Absent in the spring by Mary Westmacott

Better known as Agatha Christie :-) I read if because I was curious, since this is not a crime story at all. It's not a love story either, though. It's a psychological portrait, I could say, a very peculiar book.
You follow Joan's thoughts. She lives in England with her husband: her three children are now adults and with their own lives and spouses. She went to visit her daughter who wasn't feeling well, and while trying to go back she was stuck and the India-Turkey border because of the bad weather, and in the middle of nowhere she had nothing to do but think. It took a while, it was a long process, but Joan came to realize what we had just seen her in her thoughts. She always wanted her quiet life where everything's perfect and she's done all good things, and her family loves her, and all is good, but we saw the truth. When she told us of how she had her husband choose a job he didn't like, she was satisfied with herself and how she saved him, but we "saw his face", and knew the truth. She thought she had always made the right choices, good decisions, she was sure she had dedicated her life to her family, never thinking of herself, but we could see the truth, as could her little child when once asked her what it was that she did for the family: it's the nanny that gives them food, clothes, and generally takes care of them, and it's dad that pays her and pays for everything else, working all day. What was her role exactly? She tried to answer, but not in a satisfactory way, so she got angry at the insolence, feeling hurt and not appreciated, until she was apologiesed to.
She eventually, out there alone with herself in the desert, came to realise that her husband had a while back been in love with a woman that later died, that her oldest daughter Averil is far away emotionally from her, that she never understood any of her children. Tony had succeeded in doing what he wanted despite what her mother wanted, but her youngest daughter Barbara had married the first man that had proposed her just to get away from that house. Barbara didn't want her here, she had probably tried to kill herself after having had an affair with a scoundrel that disappeared. Her father had always known about this, but she had never realised it. She didn't want to. Sometimes she had seen the truth, more than once, but had always refused to ackknowledge it; she had always chose to believe that everything was fine and perfect, thinking them nothing more than crazy thoughts. Fortunately her husband is such a good man he's practically a saint, and the children always adored him. Joan thinks all this when she's alone out there, scared out of her mind when she thinks she has lost herself, and is alone in the world. She decides that she'll apologise to her husband, because she does love him, always has, and wants to change life... just like that.
On the train, she talks to a Russian aristocratic woman about all this, and she remains silent, as if doubting her, just like I was feeling.
As soon as she's back home, that whole adventure starts to seem like a dream, like a fool idea, and gradually her mind brings her back to her old self. She acts like nothing ever happened when she sees her husband again, but we hear his thoughts when he regrets he never told that woman that he loved her, when he reads Barbara's letter and we now have proof that everything we and eventually Joan suspected was really true. Only when he mumbles something about being alone, Joan runs into his arms shouting But I'm not alone! I'm not alone, I have you! and he comforted her Sure, you have me, but inside he was thinking that it was not true, she was alone, and she always will be, but with God's help she'll never know... I felt chilling, can't really explain it. I liked this book: nothing happens, in a way, and yet we get a look into this family and their souls, and can analize Joan much more than she can herself.
That final line really chilled me, and I hoped this is the right word. I'm sorry I can't explain it better, but I felt it inside.

Captain Phillips - 2013

It's a big, big movie, but it's not for me. I understand it's a big movie, well done, with an important story, the true story of a US ship attacked by pirates in April 2009, but to me it was part boring and part scary, because those men, those pirates were really scary, more than any zombie or monster I've ever seen. Maybe because these looked real and crazy. I don't know. It was a great movie, though, good story, good actors, very well done, really good stuff. I can see that, and admire the work. It's just not my kind of stuff. Sorry, my bad.

Eragon - 2006

I love fantasy books, but I've never read this series, so I don't know about the books, but this film is... really nothing special, acually it's pretty boring. Now, the beginning was cool, because battles with dragons are always fun, and also I admit I liked Arya (Sienna Guillory) very much. The scenes with Arya in the woods are lovely.  Eragon finds the egg she was protecting, and soon a little dragon comes out, little and blue, really adorable. The only really good thing about this film is right here, the dragon! It is beautiful, and adorable when it's little. The cutest little thing, really beautiful, all blue with blue eyes= Saphira, of course. Her voice is Rachel Weisz.
The king Galbatorix is played bo John Malkovich, but he has like five minutes total! Serving the king with his magic is Durza (Robert Carlyle), and here I have a puzzle: I like Carlyle, I like wizards, sorcerers, fantasy and all, and yet I don't like Durza. It almost seemed impossible to me, and yet it is so. He just doesn't 'feel' real... still, the final battle's special effects are coll, with his dark magic.. :-)
Brom (Jeremy Irons) trains Eragon and wants to take him to the rebels camp, the Varden. Now, can we take a moment to consider this? Jeremy Irons in a fantasy movie... why they keep doing this? Haven't they learn anything from history??? Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against him, on the contrary I like him, and I'd rather have him than Eragon the whole time, and yet I know that the combination JeremyIrons-FantasyMovie is not a happy one! Stop doing that, stop condemning all fantasy stories like this. Please, stop! Okay? Call him for something different, by the way he looked good with that beard, and he talked like Sean Connery, I liked him a lot, but this doesn't change the facts!
Anyway.
The light is cool, maybe it's just the characters that are not well developed. Of course the kid is stupid, that goes without saying: "better to ask forgiveness than permission" : what an idiot, a reckless idiot, an arrogant child who could have gotten them all killed but he's damn lucky as it always happens in these cases, and only Brom dies saving him. I'd like to read the books one day to see if Eragon is really so stupid. I mean, maybe not. Look at Percy Jackson: in the movie Percy is stupid, Annabeth is useless and Grover is unbearable, but in the books Grover is sweet, Annabeth is smart and Percy is loyal and brave, and a shy, good kid!
The best thing of the whole story is that it's all the dragon's choice:
"A dragon will only hatch if it feels the presence of its rider. It'll wait forever, if it has to. But now it's found you. It will serve you and only you, and that's put your life in danger because the easiest way for the king to destroy your dragon is to kill you. A rider will live on if his dragon is killed, but if a rider dies so does his dragon".

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: book 1: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

It's a good book. It didn't place in my top list but still scored pretty well. Usually I prefer to read the book before watching the movie, but this time I had already watched the film before even knowing this book series existed. Yet, it's so different that it didn't make any difference. I could never see the characters with the various actors' faces. They were completely different, everything is pretty different. Percy is a twelve years old kid, very young. Medusa appears like a kind old lady at first, not like a young, cool Lady Godiva. The story too is different in many ways, and Hades was pretty cool in the book.
The story is this: Percy changes school every year because he has behaviour problems: deficit of attention, and has also difficulty reading : he's more than dislexic, the letters appear to float around in front of his eyes. He feels that everything is against him, even his own mind. He loves his mother so very much, but hates the man she married. He doesn't yet know that he's Poseidon's son (nobody knows it yet) and that monsters are out to get him, so his mother only married that disgusting man so that his horrid smell could mask Percy's , and thus protecting him from monsters. One day they are found out, when his teacher reveals to be a fury and attacks him,  but at first Mr Brunner and Grover covers it all up making him believe he's imagining things. While on a trip with his mother, Grover rushes in to tell them they're in danger, and the only way to save Percy is to run to the Camp HalfBlood, where all demiGods can live in peace, and his mother drives him and his friend Grover until a Minotaur attacks them. His mother is taken and disappears vanishing in light. He fights the Minotaur and the two kids get into the camp. Well, he's passes out and is brought into the camp where he wakes up a few days later.  Grover is the satyr that was at his school to protect him, and his teacher Mr Brunner reveals himself to be Chiron the centaur. He stays at the camp for a while, training especially with Luke son of Hermes who becomes his friend, and  stays in Hermes' house with Luke and many others until it is discovered who his father is. Poseidon himself identifys him as his son with his symbol over the kid's head, so Percy moves to an empty house since he's the only child of Poseidon in the camp. Later Percy finds out that Zeus' weapon has been stolen, and there will be a terrible war if it isn't returned. He's given the quest to find it, he consults the Oracle and accepts the quest thinking that going to Hades' realm will get him his mother back. He plans to explain to Hades that he doesn't have the Lightning and never did, and ask for his mother back. He goes with his friends Grover and Annabeth, daughter of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom. Luke gives him a gift, his flying shoes, but since it's not safe for him to fly since the sky is Zeus' domain, he gives the shoes to Grover.  They have to face the furies, Medusa (and they cut her head off, and Percy mails it to the Olympus), Echidna and her Chimera; Ares tricks them into recovering his shield,  and we see Annabeth in terror for the first time when they are surrounded by lots of spiders, but they succeed, and Ares gives him a backpack with clean clothes and some money. They escape Las Vegas and oblivion at the Lotus Hotel, in Santa Monica Percy is given three white pearls by a sea spirit working for Poseidon, then they face Procuste - that I know absolutely nothing about - then Caronte who accepts to transport them for money,  and Cerbero, who is distracted by Annabeth giving them time to pass past him, to get to the Underworld. Grover's shoes start acting dangerously, almost dragging him to the Tartarus. They again manage to save themselves, and go to Hades palace. Percy asks him not to start a war, but Hades tells him he doesn't want one. Percy tells him he thinks he stole the Lightning, but Hades denies it, and thinks it's all a plan against him. Hades thinks Percy stole his magical helmet and the Lightning. Since Percy entered the Underworld, his backpack felt heavier, and now he finds that the Lightning is inside it. At that point he takes the three pearls. They are not enough to take his mother with them, so the three kids leave after Percy promises his 'uncle' to give him back his helmet. They escape the Underworld and again talk to Ares, the one God that tricked them into such a trouble. He gave Percy the Lightning, planning for it to appear only once in the underworld. Percy challenges Ares to battle, and sticking near the sea he has the strength to fight him, and wound his heel. At that point Ares goes away disappearing God-style, cursing Percy and telling him he's made an enemy. Ares leaves Hades' helmet behind, and Percy takes it. Hades furies arrives, ackknowledging that now they know it wasn't him who stole it, and Percy gives it to them to give Hades. Percy's position for the mortal world had been that of a young criminal after his mother's disappearance and his stepfather had talked bad of him on tv, but now it is cleared and Percy explains to journalists that his father will be happy to give a free gift from his shop to all the people in that city who helped him, and gives them the number :lol: that was nasty of him, but rightly so! Then they fly back to New York. Annabeth and Grover go back to the camp while Percy goes to the Olympus (in Manhattan) and meets his dad for the first time. Zeus is very angry, listens to his story but takes no action after knowing of a unknown leader in that mischief, Crono the Titan. Left alone with his father, Percy talks to him. Poseidon tells him it's natural that he doesn't find obedience easy, because the sea doesn't like to be limited, and also that his mother is back at home, Hades paid his debt and gave her back. He tells him he'll find a package at home, for him to decide what to do. He tells him his mother is a real queen, that he hadn't met a woman like her for thousands of years, then Percy goes home to find his mother is really there, happy to see him. The package is Medusa's head, and Percy gives it to his mother to decide. Neither of them needs nasty, disgusting Gabe anymore, so Ms Jackson might decide to get rid of him... Percy goes back to the camp, and a week later he received a letter from her telling him that Gabe had misteriously disappeared and that she had sold a stone statue for good money that she used for lessons at the NY university. :lol: She also told him that she got rid of Medusa's head, although I'm not quite sure how she could do that. You can't throw something like that in the bin! At the end, Percy is poisoned by Luke and understands that he was the thief, he was behind it all, hearing in his head Crono talking to him. Luke leaves the camp, and Percy is cured. He decides to spent the year with his mother and only come back for the summer. Annabeth, who had told him that she had run away from home at 7 y.o. because she didn't get along with his father, now decides to try again, and goes home too. Grover leaves on his search for Pan.
A bit like Harry Potter going home every summer, only Percy at home has a good woman who loves him so very much.
I liked it, I liked that it was narrated by Percy, I liked how it was written, it's an easy read, and I liked that they were so young, because with older characters many things wouldn't have been possible. It's okay that young kids believed that the old lady was simply offering them a free meal no problem, without asking themselves why, for example. Annabeth playing ball with Cerbero is nice and funny, but if she were older is would look ridiculous and stupid. I loved the fact that when she was going away she looked back at the gigantic infernal dog who was also looking at her, and they both looked unhappy to part ways, and she even had a tear on her cheek... awww adorable.

