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On Friday, PBS NewsHour reporter Hari Sreenivasan will report on how rising sea levels in coastal Louisiana are threatening Native Americans' tribal lands.
The piece is part of a series examining the impact of climate change on communities in America. It will explore Isle de Jean Charles, an island on Louisiana's coast that have many Native Americans have lived in since the 1800s. The island is starting to sink into the water.
"In the 1950's, the island was 11 miles long and 5 miles across. Now, it is no more than two miles long and a quarter mile across," Sreenivasan will say in Friday's report. "Where residents once used to trap, hunt and plant gardens, dead trees stand in ghost forests because their root systems were unable to adapt to the saltwater intruding from the gulf."
During the story, PBS will speak with residents of the island and scientists who argue that climate change, along with man-made levees and canals, contribue to rising sea levels.
"The lesson that south Louisiana can provide to the nation is what a rate of high sea level rise can do to the coast," explains coastal geologist Alex Kolker. "And that is it can convert into open water, it can allow storm surges to propagate further inland, and be destructive to infrastructure and even people's lives."
Read more about the video here and check back on Friday to see when the story will air.
This free webinar will inform attendees on the most significant updates and modifications in the new standard, known as E1527-21 Standard Practice for Environmental Site Assessments: Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Process.


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In this tutorial, we will go over how to install and configure the Zend Framework to work with your local development environment. I will be using Wampserver 2.0i on a Windows Vista computer but these steps can be adapted to XAMPP, MAMP, or whatever stack of Apache, PHP, and MySQL that you're using.
Local Development Environment
The first step of course is to ensure that your local development environment whether Wampserver, MAMP, or XAMPP etc. is installed, set up and running and that you can load your localhost with no problems. I assume that you already have this part done since this tutorial is not intended to cover setting up the environment.
Download the Zend Framework
The Zend Framework can be downloaded at http://framework.zend.com. You can download the full community server which includes an Apache, MySQL, and PHP stack and the Zend Framework itself and is already configured for you. But if you already have your own development environment all set up you probably don't want to do this, which is the point of this tutorial. We only want the Zend Framework. You can select the Full Package or the Minimal Package depending on your needs. If you don't want to register on the site there are direct download links available at the bottom of the downloads page.
Once you've downloaded the archived file, extract it and place the folder in a location of your choice. I generally prefer to rename the extracted folder and place it in the bin folder of my wamp folder. I have renamed the folder zf and placed it in my bin folder. Wherever you choose to place it, make sure you remember this location as it will be important.
Full Screencast
Create a New Project Using the Zend Tool
Now that we have the Zend tool set up and configured, it's time to test the Zend tool. Go to the command line (or shell) and type "zf show version". If Zend tool is correctly configured, you should see a response such as Zend Framework Version 1.9.6. You can now proceed to create a new project. Go to the command line and change directory to where you want to have your new project sit. In my case, I navigate to C:\wamp\www which is where I create all my projects.
If you simply type zf you'll see a list of all the things you can do with the Zend tool. To create a new project named myzfproject, simply type "zf create project myzfproject". After a few minutes, you will see a message that indicates the project has been created. If you navigate to the project, you can see your new project folder with all the necessary folders sitting where they need to be.
Including the Zend Library in your Project
When a new project is created using the Zend tool, the library folder in the project is empty by default. For your project to run, it needs to see the Zend Library and there are two main ways to make this happen:
- Include the path to the library which is already in your zf folder (C:\wamp\bin\zf\library) to your php.ini file.
- Place a copy of the Zend library into the library folder of each project you create
Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages and different developers have their own preference. My personal preference is to place a copy of the library in each project I create as this ensures that I always maintain version separation for my projects. It does however lead to having many copies of the library on my server which can seem redundant.
With the Zend tool configured and working, creating models, controllers, etc. is simply a matter of going to the command line and typing the appropriate command, e.g. "zf create controller controller-name", "zf create model model-name", and so on.
If you simply type zf you'll see a list of all the things you can do with the Zend tool. To create a new project named myzfproject, simply type "zf create project myzfproject". After a few minutes, you will see a message that indicates the project has been created. If you navigate to the project, you can see your new project folder with all the necessary folders sitting where they need to be.
If you now navigate in your browser to http://localhost/myzfproject/public (or wherever your project is set up) you should see the Zend welcome page.
Final Thoughts
- rewrite_module: The front facing part of your application will sit in the public folder of your project. For this to be accessible, the rewrite_module must be enabled in your apache server. This is not enabled by default when you install Wampserver, so make sure you enable it.
