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Room in Rome, a review by Tom

Room in Rome (2010/Spain) IMDb | Wikipedia Optimum Home Entertainment, Optimum Releasing (United Kingdom) Director: Julio Medem Writing: Julio Medem (Writer) Length: 107 min. Video: Widescreen 2.35 Audio: English: PCM 2.0 Stereo, English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Subtitles: English

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Stars:
Elena Anaya as Alba
Natasha Yarovenko as Natacha
Enrico Lo Verso as Max
Najwa Nimri as Edurne
Ander Malles as Boy

Plot:
A hotel room in the centre of Rome sets the interior scene where two young women, who have just met, go on a physical journey which will touch their souls.

Before they leave to go back to their respective lands, Spanish Alba (Elena Anaya, ) and Russian Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) embark with their bodies and souls on an unforgettable one night stand.

ROOM IN ROMEJulio Medem ().

Extras:

• Bonus Trailers
• Scene Access
• Trailers

Nice enough movie with beautiful girls. Nicely shot. But overall it's nothing more than two girls bullshitting each other (telling false and true stories about their lives) with some softcore sex scenes thrown in.

Rating:

(From Lesbian Movie Marathon on February 12th, 2011)

Ratatouille, a review by Tom

Title: Ratatouille
Year: 2007
Director: Brad Bird
Rating: PG
Length: 111 Min.
Video: Widescreen 2.39
Audio: English: PCM 5.1, English: Dolby Digital Surround EX
Subtitles: English

Stars:
Patton Oswalt
Ian Holm
Lou Romano
Brian Dennehy
Peter Sohn

Plot:
From the creators of Cars and The IncrediblesRatatouille for the first time with revolutionary clarity and spectacular audio enhancement. It's a rare treat you'll enjoy again and again.

Extras:
"Your Friend the Rat" & "Lifted" Shorts
Deleted Scenes
Featurettes
Scene Access
Trailers

Another really great Pixar movie! Highly recommended! A fun story and great animation.
As usual, Pixar make the human characters more cartoony, instead of trying to be ultra-realistic only to fail at it. The backgrounds/sets are really great.

Rating:

(From Tom's Random Reviews on January 3rd, 2009)

2016 TV Pilot Reviews, a review by DJ Doena

StartUp @ Wikipedia
StartUp @ IMDb

A drug dealer, a hacker and a banker walk into a bar. Well, they don't actually walk into a bar. But they do meet. This show came only accidentally across my radar so my knowledge of what it's actually going to be about is a bit sketchy. I can only tell you what happened in the pilot episode and then infer what's going to happen next.

The banker played by The O.C.'s Adam Brody doesn't seem too happy in his job. But he is even less happy when his father walks back into his life and asks him to launder some money for him.

The dad (who has disappeared by the end of the pilot so I don't know his actual role in the things to come) is a player in the drug trade and was tracked down by a federal agent played by Martin Freeman (Sherlock, The Hobbit). Phil Rask (Freeman) tried to extort the dad which is why he went to his son in the first place.

The money Nick Talman (Brody) is expected to launder belongs to a Haitian drug lord who appears to live by at least some kind of honour and now finds his money gone and is understandably pissed.

The final player is a young woman and hacker (in the classical sense of the word), played by Otmara Marrero. She has developed a new digital currency, far better than Bitcoin per her own words. She's trying to market it to the bank Talman is working at but they decline the offer. Talman on the other hand is suddenly very interested to invest.

The pilot starts the story rather slowly but since we're living in the post Breaking Bad age one should not dismiss this as a bad thing. It gives you the idea where the story is heading (drug money transferred around the globe with this new currency system) and you have to decide if the story and the acting is for you. I for one will at least watch a few more episodes to make up my mind.

Maybe the most interesting question this show could ask (don't know if it will do that though) is how our understanding of and relationship to money has changed.

Money almost always had only a symbolic value. Sure, back in the days you had gold coins and silver dollars but your trust in the currency always dependent on the fact that there only was so much of it there and that defined its value as a trading object. The minute the money owner (e.g. the state) started to print it by the bucket, the value was gone, see this 200 billion Mark note from 1923 which probably only bought you a loaf of bread.

At some point in the 1900s most currencies left the gold standard and barely anyone batted an eye.

For almost a decade now many western central banks are pumping zero interest money into the markets. There are probably very few people on this planet who still know how much money is currently in circulation. But the prices are reasonably stable.

Heck, in many regards we've even abandoned the concept of money as a physical object altogether. I know the U.S. is at least still using "pay checks" but on the other hand even the Starbucks coffee gets paid via credit card. Here in Germany we get our salary transferred into our debit account after which our landlord deducts the rent and the insurance, power and phone companies also automatically collect their bills electronically. You buy something for more than 10 euros, you probably pay with your debit card. 100 euros in cash will keep me afloat for a good two weeks at least. In Sweden they're debating the abandonment of cash money.

But all of this only works because we've developed a trust in the system. But how long is this trust going to hold? And are there better systems? Maybe this show will ask these questions. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just a variant of Breaking Bad's car wash money laundering system. But I will find out.



(From 2016 TV Pilot Reviews on September 17th, 2016)