Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
House of the Week
Own a Castle in the US!
Berkeley Castle - Berkeley Springs, WV
$1,800,000
Berkeley Castle - Berkeley Springs, WV
$1,800,000
Own the only English Norman Castle in America! The Berkeley Castle contains 20 rooms including a 45' x 26' great room with fireplaces and 16' ceilings. The dining room and 2nd fl library are paneled in carved Georgina pine. Overall, thre are 8 bedrooms, 6 full baths and 3 half baths. Plus there is an apartment with its own kitchen, bath, bedroom, and laundry room. Also included are a wine cellar, watch tower, and tower room.
Friday, November 30, 2007
House of the Week
925 Nelson St - Stoughton
$84,900
$84,900
This home was initially listed at $109,900 in April. Now it's down to $84,900! New furnace, roof, water heater, window A/C, and some of the flooring is new! Appliances included. One car attached garage. Plus it is located in Stoughton, which is a nice community located just southeast of Madison. Only 700 square feet and no basement, so it's a small house. But with many of the major updates complete, this could either be a great starter home or instant cash flow as an investment property.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
House of the Week
1507 Woodman Rd; Janesville, WI
$59,900
$59,900
Need I say more? True, there is only 704 finished sq ft. Plus there is no garage or basement. And, yes, it is located in Janesville. But it is less than $60,000 (possibly around $500 monthly payment after taxes)! It is zoned R2, so you can use it as a rental unit. And like I said, this home is located less than a tenth of a mile to the nearest Dunkin' Donuts!
Monday, November 5, 2007
House of the Week
125 N Hamilton St #1403
$2,750,000
This week's house of the week is actually a condo. The most expensive condo on the market in the Madison area. A penthouse atop Capitol Point Condominiums with views of both lakes and the State Capitol. Designed by London Architect Farjadi in concert w/present owner, this 2 level Penthouse is unique in every aspect – no right angles, 16’ patio doors, 2 private decks, flr. to ceiling windows w/electric shades, in-unit elevator&library, a chef’s kitchen & walk-in wine refrigerator, private roof top terrace w/panoramic view of Madison! Color brochures upon request.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
House of the Week
N61W29181 Parkside Pl
Hartland, WI
$6,750,000
Hartland, WI
$6,750,000
Check out this mansion located in my home town of Hartland, WI! This 7 bedroom, 5 bathroom, 18,000 sq ft house is located just north of Bristlecone Pines in Mary Hill Subdivision. It is complete with a 9 car garage, 2 huge kitchens, indoor and outdoor pools, indoor basketball court, movie theater, and state of the art technology.
MLS data sheet
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
House of the Week
752 E. Gorham Street
"Leitch House"
$1,050,000
"Leitch House"
$1,050,000
752 E Gorham St - Madison
Own a piece of Madison history. The 153 yr old Stone Gothic Revival Leitch Mansion is for sale. This breathtaking home is a city landmark. It boasts of fabulous period wallpapers, 9 fireplaces, 11 foot 1st floor ceilings, an English Glass Conservancy, a new architect award winning metal roofed garage,
fabulous gardens, 10' of deeded Lake Mendota frontage, a nanny suite & a massive wrought iron fence. Be downtown for the lake, farmers market, shows, shops, parks, theater.
- MLS data sheet
- Award winning carriage house (garage)
- Historic Madison walking tour
Friday, September 21, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
Brett Sand's Top Ten
Brett Sand loves movies and he is incredible at the game Scene It. Here is his American/British Top Ten:
1. The Godfather
2. Citizen Kane
3. The Graduate
4. One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest
5. Dr. Strangelove
6. Pulp Fiction
7. Star Wars
8. Goodfellas
9. The Shawshank Redemption
10. Rear Window
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Mike Fumelle's Top 15
Mike Fumelle (mortgage loan consultant with Associated Bank in Madison) couldn't leave certain films out of his Top Ten American/British films, and decided to go with a top 15 instead. In no particular order:
Citizen Kane
The Godfather
Apocalypse Now
Gone With the Wind
To Kill a Mockingbird
It's a Wonderful Life
The Sound of Music
Blue Velvet
The Wizard of Oz
A Streetcar Named Desire
Pulp Fiction
Unforgiven
Manhatten
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
High Noon
Friday, August 17, 2007
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Top 10 American movies
In lieu of AFI's Top 100 American (and British) films...here is my top 10 - considering impact on cinema & society, as well as quality of the film:
1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles - 1941)
2. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola - 1972)
3. Apocolypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola - 1979)
4. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick - 1971)
5. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino - 1994)
6. The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont - 1994)
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick - 1968)
8. Star Wars (George Lucas - 1977)
9. The Matrix (Andy&Larry Wachowski - 1999)
10. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson - 2004)
My top 10 directors (American, British, or whatever!):
1. Stanley Kubrick
2. Akira Kurosawa
3. Fritz Lang
4. Orson Welles
5. Martin Scorsese
6. Joel&Ethan Coen
7. Francis Ford Coppola
8. Steven Spielberg
9. Quentin Tarantino
10. Wes Anderson
Monday, August 13, 2007
Vertigo - the most overrated movie of all time?
