Two stars seems to be too much.
936617
Foreigner exemplifies the so-called "corporate rock" or "arena rock" sound that allot of people in the United States seemed to enjoy in the late-70s (as evinced by the charts), and indeed the purpose was mass appeal. Tracks from this album such as 'Feels Like the First Time' and 'Cold as Ice' are played ad nauseum on classic rock radio and everyone knows them. However, no amount of popularity, recognition or commercial success can compensate for a sheer lack of artistry and uniqueness. Foreigner's output as a whole is characterized by a lack of unique and interesting material that was neither controversial nor influential. Its sedate, its not intriguing and it doesn't make you think or really stimulate you in any other way that good rock'n'roll should. Mass appeal at the expense of artistry.
67580
The design of the watch seems classy enough. And note that while it is nominally a woman's watch, it might pass as a man's watch. In any case, keep this in mind - do you carry a cellphone? If so, then this watch, or any other, could be strictly optional. There is no need to encumber yourself with superfluous gadgets.

The entire concept of a standalone, hardwired watch is increasingly under attack by the existence of cellphones.

There is another aspect about this watch that has thus far been completely ignored by other reviewers. See the top of the product webpage, where the original list price was $495. So the current $49 being offered by Amazon seems like a great deal. It also tells you that the original price, which was probably the manufacturer's suggested retail price, was vastly inflated. If Amazon can sell it for $49 now, and presumably make a profit, then they were raking it in earlier. Anyone foolish enough to purchase it at $495 must be feeling miffed now, to put it charitably.

Taking this further, what makes you think the current $49 is a good deal in any absolute sense? There are other watches selling for $20 or less. The reality is that the manufacturing costs of many watches can be under $20. There is an element of the Emperor's new clothes operating here.
1422435
Enough said.  Apologies for the one star rating, evidently you must at least rate for one star regardless...
2321210
Usually I like Carriger's writing, but in this story, I think she misses on finding a balance, with too much of the story taken up by sex and too little by plot. As I read, I began to wonder if this was mislabelled fantasy and should have been put in the erotica pile instead. There's an awful lot of very explicit gay sex, and not very much happens. I'd thought the appearance of the hoodied mage would propel it into some sort of cloak and dagger mystery, but no, all's easily resolved. Far too easily for as much time as Carriger spends hinting at the dire consequences of any meeting between Max and the Judge, and given all Max's angst and scars. I'm a child of abuse as well, and yet I found myself getting impatient with Max's treatment of Bryan and wishing he'd just get over himself already. Not sure if that's a fault in me, or in Carriger's writing of Max. In either case, taking some time away from describing their sex play and letting us see more of Max wouldn't have hurt though. . .
1588056
I think the title says it all...  Two stars because I can't say I wanted to turn it off before it was over (I just had to see the end).
2260437
I long ago gave up trusting all the five-star reviews on Amazon; sometimes they're right on, but other times--like this one--they're really off the mark.  Lizzy does have an interesting voice, but by the end of the album it starts to grate on the nerves due to her lack of range.  There are some nice songs here that I'll probably put on a background playlist ("Video Games," "Off the the Races," but all in all I was more disappointed than impressed.  And who the heck thought it was a good idea to put that hip-hop "hey" and high-pitched yell (for lack of a better word) over and over again on so many songs (like "Diet Mountain Dew").  That's a major annoyance that makes me delete a song immediately from my computer because it completely detracts from the actual song that I'm trying to listen to.  All in all, it's okay, but nothing at all special; I think that most of the five-star reviewers will forget about this one when the next awesomely fabulous "new thing" comes along.
3867433
Writing is the usual Price high quality, so why only 2*?
Because I REALLY did not like the two main characters.
Yeas, the main character had a bad start in life, but frankly most (nearly all) of the problems are of his own doing, and he does nothing to change ANYTHING, till nearly the end of the book, and even then nothing much. He is given quite a lot, and appreciates nothing of it, so I really can not feel anything positive for him.
4592440
Yes, the words are good and so are the songs.  I do not care for the arrangements nor the production.  Nine of the twelve songs start off soft and then build up after a minute or two.  That gets old after a while.  Most of the time the vocals are too loud with the instruments too hard to hear.  I am listening to it now on a very good stereo.  We have about 120 praise and worship CD's, so I have heard many different styles.  I really wanted to like this more than I do; however, this one and the one that came before it will never be among my favorites.
453261
I have to agree with the other reviewers of this movie in the one, two and three star reviews. Three stars even seem a bit overly generous.

