.

By KRISTIN HARTY, The News Journal

Renee Sherrard-Luther hopes the March 15th fundraiser for Freedom Hills Therapeutic Riding Center will be bigger than ever this year.
National exposure should help.
On Sunday, Luther and her two children will be featured in a two-hour episode of "ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," which brought together hundreds of volunteers to build the family a new house and riding facility in October.
The Emmy Award-winning reality show chose the Luthers from among thousands of applicants because of their commitment to helping people with physical and emotional disabilities -- regardless of their ability to pay for horseback riding lessons.
For 25 years, the family has struggled to keep the program afloat. The mission: To give "hope, joy and self-confidence in the name of Christ."
"It's wonderful therapy for kids who can't run and play -- that's what I call them instead of 'disabled' " said Kenneth Seaman, professor of physical therapy at the University of Delaware. For years, he's taken physical therapy students to Freedom Hills so they could learn about the benefits of therapeutic riding.
"The riders learn balance, stretching, proper posture," Seaman said. "There's so much you can do on a horse. ... It's hard to get them off the horse sometimes."
Before "Extreme Makeover" worked on the Port Deposit, Md., property, the Luther's barn and home were in disrepair. Luther's husband, Carl, had planned a renovation project, but he was diagnosed with cancer last January. He died in April. He was 50.
"There was so much work that needed to be done in it that we couldn't afford to do," Sherrard- Luther said. Friends submitted the family's name to be considered for a Hollywood-style home makeover.
Volunteers demolished the old barn shortly after the television crew arrived in Port Deposit. They built a new barn with stalls for 24 horses and a new indoor riding ring. A renovated office area includes a new physical therapy room for riders.
"Before, in the old barn it was still open on both ends, and it was just freezing," said Kim Andreen, of Havre de Grace. Her 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Ellianna, has mild cerebral palsy and has been riding at Freedom Hills for about a year.
"It's so much nicer now," said Andreen, who walks alongside the horse, named Chunky Monkey, when Ellianna rides. "To be in that environment is a little more uplifting than being, basically, in an old, rundown shack."
Luther hopes the new facilities will allow Freedom Hills to expand, but the program still relies on sponsors and donations. The family will offer tours of their new home and barn at a fundraiser in February, and Freedom Hills' annual gala dinner and auction will include some T-shirts and photographs autographed by the "Extreme Makeover" cast.
"We need the community's involvement and financial support even more," said Luther, who's also looking for a grant writer to help her find ways to pay for costs at the riding center, where about 75 clients ride each week. "Our bills are higher."

Contact Kristin Harty at 324-2792 or kharty@delawareonline.com

Source: www.delawareonline.com

The party crasher: A visitor to New York starts throwing its weight around, stirring echoes of 9/11

By Michael Phillips |Tribune movie critic

There's nothing to "Cloverfield," really, but stripped-down chaos shot in a faux-verite "Blair Witch Project" fashion. Call it "The Manhattan Monster Project." Its special guest star is a Godzilla-inspired sea creature rather coyly concealed from full view, like a hostile celebrity who gets itchy around cameras. But I have to say, I was with it.

It's dumb but quick and dirty and effectively brusque, dispensing with niceties such as character. It runs about 74 minutes without the end credits, which isn't much longer than an hour of "Lost," the show J.J. Abrams created. Abrams is a producer of "Cloverfield," and his film, directed by Matt Reeves, is pitched at a teen and 20ish crowd that does not need its hand held, exposition-wise. Honestly, who needs words?

It is the endlessly, cruelly commodified images from Sept. 11, 2001, that "Cloverfield" pursues with a vengeance. Skyscrapers collapse and send dust clouds barreling down narrow Manhattan streets. Loose-leaf papers flutter down from the sky. The shots are uncomfortably close to everything we know from 9/11, far less oblique in their referencing than, for example, Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" remake.

You may feel queasy about such plundering, yet other sequences or parts of sequences carry a real jolt. When Marlena (Lizzy Caplan, the most vivid face in a film full of generically drawn young folk) has a run-in with a bug, a big one, and is whisked behind a curtain by Army personnel, what happens a few tense seconds later comes very rapidly and is shown in silhouette. Sometimes the best bet in an A-budget B-movie is to hit your target and move on.

The first 15 minutes or so of "Cloverfield" takes us to the going-away party thrown for Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who is taking a job in Japan, a country whose citizens revere large city-smashing visitors from the deep. Rob's friend Beth (Odette Yustman) shows up with new boyfriend in tow. Only a 25-story-tall tourist can solve this romantic dilemma. The monster itself doesn't have a story; he just is. You could say the same about the film. It's like "The O.C." crash-landed in an outer borough and woke up something nasty.

