If you’ve read the book, “The Kite Runner”, but haven’t seen the movie yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. It is truly an amazing adaption of a book, the best I can remember in a long time. Many of the scenes I imagined in the book, were practically duplicated in the film. The choice of actors was also superb and the “extra features” on the DVD were well worth watching. Marc Forster, who directed “Monster’s Ball” with Hallie Berry and “Finding Neverland” and the upcoming new James Bond film, has created a beautiful film here. You can now rent this at Redbox for $1. Of further note, the actress Atossa Leoni, who plays Amir’s wife Soraya , is the narrator of Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns” in audiobook format.

Oct 17th - mark it on your calendars. The movie opens in theaters with a great cast.

Dakota Fanning (Lily)
Queen Latifah (August)
Jennifer Hudson (Rosaleen)
Alicia Keys (June)
Sophie Okonedo (May)
Paul Bettany (T. Ray)
Tristan Wilds (Zach)

I think Dakota Fanning is an excellent choice for the lead. A great little actress and most likely will do Lily proud. If you still haven’t read the book, do yourself a favor and listen to Jennia Lamia read the audio version of The Secret Life of Bees. You can download a copy at Audible (and enjoy a great trial offer, if you’re not a member). This remains my favorite audiobook of all time and I’ve listened to many (Jim Dale as a narrator of the Harry Potter books is, of course, incredible). Jenna makes this story come alive in a way that just reading it can not.

I recently received a newsletter from Sue Monk Kidd and she detailed her visit to the movie set and how impressed she was with the job they were doing.

Filming moves across the street to shoot Scene 36– Lily and Rosaleen arriving at the Pink House. The light is falling, along with the temperature and everyone is in a rush. As the scene is set up, I talk with thirteen-year-old Dakota Fanning, who tells me her grandmother introduced her to The Secret Life of Bees before she knew she would play Lily. The crew has been telling me that she is brilliant. One of the camera guys showed me the video of her kneeling on grits, and I found her mesmerizing. After it was filmed, the set medic had to ice Dakota’s knees.

So mark that date in your calendars and get the popcorn ready.

This is a great way to learn vocabulary while helping someone else. Bookmark this page and come back to it every day and not only will you begin to sound like you have more brains than you really do :), but you will also be helping a lot of very needy people. A great idea. Be forewarned - it’s challenging, which is good and it brings you back to those words you missed originally - give it a try - good for the ol’ bean.

If you get the chance, check out Annik Ruben’s Slow German Podcast.  I’m trying to brush up on my German that I haven’t used much in the past 30 years and this is a marvelous tool.  It ranks way up there amongst my favorite podcasts.  Her voice is great, the pace is right, the topics are good - wish I would have had this tool when I was teaching High School German many moons ago.  If your German is really good, try out her Schlaflos in München podcast - aber Vorsicht! (sie spricht ganz schnell).  And while you’re at it, check out Language Geek’s website.  I just stumbled upon it, but it looks really good for all you language freaks - I’ll be putting that in my FeedDemon list for sure.

I got a kick out of this post from Violent Acres . Working daily with the public, I can identify. You might be taken aback a bit by the language (doubtful in today’s world, of course), but in this case, the customer who deems themselves as “always right” deserves a few choice words, me thinks.

The phrase ‘The Customer is Always Right’ is the single worst philosophy that has ever been adopted by American culture. It gave an entire generation of people the green light to be as impolite, unreasonable, and demanding as their little hearts desired because they were always going to be considered right. It destroyed the entire concept of courtesy and rendered manners obsolete. People began to treat their peers in the service industry like incompetent morons, lacking in feelings or human dignity, who deserved to be browbeaten and abused for no other reason than they had the audacity to run out of a particular brand of coffee. Furthermore, instead of suffering negative repercussions for their appallingly disrespectful behavior, they are awarded with free coupons and plenty of ass kissing. In reality, they should be shunned and humiliated for behaving like such self absorbed little children.

Read the rest of the article - especially if you are one of those “demanding” jerks.

Watched the debate tonight on ABC.  Finally got down to some serious discussions after wasting about an hour on ridiculous crap such as whether Obama wears an American Flag pin or the weary diatribe on Reverend Wright or Hilary’s dodging sniper bullets.  Some may find this to be the determining factors in their choice of candidates, but I agree with Obama in that the average Joe or Jane sitting down at their breakfast table in the morning is a heck of a lot more concerned with how they’re going to put food on the table, than they are with these media driven bits of nonsense.  No wonder the average American citizen is such a cynic.

I must admit that I’ve been long confused about exactly how trackbacks work. So I finally decided to “Google” it and came across this excellent tutorial. Thought this might help those of you, who like me, were equally confused.

I had to throw in that catchy title to get your attention. (Plus I had to practice my German a bit!). This is a very cool adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis done by Peter Kuper.

Here’s a marvelous web site which will touch the hearts of all cat lovers.  A very nice web presentation by Sarah and Knox.

Alley Cats : Urban Tails

Every now and then a very cool browser plug-in comes along and causes one to say “Wow!”. Piclens is one of those plug-ins.  Available for IE, Firefox and Safari.  I’ll say no more - just check it out and give it a whirl and then let me know in the comments what you think of it.