Crying Freeman - 1995

I like this film, maybe because it made the usual action-movie where everybody is out to kill everybody else into something tender... I like the two protagonists and the story. It's narrated by Emu O'Hara (Julie Condra) and how life changed for her when she saw a man (Mark Dacascos) killing other two men. He saw her too, but instead of killing her as a dangerous witness, he took his hand and told her "my name.. is Yo" and I like him and his voice and the way he says such a simple phrase. We learn that her parents died twenty years ago because she left the door open and criminals came in to kill them. For twenty years she has felf alone and guilty. Now she's made a portrait of Yo "I paint what I'm afraid to wish for", and refuses police protection. He goes to her, burns the portrait, but when she sees him she's not afraid. She's like fascinated by him and by the fact that he might kill her  "he's the Freeman, and now he will free me". In a way she wanted to die, to escape her past , her guilt and her life. He doesn't kill her, he sleeps with her instead, then he protects her and brings her to a hospital. "If you ever want to find me, remember the name Hinomura". Three days later she wakes up in a hospital room guarded by cops Forge (Rae Dawn Chong) and Netah (Tcheky Karyo). She escapes and flyes to Japan to meet him. She runs to hug him, and he tells her his story of how he was made a killer. That's why he always has a tear in his eyes after killing somebody. They said he had the spirit of a Dragon in him , and it must be true  because he never hides and yet nobody ever hits him.. :-p
He works for a Chinese 'family' but they feel he has betrayed them for her. He fights the yakuza, and now the  person that will kill him will become the new yakuza leader. A woman planned for her husband to take that role, and she doesn't give up even after he's killed. She sleeps with Netah and after Forge was killed he helps her find him to kill him. Yo uses a long bow to protect Emu: cool. When Netah shoots him, Emu takes the gun and protects him by shooting Netah. Yo defeats them all, but lets the woman live to tell everybody that Freeman Yo the potter and Emu O'Hara are dead. She gives him her word, and has to kill Netah when he won't give up and tries to shoot Yo in the back. She had given her word of honor..
Yo and Emu go away together knowing that they'll hunt them, and not caring. For the first time in a long time she's not alone anymore.

The A-team - 2010

This is like a prequel to the old series. I like it, they made the characters pretty good. I like the A-team, because I liked very much the characters. In the series, my favourites were 1Hannibal 2Murdock 2Baracus 4 Face; in this new movie my favs are 1 Hannibal 2 Baracus 3Face 4Murdock, which is the only one that didn't quite compare. It tells the story of how they met and how they became the team for hire that we met in the series. It starts with Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson) being beaten by two thugs, but they don't shoot him, they left him to be killed by voracious dogs: so Hannibal frees himself, does not kill the dogs, and goes away to save his friend "Face" Peck (Bradlye Cooper) who is in a very bad situation, but keeps on laughing because he probably is so sure that Hannibal will come :-) Hannibal needs transportation, so he stops the first vehicle he sees: "bad attitude" Baracus (Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson) was in the Rangers too, so they bond right away, and go together to save Face. Already at this point there were a few things that made me laugh or smile: the thugs telling Hannibal to 'have a plan next time' :lol:  and the fact that for Baracus the most important thing, his 'love', was his vehicle, the same black van they had in the series. :-)
They need to go to the hospital and Face mistakes Murdock (Sharlto Copley) for a doctor, and he stitches Baracus arm in a bolt shape, and sets Face's arm on fire, then Hannibal takes him into the team because he need a pilot. Of course Murdock was there as a patient, because he's kind of crazy. With Murdock flying the helicopter, they complete the mission, so we can have our "I love it when a plan comes together" line and also it explains to us why it is that Baracus will never again want to fly with him :lol: From now on they will always have to trick him or drug him to get him on a plane with Murdock :lol:
We move '8 years later, 80 missions successfully completed', where we meet Sosa (Jessica Biel), Face's ex girlfriend and also CIA Lynch (Patrick Wilson). The team goes to Baghdad for a secret, important mission, so they start 'finding the things they need', and 'building their stuff' as they always do. The mission seems perfectly completed, but at the end General Morrison dies and the US treasury plates are stolen. They are thought to be behind it, so on trial they are sentenced to prison with dishonourable discharge. Six months later Lynch goes to jail to meet Hannibal, because he wants him to get the plates back for him, so helps him escape by giving him what he asks for, a drug that will simulate death by heart attack. He wakes up when he's about to be cremated, and sets off to free Face and then Baracus, who has found peace and has made a vow never to kill again. Then they go to Germany to free Murdock from the mental hospital, and it was lovely. He was watching a 3D movie with the other patients, and we could hear the old A-team theme, and also clearly read the name Reginald Barclay which was adorable, because Reg was the Star Trek character played by Dwight Schultz, who also played the original Murdock :-D I almost screamed when I saw it. :-D
Then a mad escape plan starts, and it's so excessive and hilarious it can only be A-team style. They take a plane, but it is hit, so they put three parachutes on the tank that was inside and when the chutes are hit too they fire the cannon to move in the air and then to loose speed when they are precipitating (is this the right word? I hope so). I don't know if it was more fun the lot of mental patients going hooray or this old German woman laughing.. :lol:  They are on a personal mission to recover the plates and rehabilitate their names, but it turns out that Morrison (Gerald McRaney) had faked his death because it was him who stole the plates. Him and Pike (Brian Bloom) and Lynch were on it together, but when they stole the plates they left Lynch out and now he's so pissed off and wants them for himself. Lynch kills Morrison, the team tricks him into confessing everything while outside people are listening, but for them nothing changes. They should go back to prison, Lynch is taken by Cia, and there's nothing that Sosa can do aside kissing Face after he's being handcuffed. With that kiss, she passed him the key of the cuffs, so they can escape again, and become the team for hire we knew. Face was a perfect Face, Bosco too because actually Baracus had always been the good one, the softest guy of the team :-) Murdock... sorry, I don't like him, can't quite say why but I couldn't warm to him. Finally Hannibal... he was a good enough Hannibal, he was a good man and a good soldier... he wasn't mad though :lol: I mean in the old series, the real madman was never Murdock, was always Hannibal :lol:  yes, I admit his plans are mad enough after all, maybe is just the smile that's not mad enough , I don't know, but it's not a problem, mind you, I'm not criticizing, I liked this Hannibal very much!!
I'm just being nostalgic about George Peppard's Hannibal and his various transformations...

