Shortly thereafter the King, already troubled by tales of drought and pestilence in the land, receives news both of the strange omen at sea and of the disappearance of his son, Prince Arren. The King’s wizard tells the tale of how dragons and men were once one, until dragons chose freedom, and men chose possessions, and of his fears of how the land’s plight is due to a weakening of the “balance”. The King has little time to ponder on this before he is set upon and killed in a dark corridor by a young lad, who turns out to be his son Arren. The prince steals his father’s sword and flees the palace.

The action now moves to a desert where Arren is pursued by wolves, and rescued by a wizard who turns out to be Sparrowhawk the Archmage. Arren accompanies Sparrowhawk and travels to the city of Hortown. Arren goes to explore the town alone, suddenly becoming scared as if something is following him. As Arren runs away, he sees a young girl, Therru, fleeing from slave hunters from whom he then saves her.

Later in the evening Arren is captured by the slave hunter but loses his sword as the hunter believes it to be worthless junk. Arren is rescued by Sparrowhawk from the slavers, and they travel to a farm where Therru is looked after by a woman, Tenar, whom Sparrowhawk knows.

The head slaver (“Hare”) reports back into a castle to Lord Cob, and almost pays with his life for the loss, until he tells Cob that Sparrowhawk freed the slaves. Lord Cob orders him to bring Sparrowhawk to the castle. Sparrowhawk at the farm reveals that he is investigating the cause of the Balance being upset and leaves for Hortown, in which he discovers the sword that Arren had is in a merchant shop. Sparrowhawk is then encountered by Hare, but he transforms his face to disguise himself. When the slave hunter leaves, he buys the sword.

An awful lot has been said and written about the Smurfs since their creation in 1958 by the Belgian cartoonist Peyo, and not all of it, by any means can be true. Here are some of the stories and conjectures about the Smurfs, but the author takes no responsibility for the authenticity of any of the supposed facts mentioned. The sources of many stories and rumours are impossible to verify, but you may find some amusing…

Peyo originally named the Smurfs the Stroumpfs, but the name had to be changed as it was too hard for some to spell

Peyo made the Smurfs faces blue because he:
a) Had run out of red pencils
b) Found pink to be too “girlie”
c) Thought red looked too alcoholic
d) Found blue to be the perfect complimentary colour to red, making the figures stand out better on the page

It has been claimed that SMURF stands for “Socialist Men Under a Red Father”, and that the Smurfs’ way of life is meant to demonstrate to the world the success of communism as described by Karl Marx. Surely it is just a coincidence that Papa Smurf has a beard like Marx, that all the Smurfs each have their own specific job and do their bit for the whole community, that all are dressed alike, and all eat together at a communal table?

Smurfette has been thought by some to be the product of a misogynist mind that wanted to undermine feminism, and belittle female achievement. This surely can’t be so. Smurfette’s character is exaggerated like that of the other Smurfs (e.g. the boring and overbearing Brainy Smurf), simply for comedic effect and nothing more.

There is an ugly rumour that Baby Smurf has been caught swearing, and this seems to stem from a Canadian toy, the Talking Berry Lasvin Baby Smurf. Investigations have maintained that this was just a case of bad hearing on someone’s part.

What about the rumour that Jack Black is a Smurf? A friend of Jack’s has smurfed off this suggestion, saying that the notion was about as credible as the contention that all mankind has evolved from bacteria left behind on Earth when aliens dropped by for a picnic on their way through our galaxy.

Consternation reigned in Houston, Texas in 1983, when a story got round that Smurfs were invading schools and terrorising pupils. It turned out to be a garbled version of a local TV station report about a group of teenagers involved in petty crimes, calling themselves the Smurfs.

Another story developed about the same time in South America that the Smurfs were practising Satanism. This may have originated from the Smurfs TV series where, in one episode, Gargamel apparently makes the mark of a pentagram on the floor and generally practices black magic. It was also reported that Papa Smurf was working on magic potions and spells. It is possible that the rumours were started by a rival television company in an effort to smear the Smurfs. Is there any truth though, in the rumour that Dan Brown’s next novel is to be entitled “Smurfs and Demons”?

Fear not though everybody, because these stories are just that – silly stories, and there is no doubt that the Smurfs are our friends. They are good and honourable creatures, and would do harm to no-one. Why not make friends with a Smurf today?

Harrison Ford is peerlessly charming and always believable. For this, audiences flock to his movies in droves. It is also the reason that this film succeeds. Air Force One is a movie so ripe with clichés that it itself becomes one. You, dear reader, have been on this ride before, so many times, in fact, that we should all be earning frequent flyer credit card miles for the viewing. However, this film is a prime example of how star power and good acting can transcend the material.

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen (“Das Boot”), Air Force One is essentially a blend of familiar ingredients. Most of the great movie moments involving airplanes, cat-and-mouse chases, hijacking, hostages, politics, the president, and terrorists, are all here in some derivative, easily digestible form. Ford is, as you might have guessed, James Marshall, an ex-Vietnam vet, and the not-so-hapless hapless President of the United States. President Marshall takes a stance over-popularized in 1990s action cinema when he vows, “America will never negotiate with terrorists.”

