October 15, 2010 (San Diego)--I didn’t do great in my Introduction to Political Science class but there was one thing that stuck with me: gerrymandering. In the three and a half years since I’ve taken that class I’ve been surprised that the issue has never come up significantly. This documentary of the same name thoroughly and effectively explores this overlooked but very important subject. As Bill Mundell of Californians for Fair Redistricting put it, “Gerrymandering is America’s best kept secret.”
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‘Downzoning’ is actually ‘upzoning’ when it comes to property values
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October 15, 2010 (San Diego’s East County) - Have you ever needed to look up a phone number from your cell phone but do not want to pay the $1.50 - $2.00 cost? There is a free 411 service from Microsoft that you can use and the number is 800-225-5411 or 800-CALL-411. Take a minute right now to program this number into your cell phone directory so you never pay for a 411 call again!
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October 11, 2010 (San Diego's East County) -- The U.S. military has cancelled Internet voting for U.S. troops after hackers infiltrated an online election in Washington D.C., playing the University of Michigan “Fight” song on the voting system--and accessing the ability to change votes.
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October 9, 2010 (San Diego) -- As voters watch scandal after scandal rip apart state and municipal politics. most voters are unaware of the gorilla in the budget- redevelopment. According to the LA Times, “ After the savings and loan scandal, the HUD scandal, the EPA scandal and the Pentagon spending scandal, the next scandal to be uncovered will be the redevelopment scandal in the cities across the nation.”
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October 9, 2010 (San Diego) -- Are you longing to belong? Most likely, consciously or sub consciously, the answer is yes. As a human your need to belong is hard wired.
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“Your guide to financial planning & socially responsible investing”
By: Judith L. Seid, CFP ®
President, Blue Summit Wealth Management
October 5, 2010 (San Diego’s East County) -- We all know that credit cards are useful parts of our technology filled lives. They add flexibility and simplicity to our consumerism driven world, but they can also be dangerous. With the average American now holding four credit cards and one out of every seven people in possession of more than 10 cards it is important to stay current on the laws and regulations that govern their use and affect you.
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October 3, 2010 (San Diego)--You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger features a lot of great actors. Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Freida Pinto and Antonio Banderas make up most of the ensemble cast. It is also written and directed by Woody Allen. But despite all the talent here, the movie did nothing for me because they are all involved in a nonessential movie.
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October 5, 2010 (San Diego)--The Social Network is one of the year’s best films. That is not a label I apply to just any good film. What makes this movie special is how everything in it took me in. Very few movies this year engaged me as much as The Social Network. The writing, directing, acting, and every other aspect left me feeling genuinely spellbound. Every person involved gave one-hundred percent effort and it shows.
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October 3, 2010 (San Diego)--Claustrophobia seems to be a popular theme in the last two months. Lebanon took place entirely within a tank populated by four Israeli soldiers during the First Lebanon War. Whatever was seen outside the tank was limited to what was viewed through the periscope. Devil had several people stuck in an elevator with someone eventually revealed to be the Devil himself. Now we have Buried, a film featuring Ryan Reynolds in Iraq buried several feet underground in a coffin. This is a movie that must be seen in the theater to fully appreciate it. Not even the best home theater system can faithfully replicate the claustrophobic effects experienced at the cinema.
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September 28, 2010 (San Diego)--Playing until Friday at the Ken Cinema is A Film Unfinished. The title refers to an uncompleted Nazi propaganda film shot in the Warsaw Ghetto in the early 1940s. The majority of the movie consists of footage from the propaganda film. Director Yael Hersonski isn’t content to just show the film. Behind each shot is a story and the narrator goes into deep, articulative, and informative detail into each of them. Diaries from the overseer of the Ghetto and letters from one of the filmmakers are read.
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September 25, 2010 (San Diego)--Bran Nue Dae is a film so dreadful I felt embarrassed just watching it. Everything about it literally made me cringe. Only the completionist in me got me staying until the end. Once the end credits began to roll, I didn’t just walk out of the theater. I ran to the nearest exit. No, I’m not making this up.
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September 25, 2010 (San Diego)--Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps opens with Gordon Gekko being released from a federal penitentiary in the year 2001. Among the personal items given back to him is his mobile phone, one of those ugly giant cell phones that are an eyesore today but were trendy in the late 1980s. Gekko exits the penitentiary and sees everybody else being picked up, including one ex-convict in a limousine. But nobody comes for him. His face exudes loneliness. Here was a man who was big and rich twenty-five years ago but now nobody cares about him.
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DON'T BELIEVE DECEPTIVE POLITICAL ADS, FACTCHECK.ORG WARNS CONSUMERS
By Sylvia Hampton
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September 24, 2010 (San Diego)--My favorite scene in the French film Heartbreaker comes towards the end. Alex (Romain Duris), who is tasked with breaking up a heiress’s relationship with her fiance, puts on I’ve Had the Time of My Life from her favorite movie Dirty Dancing. He starts dancing, having memorized all the steps. I cracked a really wide smile when Bill Medley began singing. I wasn’t laughing a lot during Heartbreaker but I sure was smiling.