Into Darkness - Star Trek - 2013

Or new-Star Trek 2. I love it. Of course I love it. It's great as a new movie but it also has many reminders to the old "ST2" movie. "The needs of the many outweigh the need of the few" is the obvious one, but there are other little things I'll say later :-p Other good things in this movie: There's Benedict Cumberbatch (Khan) in his coolest look, (although my favourite remains Sherlock's), so cool that when he's running he grabs a cool coat that served no purpose at all, since Spock was there to see him, but it was really, reeeally cool :-D  and there's also Noel Clarke from Dr.Who :-) here in a small but touching role, where he's forced to become a suicide bomber to save his daughter's life.
There's an impulsive Kirk (Chris Pine), who sees a beast and immediately shoot him, poor thing, without thinking twice about it. It actually was a sort of local horse, they should have used it for transport, but at least he's only stunned, not killed, the poor innocent beast. There's Uhura(Zoe Saldana), so adorable when she worries about Spock :-D There's Pike (Bruce Greenwood) angry at Kirk with good reasons. There the usual Bones (Karl Urban)  :lol: "Damn it man, I'm a doctor, not a torpedo technician" :lol:
A bit of plot. Someone (:-D) wanted a war between the Federation and the Klingon, and used Khan for this purpose. Not knowing this, but only knowing that Khan attacked them and also killed Pine, Kirk goes on a revenge mission. Khan informs him of the big picture, and also of all his crewmen he smuggled on board. They try to stop the war plan together, but of course Khan then betrays them, and they go after him. :-)
At Khan's attack there are the usual things: Kirk is damn lucky, all the time standing in front of the window and never getting hit, and all the guards are there simply to get killed, never accomplishing anything, only functining as targets.
In London, Khan orchestrated things to have Section 31 blown up, and now he's on Kronos. Kirk is out of his mind with his want for revenge, so much that he fights with Scotty (Simon Pegg) and lets him go. Scotty was right, though. Now Chekov (Anton Yelchin) is the new chief engineer, and when he's told to put on the red uniform I laughed "no, the red uniform no, poor Chekov" :lol: but of course he's one of the main characters, so it's safe for him :lol:
Uhura started a fight with Spock in front of Kirk, angry because in the last mission he should have died, and she accuses him of not caring, about dying, about how she would feel if he died, of never feeling anything. For the first time I was a bit angry at Uhura, she was not fair, she already forgot about movie 1? But I suppose that it's kind of right too, because she almost lost him and she was out of herself. "You misunderstand. It is true I chose not to feel anything upon realizing my own life was ending. As Admiral Pike was dying, I joined with his consciousness and experienced what he felt at the moment of his passing. Anger. Confusion. Loneliness. Fear. I had experiences those feelings before, multiplied exponentially on the day my planet was destroyed. Such a feeling is something I choose never to experience again."which is understandable, isn't it? "Nyota, you mistake my choice not to feel as a reflection of my not caring. Well, I assure you, the truth is precisely the opposite" awww And later she gives him a little kiss before letting him go on his duties :-) No need for big words between them. That's enough, isn't it? :-)
It was fun to hear that the pretty blonde is friends with Christine Chapel :-) You mean Kirk hitted on her too, huh? So now he has a bad reputation, huh? Good, remember that, girl!
We meet the strangest Klingons, all piercing and no hair. We watch Khan defeating them all, then he asks with how many torpedoes he's been threatened: 72 "then I surrender" :lol: everybody was like What???
My name is Khan. I am better
At what?
Everything!
:lol: he's cool, isn't he? So cool. Not too different from our Sherlock, then :lol:
"he used my friends to control me" and a tear on his face! But of course, if you don't blink for 40 seconds (I checked) you're bound to have a tear on your cheek as soon as you do.
Scotty was funny too " This door is very wee. I mean, you know, small" :lol: adorably scottish Scotty :lol: "it's gonna be like jumping out of a moving car, off a bridge, into your shot glass" and Kirk "it's okay, I've done it before" :lol: true, we saw him :lol: And when Scotty sees how much the ship is damaged "One day I've been off this ship. One bloody day" :lol:
I was also happy to see Spock again, I mean the real Spock, Leonard Nimoy. There's already a New Vulcan, and he's there. "as you know I have made a vow never to give you informatin that could potentially alter your destiny. Your path is yours to walk, and yours alone. That being said, Khan Noonien Sing is the most dangerous adversary the Enterprise ever faced. He is brilliant, ruthless ad he will not hesitate to kill every single one of you."
"Did you defeat him"
"At great cost. Yes."  awww great cost indeed, Spock died :-(
This time, their roles are reversed. Spock is dealing with Khan, and Kirk is the one finding himself in the position to save the ship sacrificing himself, dying of radiation. When the ship is out of danger, well sort of, Spock knows there is no such thing as a miracle, and when he's urgently called in the engine room he runs there, to find Kirk dying. As it happened in the original Star Trek 2, they are divided by glass.
K: "you used what he wanted against him"
S: "it is what you would have done"
K: "and this, this is what you would have done. It was only logical"
True, the real Spock did it, and that's how he died!
I liked the fact that when Kirk was punching Khan he didn't feel anything, but when it's Spock it's a different story!! It always annoyed me that they often forgot that Vulcans are stronger. Anyway, as he said Khan is better (well, he's been genetically altered...) and he was about to win, but Uhura comes to help her boyfriend and stuns him seven times!! It still wouldn't have been enough to put him ko, but it was enough for Spock to stand up again and beat the hell out of him. He stopped only because Uhura told him that Khan's blood could save Kirk. Of course, we knew that. That's also what the Tribble was for, so Bones could find it out.
So now, with Spock saying "you are welcome Jim" their friendship is consolidated. This is the first time he called him Jim, isn't it?!? At the end there's the "five year mission" wording that was at the beginning of the original series' theme. Bones "Five years in space. God help me" :lol: Poor Bones, he gets seasick :lol:
Another funny thing. In the specials there's an interview with Benedict, and he says his role was top secret, nobody had to know, and it made me laugh. For how long Trek fans had been discussing this before actually seeing the movie? Will Ben play Khan?? :lol:, then, a first trailer came out, with him talking, and nobody had any doubt any more. We were all sure there was gonna be Khan :lol: and I would have been very disappointed otherwise!

In this movie there was also Sulu (John Cho) of course, and admiral Marcus was played by a great Peter Weller, and Alice Eve was Carol.
I found on the internet that someone considers an error the fact that Scotty could successfully stun Khan with one single shot on the ship, yet during the fight he wasn't completely stunned after Uhura shot him 7 times, but I don't think so. I think Khan was playing them, and in fact he got up when nobody expected him to and took them by surprise.

Edit:
this is the movie that starts with that white race and Spock stopping their vulcano from destroying their world, and to save Spock's life they let those people see the ship.
Kirk lied on his report, Spock didn't, and Pine is very angry at him, saying a lot of true things that Kirk resents but it's about time that someone speaks the truth to his face. He's demoted because he lied, because he counts on his luck too much, because he has no respect at all... all true things you know.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

It was cool, in a way, but it also has many many flaws. I like the special effects and the fact that they are all known characters. It's the verge of a Third World War, so a few special people are put together for a secret mission to stop the plans of the evil mastermind that's causing it all. The League's members are Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery), Tom Sawyer (Shane West), Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemyng), Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran).
In a way it was very annoying that everything was explained with so many words. I mean: saying Mina Harker is already enough, there was no reason for her to narrate her whole story!! Dracula is a very famous story, I knew her name as soon as I heard it, but the point is, if one doesn't know the name, one should look it  up, not have it all said on the screen, it gets incredibly boring for those who already knows it. Explanations are very much appreciated in the case of Rodney Skinner, because he's not the original character, he's not the original Invisible Man, so they tell us that after his death Skinner stole his formula and made himself invisible, and now would appreciate a cure... but there was no reason to explain every detail of the other characters' stories. About Dorian's portrait , Mina's condition... yeah yeah I know it. Boooring. Even when making a joke they need to explain it, like when Quatermain named Phileas Fogg. The name was enough, but he went on naming the title of the book, making it boring. They clearly have no ammiration or respect for their audience's education or intellect. They think the audience is too uneducated to know those names, and too dumb to be able to google Dorian Gray! I mean, one can't know everything, but if one cares to know it, it's easy to google it these days. And if one doesn't care, then there really is no need to tell them, is there?
Other absurd things were the fact that the bad guys shooted like devils, bullets like rain, without hitting anyone of course, but the absurd point is that when they meet Nemo face to face they stop and tell him "draw your pistol" ... :-/ absurd, why should they do that???Did they find a sense of honor they didn't have a moment before? Nemo says "I walk a different path", well good for you, but you can do that only because they're idiots! Of course, in movies evil always is stupid, it has to be...
They also made Dorian immortal. That's a bit excessive, isn't it? He wasn't immortal, his beauty was.
I don't know how I feel about the Nautilus, I mean this version of the Nautilus, a bit and white pointy thing. It's a cool vessel, I'd say, but of course it's not "THE" Nautilus... 'The sword of the ocean' tsk!
Mina the vampire walks among wounded men like nothing, not caring about all the blood at all... and immortal Dorian who has lived for I don't know how many years but really a lot, finally dies simply by looking at his portrait..because they said that if he looks at it the spell will go away... *sigh*
I don't like Mina here because the actress for some reason speaks so slowly, with such a low voice, I can hardly hear her, but then the music and the sound effects are so loud they make my head explode. Still, I liked her when she gave an impression of Quatermain, which consisted in talking the same way Connery did :lol: it was good, very good, funny :lol:
I liked Quatermain's definition of the american way of shooting "fire enough bullets and hope to hit the target" :lol: that's what they always do in the movies, firing hundreds of bullets and never hitting anyone...
The man assembling the team calls himself M, and I thought at first it was to remind of James Bond's M, but no, it turns out the M stands for Moriarty... and again, they really had to name Sherlock Holmes?? It was a stupid comment, as if someone told you they know you while you want to be incognito, and you reply "who? Jack the son of David and Jane?? No, of course not"= makes no sense.
What was that at the end? Is that man bringing Quatermain back to life? I know "Africa will never allow me to die", but does it mean forever and ever???
The only good thing they did was to make Dorian one of the bad guys, the traitor. It was so wrong for him to be one of the heroes...

