Quickie Review - The Drop

I'm interested to know if there were severe time constraints on this film. It felt as if so much of it wasn't carefully attended to. The first and the most glaring mistake was the title. The movie is based on a short story called Animal Rescue by Dennis Lethane (from an anthology called Boston Noir), which if you've seen the film, is the absolute perfect title, both in reality and as a metaphor for how the film plays out. Just from looking at this board the title change would have settled any doubts about the not-at-all (yet described as) ambiguous ending.

I didn't love the movie (something of a surprise considering Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace starred), but it wasn't so much the story, the acting or the odd mistakes, but the painfully obvious clues given throughout. Some coming directly before the scenes they foreshadow. In the end, if you read the short story (it's available online), you find the story is so painfully simple, it's not surprising the film lacked the depth it so desperately attempted to show. The ending, however, was a nice homage to Mr. Gandolfini.

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White Privilege

This was a post I wrote on Facebook after surprisingly not seeing any moaning about the Documentary by Jose Antonio Vargas, titled White People Dayyum! I just scrolled my timeline and not a single white person got their feelings hurt by White People. I unfortunately haven't seen it, but the number of fake accounts that popped up on twitter, tells me it was a damn good show. Here's the thing. If someone of color aka non-white says "White Privilege," are you offended? If you said yes, then you are exhibiting white privilege. It has nothing to do with how hard you work or study, how you stayed out of trouble, because here's the thing, that is entirely the point. Somewhere out there, there are 100 Black, Spanish, Native American, Arab, Asian, who worked and studied as hard as you and never got in trouble, but they don't have what you "earned" or achieved. Stop looking at the one person you know who isn't white that achieved as your benchmark. Loo

11 Rules of Life - Bill Gates?

I read this on Facebook this morning. A friend had posted it and said that every child should have to receive this. I of course read it and started to think. I immediately wondered who really wrote this, as I rarely see things like this attributed to the proper person. I immediately found it was written by Conservative Charles J. Sykes when he wrote a book about how America is dumbing down our youth. I read it twice and started to wonder how true it was. Below is a link to the actual picture I saw. So let's look at each of the rules and analyze them. Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it! - Life is not fair in that we are not all afforded the same opportunities based on race, creed, color, socio-economic background, but in general, those who are afforded the same opportunities to succeed are very often rewarded for their individual efforts. Sure there may be underlying circumstances, but hard work is proven to pay more often than not and those who strive for succ

Quickie Review - Finding Vivian Maier

While I thoroughly enjoyed the film, especially the first 15-20 minutes, I was a little bothered by the way the film played out. The interviews with the clearly disturbed brother, sister and the mother, who obviously, was in for a cut, didn't need to be in the film. Then the woman who suggested abuse, yet seemed to have her life defined by Maier, as she tried to muster every ounce of emotion and fake guilt. Her friend, more than happy to be party of the charade. People who talk about abuse for the first time, usually don't do so on camera. The fact these scenes were so prominent, shows that they felt wronged that they were not rewarded. Maloof on the other hand, seems to disappear from the documentary during this part, almost hiding away from the fact, he went from complete praise, to even making money off of her, to destroying her personal legacy. He almost mentions the family of boys taking care of her rent, as an afterthought. Her burial spot, never shown, yet a video of her

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