Human Resources

Starring:Jalil Lespert, Jean-Claude Vallod, Chantal BarrÃ©, VÃ©ronique de PandelaÃ¨re, Michel Begnez, Lucien Longueville, Danielle MÃ©lador, Pascal SÃ©mard, Didier Emile-Woldemard, FranÃ§oise Boutigny, FÃ©lix Cantet, Marie Cantet, SÃ©bastien Tauvel, Jean-FranÃ§ois Garcia, GaÃ«lle Amouret, Marie-Laure Potel, Patrick Baron, Patrick Pignard, Peggy Lefevre, Alain Champin
Director: Laurent Cantet
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Description

IT SEEMS LIKE ANY SMALL TOWN. But it isn't. Daniel is about to leave his home, Point Ridge, and move away to college to begin a new life. As his eighteenth birthday approaches he begins to notice that something feels different. As Daniel's eighteenth birthday approaches, the Colony waits for its leader to take his place among them. When the clock strikes midnight Daniel learns the astonishing truth… it had been written long ago and he cannot escape his destiny…

Customer Reviews:

You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover.......2006-06-05

Obviously, the same goes for this DVD and the aliens contained within it. Nana Visitor, Alison Eastwood, Bruce Boxleitner, and Hunter Tylo head-up a cast of newbies who make a go of this dismal alien farce. Based on the DVD cover, you'd think that this flick was full of gory alien action and plenty of blood and guts. Unfortunately, the menacing alien on the DVD case only makes a couple of brief and uneventful appearances. Instead, we're left to figure out why aliens are preparing for a big celebration by doing the deeds of "Uncle Bob," who seems to be the top alien until the leader is reborn via Visitor and Boxleitner's son. Of course, he ain't havin' none of that, so he teams up with Eastwood, his drop-out bud and the girl he's always longed for in an attempt to stop the alien party and save the world.

This flick is boring. It drags along at a snail's pace, keeps the viewer nice and confused as to why things are happening, and eventually ends with the promise for a potential sequel or a TV series.

The cast comes off as really fake, especially Visitor and Boxleitner, who are so full of wholesome goodness that it makes you want to throw up. Corbin Bernsen reprises his sleazeball "L.A. Law" persona but instead of fighting for justice, he keeps the aliens' skins intact as a doctor.

The effects are okay, but then again, there weren't many effects necessary for this flick since only one alien appears to have not been a guy in a suit.

In closing, I don't recommend this flick to anyone unless they've got a fixation with Scarecrow or Clint Eastwood's offspring. Keep clear of this snoozer.

THANKS FOR THE WARNING.......2005-10-04

THEY ARE AMONG US is a somewhat flaccid rehashing of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, with an obvious made for television veneer. A small town is plagued by what appears to be aliens inhabiting human bodies, but the script is plagued with an unfocused narrative and confusing red herrings. Alison Eastwood gamely plays an alien hunter, but we're never really sure where she's coming from or how she came to know about the aliens. A seemingly perfect family of father, mother and son are at the heart of the upcoming "event" which seems to be taking place on the son's 18th birthday. Good luck in guessing what this "event" is. Although the movie has decent effects, it is far from reaching the status of BODY SNATCHERS and ultimately ends up looking like a failed tv pilot.

They Are Among Us, keep ignoring them........2005-09-13

This is obviously a straight to DVD release, or better yet it's fresh from the Sci FI Channels annals. All the old gang was here from Sci Fi high Nana Visitor, Bruce Boxleitner, Corbin Bernsen, Hunter Tylo; you know all the big names. The whole story is about this community, who early on you figure out they aren't normal, and there are creatures assumingly from outer space. The creatures are big headed, big teethed, and not really scary though I am not sure they were supposed to be. We have a teenager, Daniel, who is going to be turning 18 and something big, is going to happen at his birthday "celebration", and I guessed it wasn't going to be a new car with all the ominous music and hints. His parents, one of which is an alien his mother, the other of which is Laura Ingalls husband , try to protect him by sending him to Australia, the aliens don't swim I suppose or like Outback steakhouse. We have an outlaw alien bounty hunter in a Winnebago, Allison Eastwood (poor thing just couldn't ride on her fathers coattails like the rest of the Hollywood spawn), she is out to revenge her missing father with vials of collagen and bad one liners. The whole town is on a mission to convert our Daniel into whatever alien teenagers turn into, Hunter Tylo clumps around the entire movie with giant lips (I thought they ate collagen not injected it) and epileptic seizures when she is hungry. The ending is predictable and the aliens are supposed to be reminiscent of old 50's creature features but end up really looking and acting like my middle schools production of Journey to the center of the earth. I forced myself to finish watching it. So I would say skip it, watch children of the damned instead.