I'm begining to wonder about Millennium Films. I have not yet seen any of their productions that I could say were any good. I'll keep watching Millennium Films for a little longer but, so far, not so good.

It turns out that Amazon reviewers generally hit the target in their reviews. It appears quite worth one's time reading what others have to say before spending money on products. A lesson learned here.
633992
Really it's more like two stars. I am 2/3 way in and it really is endless endless chit chat that goes almost no where and so far (even though I have read and am a fan of the two previous JC novels) it is really hard to like anyone or even to find them interesting. Everyone, Jack included, are really unlikable and unimpressive. I really got tired of what Jack thinks. I hope it gets better.
3274834
Edward Klein wrote about his subject well. But the character of his subject costs two stars and I could only give it an OK. \ :- )
1995761
Mildly entertaining.  Three stars may be a little much but two would have been too low.
1837262
the Bayreuth Myth is a strong one, strong enough to blurr our critical judgement, even more so with  an expected item such as this Ring.
The problem with this performance reveals itself at Loge's arrival - where are the fleetness AND the control of Solti, Levine or even Janowski recordings? The SEVERAL tempo shifts, so carefully indicated at this point of the score, are completely ignored! The dragon's theme has the instruction "slow and dragged", but this dragon is, one might say, a ""atlethic one"", a very waltz-like nice guy... as for the general orchestral tissue, it is a very unbalanced one: for one side, we hear 2ns violins and viols as nowhere else: for the other side, low woodwinds are almost always blurred (believe me, they are as important as any other orchestral section in the Ring!) and  sometimes also the horns (When Loge sings "...in Wasser, Erd und Luft, lassen wil nichts von Lieb und Weib." both english and french Horns take Freia's theme, and are completely ignored here by the conductor.). Tunning is a somewhat hit-and-miss affair,  equally at vocal and instrumental departments...a general "let it be" is the overall feeling here. Of course, vocal presence is the point that justifies this release, with Hotter more concernd with diction over legato line, not looking for that excessive and artificial "deep-chestedness" used by him when singing the other 2 Wotans (the lowest tessitura the main reason there: in a web-available Salome video where he plays Jokanaan, one can see how his voice was a higher one. Not being so pushed by that role, he sounds without any wobble or  hooty sounds). Neidlinger has a formidable instrument, only sounding tired at the end, and only at his lowest register, but his performance at Solti's is a more involved one. Kuen proves that chicken-like singers are not a necessary lot to sing Mime, Lustig sounds constricted even in a easy role such as Loge, and the Giants sound as tired as Walhall builders should sound, not being real giants.
But the worse is yet to come!! A very annoying and hissing sound pervades the whole of scene 3, making it a sort of ""Minimalist"" opera (at first, I didn't understand why Testament put the disc change so early (just before "Auf Loge! Hinab mit mir!"), but now the reason is clear: 90% of the listeners wouldn't have any heart to continue listening to this noise, if the disc change had ocurred just after, let's say "...Her das Geschmeid!" (already at scene 3), where the hiss is at its most awful.
 The dream-like era is exactly this, a dream...
2250892
There are some movies that draw attention from awards shows... there are some that draw fan attention.  Usually I can understand one way or another and accept the differentiation and enjoy either type for what they are.  But then a movie like Mystic River comes along and makes me wonder if my whole world is off.  Yes yes this movie is by Eastwood... maybe that explains the interest.  But nothing should forgive such overacting that only Mr. Penn can conjure up.  And nothing should forgive plot holes that would annoy a seven year old.  Sometimes Hollywood manages to trick people into watching a crapfest...  Well folks, this is one of those times.  I honestly say that this movie has NO redeeming qualities.
593783
Which got it the second star.  Other than that, the hero, who's supposed to be a master of disguise and crime gets almost everything wrong; his only skill seems to be at physical violence.  Most of which is completely unconvincing - but occasionally exciting nonetheless.

