input: I had the good fortune of reading the book before seeing the movie. It was an epic of adolescence, a dream of summers gone, a great potential indie film or big budget drama. It somehow got into the hands of a hack, who clearly took notes watching Boogie Nights and Rushmore without actually learning anything at all. The script loses the meat of the book in favor of forced emotional notes and low brow gags. I feel sorry for the actors, since the characters in the book were rich and textured, but cut down to embarrassing charactures in the film. Mason Gamble is great when given the opportunity, as is Dylan Baker, but the skeleton that remains of the story plays out like a bad after school special. Poor people = GOOD, Rich people = BAD.

Though it's almost worth watching to see the Southern California beach where Gary Sinise parks his trailer which is meant to pass for a bay in Delaware.

It's a good book, but an embarrassing turn for first time director Mills Goodloe.

K.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: True, the idea for this TV series may have sprung from the immense success which Ally McBeal is enjoying worldwide, even here in Germany. However, this said, Edel & Starck is very different from Ally McBeal in many ways.

The two main characters work beautifully together. Felix Edel (Felix Noble), played by well-known German actor, Christoph M. Ohrt and Sandra Starck (Sandra Strong - Noble & Strong, get it ???), played by charming Rebecca Immanuel, exchange quick romantic repartees and continually spy on each other while engaging in sitcom-like criminal cases in Berlin and surroundings. Further, they are aided by a magnificent cast of co-stars, most notably their secretary, played by Isabel Tuengerthal, who is a rare gem with GREAT comic potential. Also the shady wheeler-dealer, Otto, and the noble childhood pal of Felix, Frank, work very well, not to forget Sandra's best friend and room-mate, Patricia, played by the beautiful Barbara Demmer.

All-in-all a joy to watch on Monday nites: no wonder that the series and its stars have received several prizes. Will Felix get Sandra ?

I hope that we will have to wait for many more episodes to find out......

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: This extremely weak Australian excuse for a motion picture is sort of like the Pavlov Dog Experiment amongst horror movies. You remember this famous "Conditioned Reflex" experiment from your school books, right? The Russian scientist Pavlov proved that dogs tended to salivate before the food actually came into their mouths and this through repetitive routines stimulating the animal's reflexes. Pavlov rung a bell a couple of instants before the food was delivered to the dog and, after a while, he became anxious and excited and already started salivating from hearing the sound of the bell. What the hell has this whole boring explanation in common with a sleazy and low-budgeted Aussie slasher flick, I hear you think? Well, the modus operandi of the maniacal killer in "Nightmares" is an exact variant on Pavlov's experiment. Each and every single murder sequence is preceded by the raw sound and image of the killer breaking a window, because he/she insists on using a sharp piece of glass to slice up the victims. So this means that, after a short while, inattentive and bored viewers can afford to doze off and simply look up again when they hear the sound of shattering glass. That way they still don't miss anything special!

Regarding the quality of "Nightmares" as a film I can be very brief. This is a cheap, uninspired and largely imbecilic Aussie cash-in on the contemporary popular trend of American slasher movies. In the early 60's, a four-year-old witnesses the cruel death of her mother as her throat gets slit open in a nasty car accident. Twenty years later the same girl Helen Selleck is a successful stage actress, but she still has severe mental issues and regularly suffers from horrible flashbacks and traumatic nightmares. She auditions for a role in a black comedy play revolving on death and gets the part. Shortly after the big premiere, everyone who's even remotely involved with the production gets slaughtered. It is truly retarded how this movie attempts to uphold the mystery regarding the killer's identity and motivations even though even the most infantile viewer can figure it out after the first murder already. I don't think I've ever seen a more obvious whodunit than "Nightmares" and the creators should have just showed his/her face straight away and save themselves from embarrassment. The murders are explicit and very bloody and there's also an unhealthy large amount of gratuitous nudity to "enjoy". However, the production values are poor and thus the movie is never at one point shocking or provocative. The few clips we get to see of the actual play make it appear that it quite possible could be the worst thing ever performed on stage. The only positive elements in the film are the characters of the director and the gay newspaper critic, whom are both delightfully sarcastic and insult the rest of the cast members as much as we do. "Nightmares" is a dreadful piece of exploitative horror cinema, but hey, at least I gave you a golden tip to make it more digestible.

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input: Winchester '73 is a great story, and that's what I like about it. It's not your everyday western--it uses a rifle, which passes hands from various characters--as a mechanism for telling the story about these people. Rock Hudson plays an indian chief, Jimmy Stewart plays a great leading man with heart and strength, and Shelly Winters plays a gal who has to cope with the realities of her husband and the wild west. It's important to note for those politically correct types--they kill a lot of indians in this movie without remorse. By today's standards, it's still pretty violent. But it's a great story and worth watching. Enjoy!

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pos/neg ans:
positive