"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do, I stare out the window and wait for spring." - Rogers Hornsby

:: Saturday, January 03, 2004 ::

Movie Review: "Calendar Girls"

Something I did not know: this movie is based on a true story, which makes it all the more interesting.

The basic plot line is this: there are a group of women in a small town in the Yorkshire region of England, who belong to a "Women's Institute" group, which apparently is a large organization in the UK. They do fundraising for worthy causes, but when we first see this particular group, they are listening to excruciatingly boring talks on how wonderful broccoli is.

Then the husband of Annie (Julie Walters) dies of leukemia, and Chris (Helen Mirren) and some of the other women get the idea to make a calendar -- with all of the fifty-something women posing nude. They have a time trying to find a photographer, and then a sponsor, and there's a subplot with Chris' teenage son, who is of course mortified at the whole thing (and this after Chris finds a soft-core porn magazine under his bed, which is something I think is universal to teenage boys).

At times, the movie doesn't know what to make of itself -- it's a whimsical comedy, but there are also deeply emotional subplots between the two women, Annie and Chris, who sometimes find themselves at odds when the calendar becomes hugely popular and the group of women are whisked off to "Hollywood" (OK, really Burbank) to appear on the Tonight Show. We learn what bonds are formed between these women, all of them, and how they manage to get the national Women's Institute behind them even after the national president pretty much blows them off at a convention.

This movie isn't as deep as some of the others I have seen in the last month, nor will it probably get nominated for any awards (though Mirren is always good in anything she does). But it is entertaining, and well crafted, has a lot of funny lines, and of course, a happy ending, and you can't ask for much more.

What I would like to ask for in a movie-going experience, now that prices are on the way up again, is for the projectionist to not forget to focus the film on the screen (I was ready to go out and ask for a refund afterwards, but he figured it out after the first reel), and for the sixty-something women sitting behind me to stop the running commentary throughout the entire film. Seriously, if you cannot shut up for 90 minutes in a movie theater, stay home and wait for the DVD.

AYRating: ***

:: posted by Al at 6:23 PM [+] ::
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Happy New Year...

to everyone.

It's 2004.


this is the year.

:: posted by Al at 7:46 AM [+] ::
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Phishing

No, this isn't about the blues-rock group Phish, though I do like their music.

It's about a new web scam. (The name is a take off on the '70s term "phreaking", which scammers did back then to steal phone service from good ol' Ma Bell.)

Phishing is what web scammers are doing to try to convince gullible people to send them their credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc. and they are doing it this way:

You receive an e-mail from what appears to be an institution you trust: a bank, a credit card company (Citibank has been victimized), even eBay. It says something along the lines of "your account has been chosen for a random security check; you must send us your account numbers or your account access will be cut off". Frequently, the English is poorly written or fractured as if it were (because it probably was) written by someone for whom English is a second language.

If you click on one of the links in the e-mail, you get sent to a site run by the scammers, which, even though it looks legit, is the first step on the way to stealing your identity and your money.

Don't believe these, folks. Legitimate businesses NEVER (and I cannot emphasize the word "NEVER" enough) ask you for this kind of information via e-mail.

Please, please only communicate with financial companies through phone numbers and websites that you know to be legitimate, and again -- NEVER give out this information to someone who asks for it. Legit companies simply don't do business this way.

For more and for some examples of these scams, see the website of Anti-Phishing.org, a group dedicated to wiping out this insidious new scam.

:: posted by Al at 2:18 PM [+] ::
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