Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Bad
933685
Leon/JB Smoove is so great on Curb that I couldn't believe how awful this book is. Simply terrible. Kept waiting for the funny but it never came. He doos it on the show but it doesnt translate on the written page.
Definitely doesnt bring any ruckus.
2215091
This is a pretty bad movie. Basically it's a kind of historical soft porn, set in some vague time between maybe 1780 and 1900 (and towards the earlier, I think) - I can almost hear some brainless enthusiast saying "You know, the olden days.."

Others have commented on the ridiculous plot, where the young woman dressed as a boy wouldn't fool anyone with normal vision. The face alone is totally feminine, never mind any other imperfectly concealed geographical features.

And I don't even remember what the erotic episodes looked like!  Had to resort to fast-forward in the more boring parts.

So why two stars instead of one? Because there are some really attractive scene settings, quite enjoyable to look at, and for anyone who likes elegant clothes, the men's wardrobes are a treat! Sometimes I wish we could dress like that today. Of course, it implies a large servant class to track of all the different items - the vests, cravats, lace, ruffles, buckles, etc etc. not to mention the perpetual cleaning and ironing. Also, you'd want to be a person not harried by the pressure of time, since you would not get dressed in the time it takes you today to pull on a pair of Dockers and a polo shirt.

As you may have gathered, I am one who somewhat regrets the spread of "business casual" in the office. Not one of those who harbor a deep animosity against that pleasantly colorful item, the tie. I have 30+ hanging in my closet that never see any use...seems like a waste. Oh well.

If this review seems to have rambled rather far from its subject, it's simply because there isn't much there to write about!
153394
This product looks pretty, but that's all it has going for it.

1) The handle doesn't have a proper screw and screw hole, and so if you twist the handle too many times, it literally falls off into your hands.

2) Fixing the back plate to the wall is incredibly difficult, and in our case, required silicon.

3) The spigot is difficult to make work properly--water tends to erratically or weakly flow out of it.

I do NOT recommend this product, and never would have bought it if I had known about its poor construction. Pretty on the outside, completely faulty on the inside
2190970
Looks pretty, but works like a cement mixer: it bounces around, vibrates, and splashes everywhere.  Awful awful.  Can't wait to return it.
15737
Admittedly, the movie is pretty to look at.  The music is OK, even though it frequently becomes faux Lloyd Webber, and he is faux enough all by himself.  What I find objectionable is the theme:  constantly the movie hammers in a theme of "believe" as a good thing, when what the world needs now is more people who question.  Mere "belief" leads to suicide bombers and airplane hijackers and is responsible for most of what is wrong in our world today.  Toward the end of the film the conductor says "What's important is to decide to get on the train, no matter where it's going."  A pernicious doctrine if I ever heard one!
2833742
This phone case is very pretty.  I'm only giving it one star because it got dirty very, very quickly.  I can't get it clean no matter what I try.  Very disappointed, it looks awful.
678956
Bad. Very, very bad! Worse, even. This could be a very good bird-cage  lining material. The writers' ridiculous obsession with opals, which has  stretched for several books now, is making me think they're in serious need  for help. Letting them write more books like this one is NOT the answer!  (and now they've added a fascination with salt and crystals, too!)
 I  won't even go into the content of this poor excuse for a book. Enough is to  say that it has nothing to do with the Krynn we know and love.
 Buy it  if you must, but be warned! This is a series-killer
859433
GEE--I really don't like using the word hate--which the one star signifiesbut really Rebecca Minkoff? This design, although beautiful, really sucks!  I guess I should have believed the reviews and not purchased the ring--but I'm a sucker for punishment and needed to see for myself.  Well, lo and behold, just like others had warned in their reviews, the setting is too large for the crystal.  Therefore, at some point during the first wearing of the ring, without doing anything more than jumping out of the car and into your home, the crystal is sure to fall out of the setting and in this case, onto the marble floor (I was at the Garza Blanca Resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico) and break.  Ahh--thank goodness I was able to drown my woes in a Margarita right awayor I might still be suffering the pain and agony in watching this lovely piece of jewelry crumble at my feet.  It was returned for a refund the moment I returned home to the States
1366510
Ok - so I bought this for my wife a christmas present.  I hoped that it would inspire her to get a bit more organize with her pile of jewelry.  Sadly, it didn't even come close.  I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but we both thought the samething... ugly.  I think it's the proportions of the piece that just don't work.  It's not feminine or elegant enough for home use.  I could see it in a store, however.
4288941
Goodness, this was an awful film. It was pretty enough to look at, and the actress playing Maria was good, but those are the only positive things I can say about it.