- Virtual Hosts: It's generally a good idea to create a virtual host for your project early on and point it to the public folder.
Error Creating Controller:: With version 1.9+ of the Zend Framework, you may need to uncomment one line in your application configuration file if you run into problems creating controllers. You may get a "fatal error cannot redeclare class Zend_Loader...". I generally have not had this issue with 1.8 but I've run into it more than once (and so have others in the Zend forums) in version 1.9. This happens because there seems to be a duplicate reference to the library in the configuration. You can see that there seems to be an issue redeclaring something, which would imply the thing is declared already. The solution to this is found by looking in the config file. Open the application.ini file in the project config folder (in my case C:\wamp\www\myzfproject\application\configs\application.ini) and comment out this line:
includePaths.library = APPLICATION_PATH "/../library"
by placing a semi-colon before it, thus:
;includePaths.library = APPLICATION_PATH "/../library"
You should now not get this error when you try to create controllers, views, or models for your project.
If you have completed all the steps successfully, you should now be able to quickly set up projects using the Zend Tool in your local development environment without needing to install the Zend server.
I hope that this tutorial has been useful and will hopefully get you on your way to setting the Zend framework on your local development environment so that you can start exploring this powerful framework and learning how to work with it to develop your PHP applications.
I would be interested in knowing what differences there are in setting this up in different environments, such as what adaptions you had to make to these instructions on XAMPP, MAMP, or whatever your local development environment is, so please feel free to leave comments about your particular setup of configuring the Zend framework and the Zend tool.

subset: commoncrawl


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Press Release: Carnegie Mellon Researchers Say Twitter Analysis Can Help Gamblers Beat the Spread on NFL Games
But Three-Season Study Also Confirms Sports Bookies Are Pretty Good
Contact: Byron Spice / 412-268-9068 / email@example.com
PITTSBURGH—Analyses of Twitter feeds have been used to track flu epidemics, predict stock market changes and do political polling, but now that the National Football League season is underway, the natural question is: Can Twitter help beat the spread on NFL games?
The answer, say computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, is yes. Or, at least it can help a little bit at certain times during the season. They will report their findings Sept. 27 at the Machine Learning and Data Mining for Sports Analytics conference in Prague, Czech Republic.
The study began as a class project by then-student Kevin Gimpel, now a research assistant professor at Toyota Technological University at Chicago. It ultimately encompassed three NFL seasons, 2010-2012. The researchers used automated tools to sort through a stream of tweets that averaged 42 million messages a day in 2012.
Out of those, the researchers plucked out messages with hashtags associated with individual NFL teams — #giants, #newyorkgiants, #nygiants, #steelers, #steelersnation, etc. — that were sent at least 12 hours after the start of the team's previous game and one hour before the start of its upcoming game. In 2012, more than a million such messages were identified.
The idea, explained Christopher Dyer, assistant professor in CMU's Language Technologies Institute, was to see what might be divined from the collective wisdom or sentiments of fans, as reflected by their tweets. Could simple measures, such as the volume of tweets, or the distribution of positive and negative words in tweets, provide insight into which teams would win, which teams would beat the point spread, or provide guidance on betting on the over/under line (the total number of points scored by both teams in a game)?
"It's an experiment every week," Dyer said.
What they found was that their analysis of tweets didn't help much when it came to predicting winners or the over/under score. But when it came to winning with the spread, the researchers said their method was 55 percent accurate. That doesn't offer a huge advantage, Dyer acknowledged, but it might be enough to be profitable.
When setting the spread, of course, sports books don't look only at a team's performance or factors such as home field advantage and weather predictions. The goal is to attract an even amount of bets for both teams, which minimizes the financial risk of the bookie. A certain amount of psychology factors into the spread, Dyer noted, which suggests why gauging the sentiments of team fans might offer some betting advantages.
But the researchers also developed a deep appreciation for the performance of the sports books and for how hard it is to beat the spread. "One thing that surprised us is how hard setting the point spread is to do well," Dyer said. "And the sports books are very, very good."
There were limits to what Twitter could reveal. Dyer said the Twitter analysis didn't work well for the first four weeks of the season. And, in the last few weeks of the season, when many teams begin altering their strategies in preparation for the post-season, the Twitter analysis wasn't useful either.