Gary Oldman plays the leader of a Russian terrorist gang who has just hijacked Air Force One with the President’s family in tow. There are Russian prisoners to free, but Oldman has his work cut out for him. One, the President doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. Two, this archetypal villain role is ridiculous to the point of absurdity, and a lesser actor would likely crumble beneath the sheer weight of it. However, Oldman not only manages to make it work, he manages to breathe enough new life into the character to engage us.

On the ground, Glen Close is the Vice President and she is doing all she can. The role is small, but Close’s performance is nuanced enough to make it matter. A subplot centers on her assuming control of the presidency. At one point, those that matter believe the President dead. A female Vice President as a throwaway choice at a time when this actually seemed progressive could have been disastrous. It is not, and there is subtext that works here in ways we have no right to expect from a blockbuster production.

Air Force One is a spectacle, and the special effects are grand. There are high-altitude explosions, and people running around a high-speed plane in ways that should not be possible. This won’t stand up to the reality sticklers. There is also a bomb to diffuse. Of course, you knew there would be a bomb. There always is. There are five wires this time, and Ford must choose just two. Those odds aren’t good, and usually by that point, you just wouldn’t care. However, it’s a testament to Air Force One that you actually do.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elisa_Vuelo

Born in Brooklyn, he began his career in crime as protege to New York underworld boss Frankie Yale in the early 1920′s, and then moved to Chicago where he made himself a multi-millionaire from the protection business, gambling, brothels, and speakeasies. He is most infamous for planning the massacre of seven members of a rival gang on Valentine’s Day in 1929. This was also the year the Justice Department named Eliot Ness to form a special crime-busting squad which came to be known as “The Untouchables.” In 1931 Alphonse Capone was convicted on income tax evasion and began an eleven year sentence in the Federal Prison on Alcatraz Island. Capone died in 1947 and is buried in Chicago’s Mount Carmel Cemetery.

But who really was this man? How did this child of Neapolitan immigrants become the most legendary gangster of the “Roaring Twenties.” Using historical film footage, movie scenes, and dramatic recreations filmed on location in Chicago, Brooklyn, Ellis Island, Florida’s Palm Island, and Alcatraz, Al Capone: The Untouchable Legend not only depicts the rise and fall of “Scarface,” but also looks behind the myths at the private family man. Interviews with Capone’s nephew Harry Hart, and with Capone experts John Binder, Dennis Hoffman and William Balsamo all help to illuminate the social and economic milieu of the ’20s and ’30s that led to the rise of the “Mafia.”

Review by  Rick “Mad Dog” Mattix (Iowa) 

I gave this product an extra star for the occasional interview segments involving Capone historians Dennis Hoffman, John Binder, and William Balsamo, and for the especially interesting segments with Harry Hart, Al Capone’s nephew and son of Al’s lawman brother Vincenzo, a.k.a. James “Two-Gun” Hart, and with George E.Q. Johnson’s son. For the most part, however, the show is boring and silly, consisting largely of dull re-enactments, almost-as-dull crowd scenes on the Untouchables Tours bus, repetitive clips from a couple of Capone movies, plus occasional plugs for the now long-defunct Merry Gangsters Literary Society (headed by Mr. Binder when this program was filmed back in the late 1990s). The history is shallow and the narrator’s errors include having Johnny Torrio shot after the Hawthorne Hotel attack. Better research, more historical photos and films, and trimming some of the excess nonsense might have produced a real Capone documentary.

In Phoenix, Arizona, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals $40,000 from her employer to marry her boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin), and then flees to Sam’s house with the money. Along the way, she trades in her car to evade authorities, and during a storm on the trip, she checks into the isolated Bates Motel. The proprietor, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), invites her to dinner at his family house on the hill overlooking the motel. When he leaves to prepare dinner, Marion hears him arguing with his mother, who tells him that she refuses to allow him “bringing in strange, young girls for supper”.

Norman brings dinner to the motel to eat there instead. The two proceed to have a conversation over dinner, topics ranging from taxidermy to Norman’s mother, who he says has been mentally ill since the death of her lover. When Marion suggests that his mother be institutionalized, he gets upset, saying he wants to do so but does not want to abandon her. He compares his life to being in a “trap,” and observes that everyone is in a similar situation. Marion agrees with him, telling him that she “stepped into a private trap back in Phoenix.” Afterward, Marion returns to her room, where she resolves to return the money. Norman, who has become intrigued with her, watches her undress through a hole in the wall, obscured by a painting. After Marion counts the money, she takes a shower. During the shower, an anonymous female assailant enters the bathroom and stabs her to death. Back at the house, Norman calls out to his mother: “Mother! Oh, God, mother! Blood! Blood!”

He runs to the motel, where he finds the corpse; he presumes his mother killed Marion, so he tries to erase all traces of the crime to protect her. He puts Marion’s body and all her possessions, including money hidden in a newspaper, into the trunk of her car and sinks it in a nearby swamp.