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lauramcgaffey
Reviews
Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988)
Not a new concept
I laughed when I read reviews that praise this series for its innovation. There are at least 2 other series I know of (one I watched regularly in the '70s) where a host intros movies and then makes fun of them during breaks and at the end.
Yes, I believe that MST has the "characters" sitting in a "theatre" watching the movies and issuing commentary throughout. You know - similar to the auditory commentary one can turn on while watching a lot of movies on DVD. In other words, not exactly a new concept.
I loved watching Bob Wilkins' Creature Features while babysitting as a teen back in the '70s. Elvira was also fun to watch. My understanding is that there were other series such as these long before MST came along.
To me it's like arguing whether The Addams Family or The Munsters came out first and created a new genre. It really does not matter. I only mention Creature Featured and Elvira to show how inane it is to laud MST based on an alleged conceptual ingenuity.
Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise (2015)
Consistency .....
IMHO, making changes in sequels is usually the death of a series.
What makes the Jesse Stone series work is the maintenance of all the characterizations, from Jesse to the least recurring character, of all the tag lines, of the music, and even of the naming of characters.
Regarding character names, did anyone else notice that "Amelia's" last name is Hope which is the last name of the actress who plays Sydney Greenstreet? Of course, Sydney Greenstreet is the name of an actor who portrayed major roles in Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, both starring Humphrey Bogart, Bogart's character in both movies being somewhat unhappy loners.
"Amelia's" restaurant is named, Rose Cafe which is the actress's middle name, her full name being Amelia Rose Blaire.
BTW, the actress, Maria Brooks, who plays Sandy in "Jesse Stone: Night Passage" directed a 1999 one hour docudrama called, "The Odyssey of Captain Healy" about the real life Coast Guard Captain Mike Healy. Healy is of course the name of Captain Healy, State Police Homicide Commander played by Stephen McHattie, who is in Paradise Lost only off screen.
I do not believe the Jesse Stone franchise would have had more than two movies if they had messed with everything just for the sake of messing with everything. As we say in the engineering field, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Bible's Buried Secrets (2011)
Something is wrong here
There's a lot wrong with this "documentary".
Others have addressed the content and I agree with the problems they have with it. I am going to talk about the "presenter" and share my conclusions about her.
After only a few minutes I was wondering who and what this woman really is, down deep, so to speak. To support various assertions she uses the logical fallacy of an appeal to authority, her own, but in the process refers to herself differently dependent on why she says you should listen to her. Sometimes she says she is a biblical scholar, sometimes a historian and at other times an Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) scholar. These are NOT the same thing. At one point she knelt down in the dirt at an archeological dig and scraped a little and voila she's holding a small statue someone clearly handed to her. She seemed to be trying to deceive us into thinking that among her qualifications as an expert/authority she is also an archeologist.
At the start of each episode it says she is "Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Bible Studies, University of Exeter". This is her job title, not her qualifications or list of published works. Bluntly put, her title alone means little.
But, maybe nowadays being in a film is as good or better than publishing an article in a peer reviewed journal.
In the end I'm left wondering if I am correct about her hidden thesis, because I believe she has one and I think I know what it is.
So here goes! She's a Muslim who took a few introductory courses in the Bible, Judaism and Christianity. She's never really read much of either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament but got a job with a fancy title that implies she's read every word of the Hebrew Bible in the original.
If I am correct then she could just be very ignorant yet conniving. Or....?
Little White Lie (2014)
Self absorbed, self centered racist brat
Here's what I have to say about this amateur documentary: what was Lacey's message, if she had one? Why should anyone care? Why should anyone watch it? Most importantly did she at least pay her parents, especially her mother, for their participation considering she forced her mother to acknowledge her mother's infidelity publicly on camera for no good reason?
Little White Lie (2014)
Self absorbed, self centered racist brat
Here's what I have to say about this amateur documentary: what was Lacey's message, if she had one? Why should anyone care? Why should anyone watch it? Most importantly did she at least pay her parents, especially her mother, for their participation considering she forced her mother to acknowledge her mother's infidelity publicly on camera for no good reason?
A Killer Uncaged (2020)
A killer psycho who is still a danger!
You only need to watch episode 3 to see him (1) blame his victim and feel justified in killing him, (2) talk like 30 years in prison was overkill, (3) show clear signs in body language, tone of voice, and word choice when answering questions that he will easily kill again and feel justified.
The Song of Names (2019)
Magnificent!
The only flaw was when an obviously out of time modern passenger jet came in for a landing over the London skyline at 1:25:50. Otherwise BRAVO.
Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (2009)
Secondary mystery is ludicrous
BEWARE - SPOILER:
The only way I can explain why the secondary mystery is ludicrous is to give it all away.
A woman's baby is kidnapped from the hospital shortly after birth.
A baby's decomposed body is found months later in a river with the wrist band of the kidnapped baby.
The authorities declare it to be the woman's baby but she will not believe it.
Jump ahead to "today", 7 years later.
The woman finds a letter that was mailed from Paradise so she shows up in Stone's office and asks for help.
Rose insists on investigating.
Jump ahead to end of story.
Rose finds a woman living in Paradise who gave birth in the same hospital but her baby had lived less than a day. This is all legally documented information.
So, this mother # 2 presumably put the wrist band of the mother # 1's baby onto her own DEAD baby's body and left the hospital with mother # 1's baby and went home to Paradise.
Anyone see ALL the problems????
DEAD baby, known to be the child of mother #2 has clearly been dealt with legally with all documentation in place. Yet the hospital allowed mother #2 to walk out of the hospital with a LIVE baby. That's not at all likely.
Remember, Rose was able to get the documentation (death certificate, maybe autopsy report, etc.) that mother # 2's baby had died. Not just any baby, mother # 2's baby!
Let's go one step further.
If the hospital had allowed mother # 2 to walk out with a LIVE baby and had a DEAD baby on its hands somewhere, like down in the morgue, on which was the wrist band of mother # 1's baby, HOW in heaven's name did everyone think that ANY baby had been kidnapped?
And how in the world would mother # 2's DEAD baby have gotten from the morgue to a river many miles away.
Believe it or not, I have watched all the Jess Stone movies many, many times over the last year because they have helped me get through the death of my husband. Every time I have watched Thin Ice I have been irritated and not understood why. The other night it hit me. It's not that I don't particularly like the actress who plays the grieving mother who comes to town. It's that the whole mystery and its "solution" makes NO SENSE.