Rome's Pride

The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve My rating: 3 of 5 stars As a fan of historical fiction, multiperspectivity, and mysteries this book held high interest to me. Based off of the Smuttynose murders that took place on New Englands Isles of Shoals in 1873 this book follows two women on different timelines. One, Maren, was the survivor of the event that took both her sister's and sister in law's lives. The other, Jean, is a journalist in current time assigned to take photographs for a magazine article on the event. Throughout the novel you follow Maren's childhood in Norway and events leading up to the murders and Jean's research with the case as well as her interactions with those she is traveling with on a small boat. This book is full of themes of jealousy, desire, and struggles with relationships both romantic or family. The book did start very slow and the first half you do have to stick with it, however, the ending is well worth it with a twist you do not see com...

A Cave in the Clouds: A Young Woman's Escape from Isis by Badeeah Hassan Ahmed My rating: 4 of 5 stars Badeeah's story is one of survival, resilience, and humanity. Her life journey unfortunately involved paths of violence and a lack of human compassion that no person should have to face. However, this biography showed her courage to not only survive herself but her strength and compassion in helping her family and other victims with her. At 18 Badeeah was driven from her home during an ISIS raid on her Ezidi village in Iraq. She was separated from her family, some did not survive or were considered missing after her escape, except for her young nephew who she posed as his mother. They were sold into a human trafficking ring. This eventually brought them to Syria where she was sold as a wife and was both physically and sexually assaulted during her containment. Together with another woman, who was sold with them, they were able to escape and be reunited with some of their fa...

     This week I am reviewing To Kill a Mockingbird directed by  Robert Mulligan . It was produced by Alan J. Pakula  and was  released December 25, 1962. The cinematography was done by  Russell Harlan  and the musical score was written by Elmer Bernstein . To Kill a Mockingbird won three Academy Awards for Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Art Direction. It also won three Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor (Motion Picture Drama), Best Original Score (Motion Picture), and Best Film Promoting International Understanding (Award category was given from 1946-1964)     To Kill a Mockingbird follows Jean Finch (Mary Badham), nicknamed Scout, and her brother Jeremy, Jem, (Phillip Alford) for a couple years. Their father Atticus (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer in town. We see him with a case defending Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), an African American, against accusations of attacking and raping a white girl in ...

     This week I am reviewing Back to the Future  directed by Robert Zemeckis . It was produced by Bob Gale and Neil Canton and was  released July 3, 1985. The cinematography was done by  Dean Cundey  and the musical score was written by Alan Silvestri . The film won an Academy Award for Best Sound Editing .      Back to the Future is about teenager Marty McFly who is friends with an inventor Dr. Emmett Brown. Doc invents a time machine in a DeLorean using plutonium as an energy source that he tricked terrorists into giving him. As he is showing it off to Marty the terrorists arrive and attack them. Marty escapes in the DeLorean but ends up going back in time to when his parents first met. He unintentionally causes his mother to like him instead of his father so he has to put things right by getting them together. While he does this Doc of the past creates a way using lightning as a source to fuel the time machine to ta...

     This week I am reviewing Casablanca  directed by  Michael Curtiz . It was produced by  Hal B. Wallis and was  released nationally on January 23, 1943. The cinematography was done by  Arthur Edeson  and the musical score was written by Max Steiner . The film won three Academy Awards: Outstanding Motion Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing (Screenplay) . Casablanca follows the main character Rick (Humphrey Bogart) who owns a club in Casablanca. Many people that are fleeing the Nazis go through Casablanca and try to get papers in order to leave. Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) a woman that broke Rick’s heart in Paris comes in to the club with her husband Victor (Paul Henreid). We learn that she fell in love with Rick when she thought her husband died and left Rick at the train station waiting for her because she found out her husband was still alive. Rick then helps the couple flee to America by coming across two letters of transit and ...

       This week I am reviewing  Jaws ,  based on the novel of the same name by Peter Benchley,  directed by  Steven Spielberg . It was produced by  Zanuck/Brown Company and Universal Pictures and was  released June 20, 1975. The cinematography was done by Bill Butler  and the musical score was written by John Williams . The film won three Academy Awards for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Sound. John Williams's score won a Grammy, a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, an Oscar, and a Golden Globe Award. At the People's Choice Awards Jaws received Favorite Movie.       Martin (Roy Scheider) the local police chief of Amity Island discovers there is a great white shark lurking, terrorizing, and attacking swimmers in the ocean around the start of the town’s busiest beach season. Together with the help of Matt (Richard Dreyfuss), an oceanographer, and Quint (Robert Shaw), a fi...

         This week I am reviewing  Singin' in the Rain  directed by  Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen . It was produced by  Arthur Freed and was  released April 11, 1952. The cinematography was done by  Harold Rosson.  The musical score was written by Lennie Hayton and the songs in the film written by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed . Donald O'Connor received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy).       Singin’ in the Rain follows the character Don Lockwood ( Gene Kelly) who is a popular silent film star as the world transitions from silent films into talking pictures. His co-star Lina ( Jean Hagen) is seen in the public eye as his love interest when in reality he does not care for in any way. She also becomes a complication in the transitional process with her voice not being pleasing in the new films. Don meets Kathy ( Debbie Reynolds) as he is trying to escape fa...