96% The Kid with a Bike

All Critics (106) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (102) | Rotten (4)

The film should be required viewing for everyone who has lost faith in the power of random acts of kindness.

"The Kid With a Bike" vibrates with desperation, frustration and the simple unfairness of life, leavened with glimpses of hope.

Cyril is one of the most inspiringly resilient, self-aware young characters to arrive on-screen in recent memory...

"The Kid With A Bike'' is, remarkably, about hope - about the connections people forge when the ones they've been given desert them.

The Dardennes' quiet, naturalistic style strips this story of melodrama but not of emotion.

Without diminishing the boy's intensity or making him in any way ingratiating, the Dardennes take us into his mind, and we begin to appreciate not only his predicament but his resiliency.

A frank, no-nonsense drama filled with compassion for a lost soul kid abandoned by his father.

...a deeply humane movie that deserves to be compared with one of its obvious inspirations, Vittorio De Sica's neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves

A moving, sweet and at times harrowing tale...

De France does a terrific job of balancing maternal instinct with matter-of-factness, in a performance that is more human than tender - and all the more powerful for it.

Unlike many films, it genuinely earns every feeling it evokes.

a complex interweaving of bitter reality and a deeply humane worldview that sees the possibility of redemption in even the cruelest of circumstances

A beautiful and stirring story of unconditional compassion, of emotional honesty, and -- above all -- of hope.

The Dardennes' style resists cheap sentimentality, yet in The Kid with a Bike it yields a deeply moving examination of love as a shield.

Dardenne brothers set an orphan in search of a father

Will bad breaks break a boy?

How the Dardennes, time and again, turn gritty, mundane subjects into transcendent moments of honesty and truth is one of the great cinematic wonders.

This is a film that's not always easy to watch, but just about impossible to forget.

It is crystal clear on at least one point: People are mysterious and beautiful, and they need each other.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne offer another in their remarkable succession of contemporary neo-realist dramas in this quietly devastating but gently hopeful [film].

[It] gives obvious homage to a variety of films. ... But one inspiration shines throughout the movie ... The Red Balloon.

...the film delivers a final act as riveting as it is artistically satisfying. Not many films can claim a perfect ending. This one can.

...manages to balance a spiritual sense of grace with the earthy eye of a here-and-now realist.

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Obama staffer to testifies at John Edwards trail

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) ? A former campaign spokeswoman for John Edwards testified Wednesday that his wife angrily confronted a key donor about his support for the presidential candidate's pregnant mistress in 2007 at a hotel in Iowa.

Jennifer Palmieri was called to the stand by prosecutors at Edwards' corruption trial. She said the candidate had called her to the Davenport, Iowa, hotel room where Elizabeth Edwards was arguing with campaign finance chairman Fred Baron and his wife about the couple's financial help to Rielle Hunter.

Palmieri had become close friends with Elizabeth Edwards, and her husband hoped her presence could help calm the situation. Palmieri is now the deputy communications director for President Barack Obama.

That day in October of 2007, Palmieri said Baron's wife, Lisa Blue, admitted to Elizabeth Edwards that she had flown Hunter to Los Angeles for a shopping trip.

"You've got to hold your friends close and your enemies closer," Palmieri quoted Blue as telling the enraged wife. Blue added that Hunter was a "loose cannon" who could have exposed the affair to the media, Palmieri said.

At the time, a tabloid was publishing an article about the affair, and Palmieri said the campaign was absorbed with keeping the story from crossing over into the mainstream media. Edwards had told his wife he had a brief fling with Hunter, but that he had ended the affair many months earlier, according to earlier testimony.

In fact, Edwards had continued the affair and Hunter was then pregnant with his child. A close aide to Edwards, Andrew Young, had rented the mistress a home a few miles away from the Edwards family estate in Chapel Hill. The candidate had kept the arrangement secret from his wife.

Palmieri said Elizabeth Edwards couldn't comprehend why Baron and Blue would have any contact with Hunter.

"She didn't understand why they were embracing her, spending time with her," Palmieri said.

Asked what Edwards was doing during the argument, Palmieri said she didn't remember him saying much.

"He was more of a spectator than a participant," she testified.

How much Edwards knew about the money spent in the effort to cover up his affair is a critical question at his trial. Edwards has pleaded not guilty to six counts for campaign finance violations related to about $1 million in secret payments from Baron and 101-year-old heiress Rachel "Bunny" Mellon.

Edwards has denied knowing about the money, much of which was used to hide the pregnant mistress as he campaigned for the White House. Baron flew Hunter across the country in his private jet, paid for stays in luxury resorts and secured a $20,000-a-month rental mansion in California.

On Tuesday, campaign speechwriter Wendy Button testified that Edwards had later admitted to her he knew "all along" that Baron had been supporting his mistress and baby. The girl was born in February 2008 a few weeks after he suspended his presidential campaign after poor showings in the early primary states.

That contradicts what Edwards has said about his knowledge of the money, most notably in a nationally televised network interview in August 2008.

On Wednesday, Edwards' defense lawyer Abbe Lowell admitted his client had "lied quite extensively" in that interview, saying he had only a brief sexual relationship with Hunter and denying he fathered her baby.

Palmieri said she had advised Edwards against doing the interview, which came shortly after tabloid reporters photographed Edwards visiting his mistress and baby at a Beverly Hills hotel.

"I said I did not want him doing the interview if he was going to lie," Palmieri recounted. "Even I didn't believe what he was saying."

But Palmieri said Edwards decided to go ahead anyway after his wife pressed him to make a public statement denying the baby was his.

In an attempt to mitigate the damage, Palmieri said she selected ABC's Nightline as the venue for the interview because the news show was going up that night against the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on rival NBC, which was expected to get far bigger ratings.

"If John couldn't do the interview and tell the truth, it was a mistake," Palmieri said. "I didn't think it would be great if the whole country watched."

___

Follow AP writer Michael Biesecker at twitter.com/mbieseck

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Clarion Next Gate hands-on (video)

CTIA, while focused on mobile technology, often gives us the chance to peek at other devices that bridge into our beloved mobile world. Clarion's Next Gate is one such device, running on a 7-inch WVGA display and interfacing with your iPhone via the dock connector. Once you're hooked up -- which should be straightforward as it only needs plugging in -- the Next Gate allows control of apps on your device. First off, we like the idea that your iPhone is controlled by the Next Gate -- in fact when firing up an app in the demo you can see it cycle open on the iPhone display -- but its lower resolution display, hung adjacent to an iPad, made us immediately yearn for an upgraded display. The selection of usable apps includes such niceties as Twitter, Facebook, streaming radio, and of course navigation. All the apps we saw seemed to perform quite well, though we weren't on the open road in bright sunlight with the top down and the quadruplets screaming bloody murder in the back seat, thankfully. Have a peek at the video and gallery below for a tour of the interface and some of its functionality.

Gallery: Clarion Next Gate hands-on (video)

Joseph Volpe contributed to this report.

Continue reading Clarion Next Gate hands-on (video)

Clarion Next Gate hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 May 2012 21:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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