They Are Among Us--a good scary sci-fi movie!.......2005-07-19

At the beginning of this movie, the music, the rain, and the graphics all set the mood perfectly. You know that you are in for a scary hour and a half. The premise of the story is good and made me wonder, "what if these things could actually happen?" I thought the actors/actresses played their roles well and were all believeable in their parts. On the technical side of it, the editing was very effective, especially toward the end of the movie with the numerous flashbacks. The director also did an admirable job and the ending left me thinking there might be a sequel in the works. I would highly recommend They Are Among Us to everyone who is a sci-fi fan and also to all who just occasionally like a good scary movie.

Classic Globalization Films DVD: 1940s 1950s Effects & Impact of Globalization & Trade on US Economics and the Global Economy Including Issues of Human Resources & Rights

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Classic Globalization Films DVD: 1940s 1950s Effects & Impact of Globalization & Trade on US Economics and the Global Economy Including Issues of Human Resources & Rights

Manufacturer: Quality Information Publishers Inc.
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Table Of Contents:
Disc I: (1) Conquer by the Clock (1943) 11 Minutes (2) Our Shrinking World (1946) 11 Minutes (3) Trading Centers of the Pacific Coast (1947) 11 Minutes (4) Introduction to Foreign Trade (1951) - 11 Minutes
Minutes (5) Round Trip: The USA in World Trade (1952) 19 Minutes (6) 6 1/2 Magic Hours (1958) 12 Minutes (7) The World At Your Call (19??) 9 Minutes
Disc II: (1) General Motors Around the World (Note: This film is missing segments) (1927) 24 Minutes
(2) Assignment: Venezuela (1956) 24 Minutes (3) Desert Venture (1948) 28 Minutes

ASIN: B000R3QT3C

Product Description

This compilation features films about the globalization of the world's economies and how technological advances have increased peoples ability to travel and communicate worldwide. Table Of Contents Disc I (1) Conquer by the Clock (1943) - A wonderful propaganda piece that encourages Americans to beef up industrial production to help America in the Global battle for economic, political, and military control 11 Minutes (2) Our Shrinking World (1946) - This vintage film explains how technological advances in communication and transportation have stimulated globalization and the dissemination of information 10 Minutes (3) Trading Centers of the Pacific Coast (1947) - This classic film discusses the ports and trading centers of the US west coast, their influence on the rest of the world and the import of ideas 11 Minutes (4) Introduction to Foreign Trade (1951) - This propaganda piece explores the global economy and explains how each individuals country is interlinked with the rest of the world economically 11 Minutes (5) Round Trip: The USA in World Trade (1952) - A wonderful documentary film featuring workers opinions on trade and globalization from around the world including France, Britain, Mexico, and the USA - 19 Minutes (6) 6 1/2 Magic Hours (1958) - This film is all about the advantages of traveling by air 12 Minutes (7) The World At Your Call - This film discusses developing technology in long distance telephone calling 9 Minutes Disc II (1) General Motors Around the World (This film is missing segments) (1927) - A wonderful look at General Motors factories and operations around the world 24 Minutes (2) Assignment: Venezuela (1956) - This film follows an American oil executive and his family as they relocate to Venezuela - 24 Minutes (3) Desert Venture (1948) - This is the greatest oil propaganda film every made. It explains why venture capital in Saudi Arabia is crucial to fueling America's "nation on wheels" 28 Minutes

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WHITE FACE

Manufacturer: CustomFlix
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( W ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Gone Through Any Changes Lately? (DVD version)

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Gone Through Any Changes Lately? (DVD version)

Manufacturer: Western Media Products
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Product Description

This is the popular "Slinky" video, a video for motivational staff in-service and leadership meeting openers for any profession. Change is an inevitable part of business and life. How do we anticipate the ramifications of change? This humorous look at change uses the metaphor of a slinky. Fun and thought provoking. (This is the DVD version. For VHS version, see Amazon listing.)

