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MARY ELLEN GRAYBILL
70 Courtyards Drive,
Shrewsbury, PA 17361
(717) 235 - 7182
Mary Ellen Graybill attended Baltimore, Maryland city schools, Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College), and was awarded a BS Degree from Towson University in Maryland.
She worked as a professional caseworker specializing in foster care child welfare, and geriatric issues for a decade with the Baltimore, Maryland city government following her degree award.
Mary Ellen Graybill writes movie reviews posted on WWW.IMDb.Com (the world's largest movie information databased owned by Amazon.Com). A list and also full text of her movie reviews can be found by visiting the following link: http://imdb.com/user/ur24328853/comments
She travelled to Los Angeles, California and was employed in the film, television, and arts community. She worked as a movie actress, a graphics artist, and as a free lance artist.
She returned to the Maryland area and worked as a graphic artist/proofreader for Maran Graphics and eventually became a newspaper features and news writer as "Special to the SUN" (Baltimore (MD) SUN newspaper) (after writing features for the Villager of North Central Maryland, Country Chronicle, 'Peake Times, Valley Voice, Harford Country magazine, Baltimore Chronicle and other Maryland publications). She received a nomination for the International Athena Award for writing in March 2004.
She studied classical music at the Peabody Institute School of Music in Baltimore, Maryland and was awarded the Certificate in Piano following which she studied privately with Barbara Gruver, and presently performs classical piano in the Maryland and Pennsylvania areas.
Reviews
The Way (2010)
"The Way" provides us with a unifying experience without leaving our movie seat.
"The Way" is the way to go at the movies! Starring Martin Sheen as Tom, a grieving father who walks the Camino de Santiago- a medieval Christian pilgrims' route through Spain- he dispenses the ashes of his late son, played by his real son, and the director and writer of the movie, Emilio Estevez. On the way, he meets three characters, each on their own pilgrimage of solitary seeking. The four form a reluctant group as they keep finding themselves on the pathway to an understanding of their own purpose and each other's journey.
The movie opens with Daniel telling his father, "You don't choose a life, you live a life." Sadly Daniel loses his life in the quest for adventure on the trail. Martin Sheen, is thus knocked out of his ordinary life as an eye doctor in the suburbs, and decides to take the trip and dispense his son's ashes and perhaps find what his son was seeking. (Note that in the Catholic faith, cremation is acceptable, reportedly, but ashes generally are kept together, but not so in "The Way")
Tom starts out understandably depressed and sad over the loss he has experienced. When a priest asks Tom to pray with him, Tom replies, "What for?"
Thus, the movie begins- Tom having lost his son, peace and faith, and when he arrives at the start of the 800 kilometer walk, like some other travelers, he appears exhausted by life's shocks.He carries the box of ashes and tells little to companions on the trail.
Along the way, Tom encounters not just his own pain, but that indirectly of three other characters that seem to be showing up at every turn. Joost is walking to lose weight and re-gain a wife's attentions. It seems that there should be more to his character, but that is all that is revealed.
Soon, the two blend together, if not as comrades, as cooperative acquaintances.
Then, Sarah, a smoker and Canadian joins, looking bedraggled and bitter, later to reveal a tragic past. She never does give up cigarettes which is the surface reason she gives for her pilgrimage.
And, then there's the writer named Jack, an Irishman, who aggravates the group - and who is taking notes along the way for a future book. He hopes to overcome writer's block.
The group moves along dealing passively with each other, and the rainy weather conditions. Soon, a thief that steals Tom's box of his son's ashes causes the group to run together to help Tom, and a merging of the friends is evident. Towards the end of the hike, they find that they have bonded - and they all end up laughing in Tom's room. The celebration of what they have accomplished has begun!
It is a spiritual achievement- both the movie's beauty of scenery along the amazing Camino de Santiago between Spain and France- villages and warm people along the pilgrimage trail, and the way the characters blend together.
