December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
I have read three of his books: The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany and Cider House Rules. I have to say that A Prayer for Owen Meany is the best of the three. All of them are good books; all of them have been made into movies. I have only seen Garp and Cider House Rules. I have not yet seen Simon Birch, which was a loose adaption of Owen Meany.
Why do I like Owen Meany the best? It’s about a relationship between two young men growing up together in the same town. Johnny is the main character; Owen is his best friend. It’s a tragic comedy; it’ll make you laugh and cry. Johnny lives with his grandmother; Owen accidentally killed Johnny’s mother. Because of that, Owen believes he is an instrument of God. Owen is not your typical best friend; he has dwarfism and has a strange, high-pitched voice. Johnny doesn’t know his father and searches for him, which turns out not to be the major plot. The major plot revolves around the relationship between these two young men.
It’s a long novel, yet it’s a page turner once you get into it. There are religious themes that I find it to be enlightening and funny to read. If you have time to read, read this book. You won’t regret reading it.
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December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
Deaf Performing Artists Network, D-PAN, is a non-profit organization that makes music videos for the deaf and hard of hearing. One video that they have recently produced is called “Where’d you go,” a song by Fort Minor. Deaf performing artists signed the song like it’s a music video. This is my first time seeing anything like this, and at a good quality. They incorporated the use of ASL, captioning, and visual media, and they did an excellent job. There are other videos which were sent to them by other deaf performing artists. Check it out!
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December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
I recently got “Dreamcatcher” in the mail from Blockbuster.com. Somehow that movie got into my queue. I am not a fan of Stephen King, nor will I ever be. (Sorry Stephen King fans!) I watched the movie anyway. I never read any of his horror books; I have started to read the Dark Towers series.
First of all, it had a good, gripping plot. At the beginning of the movie, it was quite mild and just like any other movie. But the horror began, I wanted to stop the movie. I couldn’t, because I wanted to have closure and to know what happened at the end.
What I don’t understand about the movie is the connection between the dream catcher and the boys’ (later who grew up to be men) ability to predict and to read other people’s minds. It wasn’t explained in the movie. Also, there was an odd boy who introduced these boys to that special ability. I know that his purpose in life was to save the world from aliens. What does that have to do with the dream catcher? Does anyone know?
I would give this movie 1 1/2 star out of four stars.
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December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
Review of the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Author: Mark Haddon
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1-4000-3271-7
Summary: Christopher has autism. He knows and recalls facts that are useless to most of us, i.e. the prime numbers up to 7,000 something. Each chapter is numbered by prime numbers. He explains every little detail about his life. What colors he likes and doesn’t like and reasons for not liking them. What day is a Super Good Day because of seeing a specific color car. So on and on. Christopher learns about a mystery. Who killed the neighbor’s dog? From then on, he learns more and more than he ever learned before.
It’s fascinating to read about a person with autism and what his perspective may be like. It has a very surprising plot, which I didn’t expect to happen. Unpredictable. Sad. Perfect beach or weekend book.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
Book Review of Summer Reading is Killing Me
Genre: Children’s Literature
Author: Jon Scieszka
Illustrator: Lane Smith
ISBN: 0-14-130820-6
Summary: This book is a part of the Time Warp Trio Series, and is the 7th in the series. Joe, Sam and Fred go to school together, and receive a summer reading list on their last day of school. One of the characters, Fred, put the summer reading list in The Book, a magical book that helps the trio to solve their crisis. If anything gets into The Book, something bad happens. This time, they traveled to Hoboken, NJ, where they had to fight with all the bad characters from famous children’s literature such as Dracula, Headless Horseman, Long John Silver, and the Devil. In their fight, they have to get The Book back in order to get home.
It has surprising and hilarious elements. I thoroughly enjoy reading it myself and reading it to the kids. The kids enjoy listening and recalling the characters from which books.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (for Children’s Lit)
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December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
Original Sin (2001)
Summary
A man from Havana, Cuba meets his mail-order bride from Wilmington, Delaware. The bride turns out to be an actress pretending to be her. The real bride was murdered. The man doesn’t know about it until she runs away with his money. He finds her and brings her back. The private investigator searches for her and investigates the mail-order bride murder. He turns out to be an accomplice of the actress. There’s much more to the story, and I don’t want to give away too much.
Review
At first, I was not interested in the movie, because I did not have great first impressions of Antonio Banderas and Angelie Jolie. I knew that they were both very good looking people, but can they act? I was doubtful. After watching the first several minutes, I realize that my “original” impressions were wrong. I admit that. They’re good looking and good actors.
