For the DVD Collection- Blood Diamond and The Departed

By Turner McCullough Jr. | July 3, 2007 |

This is a new venture for me. Reviewing feature DVDs for home collections, that is. With the steady steam of DVD releases, titles can be become blurred. Two releases that are not to be missed are Blood Diamond and The Departed. If you have not seen either film in the theater, you’ve actually done yourself a favor as you’ll be engrossed with what flows onto your TV screen. Both offerings deliver the goods

Blood Diamond is a strong, captivating epic of a movie. Djimon Houson (Amistad) and Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic and The Basketball Diaries) give outstanding performances that compel your attention and your commitment to the story. Djimon is a father separated from his family by internal strife in Sierra Leone, Africa. He struggles to reunite his family and reclaim his son who has been abducted into the child soldier ranks of the rebels terrorizing the countryside. You feel his anguish and share his determination to succeed. «Read the rest of this article»

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Hate Crime Survivor, Thought Recovering, Now Suicides

By Turner McCullough Jr. | July 3, 2007 |

There are a multitude of people who keep saying that racism in America is passe, a relic of the past. That all minorities have to do is simply apply themselves and success will be theirs. To a 18-year old David Ritcheson, those claims proved unbearably false. Having initially survived a horrendous four hour physical and psychological assault, the student was thought to be making a remarkable recovery from his ordeal. College was assured him thru a free scholarship by the Anti-Defamation League. He testified before Congress in support of anti-hate crime legislation.

He was going to dedicate his life’s work to preventing hate crimes such as he had endured. However, some demons apparently still lingered on. Some pain was too great to overcome. For complete details, see the following pages:

The Dallas Morning News

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Transformers: Their war. Our ears.

By David W. Shelton | July 3, 2007 |

I’ve never been so angry after seeing a movie. I really, really wanted to hate Transformers. I was ready to pan it with every negative word I could muster. After all, it’s a Michael Bay film. Pearl Harbor was bad beyond imagination. The Island was best left undiscovered. And Armageddon was well, a big mess.

With that, you can imagine how I was ready to unload with both barrels on Bay’s latest film. Imagine my complete and utter frustration when I came to realize that I actually liked the movie.

Transformers is a summer action film which is clearly aimed at a testosterone-driven audience. I don’t know, maybe it’s the fact that I screened the film in a theatre filled with local soldier boys, geeks, dweebs, and their pals who came to see lots of explosions and hear bad dialogue. Indeed, they got their money’s worth. «Read the rest of this article»

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