High noon - 1952

This is a great movie. It's very unusual for a western movie, in the way that nobody goes anywhere. What I mean is, it's 1hour and 23 minutes long more or less, and only after 1hour and 10minutes the bad guy arrives, and the final showdown can take place. This is not about adventures and battles, it's about people and how they are...  I love the beginning, where the three men meet without a word, under the 'High Noon' song, and also the fact that throughout the movie there's the music of that song.
Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) just got married to Amy (Grace Kelly) when he gets the news that Frank Miller is coming back to town. Kane arrested him for murder five years ago; he should have been hanged, but it was first changed to life, then he was let free. Now is coming to have his revenge. Kane should have retired as Marshal, but the new one hasn't arrived yet.  Everybody wants him to leave, Amy begs him to go away, but he feels he has to stay. Miller will go after him and he doesn't want to spend his life running away, and also he wants to protect the city that he made a decent place for families by getting rid of people like Miller, and also protect his friends. Unfortunately he only has one deputy: a stupid, jealous guy who acts like a child, and quits refusing to help him. Kane starts asking the townspeople for help, for new special deputies to help him in this trouble. Miller has already three friends waiting for him: his brother Ben plus Pierce and Jack Colby (Lee Van Cleef). Kane tells them he needs men, but the result is: one "friend" has his wife tell him he isn't home, and hides; someone tells him it's his trouble not theirs; someone tells him they pay him to take care of these things, why should they take care of it themselves?!? ; there's even who thinks that business was better with Miller and his friends around... He goes around the city, receiving one disappointment after another. He's desperate. Miller will arrive with the noon train, and Amy will leave with the same. It's almost noon and he hasn't found a simgle man willing to fight with him, to help him in any way.
Noon comes, and Kane finds himself in a deserted town. Miller and his friends go looking for him. Amy is already on the train, but as she hears the first gunshot she can't stay sit anymore. She runs towards the town. She's worried he might be the dead one. She sees Kane has already killed one, then two. She watches while the remaining two keep stalling him from two different directions. She once saw his young brother killed and now she's against violence and guns, but she finds the strength to help him. Nobody knows she's there, so she takes a gun and kills the last of Miller's men. Now aware of her presence, Miller takes her hostage to force Kane to come to the open, but at that point she fights him and frees herself, so Kane can shoot him.
Only now that the four men are all dead the town fills with people. Kane looks at them and the final scene is just perfect. He doesn't exactly throw his badge, he takes it and lets it fall on the floor with despise, but the despise is all for them, for their false friendship and their cowardice. He loved his town and his friends, but now he goes away with Amy without a single word for them.
I didn't know director Fred Zinnemann, but this movie is perfect, and Gary Cooper is great, how he gets more scared as the time passes, how his disappointment towards his friends grows with his desperation, his knowledge that he'll probably die, facing alone four dangerous men.
I liked that when ex-girlfriend Helen told Amy that 'if Kane was her man, she wouldn't leave him, she would take up a gun and fight with him', Amy stands by her anti-violence attitude, but when the moment comes, and she hears a shot, she runs to him, and with pain and difficulty takes up a gun and helps him.
Four men couldn't have stand a chance without a town prepared for their arrival, and yet Kane was left alone. The usual: most of the people in the world are pathetic cowards, that's why people easily turn against each other or against weak, easy targets, instead of going after who they're really angry at. It happens every day. Unfortunately.

Hope Springs

A 2012 movie. A good movie, not at all what I expected, but a good movie. In a way maybe better than I expected. I had thought it'd be funny, but it's very serious. Well, I guess someone could find the banana scene funny, I'm sure, but basically it is a serious movie. With two amazing actors.

Kay (Meryl Streep) and Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) have been married for thirty-one years, but now we see them more like flatmates: they don't sleep together, but it's not just this. Arnold especially won't even hug her or kiss her. They barely have conversations, actually. More like two words top when he's at home eating. Kay doesn't want to go on like that, she feels lonely, she wants to have back a real marriage, so proposes a week of counseling. There's a place where this doctor Feld helds intense counseling that last a week. Arnold doesn't want to go, but she's resolute, she'll even go alone, so he yields and goes too. This doctor makes them talk about their relationship, and a lot about sex. Every day gives them a new task, like holding each other in bed, when to Arnold just holding hands would have been more than enough...

They try hard day after day, they both care very much but after a long time of things going the same way it takes time to change, but they manage it in the end. 

The ending is lovely. At home again, doing the usual things: she makes him breakfast then she washes the dishes and he goes to work. This time, we see that after a moment he comes back to give her a real kiss, then goes to work again. She follows him to the car because he forgot his case, and at the car they see across the road Carol the neighbour, and in their faces one can see they are both remembering a certain fantasy he talked about during counseling, a fantasy involving Carol, just like I was remembering that when I heard the name :lol: Arnold smiles a bit embarassed, and Kay plays non-chalance, then she turns to him and says "that's not gonna happen" and he laughs, and they kiss and laugh, and it was adorable. 

It's a brave movie in a way, because these years movie then to be frenetic, just like everything else. Like on tv, every show, every sport comment, always frenetic, loud, there's this tendency to believe that if they slow down a bit the audience will get bored and lose interest. Not this movie, this one is slow, they don't shout, everything goes slowly, and it's the only way possible. It's a movie made of expressions, esitations, feelings, and I liked it enough.

Alien vs Predator AVP - 2004

It wasn't as bad as I feared, I'll tell you. Not too good, but not too bad either. Nothing original, obviously, that's understandable, although the introduction was too long, for me. We had to meet all the members of the expedition to Antarctica, to know them, to listen to their stories and their reasons, and it was pretty boring. The millionaire Weyland is very ill and wants to make history before he dies, so wants to be the first to make the big discovery: he has found a source of heat 600 feet below ground, and his scanners show a big pyramid-like structure, so he has assembled a team of experts to study it before others get there. A big tunnel has already been made (we know who did it, a big starship full of Predators), and the place has been abandoned all of  a sudden in 1904, without a word of explanation, the dishes still on the table.. and nobody worried about that.
The scientific team goes down while some people stay above, and for some reason they are all killed by the arriving Predators. I don't know why; they are all taken by surprise and don't put up much of a fight. These Predators liked an easy win.
When they finally enter that bizarre construction the thing really starts. Practically the humans are trapped in it, so they can generate new Aliens for the hunt. A biig Alien queen is there, prisoner, used to produce eggs that thanks the the human bodies will become full, dangerous Aliens.
The only Italian actor of the cast, despite the strange choice of name, as if Sebastian was an Italian name or something, did a nice enough job. I feared the worst, honestly, because I don't like his Italian Fictions, but it was okay, and he had a good character, the only male hero of the movie, in a way.  That was nice. Unexpected, and nice. :-)
The only human to come out alive is the only smart one, who didn't want to come at all, but accepted because all the others were going and she felt they probably wouldn't have made it even to the campsite alive without her. Alexa (Sanaa Lathan - never heard of her but I liked her) was trying to escape with Sebastian. He had explained the 'ritual of passage' that this hunt was for the younger Predators, and she thought of giving them back the weapon they had because it was better to be on their side than to let the Aliens win and maybe escape free into the world. Yeah, because our team had the great idea of taking the weapons they found (not even knowing they were weapons yet) to have something to bring back with them,  not at all bothered by the fact that Sebastian was shouting for them not to touch them! What do they need experts for if they don't listen to them at all? Oh well.
When Alexa is about to fall to her death Sebastian saves her, but that act leaves him unprotected from the alien that takes him away. When she meets him again, he has an alien inside him and he knows him so he begs her to shoot him and she does, in tears. When she meets a Predator, she knees down and throws him his weapon; I'm not sure what he would have done if an Alien hadn't attacked him in that moment. Anyway, the alien knocks him down and goes to Alexa, who kills it with the Predator's weapon on the floor. Now to his eyes she's a warrior too, so he explains to her (no words, but pretty clear mime every time he has to explain something) that the Alien's blood is a terrible acid and makes a shield and a weapon for her with the dead body. Now they hunt together, then he sets a bomb and they try to escape. They go out using some sort of emergency device they had put there to come out of there quickly (it goes up really fast, why would they set that thing so fast? Did they expect a running-from-Alien situation?) and she lets him brand her cheek as he had branded his forehead. She's killed an alien by herself, after all, so she's a warrior too. Still, not yet time for goodbye.
The Alien queen comes out quite angry but he manages to harpoon it and together they attach the harpoon to a big cistern about to fall so it's taken down into the deep water, but before the fall it manages to kill the Predator. So Alexa is not the only human alive, she's the only one at all.
The big starship comes back and takes away the body but they leave her be, even give her a weapon as a gift, because they see the mark on her face.
It ends with an Alien coming out of  the dead Predator body on the ship..

Batman forever

The film directed by Joel Schumacher in 1995. So, this film is what it is, but at least it's not the silliest of them all, it has a few good points. Jim Carrey is a funny Riddles, for once, and second there is Tommy Lee Jones, which is always a good thing. I'm pretty much disinterested in Batman, here. Val Kilmer is not a bad choice, no, but the movie had so many lacking points! Nicole Kidman is one, because she was already in that stage of her career in which she doesn't care at all about acting, she doesn't even try, she just concentrates on appearing perfectly pretty. She succeeds, of course, she's amazingly pretty, but the character suffer from it.
She plays an intelligent, very accomplished and independent woman who finds nothing better than to start flirting with him. sob...
Chris O'Donnell plays Robin, the character who killed the show. Batman should be alone, not with a kid around. I know about the whole "Batman & Robin" comics and series, but still I never liked him. Plus the scene where he makes a big fuss, jumping everywhere simply to hang his clothes, to impress Alfred... :-/ I thought it was a stupid scene, but of course I didn't like the character, so pretty much nothing of what concerned him had my approval.
Jim Carrey does a lot of his funny faces that made him famous, but honestly I'd rather he didn't.
I like Alfred, though. "You're quite bright, despite what people say" :lol: Adorable.  Alfred is always lovely! Late Michael Gough played him.
Of course there are the usual things: a lot of noice, the big car... and the fact that the heroes win because they are lucky, not because they are better or smarter. No, they're lucky! And as usual the bad guys are stupid, of course. The funniest thing was Twoface and Riddler complimenting each other and hugging :lol:
Other annoying things, as if Robin wasn't enough, is that it makes no sense that in the end the girl leaves. One bad guy is dead, the other in a mental hospital, Batman's secret identity is safe, there appears to be nothing wrong, so why does she leaves if they liked each other? And what was the famous repressed memory of Bruce Wayne? It can't simply be that he saw a bat as a kid, right? By the way, it he repressed the memory of it how come he chose the bat as his simble? Because his mind knew about it even if he was not aware of it? Oh I don't know. I don't care.

