91. Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, And Stephen King

 

Heat: Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy Serve, Protect, And Laugh

Sandra Bullock makes you laugh, cry, and wonder if she is going to solve the mysteries of friendship, motherhood, love, or murder. Melissa McCarthy makes you laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Another “laugh” probably should have been put in this opening word series!

 

Bullock and McCarthy are an unlikely detective duo in the new movie Heat. Polar people (paired together), of course, are what make the movie work. The detectives are very different driven personalities in this police action themed movie. They are, however, alike in their lack of friends. It wouldn’t matter if Sandra and Melissa were looking for drug-lords, missing people, or neighborhood puppies. They both serve and protect the craft of acting better than most. Heat is opening this week at your local cinema-plex and you will certainly root for the girls and Bullock’s spandex underwear in this movie.

Melissa McCarthy from television’s Mike and Molly and comedy clubs all over New York has you laughing before she spouts a word. Chevy Chase in his early movies with Goldie Hawn was the same way. McCarthy is now chasing the bad guys unlike the criminal she played in the surprising mega-hit Identity Thief where Jason Bateman was chasing her to get his identity and money back.

 

Here are the acting duos in previous Heat crime movies:

The Heat…Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro
Heat…Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood
Heat…Jason Statham and Sophia Vergara

The original theme of this column was to introduce all the other powerful acting duos in past Heat movies and then say Bullock and McCarthy are the better. You decide!

 

Our top five movies in Sandra Bullock’s extensive acting portfolio might elevate an eyebrow or two. Your favorites are???

1. Hope Floats
2. On The Blind Side
3. Two If By Sea
4. Murder By The Numbers
5. The Net

  

Featuring

Featuring looks at the top college and high school writers and artists in the area. Their refreshing pieces of work, viewpoints, and opinions on movies, gaming, theater, television, and the arts will add greatly to our “Let’s Talk” column.

 

Here is Sean Gallagher’s take on the new movie Superman: Man of Steel.
His column byline is Sean Gallagher Loves Movies.
This review doesn’t look like it is going in Sean’s love category, though!

 

Superman: Man of Steel…A Bloated, Overlong Reboot with Countless Explosions and No Reason to Care

Man of Steel starts out pretty strong as we see Superman’s father (played by Russell Crowe) send his son, Kal-El, away from the ill-fated planet Krypton. The opening scene works well because it’s different visually and tonally from any other Superman movie we’ve seen before. Zack Snyder’s frenetic direction suits the chaos of this last minute escape. After the opening moments of action and exposition, (or as Snyder would have it, explo-sition) we meet up with Clark Kent at age 33 and flashback to earlier moments of his life. This section of the movie is where producer Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight) gave Zack Snyder his Ridalin and forced him to have almost an hour of dialogue driven scenes.

  

I admired the first half of Man of Steel for this very reason. Even though David S. Goyer’s dialogue can be pretty terrible, the cinematography and unique camerawork on display at least gave me something original. Kevin Costner, in one of his career best performances, plays Pa Kent, Superman’s human father. His few scenes in the movie really hit me emotionally. I wish the rest of the movie had been more emotionally resonant. Henry Cavill as Superman certainly looks the part, but he has so little dialogue that we don’t really get to know him or care about him. After a promising first half, Man of Steel descends into a nonstop barrage of deafening explosions, CGI overload and pretentious self-seriousness.

  

As I sat in my seat, becoming more and more bored, I was disappointed that Man of Steel could not overcome the obvious clichés of modern superhero films. Massive damage is done to the city and we get no grasp of the lives lost or the consequences. There is a drawn out climax in which the hero and villain fight each other for a very long time and accomplish very little. This movie desperately wants to be Batman Begins, but it is nowhere near as compelling. Superman should inspire applause and excitement, but in this movie, he inspires tedium.

  

Dylan’s Gaming Delights

Dylan Gabel lives and breathes gaming. His reviews of classic and contemporary games will have you running to the local game store or Internet site to purchase and connect with your next gaming challenge.

His musical slant while liking The Legend Of Zelda opens up creativity thoughts of other musical formats that will enhance the new games now being constructed.

The Legend Of Zelda by Dylan Gabel

In 1998, Nintendo created a legend that gamers will never forget. The Main Menu’s theme song still rings in my head to this very day. I get chills down my spine when thinking about it. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (released originally on the Nintendo 64) is the first game I remember completing and is what initiated me into gaming culture. In basic terms, the story is about good versus evil. By series tradition, the antagonist Ganondorf wants to rule over the Kingdom of Hyrule and the only person that can stop him is the franchise’s trademark hero, the destined child, Link. I can still vividly picture their epic final fight and hear the haunting music leading up to it.

 

While the story is important, the game-play and phenomenal soundtrack are the nails that stick out most in this game. Slashing your way through hordes of enemies; solving intricate puzzles in the deepest, darkest dungeons in the land; riding on horseback through the landscape to your destination – all backed by Koji Kondo’s amazing score. After roughly 5 years since I’ve last played it, I can still whistle the music – still picture the characters and landscape. The graphics may be dated (although impressive for the time); the game is still a work of art. The first time I played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I was a toddler, now I’m a high school graduate. The Legend has stood the test of time.

 

The Magic King-Dome: A Crashing Start To Summer Television

The summer television has started with favorites like Burn Notice, Covert Affairs, King and Maxwell, Franklin and Bash, Falling Skies, Arrested Development, and Defiance.

      

The best “new show” party crasher in terms of audience viewership is Stephen King’s Under The Dome. The visually arresting shot of the dome coming down over an unsuspecting town and cutting people, cows, and buildings in two was amazing! The cow half is very memorable.