J. Edgar (2011)
paranormal jedgar
A Look at "The Jedgar" By Mary Ellen Graybill
Clint Eastwood is known for his last supernormal movie, "Hereafter" and Leonardo Decaprio known for his last portrayal of a patient on "Shutter Island" in a scary and subtle movie directed by Martin Scorcese. So, it's no surprise that in the recently released Warner movie, "JEdgar," Eastwood directs Decaprio an almost paranormal experience for a movie goer. The viewers are treated to a mind-boggling array of real life events. Eventually, it is clear that Hoover, the former Director of the FBI in a time when public figures were sheltered in their private lives, is an egomaniac for power, both vengeful and misled. He starts out seemingly ordinary, soft-spoken and possessed with what looks like patriotism.
Judy Dench as Anna Marie Hoover provides a key pivoting point for a look at Hoover's personality. She is smothering and seductive, and yet supportive and affectionate.The scene where his mother instructs him to dance is typical of subtle, perhaps deliberate "goofs" in the movie. Mother instructs him in dancing but takes the lead herself.
Overall the effect of several "goofs" within the film itself makes it seem like this is a movie along the lines of "Shutter Island" for Decaprio. Knowing the talents of Ron Howard and Clint Eastwood in directing, it seems possible that certain "goofs " might have been deliberate. The color palette also adds another dimension to the movie, with more color at the end of the movie, which starts out pale and washed out looking.
As Hoover, Decaprio keeps secret files on important people, has no real friends except his male associate and partner, and one another "alien" to the human race, his secretary, who adheres to his wish to destroy all paper evidence when he dies.
All in all, it's easy to know why the movie is described on www.famousmonstersoffilmland.com as a horror movie!
End.
Roman Holiday (1953)
A Holiday from Royalty
Roman Holiday, the 1953 version, is a wonderful and nostalgic look at the conditions imposed on the Royal Family members that take up the responsibility of leadership, even at the young age that current England's Queen Elizabeth had to do. The movie tells us the story of the young and bored Princess Anne (Audrey Hepburn) who makes an ill-advised escape from her palatial environs to live as a commoner for a day. The reverse of "Queen for a Day" the ideal of most people's dreams.
After an outburst of independence is treated with a tranquilizing injection from the royal family doctor, the heroine finds herself falling asleep on a bench, picked up by a news reporter, and taken to sleep off what he thinks is her alcoholic stupor at his modest apartment. After her adventures in Rome with the reporter and his photographer for the next 24 hours, the royal princess returns to a worried staff and resumes her monarchy.
The role of the press in the "holiday" for the Princess is clear. After photographing compromising pictures of royalty, the situation unfolds, due to surfacing human compassion, that the reporters refrain from publishing the scenes, or telling the story.
All in all, it's an enjoyable movie, from the past, applicable to the present. There is no holiday from royalty, it seems to say.
The Forgotten Village (1941)
"The Forgotten Village" (1941) is Not to be Forgotten
"The Forgotten Village" (1941) is timeless picture of a group of Mexican rural village dwellers, who star unpretentiously as victims of incompetent folk treatment, their own resistance to change, the town's infected well water, and individual stress from the untimely deaths of children in the village. It is presented with the dramatic literary poetry of John Steinbeck,("Of Mice and Men" and "Grapes of Wrath"), the author of the story and the screenplay, eloquently told by the calm narrative voice of Burgess Meredith.
It is not clear if the adults of the village are similarly afflicted by the well water. The issue of water, a world wide issue today, is the backdrop for the drama of the characters.
The cast of characters reveal specific roles: there is "bad" witch doctor herbalist who fails to cure by laying a snake skin on the belly of a sick little girl. The girl's brother, Juan Diego, is rejected from his family for taking his stricken sister to local government medical officials who apply a spoonful of liquid medicine and then inject her with a drug.