Aeon flux - 2005

I... sort of like it, but not really... I like Aeon (Charlize Theron) and Trevor (Marton Csokas) mostly. Yeah. The story is half known half lacking. I admit, if it wasn't because I like Trevor very much I probably would never dream of watching it again. It starts with the usual, basic information: 400 years ago 99% of the population died, until Goodchild found a cure. The remaining persons reunite in the same big city. Now 400 years have passed, and some people think it's an idillic life, some other people want to bring down the Goodchild dynasty. Aeon is among them, but when she's face to face with Trevor things change. Somehow they know each other.
Spoilers, if you care..
She doesn't remember him well, but he does. Looks like he cares about her, and she can't understand this. She doesn't kill him, she sleeps with him. For this, he's consider a traitor by his 'congress' and she's a traitor for her rebellion's friends.
It doesn't matter. She learns that every person that dies is cloned again. They are all clones. Years ago the cure stopped the people from dying, but made them sterile. He has cloned himself teaching the younger self over and over the story and his research to find a definite cure, because the cloning can't go on forever. Unfortunately his brother (Jonny Lee Miller) likes this life, and sabotages his experiments by killing people and now trying to kill him too. Aeon secures the help of one rebel, her friend Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) and survives. At the end, she wants to destroy that floating apparatus so coreographic, that keeps cloning them, and the keeper (Pete Postlewaite) inside. So I guess that all the people that died in this last battle are dead forever, there is no change for them anymore. Impossible they might have been cloned in such a short time, they actually needed a woman to make pregnant with the cloned Dna, so as I said: impossible. They're dead forever.
Now, my problems: aside from the little annoying thing that when Aeon and Trevor are talking through a glass she has one expression when you look at her, but a different one is reflexed on the glass when you look at him. Annoying yes, but not too important, if it was the only thing. No, there's more.
 - She was so hurt because her sister Una (Amelia Warner) had been killed, but she finds out she has been cloned, and already reborn, which is quite fast actually. It seems like she just died a few days ago, but Trevor explained that the procedure is to make a woman pregnant with the cloned dna and then 'nature follows its course' ... well, it's not natural at all that only a few days go by from when you learn you're expecting and when you have your baby at home...
 - Would she have destroyed the keeper had her sister Una not been reborn yet? Apparently her sister was everything she had in the world, and she was able to cool down a bit only after learning the truth while holding little reborn Una in her arms. What if Una had just died and not yet reborn?
 - What about if Trevor had died, at the end, would she have done the same? A lot of people were killed in that battle, but only Sithandra meant something for her, but not enough to stop her. Aeon was full of big words, that lead to
 - the fact that Aeon says they can't keep coming back, each time it's a little bit worse, but Keeper said she had not been cloned all these years. Only now he cloned her, so how can she say that since this is the first time she's reborn? How can she have the same dreams, visions, unsettling sensations or whatever it is that they have?
 - Now that keeper is gone there won't be clones anymore, and new babies will 'probably' be born. I mean, very likely yes, but not for sure. She can't be sure since she just heard that Oren killed all the pregnant women?
 - Even if we agree that humanity will go on, there will be new babies, no more clones, her plan was a success... so what? Is that it? People didn't know about clones and cures, so how can she know the rebels will stop targeting her and Trevor?? Especially since Sithandra and three others died after being sent to kill Aeon. Now she's alive and they're not. Why shouldn't they try again? It's absurd, is what it is.
Pretty images, nice actors, both Csokas and Theron, and also Jonny Lee Miller, that being completely shaven it took me a moment to realize he was the new Holmes in America. :-)
Aside from them, the rest is meaningless. Totally absurd. Pretty images with no real story.

Murder is easy by Agatha Christie

I like it. Not my favourite, but I like it, despite the fact that in it there isn't any major detective. A man going to London by train meets an old lady that reminds him of his dear aunt, and she tells him she's going to Scotland Yard because a series of accidental deaths in her home town are actually murders, and she's sure she knows the person responsible, and also who the next victim will be, the town doctor. He doesn't believe her, as usual thinking old ladies have a lot of imagination and they all go around thinking either someone is killing them or that someone is killing someone else... but the next day he reads on the newspaper that she died, run over by a car before she could talk to the police! He's sorry, but also worried, and when later on he finds out that doctor she talked about has really died, he starts thinking that she was right, that they are all murders, and he wants to investigate. I missed Poirot very much, I admit, because he was much smarter than this protagonist, Luke. He'd have never made such puerile mistakes. The little love story was not captivating I'm afraid, it doesn't seem real.
Spoilers
Half of the book was sometimes a bit boring because it was obvious that Luke was going on a false track to start with. He kept considering possible suspects only the men, not the women or the kids, just the men, but the first time he said there's a man killing people I thought, why a man? I don't remember her talking about a man. I checked and yes, she only talked of someone, a person, not necessarily a man, and given the way those people had died, I mean you don't need to be a grown-up man to push someone in the river or to poison someone else. The consequence of this was that his whole  process of investigation kept going around the town's men and where they were, and if they could have done it, and why, and it was a bit boring because it was so limited! I don't remember when I read this for the first time, but back then I probably didn't notice, or thought there was a reason for thinking that, or something. Now, after so many books and series on crimes, this was too easy a thing to notice! It doesn't mean that I guessed right away who did it, but I got there in time. As always I had no will of stopping and thinking about it, trying to solve the mistery... I prefer to keep reading, and let them tell me, it's more fun this way.  :-)
I liked the bit about the title, when Luke told the old lady it was "rather hard to do a lot of murders and get away with it, eh?", and she replied " no no, my dear boy, that's where you're wrong. It's very easy to kill.. so long as no one suspects you. And you see, the person in question is just the last person one would suspect"... but of course this in itself is an important clue. Luke was wasting time investigating so much that Ellsworth just because he didn't like him. Poirot would have never made the mistake of judging and wishing to be guilty the one he didn't like. The fact that he was so strange and many people didn't like him is exactly why we should not consider him a suspect at all. He clearly fits the 'first person one suspects' category! Also the fact he kept saying 'man' while the old woman had only said 'a person' was a definite clue that the murderer was not a man, and since we didn't see any kids, the only possibility was a woman. There were a few of them to consider...
I also liked when Bridget asked Luke if he liked her. She knows he loves her, but wants to be sure he likes her too. I loved this scene because it's true, they're not the same thing, sometimes people love someone they don't even like, for one reason or another. It's so very true, I know it is.

ITA è troppo facile

American Hustle

So much fuss for this movie, just because there's a lot of famous actors, but it was actually boring in my opinion. I didn't like it. Lots and lots of screaming all the time, bad words every so often, lots of characters and none of them very nice... Irving (Christian Bale) is a con man married to Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), a beautiful but very silly woman he can barely stand any more, but he loves her son, that he has adopted, and doesn't want to leave him. He falls in love with Sidney (Amy Adams), his soul mate, and they start stealing together, through elaborate tricks. Agent Richie (Bradley Cooper) catches them, but that's not enough for him. He aims high, and forces them to help him arrest many others in exchange for their freedom. They start with mayor Carmine (Jeremy Renner) who actually seems to be a nice enough person, for being a politician. He actually seems to care about his city, as incredible as it may sound, but they trick him anyway. Irving convinces him that the only way to help the city is to find the money necessary. They even contact big mafia boss Tellagio (Robert De Niro), and Richie is over the moon. Only problem is, not knowing about anything, Rosalyn talks to one of Tellagio's men, reveiling the federals are involved. Now Irving has only one way to save his life. He has to save Tellagio and all his men. He blackmails the police: immunity for him and Sidney, and a small sentence for Carmine, that he actually likes. A few politicians were arrested along with Carmine. Rosalyn asks for a divorce, and Irving lives happily with Sidney and his son. Is it over, please? Oh, good. I thought the shouting was never going to end...
So, how was it? Happy ending? Yeah. Right. Irving and Sidney who had no problem with stealing money from desperate people are totally free. The mafia has not been touched, not even a bit. Of course, it never is, that's believable, at least.
Is this why they needed to many big names? To attract people that otherwise would have never watched it? Jennifer Lawrence has lots of fans, so bring her in with all her viewers ! Bradley Cooper is beautiful, nothing can be said about that, but I can't stand the man. I saw him once on a show and can't stand him since them. They tried their best to make Christian Bale ugly, and they should be happy with the result. Amy Adams... was okay, she wasn't the problem, she was sexy when she had to be, she played her role well. Still, I had read that this story was one of the best screenplays... maybe I read wrong, I can't believe it. Strange thing at the end, I didn't see DeNiro's name anywhere, not even in the cast list. Tellagio's actor's name was not listed. Why?