King’s Monday night’s dome entry brought 13 million viewers to the CBS new show sweepstakes race. The lead character is a dome wall of something. The reason we say “of something” is because in the first installment to the story no one:

1. tried to hammer the dome,
2. dig under the dome,
3. bomb the dome,
4. shoot the dome,
5. drill the dome, or performed
6. tests on the dome with any chemicals.

The dome has separated lovers, murderers, children and their pets, and a town of secretive individuals from their neighbors and surrounding towns. The potential themes are infinite. All roads and airspace into town and out of town experienced giant traffic and airplane crashes into the transparent dome. The only connections between individuals that can see each other on both sides of the dome are by written notes held up near the electrified dome wall. Cell phone bills will not be paid during the duration of future episodes.

War and Peace: Sadako’s Peace Cranes And Gettysburg

Sadako And The Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleaner Coerr

August 6^th is Peace Day. It is celebrated throughout the world and in a giant celebration each year in New York’s Central Park. Purchasing the book and true story Sadako And The Thousand Paper Cranes will give the celebration greater meaning to the young or older reader. Sadako is an athlete that is slowed down from the bomb sickness that was prevalent in Japan after the war. The contamination from the two atomic bombs we dropped on Japan was prevalent ten years after the initial destruction.

While dying in a hospital from this sickness, Sadako reads an old Japanese legend of hope. The legend voices that if you make 1,000 paper cranes in your lifetime, you will get one wish. Her wish was the wish of life. The 644 paper cranes that she fashioned before her death on October 25^th 1955 were remember in a book passed around Japan called Kokeshi. It contained Sadako’s letters and was accompanied throughout Japan by her doll of the same name. Her classmates made the 356 cranes she couldn’t finish and the thousand cranes were buried with her.

Children throughout Japan collected money to commemorate her life. In 1958 a statue of Sadako, with outstretched hands, holding a golden crane, was erected in Hiroshima Peace Park. On August 6^th children from all over the world and Hiroshima’s Folded Crane Club will leave their cranes at the granite base of her statue. In Central Park there will be a giant exchange of peace cranes in all forms from origami like Sadako’s cranes to special new commemorative designs. Directions for making paper cranes accompany the Sadako book.

The Battle Of Gettysburg: The 150^th Anniversary

July third marks the end of The Battle of Gettysburg fought 150 years ago. Tens of thousands of historical re-enactors and history buffs have been camped out in Gettysburg for two weeks of lectures, tours, reenactments, and book talks. The historic battle killed or maimed over 50,000 soldiers. A fifteen million dollar refitting of the Gettysburg Battlefield Museum has been finished in time for the celebration.

The July 1-3, 1863 battle pitted 85,000 soldiers against each other. The largest Union contingent was from New York. The Empire State contributed 27,000 troops to the mayhem. The Gettysburg Foundation has a battlefield full of Internet resources for research and study. Fact Monster and a variety of similar sites have links to every aspect of the battle and its aftermath.

Helping Local Businesses, Entrepreneurs, And Artists

More and more community members and business representatives are sending information about their companies, businesses, and work to the column. Here are the two latest that have reached out to the column through email or the business site LinkedIn. We have recommended LinkedIn a number of times for business dialogue and social media connections. It has surpassed Facebook for business connectivity. Here are our latest business updates:

Mobil Leads

Mobil Leads sent this information in for businesses that need some creative assistance. Here is the information they emailed to us.

Hi Tom,
Here’s the information you need.

MobileLeads, LLC.  has developed a cloud based comprehensive mobile platform for events and leads management to grow sales, opportunities and productivity across the enterprises – a “MLeads” app and operates a corresponding web platform http://www.myleadssite.com

What Problems MLeads solves:

Current solutions are complex, costly and do not offer a one-stop comprehensive solution
Inefficient event management process for event organizers and tradeshow industry
Not having the access to information quickly at fingertips and stay organized
Instant Follow-ups and ROI
Limited visibility in real-time across sales team and business development efforts
Reliance on support staff to do the follow ups which is ineffective, slow and reduces ROI

What is Mobil Leads?
SaaS Mobile platform to automate pre-sales, networking and event management activities
It’s a platform to automate the process of qualifying large number of sales prospects and turning them into revenue

Can be used in tradeshow events or any business meetings by event organizers, Individuals and Sales team of all sizes
We are developed and launched on Apple, Google and Amazon app stores

Size of Market:
UFI (The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry) – Global Exhibition Industry Statistics – November 2012 – Figures for 2010

30,700 exhibitions…2.8 million exhibiting companies…260 million attendees…

Other business events attendees and meetings
Around 180 Million businesses worldwide
Individuals and Sales Teams of different sizes
Every one of these participants is a prospect to use MLeads and grow together, the MLeads Way!.
How It Makes Money:
Offer $8 subscription per user per month
Competition:

Other Mobile apps like ScanBizCard, worldcard mobile, camcard, CardMunch – Business card scanner, but none of these applications come close to having the ability to perform research, follow-up actions, statistics, and visibility on leads across the team members for pre-sales and marketing activities that MLeads provides
MLeads also has features to manage events or tradeshow for event organizers who the competitors don’t have

Money Sought:
MLeads is currently self-funded
We are seeking funding and partners to help penetrate the exhibition and presales marketplace with: Expertise, Contacts, and Investments

Sincerely,

Manash
CEO and Founder
MobileLeads LLC
650 North Cannon Avenue, Lansdale, PA 19446
http://www.myleadssite.com
Phone: 215-362-2611

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