Disney's "the Princess & the Frog"

I've wanned to watch this movie for a long time, and expected it to be very engaging and entertaining

the film was actually entertaining for the first mmmm 45 minutes, however, after that things seemed to be moving very slowly that it got me bored and made think of it as a waste of time

but I although the film was boring, I need to give it some more credit, I think that this is Disney's first time to

"Love Story" Movie review

Another classic that I haven't seen before

my friend who gave me the movie on a flash disk, said that if I had liked "A walk to remember " the movie, I'd love this
honestly after watching "love story", "A walk to remember" seems to be nothing in comparison with it

"love story" is very touching and has a lot of lessons to give
at first I thought the acting was not that good, but later on I liked everyone who was in the movie, and considering how old this movie is, it was done very professionally

the only flaw the movie had that would have killed it, was during the first 30 seconds of the movie, when Oliver said "what to say about a 25 year old dead girl ..... " that tiny sentence made me expect Jenny's death every minute throughout the movie, even when they were just taking the elevator or riding a car :D
had those 30 seconds been removed, it would have made me more involved when Jenny was dying, but for me this flaw is not a big deal compared with how beautiful the movie was

its a great movie, go watch it if you haven't or tell me if you agree with me that the beginning sentence should have been removed

The Godfather Movie part 1 review

believe it or not, today was my first time to watch the Godfather, and I didn't even read the novels yet, so I don't know if throughout this review I'm criticizing the movie only, or booth the movie and the novel, but I'll say what I thought about what I had just seen

will anyone here kill me if I say that it was a horrible movie? hope not

I know that the movie is very old, but for me the first half of the move was VERY boring, till the Godfather got shoot (and by the way, I don't really think that someone like the Godfather would stop to buy some fruits on his way home, couldn't they come up with a better scene!) and at other times, things went real fast that I couldn't easily understand who was after who -even worse suddenly you discover that Michael got married AND has a kid, who is a toddler!! -

the movie only started to be interesting when Michael, decided to revenge for his father, that was, mmmmm touching - if that is the right word to use -

after that Michael runs away to hide, and meets Aplliena, whom he almost immediately marries, though he knows that we is sought for revenge, and feels so bad when she gets killed, as if it was that hard for a Godfather-to-be to expect that coming

and when Michael later one gets back to America he proposes to Kai, and simply says "marry me, I need you Kai", why do u need her? you can spare her the trouble, spare yourself the trouble, and were you that in love with her that you got married before!!
For me, that whole part about Mike's personal life was very unconvincing

the interesting parts about the movie, were those about the lives of the Godfather's sons and daughter, those scenes reminded me with our Arabic series "المال والبنون" they simply shows that filthy money leads to a miserable life - guess the arabic series did it better -

the other interesting part was how the Godfather was against drug dealing, I was surprised that such a person, would have those high morals, do they want to say that he is not that a bad man after all?
well to be hones every human has a good and a bad side, and it was nice to show the good side of such a heartless underground leader

however, that doesn't mean that I liked the movie, there was too much blood, too much killing, too much waste of time, and too much time overload at other scenes, honestly don't waste your time, just read wikipedia's summary and listen to "speak softly love" song, because that musical background was he best thing about the movie

the best of Broadway show - work in progress

Oh, what to say, the show was fascinating, very fascinating, and I deeply wished that it had never ended

this was my first time to attend anything at the opera, and honestly I knew nothing about broadway, it was my wonderful friend insisted on taking me to see the show. we missed the first part of the show as we were late, but the second part blow my mind off, that I'm very angry with myself for being that ignorant about broadway and their shows

I'm not a judge, and its not me who can review their shows, but they know how to make a show, they took advantage of everything even the theater isles
you sit there looking at the stage, and you suddenly discover that one of the dancers is passing right next to you, while others are dancing on the stage itself, you don't know where to focus and you don't wanna miss a thing!

