Bruce Springsteen - Born In The USA. The Boss at his best

Advantages: Fantastic album
Disadvantages: None

...I suppose Bruce Springsteen is the Marmite of the music world - you either love him or you hate him - or, like many youngsters who encountered him at Glastonbury this year, you have never heard of him (shame on you). For me, any music that evokes memories of my mid-80s school discos, is automatically beyond any criticism, and the title track from this album is no exception. Of course, one track doesn't make an album, but it can very often be the sole reason for purchasing it. I have often thought that Springsteen's lyrics were a little suspect, but very often these take second place to the power and emotion of the music and the mood he creates - and this album is Bruce at his raw, belting best. BORN IN THE USA - The massively powerful title track that seems to have become a patriotic anthem despite its anti...

rabidbadger 04.10.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Born In The USA - Bruce Springsteen

Gateway - the Final Frontier?

Advantages: Great characters and cleverly structured
Disadvantages: The domestic violence bit sticks out like a sore thumb

...interspersed with psychiatric consultations of just several pages. The reader is never given the opportunity to get bored using this format, and it also provides Pohl with a way to avoid the science-fiction writer's worst nightmare: the info-dump. When you've built up an amazing futuristic or alien civilisation, you have to find a way of communicating the basics of it to your readers so they understand what's going on. Too often, this tends to result in characters slowing up the action for pages at a time while they tell each other things they already know. Instead, 'Rob' and his fellow prospectors learn about Gateway and the alien Heechee in training for their exploration. And to avoid labouring these sections, the psychiatrist helps fill in the rest of the blanks ('why don't you explain it to me in your own terms?'). The characters are all...

Olly_Plimsoll 22.05.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Gateway - Frederik Pohl

Travel to the top of The Gateway Arch Mork-style - in an egg.

Advantages: Elegant architectural icon. Magnificent vies and photographic opportunity.
Disadvantages: Lenghy queues. Only partially accessible for disable visitors.

...The elegant Gateway Arch, reaching up to 630 feet dominates St Louis? skyline. Standing in the Jefferson Natural Expansion Memorial Park, the arch symbolises the role St Louis played as the gateway to the west. Shortly after the Second World War in 1947, a competition was privately financed to find a suitable architectural centrepiece for the park. The aim was to commemorate Thomas Jefferson?s vision of the spread of freedom and democracy from ?sea to shining sea? and his commissioned expedition in 1804 to the west coast headed by Lewis and Clark. Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel?s design of this graceful tapered stainless-steel catenary arch won over the 171 other entries. Construction of this remarkable structure took around three years to complete. Pictures of the construction can...

MAFARRIMOND 28.06.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Review of The Gateway Arch, St Louis, Missouri

The Final Destination in 3D - Death's final outing is a good one

Advantages: 3D is fully used, bloody like a horror should be, brilliant ending that wraps up the films well
Disadvantages: 3D is really the only standout feature, acting only okay, some dodgy effects masked by 3D

...As a fan of the final destination films I am pleased to say that the latest offering does not disappoint though I am sure a large measure of that is down to the fact that it is in 3D. In my opinion there is no question that making horrors in 3D works - there is no better genre to take advantage of 3D with various weapons, blood and guts flying out at you - and in this case they have used the 3D format exceptionally well. To give an example, and without spoiling any of the plot, when one of the victims has their head destroyed by a flying tyre the impact of the 3D is truly felt with the trye screaming towards you and then bits of her brain flying all over the place. The plot is, however, pretty much the same as all the previous installments though this one does end very well and in my mind ties up all the previous films - this has...

thepreacherman 01.09.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of The Final Destination

Please Make This *The* Final Destination

Advantages: Good premise
Disadvantages: Lack of elaborate deaths, no imaginative plot like others, doesn't live up to the hype

...While at the races, Nick (Bobby Campo) has a shocking premonition about a horrific crash that will happen and in turn will lead to all the other drivers crashing and killing numerous innocent people in the audience. This leads Nick to a state of panic and in this state he mistakenly hits another member of the audience, a scrap entails and security escorts Nick, his girlfriend, two friends and a group of other audience members out of the area. Nick tells them about the impending crash which happens seconds later. Unnerved by the events, Nick wants to forget about what happened and get on with his life however when the survivors begin to die one by one, suspicion is aroused that maybe the subsequent events aren?t just shocking coincidences and are something a bit more sinister? Being a big fan of the Final Destination trilogy I had...

