96% Hugo

All Critics (119) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (114) | Rotten (5)

Thematic potency and cinematic virtuosity -- the production was designed by Dante Ferretti and photographed by Robert Richardson -- can't conceal a deadly inertness at the film's core.

For all the wizardry on display, Hugo often feels like a film about magic instead of a magical film...

I have seen the future of 3-D moviemaking, and it belongs to Martin Scorsese, unlikely as that may sound.

It's a fairy tale for mature viewers, but the airy exterior hides emotional depth.

One of the most magical viewing experiences of the decade so far.

Aside from being one of Scorsese's most personal films, it's also one of the least cynical films of this or any other year.

This is a great director's greatest love story.

Scorsese uses 3D to submerge viewers into a glittering storybook world, but all of Hugo's beauty can't make up for the sidetracking of the tale of the orphaned boy living in the train station in favor of a film preservation PSA.

If however, you are not a film scholar or a fan of the period, Scorsese will skillfully turn you into one without you even knowing it.

Scorcese does not mess around. This is a magnificent film.

The movie itself runs a bit long at 127 minutes, but "Hugo" is worth every minute for the visual feast it provides.

Hugo is a love affair -- palpable and personal -- between director Marty Scorsese and cinema. It sputters, floats, and soars.

An infectious ode to the early days of cinema. Scorsese's use of 3D is inspired, although it might be more interesting for parents than their children.

A powerful reminder of the magic of cinema and Martin Scorsese's astounding versatility...

"Hugo" is a movie that children will enjoy, adults will admire and film buffs will cheer. It is a movie that will surprise and delight you with its wonder and awe.

Exquisite - Definitely Oscar Worthy

... a phantasmagorical fusion of 'Oliver Twist' and 'Edward Scissorhands' ... but in the end it feels pedantic and, like M?li?s' robot, proves a wondrous contraption motorized by a spring-driven heart.

Hugo is a work steeped in cinema lore, drunk on the fumes of a bygone era yet canny enough to channel its nostalgia through modern innovations.

Please, please, please don't think you need to be a child to see this incredible movie. Indeed, "Hugo," a smart, classy film that deserves to be watched on the big screen in 3-D, will find a special place with grownups who love movie art and history.

A deeply felt, hugely personal, glorious and heart-swelling ode to the magic of cinema and stories: the way they bring us together, allow us to understand each other, allow us to see our dreams come true.

Probably the first kids film in history to double as a propaganda film for the cause of classic film preservation. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

It has its sluggish moments, but Hugo is mostly a delightful tribute to the magic of early cinema, and boasts excellent use of 3-D.

Martin Scorsese's affecting, gorgeously rendered 3-D debut is one of the best films of this year and any other year.

...the best children's movie of the century so far

More Critic Reviews

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hugo/

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Video: Piracy awareness campaign rolled out

U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder has unveiled a new education campaign to raise public awareness about the consequences of intellectual property theft. NBC?s Pete Williams reports.

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45484604/

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UCLA fires Rick Neuheisel; will coach Pac-12 title (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? UCLA fired coach Rick Neuheisel on Monday after four disappointing seasons in charge of his alma mater.

Neuheisel will be allowed to coach the Bruins (6-6, 5-4 Pac-12) in Friday's Pac-12 title game at Oregon, athletic director Dan Guerrero announced. Offensive coordinator Mike Johnson will be the Bruins' interim coach if they receive a bowl berth.

Neuheisel is 21-28 since taking over the program in December 2007, never building the momentum he needed to reach his goal of challenging Southern California for city supremacy. Guerrero fired Neuheisel two days after UCLA's 50-0 loss to No. 9 USC, the Bruins' largest loss since 1930 in their crosstown rivalry game.

"I thanked Dan for the opportunity," Neuheisel said on the Pac-12's promotional teleconference for the title game, less than an hour after his firing was announced. "I don't need reasons. Certainly when you're UCLA coach, you'd like to play better against USC. When you lose in the fashion we did, that's a difficult pill to swallow."

The Bruins will represent the Pac-12 South in the inaugural league title game on Friday despite finishing two games behind postseason-banned USC in the division standings. UCLA is a 30-point underdog against the Ducks with a Rose Bowl berth on the line for the winner.

