Every year, I write about the movies nominated for Academy
Awards. I think Hollywood puts out too many terrible, violent movies. Along
with violent TV programs and video games, I think all these violent images
affect children and adults, leading to increased violence in society.
Visit my blog Sunday for my list of which movies I think
should win Academy Awards.
AARP began giving out the awards to call attention to, with
the aging of baby boomers, the fact that more movies should be made for older
adults. The group was tired of so many teen movies.
Here are AARP’s winners for 2013:
Best Movie for Grownups – “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”
Best Director 50+ - Steven Spielberg for “Lincoln”
Best Actor 50+ - Denzel Washington for “Flight”
Best Actress 50+ - Judi Dench for “The Best Exotic Marigold
Hotel”
Best Comedy – “Bernie”
Best Supporting Actor 50+ - John Goodman for “Flight”
Best Supporting Actress 50+ - Jacki Weaver for “Silver
Linings Playbook”
Best Screenwriter 50+ - Ben Lewin for “The Sessions”
Breakthrough Accomplishment – Dustin Hoffman, director
of “Quartet”
Best Grownup Love Story – Helen Mirren and Anthony Hopkins
for “Hitchcock”
Best Intergenerational Movie – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Best Documentary – “Searching for Sugar Man”
Best Time Capsule – “Argo” set in the 1970s
Best Foreign Film – “Amour” – Australia, in French with
English subtitles
Best Buddy Picture – “Robot and Frank”
Best Movie for Grownups Who Refuse to Grow Up – “Moonrise Kingdom”
Readers’ Choice – “Lincoln”
I applaud AARP for offering this awards program to help improve
the quality and diversity of the movies shown in American.
Copyright 2013, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
The average person is planning to spend $131 on Valentine’s
Day on candy, cards, gifts, and more, up from $126 last year. The total
spending for the holiday will reach $18.6 billion, according to the National
Retail Federation.
A mix of traditional and non-traditional Valentine’s Day gifts will be popular
with consumers this year, the federation said in a statement.
Slightly more than half of gift givers will buy candy,
spending $1.6 billion in total, and another one-third will give flowers, with
total spending expected to top $1.9 billion.
Others will treat their special someone to jewelry, 20
percent, spending more than $4.4 billion on diamonds, gold, and silver. An
additional 16 percent will buy clothing, spending more than $1.6 billion. Gift
cards will also be on the top of shoppers’ lists; 15 percent of gift givers
will buy gift cards for their loved ones, totaling to $1.5 billion.
The average male will spend more than the average woman this
year, the federation said. Men will spend an average of $176 on jewelry, flowers, a romantic evening
out, and more, while women will spend about $89.
There will be a lot of last-minute deals, so be on the
lookout for promotions on chocolates, flowers, and dining.
Whatever your plans, have a terrific Valentine’s Day celebration.
Copyright 2013, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Before the big day, drive her wild with
anticipation by telling her that you have the most amazing surprise for her.
This promise will keep her guessing and make her think about your evening
2. Flowers
Know her favorite flowers. If you don’t,
don’t panic. You can find out by making a comment such as, “I’ve noticed plants
blooming early this year …” and steer the conversation from there. In a
beautiful vase, arrange an exotic bouquet and hide it somewhere in your home on
the special day. She’ll like that you created the presentation.
3. Chocolate
Go to your local chocolate shop and select
her favorite kinds of chocolate. Have it boxed and nicely wrapped to prevent
her from knowing what it is when you present the chocolates to her.
4. Dinner preparation
Create a dish and name it after her. For
example, if her name is Anne, you might call the dish “Tournedos Princess
Anne.” This step is the most important. Food that is named after a person is a
special honor. And women love it when their partners do the cooking. To be
organized, cut and precook the vegetables, and make the sauce beforehand. Leave
everything in the fridge. Then, on Valentine’s Day, set the table before you
start the cooking. On both plates, place a fresh red rose. The single rose is
just part of making her think that that is all the flowers she will be getting.
When she gets home, make sure to get her to promise you that she’ll stay out of
the kitchen so you can surprise her.
5. Dinner and gift giving
When everything is ready, plate the food,
cover it and take it to the dining table, and then ask her to come and sit.
Before you uncover the lid, have her close her eyes. Retrieve the hidden
bouquet, place the flowers on the table, and ask her to open her eyes. Tell her
what you’ve named the dish. After the
meal, take her by the hand, walk her to the living room, and sit her down.
Bring out the boxed chocolate, go on one knee and tell her, “This is for you,”
or, “You make me feel whole,” or, “You are the most beautiful woman in the
world, and I love you.”
Overkill? Not at all, Quansah says, adding it really
works.