Flightplan - 2005

A good, thrilling movie, I liked it very much. It starts grim, because Kyle (Jodie Foster)'s husband has just died; she's in Berlin with her 6 years old daughter, and she has to take a flight to America, to bring her husband's body home. She's the first to get on the plane, and after it takes off she falls asleep. When she wakes up, a passenger tells her they've been flying for three hours. She looks around her but can't see her daughter. She thinks she might have wandered off a little, like kids do, and starts looking around. She can't see her, so she moves to other sections of the plane, going up and down, but Julia is nowhere to be found. She starts getting anxious, starts calling Julia, she asks for the hostess' help, then insists to talk to the captain. Apparently nobody has ever seen this child, but the captain (Sean Bean) yields to her prayers, and orders a good, thorough search, but Julia isn't found!! She couldn't go anywhere, the plane had alredy above ground when she fell asleep, she must be on the plane, but nobody has seen her, nobody can find her...
very nice indeed, well done, well studied, good actors in the right role. I don't know who that little girl is, but she looks just like a little Jodie Foster; there's a scene where their two faces are very near, just to show their resemblance, which is amazing; that is if it is all natural and not created with makeup. Anyway the effect was really good. I liked the captain too, Sean Bean was really cute and touching, in his own way, here.
Spoilers, if you go on reading.
The captain was a lovely character, because he listened to her, although it was clear that everyone else thought she was just creating trouble, and ordered a good search. When Julia is not found, she insists, but the captain finds out that not only Julia's name is not on the list, not only her boarding paper is missing, but now he receives comunication that she died along with her father, so he doesn't believe her anymore. How could you blame him at this point? He didn't know her, he had the whole plane searched already... now he thinks she has gone crazy after the tragedy of losing all her family! Plus, a security man is tricking them both; the captain trusts him because of his position, and Kyle thinks he's helping her, but actually now he goes to the captain to tell him she's got a bomb on the plane, to put lots of money of a bank account, land the plane and go out. He tells the captain this is all the woman's plan, and tells her that after the plane lands they'll search the plane, while in the meantime keeping them separated so they don't talk to each other. When everybody gets off the plane, she runs to the captain, still talking about her daughter, and his so fed up with that that tells her to drop the pretence, she's got the money now, so just stop it with all that! The security man tries to get off with the others, to get to safety with all the others, leaving the police think she's the bomber, but she yells to him that she hasn't allowed him. Smart move, so now she's alone in the plane with him and his accomplice, a hostess, but she's not so rotten as he is, and not so sure she wants to blow up a little girl, so she runs out. Now it's just the two of them, but Kyle designed the plane, she knows all about it, so she finds her little girl and blows him up.
Strong scene, when everybody sees that, they think the crazy woman really did it! But then , they see a figure walking out of there, it's Kyle, and she's got something in her arms. When they realise it's her daughter, their faces are all the same. They can't believe it, and feel sorry and guilty they had not believed her. She walks with her daughter in her arms under the eyes of everybody on the plane. They all had turned against her, but now can see she was telling the truth. The captain expresses openly his apologies.
Beautiful finale, I liked it a lot, and Sean Bean was touching, and Jodie Foster was the right choice for this role, believable as the smart, strong woman who won't give up.

Criminal minds - season 1

The series with a character I really envy: Reid, the guy with the eidetic memory, he remembers everything he reads... wow, that's amazing, I wish I had that, I sometimes I don't remember if the protagonist of a book lives or die in the end, sometimes I don't even remember the title of a book I've read... to have his memory would be just amazing... although a quick look at wikipedia doesn't put it very likely that this is really possible, the way they do it with him. Some people say not to trust wikipedia without checking, so I read here and they also say it's not what they make of it. This is fiction after all. Anyway, I wish I had whatever memory he has, and if it doesn't really exist, I wish it did, and that I have it. It's so frustrating never to remember anything....

ep 1 - Extreme aggressor - We meet Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) giving a lecture on the Footpath killer, and his stutter, right before he's called back to BAU to help with a new case, the Boston strangler. The guy lures girls to kill them,  offering a test drive to those women who wants to buy a new car. We'll see the stutter again at the end of the episode, with a guy pointing a rifle at Gideon...
Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson) is the team leader. His wife Haley is expecting, and they are choosing names :-)
-Special agent Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore) is the expert on obsessional crimes, (although I don't like his method of recreating what the Unsub thought)  and special agent Doctor Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) is their expert on "well... everything". He has an IQ of 187 and an eidetic memory; he can read 20.000 words per minute.
"Do you know why he always introduces me as Dr Reid?" - Hotchner"because he knows that people see you as a kid, and he wants to make sure that they respect you" :-)  There is also Elle Greenaway.
They are worried for Gideon because when he caught serial killer Adrian Bale, it cost him the lives of six agents. It was very cool when they zoomed in the photograph and the next moment they were in that place, like entering the picture :-) I like it very much; it's not a new revolutionary effect, but it's still a really good one, and I like it. I also liked it when they found the board game "in China is called Wei-chi, here we call it Go" the most difficult board game; I know it as Go too, I have it at home, but of course I don't play. Who would I play with?
Gideon:"try again, fail again, fail better"
Reid "Samuel Beckett"
Morgan "try not. do or do not"
Reid "Yoda"  :lol:
We also meet Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) and her funny attitude and friendship with Morgan :-)
M"I thought I was calling the Office of Supreme Genius" G"Well gorgeous, you've been rerouted to the Office of too frigging bad" :lol:
Since it's the first ep the opening credits are just a list of names under the film going on.
 - The belief in a supernatural suorce of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness - Joseph Conrad
 -Emerson said : All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle
 -Winston Churchill said: the farther backward you can look, the farther forward you will see
 -Nietzsche once said: When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you
ep 2 - Compulsion - Elle (Lola Glaudini) is curious, but Gideon challenges her to find out by herself why did the guy stutter. She'll get it at the end: he didn't know, he was just buying time, stalling. "I'll tell you what I know about stutter: I know how to provoke one" and we see how it went: Gideon provoked him, despite the rifle pointed at him. He provoked him a lot, until he could take his weapon.
We meet Jennifer Jareau, "JJ if you like" (A.J.Cook) and this episode starts with serious opening credits :-) with names to faces: Gideon,Hotch,Elle,Morgan,Reid, and JJ, and the picture with the six of them :-)
They go to Arizona, to a college where fires have been set up. It was a girl obsessed by extreme OCD who survived a fire, and her mother told her she had been tested by God with fire, and now when three threes on someone else, she thinks God wants to test them too; it an obsessive commpulsion, she has to do it, even if she doesn't want to.
Elle's tactful speech "Arsonists are socially incompetent. This guy, he doesn't go on dates, he doesn't go to parties, he doesn't feel comfortable in front of groups" then Reid looks at her "And of course he's a total psycopath" she adds. At the end, Reid almost beats Gideon at chess... but not yet :-)
Why in America the week starts on Sunday and not on Monday? It should start on Monday. Sunday is the seventh day, when God rested after six days of work... you know, that kind of stuff.
  -Einstein once said: Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world.
 -Faulkner once said: Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors, try to be better than yourself
ep 3 - Won't get fooled again - Florida. Three bombs go off. Same design used by Adrian Bale, but he's in prison. Gideon go visit him in Atlanta. When a guy walks into the police station with a bomb on him, saying the bomber put it, they need Bale's help.
Morgan still has doubts about Gideon. Hotch collected coins as a kid :-) It was a good scene when Gideon called to them to get out after figuring out the unsub will blow himself up to kill them too, and also when Bale made Gideon apologies: good, intense scene.
 -Samuel Johnson wrote: almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we can not resemble
ep 4 - Plain sight - It's Reid's birthday! He's 24 now :-) JJ is the only person in the world to call him Spence :-) She's warming to him, as if he was her little brother :-p I also liked a lot when Reid said "yeah.creepy" as if trying to be normal :lol: and also:
Reid"do you think it's weird that I knew that ballad?"
Elle"I don't know how it is that you know half the things you know, but I'm glad you do"
Reid"You think that's why I can't get a date?"
Elle"Do you ever ask anyone out?"
Reid"No"
Elle"That's why you can't get a date!" :-p
At the end Gideon, who usually doesn't give birthday presents, gives Reid two tickets for a Vip box for the Redskins match, and tells him that JJ is a huge fan, so he goes to invite her :-) But before going, Reid beats him at chess, and Gideon smiles :-)
San Diego, California, six women killed in three weeks.
Elle"you think they'll ever run out of new things to do to their victims?"
Gideon" Well, finding new ways to hurt each other is what we're good at"
The woman that was attacked by another man, not the unsub, was great, I liked her a lot. Sorry I don't know her name..
 -French poet Jacques Ripaut said: Don't forget that I cannot see myself, that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror
 -Orson Welles said: All the birds who belong to our sex have prettier feathers because males have got to try to justify their existence
 -Rose Kennedy once said: birds sing after a storm, why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?
ep 5 - Broken mirror - A girl's boyfriend is killed and she's kidnapped. (Patricia's sister Cheryl drives a yellow bug :)
 - De Clerambault's syndrome, known as erotomania: the belief that someone, usually of a higher social status, but not necessarily a celebrity, is in love with you. Erotomanics believe that the objects of their affection are subtly professing their love for them through looks, gestures, glances.
The unsub talks about them: Authoritative Gideon, with the same arrogant quality in his voice too. "you are a bit of a pedant Jason. A bit didactic? I know all about you. The ambitious agent Hotchner. Do you want to be director of the Fbi someday, agent Hotchner? Would you step on Jason Gideon to get there? I think you would. Post-traumatic stress is a very good excuse. Even your sick, pregnant wife can't get you to leave your post. Jason Gideon, an expert in the criminal psyche, yet unable to diagnose the autistic leanings of the very insecure doctor Reid. Well, maybe he can make money counting cards in Las Vegas. The lovely Elle was promoted too soon. She doesn't have what it takes to make it in the Bau boy's club. You're no threat to me, you're no threat to anyone. And token Derek Morgan wants to be taken seriously but he is just a pumped-up side of beef. I know who you are. I know how you think" That agent/unsub made me laugh here, it was a good speech! Lots of fun :-) After this, it was obviously Elle who got to him at the end :-)
I don't know, I don't care how many good things Elle does. I don't like her. Maybe it's simply because I just don't like the actress. I tried, I can't help it. She's always posing, her eyes with so much make-up, it's artificial, when she speaks too. She also keeps her eyes always half-open-half-closed, as if trying to make a seductive look... yeuch.  (yeuch for the fact, not for the eyes. She is pretty, sure, but so what?)
I look at her and I don't feel the character, just an actress showing that she's pretty, as if this was unheard of in actresses.
 - Euripides said: when a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him
 -Euripides said : when love is in excess, it brings a man no honour, nor worthiness
ep 6 - L.D.S.K. - Des Plains, Illinois. It means Long Distance Serial Killers. Three shootings in two weeks, a man shoots at random people in order to save them afterwards, and feel like a God. Hero-homocide.
Reid failed his qualifications, for now he can't carry guns. "Look at me, without a gun on my belt I look like a teacher's assistant" ... yes, actually he does :lol:
He knows they're onto him, so takes hostages in the ER room, and Reid and Hotchner are in there too. Hotchner talks to him, insults Reid and asks the chance to beat him. He kicks Reid to give him a chance to get the gun on his ankle. Reid takes it and shoots him. Then Hotchner tells him he hopes he didn't hurt him too badly. "Hotch, I was a twelve year old child prodigy in a Las Vegas public high school. You kick like a nine-year-old girl"

