THREE GREAT MOVIES:INVICTUS,PRECIOUS,THE BLIND SIDE

I have been going to the movies, but this is the first time I am going to write a short criticism about three of my favorites......

Invictus: This is base on a true story which we are all familiar....The story is about how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) who has been elected as the first black to be president of South Africa.....How to unite his country and his people is one of his biggest problem and he decide that the best way will be with the game of Rugby which everyone loves...So he invites the captain of the team (Matt Damon) to tea so that he can talk about making his team a winner and win the 1995 World Cup......Both Mr. Freeman and Damon are excellent in this film......I gave it three chocolate kisses....Invictus is a poem written by William Ernest Henley that Mandela used to say it to himself when he was in prison.........

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

The Blind Side:

This film is also based on a true story.....
A teenager Michael Oher is walking in a cold night with just a tee shirt and short when a wealthy lady who is riding with her family sees him...She ask her daughter if she knows him and the daughter tells her that he is in her class.....They stop the car and ask him were he is going and when she does not like the answer she decides to take him home.....the lady is Leigh Anne Taohy(Sandra Bullock) her husband is played by Tim McGraw.....Miss Leigh Anne takes Michael under her wing and the rest is history like they say......This is another excellent movie that is a must see and I give it another 3 chocolate kisses.......

Precious:

This is a very hard movie to watch.....It took me a long time to go see it....It takes place in Harlem 1987 It is about an African-American teenager Clairisee"Precious" Jones...Sixteen and pregnant with her second child....This girl dream of a better future for herself and for her children....She is in the ninth grade and she does not know how to read and write....She does every thing for her mother (Mo'Nique) who abuses her and hates her....When the school sends her to an alternative school she starts to write how she feels........She tell her Social Worker (Marian Carey) that her children were fathered by her own father....One on the babies has Down Syndrome..After she has the baby and returns home her mother does something to her that Precious takes her baby and runs away.......This movie is excellent, but hard to take...I cried and was very upset....Mo'Nique was fantastic as the abusive mother......I give three chocolate kisses also.....my next movie will be AVATAR.........Love Sci-Fi

ANTONIO'S LIFE & SHANGHAI GIRLS

Antonio's life by Jose F. Garcia: The story starts in Basque. Antonio was born in Spain, but was not considered Spanish since he was born in Basque region....Basque is a place between Spain and France and neither country wanted them...The crown of Spain kept them poor and ignorant.

The Barradaz brothers Xavier fourteen and Antonio thirteen were sent to Barcelona to live with their uncle because the new wife of their father told him she did not wanted the boys.....Unfortunately the uncle was no were to be found..So the boys had to fend for themselves.
At the docks the boys split to find work....Xavier finds a ship that is sailing for Argentina....The captain hires him to work on his fathers ranch......Xavier is good with animals...So the brothers say good-bye knowing that they will not see each other again.....

Antonio in the mean time meets with a young guy that likes him right away and takes him under his wing.....Miguel is only two years older, but treat him like a son.....Miguel lives in the convent with the nuns..He helps preparing the church for mass. He present Antonio to the nuns and show him the duties that will be required of him....One thing Antonio realizes is that he must learn to read....Fortunately the Mother Superior likes him and they show him how to read and write.....The boys work at the docks and help the nuns with whatever they need...Time passes and Miguel meets a beautiful girl and falls in love. The only problem is that she comes from a wealthy family and when they notice that she is falling for Miguel they decide to send her to Cuba....Miguel promise her that he will go to Cuba and get her some how...

In the mean time the Sister Superior dies and leaves everything to Antonio......So now they decide to make all the preparations and go to Cuba to look for Mercedes.....But they know that they can not stay in Cuba they must go to another Island in the Caribbean......They finally settle on going to Puerto Rico......After a few days in Cuba sitting around the plaza they finally see Mercedes and are able to speak to her. While Antonio is inside the store Miguel and Mercedes make plans to elope.
They succeed and they get married aboard the ship. Once they reach Puerto Rico they start a new life......

Antonio who considers Miguel as a brother plan everything with him...They became very successful in Puerto Rico. Antonio meets a beautiful Puertorrican girl and marries her....
Tragedy strikes when many years later Antonio enters politics and terrible things happened.

In the back of the book it says that "Antonio's Life is based on Jose Garcia's grandfather's life...Also in the back of the jacket it reads: "It tells a story of how a kind man can engage in acts of violence, and the price to be paid as a consequence." I recommend this book as well as Shanghai Girls.....

ANTONIO'S LIFE & SHANGHAI GIRLS

I have read two wonderful books these past weeks.... they may seem very different, but yet they have a lot in common....the Shanghai Girls by Lisa See is about sisterly love and a different culture......Antonio's Life by Jose F. Garcia is about brotherly love and a different culture also.....

First "Shanghai Girls" is the story of Pearl Chin and her sister May......Pearl is the oldest of the two....She is 21 while May is 18........The time is 1936 Shanghai...The girl are carefree living in a modern City their father is wealthy and they are having the time of their life......They pose for a young man that makes calenders....but one day their father tells them that he has lost his money gambling and in order to pay his debt he has sold them as wives.....to suitors who have traveled from Los Angeles to find Chinese brides......they are two brothers and one is only fourteen....

