kimblr.com

(out of 4)
Starring Susan Sarandon, Christopher Plummer, Max von Sydow, Gabriel Byrne, Roy Dupuis. Directed by Paolo Barzman.99 minutes. At the Varsity, Grande. PG
A piece of advice for Canadian filmmakers – don’t make movies out of dreary CanLit novels. They’re easy enough to spot.
The late Matt Cohen’s 1990 novel, Emotional Arithmetic, was full of people haunted by memories of the Holocaust, and in Canadian fiction that’s a sure tip-off we’re in for plenty of wintry blasts from the intellectual fog machine.
At least the weather’s fine in this screen adaptation. It’s 1985 and Melanie Winters (Susan Sarandon), a Holocaust survivor, lives in a farmhouse in the Eastern Townships with a splendid view, marred only by the presence of her husband, history professor David Winters (Christopher Plummer) who has affairs with his students and acts like Mr. Grumpy at home. Plummer’s cold-fish portrayal is almost too convincing for comfort.
Melanie is a one-woman Amnesty International, clipping out newspaper stories of various global atrocities and filing them in the attic.
"We have six million Jews living in the attic," her husband complains at one point. This is not to mention victims of the Khmer Rouge. Understandably Melanie has to take what she calls "crazy pills" to deal with her emotions.
"You’re caught between a crazy bitch and a moral bankrupt," she tells her grown son, Benjamin (Roy Dupuis). "I’m sorry."
On the scene arrive two of Melanie’s old friends. Jakob Bronski (Max von Sydow) survived not only Nazi death camps but the Gulag. While a prisoner at a transit camp for deportation of Jews in Drancy, France, he befriended and helped save the lives of two children, Melanie, and an Irish lad named Christopher Lewis (Gabriel Byrne).
Now the three are reunited for the first time, much to the displeasure of Melanie’s husband.

thestar.com

I have way too much stuff in this house. I need to take a week just to recycle and file, and perhaps put up another bookshelf or two to house all the books I’ve accumulated since moving into this residence.
All-in-one gadgets help keep some of the clutter at bay.
They don’t organize anything, but they do cut down the number of tools I need to have on hand, as well as keep the emergency box I keep in my car from running over with stuff.
I’m talking about items like the Black and Decker PD600 PivotPlus 6-Volt NiCad rechargeable drill and screwdriver, with an articulating head ($51 retail, although it’s easy to find at half the price, like many of these driver/drills).
When I first moved into this house, I had no idea how many times I’d need to use a screwdriver or a drill. I learned quickly how convenient it was to have a cordless, reliable power tool.
All the bookcases, several pieces of furniture and tons of odds and ends (such as taking apart and putting together all kinds of fixtures) happened with ease, thanks to this handy tool.
If I lost my tool kit, I’d feel OK as long as I had this and my Leatherman, a pocket-sized, tool that includes among its uses a wire cutter, needle-nose pliers, several sizes of screwdrivers, a can/bottle opener and scissors.
Now, years later, there are tools like the Panasonic EY6225C 3.6-Volt NiCad 1/4-inch Hex Cordless Drill/Driver ($117), much lighter and more manageable than mine.
SOS for the road
Say you want to make your emergency car kit a bit more compact. How about the Swiss Tech BodyGard Platinum 7-in-1 Multi-Function Tool with Key Ring ($30)? (But, they’ve got to come up with a catchier name!)
This baby promises to be all you need, should you find yourself in some kind of calamity in the car, or even in the house.

msnbc.msn.com

“THE BANK JOB” (C): This is a solid, no-nonsense heist thriller, yet one that ultimately fails to distinguish itself from the many others of the genre. Jason Statham, star of the “Transporter” movies, plays the vividly named Terry Leather, a used-car dealer with a criminal past. He and some of his amateur thug pals get roped into robbing the bank’s vault by seductive ex-model Martine Love (the stunning Saffron Burrows). Martine herself has been roped into organizing the heist by her married lover (Richard Lintern), a member of MI5 who wants to retrieve some potentially scandalous photos of someone in the royal family, which are stashed inside a safe deposit box in the vault. 115 minutes. Rated R for sexual content, nudity, violence and language.
“BE KIND REWIND” (C):The frantically useless Jerry (Jack Black) gets zapped by an electromagnetic field while trying to sabotage a power plant in Passaic, N.J., and ends up accidentally erasing every tape at the video store where his longtime friend, the low-key Mike (Mos Def), works. The two hatch a scheme to reshoot a bunch of movies, starting with “Ghostbusters,” and rent them out to unsuspecting customers. Not only do people in town not mind, they fall in love with the makeshift movies. “Be Kind Rewind” could have been a clever, biting satire about pop culture but instead feels too fluffy and sweet. 101 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some sexual references.
“DRILLBIT TAYLOR” (C): Judd Apatow produced, Stephen Brill (“Little Nicky”) directed and Seth Rogen co-wrote the script to this one-note story about a trio of high school nerds who hire a bodyguard to protect them from a psychotic bully. Owen Wilson is the same low-key guy as usual, playing the titular Santa Monica homeless dude who pretends to have special ops training to get the gig. Young stars Nate Hartley, Troy Gentile and David Dorfman have a likable, goofy chemistry with each other, and the fact that they’re up-and-comers makes them more believable. But once you get past the premise, there’s just nowhere to go. 102 minutes. Rated PG-13 for crude sexual references throughout, strong bullying, language, drug references and partial nudity.

vindy.com

It was illegal. It was dangerous.
And the black team won 88-44. “They never saw anyone run up and down the court like we did,” a McLendon player says.
If you’re unfamiliar with the game, you’re not alone. The players and coaches from historically black colleges and universities were more obscure than baseball’s Negro Leagues, but were victimized by the same exclusions from the white mainstream. As racial barriers eroded, and white colleges recognized how much black talent they had ignored, they cherry-picked until it became nearly all theirs. The black colleges didn’t go out of business, as the Negro Leagues did, but they lost their leverage with recruits to the universities that act as the farm system to the National Basketball Association.
This remarkable four-hour documentary by Dan Klores, to be shown in two installments without commercial interruption on ESPN on Sunday and Monday nights, is as heartbreaking as any about civil rights. He sets it against the indignities of segregation but depicts the black colleges as educational safe houses where children of cotton pickers and sharecroppers felt nurtured and motivated. Like the grainy film of Mr. McLendon’s teams, archival footage from places like the Tuskegee Institute offers a vision of separateness.

read_more

COLUMBIA - Another Columbia business was the scene of an armed robbery early Saturday morning.
At 4:42 a.m., Columbia Police officers responded to the Break Time Gas Station located at 901 U.S. Highway 63 Connector.
According to a news release, a black male described as 5′11″, 200 lbs. and wearing a tan ball cap and black jacket, robbed the gas station at gun point.
He fled with an undisclosed amount of cash in a green, two-door passenger car with a sunroof. Police said no one was injured in the accident.
If you have any information regarding this crime, please submit your tip on the CRIMESTOPPERS Web site. You can find a link to the site on the left side of this page.
You do not have to give your name and you may be eligible for a reward of up to $1,500 if your information leads to an arrest.
Published: Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 7:28 AM
Last Updated: Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 11:47 AM

read_more