Robert Beltran Books

Excellent color pictures/MRIs. Definitely not a beginner text- an advanced text. There is no guide to using the text. That would have been helpful. The pictures on the bottom of the page were almost too small to be of any good. For those of us who are not experts, it would have been nice to have some similar slices of normal anatomy next to the pathological anatomy.

For MSK MRI, this is an excellent reference book. The computer-designed illustrations are helpful and the bullet-point outline form works well for MSK (I'm not so sure about other specialties). This is not a comprehensive book to cover the pathophysiology of bone disease and it is all MR modality. I use it to complement other texts such as Greenspan.

This movie is really good. First off, I am a fan of John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis, and upon finishing this movie for the first time, I felt that they work well together. Jamie shows off her killer bod in many scenes throughout, and can really motivate you to work out yourself. It's got a good meaning to the storyline. The soundtrack is phenomenal, with upbeat 80's hits, which makes the movie even better. I could relate with Jamie Lee's character, Jessie, because she likes to be perfect, in everything she does. "What's wrong with wanting to be the best that you can be? What's so wrong with wanting to be perfect?" is a famous line of Jessie. It's one of my favorite quotes -- and, really, what IS so wrong with wanting to be the best that you can be? Check it out. Some scenes I would label "iffy" (i.e. the strip tease scene), but overall the movie is great.

Yeah, it's got some completely over the top Olivia Newton John "let's get physical" moments, but then again, this WAS the 80s and I lived through this era. "Perfect" is a pretty accurate and literate look at America's obsession with physical beauty, and along the way addresses the major ethical and creative issues that separate hack journalists and great writers. It's a pretty good story!

I am kind of amazed at how quickly a film like this will be dismissed out of hand as plain goofy or some guilty pleasure. I know a lot of journalists, and many of them drive me nuts with their shallow take on the things they are supposed to be elucidating. That's exactly why Perfect works so well with the apparent superficiality of sexual culture and what painful truths it masks. It's got believable characters, a good plot, and is pretty entertaining to boot! How this film can have a 3-star rating and "POC: At World's End" have a 4-star rating is beyond me.

Just the idea of John Travolta portraying an "investigative journalist" is more than enough to start most Bad Movie buffs tittering, but get set for some serious guffawing when you learn that he's cast here as Rolling Stone's top reporter, hot on the trail of an important story: "Health clubs are turning into the singles bars of the '80s," Travolta says, "inflated bodies, airheads..." Of course, he should talk since, two years before this movie was made, Travolta helped define the term "airhead" by flaunting his near-naked, newly "inflated body" -- shaved to the skin and oiled to a sheen -- to promote STAYING ALIVE on the pages of (yes, that's right) Rolling Stone.

The magazine's real editor/owner Jann Wenner, inexplicably agreed to essentially play himself in this flick, the jerk who's certain Travolta is proposing a major cover story: "Hot tubs, alfalfa sprouts." Wenner practically cackles, "we haven't done L.A. in a long time." No parodists need apply to "do" Wenner for, unintentionally, he offers up a definitively hilarious character assassination on himself, whether he's telling us, "Rough night! Mikey Douglas was in town," or being "just folks" while cooking up pasta with Lauren Hutton, or noisily barking over the phone to Travolta, "Eat sh-- and die."

What saved Wenner from having to kill himself after this movie came out (and died) is the fact that the rest of the cast is every bit as embarrassing (talk about ensemble acting). Travolta, working "undercover" at West Hollywood's Sports Connection club but calls it the "Sports Erection," tells aerobics whiz Jamie Lee Curtis, "I think we've come full circle, almost back to Emersonian America," and reveals his reporter's trade secret: "Always treat a famous person as if they're not, a person that's not famous as if they were, and think of your interview as a seduction."

Does it work? Curtis types onot Travolta's computer the immortal entry, "Wanna f--k?" When Laraine Newman, playing "the most used piece of equiptment in the gym," fails to score Travolta, she gets off an unforgettable aside, "I'm gonna go see if I can scare up a gang bang." When Curtis's scandalous past is regurgitated in print, Travolta calls to apologize from Morocco (played none-too-authentically by the L.A. restaurant Dar Magreb) but the unforgiving Curtis rages, "You're a sphincter muscle!" Travolta then wins the biggest laugh in the movie by remarking to a passing waiter, "When Mr. Bowles comes, tell him I had to go back to the States."

Happily, return he does, in time for the "We-don't believe-our-eyes" finale when the whole cast (the chubby Wenner included) dons form-fitting sweats for an aerobics workout.

With Marilu Henner, Anne DeSalvo, and Mathew Reed (as a tough pretty boy who snarls at Travolta, "Just don't call me a male stripper -- I'm an exotic dancer, and don't ever forget it")

This is a godawful movie, a waste of several million bucks by Universal and whoever else was responsible. They could have paid my salary for my entire career for what it cost them to make this moronic notion to capitalize on what some executive must have decided was the "sexy" health club craze of the 80s. Actors doing calisthenics in tights do not a feature film make. Lucas or Spielberg or a mailroom clerk could have told them so.

I saw this film for the first time in the 80's on Cable and found it a bit cheesy. The writing was a bit stiff and the story was a slow moving train ride at times and didn't know where to go. It either wanted to be an overview of the potential dangers of investigative Journalism or a mellow drama about the California Healthclub social scene. It did neither of them well but what it did was take a snap shot at what was trendy about the decade we love to hate. I LOVE IT!
Ms. Curtis is so good for this and even thought she is given horrible dialoge to utter, she is totaly believable as a "Arobic Guru". Buy it for her and her alone. Travolta ia just a folding chair as far as this film is concerned. He adds nothing to the mix other then offering a body for Jamie to emote to.
The basic transfer is good and the price is right.