"The Little White Horse," the novel on which the film was based, is a charming but structurally weak book. The story needed to be tightened up and altered for the movie, but many of the film-makers' additions and changes made the story even weaker. The worst change was probably the recasting of Robin as not only one of the thugs but (weirdly) as the boy from "A Clockwork Orange." The revised Moonacre legend was so hokey and so miserably acted that I almost turned the DVD off. Maria's uncle and Loveday were both awful, and they topped off their performances with a sloppy kiss that should turn any preteen girl against sex for a couple of years.

I didn't mind the idea (new to the movie) that Moonacre Valley would be destroyed by the 5000th moon unless the Moon Princess's pearls were returned to the sea. If they could have been returned without heavy doses of slapstick, cliche, and misogyny (that's contempt for women, which surfaced in the book but was much worse here), the movie might have had a chance. But no ...

To top it off, the credits are accompanied by a cheesy pop song unrelated to anything in the film.

This movie will not harm anyone's little princess, and does feature a spunky and resourceful young heroine, but there are so many better choices.
1350897
Pros:
Beautiful, crisp colors

Cons:
Very tight fit
Volume buttons are  unresponsive
Color and buttons don't match the photo
Case doesn't close completely -- There is a gap between the microfiber interior and teal portion of the case

I just received the item today and the first thing I noticed was how pretty the case looked. The colors are beautiful and while the case is a lot greener than the photo portrays, I was willing to ignore it. However, it was incredibly difficult to slip my phone into the case and even with all of the struggling, the case didn't even close completely as there was a noticeable gap between the microfiber interior and the teal portion of the case. Also, my volume buttons were completely unresponsive, and I figure everything would work perfectly if the case closed, but it doesn't, so nothing works. The buttons on the case don't even match the ones in the photo. So now, I am trying to remove the case from my phone and I'm finding that I can't. It's stuck and I'm getting increasingly frustrated. I really wanted to love this case because it looks so beautiful, but as of right now, it's absolutely useless to me and as soon as I pry this thing off of my phone, I am going to demand a refund.
4044003
Pretty, but slippery, and thus without padding, ultimately deadly to your laptop.  A real maker would've put in a bit more time and effort to designing the upper corners where the laptop is not the least bit cushioned if it drops.  The putative snazziness of this item is just a shortcut to sadness.  Plus, it says "EASYACC" in garish fake silver letters on the front of the flap.

Would not buy again.  Would not give to someone I hated.

I've bent the corner of my laptop back into alignment, and went out to a luggage store and bought something that, hey, at 10 times the price is kind of crap.. but in this instance, I very deeply "get" why not to cheap out on something like this.

Seldom have I been ashamed at saving a buck.. but this time I am in spades.
4752470
I had this album in high school.  Who in those years didn't?  Bought the CD because my sometime band wanted to do "Nights in White Satin" and "Tuesday Afternoon."  Indeed these are absolutely gorgeous songs.  The Moodies' problem was they took themselves too seriously, and the classical pretensions of this album are insufferable, with treacly orchestra breaks and hideous spoken poetry between tracks.  There is no way I would listen to it all the way through without being paid for it.  But, as noted, gorgeous is gorgeous.  Maybe you should download the individual songs in iTunes?
183154
It arrived quickly, but when I picked up the box I automatically thought it felt too light. Uh oh. Does this mean it's made out of crappy material? Read on.

The body of the dress is completely straight and not flowy at all, making it difficult to walk. It's covered by two layers of cheap tulle that would not uncrinkle. This is the type of material my kids use in arts and crafts to make bug nets.

The top of the dress is strapless with lace over tulle and very itchy. The distance from my shoulders to where my boobs go is too far apart. Now, I know I've nursed 4 kids and my tits are headed south, but not THAT far south. Not to mention, its "padded". I mean, these"pads" were made for a girl with a B cup, at most. Not a double D like myself. It literally looks like I've got huge, hard nipples all the time...

The arm holes are also too big and gap open. I could alter the dress but I'd have to widen the skirt so it flows, replace the tulle with better lace, take up the shoulders ( which would be tricky seeing how it's got a lace pattern I'd  probably end up ruining), and then, well, it probably would be easier to just get a whole new dress.

