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Posts Tagged 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'
Wilmington on Movies: Sucker Punch, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Monogamy
Sucker Punch (Two and a Half Stars)
U,S.: Zack Snyder, 2011
Great visual effects. Lousy script. That seems to be a consensus on Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, even among some people who like it. And I guess I'd agree. Sort of. The movie is too incoherent and confusing to be really counted a success, too brilliantly executed on many technical levels to be dismissed as worthless trash. And even if that's what's wrong with many big studio movies today — they tend to give us stunning technique and visuals at the service of half-baked scripts or woefully unrealized ideas — well, stunning technique is nothing to sneeze at. Sucker Punch has it.
But what is this complex, flashy, elaborately designed, rock-'em sock-'em show about really? Freedom? The World of the Imagination? Or just Babes with Guns in Hot Pants?
Tags: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, monogamy, Sucker Punch
Posted in Columns, MCN Originals, MCN Weekend, MCN Weekend Reviews, Movie City News, Movie Review, Reviews, Wilmington | Comments Off on Wilmington on Movies: Sucker Punch, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Monogamy
Wilmington on DVDs: Sweetgrass, A Prophet, Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music, The Ghost Writer … and more
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
CO-PICKS OF THE WEEK: NEW
Sweetgrass (Four Stars)
U.S.; Lucien Castaing-Taylor/Ilisa Barbash, 2010 (Cinema Guild)
In Sweetgrass, named for the lushly beautiful Montana country in which it takes place, we see the last summer pasturing of the vast sheep herd that once belonged to the Allested ranch in Big Timber: thousands of sheep blanketing the mountain slopes and valleys, bleating, baa-ing and clanging their cowbells like some grand atonal choir, ranging freely over the green grass and past the rushing rivers and under the high blue sky, surging like some white snowy river itself, with that entire tumbling, rippling, slowly moving mass of animal life itself cared for and guided by just two lone sheepmen in cowboy hats on horseback, with their alert and tireless sheep dogs loping alongside.
This stunning event was recorded by Lucien Castaing-Taylor ("recordist" or, I guess, cinematographer-director-editor) and Ilisa Barbash (producer), a husband-wife ethnographic filmmaking team then resident in Boulder, Colorado and now based at Harvard University. It was the last of its kind, because the Allested Ranch closed down in 2006, when Bush administration bureaucrats cancelled the public land grazing permit that the Allesteds and other independent ranchers had used for more than a century to feed their herds.
So what we see, though it isn't explained until the end titles, is the end of a way of life — another wondrous American ritual and tradition, largely lost to the contemporary world.
As with Frederick Wiseman's great socio-political documentaries, such as High School, Welfare and The Titicut Follies, there is no voice-over or narration. There's precious little talk at all, and most of it comes from sheepmen John Ahern and Pat Connolly, who plan their work and gab laconically, or cuss something fierce, as they ride, or as they sip coffee and chew bacon, or just laze around and ruminate, in their camp chairs or by the fire.
Often they complain. But we can't. They're burdened by each day/s work, which looks endless. We're blessedly privy to the beauties of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, and that huge woolly cloud of sheep. As in King Kong directors Merian Cooper's and Ernest Schoedsack's great 1925 documentary Grass, a movie which watched another group in a more distant land, the Bakhityari or Persian tribesmen, taking their herds to pasture, we're absorbed by the spectacle and by the journey before us: with the sheep moving like a great white wave grazing uphill and down, as the sheepmen try to protect them (vainly in one instance) from marauding grizzlies and wolverines, as mothers suckle their young, and dogs run and nudge, as the season passes, and as we see what only a relative handful have watched before this.
Critics have generally loved this film — and they're right — but Sweetgrass is unfortunately the kind of movie that would-be wits denounce because they say nothing is happening, that it's like watching paint dry. Or sheep graze. Nothing is happening? What in God's name were they looking at in the theatre? Their watches? Their navels?
Thanks be to the filmmakers for undertaking this journey, which took them two years (2001-2003) to record and eight in all to get on film and in theatres. We are in their debt, and also in that of the Allesteds and of sheepmen Ahern and Connolly (and hell yes, of the horses, dogs and the sheep herd as well), for the lyrical sights and uncommon beauties of Sweetgrass. At the end, crusty John Ahern, riding in a truck cab, is asked by his boss Allested what he'll do next, and he replies that he "ain't going to worry about it for a week or two." You think: Well, that's okay, get some shut-eye. You earned it. Goodbye, sheep. Adios, amigos. Extras: Commentary by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash; Additional Scenes; Trailer; Booklet with Robert Koehler essay.
A Prophet (Three and a Half Stars)
France; Jacques Audiard, 2009 (Sony Pictures Classics)
The Grand Prize winner at the last Cannes Film Festival, this brutal, unsparing prison picture, about the rise of a young Muslim convict who becomes the favorite of the prison's Corsican mob boss, has been widely hailed as a great foreign language film and a great crime movie.
Whoa. Not quite, says me. It's certainly a riveting show, and it has an undeniably great performance by Nils Arestrup as the Corsican mobster Cesar Luciani (the kind of dour gangster role for which Lino Ventura once held the patent), and a magnetic one by newcomer Tahar Rahim as the rising Muslim assistant crook Malik El Djebena.
But, on first glance, I disliked the ending, which almost seems to secretly glorify the young thug, for no better reason than that he's an improvement on the old thug, and to overly admire what I took as a possibly equivocal and darkly ambiguous resolution as some kind of stirring "star-is-born" multi-cultural parable.
Maybe I'm wrong. Director-co-writer Jacques Audiard says that A Prophet is an anti-Scarface, and in some ways, he's right. But the De Palma/Pacino 1983 Scarface, whatever the uses that some gangsta-rappers made of it, does say that crime shouldn't pay, and clearly shows why, as did the superb 1932 original Scarface by Howard Hawks, Ben Hecht and Paul Muni.
END OF SPOILER.
I'm not completely sure what A Prophet. But Audiard, here and in A Self Made Hero (with Mathieu Kassovitz) and The Beat that My Heart Skipped (with Romain Duris), seems to have a soft spot of some kind for psychopathic anti-heroes, or maybe to him, psychopathic heroes, as long as they're cute, intense star material.
That doesn't invalidate the film, or Audiard's grim vision, or Rahim's often incredible performance. But it makes the movie, to me at least, less powerful and satisfying than those two recent fact-based movies about Italian organized crime, Il Divo and Gomorrah. A Prophet, by contrast, seems to me at least partially a wish fulfillment fantasy. If so, it's a wish I didn't particularly like to see fulfilled, at least not without more criticism.
But A Prophet, whatever my cavils, gets you on the hook and keeps you there. It summons up a prison and criminal world that, up until the end, I found grimly plausible, fiercely exciting. It also boasts that Arestrup performance, which is an absolute knockout. (In French, with English subtitles.)
PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSICS
Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music — The Director's Cut (Four Stars)
U.S.; Michael Wadleigh, 1970-1994 (Warner)Both a great rock concert movie, and a superb documentary on youth culture in the Vietnam War Years, Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock — shot at the legendary 1969 Aquarian gathering at Max Yasgur's farm at Bethel, N. Y. (not the nearby Woodstock) –brings back the era and all its pot-fumed tenderness, horror, humor, beauty, ugliness, and glorious absurdities, as few other movies can.Caught by the virtuoso wide-angle cameraman Wadleigh (along with many others) in amazing handheld widescreen images full of sweep and scope and seething with energy, and cut by editor/assistant director Martin Scorsese (and others) in vividly atmospheric sequences and evocative, witty split screen juxtapositions, the movie literally overwhelms youThe original three day concert — which wound up being one of rock history's great freebies, when the crowds, measuring a half million plus, overflowed the ability to count or charge them ticket money — is rendered with shocking, lyrical immediacy. Woodstock records both the amazing social extravaganza surrounding the music — the gargantuan sex-drugs-and-rock-n'-roll community that descended on Yasgur's green farm fields, the bad trips and free food, the marijuana, nude romps and ubiquitous flashing peace signs, the ocean of communal feeling and occasional bummers — and, of course, the memorable music itself.David Gates' dyspeptic Time Magazine anniversary cover story about Woodstock (a few years ago) to the contrary, it was a terrific concert. (Gates seems angry not only at '60s youth culture in general, but that acts like Merle Haggard weren't on the bill. But you wouldn't expect the bard of "Okie from Muskogee" to have shown up in 1969 at Bethel, even if today, Haggard cheerfully will shares a show with peacenik Bob Dylan.)The original roster of acts in the 1970 movie included Crosby, Stills and Nash (ladling out, among others, Steve Stills's honeyed lyric to Judy Collins, "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," plus, under the closing credits, Joni Mitchell's soaring anthem to the whole affair "Woodstock"), along with Jefferson Airplane, The Who ("See Me, Feel Me" the mesmerizing capper from "Tommy"), Richie Havens (the heartbreaking folk ballad "Motherless Child"), Joan Baez ( a hushed, reverent "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"), Santana (the fever-drenched "Black Magic Woman"), Sly and the Family Stone (Taking us "Higher," if possible), Joe Cocker (tearing out his classic version of "A Little Help from My Friends") and, as a blazing climax, guitar god Jimi Hendrix, with his legendary exploding variations on "The Star Spangled Banner," complete with sonic Hendrix booms on "rockets red glare" and "bombs bursting in air."Over the years, Woodstock has picked up even more initially deleted musical high points, some not used in the original cut because of lesser picture quality (they were shot at night), like blues lady Janis Joplin's frenzied "Work Me, Lord") and, in the extras here, three performances by Creedence Clearwater Revival (including "Born on the Bayou"). and one by the Grateful Dead ("Turn on Your Love Light").
Throughout, either in the epic original and this expanded director's cut, Woodstock beautifully records both the amazing social extravaganza surrounding the music — the gargantuan sex-drugs-and-rock-n'-roll community that descended on Yasgur's green farm fields, the bad trips and free food, the marijuana, nude romps and ubiquitous flashing peace signs, the ocean of communal feeling and occasional bummers — and, of course, the memorable music itself. Peace.
Extras: Deleted performances (Baez, Country Joe & The Fish, Santana, The Who, Joe Cocker, Mountain, Canned Heat, Paul Butterfield, Sha Na Na); featurettes, documentary.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Blu-ray
The Ghost Writer (1 Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) (Three Stars)
U.S.-U.K.; Roman Polanski, 2009 (Summit Entertainment)
Shutter Island is a movie Roman Polanski probably should have made, just as, for different reasons, Schindler's List was. (He got a second great chance at Schindler's subject matter, and triumphed with it, in The Pianist.) But Island is even more his kind of movie than Scorsese's: a descent into subjective terror that fits Polanski's eye-level nightmare style perfectly, a movie that might even be described as a mix of the elements of his masterpieces Repulsion (the crazy killer), Cul-de-Sac (the island) and Chinatown (the detective and the scandal).
The Ghost Writer is the movie Polanski did make: an adaptation of Robert Harris' prize-winning thriller The Ghost about an opportunistic (and nameless) young writer (Ewan McGregor) brought to an isolated retreat on Martha's Vineyard, and hired to ghost-write the autobiography of a retired Tony Blair-like British Prime Minister named Adam Lang (played with 007-like machismo and insouciance by Pierce Brosnan), while trying to fathom what's up with Lang's wife (Olivia Williams), his assistant (Kim Cattrall), a mysterious political rival named Emmett (Tom Wilkinson) and a gabby old man (Eli Wallach).
Based on the movie, The Ghost doesn't seem like a very good novel. The film didn't seize my imagination or chill my blood as I wanted it too, even though I was primed for it, and even though Polanski directs it beautifully, visualizing each scene with an edgy, icy-gray or chilly-blue bleak atmosphere and a sense of underlying evil and panic. But Polanski is a master, and evidences of his mastery are all over the movie.
I once transcribed a Polanski interview, in which I thought he was saying to me that the two most important thing in movies were "characters and utmost fear," when what he was really saying, was "characters and atmosphere." He gets at least two of those three here: atmosphere and utmost fear. But though the actors are good, none of the characters (not even the usually movie-stealing Wilkinson's) is very memorable. And it's hard to empathize with a character in a thriller, like McGregor's Ghost, who shows so little fear, with so much danger and enigma around.
The Ghost may be a good writer, but he doesn't seem to have read much John Grisham or watched Three Days of the Condor. The fact that Lang has been linked to a CIA scandal doesn't seem to phase him. Neither does the coincidence of his predecessor being drowned in the first scene, nor any of the mysterious things that happen along the way. Maybe the fact that the writer remains nameless has made him think himself invulnerable, already a ghost of himself.
Anyway, Polanski may be a captured fugitive, but he's no fake, even if The Ghost Writer sometimes feels a little as if it were ghost-written. It's been decades since Pauline Kael suggested that Polanski might become the new Hitchcock (at least before Truffaut did), yet this is his first thriller since Frantic in 1988. He's capable of better in the genre; he's capable of masterpieces. I hope he does them.
Extras: Interview with Polanski; Featurettes.
James and the Giant Peach (2 Disc Blu-ray DVD Combo) (Three and a Half Stars)
U.S.; Henry Selick, 1996 (Walt Disney)