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September 24, 2010 (San Diego)--I watched Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole in a packed theater. Much of the audience consisted of parents and kids, many of them ranging between three to seven years old. There was an air of excitement in the theater during the half hour before the screening. But within the first fifteen minutes all the fun was sucked out. By the end, the atmosphere was cold and joyless. I left the screening depressed, manipulated, angry and appalled. This movie is based on a series of children’s novels but it is definitely not for kids. I will feel sorry for parents who will be understandably misled and take their kids to see a movie that will leave their young ones with tears and nightmares.
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September 17, 2010 (San Diego)--The Town opens with Ben Affleck and his crew robbing a bank. The action here is standard but one shot stands out. Rebecca Hall, playing a Bank Manager, is forced to open the safe. She shakes as she tries several times to get the correct combination. She’s under pressure because the cops are on their way and because she has a gun to her head. She finally manages to get it open. This looked promising; Affleck, who also directed and co-wrote, shows a knack for directing suspense despite the otherwise ordinary robbery.
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September 17, 2010 (San Diego)--A lot happens in Soul Kitchen. Too much, actually. Just as a film can rarely survive on the flimsiest of plots, a movie can have just as much a hard time sustaining itself trying to balance a smorgasbord of story lines. This newest film by German director Fatih Akin suffers from a major case of plot overload. In my notes I made a list and counted six distinct story threads. For this movie that was too many.
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September 13, 2010 (San Diego) -- Since it is clear banks and brokers would rather lay people off then hire them, it is time the U.S. Government provide entry-level jobs in public service to stimulate the economy. This worked before, when the CCC and WPA provided millions of unemployed US citizens with jobs and training that helped the U.S. out of the Great Depression.
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September 13, 2010 (San Diego) -- Today I will venture out into the Realm of the Off Topic. What follows is not exactly movie-related but I feel compelled to talk about the last few weeks and how they have affected me. I’m sure some of you may feel the same way I do after reading this post.
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September 13, 2010 (San Diego)--“I don’t want to play the character of Joaquin Phoenix anymore,” says Phoenix, the subject of this documentary. “I want to be whatever I am.” That is his explanation for why he chose to give up acting in favor of a rap music career. I’m Still Here, helmed by Phoenix’s brother-in-law Casey Affleck, is a film that you simply cannot prepare for. There are many images you will never unthink. These are not criticisms; as hard as it was to watch, I liked it. I didn’t necessarily enjoy it as I normally would. The documentary sets out and accomplishes what it wants to do and conveys what it wants to communicate. It doesn’t work as entertainment but then maybe that wasn’t the point.
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September 12, 2010 (San Diego)--A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop is not a bad movie per se but an unnecessary one. I could easily apply that label to a lot of bad movies but usually every movie, even the real stinkers, starts out conceptually with the best of intentions. This newest film by Yimou Zhang, a remake of the Coen Brothers’ film Blood Simple had no reason to be made.
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Jack guest blogs for his owner, Dawn Celapino this week
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September 6, 2010 (San Diego)--Neil Marshall is a British writer/director renowned for the amount of blood and gore he includes in his films. Sometimes he’s visceral as in Dog Soldiers. He can be gleeful and cartoonish about it like he was in Doomsday. In The Descent, the violence was unpleasant. In the case of Centurion, he is gritty and realistic. Even if it appeared gratuitous, I didn’t mind because I had a lot of fun watching it.
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ON THE SILVER SCREEN: PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1 A SATISFYING CONCLUSION TO MESRINE SAGA
By Brian Lafferty
September 6, 2010 (San Diego)--Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1, released last Friday, is the second of a two-part series. Killer Instinct emphasized action while this one focuses more on character exploration. Vince Cassel showed us in the first movie how he could rob banks. The movie contains action but not as much as the first. Instead, Cassel is given the opportunity to flex his acting muscles this time around, giving us a glimpse of one of France’s most notorious outlaws when he’s not on his latest crime spree. It is here that we get a portrait of the criminal artist as an older man.
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by Sharon Courmousis, Sacred Rocks Reserve "Don't blow it - good planets are hard to find.” ~ Quoted in Time
“There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.” ~Mohandas K. Gandhi
Recipe: Lime and Coriander Char-Grilled Chicken
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Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.
By Nancy and Dawn Clement
By Miriam Raftery
By Penelope Young Andrade
By: Judith L. Seid, CFP ®
Jeremy’s on the Hill California-style Bistro
By Will Power
by Sharon Courmousis, Sacred Rocks Reserve
s need but not for man's greed.” ~Mohandas K. Gandhi
By Dawn Celapino
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