The plot of the movie was gripping and kept me on my feet. The first conflict was about her stealing the money, and then they came back together. Second was when the private investigator (PI) told the man that she killed the mail-order bride. Lastly, it was about the relationship with the PI, which I’m not going to reveal. Yet… close to the end, I was anxious to get the movie over with. One can see the ending from a mile away. When I saw the ending, I was shocked. It was not what I expected it to be; let’s just say, it ended happily.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
Goodbye Lenin (2003)
Summary
The young man grew up in East Germany. His mother had a heart attack just when East Germans were protesting which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. She then went into coma for eight months. She missed all of the changes during that time. So the son decided to keep everything just like it was before the fall, because the mother was heavily involved in the Communist party. He felt that it would be too much for her, and she would have another heart attack which possibly will kill her.
Review
This movie is fascinating to watch. It brought back memories of what happened in Germany in 1990. I found it interesting about how the son had changed and matured while she was in coma. When she woke up, he fell asleep one time while taking care of her. She got up and walked out of the apartment. She saw the changes. That’s when she had to grow up, too. My favorite comedic part was when his girlfriend, a student nurse, was practicing putting on cast, they had an argument. She got up and left the bathroom. He was stuck in the bathtub, and he tried to get up.
This movie is much better than “Wings of Desire,” a German film with Peter Falk. The plot of “Goodbye Lenin” hooks you in, and you would want to know how it ended. “Wings of Desire” was much more complex, and it was not easy for me to sit and relax while watching it. Yes, “Wings of Desire” was a good movie (it won an award at Cannes Film Festival) but it required deep thinking. “Goodbye Lenin” didn’t require deep thought, and you can enjoy the plot better.
The ending was good. I’m not going to spoil it. Go and watch it!
Rating
4 1/2 stars out of 5 stars
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December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
I was on Stumble Upon over the weekend, and I found this web video called “Dance, Monkeys, Dance.” It looked really cool, but it had audio. Unfortunately, it was not captioned. So I contacted James Short of harkle.com to see if there is a way to get this captioned. James then emailed Ernie Cline, the person who created the dancing monkeys, and Ernie was willing to provide the transcript to get it captioned. Within two days, it’s captioned. Yippie! See what one can do by email! 
James put it on two websites: www.harkle.com and http://dotsub.com/films/dancemonkeys. It’s a feature film on harkle.com; on dotSUB.com, it will be translated into foreign languages.
After viewing “Dance, Monkeys, Dance” with captions, I now understand it’s a slam poem about “monkeys,” i.e. humans. I love how the writer used the perspective of the monkey and a sense of humor in the poem and combined the photos with the poem.
So if you find something interesting online and it’s not captioned, contact James Short at jshort@harkle.com. (FYI: He will contact the producer of the online media for permission, and try to get it captioned.)
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December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
I don’t know if you all know about Rocketboom.com. It’s a public service announcement about current events and/or satire about everyday life. This is one of my favorite programs, and I look forward to seeing this video every day when I get a chance.
Check to see what Michael Smolens of dotSUB.com says about captioning their videos. dotSUB.com is one of several online companies out there that captions media for the deaf. They also provide captions in other languages for the deaf and for the people who don’t speak English.
Isn’t this awesome!!! Please support this, and let them know how much you appreciate their efforts to do this.
UPDATE: Thanks to Todos la vie for asking the question. Once you get to dotSUB.com website, click on Latest, and then you’ll see “Michael at Rocketboom Session during Podcamp NYC.” Click on that.
As for Rocketboom latest episodes, go to Latest, and then you’ll see a list of different episodes, which are chronologically dated. Enjoy!
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December 27, 2007 by moxiemocha
Harkle.com is a directory of closed captioned web videos servicing the deaf, hard of hearing and anyone who enjoys the clarity that closed captioning provides. Harkle is also an advocate for web captioning and accessibility, persuading producers to caption their content and promoting free or inexpensive software or services.
Want to see a specific web video get captioned? Harkle.com users can request captions for their favorite videos. They can even volunteer their time to get involved. Volunteers help with transcription, caption text editing, captioning timing and caption upload. They can even help by contacting producers for copyright clearance and persuade them to help underwrite the small cost.
James Short, founder of Harkle.com, is a big fan of the free captioning software MAGpie (despite its current shortcomings) and is also very excited about the new online options for captioning like Overstream.net, Mojiti.com and DotSub.com. Now almost anyone can overlay captions onto videos at YouTube and other shared video sites.
I volunteer my time setting up the lines for lonelygirl15. What I do is go to lonelygirl15 website for the script, copy and paste the script onto Word, and then rearrange them so that it’s easier to read. I then forward the scripts to Harkle who adds the captions to the video, with the lonelygir15 producer’s blessing, of course! It takes some time, but I feel I’m doing my part to help make online captioning a reality.
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