British writer Roald Dahl started out was a specialist in the adult and macabre, crafting witty little literary gems of crime, sex and suspense for class markets. (Playboy often ran them, and Alfred Hitchcock often adapted them for his TV show.) Then he switched to children's stories, jettisoning the sex, adding more whimsy and fantasy to the suspense, and coming up with modern classics like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (filmed twice, first by Gene "Willy Wonka" Wilder and later by Tim Burton), and this juicy little tale of voyage and adventure, filmed by Burton (the producer) and Henry Selick: the team behind The Nightmare Before Christmas.
It's an odd, sophisticated, beguilingly weird and somewhat creepy tale of an orphan boy named James (Paul Terry)* who escapes from his two awful aunts, Sponge and Spiker (Miriam Margolyes and Joanna Lumley), when a giant peach shows up, and grows up, on their coastal hillside home, filled with genial giant talking bugs, and then sails off toward New York City, land of James's dreams.
The film, done in Selick's sprightly stop-motion animation style, begins somewhat murkily and nightmarishly, then really takes off when the boy and the bugs sail away. The look is bewitching and the cast is swell: including Susan Sarandon (see below, with Tim Robbins) as the seductive Spider, Simon Callow as the posh-voiced Grasshopper, Richard Dreyfuss as the streetwise Centipede, Jane Leeves as the matronly Ladybug, and David Thewlis as the Naked earthworm. Dahl's stories are for children of course. But, like Edward Gorey's, they probably have their strongest admirers among adults. Here's an example.
Extras: Featurettes.
* No relation to the cartoonist of Terrytoons.
The Kim Novak Collection (Three and a Half Stars)
U.S.: Various Directors, 1955-59 (Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures)
My favorite Kim Novak line comes in Pal Joey, Columbia's dubiously altered, shamefully bowdlerized but still entertaining adaptation of the great cynical/lyrical O'Hara, Rodgers & Hart stage musical classic, in which Novak's Linda English says to Frank Sinatra's cabaret Casanova Joey Evans, in a girlish, amused, deliberately non-provocative voice, with no Mae West intonations or hints at all, "You're right. I do have a great shape. Confidentially, I'm stacked."
Stacked she certainly was: a willowy but sumptuous blonde bombshell with (usually) short-cropped platinum hair and a 37" bosom that never knew a brassiere ("That's right!" her Vertigo director Alfred Hitchcock once said tartly to Francois Truffaut. "She's particularly proud of that!")
Pretty Novak, born in 1933, was a Chicago railroad worker's daughter and a natural beauty with haunting eyes and a vulnerable air, who became a movie star in her early twenties, with 1954's noir Pushover directed by her lover Richard Quine, and then a megastar with 1955's Picnic, directed by the explosive Joshua Logan, in which — as playwright William Inge's small town Kansas princess Madge, with George Duning's Theme from Picnic glowing behind her — Novak danced her way into the hearts and loins of William Holden's ex-football star/drifter Hal, and many more of the males of a susceptible nation.
The great years of her stardom, the mid to late '50s, are well-covered here. These movies give you the classic Novak image: a gorgeous fair-haired girl who's a little troubled by her own long-legged, statuesque beauty, a bit hesitant about pushing herself forward, slinky and self-conscious, sometimes suspicious of men, a traffic-stopping but vulnerable glamour girl with brains and surprising sensitivity.
Like Marilyn Monroe, who often played it dumb, the real-life Novak was a reader. (Sinatra, one of her dates, wooed her with first editions, while his fellow Clansman Sammy Davis, Jr. hit the jackpot in one of the more famous secret love affairs of the '50s.) There's a very well-written sleeper in this box, which you probably haven't seen, but contains top-notch New York dialogue and one of her best performances: writer Paddy Chayefsky's and director Delbert Mann's Middle of the Night.
By 1964, she was considered past her prime, and when she played Polly the Pistol, the girlish hooker (with the belly-button jewel and the requisite heart of gold) in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid, she shared in the movie's lousy notices. Today Kiss Me is rightly regarded as a flawed classic, and if original star Peter Sellers hadn't had his heart attack and dropped out in mid shooting, we might see it as a masterpiece, as some of the French do ("Embrasse-moi, Idiote!")
But maybe she was too much a creation of the '50s, of the last fugitive years of the Golden Age, a kind of platinum blonde Jekyll and Hyde. Kim Novak could play it naïve and lower class, or tony and glamorous, and sometimes she played both in the same movie, as in her masterpiece, as Madeleine/Judy in Hitchcock's Vertigo. (He'd wanted Grace Kelly for her part, but Hitch always wanted Grace Kelly, for every part.) Vertigo, of course, is in lots of Hitchcock Paramount or Universal sets. But it's a shame Columbia couldn't cut a deal and get it in this one. What's a Kim Novak collection without Vertigo?
She probably wasn't a natural actress. She gave some awkward performances. But she was a natural-born star. Kim was one of the movie dream girls of my youth, and I still get a pang looking at her. Confidentially, she's stacked.
Includes: Picnic (U.S.; Joshua Logan, 1955) Three and a Half Stars. William Inge's great Broadway dramatic hit about the way sex steams up in a small Kansas town at the annual picnic, with Novak as the town siren, William Holden as the drifter who steals her from his best friend (Cliff Robertson in the role the young Paul Newman played on Broadway), Betty Field as Kim's mother and Susan Strasberg as her little sister, who loves Carson McCullers, Rosalind Russell as the busybody schoolteacher whose aging beau, Arthur O'Connell, is marriage-shy. The stage play, which was also directed by Josh Logan, had a great ensemble cast — Janice Rule, Ralph Meeker, Eileen Heckart, Kim Stanley (understudied by Newman's gal, Joanne Woodward), and O'Connell. But there's something iconic about this one, and something iconic and ultra-50ish about both Kim and the movie.
Jeanne Eagels (U.S.; George Sidney, 1957) Two and a Half Stars. Novak plays the reckless, self-destructive '20s stage and screen beauty and superstar Jeanne Eagels, who made an onstage hurricane as Sadie Thompson in the Maugham play Rain, — a drama-goddess who drank and screwed and missed so many performances she was banned by Actors' Equity, and died of a heroin overdose. It's a tough part and not one of Novak's real successes. But she had guts playing this brilliant talent and bad girl.
Jeff Chandler is her Coney Island mentor/lover, Agnes Moorehead is her haughty teacher, and Murray Hamilton is the sleazy guy who helps push her over the edge. Sidney and cinematographer Robert Planck make it brassy and glamorous, there's an allusion to director Frank Borzage, and a great trio of writers worked on the script: prolific Oscar-winner Sonya Levien (Quo Vadis, Drums Along the Mohawk) and those two excellent novelists Daniel Fuchs (Low Company) and John Fante (Ask the Dust).
Pal Joey (U.S.; Sidney, 1957) Three Stars. Gene Kelly became a Broadway star, beckoned by the movies, when he playing the amoral, lady-killing show biz heel and kept man Joey Evans in the great musical play by writer John O'Hara and the supreme song-writing team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. And Kelly was promised the movie and the role, with Rita Hayworth as his star, in the '40s by Columbia boss Harry Cohn. But in the '50s, when the movie was finally made, it was Gene's pal and ex "In the town" dance partner Frank Sinatra who got the move call for Joey. And though the film is regarded as famously botched adaptation, it's not really Sinatra's fault, he sings the songs here as well as Kelly danced them, on stage.
This is actually one of Frank's quintessential movie roles, full of Sinatra-isms like "gasser," and "ring-a-ding," with added songs by Rodgers and Hart, and with orchestrations by the unbeatable Nelson Riddle — Sinatra's genius arranger on "Only the Lonely," "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," and many other classic albums, including all of Ella Fitzgerald's George Gershwin Songbooks. Frank spins a real gasser on "Lady in the Tramp" (it's worth the whole movie), and he also kills us on "I Could Write a Book," and "There's a Small Hotel," while the dubbed Rita Hayworth as the socialite Vera, who's keeping Joey, delivers "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" and true love/non-stripper Kim's dubber sings that poignant gem "My Funny Valentine."
What the movie needs is even more Frank, even more Rodgers & Hart, packaged by Riddle. It also may have needed Billy Wilder, whom that famous bully Harry Cohn turned down as director. The problem was the script, which Billy would have fixed, but which certainly baffled Dorothy Kingsley. It was the '50s and the goddamned Breen office was still fouling up movies in the name of our morals. But a moralistic "Pal Joey" is like squeezing Mae West into a nun's habit. Even so, Sinatra, "The Voice," singing "The Lady is a Tramp" is enough to obliterate all bad, or goody-two shoes, memories.
Bell, Book and Candle (U.S.; Richard Quine, 1958) Three Stars. Novak rejoins Jimmy Stewart in the same year as Vertigo playing Gillian Holroyd, lady witch and classy Greenwich Village shop-owner who has a cat named Pyewackett, and who utterly bewitches, bothers and bewilders Manhattan publisher Shep Henderson (Stewart) in this swanky adaptation of playwright John van Druten's spooky romantic comedy, directed by ex-beau Quine. Novak 's fellow witches include those sometimes macabre, sometimes playful ladies Elsa Lanchester (Queenie) and Hermione Gingold (Bianca), Ernie Kovacs is a great drunken writer (on witchcraft) named Sidney Redlitch, Janice Rule (who played Novak's Picnic role on stage) is Jimmy's luckless fiancée Merle, and Jack Lemmon, no less, is a grinning, streetlamp-quenching delight as Gillian's impish brother, the bongo-playing warlock Nicky.
Witchcraft here is obviously a code or analogue for '50s Bohemianism and the Greenwich Village bi and homosexual counter-culture, and the witches all hang out in a hip club called the Zodiac. Bell has some of the look and feel, if not the richness and impact of a classic. It just misses, and I guess I wouldn't have hired Daniel Taradash (Picnic's adaptor) for this script. Maybe they needed Billy Wilder for this one too. But you can't beat that cast. Or that cat. Or that hat of Shep's, symbol of a bewitched heart, that we see soaring and falling all the way from the skyscraper to the street.
Middle of the Night (U.S.; Delbert Mann, 1959) Three Stars. As interviewer Steve Rebello remarks, this is the sleeper of the set. Novak in her prime often had good screenwriters or sources, and here she has the best script (excepting Vertigo) she was ever given: Paddy Chayefsky's April-December romance Middle of the Night — done on TV with Eva Marie Saint and E G. Marshall, done on Broadway with Gena Rowlands and Edward G. Robinson, and done here with Novak and Fredric March. March is the affluent garment maker/widower who takes a good look at his secretary (Novak) one day and stumbles into heaven and hell. The script, like Marty, is both crackling and compassionate, and the supporting cast includes Lee Grant (as Novak's savvy friend), Albert Dekker (as March's girl-chasing partner), Glenda Farrell (as Novak's skeptical mother) and Martin Balsam as March's sympathetic son-in law. The movie has that great '50s-'60s look: New York City in black and white. But it didn't work with audiences, and it's a shame.
Extras: Interviews and commentaries with Kim Novak and Stephen Rebello; Featurettes; Trailers.
OTHER CURRENT AND RECENT DVD RELEASES
Kick-Ass (Two Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) (Three Stars)
U.S.; Matthew Vaughn, 2010 (Lionsgate)
Kick-Ass is a movie made from a comic book about a wish-fulfilling teen geek who plays at being a super-hero named Kick-Ass, and then runs into some real heroes (including a wildly talented purple-haired 11-year-old nicknamed Hit Girl, and her death-dealing pa, Big Daddy) and some real villains (including a vicious mob boss and his spoiled-rotten son). Though it may sound as if the Farrelly Brothers or Judd Apatow wannabes had taken over the latest action-comic picture epic, it's better than we might have expected: at its best, expertly done and full of snazzy, kick-ass, wish-fulfilling fun.
Director Matthew Vaughn, Guy Richie's ex-producer (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) and helmer of the British neo-noir Layer Cake, shows the same mix of slam-bang action and a genial light touch that director Jon Favreau brought to Iron Man. Vaughn and his co-writer Jane Goldman (adapting the comic by Mark Millar), know what their basic audience wants to see. But they also know what audiences not usually attracted to this kind of movie may want to see as well: something witty and light and self-kidding, with the humor counter-balancing the carnage.
Of course, the carnage needs to be counter-balanced. Kick-Ass is funny. But it's also so violent, and sometimes so convincingly bloody and savage, in its half-comic over-the-top action scenes — which include the kind of one-against-a-bunch climactic wholesale slaughter-fest usually administered by a Bruce Lee or a Sonny Chiba, but here dealt out by that 11-year-old girl — that, at times, this movie becomes genuinely disturbing. (Parents should heed that "R" rating, which mentions "strong brutal violence, pervasive language, sexual content and nudity.") Still, I can't go along with the stern or skittish condemnations the show has aroused in some. That wounding violence, especially in a revenge fantasy, strikes me as not necessarily such a negative thing. Movie violence often should be more disturbing, should have consequences.
And here, when high school geek Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) goes on his first costumed Kick-Ass expedition, and gets stomped by gang-bangers (well and half-realistically played by Johnny Hopkins and Ohene Cornelius) and run over by a car — winding up with nerve damage for the rest of the movie — it reminds us that violence hurts, that the world is full of pain, which is something that big action movies often leave out. That hurt gives more edge to the movie's action, and also to its humor and satire, to the ways it burlesques and sends up the geek fantasies of vigilante-ism and super-celebrity that fuel almost every action-hero movie.
The fact that Kick-Ass starts life as a media-friendly geek-imagined fake, that the real super-heroine here is a cute little girl named Mindy Macready (played by Chloe Grace Moretz), incredibly well-versed in martial arts and gunplay by her action-hero dad Damon ("Big Daddy") Macready (Nicolas Cage), makes the movie more fantastic, less half-real. It's also a riff on the gun culture that permeates our society, with presidential hopeful Sarah Palin (a kind of wannabe Hit Girl, but not as cute) smiling adorably while she calls on her followers to get their enemies in their sights and "reload."
Wham! Bang! Thank you, Ma'am! In our introduction to this movie's Hit Girl and Big Daddy, Mr. Macready reloads just like Sarah and her fan-boy militia. He aims and shoots his daughter from point blank range, then watches her bounce up, protected by body armor. Later Mindy kids Papa by requesting a pony for her birthday, when what she really wants are Palinesque weapons of destruction. Pony, my ass! The satire, deliberately profane, kids our own gun-nutty cultural callousness. But the vulnerability of the movie's good guys, and girl, facing a smash-face violence that often hits OldBoy levels, lets some reality seep back in. It keeps us anxious.