After the marriage Pearl decides that she and May are not going to travel to California to be with their husband...She throws the tickets away......Unfortunately her father has not told the whole story that he owes the money to the Chinese gang and they come to the house to reprimand the two girls.....They promise to go as soon as they can....Everything seems impossible because the Japanese have invaded China.....How the girls get out of China and are able to get to Los Angeles is quite a trial......All that they suffer and how they succeed is the beauty of the book....but I believe that the author will write a sequel since it was left hanging......
I will write the other novel tomorrow..........

WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW

Have you ever read a book you liked, but wanted to hit the author with it....That is what happened to me with this book. "What i Thought i Knew" by Alice Eve Cohen....A Memoir

I liked the book and was really happy that it turned out the way it did....But many times I had to stop and take a breather, because she upset me so much that I wanted to hit her with the book...

The synopsis: After a terrible divorce Alice is happy with her new boyfriend, her adopted daughter, and her job....She start feeling terrible and goes to the doctor who tells her she is going through menopause......So the three of take a trip to Europe that they have planned before she fell ill....There she feels worse. While her nine year old daughter and her boyfriend are having a great time she is sleeping in their hotel room and feeling miserable.

When they get back she goes to see her doctor again. The doctor puts her on hormone therapy and give her an exam...After a lot of proving, her doctor tells her that she has a tumor and send her for a emergency CAT scan........The CAT scan reveled that Alice does not have a tumor, but she is six months pregnant....
Lo and be hold here she is forty-five years old without a pre-natal care and no insurance coverage for a high risk pregnancy....

She tells her boyfriend who so happy he is static....but she does not want this baby...She does not know what to do.....Have a late abortion in Kansas the only state that does that, give it away for adoption or what......She feels overwhelm........It is a great read.......and I recommend it

THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN HAPPENING AROUND HERE

I have not been posting anything since September....A lot of things have happened before them that I did not posted because I was brain dead.......:0) In May of at the end of April my daughter came to the house with the silly pretest that they were looking at houses in the neighborhood......A big lie....The day before there was a mysterious BOOM that no one had an explanation for it.....Some said that it was a meteorite that fell in the sea....Only the meteor knows for that matter....Anyway that evening they come and it just happened that I had the news on and they were talking about the "big boom"....Then our daughter tells me that she knew what the boom was and she said "it left this"...then she produce a baby picture of a sonogram....

That was a great surprise and I started to cry...Oh well I am a cry baby any way......The big surprise for them and for us was that she was almost six months pregnant and she did not know it... No matter she was pregnant and we were all very happy...It is their first and it was a boy.

Time flew by and on July 24, 2009 she had a baby boy by cesarean...He weighted 9 pounds and 12 ounces....A beautiful child named Owen Flynn Ricketts......We have been taking care of him since our daughter went back to work....

The baby is growing the way he should....He is a joy to all of us....He soon will be four months old

He is beginning to turn and I guess soon he will me sitting too.....

NOR'EASTER

Last week Thursday November 12 we had a Nor'easter...I thought it was the remnants of Ida...Anyway they called it a Nor'easter and it was bad...There were beach erosion.....It brought lots of rain. Norfolk was underwater.....Other parts of Hampton Roads were hard hit...The Governor declared it a disaster zone....Our neighborhood was underwater...The children did not have school for two days...That made them very happy...Of course the parents where not happy some had to miss work because of it....

Our yard looked like a river...Our street got flooded, but fortunately the water subsided by the afternoon..Our son who lives in Little Neck lost power for a day and a half.... A good thing that he had four huge trees chop down a few days before the storm.....Our daughter street was like a lake and they could not get out the next day.......

We also had another visitor from as far as Puerto Rico....This huge Barge name "La Princesa" got loose and landed on Little Island in Sandbridge.....The Barge was caring hazardous material and the authorities were afraid that it was going to collapse with the fishing pier...Also there are a series of Condos that became in danger of being hit by the barge....The Cost Guard tried for three days to dislodge it with no avail.....Monday morning finally they were able to sent it on its way to New Jersey her destination....... That was the most exiting thing about the Storm....Lots of people went there to see it and take pictures......It was an awesome site.......

They are announcing more rain and wind for this Saturday and Sunday...If that is the case our neighborhood is going to be under water again because the City did not see it fit to collect our bags of leaves and pine needles and chunks of branches fallen from the storm.....The City always leave our area for last...We pay our taxes the same as those neighborhood that are more affluent than ours......Last Friday they announced that the Friday collection was going to be collected on Monday while ours that was supposed to be collected on Thursday was left to be collected this Thursday. A whole week and then they did not collect the bags that are on our curves.....I could not see the sense of it....What is with that...?

SOUTHERN PATIO

I bought a beautiful 13" Fiberglass Planter made by Southern Patio and Garden Collection....
The Planter has a lifetime warranty.....but when I called to tried to explain that the top rim of the planter has come apart I never really got an answer.....

I must be fair I did get a called left to my answering machine...I returned the called, but again I had to leave a message...Sort of a catch 22....After that they did not called back...So I gave up too...

The planter cost me $9.99 and I was not going to trouble my head with calls that went no where........I bought the planter in May 29, 2009....I should have been more careful since it was made in China and we all know the fantastic quality Chinese items are made of.....Yes I am being sarcastic......I cannot help it.....
I am still using the planter since I had no choice..I had transferred a plant in there and I did not wanted to disturbed the poor thing again......But I cannot hep wondering if the planter is going to continued falling apart or when it will happen...