It is difficult for me to understand the so called "greatness" of the film, Vertigo. Let me go through step-by-step why Vertigo is a bad movie:
1. The movie has the wrong tone. The story is extremely dark, but the movie does not have a dark tone to it. All elements of this film (music, lighting, cinematography, etc) are played out as either a thriller or an epic romance, and Vertigo is really neither of those things...it's a dark drama with a mystery plot twist.
2. The characters are unlikable. Scotty falls in love with 'Madeleine', who he thinks is married to his friend - yet he doesn't seem to have any guilt or remorse about it. Then he meets Judy, who he thinks is a different person, and he basically wants to turn her into 'Madeliene'. That is quite obsessive and unhealthy, to a point where I don't think the audience should be sympathizing with his character. On the other hand we have Judy. She collaberated with Gavin to kill the real Madeleine. And the only regret she seems to have is losing Scotty - not the fact that she helped murder a person. So the two characters in this movie that we are supposed to sympathize with are both unlikable characters with no redeeming value. It seems the the movie is trying to give them redeeming value by them being in love with each other - which not only is bad logic, but doesn't work anyway.
3. The romance is unromantic and unrealistic. Watching the first part of the movie, it appears to be a mystery. The movie directs the viewer to be thinking about this mystery involving Madeleine being taken over by the ghost of Colette. So the romance that develops between Scotty and 'Madeleine' is secondary. Additionally, this romance dies to the viewer after 'Madeleine' is thrown off the tower. It only lives in Scotty, which seems strange and obsessive, as is explained above. We don't really see any romance that happens between Scotty and Judy, all we see are his obsessions of him wanting her to look like Madeleine. So this romance never really takes hold of the film - in the first part it is secondary to the plot and in the second part it is an obsession and not a romance.
4. Bad storytelling - poor development of plot & characters. If Vertigo is to be used in any film courses, it should be used as an example of inefficient story telling. This movie drags on for over 2 hours, yet the characters and plot are under-developed. Look at the scenes where Scotty is following 'Madeleine' - there are many unneeded and lengthy shots to portray a few pieces of information. We don't need to see the cars driving and parking to and from every place; we don't need to see a bunch of facial expressions on Scotty's face; we don't need a couple of minutes at every scene. It was just so long, and there are 2 or 3 sequences like that! As a viewer, we gained some information to the plot and that's about it. Then when Scotty gets out of the mental ward, he goes to every one of these same places and mistakenly sees 'Madeleine' like 3 or 4 times! I mean that whole sequence wasn't even needed considering that Scotty's friend verbally said that he was still in love with 'Madeleine' when she was leaving the mental ward. It's just so redundant without any point of being redundant other than to hit us over the head with simple information such as "He is following her" or "He's still in love with Madeleine".
5. The music is horrible. I hate the music, although I will admit many classic films have bad scores in my opinion. But even if you like the music, some of it completely doesn't fit. It has overly dramatic, sweeping epic romance music for scenes between Scotty & Madeleine/Judy. That is totally uncalled for in this movie where the romance is very unlike the sweeping epic romances like in Gone With the Wind. It's not even a romance, like I explained above. I mean, are we really supposed to buy into the idea that Scotty and Judy are in love after he makes her dress up exactly like 'Madeleine'? It is ridiculous.
6. Poor motivation/closure for the end scene. At the end of the movie, Judy jumps off the tower. I could understand it if she jumped because she can't live with herself for being responsible for someone's death and never being able to gain the love of Scotty. But she doesn't jump for these reasons, at least the movie didn't portray it that way in my opinion. She seemingly jumps out of fear from someone walking up the stairs. The person walking up turned out to be a nun, which has nothing to do with the movie. Additionally, there really wasn't anybody that should have evoked such fear in Judy - the only person she could have been fearful of was Scotty, who was right there, obviously not about to kill her. And how does jumping and killing yourself help anything...if anyone was going to kill her up there, it would have likely been by pushing her off the tower. It is just so mind boggingly stupid that she jumped off that tower! But the ending alone wasn't bad, the entire movie was bad.
Vertigo - 1 star out of possible 5
Friday, July 27, 2007
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