The Book Thief is a 2013 American war drama film based on the novel of the same name by Markus Zusak, directed by Brian Percival and written by Michael Petroni, with a musical score composed by John Williams. The film stars Emily Watson, Geoffrey Rush, Sophie Nélisse, Ben Schnetzer, Nico Liersch, and Joachim Paul Assböck.
The movie The Book Thief has been called one of the worst World War II movies ever made. I disagree. We all have seen movies that play in Nazi Germany before and during the war. There are others where Jews have been saved by Germans who endangered their own lives.
What intrigued me about this film was the young main character, a nine-year –old –girl, Liesl, played by Canadian acting novice Sophie Nélisse, an exceptionally beautiful young girl, who also trained in ice skating for the Olympics as I heard in an interview. Her acting skills seem effortless and natural.
Liesl ends up in foster care with a very rough and ready couple, the Hubermans, in Molching, near Munich; they take her in for the money. Herr Huberman is unemployed because he hasn’t joined the NSDAP, the Nazi party. Frau Huberman makes a modest living for the family by doing other people’s laundry. Liesl’s real mother was arrested and sent to the camps as a presumed communist. Her brother, who was supposed to live with their new foster family too, dies while on the train to Munich.
In spite of her age, Liesl cannot...
Valentine's has come and gone. You may still be single but have made a resolution to do something about it.
There is help out there: Professional dating counselors give dating advice and look for a partner for your love life like headhunters for professionals.
First Coast Living featured me, the former Matchmaker from Ireland on 6 February '14 on their program.
Why is it so difficult to meet somebody these days? With a busy life and time restrictions on their hands, many viewers had this and other questions for me. Honestly, they keep popping up as they did in Dublin where I had my agency:
- Where are all the good men?
- Where do you go once you are over 40?
- How safe is online dating?
- Why do people lie online?
- Where is my soul mate?
- How do I know that men don't just want a hook up for the night? etc.
TV segments are notoriously short (3-5minutes usually), so it's impossible to answer all these questions. My book Next Time Lucky:How to Find Your Mr. Right offers many answers and the new step by step guide gives invaluable information about how to get back into the dating game, especially when you're over 40 and coming out of a long relationship.
Available on Kindle and Nook too, it's just the price of a cup of coffee and has longer staying power and more entertainment value.
See the reviews on my site and trust the experience...
No lover for Valentine's? No soul mate in sight?
Forget about relationships and the heartbreak that goes with it! Get a robot!
Robots have been with us since before Star Wars. They have been cleaning, repairing and some more sophisticated bots will soon be available to cook for us, do the laundry, even babysit or tend to our elderly parents. Last year, a NJ based company introduced a talking, touch-sensitive robot “companion”.
A Japanese robot developer, H. Ishiguro, in Kyoto who also teaches at Osaka University created a silicone doppelgänger so that he can interact on the internet in two places. “You believe I’m real”. If you can’t tell the difference, does it matter in the end whether you’re interacting with a human or machine?
Welcome to the future of dating, living, loving and companionship!
The movie HER (directed by Spike Jonze) opens a window into this future when a withdrawn writer (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with his computer's highly advanced ─sentient─ operating system (Scarlett Johansson's voice): A futuristic sci-fi romance?
Is it an odd, sad love story, combined with a meditation on technology as an accelerator of social loneliness? Not a small part of it seems to be an allegory of lonely guys and their fear of women.
Does the movie force us to consider what constitutes a 'real' relationship in a world where every interaction is filtered through technology, making it feel like a vital contemporary romance?
One critic found “The romantic intimacy is...
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