Though the advantage of Twitter analysis was modest, Dyer said improvement might be possible with a more sophisticated analysis of tweet content. Also, a common difficulty in Twitter analysis is the rapidly changing nature of the social network. "It's a moving target," Dyer explained. "More people are on Twitter this year than the year before and the year before that." The number of tweets analyzed by the researchers for the 2012 season was five times greater than the number of tweets in the 2010 season.
The sports books themselves might benefit from using Twitter analysis, if they aren't already using it, Dyer said. As for the researchers, who included Noah Smith, associate professor of language technologies and machine learning, and Shiladitya Sinha, a student majoring in mathematical sciences, the interest is purely in understanding how Twitter data can be analyzed and used.
"As far as I know," Dyer said, "none of us has actually placed a bet based on our findings."
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and Sandia National Laboratories.
The Language Technologies Institute and Machine Learning Department are part of CMU's School of Computer Science. Follow the school on Twitter @SCSatCMU.


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Two More Summer Reads: Blogger book reviews
I've just finished reading Mae Clair's mystery "Eclipse Lake" and have Sally Cronin's story collection "What's in a Name?" on my TBR. You'll want to heck out these awesome authors and get reading! ~Bette A. Stevens http://www.4writersandreaders.com
I usually read in bed at night and pass out after one or two chapters. One book can easily take a whole month to read. Not so while on vacation. Here are two more reviews of blogger books that I read during my trip to Colorado. Enjoy.
Eclipse Lake
by Mae Clair
A blend of mystery and romance with strong characters.
Eclipse Lake is one part cozy mystery and one part romance. The story focuses on Dane Carlisle, a teenage lost-cause who grew up and turned his life around to become a multi-millionaire. He returns to his hometown with his adopted son, hoping to make amends with his older brother. But memories of the teenage Dane persist, and the discovery of an old skull raises more suspicions about his past. Set against Dane's dark history and the current turmoil is his fairytale romance with a spunky photo-journalist who's in town shooting pictures…
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I have been noticeably absent from the blogging public lately. Don't get me wrong; I have been all over the blogosphere, reading, appreciating, and commenting. I've discovered even more amazing writers to try to keep up with, but it's the actual execution of my own blog that has been missing. I disappeared into my own head, doubted my abilities; gave in to my fear. I was hoping to sop up all the awesomeness, and be inspired and challenged, but it backfired.
Honestly, I follow so many talented writers, and every day I marvel at their skill with words, especially humorous words. Hell, some of them make up their own words. 😉 Where all this reading backfired is that it caused me to compare my own writing and it just paralyzed me.
My last post was a bit presumptuous, in hindsight. It was a re-blog, so it wasn't even an original post, but I really enjoyed several of the 10 Great Quotations from Writers about Writing, so I thought I would share it. Especially this one:
'Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.' – Cyril Connolly
So in focusing on reading other's work and becoming so intimidated by the quality of prose I continually encounter, I allowed myself to forget my one cardinal rule of blogging: to write for myself. Not for an audience, not for followers, not for the Likes and comments, although they are lovely, and I appreciate them SO much, they are not the reason I am here.
I have things I need to share, several of them in various stages of draft. I want to reflect on where I came from and how I got here; 'splain a few things, so to speak, maybe even to myself. I want to relate past experiences, both on two wheels and not. I need to vent about things that I am currently going through, especially with my mother. And I look forward to relating many, many future adventures. I am not always going to stay on topic, and I am certainly not always going to be brilliant, but I am going to be the most authentic me possible. I hope you come along.


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It's a perplexing little scene, no doubt about it, but then The Mod Squad is an eccentric little movie. It's a terrible movie, really, but I'm not hardhearted enough to condemn it, because it brings back some of the scrappy feel of '70s TV action series. Granted, as cultural revivals go, this isn't exactly on the level of the Renaissance. But after the tiresomely Wagnerian sturm und drang of '90s action movies, with their errant asteroids and their heroes blown to safety by the force of huge explosions, it's rather refreshing to see a hero scale a chain-link fence and bring down a suspect with a flying tackle to the accompaniment of growling funk.
It's a shame that the director, Scott Silver, who wrote the convoluted script with Stephen Kay and Kate Lanier, didn't know when to quit. When characters dash through parking garages or cars crash through warehouse doors, Silver's direction has a fine straight-faced irony. But when he allows the characters to make self-aware remarks--"At least it's not an abandoned warehouse," quips one--the air is let out of the joke with a flatulent sound.
