Sunday, November 6, 2011

High Heels and Low Lifes

  • Minne Driver (Good Will Hunting) and Mary McCormack (Mystery, Alaska) star as best friends who take on low-life thieves in this hilarious high-energy action-comedy. It all starts when Shannon (Driver), a nurse at a London emergency room, and Frances (McCormack), a struggling American actress, overhear bank robbers on a radio scanner making off with a fortune. They make contact and demand a cut at
Minnie Driver (GOOD WILL HUNTING) and Mary McCormack (GUN SHY) star as best friends who take on low-live thieves in this hilarious high-energy action-comedy. It all starts when Shannon (Drier), a nurse at a London emergency room, and Frances (McCormack), a struggling American actress, overhear bank robbers on a radio scanner making off with a fortune. They make contact and demand a cut of the loot. But when the stubborn felons refuse to hand over a penny and threaten their lives in return, the girls ! decide to raise the stakes and give the thugs a run for their money! Packed with daring heists, double-crossings, and high-speed hilarity, HIGH HEELS AND LOW LIFES is the most fun you can have this side of the law.Supremely silly and entirely entertaining, High Heels and Low Lifes begins with a high-tech bank robbery--into the middle of which stumble Shannon (Minnie Driver) and Frances (Mary McCormack), who have gone out and gotten drunk because Shannon's boyfriend forgot her birthday. Thanks to this same boyfriend's surveillance equipment (on which he was creating his "urban noise symphony installation"), they end up with a cell phone number belonging to one of the thieves and decide to experiment with blackmail--an experiment that soon gets them into deep trouble. None of this is remotely plausible, but the breezy script keeps taking surprising twists, Driver and McCormack are an engaging duo (and they run to and fro in tight, stylish outfits), and the mo! vie is directed with flair. Fun, frivolous, and unexpected. --Bret Fetzer

Focus: A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction

  • ISBN13: 9781434103079
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Bestselling author Mike Schmoker describes a plan for radically improving student learning that is built on three core elements: a focused and coherent curriculum (what we teach); clear, prioritized lessons (how we teach); and purposeful reading and writing, or authentic literacy.

With this "less is more" philosophy, educators can help students learn content at a deeper level, develop greater critical thinking skills, and discover more clearly how content-area concepts affect their lives and the world around them.

Both a call to action and a blueprint for creating more effective classrooms, Focus: Elevating the Essentials for Radically Improved Student Learning will cha! llenge your assumptions about schooling and show how educators who have embraced this approach quickly achieved spectacular results.

Meet Emily and Paul: The parents of two young children, Emily is the newly promoted VP of marketing at a large corporation while Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, yet more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task.

In this book, we travel inside Emily and Paul's brains as they attempt to sort the vast quantities of information they're presented with, figure out how to prioritize it, organize it and act on it. Fortunately for Emily and Paul, they're in good hands: David Rock knows how the brain works-and more specifically, how it works in a work setting. Rock shows how it's possible for Emily and Paul, and thus the r! eader, not only to survive in today's overwhelming work enviro! nment bu t succeed in it-and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day.

YOUR BRAIN AT WORK explores issues such as:

- why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources

- why it's so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions

- how to maximize your chance of finding insights that can solve seemingly insurmountable problems

- how to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible

- how to collaborate more effectively with others

- why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier

- how to be more effective at changing other people's behavior

The author writes, "At the heart of this simple book lies the key to many of the struggles we face these days, from being productive and achieving our goals, to getting healthy and fit in the face of fast food and inactivity, to finding simplicity and peace amidst chaos and confusion.! That key is itself simple: focus. Our ability to focus will allow us to create in ways that perhaps we haven't in years. It'll allow us to slow down and find peace of mind. It'll allow us to simplify and focus on less-on the essential things, the things that matter most.