Copyright 2013, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
BRP is recalling about 10,200 Ski-Doo snowmobiles.
The fuel pump inlet fitting can come into contact with the
oil tank and break, leading to a fuel to leak that poses a fire hazard, the
company and U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a statement.
The firm has received three reports of fires. No injuries
have been reported.
The snowmobile has the model name printed on the vehicle’s
side panel.
Manufactured in Canada, the snowmobiles were sold at Ski-Doo
dealers nationwide from March 2012 through January 2013 from about $8,000 to
$12,000.
Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled
vehicles and contact a BRP dealer to schedule a free repair, the company and
commission advise. BRP has notified registered consumers directly about this
recall.
For more information, call BRP at 888-638-5397 from 8 a.m.
to 6 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, or visit www.ski-doo.com
and click on Recall Information under the Owner Center.
Ads during Sunday’s Super Bowl cost an
average of $3.8 million for a 30-second spot, up from last year's $3.5 million.
The 2013 offerings, like last year, showed scantily clad women and people being
slapped and knocked down.
Adding to the violence of the ads and the
game of football itself were ads for movies, such as “Ironman 3,” and TV shows, such
as “How I Met Your Mother,” which showed hitting, punching, slapping, and
explosions.
At halftime, Beyoncé wore a skimpy costume,
as did the couple of dozen of women who performed with her. Then she writhed
around on the floor of the stage. The performance added to the sexist
atmosphere of the Super Bowl.
I did like one
ad: Dodge, in advertising its Ram
pickup, offered an ad about the importance of farmers, narrated by Paul Harvey.
Here are my awards for the worst ads airing
during this year’s Super Bowl:
Unnecessary violence:
Two guys in a library whisper,
then fight about what’s best in an Oreo cookie, the cookie or the cream.
The fight spreads throughout the entire library, and the police drive through
the wall to break up the fights.
In an ad for SABMiller Redd’s Apple Ale, a guy
can’t decide what to order, so an apple is thrown at him, knocking him down.
Then he knows he should order Redd’s Apple Ale.
In Audi’s
ad, a teen gets the keys to the Audi to drive to the prom. He marches in and
steals a kiss from the queen and gets punched by the king.
Silliest:
Budweiser’s ad, with the man who
trained a Clydesdale that later broke away from his team of horses during a
Chicago parade to hunt the man down, ranks as silly, in my opinion.
Also silly was Tide’s ad
featuring a salsa stain on a shirt that looked like a football player. Dozens of people came to look at the “miracle,” with the man’s wife
washing the shirt and saying “Go, Ravens.”
A man who loves Doritos
buys a goat who loves them, too. By the end of the ad after the goat has eaten
hundreds of packages of the chips, the guy’s hoarding them and making a
for-sale sign for the goat.
Stretchers, a tennis shoe, shows a man
outrunning a cheetah and tying him up, thus saving an antelope.
Most sexist:
Last year, Go Daddy.com showed two guys
in the “cloud” populated with scantily clad women. This year, it grossed out a
lot of people by showing a sexy model kissing a nerd with awful sloppy sounding
kissing.
In another Go Daddy.com ad, also sexist, wives around the world are harping to
their husbands for not putting their big idea online.
Fiat’s ad slowly panned over a woman lying on the
beach in a bikini was bad enough, but having a scorpion crawl over her? Yuck.
Then, when she sees the car, she stands up and throws off her bikini top. The
scorpion drags it away.
Motorola's cell phone ad features actress Megan Fox in
a bathtub. Two men slap each other and another falls off a ladder looking at
the phone.
A Doritos
ad shows a little girl bribing her dad to play her with a bag of chips. He
dresses up and puts on makeup, as do four of his friends.
Gliden, t-shirt maker, produced an ad showing a man
trying to sneak out after a one-night stand, which included fuzzy handcuffs,
only the woman is sleeping in his favorite t-shirt.
Century 21’s ads don’t show women in a good light either.
A woman is so taken with her new wealth that she doesn’t see that her husband is
choking, a woman in labor demands a new kitchen, and a mother-in-law is so
awful that a groom faints at the altar when he thinks about living with her.
Calvin
Klein’s ad showed a male model in
nothing but underwear for most of the ad. Objectifying men isn’t any better than
objectifying women.
Best Buy’s ad showed Amy Poehler asking dozens of
questions, and making suggestive comments to the sales associate.
In a Coke
ad, a bus full of chorus girls chases toward a giant bottle of Coke, with other
characters. One of the girls shoots a cannon full of something that sounds bad
but floats down lightly at the cowboys. And, a biker, gets thrown up on the
window of the bus.