I haven't read the Kick-Ass comics, written and drawn by Millar and John Romita, Jr. (My own super-hero comic-reading heyday included Superman and Batman, and ended around the prime time of Johnny, Jr's Daredevil-Spider-Man drawing dad Jazzy Johnny Romita, Sr.) But the story structure of the movie Kick-Ass reminds us that in the most popular super-hero fantasies, Clark Kent and Peter Parker are just as important as Superman and Spider-Man. Here the early scenes pivot around the ineffable nerdiness of Dave and his geek buddies, smart-ass Marty (Clark Duke) and Todd (Evan Peters), and by way Dave is ignored by the school's top girl, Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca), and kept away from fraternization with the Mafia rich kid Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) — and how Dave evades his parents (Garrett H. Brown and Elizabeth McGovern) to create the fantasy world of the masked, costumed, swaggering Kick-Ass, a multi-colored human action toy who's exactly the kind of superhero a geeky kid would dream up.
Revenge fantasies are popular partly because they blow way our frustrations, and because the real world actually is full of bad guys and gang-bangers who really do hurt people. Crime boss Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong), and his squad of torpedoes led by WiseGuy Big Joe (Michael Rispoli), are heavies with a touch of real-life viciousness (or at least reality filtered through other mob movies and TV shows) — and when some of those heavies go down like video-game targets, it's hard to mind, especially when the vanquishing kick-asses are a nerd in a super-hero suit and a little girl with purple hair and lots of energy. Kick-Ass pushes our movie paradigms and clichés of violence and worm-turning to extremes, and whether you laugh at it, or go "Tsk-tsk," probably depends on your own frustration-level. It made me laugh and sometimes cringe.
Extras: Commentary with Matthew Vaughn; Documentary; Featurettes; Live Menu System.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Also 3 Disc Blu-Ray) (Two and a Half Stars)
U.S.; Thor Freudenthal, 2010 (20th Century Fox)
This one is better than it first looks — and it initially looks pretty silly, despite the source.
That source: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a best-selling children's book by Jeff Kinney, written in the form of a diary by a supposedly actual wimpy kid, Greg Heffley (Zach Gordon), who's suffering through the torments of middle school (Grades 6-8).
This wimpy kid is the Job of junior high, a sort of Coen-Brothersish "Serious Boy." He's picked on by classmates and older thugs, dissed by his teachers, shut out of a seat at the cafeteria, abandoned by his friend, pestered by guys even dorkier and wimpier than he, teased by the school paper editor, joshed by his parents, bullied by his gym teacher, out-wrestled by a female nemesis and ignored by the prettier girls. To top it all off, he's a bit of a jerk himself: an unreliable friend and a little liar.
Waiting for him and us throughout the movie is a joke we really don't want to see: involving an open-face cheese sandwich, rotting and festering away, and going greenish-nauseating, right in the middle of the outdoor playground basketball court. It's a sandwich that nobody ever moves (don't they ever play hoops at that school?) and we know that someone, somehow, somewhere, is probably going to have to eat it. Or seem to eat it. ("Eat it raw!" as the bullies used to scream, back when I was in junior high.) Luckily, it doesn't look anything like real food.
Any more than this movie looks anything like a real middle school, or a real suburb. What saves all this school-kid angst, done in high-Spielbergian exaggerated style by Thor Freudenthal (who made the visually inventive but mostly awful Hotel for Dogs)? The actors, mostly. Gordon as the "wimpy kid" diarist Greg and Robert Capron as his plump, sweet tempered best friend Rowley Jefferson, are so cute, so easy and adept, and so consistently funny, that they redeem a lot of the movie's sprightly, but over-cute and over-obvious comedy.
Gordon has a gravity and low-key intelligence that once would have made him ideal for a role played by another kid Gordon: Barry, as Jason Robards' nephew in A Thousand Clowns. And Capron's Rowley is a real find: a great fat little sidekick with a wonderful seraphic smile and the disposition of a frisky puppy.
After.Life (Also Blu-ray) (Two and a Half Stars)
U.S.; Agnieszka Wostowicz-Vosloo, 2009 (Starz/Anchor Bay)
Christina Ricci, as car-crash victim Anna Taylor spends most of this movie nude, or in a red slip, and lying on a table at the funeral home. Liam Neeson, as funeral home manager/departures specialist Eliot Deacon, spends much of it staring down at her and speaking softly, trying to get Anna to accept her fate.
No this is not the breakthrough in necrophiliac movie romance we're all not waiting for. It's a sophisticated, scary horror film in which Deacon proves to have a wild talent, albeit one very helpful in his profession. Deacon can speak to the dead, before their interment — although here, he spends most of his time jawboning with Anna, and ignoring the others, who aren't as pretty and don't have red slips. Anna's guilt-tripping boyfriend Paul (Justin Long), who would like to talk to her too, gets mysterious calls from the funeral home, and is very suspicious of both Deacon and his business and home, into which he keeps trying to break. And little Jack (Chandler Canterbury) can hear and see Anna, though that may simply mean he's a potential departures expert.
Neeson, underplaying beautifully, shows that he could have played Hannibal Lecter, or any of Peter Cushing's old Hammer roles, and done a first-rate job. It's hard though, to imagine how Deacon is able to take care of a thriving funeral business in a huge house with a mortuary and an accompanying graveyard, and do it all, even the grave digging, all by himself — besides carrying on long conversations with corpses and making sure they don't escape.
Ricci is a fine damsel in grisly distress. Long, also the Alvin of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel is suitably perturbed, especially when he gets his ghostly calls or takes a roll in the cemetery.
I think that Wostowicz-Vosloo shows a lot of talent here, but that her subject matter is a shade too grisly and a little too lacking in real dark humor. Don't confuse this movie, by the way, with Hirokazu Kore-eda's wonderful 1998 fantasy After Life — which is not at all gruesome, and in which Ricci and Neeson do not appear, in red slips or otherwise.
Dogora (Three Stars)
France; Patrice Leconte, 2004 (Severin)
From the unusually versatile cineaste Patrice Leconte (Ridicule, The Hairdresser's Husband): A beautifully photographed semi-travelogue documentary, in which Leconte's camera wanders around without narration in Cambodia — catching views of boats, people, waving grain, motorcycle riders, shabby or neon-lit city streets and relics of the past — while a very western and catchy orchestral/choral score by Etienne Perruchon gives the whole thing a Koyaaniqatsi feel.
I would have liked a little narration, or an identifying title or two, but Leconte has his perverse side. In the accompanying interview, he tells of a high school critic/interviewer who finally found a connecting thread in Leconte's variegated oeuvre — his films mostly deal with an encounter between strangers and are all set in enclosed worlds — and proceeds here to offer a film that utterly contradicts it. (No dialogue or subtitles.)
Extras: Interview with Leconte; Trailer.
Charlie's Angels (Blu-ray) (Two Stars)
U.S.; McG (Joseph McGinty Nicol), 2000 (Sony)
Despite that omnipresent Farrah Fawcett poster, this '70s TV "classic" about glamour girl trouble-shooters wasn't really very good. And the movie is just more frenetic and expensive. It's a supposed showcase for Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu as the Angels, and they look good it. (Then again, when don't they look good?) With Bill Murray, Tim Curry, Sam Rockwell and LL Cool J. I hope they all had a great payday.
Bull Durham (Blu-ray) (Three and a Half Stars)
U.S.; Ron Shelton, 1988 (MGM)
A tough old minor-league catcher on his last legs (Kevin Costner), a young pitching phenom with lots of attitude (Tim Robbins), and the team super-fan with a great idea of baseball bonuses, who stands between them (Susan Sarandon). The best of all minor league baseball romantic comedies, despite that crack of Costner's about the JFK assassination. Well, I guess there aren't that many minor league baseball romantic comedies…Okay, one of the best of all sports romantic comedies. Sports movies maybe. Sure.
Sarandon had to prove to the execs that she was sexy enough for this show, and they should have been ashamed of themselves for even asking. (At least she got a bonus herself: This is where she met future husband Robbins.) Three balls, no strikes. A dry, wry, sexy double-header. No, that's not a double entendre, at least not an intentional one.
Extras: Commentaries by Shelton, Costner and Robbins; Featurettes.
The Breakfast Club (25th Anniversary Blu-ray) (Three Stars)
U.S.; John Hughes, 1985 (Universal)
Five kids on weekend detention hall duty (class princess Molly Ringwald, jock Emilio Estevez, brain Anthony Michael Hall, freaky Ally Sheedy, and leather-jacket rebel Judd Nelson) get stuck with the biggest asshole of a teacher/detention monitor the school has got (Paul Gleason). They bond. He gets his. I was mixed on this in 1985. After all the '80s were such a goddam terrible decade for movies, it all began to look like crap. But I feel a little nostalgic about Breakfast Club now. It's probably John Hughes' most heartfelt statement of suburban teen solidarity. (His best movie remains Ferris Bueller's Day Off.)
Part Time Work of a Domestic Slave (Three and a Half Stars)
Germany; Alexander Kluge, 1973 (Facets Video)
Director-writer Alexander Kluge and his star actress/sister Alexandra Kluge re-team for a movie that's similar to their great 1966 Venice Film Festival German New Wave breakthrough Yesterday Girl and just as provocative. It's a radical, feminist, but not predictable look at marriage, sexism and labor unions, a Godardian mix of drama/melodrama and semi-documentary verite with Alexandra as Roswitha the activist wife of a student/ worker (Bion Steinborn), whose factory is slated for a secret closure and relocation to Portugal by its unscrupulous bosses.
The movie splits neatly in two, and committed mothers may be disturbed by it. In the first part, Alexandra works part time as an illegal abortionist's assistant and the graphic operation scenes will make many cringe. In German, with English subtitles.
Extra: Kluge's short documentary on education Teachers in Transition (Three Stars)
Crack in the World (One Star)
U.S.; Andrew Marton, 1965 (Olive)
Andrew Marton's zenith as a filmmaker was undoubtedly his brilliant action direction of the chariot race in the William Wyler-Charlton Heston Ben-Hur. Here is what I hope is his nadir: a completely idiotic disaster movie, with passable effects and a ludicrous script, in which mortally ill and furiously obsessed scientist Dana Andrews (who takes his marching orders, bizarrely, from Alexander Knox and a conference room in London) fires a missile at the earth's core so that we can pipe out the magma for fuel. Bad idea.
Unfortunately, our rash scientist creates a huge crack which travels fast around the world, leaving earthquakes, volcanoes and other catastrophes in its wake — but not too fast for Andrews' fleet-of-foot scientific colleague and romantic rival Kieron Moore, who keeps chasing the crack, and trying to fix things.
With Janette Scott, as Andrews's steadfast wife, who stands by her man even as the world seems on the verge of ending because of his stupidity.
The ending features the requisite couple shot, lots of red magma and a cute little squirrel poking his head up to catch a glimpse of sky.
END SPOILER
The only possible reason for watching this genuine catastrophe (Dana Andrews fans should actively void it and catch his other 1965 movie, that neglected classic In Harm's Way instead) is if you have designs on making an Airplane-style spoof on disaster movies, and want the most ridiculous premise possible. The ad tagline for Crack in the World, by the way, was "Thank God it's only a motion picture!" Amen.
Appointment with Danger (Two and a Half Stars)
U.S.; Lewis Allen, 1951 (Olive)
Brusque and hardcase postal inspector Alan Ladd goes undercover to investigate a murder that may be the key to a huge impending postal truck robbery. Phyllis Calvert is a nun who witnessed the murderers: that sterling noir pair Jack Webb and Harry Morgan of Dragnet), Paul Stewart is the robbery boss, and Jan Sterling does another moll. This is pretty entertaining in a "T-Men" sort of way, but not half as stylish.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK: REVIEWS TO COME
Presenting Sacha Guitry (Four Discs) (Three and a Half Stars)
France; Sacha Guitry, 1936-38 (Eclipse/Criterion)
Includes: The Story of a Cheat (France; Sacha Guitry, 1936.) Four Stars. (In French, with English subtitles.) The Pearls of the Crown (France; Sacha Guitry, 1937.) Four Stars. (In French, Italian and English, with English subtitles.) Desire (France; Sacha Guitry, 1937.) Three Stars. (In French, with English subtitles.) Quadrille (France; Sacha Guitry, 1938.) Three Stars. (In French, with English subtitles.)
Extras: Four essays by Michael Koresky.
Tags: A Prophet, After.Life, Appointment with Danger, Bull Durham, Charlie's Angels, Crack in the World, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dogora, James and the Giant Peach, Kick-Ass, Part Time Work of a Domestic Slave, Sweetgrass, The Breakfast Club, The Ghost Writer, The Kim Novak Collection, Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music
Posted in DVD & Blue Ray, DVD Reviews, MCN Originals, Reviews | Comments Off on Wilmington on DVDs: Sweetgrass, A Prophet, Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music, The Ghost Writer … and more
% Chg
Title Gross Thtr % Chgn Cume
Venom 33 4250 NEW 33
A Star is Born 15.7 3686 NEW 15.7
Smallfoot 3.5 4131 -46% 31.3
Night School 3.5 3019 -63% 37.9
The House Wirh a Clock in its Walls 1.8 3463 -43% 49.5
A Simple Favor 1 2408 -50% 46.6
The Nun 0.75 2264 -52% 111.5
Hell Fest 0.6 2297 -70% 7.4
Crazy Rich Asians 0.6 1466 -51% 167.6
The Predator 0.25 1643 -77% 49.3
Also Debuting
The Hate U Give 0.17 36
Shine 85,600 609
Exes Baggage 75,900 62
NOTA 71,300 138
96 61,600 62
Andhadhun 55,000 54
Afsar 45,400 33
Project Gutenberg 36,000 17
Love Yatri 22,300 41
Hello, Mrs. Money 22,200 37
Studio 54 5,300 1
Loving Pablo 4,200 15
3-Day Estimates
No Good Dead 24.4 (11,230) NEW 24.4
Dolphin Tale 2 16.6 (4,540) NEW 16.6
Guardians of the Galaxy 7.9 (2,550) -23% 305.8
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4.8 (1,630) -26% 181.1
The Drop 4.4 (5,480) NEW 4.4
Let's Be Cops 4.3 (1,570) -22% 73
If I Stay 4.0 (1,320) -28% 44.9
The November Man 2.8 (1,030) -36% 22.5
The Giver 2.5 (1,120) -26% 41.2
The Hundred-Foot Journey 2.5 (1,270) -21% 49.4