The film's mission--I have no idea of how many moviegoers will choose to accept it--is to leave its audience feeling spent and shaken up (no American triumphalism here) but satisfied. The film's early trailer managed that trick in spades, ending with the money shot: the head of the Statue of Liberty clang-clang-clanging up the avenue like an errant bowling bowl. By now, thanks to our viral entertainment reproductive systems, that well-circulated shot feels like it comes from a much older film. But there are other sights worth the shudder, chief among them the monster's parasitic giant spidery crawlie offspring, causing trouble for our nominal heroes and heroines as they make their way Uptown in the subway tunnels.

"Cloverfield" is faux-distressed, like jeans. It is shot as if it were digital footage from Rob's camera, recorded by Hud (T.J. Miller), who likes Marlena the way Rob likes Beth and Beth likes Rob and really, none of that matters. The only emotional moment in Reeves' deliberately artless shaky-cam exercise is the sight of the dear old Brooklyn Bridge getting creamed. Who doesn't adore that bridge? If I were a New Yorker, I'm not sure I'd enjoy seeing it trashed.

Beyond such crude but undeniably gripping suspense tactics lies this question: Will audiences go for seeing the real-world horror of 9/11 so thoroughly reprocessed for escapism? Will they make "Cloverfield" a hit? I'll say this for it: It knows where it's going. And it has nerve, ending the way it does. (Then again, a lot of good a nervy ending did "The Mist" at the box office.) There's no conventional musical score to be heard in "Cloverfield," for the record, all the better to heighten the fake realism. Then under the end credits, the soundtrack is suddenly awash in a lushly orchestrated 1950s-style suite composed by Michael Giacchino, our finest contemporary film composer. It's a little insane, this so-called "overture" carrying a jokey title ("Roar!") and featuring a vaguely Prussian-sounding vibe. Very dashing and zesty, this music. The film itself is into a harsher, more demographically calculating brand of fun. But I enjoyed it. Sometimes a few hundred empty calories hit the spot.

mjphillips@tribune.com
- - - - -
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for violence, terror and disturbing images).
Running time: 1:24.
Opening: Jan. 18.
Starring: Lizzy Caplan (Marlena); Jessica Lucas (Lily); T.J. Miller (Hud); Michael Stahl-David (Rob); Mike Vogel (Jason); Odette Yustman (Beth).
Directed by: Matt Reeves; written by Drew Goddard; photographed by Michael Bonvillain; edited by Kevin Stitt; production design by Martin Whist; visual effects by Double Negative and Tippett Studio; produced by J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk. A Paramount Pictures release.

Duality on display at Detroit auto show Alternative-fuel-powered cars and gas-guzzling trucks
Sunday, January 13, 2008
BY RICK HAGLUND
Ann Arbor News Bureau

A green theme has been sweeping auto shows across the globe, the result of higher gasoline prices, more stringent fuel economy and emissions regulations and worries about climate change.

But Detroit's North American International Auto Show, which opens for news media-only previews today and to the public on Jan. 19, will feature a panoply of product palettes.

There will be no shortage of alternative-fuel-powered cars, crossovers and compact trucks among the more than 50 new production and concept vehicles being introduced this week.

But high-performance vehicles and big, gas-guzzling trucks will be seen in abundance on the show floor at Cobo Center.

Ford Motor Co. today will unveil its restyled 2009 F-150 pickup, while Dodge will show off a freshened 2009 Ram truck. Despite falling sales of full-size pickups, the F-150 remains the best selling vehicle - car or truck - in the country.

"How can you ignore the F-Series launch? It's huge,'' said Erich Merkle, an auto industry analyst at IRN Inc. of Grand Rapids.

And it's one of the most profitable vehicles for Ford, which last year dropped to third place in U.S. sales behind Toyota Motor Corp.

"This show doesn't seem to have a theme,'' said Tom Libby, senior director of industry analysis at J.D. Power & Associates of Troy. "The products are all over the map. I think that's a reflection of the industry right now.''

Libby and others say uncertainty about the economy and a projected fall-off in vehicle sales this year have prompted automakers to display a diverse array of products, in an attempt to excite cautious consumers.

Analysts say U.S. car-and-truck sales could fall to around 15.5 million vehicles this year, the lowest level in a decade.


Source: http://www.mlive.com