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New reports from the Pew Hispanic Center conclude that low-income Latino students are the most segregated, ill-served group in the country's public high schools. The reports detail high school conditions for Hispanic students in the United States.

Proud to Be an American

Ghana, which turns 50 today, is planning nationwide celebrations that will be attended by dignitaries from around the world. The West African nation was the first black African country to obtain its independence from colonial rule. But there are mixed feelings about the anniversary.

Lebanese-American artist Doris Battar is exhibiting her photographs of life in the Middle East taken over the last two years. Host Gloria Penner talks to the artist about her work.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is refusing to resign Monday after a special commission harshly criticized his leadership during last July's war in Lebanon. The two Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping sparked the war in Lebanon are still not free.

I just heard from fellow film critic and Film Club co-host Scott Marks that the San Diego Union Tribune has let go their film critic David Elliott. (I haven't contacted the UT to get any details, however.) I may not agree with David's taste in movies but I think the decision to let him go and to apparently run wire reviews instead is a bad decision. Every community needs a diversity of critical voices whether it's about movies, theater, music, pop culture or politics. David contributed to that diversity of voices in regards to film, and that voice will be missed.

Horror remakes and sequels are still all the rage these days. The latest is

Single-handedly this film may have inspired a whole young generation to fall back in love with movies and with movie making much in the same way that the French New Wavers made filmmaking fun, sexy and a bit punk back in the 60s. Narrative structure fascinates writer-director Quentin Tarantino. In some ways the telling of the story is more important than the story itself. For him, going from point A to point B is not only too simple but it's simply not fun - like having sex without foreplay. Tarantino's solution is to chop up the narrative and rearrange the pieces in unexpected ways so that climaxes and reveals occur in unlikely places. He also takes delight in having his characters tell jokes and stories as another means of playing with our expectations about narrative structure.

"Bedtime Stories" (opening December 25 throughout San Diego) is an excellent movie. It's the kind of movie where you can have a family outing and everyone can enjoy the film. It is about this guy who owns a hotel and sells it to another guy named Naughtingham under one condition: his son is to run the hotel when he is older. Little does he know that his son Skeeter (Adam Sandler) would be running repairs instead of the actual hotel. Some years later when Skeeter and his sister are fully grown and his sister has two children, Skeeter is asked to babysit his niece and nephew. They have been deprived of almost everything that makes life fun by their mother and it is up to Skeeter to correct that. He feeds them junk food and lets them watch TV. They have a pet guinea pig with ridiculously huge eyes that seems to be the main point of almost all the jokes. When the first night is coming to a close Skeeter decides that he should tell the kids a good story to finish the day. He comes up with a story that basically narrates his own life and how it is going down hill. The kids chime in every now and then with their own little twists, like having it rain gumballs or that he will save a damsel in distress. Skeeter soon finds out that everything that the children say will come true. He has all sorts of fun with this like trying to get himself a bright red Ferrari for free but because they don't say so, it never happens. Unfortunately Skeeter's boss is going to tear down the kid's elementary school to build his new hotel. So Skeeter tries to get the kids to help him with his ideas to save the day.

My & time in law school, after two overseas tours and spending four out of five years out of the country, & was also when I began to realize just how much modern America had let big government intrude into people's lives with incentives and penalties all hinging on acceptance of one family & model as being the only acceptable family unit. &