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Bengaluru: Maharashtra erases Tipu's name from Mumbai playground
Home » World » 6 killed in seaplane crash in Jerusalem Bay near Sydney
6 killed in seaplane crash in Jerusalem Bay near Sydney
Sunday, December 31st, 2017 at 4:37 PM
Sydney: At least six people were killed after a seaplane crashed into Jerusalem Bay near Sydney, Australian New South Wales (NSW) Police confirmed on Sunday.
The Sydney Seaplanes aircraft, carrying a pilot and five passengers, crashed at about 3.15 pm and a search and rescue operation was launched to locate the aircraft which is believed to be submerged, Xinhua news agency reported.
Debris and an oil slick have been found on the surface of the water.
NSW Police confirmed all six bodies had been recovered by about 7.30 pm on Sunday.
According to local media reports, the seaplane was returning a party of five people from a restaurant to Rose Bay in Sydney's east when it crashed into the water.
"We don't know why the plane crashed," Commander of the Kurung-Gai Local Area Command, Acting Superintendent Michael Gorman, told reporters.
Sydney Seaplanes confirmed that an incident had occurred with a plane believed to belong to the company. Sydney Seaplanes offers scenic flights over Sydney tourist attractions and waterways including the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and Pittwater, as well as the Hawkesbury River region.
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Haveri: '59 cases of Congress to be handed over to Lokayukta'

