The Amazon Guide

Copyright © 2006 Ed Bagley

To Kill A Mockingbird – 3 Stars (Good)

Gregory Peck won a Best Actor Oscar in this adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about white lawyer Atticus Finch defending an innocent African American man accused of raping a white woman.

This is a story that illuminates everything that is wrong about hate, prejudice, bigotry, ignorance, stupidity, lack of backbone and lack of a heart. It is a story about an all-white male jury who makes important life decisions without right thinking and right motives.

Finch (Gregory Peck) suffers retribution because of his defense of Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) who is accused of raping Mayella Violet Ewell (Collin Wilcox). The real villain is her father Bob Ewell (James Anderson) who beats her and tries to kill Finch’s daughter Scout (Mary Badham) and son Jem (Phillip Alford).

Scout narrates this story about her childhood memories. She and Jem team up with friend Dill Harris (John Megna) in a subplot involving “Boo” Radley (Robert Duvall) who ultimately saves Scout and Jem from Bob Ewell by killing Ewell with his own knife.

Sheriff Heck Tate (Frank Overton) would later claim that Ewell fell on his own knife. Tate knew that Ewell was two legs and bad news coming in the form of one bigoted human being; there would be no charges filed against Boo.

In the end, the innocent Tom Robinson is found guilty and shot to death when he tries to flee his injustice.

It is no irony that this 1932 story takes place in Macon County, Georgia, a cesspool of racially motivated hate even in 1962 when this film was released.

To Kill a Mockingbird shows that some people will never have any discernable personal growth in their entire life; thank God that others do.

Boo, a scary recluse who only came out at night, was Duvall’s first movie role. Duvall apparently stayed out of the sun for six weeks and dyed his hair blond in preparation for the role.

Dill was modeled after author Harper Lee’s childhood friend Truman Capote. Finch was the middle name of Harper Lee’s father.

Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird, won an Oscar and the film also won for Best Art Direction for a black and white film. The film earned 5 other Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, won by Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif.

Gregory Peck picked up the Golden Globe for Best Actor, and the film also won another for Promoting International Understanding. Peck has said that this film was his favorite work.

His character Atticus Finch was voted the top screen hero of the last 100 years by the American Film Institute. This is truly a no-spin honor. To Kill a Mockingbird is also ranked No. 2 on AFI’s 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time (It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart is No. 1).

The evidence of just how emotional To Kill a Mockingbird is comes from Brock Peters (the accused) who started to naturally cry while shooting the testifying scene. Gregory Peck said he had to look past him to keep from choking up himself.

Racial bigotry is an extremely emotional and hateful occurrence that continues to linger with us today. Were it not for a loving God who is color blind, the hurt would be even deeper and more destructive.

To Kill a Mockingbird is as appropriate today as it was when it was released. Each generation must work to progress past the sins of past generations. Tom Robinson may rest in peace knowing his descendants will then have a better system of justice.

About the Author:

Ed Bagley’s Blog Publishes Original Articles with Analysis and Commentary on 5 Subjects: Sports, Movie Reviews, Lessons in Life, Jobs and Careers, and Internet Marketing. Read my 3-part series on “Secrets Men Don’t Want Women to Know” and reviews on the Broadway musicals “Camelot”, “Chicago” and “The Phantom of the Opera”. These are all excellent films. Find my Blog at:
http://www.edbagleyblog.com
http://www.edbagleyblog.com/MovieReviews.html

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – “to Kill a Mockingbird” Exposes the Destructiveness of Bigotry

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To Kill a Mockingbird (Collector’s Edition) $19.98 Gregory Peck won an Oscar for his brilliant performance as the Southern lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape in this film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The way in which it captures a time, a place, and above all, a mood, makes this film a masterpiece. The setting is a dusty Southern town during the Depression. A white woman accuses a black man of rape. Though he is obvious…

