawyer is Peter MacNicol as John "the Biscuit" Cage. He is actually a very believable, existing "type" found in the real legal world. The premise that the set opens with is that Ally finds herself working for the same firm that has her old boyfriend on board. Problem is that he is now married to someone else and she is still single. Worse, he's married to another very attractive lawyer who also comes to work with the firm. I got a little tired of this duo about half way through the series and found John "the Biscuit" Cage's scenes with Ally a lot more interesting. Much is made of the unisex bathroom in the law firm which everyone in the firm uses together constantly. I found this bizarre and thought it really took the show's credibility down a big notch. However, I liked the computer generated special effects, especially the one of a fully dressed Ally swimming underwater through the law firm's offices. The music is also very good. If you are interested in romance genre material set amidst legal trappings, you will enjoy this set.

People told me Illustrator was easier to learn than Photoshop. Were they wrong! Or maybe they didn't know I'm bad at math because Illustrator is based on bezier curves, vector shapes, math and geometry. It is about as different from Photoshop as a program can be except that they look the same when you first open them up. Just try "drawing" (and I use that word loosely) a curve in Illustrator with the pen tool and you will instantly recall everything you ever hated about high school math. However, if you loved math, this may be YOUR program. This book deserves 5 stars simply because I would be utterly lost without it. I'm taking Illustrator Part II right now at the college where I teach and I still can't move off this book and into a more complex text. I tried moving into the Adobe Classroom in a Book and very quickly found myself unable to do anything in the exercises. I am learning this program very, very slowly and I need an extremely visual, full color approach that spells out every step to me, skipping nothing, assuming nothing. This book does that. I'm very slowly improving in the program. I used it in taking Illustrator Part I (it was not the required text which I didn't even buy) and got an A in the first course yet I still can't move into a more complex book. In this course I have to make an entire calendar for 2003, draw it, and I hope to have this book mastered by the end of it and then, finally, move onto a more complex text. I'm not counting on it though.

Much as I enjoyed Chris Nolan's "Following" and "Memento", he really pulls out all the stops with this third film. I saw the foreign film upon which this was based and, unusually, this is the better film. (Usually American remakes of foreign films are total schlock but that is not true here.) It has some key ingredients for achieving this though. First off, a first rate script that no one has "Hollywoodized." Secondly, letting Al Pacino and Robin Williams loose with their talents on first rate material and, in Williams' case, against his usual type, was sheer genius. The two are absolutely superb together. Pacino is the anti-hero cop who investigates a murder case in Alaska while trying to cope with a partner (Martin Donovan) who is going to turn state's evidence against him when they return to LA. Not only will this ruin his career but it might also release all the murderers Pacino's character put away in prison. The partners are trying to track down the villain, Williams. Surprisingly though, instead of running, Williams' villain comes forward and plays with Pacino's character, preying upon his weaknesses. Pacino is further handicapped by not being able to get any sleep because of a variety of factors but not the least of which is that he's not used to sunlight 24/7 which occurs in Alaska in the warmer weather. Martin Donovan and Hillary Swank do very good work as the other detectives but it is hard to compare them against the sheer star power and magnetism of Pacino and Williams together. The murder case is actually not as important as the unravelling of these two men's characters. Buy it. I did and it's not going anywhere!

I wasn't expecting much from Van Morrison doing covers of showtunes and standards from the 1940s and 1950s. It just goes to show though that one never knows an artist's real range until he or she starts exploring it. Although this is as different from the rest of his work as can be imagined, it is all superb. Additionally, these are are very unique renditions of songs I have on other discs by other artists and there is NO overlap. I'm not familiar with Georgie Fame but it is too bad that he and Van Morrsion only did this one work together. What a terrific combination they are. The title tune is worth the price of admission alone. This is a live recording too and I've noticed Van Morrison does particularly well when performing live as opposed to in the studio. Many musical artists do their best work live and perhaps it is the sheer exhiliration and joy of performance that they really need to bring out their best.

I was absolutely spellbound the entire time this film played. I do not ordinarily do well with films that are horror genre allied but this was the exception. One big reason this film succeeds is that it has a story that catches hold of you and never lets go. I found myself wondering what I would do if I were the son, Fenton, whose father embarked on an avenging angel serial killing quest and expected me to be his helper along with my smaller sibling. There does seem to be a side issue too as to whether the father and the younger son actually have some psychic ability too so that they can actually see the "crimes" of their victims which make them "demons". That ultimately is left to your own viewer judgement, however. The next big reason this film works is that the acting is first rate. Paxton is superb as the father (and the film director) who is gripped by this apocalyptic vision and quest. The two boys playing his sons are equally great as his followers, one willing and the other unwilling. And Matthew McConnerghy and Powers Booth bring it all home as the adults years later who are left with the aftermath of the father's legacy.

I know everyone bemoans that online music availability is supposedly destroying the music business. However, I had lost track of David Byrne's music in recent years but then saw free downloads of 2 tracks of this album online. After listening to the tracks repeatedly, I bought the album. No other device had gotten me to look at his music even though I'd been a huge fan during his Talking Heads days. I then discovered he has an online site with 2 complete downloads of songs from virtually every solo album of his. I downloaded all of them and every single song is terrific. That is true of this album too. Byrne has not lost an iota of his talent. His music and lyrics remain quirky, edgy, extremely rhythmic and infectious. True to his art student origins at the Rhode Island School of Design, he also continues to use fabulous cover art for every single album as well. Perhaps online downloads can bring to our attention musical talent that is unfortunately being obscured by the lesser "superstar" talents currently consuming the creative possibility that lurks within the music industry. I've downloaded some of these current superstar's clips and have yet to find one that lasted more than 3 minutes on my hard drive. They were so dreadful that they immediately went into the recycle bin.