TV's The Mod Squad, which ran on ABC from 1968 to 1973, was the creation of Bud Ruskin, who, as a young man, had worked as an undercover narc for the L.A. Sheriff's Department. His inspired notion was to package three "mod" '60s youths in a format--the hour-long police drama--that even the staunchest silent majority type could handle. Pete (Michael Cole) was a rich kid who had gone hippie and was cast out of Beverly Hills, lissome Julie (Peggy Lipton) was the runaway daughter of a hooker, and soul brother Linc (Clarence Williams III) had been in the Watts riots. All three characters had had run-ins with the law and had been given a chance by gruff-but-lovable Captain Greer (Tige Andrews) to become undercover cops.
Essentially, it was a show about finks--and finks of a sort that very much existed in real life--but somehow Julie, Linc, and Pete were always on the side of the angels. The bad guys weren't the sincere protesters and activists, but the opportunists and crazies who took advantage of their commitment. Seen today, the show--episodes of which were occasionally directed by the likes of Richard Rush--seems hilariously overwrought and dated, but there's an undeniable sexy charm to the actors, which was surely the reason for the five-year run.
The stars of the new film version--Epps as Linc, Claire Danes as Julie, and Giovanni Ribisi as Pete--have shown their talent in other films. Danes created a near-flawless, criminally underrated Juliet for the '90s in Baz Luhrmann's film Romeo and Juliet, and Ribisi was one of the strongest members of the Saving Private Ryan ensemble. But what The Mod Squad requires is not fine acting but glamour and casual appeal. This is less valuable than good acting, but unlike acting, it's impossible to attain by diligent effort--a performer either does or doesn't have it.
Epps and Danes have some--they look awfully chic, anyway--but it's the soulfully homely Ribisi who's the life of the party. He plays Pete not as a dashing hippie prince but as a slow-thinking Southern California ditz who prefixes most of the lines he speaks with the word "Duuude."
Ribisi serves as a sort of surrogate for the slow-witted kids whom the filmmakers presume are out in the audience--Pete stands listening, while Julie and Linc discuss their theory of the case at hand, and at last he helpfully blurts out, "This is one of those dirty-cop drug things!" That's about as coherently as I could have put it--indeed, that's all that need be said concerning the oddly twisted plot, except to note that some gifted character players are shooed through it, among them Dennis Farina (as Captain Greer), Richard Jenkins, Steve Harris, Bodhi Elfman, and Josh Brolin.
It's easy to ignore these knockoff movie versions of retro TV shows, because they're almost always atrociously made. But it can be instructive to watch them, because of the template they provide for culture compare-and-contrast between the old show's era and ours. It's notable, for instance, that while the behavior of the characters on the '60s show always displayed exemplary integrity, the members of the movie Mod Squad actually act like wild kids. Danes's Julie drags a boyfriend into the ladies' room of a club to make out and, later, vandalizes his car when she learns he's betrayed her. Ribisi's Pete gets it on with a girl out in the open in the same club--they don't even bother with the restroom.
This may make moral watchdogs do some hand-wringing about them as role models. It's a good bet, though, those same watchdogs won't notice that Pete, Linc, and Julie manage to get through all of the film's car chases and foot chases and fights without firing a shot or killing any of their enemies.
The Mod Squad.
Written by Stephen Kay, Kate Lanier, and Scott Silver. Directed by Scott Silver. Starring Omar Epps, Claire Danes, Giovanni Ribisi, Dennis Farina, Richard Jenkins, Steve Harris, Bodhi Elfman, Josh Brolin, and Michael Lerner.


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Front Runners List: Click to see list completion progress by climbers that log their climbs using Peakbagger.com.
Multiple Ascents Grid: Click for a grid showing all of Rob Halstead's ascents of peaks on this list (including up to 10 rounds of repeats).
Compare Climbers: Click to compare ascents of up to 5 climbers working on this list.
In 1891, Sir Hugh Munro of the Scottish Mountaineering Club first published his tables of hills in Scotland over 3000 feet high. This was the first ever systematic and rigorous peak list ever created, and the genesis for the entire hobby of peakbagging. The pre-requisite for any serious peak list is accurate surveys, and it is no coincidence that Munro's pioneering work occurred in one of the first nations to create comprehensive topographic maps of its territory.
This list has changed quite a bit over the years, and there is no uniform prominence cutoff that separates a Muro from a "Munro Top", which is a subsidiary summit.