Kia’s scantily clad women “robots” put this ad in
the sexist category. One of the robots kicked a man, earning it violent points,
too.
While SodaStream
made environmental points showing its machine that carbonates beverages, thus
avoiding using cans and bottles, it wasn’t necessary to have a woman in a
bikini operate the machine.
Most irritating:
Since there
isn’t any drama when you buy a car from Cars.com,
for the commercial, the sales representative gives the two consumers a wolf
cub, then the jealous wolf-mom walks in. Ha, ha.
In an ad for
milk, The Rock races out to the
street in his pajamas to pick up milk. He dodges bank robbers, angry lions, and
traffic jams and ignores a kitten stuck in a tree.
Ageist:
In the Taco Bell ad, a group of seniors leave
the retirement home for a night on the town. While some people thought their
partying was funny, I thought it made older people look ridiculous.
Racist:
In a Volkswagen ad, a white man’s car makes
him so happy he speaks with a Jamaican accent. When the ad was released early,
many people wondered if it was racist.
Dark and creepy:
Anheuser-Busch
announced its new beer, Budweiser Black Crown, with two ads that were dark and
creepy, featuring young, upscale people in dark clothing.
Bud Lite’s ads featured characters
trying to get luck through voodoo. One man carried his living room chair to the
voodoo master, Stevie Wonder.
In the Mercedes-Benz
ad, an actor is going to sell his soul in exchange for a new Mercedes CLA as
well as a rich lifestyle, which includes dating Kate Upton and dancing with
Usher. However, the actor sees on a billboard stating that the price starts
under $30,000, so he saves himself.
Sportspower Ltd. is recalling about 120,000 BouncePro 14’
Trampolines; 92,000 units were recalled in May
2012.
The enclosure netting surrounding these trampolines can
break, allowing children to fall through the netting and be injured, the
company and U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a joint statement.
Sportspower has received an additional nine reports of the
enclosure netting breaking since the May 2012 recall. There have been five
reports of injuries including broken bones, back and neck injuries, and
contusions.
This recall is an expansion of the May 2012 recall of brown
tetlon netting to now include black tetlon netting. This involves the Sportspower
BouncePro 14' Trampolines with model TR-1686-TPR.
UPC code 687064045552 or 687064042100 is printed on the
product’s box. Sportspower BouncePro 14’ is printed on a plate on the leg of
the trampoline frame.
The trampolines are surrounded by enclosure netting on the
perimeter of the trampoline measuring about 6 feet high. The netting is
designed to contain individuals bouncing on the trampoline.
Manufactured in China, the trampolines were sold only at Walmart
stores nationwide from February 2009 through March 2011 for about $300.
Consumers should immediately stop using the trampolines and
contact Sportspower to receive replacement enclosure netting, the company and
commission advise.
For more information, call Sportspower at 888-965-0565, from
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, visit www.sportspowerltd.net and click on “Recall
Information” at the bottom of the page, or e-mail customerservice@sportspowerltd.net.
Consumers
who are in the market for a new TV – maybe in time for Super Bowl Sunday – will
find models that are bigger, better, smarter, and cheaper, according to the
latest Consumer Reports TV tests.
Consumers
should be happy to know that TV prices are usually lowest in February and
March, when manufacturers start shipping new models and retailers cut prices to
sell off the old ones.
Significant
new features on 2013 models aren’t expected, so consumers shouldn’t pass up
great deals on top-rated 2012 sets, according to Consumer Reports. However, beware.
Some TV bargains can be risky.
Super-low
priced sets, especially from lesser-known brands, aren’t always the best deals,
reports the consumer testing organization. Some of the lowest-scoring sets in Consumer
Reports’s Ratings – with below-average marks for picture, sound, or both –
include TVs from Coby, Element, Haier, TCL, and Westinghouse.
LCD
TVs from LG, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony have consistently been among the best
performers in the Consumer Reports Ratings. Plasmas sets from Panasonic have
been at the top, followed closely by Samsung and LG.
Internet-capable TVs
The
Consumer Reports Ratings include more Smart TVs, or TVs that can connect to the
Internet to stream video from online services, giving easy access to on-demand
movies and TV shows.
All
tested TVs with this capability offer Netflix, but the availability of other
services like Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and Vudu varies by brand. A
growing number have full browsers for surfing the Web, built-in Wi-Fi, and
access to an apps market. In addition to streaming video services, most
Internet-capable TVs let you connect to a music service such as Pandora, social
networking sites such as Facebook, and Twitter, and even eBay.
Basic questions to consider
See
the article “Consumer Reports: Latest TV Sets Are Bigger, Better, Smarter, and
Cheaper” for information on what size TV to buy, whether to choose plasma or
LCD, what resolution is best, and whether to buy a 3D capable awr.