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Rhythm Stars are a fun, fresh group of talented musicians, whose many years of experience in the industry make them a force to be reckoned with. The band have played all over the UK and Europe, and recently spent a year-long residency in Dubai. With a large and varied repertoire of fantastic pop, rock and soul songs spanning from the classics of the 50s and 60s to the current chart hits of today, The Rhythm Stars are well versed in how to keep your wedding guests on the dance floor all night long and can also perform as an acoustic duo for the drinks reception or wedding breakfast.


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Le championnat de France de rugby à XV de 1re division fédérale 1997-1998 voit s'affronter  réparties dans 4 poules. Les deux équipes finalistes sont promues en Elite 2 à l'issue de la saison.

En 1997, le Groupe B est divisé en deux champîonnat distinct, qui prennent le nom de Nationale 1 et de Nationale 2. Ils correspondent aux  et  échelons du rugby français.

Saison régulière

Poule 1

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Poule 2

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Poule 3

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Poule 4

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Phases finales

Barrage

Tableau

* Équipe recevant au match retour

Notes et références

Liens externes
 Résultats sur The history of rugby through its competitions

1997-1998
Rugby D3 1997-1998
Rugby D3 1997-1998
Rugby à XV en France en 1997
Rugby à XV en France en 1998

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


I woke up to the first heavy frost of the year outside my window. It's not much, considering that it's already snowed in northern Illinois where I used to live. But pretty impressive for Texas.
With cold weather comes all sorts of ways to adapt to it. One of my favorite neighbors insists that anything below 50 degrees is too cold to go walking in; one of the delivery drivers at Domino's won't wear long pants until it's in the 20s. Comparing all these cold-weather wimps to the people of Illinois...well, let's just say it's rather humorous.
60 degrees: Northerners wear long pants and short sleeves, although shorts and sandals are fairly common if it's sunny. A jacket might be worn if it's cloudy or windy. A southerner, on the other hand, will be wearing long sleeves and possibly a light jacket.
50 degrees: Northerners switch to long sleeves and pants, although you might spot the occasional teen wearing shorts, and light jackets are not uncommon. Southerners break out the hats and light gloves.
40 degrees: Northerners wear light or midweight jackets and might drive with the windows open. Southerners go to Tractor Supply for parkas.
30 degrees: It is officially cold outside. Northerners wear heavy jackets or parkas depending on their metabolism. Children and teenagers will still try to check the mail or feed the dog barefoot and without a jacket on, although their mothers will scold them for it. Southerners dress like they're going on an Arctic expedition.
20 degrees: Northerners wear parkas and occasionally two pairs of socks. Southerners refuse to leave the house if at all possible; school will be canceled with any measurable snowfall.
10 degrees: Northerners begin to limit their outside activities but are still seen chopping ice off their driveways. Southerners are virtually housebound.
0 degrees: Temperatures of this degree are rare in the south, but can occur, especially if wind chill is factored in. At this point, Northerners will begin to skip church. They might not walk their own dogs, but they will bundle up to walk the neighbor's dogs if they are getting paid for it. Common articles of clothing include long underwear, snow pants, parkas, hats, and mittens so thick the hands are rendered virtually useless. Southern life as we know it ceases to exist.
But here's the thing about life in the south: winter comes in bursts.
It will be fifty one day. Then thirty the next. It might stay in the thirties all week but warm up into the sixties by the weekend. My weather app says that it's supposed to be 67 on Saturday and 49 on Sunday, only to warm back up to 62 by Tuesday. Texas is either bipolar or drunk. Either that or it's compassionate, trying to bring on winter but forever relenting after seeing the misery of its people.
When do you bring out the winter coats? And are you going to buy Where the Clouds Catch Fire (by clicking on the "Purchase" tab above) for anyone on your Christmas list? Let me know in the comments below! God bless you, dear readers, and don't forget to like us on Facebook!


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Idrizi: We voted to the Territorial Division, disrupting the creation of the Region of Northern Epirus
Idrizi: Territorial reforms voted in 30 July 2014, it is becoming a problem not only electoral between political parties, but also geopolitics".
As it has happened in the census in 2011, the Party that represents the nationalist interests of the Cham Community , PDIU when they proposed criminal penalties "who declared as Greek nationality", is the second time that this political party openly stated stance by Albanian politicians on the New Territorial Division of the vote in 2014.
Tirana. During a Congressional Session within PDIU elections, the Party that defends the interests of Cham Community, The Chairman, Shpetim Idrizi, analyzed the activity of this Nationalist Party, which accuses Greece, for genocide against the Cham Community, during World War II.
He called as " the Great Victory" the adoption of The Territorial Division of vote by the Albanian Parliament in July of 2014, stated that "with the votes of our Party, we avoid creating zones of the Northern Epirus, an aspiration of the Greek nationalism" noted Idrizi
But over all, Idrizi during his speech, continuing to declare for a resolution to be adopted by the Albanian Parliament about Chamuria, and proposes to see from the international community, to put pressure on Greece to grant a Autonomy to the Cham community in Greece ".
Despite the heightened nationalist rhetoric, the declarations of the head of the PDIU created the impression in the opinion that "The Territorial Division, separately, was a creature for administrative elections, which favored the government, but at the same time has destroyed the existence of the Greek Communities in the South of Albania, bringing together municipalities , with Muslim Majority, the Greek ones, as was the case of Himara ..
Idris also mentioned Former US Ambassador in Tirana, Alex Arvizu, who officially invited, PDIU to vote for the territorial division, having become a great service, to the nation.
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This report published in Communicable Diseases Intelligence Vol 29 Issue Number 2, contains the OzFoodNet quarterly report for the first quarter of 2005.
The Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing established the OzFoodNet network in 2000 to collaborate nationally to investigate foodborne disease. OzFoodNet conducts studies on the burden of illness and coordinates national investigations into outbreaks of foodborne disease. This quarterly report documents investigations of outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness and clusters of disease potentially related to food occurring around the country.
This report summarises the occurrence of foodborne disease outbreaks and cluster investigations between January and March 2005. Data were received from OzFoodNet representatives in all Australian states and territories and a sentinel site in the Hunter region of New South Wales. The data in this report are provisional and subject to change, as results of outbreak investigations can take months to finalise. We would like to thank the investigators in the public health units and state and territory departments of health as well as public health laboratories and local government environmental health officers who collected data used in this report.
During the first quarter of 2005, OzFoodNet sites reported 145 outbreaks of foodborne or enteric illness. In total, these outbreaks affected 2,446 people and hospitalised 77 persons. Three deaths were reported. All three of the deaths occurred in aged care facilities. Two were associated with outbreaks of norovirus infection and one with Salmonella infection. As usual, the majority (51%, n=74) of outbreaks resulted from infections spread from person-to-person (Figure).
There were 31 outbreaks of illness where contaminated food was suspected or proven to be the primary mode of transmission. This compares with 24 outbreaks for the first quarter of the previous year and 25 outbreaks in the fourth quarter of 2004. Salmonella Typhimurium was the causative agent for seven outbreaks, while Ciguatera toxin was responsible for three outbreaks and Campylobacter for two. Of the remaining outbreaks, one each was caused by Clostridium perfringens, Salmonella Enteritidis 26 var, Salmonella Hessarek, Salmonella Saintpaul, and suspected scombroid poisoning. In one outbreak caused by Salmonella, there were multiple serotypes isolated from patients including: Chester, Muenchen and Subspecies 3b. An aetiological agent was not identified in 42 per cent (13/31) of the outbreaks.
Ten of the outbreaks were associated with meals prepared in restaurants and another seven with food prepared in private residences. Five occurred in aged-care facilities and four were associated with food prepared by commercial caterers. Two outbreaks involved food prepared in takeaway food outlets. Single outbreaks occurred at a school camp, an institution and an undefined setting. Thirteen of the outbreaks occurred in January, six in February and 10 in March.
To investigate these outbreaks, sites conducted six cohort studies and two case control studies. For 21 outbreaks, only descriptive data were collected and in two outbreaks no individual case data was collected. In eight outbreaks, investigators obtained microbiological evidence linking a food vehicle to illness, and analytical epidemiological evidence in five outbreaks. For the remaining outbreaks, investigators obtained descriptive epidemiological evidence implicating the food vehicle or suggesting foodborne transmission.
In New South Wales there were eight outbreaks of foodborne illness reported during the quarter. One outbreak of Campylobacter jejuni in an institution affected two residents on a diet of pureed foods, although no food vehicle was identified. A second outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul in a private residence affecting two people was suspected to be caused by cross contamination of salad by raw chicken. In the other six outbreaks no causative agent was identified. Four of these involved restaurants and two of the four followed the consumption of chicken. The suspected food vehicle was not identified in the other two outbreaks. These restaurant-related outbreaks affected between two and seven people each. The other two outbreaks of unknown aetiology involved a beef casserole prepared by a commercial caterer (13 cases) and food from a takeaway store (3 cases).
Victoria reported 14 outbreaks of foodborne disease, five of which were associated with different phage types of Salmonella Typhimurium. There was one large outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium 197 at a Turkish restaurant. S. Typhimurium 197 was isolated from dips served at the restaurant. The results of this investigation are still being finalised. An outbreak of S. Typhimurium 12 following a barbeque at a private residence resulted in 15 people being ill. The specific food vehicle causing the outbreak was not identified.
Victoria reported two outbreaks of S. Typhimurium 9, one of which was associated with food prepared in a restaurant and the other was associated with a takeaway outlet. The restaurant outbreak affecting 13 people was caused by hollandaise sauce made with raw eggs. S. Typhimurium 9 was cultured from a sample of leftover hollandaise sauce. Hollandaise sauce at this restaurant also resulted in an outbreak of S. Typhimurium 9 one year earlier in May 2004. Trace back of the eggs revealed that the eggs were supplied by the same company for both outbreaks. The second Victorian outbreak of S. Typhimurium 9 was also caused by eggs from this company. In this outbreak affecting 14 people participating in a children's cooking class run by a commercial caterer, investigations implicated chocolate mousse made with raw eggs. Environmental investigations were undertaken on the farm supplying eggs and Salmonella Typhimurium 9 was cultured from a wash sample of dirty eggs.
Eggs were also suspected to be the cause of outbreaks of S. Enteritidis 26 var in an aged care facility and S. Typhimurium 126 var 4 in a private residence. The first affected seven residents and the eggs were traced back to a producer who had recently isolated S. Enteritidis 26 from one of their farms. In the second outbreak five people were ill after consuming chocolate mousse containing S. Typhimurium 126 var 4, although it was not possible to trace back the supply of eggs to a specific farm.
Victoria reported that 30 children and seven staff were ill with campylobacteriosis following a school camp. Campylobacter was isolated from the drinking water supply at the camp, although children also drank unpasturised milk and had contact with farm animals.
There were seven outbreaks in Victoria in which no causative agent was identified. Two of these occurred in aged care facilities and affected 30 and 11 residents respectively. Both were suspected to be caused by Clostridium perfringens. Three of the outbreaks were associated with commercial caterers, one with a restaurant and one with a takeaway outlet. Food vehicles associated with these outbreaks of unknown aetiology included chicken vol-au-vents, veal rolls, red curry, seafood platter, baked fish and hommus dip.
Queensland reported six outbreaks of foodborne illness, three of which were due to ciguatera fish poisoning. The fish responsible for the outbreaks of ciguatera were mackerel, black trevally and yellowtail kingfish. An outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium 12 affected 10 people, although no food vehicle was identified. Thirty-six people were ill in an outbreak of Clostridium perfringens after a meal of braised steak and gravy at an aged care facility. C. perfringens was isolated from both the food eaten and residents' stools. In a second outbreak in an aged care facility, eight residents were ill with salmonellosis thought to be caused by a contaminated rainwater tank. Patients were infected with multiple serotypes of Salmonella, including Muenchen, Chester, and Subspecies 3b over a three month period. Subspecies 3b was isolated from water from the facility's rainwater tank. The tank water was also heavily contaminated with E. coli. The source of the pathogens is unknown but may have been due to amphibians or reptiles.
South Australia reported an outbreak of S. Typhimurium 9 affecting 13 people following a restaurant meal. Shallot pancakes were the only food with a high, but non-significant, association with gastroenteritis.
Tasmania reported one outbreak of suspected scombroid poisoning in two people, thought to be due to yellowfin tuna in a nicoise salad served at a restaurant.
The Australian Capital Territory reported an outbreak of S. Hessarek caused by contaminated free range eggs. The eggs were served at a restaurant as poached eggs and as hollandaise sauce.
During January to March 2005, there was an increase in S. Typhimurium 197 cases in New South Wales that occurred among people of Middle Eastern ethnicity. While this community-wide increase in infections occurred at the same time as the large outbreak in Melbourne, there was no apparent connection between the two outbreaks. The number of cases of S. Typhimurium 170/108 was also markedly increased in New South Wales during the first quarter of 2005. New South Wales investigated the increases of both of these phage types of S. Typhimurium using a case control study methodology exploring hypotheses developed during interviews of a series of infected patients. The hypotheses included consumption of poultry and red meats, although results of these studies were not finalised at the time of this report and are not reported in the summary of outbreaks above.
During the quarter, there were two outbreaks potentially associated with drinking water. The first was associated with an outbreak of campylobacteriosis on a school visit to a farm and the second with a prolonged outbreak of salmonellosis at an aged care facility. The aged care facility used rainwater tanks as the source of drinking water. The tanks may have been contaminated by animals on roof catchment areas. This outbreak and previous microbiological surveys illustrate that tanks may be unsuitable as a source of drinking water for aged care facilities.4 Rainwater tanks have been implicated as a source of disease previously and they are difficult to clean and maintain.5,6 Rainwater tanks may be a more common cause of disease than previously recognised.
1. Dalton CB, Gregory J, Kirk MD, Stafford RJ, Givney R, Kraa E, Gould D. Foodborne disease outbreaks in Australia, 1995 to 2000. Commun Dis Intell 2004;28:211–224.
2. Mintz ED, Cartter ML, Hadler JL, Wassell JT, Zingeser JA, Tauxe RV. Dose-response effects in an outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis. Epidemiol Infect 1994;112:13–23.
3. OzFoodNet Working Group. Foodborne disease investigation across Australia: annual report of the OzFoodNet network, 2003. Commun Dis Intell 2004;28:359–389.
4. Simmons G, Hope V, Lewis G, Whitmore J, Gao W. Contamination of potable roof-collected rainwater in Auckland, New Zealand. Water Res 2001;35:1518–1524.
5. Merritt A, Miles R, Bates J. An outbreak of Campylobacter enteritis on an island resort, north Queensland. Commun Dis Intell 1999;23:215–219.
6. Taylor R, Sloan D, Cooper T, Morton B, Hunter I. A waterborne outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul. Commun Dis Intell 2000;24:336–340.
* No foodborne outbreaks reported from Western Australia or the Northern Territory during the quarter.


