Life Goes On - The Complete First Season



Life Goes On, a fondly remembered family
drama that began in the late 1980s, was groundbreaking for two reasons in that
it was the first drama to prominently feature a character with Down Syndrome,
and in later seasons, a character with HIV. The Thatcher family is comprised of
parents Libby and Drew, Paige, Drew's adult daughter from a former marriage,
18-year-old son Corky, and daughter Becca. The first season is marked by Corky's
entry into mainstream high school and the trouble he faces as he attempts to
keep up with his school work and blend in with his peers. Becca is going through
growing pains of her own, fending off the barbs of popular girl Rona Lieberman,
and dealing with a big crush on the big man on campus, Tyler Benchfield. Libby
is balancing the demands of career and motherhood, while everyman Drew, who
decides to leave the construction business, is trying to g...
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An Unfinished Life

Robert Redford has been less active in recent years (as a movie star,
anyway), but "An Unfinished Life" is a reminder that his talent is only getting
stronger, that his acting life is indeed not yet finished.

Here he plays a gruff and solitary Wyoming rancher named Einar Gilkyson,
whose body and pickup truck are both beginning to suffer from age. With his
frequent muttering and cowboy-style swearing, Einar is a Clint Eastwood kind of
role for Redford; he's even got Eastwood's old buddy Morgan Freeman on staff, as
Einar's ranch hand and best friend Mitch.

Einar sold off most of his cows years ago and now lives quietly and simply on
the homestead. This existence is disrupted by the arrival of his dead son's wife
Jean (Jennifer Lopez), whom he has not seen since the funeral 12 years ago and
whom he blames for the car-accident death of his beloved son. He did not know
that ...
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Last Holiday

What Queen Latifah has going for her is an outsized, likable personality.
Beware of any movie that wants her to pretend to be something else.

For example, beware of "Last Holiday." Here she plays a quiet, timid
Louisiana woman who lives a solitary life of little importance. When this woman,
Georgia Byrd, learns she has three weeks to live, she moves to a luxury hotel in
Europe to spend her final days doing all the fun things she only dreamed about
before. There she touches the hearts of the hotel staff and wins over all who
encounter her with her down-home wisdom and aw-shucks humility.

Ugh. Ugh, I say. Latifah simply is not believable as a shy, mousy creature.
It's too fundamentally opposite of who she is. It's like asking Yao Ming to play
a dwarf. And the hotel staff falling in love with her? I can buy that if it's
Queen Latifah they adore, but not Georgia Byrd. Georg...
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Day of Wrath

DVD Video Review: Anthony Nield reviews the
BFI's Region 2 handling of Day of Wrath, Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1943 drama set to
a backdrop of 17th century witch hunts. As with the BFI's other Dreyer titles,
the disc comes with an as-good-as-it-gets presentation and a fin...

The Prisoner of Shark Island

DVD Video Review: Mike Sutton looks at the
very impressive Masters of Cinema release of John Ford's excellent 1936 film
"The Prisoner of Shark Island".

True Dangers Of Mobile Phones And Wireless Technologies

Our society has become both socially and
economically dependent, in just one short decade, upon a technology that is
doing tremendous damage to the fabric of our world. The more entrenched we let
ourselves become in it, the more difficult it will become to change our course.
The time to extricate ourselves, both individually and collectively — difficult
though it is already is — is now. Photo credit: Dimitrios Kaisaris It is getting
quite difficult to imagine a world without mobile communications. Wireless
internet access is set to blanket the planet, just like cell phone networks
already do. There has been an explosive development - practically all during the
last three decades - that brought mobile to the farthest corners...