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This season\’s lineup includes senior forward Jeff Adrien from Brookline, senior guard Craig Austrie from Stamford, sophomore guard Kyle Bailey from Lancaster, sophomore guard Donnell Beverly from Hawthorne, senior guard Johnnie Bird from Fort Bragg, junior guard Jerome Dyson from Potomac, junior forward Gavin Edwards from Gilbert, freshman guard Scottie Haralson from Jackson Mississippi, junior Alex Hornat from South Windsor Connecticut, senior John Lindner from Cheshire, freshman Ater Majok from Stone Mountain, sophomore Charles Okwandu from Lagos Nigeria, senior A.J. price from Amityville, junior Stanley Robinson from Birmingham Alabama, junior Hasheem Thabeet from Dar Es Salaam Tanzania, senior Jim Veronick from Durham Connecticut and freshman Kemba Walker from the Bronyx.

No basketball team amounts to much without the necessary guidance from the basketball coaching staff who supports, educates, trains and instructs the team. The Huskies are no exception. Coaching support for the Huskies includes head coach Jim Calhoun who is in his 23rd season with the Huskies. Associate head coach George Blaney is in his 8th season with the Huskies. Assistant coach Andre LaFleur is in his 8th season with the Huskies. Assistant coach Patrick Sellers is in his 5th season with the Huskies and director of operations Beau Archibald is in his 2nd season with the Huskies.

The Huskies will continue their participation in the 2008-2009 season with games against the Providence, at Louisville, Michigan, Syracuse, at Seton Hall, Pittsburgh, South Florida, at Marquette, Notre Dame and at Pittsburgh.

Thus far the Huskies have an overall game record of 18 wins and 1 loss. These statistics can be further broken down into 9 wins and 1 loss at home games, 5 wins and no losses at away games and 4 wins in neutral areas.

Adrien appears to be quite the contender for most valuable player on the team this season with point scoring averaging 14.3 and a total of 271 points. A very close competitor, however is Dyson, who has 257 points and is averaging 13.5 points per game. Of course, there are more than a few games left to be played this season, which means numbers can change quickly.

The Harry A. Gampel Pavilion is the location that all home games for both men\’s and women\’s basketball are held. Opened for business in 1990, the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion is over 171,000 square feet in the overhead dome and offers 39,000 square feet of space that is attached to the Wolff-Zackin Natorium.

With state of the art facilities, the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion offers modern scoreboards with complete player lineup information that includes fouls, points, and full color game video boards, wood grain professional style individual lockers, an adjoining varsity team lounge and an audio visual area with a large screen television that features satellite dish hook-up for game reviews and scouts.

The Huskies are NCAA participants and follow the rules of the organization regarding agents, amateurism, contact with students and athletes at the school and with high school and junior college coaches and student-athlete employment.

About the Author:

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Life As a House [VHS] $7.83 A respectable tearjerker, Life as a House is a welcome throwback to angst-ridden family dramas like Ordinary People and Terms of Endearment. It falls short of those modern classics, but you’ll probably still need Kleenex if you appreciate Kevin Kline’s underrated dramatic skills. As the title suggests, Kline’s project is a broad metaphor for repairing damaged lives from the foundation up. Playing …

Life As a House [VHS] $9.48 A respectable tearjerker, Life as a House is a welcome throwback to angst-ridden family dramas like Ordinary People and Terms of Endearment. It falls short of those modern classics, but you’ll probably still need Kleenex if you appreciate Kevin Kline’s underrated dramatic skills. As the title suggests, Kline’s project is a broad metaphor for repairing damaged lives from the foundation up. Playing …

Life as a House [VHS] A respectable tearjerker, Life as a House is a welcome throwback to angst-ridden family dramas like Ordinary People and Terms of Endearment. It falls short of those modern classics, but you’ll probably still need Kleenex if you appreciate Kevin Kline’s underrated dramatic skills. As the title suggests, Kline’s project is a broad metaphor for repairing damaged lives from the foundation up. Playing …

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Inés of My Soul is a daring novel, grand on any scale. Daring, because the writer has courageously confronted one of the bloodiest periods in South American history, taking sides neither with the conquistadors nor with the indigenous people; grand, because it is a vastly researched historical fiction as well as being a love story.