Private sponsorships from friends and local businesses keep Michaels Paralympic Dream alive as the he heads to the 2011 INAS/IPC Global Games in Imperia, Italy.
Friends and family members of Michael Murray, the highest ranked track athlete with intellectual disability in the US, spearheaded a local fundraising campaign to help offset Michael's out-of-pocket expenses for the 2011 Global Games in Italy. The Global Games is an important qualifier for the London 2012 Paralympics and Michael represents the best chance for a US runner to qualify in the T20 class.
Athletes Without Limits would like to thank Nashville Illusions USA Track & Field Club and all those who contributed at the local benefits for supporting Michael's Paralympic dream.


Odessa is a multi-cultural, multi-religious city with more than one million inhabitants and with European traditions. The city occupies a unique place in the post-Soviet space and among the Black Sea countries. Here Odessa rightly called «the capital of jazz». It was she (Odessa) who gave birth to the first jazz orchestras. Jazz continues to show momentum in large-scale jazz festivals in our days. Jazz is actively demanded in Odessa, both local audiences and numerous tourists. What is he, Jazz in Odessa?
In the early twentieth century Odessa breathed with jazz.
A hilarious movie «We are Jazzmen», which was filmed in Odessa in the historic area of the city, tells us about that time. The film tells us about a student of the Odessa Music College Costya Ivanov who draws a new direction in music — jazz in 1926. Because of this hobby he, Komsomol, was expelled from college and asked to choose between studying and favorite music. Constantine chose jazz. Musical comedy directed by Karen Shakhnazarov was the best film of 1983 according to a poll of the magazine «Soviet Screen».
Parade on the Jazz Carnival — lively and bright!
It is planned to open a jazz school for children in Odessa. And also Mikhail Freidlin has proposed to open «The Jazz Academy named Tatiana Boyeva» in Odessa. You can leave your comments and support this proposal.
The decade of the Odessa Jazz Carnival (2001-2010) has passed, and Mikhail Freidlin has a new great idea. Now he is an author and producer of a new project — the International Festival-Contest of jazz improvisation skills "Master-Jam Fest"! The Contest consists of two stages: the selection online tour and the final tour in Odessa on the International Day of jazz, declared by UNESCO this year. Jazz musicians able to improvise in different jazz styles are invited to participate in the contest! Read the rules and instructions and join us!


Well, well, well. Somethings just can't stay hidden for long. It's true. I really do enjoy me some Harry Potter. So my bestest friend, Nicole, and I decided to go see the midnight show. I've never been to a midnight show. I went to the movie theater's website, and saw that there was also an event/party thingy. I said, "Do you want to go to a party, too?" And she said, "What party? Hells, yes, I want to go to a party!" (Yes. She did say that.) Then I directed her to the website. Because I am savvy that way. Girls' Night was on, baby!
Thursday, I drove down to the big city where my bestest friend lives. We met when I lived in the big city at Stampin' Up! stamp club. She liked me. Had one of those girl crushes. Kind of like a man crush, but only girly. I liked her, too. It worked out. We're awesome together. I digress.
We went to Chick-fil-A for dinner. Okay, I ate. She got a Coke. I said, "I threw up last night." It was true. I woke up at one in the morning and puked my guts out. Then I was fine. Then, at three, I woke up and wondered if I needed to throw up again. I didn't. I think I just ate something that did not sit right with me in my stomach. But I lost two pounds when I weighed myself the next morning. That's all that matters, right?
I digress again. I probably will again. Just wait for it.
After dinner, we went to the movie theater where they were having the party. A little place called "The District". No lie. It sounds so - I don't know. Concrete? Prisony? But it's not. It's nice. We went to Platform 9 3/4 where we checked in, were given wrist bands, and our acceptance letters to Hogwarts. So exciting! Then we got our 6 free Galleons (if you wanted more, they were $10 for 6 - so not worth it). Then we got to play dress up in some witchy clothes, and get our picture taken. We watched a kid try to beat his mom at Wizard Chess, and posed by the chess board. After that, we got sorted. I am a Gryffindor. My bestest friend suddenly became my arch enemy when the Sorting Hat put her in Slytherin. So rude. Actually, we just randomly picked these badges out of a bowl. I wanted to be in Ravenclaw. "Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure." (Rowena Ravenclaw) I'm really not that brave.
Yeah, just ignore her dates stamp. It's wrong. But that's my letter!
Here we are together, together, together. Hooray for Hogwarts!
"That's barbaric!" "That's a wizard's chess!"
Oh, yeah. I'm pretty undesirable.
You'd better watch out for her. She's dangerous.
Yeah, no. I didn't put a snake around my neck. But you go, Britney Spears. Oh, yeah.
Snakes aren't my thing, but Nicole does not like spiders.
I asked Professor Snape to take our picture. He was kind enough to oblige.
Hey! That's where we had dinner!
Oh, what a night! It was so totally wicked!
hey! so you know we live like 2 minutes from the district right? we were going to go last night but jamie had to work super early! too funny. we're headed there in a few minutes, actually. i'm glad it was fun! but jealous too. you are pretty-pretty.


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Trupanea syrmophora is a species of tephritid or fruit flies in the genus Tephritomyia of the family Tephritidae.

Distribution
Fruit flies feed upon fruit, leaf's, honeydew, and vegetables Chile.