If UCLA loses to Oregon, the Pac-12 would have to petition the NCAA for bowl eligibility for a 6-7 team. The Bruins haven't indicated whether they would pursue a waiver, although Johnson's appointment as interim coach suggests they would.

UCLA made it to just one bowl game in Neuheisel's first three seasons, winning the EagleBank Bowl in Washington, D.C., in 2009.

Neuheisel's firing before the title game is an ugly end to the 50-year-old coach's self-described dream job. He was a quarterback at UCLA, leading the Bruins to an unlikely victory in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 2, 1984.

On Sunday, Neuheisel said he believed he deserved to return as the Bruins' coach, citing their five conference victories, bowl eligibility and title game berth. He said he felt the Bruins had "moved the needle" to keep UCLA on a path to excellence.

"We have certainly had some unfortunate evenings where things haven't gone our way, but I think the program is headed in the right direction," he said.

Neuheisel had more success during his first two head coaching stops at Colorado and Washington, leading the Buffaloes to 33 wins and three bowl victories over four seasons before taking the Huskies to four straight winning seasons and a Rose Bowl victory after the 2000 campaign.

Neuheisel eventually was fired by Washington after a series of problems in Seattle ranging from player discipline to a rift with school leadership to his infamous involvement in an NCAA basketball tournament pool. After two years out of coaching and a stint on the Baltimore Ravens' staff, Neuheisel took over at UCLA.

But the Bruins went 4-8 in his first and third seasons, with a 7-6 finish in 2009. He had high expectations for his current team, but the Bruins have won consecutive games just once all season, usually alternating blowout losses and narrow victories.

UCLA still went 5-1 at the Rose Bowl this season, and surprising losses by Utah and Arizona State propelled the Bruins into the Pac-12 title game even before their blowout loss to USC.

When Neuheisel returned to UCLA, he declared the "football monopoly is over" in the Los Angeles area ? words that haunted him with each loss by his Bruins. Neuheisel ended up with much less success than former teammate Karl Dorrell, who was fired in 2007 after going 35-27 in five seasons that included four bowl berths, a 10-2 campaign in 2005 and a Sun Bowl victory.

Johnson joined Neuheisel's staff this season, replacing Norm Chow after Neuheisel's messy public breakup with the longtime offensive mastermind. The former NFL assistant coach was the San Francisco 49ers' offensive coordinator for most of last season, and he has helped Neuheisel to lead a resurgence of UCLA's offense this year.

Neuheisel and Chow installed Nevada's pistol offense at UCLA last season, a surprising decision viewed as desperation by two veteran coaches with a wealth of experience in other systems. The switch revived UCLA's nonexistent ground game, but the formation still felt gimmicky and unsuited to UCLA's personnel even this season, when the Bruins had decent success with the emergence of Kevin Prince as a running quarterback.

Neuheisel remained confident in his abilities until the end, saying last week that he thought UCLA had "closed the gap more" in its rivalry with USC. The Trojans then delivered the third-biggest blowout in the rivalry's history, shutting out UCLA for the first time since 2001.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111128/ap_on_sp_co_ne/fbc_ucla_neuheisel_fired

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Lady Gaga Covers Vanity Fair, Reflects on Relationships Past


The incomparable Lady Gaga opens up to Vanity Fair about some of the relationships that have gone wrong for her in the past, as well as what it's like to give her all on stage.

"When I'm performing, I'm so giving, so open and myself," says the hardest working woman in showbiz. "When the spotlight's off, I don't know quite what to do with myself."

The singer, who's dating Taylor Kinney now, doesn't always look back positively on some of her previous flings. She tells VF in its January 2012 cover story:

Lady Gaga Vanity Fair Cover

"I have this effect on people where it starts out good," Gaga admits, ominously.

"Then, when I'm in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it's all just unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me."

"I have never felt truly cherished by a lover," the 25-year-old admits. "I have an inability to know what happiness feels like with a man."

"I say this honestly, and this is my new thing as of the past year: when I fight with someone I'm in a relationship with, I think, What would my fans think if they knew this was happening? How would they feel about my work and about me as a female if they knew I was allowing this to go on? And then I get out."

"I only know the happiness of putting a smile on someone's face from the stage."