So, the drawbacks.  The "hero's" character is flat and undeveloped; there is little to no character interaction; the rest of the characters are stick figures or comic book preposterosities, for me, the "narrative drive" some find in it drops dead every time we get a flashback to the backstory that the writer says provides the "hero's" motivation (and every time I had to exercise major will power to crank up my suspension of disbelief);  all the heists planned and executed by these supposed heist meisters are really, really, really stupid....

And, worse, book seemed a not very clever pastiche: of Richard Stark, of many flailing but big selling thriller writers, and most of all, the TV show Burn Notice.  The narrator is forever giving us the inside scoop (which never feel either "inside" or "scoopish") about things "real criminals" know and do.

And yet worse: the writer doesn't seem to know anything.  He makes a fuss over Chevy Suburbans, but doesn't know how much they weigh.  The panoply of drugs being taken by the two crooks who start off the action seems to be cobbled together from a google search.  The hero, despite his only apparent skill being physical violence, doesn't know how to make an Uzzi shoot in bursts.  The writer talks about a marsh for three or four pages, then refers to it as bog.  The writer thinks you can hear a CPU "beginning to work". He thinks .357 slugs are "fat as a quarter."  And he thinks an arch villain called "The Wolf" is something other than ridiculous.

So how does the book get to be 300 pages?  Endless Burn Noticy pseudo-info about the workings of the crook-cop axis of mediocrity.  Here is perhaps the most benign example: "The police have ways of figuring that [stuff] out."  Yeah, right, sure.  Coupled with endless misplaced specificity. For example, for no particular reason, he gives us what he thinks is the inside dope on how cops get through locked doors, and then on silencers, rightly termed he informs us, suppressors.  But he fails to distinguish between sound suppressors and flash suppressors, so I felt condemned to permanent state of ignorance.

At one point our hero says, "I'm the ghostman. Where's the Wolf?"  Why, oh, why didn't the other guy answer: "Out back, gnawing on a dead woodchuck."
1755571
This book was headed for a two star rating, but in the last 3rd it started getting a lot more interesting. My 3 star may have been too generous, but two star still seems too low. The guy is not a bad story teller and he is draws good portraits of his characters, but the evidence he accumulates is not real compelling and he jumps to conclusions from it that are unwarranted. Because it is a novel, his conclusions turn out to be mostly right, but they aren't only conclusions one could draw nor the most likely. The book is  successful in showing the world of a small time newspaper and perhaps future books may be better in drawing in convincing evidence that lead to a more satisfying final result. The last 3rd of the book is good, but makes you hope in the future the author improves his story telling. I remember many early books by Michael Crichton were not as good as they should have been, so perhaps there is hope for this guys later books in this series.
527974
The LCD remote uses a phone battery. You have to bust your knuckles getting it in, and it's going to be expensive to replace.

Two AA would have been just as good. Two AA were good enough for my McIntosh 6900.

Not only that, you have to charge the remote in an AC outlet, just like a telephone. All this instead of good old AA.

What is Marantz thinking? That semi-high-end equipment requires more complex, more difficult accessories? A more challenging set-up? That two AA would have been too plebeian, too mundane?

This strikes me as both pretentious and non-user-friendly.

I've been talking to some audio salesmen and advisors, and the picture of Marantz that emerges is a company that overlooks small but important details. For instance, the manual says "You cannot adjust bass and treble when listening through headphones." Who would want to listen to music through headphones without adjusting the sound?

I paid $1399. I hope Amazon refunds $1399 instead of the new price of $699.