References

Tephritinae
Insects described in 1942
Diptera of South America
Endemic fauna of Chile


text:
Marvel Releases Guardians of the Galaxy RPG, No IAPs or Data Connection Required
Tim July 17, 2014 12
In the new Guardians of the Galaxy game from Marvel, you team up with Star-Lord, Rocket, Groot, Gamora, and Drax to keep The Universal Weapon out of the wrong hands. The game, which is an RPG, costs $4.99, but crazily enough, does not feature any IAPs or...
Check Out AirFighters Pro, One of the Best Flight Simulator Games We've Played on Android
Tim March 28, 2014 22
A new flight simulator game is available on Google Play, titled AirFighters Pro. The game comes from developer Rortos, known for a handful of other flight simulator games on both Android and iOS. This title is priced at $4.99, with no free version currently...
94 Seconds is a Fun and Fast-Paced Trivia Game That is in Fact, on Android
Last night, I was sitting next to a friend that happens to own an iPhone. He pulled out his phone and started playing a game that looked really interesting which I had never seen before, so I asked what it was. He replied and told me it was called 94 Seconds....
Resident Evil 4 Makes Its Way Onto Android In Korea, The Zombies Are Coming
To be honest, this was a long time coming. Capcom's Resident Evil 4 can be found on almost every platform that you can shoehorn a game into. After debuting on the Nintendo Gamecube, the game was ported to the Playstation 2 and then proceeded onto everything...
Review: Shift does platforming with a touchscreen right
Matt Demers February 12, 2011 11
If you're familiar with my game reviews, you'll know that I'm not a fan of anything that tries to make precision movements with on-screen buttons work. They tend to be ill-advised affairs, and a frustrating time for all. Something about buttons that aren't...
Review: Runik brings tile matching madness to Android
I'm a big fan of puzzle games on my phone for two reasons: usually they're quite easy to pick up, and they tend to be easy on my aging Droid's poor processor. Accessibility is key for Android games, and puzzlers seem to be one of the few genres that can...


Dental Implants are a revolution in the realm of tooth replacement. Before they made their way into dentistry, the only option for tooth replacement was removable dentures, which made chewing some types of food difficult, and sometimes impossible.
Dental implants are a permanent form of tooth replacement that is not removable.
A dental implant is very different from other tooth replacement options. A titanium screw is inserted and allowed to fuse with the jaw bone. The screw is then fitted with an abutment and a crown to make it look just like a natural tooth.
All tooth replacement options can improve visual appearance. However, they cannot help preserve the bone that breaks down after teeth have been removed.
Dental implants are placed in the empty space where a tooth would be found, which preserves the bone, and the jaw structure. They can be used individually, or as a full mouth replacement option without needing to anchor to other teeth.
Having a dental implant placed sounds more dramatic than the procedure really is. The procedure is actually fairly quick.
An incision is made into the gum tissue where the implant will be placed. Variously sized drills are used to create the proper sized hole in the bone for the implant to be inserted. After the hole in the bone has been made, the implant is screwed into the bone.
Once the dentist is satisfied with the placement of the implant, the hole is then stitched closed around the implant.
This procedure may sound extremely invasive but it can be performed under local anesthesia, or under sedation. The operation should be completely painless.
There may be some post-surgical pain while the incision heals and the implant merges with the bone. It will take 4 months for the implant to heal before you can have the crown added to make it appear as a natural tooth.


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The generation of subsurface temperature profiles for Kuwait
A. A. Al-Temeemi, D. J. Harris
A predicted profile of the periodic variation of subsurface temperature with depth is presented for the soil conditions of the State of Kuwait. The generation of the profile is based on Labs' equation for subterranean temperatures, which takes into account the thermal and physical properties of the soil. These subsurface temperatures are then compared with the ambient dry-bulb temperature. The profiles are then used to analyse the seasonal variations in subsurface temperatures at different depths and the time lags produced when compared with air temperatures. The resulting charts and graphs should be a useful tool for those interested in the energy conservation potential of earth-sheltered and earth-bermed structures in Kuwait. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-7788(01)00069-X
Earth-bermed buildings
Earth-sheltered buildings
Subsurface temperatures
Subterranean temperatures
10.1016/S0378-7788(01)00069-X
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'The generation of subsurface temperature profiles for Kuwait'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
temperature profile Earth & Environmental Sciences
temperature Earth & Environmental Sciences
Earth structure Earth & Environmental Sciences
energy conservation Earth & Environmental Sciences
soil condition Earth & Environmental Sciences
seasonal variation Earth & Environmental Sciences
air temperature Earth & Environmental Sciences
physical property Earth & Environmental Sciences
Al-Temeemi, A. A., & Harris, D. J. (2001). The generation of subsurface temperature profiles for Kuwait. Energy and Buildings, 33(8), 837-841. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-7788(01)00069-X
Al-Temeemi, A. A. ; Harris, D. J. / The generation of subsurface temperature profiles for Kuwait. In: Energy and Buildings. 2001 ; Vol. 33, No. 8. pp. 837-841.
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title = "The generation of subsurface temperature profiles for Kuwait",
abstract = "A predicted profile of the periodic variation of subsurface temperature with depth is presented for the soil conditions of the State of Kuwait. The generation of the profile is based on Labs' equation for subterranean temperatures, which takes into account the thermal and physical properties of the soil. These subsurface temperatures are then compared with the ambient dry-bulb temperature. The profiles are then used to analyse the seasonal variations in subsurface temperatures at different depths and the time lags produced when compared with air temperatures. The resulting charts and graphs should be a useful tool for those interested in the energy conservation potential of earth-sheltered and earth-bermed structures in Kuwait. {\textcopyright} 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.",
keywords = "Earth-bermed buildings, Earth-sheltered buildings, Energy conservation, Kuwait, Subsurface temperatures, Subterranean temperatures",
author = "Al-Temeemi, {A. A.} and Harris, {D. J.}",
doi = "10.1016/S0378-7788(01)00069-X",
journal = "Energy and Buildings",
Al-Temeemi, AA & Harris, DJ 2001, 'The generation of subsurface temperature profiles for Kuwait', Energy and Buildings, vol. 33, no. 8, pp. 837-841. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-7788(01)00069-X
The generation of subsurface temperature profiles for Kuwait. / Al-Temeemi, A. A.; Harris, D. J.
In: Energy and Buildings, Vol. 33, No. 8, 10.2001, p. 837-841.
T1 - The generation of subsurface temperature profiles for Kuwait
AU - Al-Temeemi, A. A.
AU - Harris, D. J.
N2 - A predicted profile of the periodic variation of subsurface temperature with depth is presented for the soil conditions of the State of Kuwait. The generation of the profile is based on Labs' equation for subterranean temperatures, which takes into account the thermal and physical properties of the soil. These subsurface temperatures are then compared with the ambient dry-bulb temperature. The profiles are then used to analyse the seasonal variations in subsurface temperatures at different depths and the time lags produced when compared with air temperatures. The resulting charts and graphs should be a useful tool for those interested in the energy conservation potential of earth-sheltered and earth-bermed structures in Kuwait. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
AB - A predicted profile of the periodic variation of subsurface temperature with depth is presented for the soil conditions of the State of Kuwait. The generation of the profile is based on Labs' equation for subterranean temperatures, which takes into account the thermal and physical properties of the soil. These subsurface temperatures are then compared with the ambient dry-bulb temperature. The profiles are then used to analyse the seasonal variations in subsurface temperatures at different depths and the time lags produced when compared with air temperatures. The resulting charts and graphs should be a useful tool for those interested in the energy conservation potential of earth-sheltered and earth-bermed structures in Kuwait. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
KW - Earth-bermed buildings
KW - Earth-sheltered buildings
KW - Subsurface temperatures
KW - Subterranean temperatures
U2 - 10.1016/S0378-7788(01)00069-X
DO - 10.1016/S0378-7788(01)00069-X
JO - Energy and Buildings
JF - Energy and Buildings
Al-Temeemi AA, Harris DJ. The generation of subsurface temperature profiles for Kuwait. Energy and Buildings. 2001 Oct;33(8):837-841. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-7788(01)00069-X


