Time To Think About Selling Your Home?

It could be the best time in years.

In 2009, I wrote the following in a blog entry: “Sellers, hang in there, your day is coming … It's a cycle. Your time will come around again.” Sellers, your day is finally arriving. With the severe lack of inventory in our area over the past six to eight months, it was inevitable that prices and demand would begin their ascent and we would see an increase in the activity for previously “unsellable” property. Here’s a perfect example. Last week, we listed a property that is in overall good condition and is priced to market comparables. Within two days we’d had three showings and an offer was made. While we were negotiating that offer, the property received three more showings in the following days. To recap, within one week of listing there…

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Dinner and a Movie

'The Avengers': A Movie to Marvel

Humor proves the most potent superpower for this blockbuster.

The summer movie season starts early, and this could be the biggest movie of the year. It is one of the most entertaining comic book blockbusters ever made: Marvel's The Avengers. You’ve met most of these characters before. Iron Man is Robert Downey Jr. Captain America is Chris Evans. Thor is Chris Hemsworth. The Hulk is Mark Ruffalo. Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury assembles the team to stop a diabolical bad guy who, you guessed it, wants to rule the world. But they spend nearly as much time battling one another as they do battling evil. What's great about this film is the sense of humor it shows without disrespecting the characters or the fans who have been waiting forever for this superhero mash-up. All the main characters get plenty of …

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Dinner and a Movie

‘Pirates’ Will Pillage Your Funny Bone

Searching for a treasure-trove of laughs, you’ll fit right in with this animated crew.

A below-average pirate captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) seeks to win the elusive Pirate of the Year award but faces some strong competition in The Pirates! Band of Misfits. From the folks who brought us Wallace and Gromit, the story is feather-light but strong enough to introduce the characters and establish their conflicts, which are pretty predictable. It's more of a comedy than an adventure, appealing to both children and adults. Such a film should be a crowd pleaser at the box office. Audiences love pirate movies. Toss in some quirky characters, like a twisted Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin, and you have an evolutionary success. The film is an enjoyable 90 minutes. The voice casting was mostly on merit and not on stunt casting, making…

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Dinner and a Movie

Romance Sparks ‘The Lucky One'

Teen heartthrob Zac Efron grows into a leading man for a role full of war, love and dog kennels.

Zac Efron plays Logan, a soldier on his third tour in Afghanistan who comes across a picture of a woman and is inspired to search for her stateside, in The Lucky One. His search lands him at a kennel in Louisiana owned by Beth (Taylor Schilling) and her grandmother, Ellie (Blythe Danner). He gets a job there and settles in, still not telling anyone his real reason for being there. As you might imagine, sparks start to fly. The Lucky One is a Nicholas Sparks movie. He's good at this kind of thing, writing books that turn into such movies as Message in a Bottle, Nights in Rodanthe and The Notebook. This film is one of his better stories, and with an attractive young cast, it should appeal to audiences. Efron is making a statement as a …

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DA Makes Offer; Sexual Assault Report Released

Get a recap of all the major headlines we had April 8-15.

The March 11 vandalism of East Paulding High School and surrounding areas continued to make headlines last week. The latest development saw 21 of 24 teens facing charges taking the Paulding district attorney’s offer to go into a pre-trial diversion program during a Friday afternoon meeting. Earlier in the week, we learned that one of those 24 teens likely will not get to participate in his school’s graduation ceremony following action taken by the Paulding County School Board. In other school district news, class sizes are set to remain on par with this year’s numbers. Another government entity that met on Tuesday was the county’s Board of Commissioners, which gave its approval to the formation of a radio system board. With talk of …

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Game Review: 'Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City'

Worse than a city full of raccoons.

Pre-rant clarification: I am not a Resident Evil fan. I’ve actually never played one before this because I never owned an original Playstation and even when I had a PS2 I quickly traded it in for an Xbox at the persuasion of a friend.  The first one to become available on the 360 was Resident Evil IV, and I didn’t see the point of playing the fourth installment (or rather something like the fifteenth if you count all the remakes and spinoffs and side stories and crap).  So anyway, yeah, I’m not a fan or even a vet. It probably stands to reason, then, that I have no right to critique the latest installment in the series without knowing anything about the previous titles. But, I’m going to do it anyway.  Like I said, I know nothing about the…

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Adam Alexander

11:18 am on Sunday, April 15, 2012

A reader informed me via email that Resident Evil V was actually the first to be released on the 360, and that IV was re-released on the 360 after that. Sorry about that.   more ›

Dinner and a Movie

‘Three Stooges,’ But How Many Laughs?

The one-time kings of gross-out comedy, the Farrellys, create a gross copy of the original slapstick fools.

From the geniuses who brought you There's Something About Mary and Dumb & Dumber comes a much-anticipated movie about three morons, The Three Stooges. It's Larry, Moe and Curly 2.0. This time around, Sean Hayes plays Larry, Chris Diamantopoulos is Moe, and Will Sasso is Curly. The film is three episodes drawn into one 90-minute movie as the Stooges do what they can to save the orphanage they grew up in. This movie has been talked about for more than 10 years, and, sad to say, it's pretty anticlimactic. I was never a big fan of the original Stooges, and the new Stooges were doing impressions rather than performances. The eye-poking and slapping are so repetitive, it's almost sad. Sure, they look like Larry, Moe and Curly, but if you love …

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Sexual Assault, Hospital Developments Top Headlines

Get a recap of all the major headlines we had April 1-7.

An Austell man faces aggravated child molestation and aggravated sodomy charges in connection with an alleged sexual assault of a 7-year-old boy Wednesday. We later reported the details behind Demetrius Ortez Jones’ May 2010 indictment in Cobb County on similar charges. We hope to bring you more details behind this story this week. A Paulding County woman on a trip to Mexico has been reported missing. Learn more about the disappearance of Christina Cassin of Acworth. Reynold J. Jennings of WellStar Health Systems focused on the future WellStar Paulding Hospital during his keynote speech at Thursday’s Paulding County Chamber of Commerce Georgia Power Luncheon. We’ll be covering Monday’s groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the future …

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Dinner and a Movie

‘American Reunion': Still Gross After All This Time

Guard the family pastries because Jim and the gang are back for a fourth round of ‘American Pie’ antics.

The kids are back, rediscovering their youth from their 30s, in American Reunion. This is the fourth installment of the American Pie franchise, featuring pastry lover Jim (Jason Biggs), nice guy Oz (Chris Klein) and party animal Stifler (Seann William Scott). Each character is dealing with a midlife crisis or relationship problem that builds up to a funny comedic payoff. The supporting cast, including Atlanta native Alyson Hannigan, helps this film bring humor to sexless marriages, rehashed high school flings and dead-end careers—or, as I like to say, comic gold. This may be the best film in the series since the original, which came out in 1999. Many of these characters work better as awkward adults than as teens.  Most of the jokes are a …

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