Reviews (DVD Only) – Page 2 – Public Intelligence Blog

Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Robert Luketic

5.0 out of 5 stars Could Become a Cult Classic — Jams Every Cliche Into One Package, November 29, 2013

This could become a cult classic, at least among those of us that have been spies or love spy movies. This was my Thanksgiving break in Afghanisgan, and so good I have put it on background a couple more times as I work on curating Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.

Heigl is not quite as great as in The Ugly Truth, but this movie has crammed into it every single cliche from across a range of spy movies down to all your neighbors being sleepers and a grand shoot-out in the end, so I for one am very tolerant of the little hic-ups across the movie. It's a low budget hoot and they got to visit Monaco.

On the strength of this movie and being reminded how great she was in The Ugly Truth I have ordered One For The Money and expect to enjoy that. Remember, this is the woman whose orgasm scene in the restaurant rivals Meg Ryan's original in When Harry Met Sally.

Also, the prices on these are extraordinary — under 2-4 dollars! I use my computers for more important stuff, so it's nice to have the hard DVD to put the TV on the side to work.

Other great DVDs along these lines:

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Full Screen Edition)
The Men Who Stare at Goats
Harry Brown
Twisted
Human Target: The Complete First Season
From Paris With Love
Traitor

I recommend a total of 133 DVDs at the bottom of the second column of Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog. All my reviews are there, and all lead back to their respective Amazon page.

Best wishes to all,
Robert David STEELE Vivas
YouTube: Gnomedex 2007

2013/10/202013/10/20

Review (DVD): Powerbody: Advanced Russian Kettlebell Workout with Phil Ross

Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Reviews (DVD Only)

Phil Ross

5.0 out of 5 stars Single Best Value — Better than any book, October 20, 2013

After reading through Kettlebells For Dummies I have to conclude that this DVD by itself is vastly more useful than any book. This is a complete package offering 45 minutes of perfectly displayed instruction for a routine that can be completely in 30 minutes.

Introduction. Basics include flat shoe or barefoot. Chalk up and hydrate but you must complete the exercise in the allotted amount of time to achieve the optimal benefit. Do not settle for anything less than a cast iron single piece kettlebell. This stuff is DANGEROUS if you are not warmed up, trained up, and ready to do the relatively coordinated actions such as swinging a kettlebell up, letting go the handle, and catching it the palm of you hand. What impresses me about this advanced version is that it clearly is a full-body work out where bending of the knees, a straight back, flexible hips, and balance are essential.

Tutorial. In this section a series of exercises are demonstrated with ample words, ending with the towel halos using a single sixteen pound RK and swinging the RK around in a manner that is clearly a full body work-out. And dangerous. If you are not good at this you could let go and hurt someone — or be hurt by others not yet ready for this exercise.

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2013/10/202013/10/20

Review: Kettlebells for Dummies

4 Star, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Reviews (DVD Only)

Sarah Lurie

4.0 out of 5 stars Overkill — 50 pages fluffed to 342, October 20, 2013

If you ever wanted to get to know a Russian Kettlebell intimately, as well as its family going back 1000 years and every possible nuanced aspect of it, this is the book for you. For me it is total overkill and would more usefully be replaced by a 50 page illustrated guide and a single wall chart — or two, one for warm-up with jumprope and stick, the other a series of exercises. I watched Powerbody: Advanced Russian Kettlebell Workout with Phil Ross before going through this book,and now I am leaning toward reversing my conclusion that the Ross DVD was too advanced and one should start with this book. Given a choice between the two, I would dump this book and use the DVD as a complete package.

Bottom line: too much of everything. This is a doctoral thesis on pulling carrots out of the ground. This is a formula book on steroids. It certainly earns four stars — some might give it five (I mistrust most of the reviews, them seem to be very short and empty reviews from people doing the author a favor) — and the substance is worthy, but the overall “door stop” nature of the book is very off-putting. I could have distilled this book into 50 pages with two wall charts, and been happier with that at the same price.

Here are a few bottom lines from this book:

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2013/04/20

Review (DVD) Great Barrier Reef — BBC Earth

5 Star, Environment (Solutions), Reviews (DVD Only)

5.0 out of 5 stars RIVETING! As close as most might get, do not miss the chance

April 20, 2013

I put this up on my second screen, intending to do odds and ends on my primary screen, but very quickly found myself giving the film my undivided attention.