Peakbagging as we know it was invented in Britain, and there is a very long and rich long tradition of compiling hill lists.. The goal of this web site is to show a representative subset of some of the better-known lists from UK and Ireland in a global context, and not to be an exhaustive resource. There are countless other online destinations for information and ascent tracking in the British hills.
In compiling these lists, I used the Database of British and Irish Hills (DoBIH), Version 14.1, to supplement the data that had long been in the Peakbagger database. Thanks are also due to Alan Dawson, Chris Crocker, Rob Woodall, and Peter Stone for helpful comments and review of UK/Ireland data on this site.
= Peaks climbed by Rob Halstead = Unclimbed peaks
This page has been served 454872 times since 2004-11-01.


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It's the final day of my mini blog tour and I'm over at Katie Teller's blog with an excerpt of my début novel, Dark One's Mistress. So I'll be handing over my blog to Charles Yallowitz as he announces…
Legends of Windemere: Allure of the Gypsies has Arrived!!!
The epic adventures of Luke Callindor and Nyx continue after their journey down the L'Dandrin River in Legends of Windemere: Prodigy of Rainbow Tower.
Reeling from his failures in their previous adventure, Luke leads his surviving friends to his hometown. With his mind frayed and his confidence fractured, Luke must face the family and fiancée he left behind. It is a brief homecoming when the vampire Kalam attacks the village, forcing Luke and Nyx to break into his lair for the key to resurrecting a fallen warrior. It is a quest that will force both young heroes to reach new heights of strength and power that they never knew they had.
Can Luke and Nyx escape the lair of Kalam? And, what role will the orphaned gypsy Sari play in their looming destiny?
Wondering what you're in for? Check out the praise earned by the first two installments of this high fantasy series.
Review Excerpts for Legends of Windemere: Beginning of a Hero:
"I greatly enjoyed the vivid characters, the gripping plot, and the refreshingly unique writing style (present tense)." – kdillmanjones
"This is a sophisticated and delightful read. I recommend this book to lovers of Fantasy or to General Fiction readers. The story is compelling enough to entertain a wide audience." – John Howell
"One of the things that won me over was the bouts of humor. Especially in the beginning. "This is not possible! I am a Paladin!" I thought I was going to die with delight." – C.N. Faust
Review Excerpts for Legends of Windemere: Prodigy of Rainbow Tower:
"Something I find unique about this fantasy novel that I don't often find in others, is that the hero, Luke Callindor is rather of the unlucky variety. He does not get everything he asks for, he stumbles, falls, gets knocked down (literally)and taught lessons as he goes. This is helping him to grow into the hero that was promised in the first book." – Ionia Martin
"Nyx is such a strong personality. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her and more of the other characters, new and already known, with the rich tapestry of Windemere unfolding in between intense actions scenes and moments of kindness and budding friendships." – Danielle Taylor
"Almost like the Harry Potter series. The books start out so young and innocent, but by the last book – watch out!" — Momto4Booklover
Author Biography:
Charles Yallowitz was born and raised on Long Island, NY, but he has spent most of his life wandering his own imagination in a blissful haze. Occasionally, he would return from this world for the necessities such as food, showers, and Saturday morning cartoons. One day he returned from his imagination and decided he would share his stories with the world. After his wife decided that she was tired of hearing the same stories repeatedly, she convinced him that it would make more sense to follow his dream of being a fantasy author. So, locked within the house under orders to shut up and get to work, Charles brings you Legends of Windemere. He looks forward to sharing all of his stories with you and his wife is happy he finally has someone else to play with.
Twitter- @cyallowitz
Another big event to celebrate the debut of Legends of Windemere: Allure of the Gypsies
is that I'm holding a Goodreads Giveaway! The prize is a paperback copy of ALL THREE LEGENDS OF WINDEMERE NOVELS. Winners will be picked at the end of December, so go HERE to enter the contest.


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Be Still . . .
Devotionals for Daily Living
For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
(Galatians 5:17 (NIV))
What is your definition of freedom?
If you accept society's understanding of that word, freedom means the ability to choose to do whatever you may wish to do and to say whatever you may wish to say. This is the freedom that focuses on the flesh and leads someone to choose sin.
Is this the way that someone who has been set free from bondage defines freedom?
This freedom implies no more chains. It implies that there will be no more consequences of the bondage. It implies an overwhelming joy that comes only when such a heavy burden has been removed. This is the type of freedom that comes when you focus on things of the Spirit. This is the freedom that allows someone to overcome the consequences of sin.