The story is told from the imaginary point of view of Inés Suárez from what she may have written in her diary when seventy years old. The diary’s existence is also imaginary. Only a writer of Isabel Allende’s stature would dare to tell this very complicated story in flashback and succeed so brilliantly.

In her diary, Inés addresses Isabel, her stepdaughter from her last marriage. In the first chapter, Inés Suárez says: “I beg you to have a little patience, Isabel. You will soon see that this disorderly narrative will come to the moment when my path crosses that of Pedro de Valdivia and the epic I want to tell you about begins.”

Inés, a poor seamstress from Plasencia–a town in Spain, comes to the new world in a ship with her niece to search for her husband Juan de Málaga. In reality, she is determined to escape from poverty and the backward thinking of the society she was born into. When she learns her husband is dead, she tries to make it on her own with her nursing and housekeeping skills. When a man who was in the same ship with her tries to attack her, she kills him out of self-defense, but the shipÂ’s captain takes the body of the man from her house and discards it, keeping her name clear. After this, Inés wants to move on to other towns in the new world, partly with fear of being found out. It is at this time that she meets Pedro de Valdivia, the conquistador of Chile, and becomes his mistress.

Inés gets Pisarro’s permission by saying that she knows dowsing and can find water in the desert; so, together with Valdivia she travels to Chile, crossing an impossible arid region and facing many hardships to establish the city of Santiago in the Mapocho Valley as a Spanish settlement. They call the new town, “Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura.” The date is February 12, 1541.

In this settlement, cut away from Peru because of distance and dreadful travel conditions, the group faces a terrible struggle against chief Michimalonko’s fierce Mapuche Indians. Inés’s story continues until 1580 when she is writing her memoirs at age seventy as a rich and successful widow but somewhat boastful and full of pride.

Even if the story is filled with battles, cruelty, and blood and gore, the central theme is the passionate love and companionship between two lovers. The relationship between Pedro and Inés is that of a fairy tale, passionate, loving, and full of communication. Even if Pedro changes from an idealistic man to a man of greed eventually, his love for Inés survives to his last breath.

Although Isabel Allende, through Inés, does not lionize or conceal the brutality of the conquistadors, she romanticizes the idea of establishing settlements in the new world and the exploits of those who went through so much to conquer the continent. Inés, a remarkable woman who comes up with solutions to most problems the people of the settlement face in the new world, is portrayed as the modern women’s rights advocates would like to see a heroine. How much of this idealizing might have come close to the truth is debatable.

Inés of My Soul is the fifteenth book for Isabel Allende. In this book, too, her narrative style takes over the story, but her delightful storytelling with the exciting twists and turns in her narration grip the reader fully and make him want not to leave a word unread.

Isabel Allende is a Chilean novelist who was born on August 2, 1942 in Lima, Peru. His books are: The House of the Spirits (1982), La gorda de porcelana (1984), Of Love and Shadows (1985), Eva Luna (1987), The Stories of Eva Luna (1989), The Infinite Plan (1991), Paula (1995, Afrodite (1997), Daughter of Fortune (1999), Portrait in Sepia (2000), City of the Beasts (2002), My Invented Country (2003), Kingdom of the golden dragon (2004), Forest of the Pygmies (2005), Zorro (2005), Ines of My Soul (2006), and Dos Palabras.

The book is in hardcover and 336 pages with ISBN-10: 0061161535 and ISBN-13: 978-0061161537.

As expected from Allende’s wonderful storytelling, “Inés of My Soul” is a brilliant historical epic, full of excitement and suspense.

Joy Cagil is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers Her portfolio can be found at http://www.Writing.Com/authors/joycag

Isabel Allende: Tales of passion