2011

Happy New Year to all...

I'm very thankful for many things but most of all for the continued recovery of my wife, Karen.

She spent half of November in the hospital before the doctors were able to treat her for an unknown virus.  The treatment worked and she's slowly recovering her strength and health.

As our friend Fr. Andrew Massawe from Tanzania has so often told us -- God is good all the time, all the time God is Good...

Happy New Year and thank you to all for your well-wishes, thoughts, cards, flowers, and prayers for my wife during the past six weeks.

Happy New Year!

Entourage - Season 4

We watched this entire season in the space of only a couple of nights.

It's pure entertainment and highly gratifying.  An honest look into the inner sanctum of Hollywood from the perspective of a star and his talent agency.

Jeremy Piven is excellent as uber-agent Ari Gold.

Several seasons to go and you can already see that they're starting to run out of original stories, but this always seems to put a Pavlovian smile on my face, especially when the opening music and credits run...

Drive

Debuted at Cannes in 2011 and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn won Best Director at the festival for this entertaining piece of work.

Ryan Gosling is the anonymous driver who works as a Hollywood stunt driver by day and a for hire get away driver by night.

The opening sequence is fantastic as Gosling navigates the night streets of downtown L.A. as he escapes the police net drawn for him.

A few too many needless violent moments but all-in-all this is a refreshing film that helps to alleviate the onslaught of superhero comic, remake, and sequel pipeline that Hollywood continues to operate.

I'm not a fan of Albert Brooks but this is the best I've ever seen him as he plays it straight as a low-level crime boss who means business.

Carey Mulligan is literally the girl next door who Gosling falls for, and in an effort to do good, he is further drawn into a seedy underworld from which is tough to escape.

Highly recommended.

Our Idiot Brother

Paul Rudd as the title character disrupts the lives of his three sisters and then brings healing.

A light-hearted comedy that will put a smile on your face.

Nothing more, nothing less...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas...

Margin Call

A fictionalized portrayal of what went woefully wrong on a larger scale in the financial markets in 2207.

Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, and Stanley Tucci star.

This film gives a fairly realistic look at what happens behind the closed doors of a Wall Street firm when damage is trying to be controlled.

Well acted and dramatically appealing...

Photo of the Day

- Christmas is a comin'...

Oranges and Sunshine

Emily Watson stars in this drama based upon a 1994 book highlighting some shameful crimes that occurred in the U.K. and Australia from the 1940's through the 1960's.

As many as 130,000 children were removed from orphanages in the U.K. and transplanted to other parts of the Commonwealth, mostly to Australia.  The children were told that their mothers had died and the mothers, many of whom were determined to be temporarily "unfit" to parent, when they searched for their children, were told that the kids were placed for adoption in better homes.

Many of the children, once transported to Australia, found themselves enslaved and forced into hard labor and even sexual abuse.

Directed by Ken Loach's son, Jim, this could have been a better film if it were perhaps made as a documentary instead...

Photo of the Day

The light coming into the kitchen this late afternoon illuminated the cabinet in a particularly beautiful way.

Water for Elephants

Based upon a best-selling book and adapted by Richard LaGravanese, the film stars Christoph Waltz, Reese Withersopoon, Robert Pattinson, and a 9,000-pound elephant.

Set in 1931 amongst the Benzini Bros. circus, this story of passion, adventure, and loss is good entertainment...

My Beautiful Laundrette

Directed by Stephen Frears, and originally released in the U.K. in 1985, this is the story of a young Pakistani man named Omar and his attempt to turn a run down laundrette into a money-making business in 1980's London.

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis (as Omar's gay companion) in one of his first film roles, I'm not sure this film holds up through the test of time.

It was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar in 1987 and was one of the U.K.'s Working Title Films production company's first successes...

Everything Must Go

Will Ferrell stars as a man who arrives home after losing his job to find that his wife has left him and changed the locks on their house.

With all the furniture and belongings on the front lawn, he decides to carry on with his life with as much normalcy as he can muster, living on his front lawn in plain view of his neighbors.

This dramatic role is a studied move away from Ferrell's reputation for comedy.  He doesn't have much to do with his character as the tone of the film is stuck between wanting to be a pure drama and making comedic light of his situation.

Based on a short story ("Why Don't You Dance") by Raymond Carver, I'm not sure that this is the best adaptation of that particular story.

The Hangover Part II

Another installment, this time set in Thailand rather than in Las Vegas.

Some funny parts but follows the story map of the original and feels tired and worn...

Horrible Bosses

Three friends stuck in various jobs, all with overbearing and almost sadistic bosses, decide upon a plan to kill each other's employer.

Crude, dumb, and funny...

Jason Bateman stars and Charlie Day soars in this nice bit of escapism.

My Wife - Part 2

... two weeks later my wife had another episode requiring another emergency visit to the hospital.  This time I took her directly to a newer medical facility in Dublin associated with the University of Pittsburgh.

She was hospitalized for half a month before she was just released this past week.

The doctors were never quite sure what was wrong but they finally narrowed it down to an unspecified virus.  So after a CT-scan and two MRI's of her brain, a visit to a neuro-opthamologist, a CT-scan of her neck arteries, an endoscopy, an X-ray of her lungs, a CT-scan of her heart, an ultrasound and CT-scan of her abdomen, numerous blood tests, an angiogram, and a lumbar puncture... our prayers have been answered and she has continued to gain strength and recovered enough to be allowed to now rest at home.

She's doing much better and I thank God and her friends and family that nourished her with prayers, thoughts, cards, flowers, and love during this difficult time.

The nurses and staff at The Beacon were wonderful and we are grateful to everyone for your kindness and support.