To far too many people, they see no difference in these definitions of freedom, but there is a significant and costly difference!
They are at opposite ends of the spectrum. There is no way that you can have both. When we choose the flesh, we deny the Spirit. When we choose the Spirit, we deny the flesh. Our life, and our eternity, are determined by which we choose and, consequently, which we deny. I have seen this illustrated as each person having two distinct paths that they can follow, or two distinct creatures within them – one good and one evil. The one that wins the conflict is the one that is fed.
What is winning this conflict in your life?
Copyright 1998 – 2018 Dennis J. Smock
Daily Living Ministries, Inc.
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A dream covered in morning dew. A beautiful dream of me and of you.
With All the Love I Possess,
Stay a moment longer — please
Across the pillow from me
What a stirring sight you are to see
A sun-kissed silhouette from the sunbeams shining through on you
These Morning Moments — Precious — just us two
My bright blue eyes staring across my pillow — so intently
Your fingertips draw lines on me — so softly
My hair tossed asunder
You brush away a curl from my face
Please-oh-please — just a moment longer —
Bring me the sunrise in a teacup
Because you know, I don't want to get up
Pick me a pink peony soaked in the sweet dew
Then, perhaps, I'll consider getting up with you
To start our day anew
Though — OH!
How I cherish these precious Morning Moments with you!


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Movie review: Michael Bay delivers a battle for the ages with new 'Transformers'
All too often a movie will be judged based on the film that preceded it. I believe that will be the case with the latest from Michael Bay's "Transformers" franchise.
Most people I talked to believe that the second in this series was a huge step back from the first film. Some were worried that the third film was going to continue that trend.
Luckily, Bay delivers a much better product this time around and gives you a final battle that must be seen to believe.
Sam Witwicky (Shia Labeouf) has reached a roadblock in his career. He is a hero that has saved the world countless times, unfortunately no one knows that he has. He has been decorated by the president himself, but no one knows why.
That is because the existence of the transforming robots is still shrouded in mystery and kept under wraps by the government.
This leads to trouble for Sam as he tries to find a job. Because he was wanted by the FBI during one of the previous adventures to save the world, this shows up on his record. This severely hampers an interview because he can't explain why. I mean, who would believe a story about huge transforming robots and him saving the world.
Luckily for Sam, he is the boyfriend of understanding Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), who not only believes him, but also is supportive.
At the same time, Lt. Colonel William Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and his NEST team have been working with the Autobots to humans from destroying each other.
During a mission in Chernobyl at the request of the Ukrainian government, they discover a fuel cell to the long lost Autobot ship, The Ark.
Optimus Prime takes this discovery as a lack of faith by the humans because they lied to him about the human's prior knowledge of the robot's existence.
Optimus launches his own mission to retrieve the contents of the ship as well as find the former leader of the Autobots, Sentinel Prime.
But like all things that involve the Transformers, there is more to this situation than meets the eye.
Now I wanna focus on the changes that made this film better than the second.
Well, unlike most critics out there, I believe switching from the cardboard-like Megan Fox to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as Sam Witwicky's love interest was a welcome change.
Not only did I enjoy Rosie's performance more, I just believed in the chemistry between her and Shia more than when Megan was in that role.
Can Rosie act? Well, there were some rough moments, but overall I was happy with her performance, and it didn't seem as mechanical as Fox's portrayals were. Rosie seemed to have more depth to her. She didn't appear so shallow.
Another change is that the human contingent of the NEST force doesn't appear as helpless as before. Several times you see humans bringing down Decipticons without Autobot assistance. I liked that we humans didn't just appear to be cannon fodder.
Then there were the things that I had hoped they would change but didn't, namely the language element.
Now I have been one that hasn't harped much on language before when it comes to the big screen but with this film, I really didn't see the reasoning behind it. It didn't enhance any joke or make any action seem deadlier. It just made me cringe and think of all the young fans that may not get to see this film because of the use of harsh language.
I had really hoped Bay would have dialed that back a little, but he didn't.
Finally I want to talk about what takes this film and separates it from the two previous installments, the battle scenes. This are bigger, louder, and more intense than anything you have seen before on screen. It was like "Blackhawk Down" with robots. This is something that Michael Bay just knows how to do right!
I must applaud the film makers for bringing back life to the franchise with this third installment. No it isn't perfect, but in the end, it doesn't have to be. It has robots, explosions, action and adventure. What more could you ask for?
4 out of 5 stars for pure robot mayhem!
Maryville Daily Forum