Lady Gaga Vanity Fair Pic

Strangely, Gaga says that after some contentious breakups, exes asked her to marry them. "How f*%kin' romantic, you a$$hole," she reflects, sarcastically.

"Sure, pop a ring on my finger and make it better. I can buy myself a f*%kin' ring."

Of her latest video, for "Marry the Night," she says it's "autobiographical," and required the grueling task of "getting ready to relive the worst day of my life."

Some nice food for thought! Follow this link for VF's interview with Gaga ...

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/11/lady-gaga-covers-vanity-fair-reflects-on-relationships/

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Afghan woman jailed for being raped aims to change law (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) ? An Afghan woman, jailed two years ago for adultery after she was raped by her cousin's husband, is seeking a presidential pardon that her lawyer hopes could set a legal precedent for other women in a similar position.

Gulnaz, now 21, became pregnant following the attack in 2009 and her baby daughter was born behind bars. When her pregnancy brought the crime to light, she was, like her attacker, convicted and jailed for the crime of adultery by force.

She was initially sentenced to two years' imprisonment, but on appeal, this was increased to 12 years. A further appeal last week saw that cut back again to three years.

Gulnaz's attacker received a 12-year prison term, later reduced on appeal to seven years.

Her case has drawn attention to the challenges still faced by Afghan women, 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime that banned women from almost all work and education.

With foreign combat troops set to return home by the end of 2014, some activists inside and outside Afghanistan fear that women's rights may be sacrificed in the scramble to ensure the West leaves behind a relatively stable state.

Human rights campaigners have condemned her conviction, and the court's decision that she could go free if she married her attacker, which she later agreed to. He is still married to her cousin, but under Afghan law can take a second wife.

This requirement for her release has now been lifted, said her lawyer Kimberley Motley, of law firm Motley Legal, although she could not comment on whether Gulnaz would reconsider her decision to marry him.

"The fact that the court eliminated the portion of the sentence that says she has to marry this man is definitely something that supports the Elimination of Violence against Women law which was signed by the government," Motley said.

"Once President Karzai chooses to grant her clemency, which I am very confident of, that will... set precedent and will show his support for the Elimination of Violence against Women act and his support for Afghan women."

That law was passed more than two years ago, but the United Nations warned last week that there was still a "long way to go" in implementing it, and only a small number of cases have been prosecuted under the Act.

MORAL CRIMES

Female victims of rape and abuse can find themselves accused of "moral crimes," and like Gulnaz, face heavy sentences, the United Nations found.

Some such offences, such as running away from home, are not technically crimes under Afghan law, but judges can interpret the law to cover them, Motley said.

Motley said she believed Gulnaz's appeal was already setting a precedent for some moral crimes cases.

"Hopefully they can use this case... as an example to argue their particular cases in court," she said of defense lawyers.

Motley delivered a petition with nearly 5,000 signatures, collected in less than a week, to Kabul's Presidential Palace on Sunday, demanding Gulnaz's immediate release.

Hundreds more signatures had been added by early Monday, some with strong words of condemnation attached.

"The whole world is watching and every decent person would be disgusted by this and other gross injustices, when the victims are punished instead of the perpetrators just because they are female," one signatory to the petition wrote.

Motley, who worked with an Afghan lawyer on the appeal that reduced Gulnaz's sentence, said she expects President Hamid Karzai to grant clemency as the case has a weak legal basis.

"There is not one person that I've talked to, or that knows about this case, that can find any justification in her sentence," she said after visiting the palace.

"I am very encouraged by the fact that the president's office found out about this case this week, and as I understand it they immediately called the attorney general's office to find out more information," she told Reuters.

The attorney general's office declined immediate comment on Gulnaz's case.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni, editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111128/wl_nm/us_afghanistan_gulnaz

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Chinese Police vs Islamic Uyghur Terrorists

Don't bring knife to a gun fight:

This is the full footage of the incident : The incident which took place in China, Xinjiang 2009 when a small group of Uyghur separatists after a gathering in the local mosque decided to attack the chinese local authorities... as you can see it didn't turn out too well...

(I want clarify - this is the full footage and should not be the same footage posted on LL earlier which was taken from chinese news)

Loading the player ...