 -Nietzsche wrote: the irrationality of a thing is not an argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

 -Shakespeare wrote : nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable
Not knowing what you feel is not the same as not feeling anything - this was said by Gideon, but is a beautiful sentence! Reid just told him he doesn't feel bad about killing a man. Gideon also tells him he's proud of him :)
ep 7 - The fox - Hotch and his wife with the new-born baby awww cute little thing :-)
Families are murdered at their homes. Reid interviews a man alone, doing good :) It was a therapist who lost his family (because they went away) and now stays for a few days with a new one before killing them all. They catch him, and he had eight wedding rings, eight trophies, meaning he had killed not two families but eight ... :-(
ep 8 - Natural born killer - Baltimore, Maryland. A hit-man took so much pleasure in his tortures, he's killed circa a hundred people so far. He almost killed Hotch but they caught him, and Hotch talked to him and they found the place where he kept the undercover agent Jimmy Baker and save him.
Hotchner " you were just responding to what you learned, Vincent. When you grow up in an environment like that, an extremely abusive, violent household, it's not surprising that some people grow up to become killers"
Vincent " some people? you said some people grow up to become killers"
Hotch "and some people grow up to catch them" awww so Hotch had a bad childhood... :-( that might explain a few things... not necessarily, but it could...
Morgan has done eighteen months undercover, as a cop.
 - Hemingway wrote: There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted men long enough and liked it never really care for anything else
 -Carl Jung said: the healthy man does not torture others. Generally it's the tortured who turn into torturers
ep 9 - Derailed - Elle is travelling by train when a madman takes everyone hostage. Among them there was this Josh kid that was so stupid, unbelievable. Okay he's young, but he's twenty not ten, and he's always drunk, which makes him even more stupid.
Ted is delusional, thinks everyone is a government agent, thinks they put a microchip in his arm and wants it out. Reid does a magic trick to convince him that he did it. They were all worried about letting him go alone, and Gideon was worried sick. Reid:"could at least one of you look like you're going to see me again?".
Then Reid talks to him: "the voices, they helped you, right? It's where you get your ideas from. While the other kids were outside in the playground, you were inside reading, studying, learning. The voices wouldn't stop. They helped you understand things that other people could never realise. And... then as you grew older, it became almost a responsibility. Right? A responsibility to use that ability, to use your knowledge. " Aww Reid.
 - Roger Oxton Bolt wrote: a belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses, it is an idea that possesses the mind
 -Albert Einstein ask the question that sometimes drives me crazy: Am I or the others crasy? (Reid)
ep 10 - The popular kids - Reid gained a few more points when he said "Actually there aren't that many scientific errors in Star Trek. Especially considering how long ago it was made" :lol:  the poor kid is having nightmares lately that keep him awake at nights. He talks about it to Morgan, who have had his share of nightmares, and Morgan tells Gideon. Gideon shows him a picture he carries around with him: a girl he saved years ago, that every year writes to the BAU updating them on her life. Everyone of them has nightmares, but thinking of the people they saved makes them bearable, for Gideon :-)
- Sir Peter Ustinov said "unfortunately, a super abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares
 - "For the evil is man's best force. Man must become better and eviler" Zarathustra, the super-man, apparently means that there's no moral obbligation for killing someone if you're superior to them... or at least this is what Reid says.He was speaking metaphorically about evolving as a species...
 - Playwright Eugène Ionesco said "Ideologies separate us, dreams and anguish bring us together"
ep 11 - Blood hungry - In Tennessee, a crazy young man kills people and eats them, and his mother didn't say a word, even about the seven y.o. boy he had brought her. :-/
Gideon can't go with the team because he's on crutches, after hurting himself skidiving, and now he works from Garcia's office, driving her crazy :lol: He's at n.24 in his 25 points list of things to do before he dies. N.25 is to give his son Stephen a call. "he doesn't wanna hear from me" and Hotch"you don't know until you try" so Gideon calls him. The episode ends without letting us know what they say to each other, but we see Gideon laughing, so it's probably not going to be a disaster after all. :-)
 - Harriet Beecher Stowe once said "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone"
ep 12 - What fresh hell? - In Delaware, an eleven y.o. girl is kidnapped. The father is dying of cancer. A stupid neighbour woman starts talking about sex offenders living in the neighbourhood, bringing him a flyer. He runs to the man, and Hotch and Morgan come in time to stop him. At the end, they find the right house, and Gideon runs and breaks in without a warrant and searches till he finds her, then he puts her picture in his office :-)
Garcia is convinced Gideon sent her flowers, but it was Hotchner. Gideon sent her an Mp3 player.
 - The poet WH Auden wrote "Evil is always unspectacular and always human. And shares our bed, and eats at our table" 
 - "Measure not the work until the day's out and the labour done" - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
ep 13 - Poison - In New Jersey, some people are poisoned with Lsd: an old woman dies, a man beats his little son almost to death because he was seeing monsters. The man responsible misleaded them more than once; he wanted to kill all the bosses of a firm that fired him. It's good that at least he had the decency to kill himself. Hotch was a lawyer... I should have probably known that by now.. but I don't remember, it just came to me like 'oh really??'
 - Roman philosopher Lucretius wrote: "What is food to me, is to other bitter poison"
 - Confucio warned us "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves" 
ep 14 - Riding the lightning - They are in central Florida to visit a couple of murderers in death row, only it turns out she isn't one. He's the scum bastard, she never killed anyone. Jacob (Michael Massee) has murdered at least thirteen girls and ordered his wife to kill their son Riley: she admitted that she did, but she didn't. This was her most precious secret. He was adopted, never knowing she was her mother, because she wants him to be totally free of Jacob, she wants him to grow up without ever knowing he had Jacob as a father. Gideon is very touched by her, and wants to save her. His team finds the kid, he's a cello prodigy, but she doesn't want it to be revealed, she prefers to die. It's too late now, so he tells nothing to the kid, letting her die happy. Still, Hotch runs to Jacob a moment before he's killed, showing him the kid's picture, telling him "Riley. You lose". He's now seventeen, and he has good normal parents.
Sarah-Jean told Gideon "you have a lovely smile, but you don't smile much" :-) Her character was the centre of the episode, but I'm sorry I didn't like the way she spoke, I really didn't, it put me off, I find it annoying. I liked Gideon very much, he seemed so touched, so in pain for her, he was heartbreaking: when he was making up his mind about her son, when he hugged her, when he watched her die, when he went to see Riley's concert, and he smiled and he cried.. I was crying too, just because he was.
Gideon's son is 25 apparently.
 - "Who so sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed" Genesis 9:6
 - Albert Pine said "What we do for ourselves dies with us, what we do for others and the world remains and is immortal."
ep 15 - Unfinished business - Washington; Max Ryan is presenting his book on the Keystone killer. He retired and wrote it on the one murderer he never caught, maybe hoping to lure him out, and now he's back, killing and playing with him, to the point of leading them to stop another killer, just for the game's sake. The Keystone killer had killed 7 women in the 80s, and now kills another woman, but no more because they get him in time to save the last one.
Ryan is used to being a loner and hasn't seen his family in years, but Gideon convinces him to use the help of the team. When they catch him, Gideon lets Ryan cuff him, while he takes care of the woman. That's why I love Gideon .-)
Reid read Ryan's book on the plane, and already remembers the quote and the page number.
 - Norman Maclean wrote : It is those we live with and love and should know, who elude us
 - Abraham Lincoln once said : in the end, it's not the years in your life that counts, it's the life in your years.  
ep 16 - The tribe - Terra Mesa, New Mexico. We meet Sean Hotchner, Aaron's brother: so handsome, Garcia is speechless. :-)
case: Five kids are brutally murdered, trying to blame it on the indians, and the team uses the help of John Blackwolf. One girl is kidnapped by two men payed by her father who wanted to protect her, because Ingrid had joined a dangerous cult. A family of five people is also murdered. The guy leader of the cult is trying to provoke a war between white people and indians. Hotch and Blackwolf fight some of his guys at the indian school, and stop their massacre, this time. Blackwolf calls Hotch Captain America :lol:
 -You can take many paths to get to the same place= Apache saying. I like it.
At the end Hotch goes to meet his brother Sean to make peace, and gives him the name of a person he can call if he needs help. Sean:"this your way of saying I can't take care of myself?" - Aaron:"No, it's my way of saying I'm a jackass" - Sean:"you know it must be hereditary, and Aaron laughs and smiles!! I think this might just be the first smile in 16 episodes! Right at the end!!
 - Nietzsche wrote : the individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
ep 17 - A real rain - In New York. Only 13 minutes into the episode and we already get a smile from Hotch, thanks to Garcia. :-) I could get used to it .-) I liked to see the team eating together at the chinese place :-) with Reid that can't use chopsticks :-) They were all talking and laughing, even Hotch, when it ends because of a new murder.
case: A man kills people who were acquitted for murder, but not convicted. They catch him and save his last victim, who actually appears to be innocent for real. People thought of this killer as a punisher for criminal, as if working for a higher justice, but it was only a killer. How could he know that they were not innocent? He didn't! People are always so eager to judge and condemn!
 - WH Auden said: murder is unique in that is abolishes the party it injures, so that society must take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness.
 - Gandhi said : better to be violent if there's violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence
 - Gandhi also said : I object to violence, because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent. 
ep 18 - Somebody's watching - Los Angeles. Reid and Gideon are at Parker Dunley's art gallery, where Reid meets him again: they were at high school together, and also meets Lila, an actress, whose artist friend is quite aggressively charmed by  Gideon : "if I weren't a lesbian, I'd jump your bones. You have these piercing, discerning eyes which remind me of my father who was a shrink, and I'm like God, I'm so hot" which I admit is more than awkward, it's more crazy-weird-sick! Gideon leaves in a hurry!!! :lol:  They were in Los Angeles to lecture the police department; when they find out someone is killing people connected to actress Lila Archer, and they think she's in danger too, because the killer has an obsession with her, Reid is assigned to protect her, and here we go again: "I won't stop living my life!!". Of course not, why should you? There's only someone out there to get you! It's not like the guy's dangerous or anything, right? There are only four or five people already killed, after all! God, how I hate this stupidity every time!
Lila kisses Reid in the pool .-) so he has to change : I like him in normal, informal clothes :-)  The stalker was her old friend Maggie, and she comes to the house, but Reid saves Lila :-) then they say goodbye. It was cute when he stalled Maggie saying "she loves me, now" :-) Reid's face is now on magazines covers. :-) Morgan: "You were her hero!" Yep!!
 - Diane Arbus once said : A photograph is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you, the less you know.
 - Bernard Shaw once said : An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country. 
ep 19 - Machismo - In Mexico, old women are murdered. A man who used to rape women now kills their mothers; the team rushes to save the last woman, but the women together had already took care of him! Good ! Protect your homes and your families! The end was the best part of the whole episode. I mean, not because of him, but because of the whole thing: all the women together, the mexican proverb, the fact that they're not charged with anything because they were protecting their homes...
Hotch was at home for the weekend: it was his birthday, he was trying to stop his baby from crying, unsuccessfully, then Haley's sister held him and he stopped immediately :-) When Gideon calls him, Haley guesses right away what it is and tells him to go. Her sister looks at him and he says "You heard her. She said it was all right" - "You're one hell of a profiler" yeah, I got that too, no need to be a profiler to see what she's feeling, but he feels he has to go... but at times like this I too think they might spare him for one day!! I know what he does is great and important, but seriously, one man absent for one day would really damage their work so much??  Come on!
 - Gideon: In my experience evil is not a cultural phenomenon, it's a human one.
 - Mexican proverb : The house does not rest upon the ground but upon a woman.
 - Anthony Brandt wrote: other things may change us, but we start and end with family.
ep 20 -  Charm and harm - Four women were killed and the police knows who it was, but they can't find him, so they call the BAU. Mark Gregory escapes through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina... finally a witness "saves" one girl, and the last victim fights back until they get there and kill him. He first killed his mother when he was 10 because she cheated on his father.
 - The French philosopher Voltaire wrote : there are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts
 - The author Francois de la Rochefocauld wrote : we are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.
ep 21 - Secrets and lies - There is a mole at Langley. Gideon has worked unofficially for the Cia :-) That Cia boss Bruno Hawks, Deputy Director of Operations, did his military service with Jason Gideon. Now they must find the mole in time to save a woman and her two children. The mole was his friend Bruno, and Gideon proved it with the help of the other of his agents. Bruno was right, they would never put him in prison with all he knows : he dies in a 'car accident' , according to the papers....
Morgan has a dog called Clooney :-) and Garcia tries to find Prince William's phone number in the Cia computers, and J.J. is amused and calls her "you crazy person" which was sweet. :-)
 - Albert Einstein said : whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
 - George Orwell said : in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
ep 22 - The Fisher King , part 1 - It's vacation time for all the team, two weeks away and none of them can wait. Elle and Morgan are at a resort in Jamaica; Hotch is finally at home, happy with his family :-) ; Gideon is alone at a cabin in the woods, cooking and waiting for a person :-) a woman :-) ; Penelope is role-playing online at Camelot, Reid is in Nevada: his mother suffers from schizofrenia.
Hotch receives a strange phone call at home; Garcia's system is hacked via that game; Gideon is sent a human head in the mail, from Jamaica, and in Jamaica Elle is arrested for the murder of a man found headless, and Hotch flies there to set her free. Even J.J. gets a message, and so does Reid, at the place where her mother is. They all get back to put together all the pieces each of them has. Another clue is also delivered at Haley's door. They were given explicit order to keep it among themselves, do not involve anyone else. Gideon orders a press conference breaking up the only rule the Unsub had given them, and as Elle gets home, he's there and she gets shot!
This Unsub had all their locations, personal datas. He got  things from the Beaureau computers, and Garcia has to confess he could hack her because she played that game. Gideon is furious "How could you be that stupid?"
Poor Gideon is destroyed: "I got nothing left. I needed a place where I didn't have to know what was out there. Where I could just close my eyes and not see bodies torn to pieces or hear children calling out for help. That cabin was the only thing I had left and this guy took it away from me. I'd like to be alone. Please."
Medieval time: prime is 6am, terce is 9 am, sext is 12-noon, none is 3 pm, vespers is 6 pm.
 - Writer Elbert Hubbard said : No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one