The color was pretty, I'll give them that.

So I guess if you have a cookie cutter size 5 body, you'll do alright with this. But anyone who's got a few extra pounds and is picky about what they want, I suggest spend a few more dollars and buy something else.
2447843
"Maid in Manhattan" is Cinderella revisited with an attempt to re-create the atmosphere of "Pretty woman" (couldn't make it). I could stop this review right here and it would have sumarized the whole movie. But I want to go on and say some things.
In my opinion, Jennifer Lopez is very beautiful, but she's still looking for the part that will make her an actress respected for her talent. Since "The cell", all her movies were completely awful. "Maid in Manhattan" is just a little rise in a sequence of bad movies. Ralph Fiennes is a very talented actor (one of my favorites) with a sequence of interesting (yes, good) movies and characters since the terrible "The avengers". He must be needing the money. Both Jennifer and Fiennes have played very different parts along their career. Jennifer Lopez hadn't done, so far, a complete-and-only latina girl (Selena, for example, was a more complex character - a real life person in fact -  not just a latina singer). I mean, think about "The cell", think about "Blood and wine". And Fiennes was that monster nazi Goeth in "Schindler's list", he was Francis Dollarhyde in "Red dragon", and best of all, he was the Count Almasy in "English patient"! So, that's the question, why did they choose to play two over-stereotyped characters in a below average movie with a terrible script full of cliches (yes, there is the scene when the pretty lady has to prove lots of dresses and everyone is happy)?
Maid in Manhattan is not even a three-stars movie, it's more like two-stars. But I will give it three. Why? Because in the end, after all the cliches and stereotypes, leaving reason aside, I could enjoy the parts of the movie that weren't completely annoying. I also liked the kid playing JLo's son.
But the main reason is that there's a line that's going to be memorable:
Marisa (J Lopez): I came here tonight to tell you this can't continue from this.
Chris (Fiennes): Then you should have worn another dress.
Grade 6.0/10
1857859
This book is remarkably bad, not because it's a boring book about programming from which you'll learn absolutely nothing. (That's not remarkable.) It's because it claims to be a book about beautiful code that will help you to make the same. Forget it.

First off, there isn't any beautiful code in this book as far as I can see (and I'm looking from the perspective of 25 years in this game). The first chapter is about regular expressions, which are about as beautiful as a root canal.

As another reviewer pointed out, the writing is terrible, too. Each chapter is like the programmer's eulogy to himself. He'll recount his great achievements and tell us how much he liked puppy dogs and sunshine -- or Haskell and Scheme, or whatever he personally likes. How any of this is supposed to be relevant to your job as a programmer is beyond me.

One chapter opens with a line of arcane Scheme code and the suggestion that, if you don't understand it, maybe you should just "read the first few chapters of the Scheme manual." What a jerk! Another author suggests that we should wade through all the intricacies of the Solaris operating system's process control scheme so that he has enough background material to describe a bug. Really? This is beautiful code? I think not.

If you want to feel superior to other programmers... If you want to sleep well knowing that *your* code must surely be more beautiful than anything these windbags have thrown out, then this is a great book! Otherwise, a basic college course in program organization and debugging would be of much greater help.

Real beautiful code must meet two objectives: First, the program must run correctly and be easy to work with in the users' eyes (not just the programmer's). Second, the program must be easy to debug because 75% of development time and effort goes into debugging, not writing new algorithms. These are primary axioms in quality software development, yet they're never mentioned in this book, which is full of puffery and pride for the developers' own code that looks "beautiful" to them.

Do yourself and your end users a favor and skip this.
3043152
I've actually taken the time to listen to this album a dozen times or more just to make sure it was really as annoying as I thought it was.  Oh boy.

In the publishing field there are vanity books, where someone famous writes a book and gets their fans to make it a best seller even though it's vacuous and bloated.  I guess this is the same thing, although the guitar work here is nice and fulfilling (yet repetitive).  The songs seem to be all in the same key, or close to it, to make sure that her voice does OK.  She seems to be slightly flat or off-key in most of the songs, and the echo box doesn't really help that.  The "wall of sound" effect is horrifying.

I'm sure it's some people's cup of tea, but if this wasn't fronted by a cutie-pie actress, I'm not sure this album would have been made.

This music grinds on you like a squeaky wheel.  I appreciate the attempt, but I really thing this was a vanity thing.  Only.