London’s Aya makes her debut in this excellent Naked Music release, produced by Jay Denes, of Blue Six fame, with whom she shares songwriting credit. Her beautifully soulful vocals shine here in this laid-back downtempo set of tunes, reminiscent somewhat of groups like Zero 7, Blue Six, and Sade.

Grade: A-.

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Londoners Ben Watt and Jay Hannan take a CD each to mix a beautiful collection of deep house, full of infectious Latin grooves and jazzy solos galore. Many of these tracks are fairly obscure gems and some are club anthems. With consistently good flavor throughout, both disks are deliciously funky.

Grade: A-.

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Montréal resident, LaFlèche, throws it down in this uptempo house set from 2001. The grooves here range from tech house to more of a Chicago sound, with a ton of Latin flavor. The relative obscurity of this DJ doesn’t diminish this take-no-prisoners mix, a booty-shaking good time.

Grade: B+.

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King Britt remixes the mellow tracks from “The Philadelphia Experiment”, an ecletic jazz/soul album. He primarily focuses on a deep house sound with a very intriguing intertwining of hip hop rhythms and soul grooves. With high production quality and a very interesting jazzy sound, this is a fun album.

Grade: B.

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This collection of electro house tracks, the sophomore album by John Tejada and Arian Leviste, delivers a good groove with some beautiful syncopated rhythms and a deep feel that would work well in a DJ mix. With complex layered textures and funky drumlines, this unmixed CD really hits the spot.

Grade: A-.

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Physical therapist, Jim Johnson, walks us through a pair of simple methods for motivating ourselves and other people in this very short book, written from the narrative perspective of a physical therapist in training, seeing how the “sixty second motivator” works his magic in getting reluctant patients to follow instructions.

Grade: A.

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Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, Lorne Greene, George Kennedy, and Genevieve Bujold star in this Oscar-winning disaster epic, written by Mario Puzo–featuring an unbelievably violent series of earthquakes that devastate downtown Los Angeles. While sometimes cheesy, this is a fun opportunity to watch a swashbuckler try to save everyone.

Grade: B.

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Sometimes, a very low budget film delivers an unforgettable story and stellar acting by unknowns. Sadly, this one delivers no such thing, instead resorting to a poorly-written story, lots of twisted sex scenes, and the most startlingly bad camera work of the 1990s. Let this one languish in obscurity.

Grade: D-.

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Motivational speaker, John C. Maxwell, gives lessons in people skills in this short little book primarily written by a psychologist, Les Parrot, Ph.D. The maxims are very helpful, although some of the anecdotes and illustrative examples seem gimmicky and contrived. Much of the advice here is grounded in common sense.

Grade: B.

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Roger Moore is James Bond in this classic spy thriller. Of course, cheesy acting, ridiculously attractive women, and convoluted plot twists–even obviously transparent ones–are de rigueur for this type of picture. A weird villain and his henchman, Jaws, deliver on a fun time, provided disbelief is sufficiently suspended.

Grade: B-.

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