Q: With no fault to the actors (they all put on great performances), the overall story was not very well executed. The movie opens with a great zinger: a crazy old guy forces a young Aborigine girl's car off the road. But then, we're forced to endure 40 minutes of character development with an entirely new group of characters ... and we don't know why until the 40 minutes are up. It turns out that they are the ones who eventually discover the girl's body ... and the story progresses from there.

While the story does pick up at that point, it really goes nowhere. After 2 hours, I asked myself: was there a point to this, or was it just to see the characters struggle with accusations of racism and stupidity of how they handled the discovery? The story was ultimately unsatisfying and felt unfinished. While it is well acted, there's not a strong enough backbone in the film to warrant recommending it. OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: A delight mini movie, a musical short based on three of Cole Porter's Broadway smash songs. Bob Hope's first credited film is a delight! He plays an American playboy millionaire on vacation in Paris. The film opens with him sitting at a table of an out door cafe telling his friends about this beauty that takes his breath away. Suddenly he spots her a few yards away. he is so over come his friends tease him and suggest "just show her your bank book." But Hope claims he can win her in less than 30 days with "no" money! They bet polo ponies over the issue and take all his cash and ID's. Hope follows her and when they are alone gushes out a proposal she does not believe he is sincere until he sings to her, "You Do Something to Me" by Cole Porter. But she must leave and he tries to earn money as a tour guide so he can pursue her. But when she sees him showing another girl around town, disillusioned she wants to drop him. He continues to chase her and catches up to her and her family at a race track where he bets his meager earnings on the last race hoping to win enough to impress her. Through a series of events and large synchronized dance numbers he loses the winning ticket and she decides to marry him rich or poor. So he wins the girl, the race and the bet and sings two more songs! OPTIONS:
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A: positive
Q: "Who Done It?" contains many surefire laughs and gags. It is not only one of the best Stooges films with Shemp, it is one of the finest short comedies Columbia produced. Director Bernds originally wrote the screenplay in 1946 for the Stooges, but when Curly Howard suffered a career-ending stroke, it was tailored for the Columbia comedy team of Schilling and Lane (their version was released as "Pardon My Terror.") It obviously was too good for the Stooges to pass up, and it was finally filmed by the Stooges at the end of 1947.

Old Man Goodrich calls ace detectives Shemp, Larry, and Moe out of fear that he will be murdered. When they arrive at his home, Goodrich has disappeared, and his niece and assorted goons try to get rid of the Stooges. Will they find Goodrich and bring the niece and goons to justice?

Shemp is particularly funny in this film. His reactions after being given a mickey by Christine McIntyre are superb; he gives his trademark sound (eeeb-eeeb-eeeb) and Miss McIntyre is noticeably trying not to laugh! Other funny scenes: the close-up of Moe's mug looking through the camera lens; and the in-the-dark fight with all cast members involved.

Nikko the goon (played by Duke York) is one of the most unusual looking characters ever portrayed in a Stooges film. With his kinked hair, he could almost pass for a Stooge, if he didn't tower over everyone else! "Who Done It?" is a gem among the Stooges films with Shemp. Even die-hard Curly fans will enjoy this one! A true Stooge classic. 9 out of 10. OPTIONS:
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A: positive
Q: We tend to forget that the master/slave context of the past centuries lead to more than well-tended estates, powered by large groups of enslaved people, and a lot of money for the white owners. It lead to a group of people caught in the middle - the offspring resulting from slave owners interferring with their female slaves.

Some of these children just became more slaves, and others were free...but free and coloured, which back then meant anything but, relative to the lot of their sires.

A class formed around these offspring - the gens de couleur libre or free people of colour - and that class was able, to a certain extent, to own property, raise themselves from downtrodden to educated, and to attain a comparative dignity. That is to say, they weren't slaves, but they were still exploited to a certain extent.

Often, the women lived as mistresses to the white plantation masters and men of wealth, set up in their own houses, with allowances, schooling paid for for their children, and a kind of gentility, dependent on the respectability they chose to impose on their families. In essence, they were prostituting themselves to ensure their own prosperity, and relative independence from labour - an arrangement called placage.

Feast of All Saints is a beautifully written story about the children of one such woman, the result of just such an arrangement with a local gentleman, and the people who touched on their lives, in both a negative and a positive way. The tale was an eye-opener for me, a New Zealander, with no real conception of the black/white lines, let alone that grey area in the middle where the gens de couleur libre trod gingerly.

The characters are very three dimensional, and have been well-rendered in this adaption of the novel, by Anne Rice. The parts are well-cast, the costumes are wonderful, and the brutal way the lines are drawn out, with the blurred areas made all the more distinct by the conflicts the protagonists go through. The gens de couleur libre could not marry the whites, the slaves could not help themselves, and the whites, even the sympathetic ones, couldn't bear to face the economic reality of doing right by the people they depended on.

I recommend this story, both the novel and the miniseries, to everyone, unreservedly. If you can't handle the truth you'll cringe and cower through some parts, as one injustice after another is meted out on those of colour, both by their white oppressors, and by their own people. Bear in mind though that this is nothing more than reality, and this tale is an absorbing way to learn about it.

I know it may sound callous, but this miniseries both entertained me and enthralled me, despite the sour taste I found in my mouth at what went on, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Watch it. If not read up on the period, because there's a lesson to be learned from it all. OPTIONS:
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A: positive