them

Them Featuring Van Morrison
$11.98
Is this an original. Why is the C.D. called Them featuring Van Morrison? Morrison was not popular until he left the band, and became solo. Should the C.D. just be called THEM? Why would Morrison be a special feature if he was the regular band member? Somebody let me know, because i know my music very well. My generation was the 60's. Anyway this is a must C.D. if you want thier main hits. Some of the songs i never heard before [...] they were o.k. It's to bad Morrison left, the band was on thier way up. I really don't care for his solo stuff. Mack Attack

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms / Them! (Double Feature)
$14.98
It's what you would expect for the price you pay for these two films. The Beast from 20,000 fathoms is the better of the two but how can you go wrong when you get two movies for the price of one to watch classic 60's b films

Them (a.k.a. Ils)
$24.98
Let's see now ... the story is almost non-existent and soon telegraphs its intentions. There's a pretty minimalist approach used throughout, with just a handful of actors, one or two locations, and almost no music. It succeeds in being moderately suspenseful although it does take a while to achieve this. The revelation, although disturbing, is quite prosaic and left me feeling a little cheated given the ominous mystery of what had gone before. So, in summary, this is a simple, moderately effective chiller that doesn't leave much of a mark. Also, although it claims to be based on true events, Googleing the victims' names produced (at date of writing) nothing except information relating to this movie, which makes me wonder ...

Them: A Memoir of Parents
$16.00
As a fan of biographies, particularly the insightful kind about subjects who are interesting yet slightly obscured by time and not already the subjects of countless books and articles (such as presidents, Lady Diana, Jackie O etc.), I enjoyed this book. As others have stated Francine Du Plessix Gray manages to accurately portray her mother, father, and stepfather as human people with faults, foibles and quirks, yet very interesting people who clearly loved her and passed along the necessary talent and backbone for her to become an esteemed writer. Against the fascinating tales of escape from one war after another in 20th century Europe, followed by the struggle to succeed socially and economically after managing to escape to 1940's and 50's New York City, the writer weaves a story of her own repeated attempts to make emotional contact and gain support from her mother Tatiana and stepfather Alex (her beloved pilot father having died heroically attempting to join the French resistance).

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I do not believe that Tatiana and Alex come off like self-obsessed monsters, at least not until they reach their old age when health problems and perhaps mental instabilities begin to plague them. Rather, they seem to be, at heart, good people whose own upbringing and emotional growth were traumatized and stunted by their own dysfunctional parents and the political upheavals and wars that forced them to live a somewhat nomadic existence, much of it distant physically or emotionally from their own parents. They developed their own coping mechanisms, dealing with upset and conflict through distance, control, and in Tatiana's case, by becoming a largely functional (until the end of her life) drug addict and alcoholic. One must remember in reading this book that the understanding of addiction in Tatiana's time was not the same as it is today and "rehab" as we know it did not exist. There were no Betty Ford clinics and indeed, many people depended on "mother's little helpers" and didn't even realize it was a problem as they were prescribed.

My one criticism is that the beginning sections of the book, which focus extensively on Tatiana and Alex's ancestral background, tend to be disjointed and hard to "get into". The author also tends to skip around in time, coming back unexpectedly (and somewhat annoyingly) to a long section on her grandfather's gambling exploits after the reader believes she has moved on to Tatiana and Alex and dispensed with the topic of their parents. However, the book moves along more linearly and smoothly after the family finally arrives in New York and begin their career climbing. One senses that the parents are motivated partly by ambition, but also by a keen sense of survival of the fittest, a fear that any failure to be ruthless might result in the entire family being thrust into the bleak working-class climate of suburban factory life, where Tatiana's own father has already ended up.

It is a bit unsettling at book's end to see the author in her sixties still striving to get some type of paternal love from her stepfather, who became even more distant after Tatiana's death, and threw most of his remaining energies into a relationship with his nurse. The author of all people should have realized that her mother, though perhaps the love of Alex's life, was also a difficult and demanding woman, and Alex perhaps is not to be faulted for wanting a more comfortable relationship with a younger woman willing to dedicate her own life to fussing over him for a change. However, the author does seem to understand and make peace with the situation by the time Alex too has passed away, so her criticisms of her stepfather as not grieving enough over her mother's long-drawn-out decline and demise may be forgiven. Overall, an interesting and thought-provoking work about history and family dynamics.