Great_reviewer07 19.09.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Review of The Final Destination

Rehashed in the USA

Advantages: Some good tracks
Disadvantages: Some awful tracks, probably too diverse for all tracks to appeal to one person, many of the songs are slow

...The ‘in’ thing at the moment seems to be celebrities starring in reality TV shows. We’ve had Celebrity Driving School, Big Brother, Fame Academy and I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Recently, ITV viewers saw the final of another celebrity reality TV series – Reborn in the USA. The idea was to take ten former music stars and try to relaunch their careers by taking them on a tour of American cities. They would perform songs live on stage, fitting in with various themes each week (similar to Pop Idol). The theatre audience would vote for their favourites, the bottom two being put to a phone vote at home in Britain to decide who would be kicked off next. The final was held in Britain, where we saw Tony Hadley beat Michelle Gayle. This is the album featuring songs from the series and including all ten...

KarenUK 15.06.2003 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Reborn In The USA (17 Unforgettable Songs As Performed On The Hit ITV1 Show) - Original TV Soundtrack

Destination Death

Advantages: A gorefest, little details that bring the film together
Disadvantages: No story line to get my teeth into, some of the acting was a bit wooden

...although he doesn't know why. When everyone boards the plane Alex has a vision of the plane starting to break up in mid air and then exploding. He panics so much that he has to leave the plane along with five other students and a teacher, with those left behind thinking Alex is a total nutcase who's ruined their holiday. The plane takes off and then **bang**, it hasn't been in the air for two minutes and suddenly there's a fireball where the plane should have been. Obviously this freaks Alex out and when the FBI arrive on the scene they interview him as a possible suspect, although how they could possibly imagine a nerdy looking 17 year old to have the brains and imagination to create such a catastrophe is a bit weird. But then things get worse. The seven people who left the plane start dying off one by one and although he doesn't have any...

Fruity_Tart 03.11.2003 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Final Destination (DVD)

Deadly Destination

Advantages: A taut thriller with loads of scares
Disadvantages: The cast are nothing more than adequate

...Taking the horror genre to a whole new premise, Final Destination introduces the villain as Death itself. Devon Sawa stars as Alex, a high school student who is preparing to go to Paris on a field trip with his class. From the opening credits, all the signs point towards something sinister. And as Alex gets on the plane, he finds himself thrust into a mid air explosion. Moments later though, he wakes up and discovers that it was nothing more than a dream. However, convinced it was more like a premonition, he and a handful of students get into a brawl and are thrown off the plane. As they are rounded up in the departure lounge, they watch in horror as his premonition is realised and the plane explodes moments after taking off. The police are instantly convinced that Alex must be part of some conspiracy to blow the plane up, and as...

bilbob20 23.04.2007 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Final Destination (DVD)

The lives of others, a stunning film of life in the GDR

Advantages: Gripping, interesting and cleverly portrayed
Disadvantages: Quite long

...The Lives of Others (German title: Das Leben der Anderen) is an absorbing account of 4 lives in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that is intriguing and subtly unsettling. The premise of the film starts with committed believer in the East German regime and stasi (secret police) captain Gerd Wiesler asks his former classmate and subordinate Anton Grubitz to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman and his actress girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland. The film focuses of the development of sympathetic feelings by Grubitz towards his subject and the entanglement of opposing loyalties, betrayal and the dreadful fear of living under such a regime are played out. For a thriller there is not a lot of action and the plot unfolds subtly and slowly. However, whilst not much is happening I was still on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happened next...

flyingllamas 06.07.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of The Lives Of Others (DVD)

Destinations

Advantages: A quick read
Disadvantages: Confusing as there were too many characters

...Sheila O'Flanagan is a successful Irish writer, and before writing she had a very successful career in banking. She writes a column for the Irish Times and, prior to writing 'Destinations', she had also written 8 hugely successful novels, including 'Caroline's Sister', 'Isobel's Wedding', and 'He's Got to Go'. Destinations is a novel which revolves around the Dart train system in Ireland. There are 19 chapters in the book, each one has a title with a train station alongside it, such as 'Saturday at 12' - Killiney, or 'Charlie's Dress' - Dalkey. Each chapter revolves around a different character, or characters, such as Greg and Helena - they are the characters of the 'Saturday at Twelve' chapter. Greg has had a fling at his office Christmas party which, inevitably, Helena has found out about and has since thrown Greg out. THey...

jules.34 23.05.2008 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Destinations - Sheila O'Flanagan