Kev's Reviews

He's a mean one, the Grinch. He's as cuddly as a cactus. He' s as charming as an eel - and he's about to steal Christmas. Just north of Whoville lives the Grinch inside a cave in Mount Crumpit. In the classic children's book,  Dr. Suess paints the Grinch as an immoral , vindictive creature who hates Christmas for no apparent reason - which, in my opinion, is a lack of character development. However, in the beloved film, directed by Ron Howard, he is interesting and has reservations about Christmas that have been deeply rooted from his ill-fated childhood. We discover this when Cindy Lou Who conducts an investigation into the Grinch's past, exposing the truth about the so-called "nice" Who's - even Mayor Augustus Maywho, who had bullied Little Grinch simply because he was different. While Cindy Lou is on the verge of exposing the Who's who drove the Grinch away from Whoville , the echoes of holiday cheer reach Mount Crumpit as the town p

2017 film When a murder has been committed on the Orient Express, the famed detective Hercule Poirot is enlisted to lead the investigation. The victim is Samuel Edward Rachette, stabbed twelve times, described by Poirot as a savage.  I know, it's a cliché. But, what else can you expect from a Kenneth Branagh film based on an Agatha Christie novel? Oh, where to start? Let me begin by saying that this film is a remake of a 1974 version of a 1934 film, which is quite confounding in and of itself.  The 1974 film was well-received at the 47th Oscars , having been nominated at the 47 th Academy Awards for  Best Actor  (Finney),  Best Supporting Actress  (Bergman),  Best Adapted Screenplay ,  Best Original Score ,  Best Cinematography , and  Best Costume Design . Of these nominations, Ingrid Bergman was the only one who came out with an award.  1974 cast There has been much debate over which of the two is better. New York Times Reviewer Glenn Kenny asserts, "Mr. Finney&

The Guardians Skylord and the band of humanoid misfits in this pulp-fiction sci-fi adventure from Marvel Studios as they are drafted by a powerful alien hierarchy called the Sovereign to guard precious batteries from invaders. When Rocket is caught stealing the sets, the Sovereign dispatch an armada after the Guardians as an act of vengeance. In escaping the all-powerful regime, Peter finds his father. Naturally, Peter is conflicted with emotions about his estranged father - elated to find him, betrayed that his father had left him and his mother in the first place, hesitant toward this stranger. Now, the first film was clean, crisp and  lively with smart quips from Rocket and Drax. "I t’s the same combination of cartoony action and intergalactic screwball with some ambient production design recalling the photorealist sci-fi imagery of Roger Dean or Chris Foss in a bygone age, creating a visual sense of earnestness to offset the archly retro pop culture gags," writes

A group of intergalactic criminals are forced to work together to stop a radical warrior from seizing control of the universe. Sound familiar? Like the Lucas-Spielberg space-odyssey-based collaboration that is Star Wars and the adventures of Captain James Kirk of Star fleet in Star Trek, Stan Lee's comic book-based sci-fi adventure is the little nerdy boy who wants to be in the cool group. The Hans-Solo wannabe Chris Pratt as the easy-going space-cowboy Peter Quill, who finds himself in a quarry of bounty hunters after stealing an orb coveted by the evil Ronan (I had flashbacks of Indiana Jones watching this part of the story unfold). Evading R onan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with four disparate misfits: gun-toting Rocket Raccoon, treelike-humanoid Groot,  an  enigmatic Gamora, and a vengeance-driven Drax the Destroyer.   But, of course, as Quill inevitably finds out, the orb is not just a valuable artifact . Rather , it's a cosmic threat to the universe with p

A little birdie told me that Tobiidynavox had gotten a little airtime on a certain TV series - my least favorite sitcom - Speechless. Seriously? I'm not trying to burst anyone 's bubble but as the leading company in augmentative communicators, why do they need the exposure? Even though it's on a smaller scale, this is like Apple having a slot for their Mac on the hit movie Steve Jobs. A study conducted by the Journal of Management and Marketing Media, "While product placement is riskier than conventional advertising, it is becoming a common practice to place products and brands into mainstream media including films, broadcast and cable television programs, computer and video games, blogs, music videos/DVDs, magazines, books, comics, Broadway musicals and plays, radio, Internet, and mobile phones." The entertainment industry is the Fountain of Youth for companies of the products. Naturally, the more an episode is aired, the more exposure the product gets; the mo