Source:

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Amazon's Black Friday Kindle Sales Quadruple (NewsFactor)

Amazon reported its best-ever Black Friday sales for the company's Kindle family of e-readers and media tablets, the online retail giant said Monday. Unit sales quadrupled across the board in comparison with Kindle sales the same day last year.

"Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we'd already sold millions of the new Kindle family," said Amazon Kindle Vice President Dave Limp. "And Kindle Fire was the best-selling product across all of Amazon.com" on Black Friday.

However, Apple's iPad also had an outstanding Black Friday, according to the sell-through observations made by investment firm Piper Jaffray. "We observed Apple stores selling 14.8 iPads per hour, up from 8.8 iPads per hour last year on Black Friday," noted Piper Jaffray analysts Gene Munster and Andrew Murphy.

One reason why was that Apple discounted iPads 8 percent to 9 percent for Black Friday this year, compared with 6 percent to 8 percent on Black Friday last year. "Apple stores were selling 68 percent more iPads per hour on a year-on-year basis," Munster and Murphy wrote in a Monday investor note.

Sales Channel Rivalry

Though Apple also sells the iPad via mass-market retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, the $199 price tag sported by the new Kindle Fire clearly helped Amazon beat Apple's iPad unit sales at Target's retail outlets nationwide.

"This was a great Black Friday for Target and for Kindle Fire, which was the best-selling tablet in our stores on Black Friday," said Target Vice President Nik Nayar.

Amazon also benefited from heavy Kindle sales at Best Buy. On the other hand, Apple's iPad is available worldwide and also distinctly appeals to business professionals in ways in which the Kindle Fire cannot -- due to Amazon's design emphasis on delivering multimedia entertainment as well as the limitations induced by the device's Amazon-centric user interface.

The Black Friday results racked up by Apple's iPad were consistent with Piper Jaffray's estimate of 13.5 million unit sales in the fourth quarter of 2011 -- up 84 percent year-over-year. "We remain comfortable with our iPad estimates based on this data," Munster and Murphy wrote.

Nook Competition

Though Kindle Fire has remained the best-selling product across all of Amazon since its unveiling eight weeks ago, the red-hot device faces a new rival in the more-powerful Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble, which is priced at $249. The book retail giant also has reduced the price of its older Nook Color e-reader/tablet to $199, to match Amazon's Kindle Fire pricing.

The ultimate key to the Nook Tablet's success, however, is the new Nook Boutique recently launched at Barnes & Noble stores nationwide. "It's a fairly radical change, if you think about it -- turning bookstores into consumer electronics stores," said J.P. Gownder, the lead PC analyst at Forrester Research.

Gownder believes Barnes & Noble's new sales-channel effort is off to "a good start" for several reasons, including the development of logical breakouts centered on different usage scenarios, such as Nook Kids, Nook Newsstand and Nook Apps. "These scenarios allow Barnes & Noble to communicate the specific features of the device that shine," Gownder wrote in a blog.

The new Nook Boutique also provides customers with direct on-site product support, an area in which online retailer Amazon cannot compete. "Critical to any channel experience is the ability to have well-trained staff interacting with customers," Gownder wrote.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111129/tc_nf/81145

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J.R. Martinez Gets Pentagon Invite Following DWTS Win

What a week it’s been for newly crowned Dancing With the Stars winner J.R. Martinez. The Pentagon has come a callin’, well actually, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has. He personally invited the Army veteran to come to the Pentagon for a visit so they could meet in person. Panetta wrote J.R. to congratulate him on his DWTS win. “Your strength and spirit captivated the nation, and your victory sends a strong message about the strength and resilience of our wounded warriors,” the note said. On Friday, Panetta spoke to Martinez on the phone and chatted for about 10 minutes. It was then that he asked the 28-year-old to come to Washington, D.C. Details of the visit are still being ironed out, and E! Online reports that Martinez will speak to troops (active and retired) while in D.C. Martinez beat out Rob Kardashian and Ricki Lake to claim the Season 13 DWTS championship title. He had been a frontrunner since the beginning of the season, inspiring us all with his amazing story. In 2006, while deployed in Iraq, he was driving a Humvee that hit a landmine. The explosion left him burned on over 40 percent of his body. He endured [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RightCelebrity/~3/ZEU_toqYNwI/

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