End of season one. Big finale, no doubt, although I'm glad I'm watching this on dvd, so I don't have to wait months to know how it ends. I'll put on a new dvd right away :-D

Madagascar 2 - or - Madagascar: escape 2 Africa

I guess if you're six it might be funny, sure, but if you're an adult is is just silly. In this movie there's a lot, a lot of animals dancing, all the time, and also a lot of the old lady that kicked Alex in the first movie. Here she's back, being nice to every person and absolutely nasty to all the animals, beating the life out of them any chance she gets. In the first movie she sort of had a good reason, you know, being in the city, and these animals had no business being there loose. But here, we are in Africa, and she's the one with no business being here. She's on a safari, and she fights with Alex just because she remembers him; takes away all their water because who cares about animals dying a horrible death as long as she is comfortable and with more water she could ever need...
We see how Alex (Ben Stiller) was taken from Africa by hunters and brought to New York. Now, after they leave with the plane in the last movie, they crash... where? But in Africa, of course. and Alex meets his parents and learns that other lions don't dance, they fight. Marty (Chris Rock) finds other zebras, which is amazing and exciting at first, but then he realises they're all alike, and they can do everything he can do, nothing special. Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) meets other hippos, including big Moto Moto (Will.I.am) who 'asks her out' , and Melman (David Schwimmer) is rotten jealous because apparently he's in love with Gloria... a giraffe in love with a hippo...
There's also the lemurs , with King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen) with them in Africa. The penguins are here too, but in a role too small. They were the best part of the first film. Now they've taken that part away, and what's left is just for little children, I really can't see what an adult might like in all this.
Other voices are Alec Baldwin as Makumba and Bernie Mac as Zuba the father. Actually I don't know who Bernie Mac is, but I liked his voice a lot.

Gravity - 2013

It's a survival film, with only two actors, and four more giving only the voice. It's all in space, and I don't like space-suits. Matt (George Clooney) is a veteran astronaut, very at ease in space. Mission Specialist dr. Ryan (Sandra Bullock) instead is not an astronaut, she's something between a doctor and an engineer, up there to repair-upgrade some equipment. Because of a Russian incident, they are hit by lots of debris, and from that moment things become very tough. First she's loose and floating in space, but Matt comes to the rescue and brings her back to the Explorer, then they decide their  best chance is to reach a Russian space station and use a thing there to go back home. The thing can't be used to return to Earth, so Matt plans to use it to reach another place, a Chinese space station, this time, but before they can do that, they have to enter the russian station. They can't catch it well, but Ryan gets entangled in its cords, and she catches Matt. For some reason, he tells her that she can't help him, that he's risking pulling her away with him, although I don't see why, just like I don't see why people in space float away. If there's no air, and nothing is touching him, and nobody pushed him before he just let go, why he keeps floating away? Shouldn't he stay still? Oh well, I know nothing of these things, so these are not critics, just things I don't understand. On the same line, I'd have thought that she had stopped him, that they were both stopped, and she only needed to move him towards her position for him to slowly move her way by inertia... I suppose I really know nothing of these things...
Anyway, Matt decides he can't make it, so lets go and leaves Ryan alone, encouraging her to keep believing she can do it. She was in a real panic, but manages now to enter the russian space station. She tries to move that sort of shuttle, but its parachute's cords are stopping it, so she wears a russian suit and goes out to entangle the damn thing. When she's out, debris come again, not hurting her, but actually helping her by freeing her shuttle. So she enters and tries tomove towards the chinese station, only to discover she can't move, there's no fuel. She's very near the point of just letting go, giving up, relaxing there and wait for the death that will reunite her with the daughter she had and that died 4 years old. She has some sort of spiritual experience, where she sees Matt again, and talks to him, and he helps her. She decides she doesn't want to die, and uses the landing system of that shuttle to move towards the chinese station, which is slowly moving towards the orbit. She ejects herself from the russian shuttle and moves herself with the help of a fire-extinguisher. Aboard the chinese station, she heads towards Earth. A fire goes on inside, and she lands on a lake, so when she opens water fills it in and it sinks. She gets out, but she's too heavy. She takes off her suit and swims ashore. She made it, she's alive.
I don't know, it's not generally my kind of thing, and I'm sure if Ryan had been played by someone else I would definitely not like it, but since I always liked her there's at least something.
I liked the scene when she took the space suit off the first time, after all that it was almost like being reborn. It's certainly very well done, Alfonso Cuaron knows what he's doing, because 90 minutes of film pass quickly enough, half of it with two people, and the other half with just one.
Very good film, although I tell you I'm just not fond of space-suits.