The
full report, which features Ratings of 140-plus LCD and plasma TVs, can be
found in the March issue of Consumer Reports, on newsstands January 31, and
online at ConsumerReports.org.
Copyright 2013, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
After 12 people were killed and 58 wounded at a movie
theater in Aurora, Colo., on July 20, 2012, I wrote an article about how
America needs to figure out why these mass killings are occurring and stop
them.
It was heartbreaking that at a very violent Batman movie, a
gunman killed and wounded so many innocent people. I called for action on gun
control, mental health programs, violent images aimed at children, and
hatemongering.
Not much discussion on these issues was occurring then.
However, that all changed when 20 students and six teachers were murdered by a
gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012.
Yesterday, President Obama issued a list of items that his
administration or the Congress can do to curb gun violence. I applaud the
president for finally acting on this issue, and I support most of the suggested
options.
Among those that I think are most needed that Congress must approve:
Require universal background checks for all firearm sales.
Reinstate and strengthen the ban on assault weapons.
Limit ammunition magazines to 10 rounds.
Provide $10 million to CDC for additional research on
relationship between video games, media images and violence.
Give $150 million to school districts and law enforcement
agencies to hire school resource officers, school psychologists, social workers
and counselors.
Provide $50 million to help 8,000 more schools train their
teachers and staff to create safer and more nurturing environments.
Provide $55 million for new initiative (Project AWARE) to
make sure students get treatment for mental health issues.
Provide $25 million for state-based strategies supporting
individuals ages 16-25 with mental health or substance abuse issues.
Provide $25 million to offer students mental health services
for trauma or anxiety.
Provide $50 million to train 5,000 additional mental health
professionals serving children and young adults.
Action the Obama administration can take without
congressional approval:
Direct the Centers for Disease Control and scientific
agencies to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun violence.
Launch a national campaign to promote common-sense gun safety
measures.
Review and enhance safety standards for gun locks and gun
safes.
Direct attorney general to review gun safety technologies.
Launch a national dialogue about mental illness.
Finalize requirements for private health insurance plans to
cover mental health services.
Ensure that Medicaid recipients get quality mental health
coverage.
With Congress deadlocked on so many issues, it’s
discouraging to see that the most important items on the list require
congressional approval.
Despite the
significant hype, I wasn’t very worried that Congress and the president wouldn’t
reach a deal on the so called fiscal cliff. What I was concerned about was how
the deal would affect consumers, particularly older Americans.
The fiscal
cliff deal has a number of items that will benefit consumers. They include:
All income
below $450,000 for families and $400,000 for individuals will permanently be
taxed at Bush-era rates.
The 2009 expansion
of tax breaks for low-income Americans – the Earned Income Tax Credit, the
Child Tax Credit, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit – will be extended
for five years.
Federal
unemployment insurance will be extended
for another year, benefiting those unemployed for longer than 26 weeks.
The
Alternative Minimum Tax will be permanently patched to avoid raising taxes on
the middle-class.
However,
Congress missed a big opportunity to truly pass positive measures to help
consumers with these missteps:
The deal
doesn’t address the debt-ceiling.
The payroll
tax holiday will be allowed to expire,
which means taxes will go up for consumers.
A full
package of temporary business tax breaks will be extended for another year,
including breaks for race-car track owners, electric scooters, Goldman Sachs office
space, coal produced on Indian lands, and Hollywood films.
Funding is cut for the Affordable Care Act’s
consumer oriented and operated plans – non-profit, customer-owned and operated
plans that could test out new ways to deliver health care – by about $1.9
billion.
The
sequester will be delayed for two months. Half of the delay will be offset by
discretionary cuts, split between defense and non-defense. The other half will
be offset by revenue raised by the voluntary transfer of traditional IRAs to
Roth IRAs, which would tax retirement savings when they’re moved over.
The upcoming budget cuts
required by the fiscal cliff deal will be part of discussions on the budget on Capitol Hill, and no one knows what
agencies and programs they’ll affect. That’s a problem for consumers because vital
programs may be slashed, especially with heavy lobbying from the military
industrial complex not to cut military spending.
Even though
the Democrats won big in November, Congress is gridlocked due to faulty
policies supported by Republicans, the conservative media, including Fox News,
and American corporations. It’s frustrating when so much needs to be done in
this country, but special interest groups squash progress and the ability of
the government to move forward positively.
Instead of
adequately funding needed programs for consumers, Congress will be bogged down
with what to cut, then we’ll have another fiscal cliff debate and – oh, yes –
another debt ceiling debacle.
Copyright 2013, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