text:
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Massachusetts Case Law › Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Decisions › 1984 › Minaya v. Massachusetts Credit Union Share Ins. Corp.
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Minaya v. Massachusetts Credit Union Share Ins. Corp.
392 Mass. 904 (1984)
467 N.E.2d 874
JOSE MINAYA & others[1] vs. MASSACHUSETTS CREDIT UNION SHARE INSURANCE CORPORATION.
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Essex.
Present: WILKINS, ABRAMS, NOLAN, & LYNCH, JJ.
John P. McGloin for the plaintiffs.
Michael P. Marnik for the defendant.
ABRAMS, J.
In this action, the plaintiffs allege that their dwellings were destroyed by a fire proximately caused by the *905 dangerous and hazardous conditions maintained by the defendant on an adjacent property. The defendant's answer was a denial, and an affirmative defense that, on the date of the fire, September 9, 1982, the owner of the property was the city of Lynn, because, on August 13, 1982, a final decree in the city's tax lien case against the defendant had been recorded. In its answer, the defendant claimed that it "was not in control, did not own nor have any interest in the premises" on the date of the fire. The defendant moved for judgment on the pleadings. Mass. R. Civ. P. 12 (c), 365 Mass. 754 (1974). A Superior Court judge allowed the defendant's motion, and we granted the plaintiffs' application for direct appellate review. We reverse.
The effect of a motion for judgment on the pleadings is "to challenge the legal sufficiency of the complaint." Burlington v. District Attorney for the N. Dist., 381 Mass. 717, 717-718 (1980). See Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. United States, 490 F. Supp. 328, 329 n. 1 (E.D.N.Y. 1980) ("On a 12 [c] motion, the movant is deemed to admit his adversary's allegations of fact; the movant's allegations, conversely, are taken as true only if specifically admitted by the adversary"). "For purposes of the court's consideration of the [rule 12 (c)] motion, all of the well pleaded factual allegations in the adversary's pleadings are assumed to be true and all contravening assertions in the movant's pleadings are taken to be false." 5 C.A. Wright & A.R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1368, at 691 (1969).
The essence of the complaint is that the defendant's property was in a dangerous and hazardous condition, and that the condition of the property created a nuisance for which the defendant was liable. The plaintiffs assert that "[a]s a direct and proximate result of the nuisance created or allowed to exist by the defendant and the negligence, or intentional acts of the defendant as aforesaid, the plaintiff[s'] personal property and [that] of the plaintiff[s'] famil[ies] [was] damaged and destroyed by fire, all to the plaintiff[s'] damage."
The parties do not dispute the fact that on the date of the fire, September 9, 1982, the defendant did not own the property *906 because on August 13, 1982, the city of Lynn had recorded a final decree in its tax lien case against the defendant. The complaint, however, does allege that the defendant continued to maintain the nuisance "for several days" after the city recorded its tax lien.
The narrow issue before us is whether the fact that title to the property was in the city of Lynn insulates the defendant from any liability. We conclude that it may not, and therefore we remand for further proceedings.
A transfer of ownership of land does, in most cases, relieve the prior owner of liability for dangerous conditions existing on the land. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 352 (1965). There is, however, an exception to this general principle which, on the pleadings before us, may apply to the instant case.
The "exception to the general rule of nonliability of the vendor is found in a number of cases where the land, when it is transferred, is in such condition that it involves an unreasonable risk of harm to those outside of the premises. In nearly all of the decided cases, this has amounted to either a public or a private nuisance, but this is clearly not essential. In such a case the vendor remains subject, at least for a reasonable time, to any liability which he would have incurred if he had remained in possession, for injuries to persons or property outside of the land, caused by such a condition. The reason usually given is the obviously fictitious one that by selling the land in such condition he has `authorized the continuance of the nuisance.' A more reasonable explanation would appear to be merely that the vendor's responsibility to those outside of his land is regarded as of such social importance that he is not permitted to shift it, even by an outright sale" (emphasis supplied). W. Prosser, Torts § 64, at 413 (4th ed. 1971). The Restatement (Second) of Torts § 840A (1977) states that a transferor of land "upon which there is a condition involving a nuisance for which he would be subject to liability if he continued in possession remains subject to liability for the continuation of the nuisance after he transfers the land ... until the vendee or lessee has had reasonable opportunity to discover the condition and abate it." See id., § 373 (analogous *907 provision for negligence). See also O'Connor v. Altus, 67 N.J. 106, 114 (1975) ("liability for physical harm caused by a natural or artificial condition, of which the vendor has actual or constructive notice, involving unreasonable risk to persons on or off the land continues only until the vendee has had a reasonable opportunity to discover the condition and take appropriate precautions"). Cf. Walter v. Wagner, 225 Ky. 255, 258 (1928) ("the one who creates a nuisance on his land is not relieved from liability for the damage it occasions to others by a sale of the property.... [Liability] would continue until the liability of the purchaser becomes fixed").
Further, "[p]ublic policy in a civilized community requires that there be someone to be held responsible for a private nuisance on each piece of real estate, and, particularly in an urban area, that there be no oases of nonliability where a private nuisance may be maintained with impunity." Kurtigian v. Worcester, 348 Mass. 284, 291 (1965). Thus, an owner of land who has maintained a nuisance may not be discharged of responsibility for that nuisance merely by either failing to pay property taxes or by a transfer until the new titleholder has had a reasonable time to correct the nuisance. Resolution of the plaintiffs' claims is therefore contingent on the development of facts relative to the nature of the nuisance, the time at which the defendant relinquished control of the property, and whether the period commencing on the date on which the city assumed control and ending on the date of the fire was reasonably sufficient to permit the city to abate the particular nuisance.
Our decision is not inconsistent with Kurtigian v. Worcester, supra, relied on by the defendant. In that case, liability for a private nuisance was imposed on the defendant city, which had recorded an instrument of taking nine years before the plaintiff's injury. We held that, despite the fact that the city had not foreclosed the prior owner's right of redemption until after the injury, "the city's right to possession long preceded the date of injury." Id. at 287. We stated that "[l]iability for damage caused by the defective condition of premises turns upon whether a defendant was in control, either through ownership or otherwise," id. at 285, and concluded that the nuisance *908 "was on land owned by and subject to the control of the city." Id. at 290. Because the city was liable,[2] we specifically did not reach the issue of the liability of the prior owner. Id. at 285-286.
Because in some limited circumstances a prior owner of real estate may be liable for a nuisance even after the transfer of title to the property, the plaintiffs' complaint is legally sufficient to survive a motion under Mass. R. Civ. P. 12 (c).[3] The judgment is reversed and the matter remanded to the Superior Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
[1] Juana Rosario, Martin Castillo, Alejandro Nunez, Victor Castillo, Manuel Nunez, and Seferina Ramos.
[2] The city of Lynn has not been joined as a defendant in this action, and no issues relating to its liability are before us.
[3] The defendant also argues that the plaintiffs' pleadings are defective in that they fail to allege certain specific facts, they fail to show the causal link between the alleged nuisance and the fire, and they insufficiently state a claim of nuisance. Under our rules of civil procedure, such defects do not warrant judgment on the pleadings.
"Under Mass. R. Civ. P. 8, 365 Mass. 749 (1974), intendments are to be made in favor of the pleader, rather than against him, and we resist any tendency to reinstate abandoned pleading requirements. Charbonnier v. Amico, 367 Mass. 146, 152-153 (1975). Legal conclusions are not frowned on, if the defendant is fairly notified of the nature of the claim and the grounds on which the plaintiff relies. Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46 (1957)." Druker v. Roland Wm. Jutras Assocs., 370 Mass. 383, 385 (1976).
of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court opinions.


St. Andrew Avellino Parish under the direction of Mr. Stephen Galizia, Music Director, has two choirs that sing each Sunday at Mass.The Junior Choir is made up of young men and women of our parish from 4th grade through high school. They practice every week and sing at the 9:00 a.m. Family Mass each Sunday from September through June. The Adult Choir practices every week and sings at our 10:30 a.m. Mass every Sunday from September through June. Each choir also performs during our Annual Christmas Concert and Tree Lighting that takes place on the 3rd Sunday of Advent each year.


text:
Dutch, English, Greek, Italian, Russian
AN-jəl-ə
God's messenger
More info about the name "Angela"
Angela originates in Greek language and means "God's messenger". It is a feminine form of Angelus. In English-speaking countries it has been used since the 18th century and in the U.S. it was most popular in the 1970s. It was popularized by the English actress Angela Lansbury, who starred in the TV series Murder, She Wrote. Angela was also the name of a Catholic Saint in the 13th century.
Popularity of the Name Angela
Also Spelled Like...
Angelia, Angie, Angelina, Anzhela, Anjela, Andela, Andjela
Famous Angelas
Angela Bassett - actress
Angela Chang - singer
Angela Gurria - artist
Angela Kinsey - actress
Angela Lansbury - actress
Angela Lanza - actress
Angela Lindvall - model
Angela Molina - actress
Angela Via - singer
Angela Sarafyan - actress
+ Add a Name · View More


Mechanics and auto part stores are teaming up all over northern Michigan to give victims of domestic abuse a second chance.
According to the organizing body, 1-800-Charity Cars, owning a reliable car may not be the American dream, but for mothers attempting to escape abusive relationships, a car can be a new lease on life.
"For a family living in a rural area, a vehicle is crucial in order to get a job since there is next to none public transportation," said domestic abuse and sexual assault program director Chris Krajewski of the Women's Resource Center. "Having a reliable car can mean the difference between getting out of an abusive relationship or not."
Charlevoix residents may donate a used car no more than eight years old, less than 150,000 miles and in relatively good shape. The car will then have any necessary parts replaced by Rodney Kippe's Complete Muffler in Charlevoix, one of 105 participating auto shops in Michigan, before the cars are awarded to needy area recipients during a ceremony on Oct. 13 in Lansing.
"We could probably do a couple cars, but we have yet to find one," Kippe said. "You can bring it (your used car) down and we'll get a hold of Charity Cars and someone from their organization will come out and inspect it to see if it is acceptable."
Those wishing to donate a used car may also contact 1-800-Charity Cars directly by calling 1-800-242-7489 or visiting them on the Web at www.800charitycars.org where they may fill out a donation application.
Kippe said the latest he could receive cars, free from large defects such as engine or transmission problems, and have them ready for the giveaway is the end of September.
While nicer used vehicles are desired, Charity Cars will accept older vehicles which may be sold at auction with all the proceeds used to attain reliable cars.
Charity Cars began in 1996 as a nonprofit with the mission of providing reliable transportation to military families, victims of natural disasters and the working poor in addition to victims of domestic violence.
According to Krajewski, the need for these cars is a real one.
"The Women's Resource Center in northern Michigan serves five counties and in our last fiscal year we opened over 570 (domestic abuse) cases," she said. "I'd like to see every survivor of domestic abuse who does not have a car to get one."
She added, "It's one last barrier they have to overcome."
Charity Cars also furnishes the first six months of insurance and first time license plate and title fees.
"Accountability plays an important role in the program via the Charity Cars contract. Vehicles are registered and titled in the recipient's name, however, Charity Cars retains a lien on each vehicle for a period of one year so the vehicle cannot be sold," it states on the Charity Cars Web site. "At times recipients are mandated to be employed within 30 days upon the receipt of a vehicle and must remain employed throughout the lien period. Additionally, contractual obligations require recipients to maintain car insurance and to participate in follow up case studies."
The Charity Cars group hopes recipients of the cars will use the car to find gainful employment and become self-sufficient.
Randy Lucyk, owner of Midas Muffler and Brake Shop in Kalkaska and regional coordinator of the auto shops involved in the event said they are down 40 percent of the number of cars they would like to have.
"We are hoping to get 12 cars in northern Michigan. We would encourage people to look into their hearts and driveways and see if they have a vehicle that would benefit people in their community," he said. "If we get donations from Charlevoix, we're going to do our best to get those back in Charlevoix."
Vehicle donations qualify for a tax deduction if the value exceeds $500.
While charity cars is not taking applications for vehicles until 2009, people eligible for cars include domestic violence victims and natural disasters, the poor and military families.
Those wishing to apply in two years can send their letters to 1-800CharityCars, 750 Miami Spring Drive, Longwood, FL 32779.
Anyone in an abusive relationship can get help by calling the Women's Resource Center's 24-hour hotline at (231) 347-0082.
Contact Kippe at Complete Muffler by calling (231) 547-1171.
To donate a vehicle outside of Charlevoix, contact Lucyk at (800) 310-7810.


All current AAA members receive 25% off their entire purchase of $200 or more including prescription lens upgrades at Glasses.com. Prescription glasses orders also include free lenses on CR-39 PLUS lenses. Orders under the $200 threshold will receive 15% off. Offer will be auto-applied to qualifying orders and reflected in the order summary. Offer cannot be combined with other discounts. Other restrictions may apply. Void where prohibited. Must be valid AAA member to participate.


The use of the word "just" by an Australian means that whatever it is you have to do, it will not be easy, as in "Just pull that sword out of the stone" or "Just split that atom."
Michael Edward Palin (born 5 May 1943) is an English comedian, actor and television presenter most famous as one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python, and as a presenter of travel documentaries.
Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won't be made safer by creating barriers between people.
There are many ways of seeing the world. You can hang upside down from a meteor, volunteer to be the fourth stage of a three-stage rocket, or simply get in a balloon and keep going. But if it's sheer, unadulterated discomfort you're looking for, just stay on land.
I wish them a long and happy life. If it's as long as their wedding, I'm sure they'll be fine.
One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.
Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won't be made safer by creating barriers between people. Cries of "They're evil, let's get 'em" or "The infidels must die" sound frightening, but they're desperately empty of argument and understanding. They're the rallying cries of prejudice, the call to arms of those who find it easier to hate than admit they might be not be right about everything.
It's not a model if it's full-size. It's a ice-breaker!
I've got a false lip.
This was a comment made about picketing of the film Monty Python's Life of Brian  but there is no reason to attribute it to Michael Palin.