The movie indicates the promise of modern medicine, and the story by John Steinbeck focuses on the environmental contamination in well water (a reality in many third world countries nowadays as well), playing down the value of the medicine woman's powers of comfort and spiritual reassurance, consciousness, etc. Just as the pharmaceutical drugs are not named, there is no mention by Steinbeck of any herbal plants and spices- just scenes where they are administered by the old herbalist.
The message to the viewer is that the old ways did not always work, in the face of grinding poverty and a bad water supply. But the rebellion against the "new" medicine by the villagers may be in part due to an instinctive awareness that for billions of years, human beings have found healing in barks, spices, herbs and plants of many kinds. A synthetic approach to healing ends the movie where white-coat clad students lean over equipment in labs seeking the answers to illness. Prevention and the mind-body connection is left to the imagination in 1941.
The well-meaning teacher in the village acts as the quiet voice of reason in the movie, seeking to bring the usefulness of water treatment to the village, and to bring pharmaceutical medicines.
Burgess Meredith's narration appropriately disappears behind the images of real people attending to their sick children.
With side effects of modern medicines claiming lives of over 100,000 people per year according to records published in recent years, this film now sounds a clarion call for a new balance- prevention-oriented medicine, not drugs with bad side effects. (Prevention in the form of public health- the protection of public wells also is indicated to make the public environment safer, for example.) In this movie, the message is the old ways did not work. But, the message today- 70 years later- is when is it time to abandon the new (drugs with bad, often fatal side effects) and learn about and apply some of the ancient wisdom.
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Written by Mary Ellen Graybill, a widely published writer who is a Letters Member of Pen Women (Gunpowder Branch, Maryland). Publications include The Baltimore SUN (MD USA)
This movie review is posted on WWW.IMDb.Com (the world's largest movie information database, owned by Amazon.Com)
To date, these are the reviews available: 1. The Forgotten Village (1941) 2. The King's Speech (2010)
A full list of Mary Ellen Graybill's movie reviews on WWW.IMDb.com with links to full texts of reviews is accessible via:http://imdb.com/user/ur24328853/comments
Mary Ellen Graybill's email address is: megraybill@yahoo.com
The King's Speech (2010)
The King's Speech (2010) Leaves Me Speechless
The King's Speech (2010) starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter, directed by Tom Hooper is not just another Hollywood movie about the British monarchy.
In a way, the new King's (King George VI) trouble with giving a speech is reflective of the public's inability to hear. The King's hesitancy in his speech could be seen as an artistic metaphor for the country of England to not see the need to "speak up" or join the fight against the German Nazis. It's the old idea that the people get the leadership they deserve.
The audience winces as the King's makes a few bad attempts at a public speech.
It's more than a look at history. It's an inside look at a world family-and the bravery of one man appointed King who desperately rises to the occasion, after conquering not an army attacking his country, but after conquering his own internal and external enemies- his upbringing, his seemingly volatile, but repressed nature, and a resulting serious speech impediment.
The movie presents us viewers with an "against the odds" story of the father of the popular Queen Elizabeth now residing on the British throne. We know, again from the movies, (The Queen, 2008) of the current Queen's dignity in the face of outside circumstances of fate and choosing. With the impending marriage of Prince William, there is an anticipation of a transition in the British monarchy, a monarchy riddled with past achievements and disasters both.
The King's Speech movie lets us experience the individual strength of a King whose suffering is almost too painfully portrayed on his face until the end of the movie. Colin Firth is convincing as a man tortured by his childhood,and yet, with the help of his speech therapist, played by Geoffrey Rush, becomes his own person, finds his own voice.
It's a great escape to watch this beautifully filmed movie- an enjoyable and enticing way to look inside the royal palaces and imagine what really happened. The portrayals are fictional from a screenwriter's pen. But, the result is a movie worth seeing and hearing.
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Written by Mary Ellen Graybill,BS- a Pennsylvania-based freelance writer who has produced over 200 published articles for magazines and newspapers including the Baltimore SUN (Maryland). She goes to a lot of movies.