Movie Review of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

I have a confession: Tom Cruise is my own personal enigma. Time and time again, I cannot explain how I manage to find this man to be mindblowingly arrogant and quite frankly, a general weirdo, and yet I have LOVED just about every movie I have ever seen him in. It's like a twisted form of admiration that even I don't quite understand, because I am serious when I say this: I REALLY don't like him. And yet true to form, by the end of MI-4, I was under that spell again.

THE GOOD: Blamed for the recent bombing of the Kremlin, the IMF is shut down and all members are disavowed, which leaves Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his fellow agents on their own to clear the agency's name and prevent another attack-this one designed to be on a more frightening scale. Joined by agents Benji, the tech nerd (Simon Pegg), the beautiful Jane(Paula Patton), and desk jockey analyst Brandt (Jeremy Renner), Ethan is in a race to stop Hendricks (played by Michael Nyqvist), a lone terrorist who has managed to steal Russian nuclear codes. As in every previous Mission film, there is no shortage of action and intrigue, but this one seemed to have exceeded them all, thanks in no small part to the much advertised scene of Tom Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa in Dubai-the world's tallest skyscraper. There's been a lot of talk about the fact that a stunt man was NOT used in this scene, implying obviously that Tom did it all on his own. I haven't been able to independently dispute or confirm this, but may I just say that if it IS true, I have gained an entirely new level of admiration for this man. I still don't like him, but you have to have some healthy respect for someone who is willing to do a stunt like that. I think it also cements the fact that there's something not quite right in his head too, but there's no need to get into that here.

The Magic That Is Harry Potter

The story of Harry Potter is found in a popular series of seven fantasy books written by the British author JK Rowling. The hero in these stories is the character of Harry Potter. The fantasy in these books revolves around magic. Harry is born a wizard and therefore has the power to perform magic. He realizes that there are many other magic people on earth who are witches and wizards and who live unknown amongst the 'Muggles', or normal people who have no magic powers. When Harry is eleven years old a letter is sent to him that invites him to attend Hogwarts, a boarding school for young wizards and witches. Each of the seven books in the series tells the reader about a year of Harry's life at his school, the people he meets at the school, what he learns, as well as his adventures.

There have been over 450 million copies of the book series that have been sold as of mid 2011, and the books have been translated into sixty-seven languages. The idea for the character and the books came to the author's mind while waiting on a train that was delayed on the way to London in 1990. Her first book was completed in 1995 and the publishers asked her to use a more gender neutral name in case boys would be put off reading an exciting novel written by a woman. Harry's birthday is on July 31st, which happens to be the author's birthday as well.

Sister Dorothy and the Fate of the Amazon Rainforest

What a powerful, visceral movie! They Killed Sister Dorothy was amazing! I could not finish it because I was too upset, but my friend told me the end. Having spent a good deal of time myself in Brazil, I can relate deeply to the attitudes represented in this documentary. Both that if the ranchers, the workers and the PDS participants.

There are several groups of actors in this movie. The ranch and sawmill workers that want to make a living cutting trees and tending to cattle that will become dinner on the plates of middle and upper class Brazilians. There are the ranch owners like "Taradao" ("Sleazy" in English) that care most about maximizing their profit at the expense of the trees and soil of the Amazon (the lungs of the world, second only in carbon sequestration to the deep ocean).

Next we have Americo Leal, literally, Americo (taken from America) Loyal. Americo is the lawyer defending the man that killed sister Dorothy. He claims that Dorothy was not a nun. She was an agent of the U.S. government sent to the Amazon in disguise as a nun to start an uprising in the Amazon so that we North Americans could ultimately take over the Amazon and enjoy the wealth of its resources. This man makes me ashamed of the human race.

And then there is Sister Dorothy and her landless followers that want to live sustainably...or so they claim. One of Dorothy's opponents says that her plan for the PDS (Sustainable Development Project) is not "sustainable." What he means is that the small-scale agroforestry style plan put forth by sister Dorothy will not create new logging and ranching jobs for people like him. Ah, the ever sacred claim of new jobs. This sounds very familiar. It is a claim not infrequently made by American politicians when they are trying to get elected. But exactly what kind of jobs is he talking about?