Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: Spacecamp is my favorite movie. It is a great story and also inspires others.

The acting was excellent and my wife and I went to see Lea Thompson in Cabaret years later due to her performance in the movie. It is unfortunate that the Challenger Accident delayed and hurt the movie.

The 20th Anniversary of the Challenger Accident is coming up. I knew one of the Challenger Astronauts off and on since childhood on the Carnegie Mellon campus where my father went to school; I also know a close friend of the late pilot.

I was the technical review last year for National BSA for the Boy Scout Astronomy Merit Badge and I still find Spacecamp a great movie to recommend to Scouts doing the Space related merit badges I teach.

I ran into the late astronaut again as an adult and was following a schedule of engineering education we had put together when Challenger blew up. I wound up sitting in with Willard Rockwell and his engineers,"invisible", going over things after the Accident at the Astrotech stockholders meeting by chance as a result, so I'm much closer to the Accident and any movie similarities. I made sure that I was a good student and finished the degree four years later, strangely enough, on the recommendation of the Rockwell engineer who told them not to fly Challenger in 1986 and who later built Endeavour.

Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: No, this hilariously horrible 70's made-for-TV horror clinker isn't about a deadly demonically possessed dessert cake. Still, this exceptionally awful, yet undeniably amusing and thus enjoyable cathode ray refuse reaches a breathtaking apex of absolute, unremitting silliness and atrociousness that's quite tasty in a so-execrable-it's-downright-awesome sort of way. Richard Crenna, looking haggard and possibly inebriated, and Yvette Mimieux, who acts as if she never got over the brutal rape she endured in "Jackson County Jail," sluggishly portray a disgustingly nice and respectable suburbanite couple whose quaint, dull, sleepy small town existence gets ripped asunder when the cute German Shepard they take in as the family pet turns out to be some ancient lethal evil spirit. Pretty soon Mimieux and her two repellently cutesy kids Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann (the psychic alien moppets from the Disney "Witch Mountain" pictures) are worshiping a crude crayon drawing of the nasty, ugly canine entity in the den. Boy, now doesn't that sound really scary and disturbing? Well, scary and disturbing this laughably ludicrous claptrap sure ain't, but it sure is funny, thanks to Curtis ("Night Tide") Harrington's hopelessly weak direction, cartoonish (not so) special effects, an almost painfully risible'n'ridiculous plot, and a game cast that struggles valiantly with the absurd story (besides the leads, both Martine Beswicke and R.G. Armstrong briefly pop up as members of a Satanic cult and Victor Jory has a nice cameo as a helpful Native American shaman). Favorite scene: the malicious Mephestophelion mutt puts the whammy on Crenna, practically forcing him to stick his hand into a wildly spinning lawnmower blade. While stuck-up snobby fright film fans may hold their noses at the perfectly putrid stench of this admittedly smelly schlock, devout TV trash lovers should deem this endearingly abominable offal the boob tube equivalent to Alpo.

Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: Ok, I like B movies...I know what B movies are supposed to represent. But this is just awful. I am amazed it got such a decent overall score. The only redeeming qualities of this flick are the (mostly) marginal splatter effects. Don't get me wrong, gore abounds in this flick - but few effects really jumped out at me (like the anal "probe"...that was great!).

I believe this movie was filmed on a camcorder. C'mon - rent a Betacam at least, I've seen porn with better production values (and better acting as well).

Acting - sucked! But not in the Troma or Full Moon sort of way.

Story - contrived! But thats what you get from films like these. Very loose!

Sets & Props - sucked! My 16 year old brother makes more elaborate sets for our house on Halloween.

Dubbing and dialogue - sucked! Horrible voice acting (I shouldn't even call it acting) and every other word is "S**t" or "F**k".

There are tons of good classic and B rated horror / splatter flicks out there and they are not that hard to track down. Do yourself a favor by not wasting time on this crap!

Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer:
Mario Lanza, of course, is "The Great Caruso" in this 1951 film also starring Ann Blyth, Dorothy Kirsten, Eduard Franz and Ludwig Donath. This is a highly fictionalized biography of the legendary, world-renowned tenor whose name is known even today.

The film is opulently produced, and the music is glorious and beautifully sung by Lanza, Kirsten, Judmila Novotna, Blanche Thebom, and other opera stars who appeared in the film. If you're a purist, seeing people on stage smiling during the Sextet from "Lucia" will strike you as odd - even if Caruso's wife Dorothy just had a baby girl. Also it's highly unlikely that Caruso ever sang Edgardo in Lucia; the role lay too high for him.

In taking dramatic license, the script leaves out some very dramatic parts of Caruso's life. What was so remarkable about him is that he actually created roles in operas that are today in the standard repertoire, yet this is never mentioned in the film. These roles include Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur and Dick Johnson in "Girl of the Golden West," There is a famous photo of him posing with a sheet wrapped around him like a toga. The reason for that photo? His only shirt was in the laundry. He was one of the pioneers of recorded music and had a long partnership with the Victor Talking-Machine Company (later RCA Victor). He was singing Jose in Carmen in San Francisco the night of the earthquake.

Instead, the MGM story basically has him dying on stage during a performance of Martha, which never happened. He had a hemorrhage during "L'Elisir d'amore" at the Met and could not finish the performance; he only sang three more times at the Met, his last role as Eleazar in La Juive. What killed him? The same thing that killed Valentino - peritonitis. His first role at the Met was not Radames in Aida, as indicated in the film, but the Duke in Rigoletto. So when it says on the screen "suggested by Dorothy Caruso's biography of her husband," that's what it was - suggested. What is true is that Dorothy's father disowned her after her marriage, and left her $1 of his massive estate. They also did have a daughter Gloria together (who died at the age of 79 on 10/7/2007). However, Caruso had four other children by a mistress before he married Dorothy.

Some people say that Lanza's voice is remarkably like Caruso's, but just listen to Caruso sing in the film "Match Point" -- Caruso's voice is remarkably unlike Lanza's. In fact, from his sound, had he wanted to, Caruso could have sung as a baritone. He is thought to have had some trouble with high notes, further evidence of baritone leanings; and the role he was preparing when he died was Othello, a dramatic tenor role, which Lanza definitely was not. Lanza's voice deserved not to be compared with another. He made a unique contribution to film history, popularizing operatic music. He sings the music in "The Great Caruso" with a robust energy; he is truly here at the peak of what would be a short career. His acting is natural and genuine. Ann Blyth is lovely as Dorothy and gets to sing a little herself.

Really a film for opera lovers and Lanza fans, which are probably one and the same.