In no way do I agree with any prior criticisms of either the underwater voice, which I found totally appropriate, of the use of high speed photography, which was both essential and in my view, ultra professional. Some of the stuff shown here has never before been captured (e.g. parrot fish building its nightly mucus page) and other stuff just blew my mind, such as the rare coral spawning, the launching of male and female eggs from coral.

I had no idea, plain and simple. This film is educational, entertaining, and enchanting.

This is, as another reviewer has noted, three movies in one, to which I would add: 185 minutes, with each of the three segments roughly 60 minutes in length.

For myself, I could only marvel and the hundreds of hours it must have taken, of patient seemingly endless toil in filming, and ultimately the hundreds of hours doing the editing to get to this quite formidable, RIVETING, offering.

Highly recommended. Not only ideal for children, but a very fine — an extraordinary — view for adults.

2013/01/182013/01/19

Review (DVD): Dark Legacy — Compelling Public Indictment of George Bush Senior as CIA Lead for Assassination of John F. Kennedy

6 Star Top 10%, Atrocities & Genocide, Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only)

John Hankey

5.0 out of 5 stars Six Star Special — Poetic, Compelling — Sufficient to Indict George Bush Sr., January 18, 2013

I have reviewed a number of the non-fiction books about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and received this film as a gift from an Amazon reader who appreciated my book reviews.

First off, the film is superbly professional and poetic in its opening, a panoramic survey of John F. Kennedy and why he mattered, as a President representing the 99%, as a President striving for peace and against the US military industrial complex (books show that Khruschev had the same problem with his own military complex).

Crucifies ABC's Peter Jennings for being part of a cover-up and nationally-televised propaganda film lying to the public. As an intelligence professional who has written extensively about information pathologies, I hold the captured corporate media in great disdain, and consider all of them to be craven to the nth degree.

I have to say that as good as the movie is, it absolutely had to be valued in the context of the books that provide vastly more detail. This movie is a summary — a very compelling and gifted presentation of the totality of the assassination including details and excellent photographic and video reviews, but the movie is only good enough to INDICT George Bush Senior, not enough to convict.

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2011/09/082011/09/08

Review (DVD): Temple Grandin

Reviews (DVD Only)

Claire Danes, Mike Jackson, Christopher Monger

Six Stars & Beyond–A Mind-Altering Cinematographic Phenomenon, September 8, 2011

I bought this on the recommendation of a reader-reviewer at Amazon, shortly after I reviewed A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness. Normally I defer to other reviewers for something like this, and just do a short review for the record to join the other 100+ DVDs for smart people that I recommend at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, but in this instance, I am not satisfied with the top-rated review; they do not do the combination of acting, story, and cinematographic representation justice.

I watched this movie twice, the first time on background (a second screen), suffering through very low sound until I finally realized that it is imperative to use the DVD software controls to set it on stereo (at least for my configuration–if you get very low sound it is not a defective DVD, you just need to run through the audio settings); and then a second time.

Here are some of the things I would itemize about what makes this one of the most extraordinary movies I have watched in my 59 years.

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2011/06/122011/06/12

Worth a Look (DVD): One Man, One Cow, One Planet

Advanced Cyber/IO, Atlases & State of the World, Change & Innovation, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Complexity & Resilience, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Crime (Corporate), Cultural Intelligence, Culture, Research, Disease & Health, Earth Intelligence, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Ethics, Gift Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (Public), Key Players, Methods & Process, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace Intelligence, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Public Administration, Reform, Reviews (DVD Only), Science & Politics of Science, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technologies, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Threats, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

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Phi Beta Iota: The industrialization/ chemicalization of agriculture, in combination with the corruption of every aspect of society beginning with governance and extending to the media, has allowed for the desecration of the Earth and the poisoning of humanity. This has been done with the explicit consent and encouragement of the so-called elites of the West, who have a vision of eugenics and the covert eradication of the poor and uneducated over time. These elites do not see that the brainpower of the three billion poor is the only thing that can restore natural harmony and sustainable agriculture as well as legitimate governance and natural capitalism. The time has come to create M4IS2–public intelligence in the public interest.

Category: Reviews (DVD Only)

Review (DVD): Killers with Katherine Heigl