I was not sure if video recording was allowed at first and thus didn't record the first three acts, but I found some of them on youtube, and here they are

1. Starmania
sorry can't find it on the web, it was the best and I really wanned to hear the song once more, it was a french song and it sounded something like "I'm an artist"

2. Cats - Memory




3. The Phantom of the Opera
this is longer than the one I saw, and for me the performance on OUR opera stage was better :P
of course I was very happy with this act because it has some vampires in it :D



and from here starts my recording, the sound quality is not that good, it was a hundred times more brilliant in reality

4. Beauty & the Beast - Be our Guest

5. Beauty & the Beast - Beauty & the Beast 

6. Chess

7. Hair




8. Jesus Christ

9. Mama Meia

(I'm still uploading but decided to post this finished part and update it as I go)

Emma, by Jane Austen. A review

This is my second Jane Austen novel, the first was Pride & Prejudice, that I read last summer, and although both novels are great, Emma is deeper

Unlike Pride & Prejudice, that progressed a bit slowly and was a bit boring at some intervals, Emma too unexpected turns sometimes

I tried to write a summary of the novel as I usually like to do, but this novel is very complex, and has many character that the summary would take 2 or 3 pages and I'm sure that would be a very good thing, however  really recommend reading wikipedia's summary, they say everything better than I can






however I found the 1996 Emma movie on youtube, here is part 1, I didn't watch it all yet, but part one is very similar to the novel, and probably the rest of the movie would to, so at least watch the movie if you don't have time to read the novel



what I'm very happy about is that Emma Mr knightly & Frank Churchill looks the way I imagined them (except that I imagined her with black hair) hope I'll find the full movie online

there is only one criticism to the novel. I always say that great writer seem to run out of ink or paper at the end of their stories :D the ending was very quick an unconvincing, Harriet & Emma were both in love with Mr Knightly, but when Harriet gets her second proposal from Mr Robert Martin, she immediately accepts as if she weren't in love with another man few pages ago!! that gives the novel its happy ending without breaking the friendship relation between Emma & Harriet

I'm always in favor of happy endings, and I'm not against a happy ending for Harriet, but, I imagined that Harriet would never be happy ever after, she has broken her heart 2 times already, and it shouldn't have been that easy for her to accept that her best friend is marrying the man she loved Harriet simply married another man and moved on, because he proposed for the second time, not because of her social situation or of feeling that Mr Martin is the best man she can aspire to, this in my opinion would have been a more convincing happy ending

still I really recommend reading the novel I even think it should be mandatory taught to all girls at school, (I'm not kidding). it shows how you might be over self confident with your speculations that you might not see what is going on clearly, it shows how easily you can be confused on who likes who,  and how easy it is to almost destroy a persons life thinking that you are doing them good

“Brand failures: The Truth about the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time” book review

I’ve been reading this book for almost 2 month now, not because its long, but because it has stories about a hundred famous brands and how they failed or are expected to fail, each brand story is discussed in an average of 3 pages in an interesting way and ends with a “what is learn from the failure story?” which sometimes is a bit silly and contains some repeated material, but it still give a lot of insight

I used to read a “story” or more each day and that’s is why it took me too long, to finish but that was the best thing about the book since the story would take around 10 minutes to read and that makes reading a possibility during school days and maybe exams

The book is very helpful for marketing students, or for anyone interested in the marketing fields, actually I read it because my marketing professor recommended it, as it further enforces the marketing basics and rules through examples that you probably would not forget

The interesting thing that after reading the book you see (or at least I sow) that when companies corrupt or fall, it’s usually because of its heads. That is simple and well known, and the case of the fall of Enron is an undeniable proof on the effects of mal management, but this book shows you that companies don’t need financial managers to manipulate its earnings, or any form of financial scandal to fall, they just need a bad idea embraced by its top management, or an arrogant CEO, and baaaam, everything goes down regardless of how efficient everything was, that idea is not widely spread among the business students I met, we usually believe that well established companies with a good market share won’t easily fall, but that is not the case at all, in fact the arrogance of these companies and their self-esteem is what drives them down

It also showed the real power of marketing, I used to believe that if a product is good it will sell itself with no need for intensive marketing, that is true and the book proves that in many cases, but in others, if your marketing is not good, if customers don’t actually understand what the product is for, or if you unintentionally communicate a bad message through ineffective ads, you are screwed, regardless of how genius the product is

You’ll really think about all the concepts you know about economics, business & marketing, and in some cases many of these concepts will get integrated and more interesting, I recommend reading this book, specially if you would read a story or two from it each day, so you don’t spend a lot of time, and have something to think about all day

Please share your thoughts if you have read the book, or after you read it