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Management vs. labor in a contemporary French setting
The price of being upwardly mobile
real people, real issues
Raw, Strong, Personal, Socioeconomic Cinematic Experience...
Great Taut Working Class Drama

Human Resources
Starring: Jalil Lespert , Jean-Claude Vallod , Chantal Barré , Véronique de Pandelaère , and Michel Begnez
Director: Laurent Cantet
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Art House & International | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( H ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

General | Foreign & International | Stores | DVD | Video

Mouchette - Criterion Collection
La Haine (Criterion Collection)
The Conformist (Extended Edition)
Gabrielle
Volver

ASIN: B0002EJ7LM
Release Date: 2004-08-03

Description

Parisian business school student Frank takes an internship in the Human Resources department at a factory where his father has labored for the past thirty years. When Franck's efforts to better the company lead to the firing of many employees, including his father, a furious confrontation ensues as father and son must ponder their relationship and their own separate lives. From acclaimed director Laurent Cantet (Time Out) and winner of over 17 international awards, including the Jury Prize, Seattle International Film Festival.

Customer Reviews:

Management vs. labor in a contemporary French setting.......2007-01-15

I thought this was played in a rather too pedestrian manner until near the end when the unspoken conflict between the father and the son exploded. In a sense this is a story more or less a century behind its time. We have the factory and the bosses, and we have the workers whose labor is exploited by those who own and control the capital. We have the union organizers who are little different from those who long ago sought a worker's paradise while employing communist tactics.

But where this is different is that it depicts the conflict in a contemporary setting with the institution of the 35-hour week as the bone of contention. Jalil Lespert plays Franck, the son who is home for the summer from college in Paris to serve as a management trainee at the factory where his father (Jean-Claude Vallod) is employed. The father is a throwback to the loyal worker of the 19th century who was wedded to the machine, who adored the machine, someone who has completely accepted his status as worker/cog in the greater machine that is the factory. Even in his off hours he works cutting wood using a large buzz saw in his garage. But he wants something better for his son.

The son is personable and talented. He puts together a questionnaire that allows management to see how its employees feel about the 35-hour week in order to better manipulate them. By accident he discovers that management is going to fire 12 workers, most of whom have spent their entire working lives for the company. This is the crisis point for the son.

Without going into plot details, what we discover at the end is that the father despises himself because he is nothing more than a man who feeds a machine while the son reveals that he at some level hates his father because he is a factory worker, a man who had neither the ability nor the gumption to raise about his station in life and a man who is afraid to question management.

Bottom line: slow and realistic to the point of being mundane with professional, but uninspired direction by Laurent Cantet.

The price of being upwardly mobile.......2005-02-24

In Jan 2000, the French government mandated a 35-hour work week for companies employing over 20 people. Those companies with less than 20 employees had to make the change to a 35-hour work week by 2002. The French film "Human Resources" focuses on a fictional factory about to make the work week switch.

Franck (Jalil Lespert) returns home from university in Paris to a small industrial town. He's employed as a summer intern at the same factory where his father (Jean-Claude Vallod) has toiled for the past 30 years. Franck returns full of great ideas. He's about to make a step into middle class life, and his parents, who've clearly made tremendous sacrifices for Franck, are very proud. Franck's father, however, has difficulties expressing his feelings, and he tends to resort to terse lectures and dire warnings. Perhaps he can see troubles ahead ...

Franck's father proudly shows off the machine he's stooped over for the past 30 years. His job, basically, is to load the machine, endlessly, with parts. The monotony of such mind-numbingly boring work is devastating, and yet the factory workers express the common thought that they were all appalled by the daunting aspect of spending their lives like this, but now they're used to it. With foremen barking orders to the workers to keep up speed and productivity, the workers are reduced to drones--human machines--without personality, and no one seems more of a machine in human form than Franck's father.

The dilemma at the factory is to negotiate terms for the 35-hour work week. Union officials--particularly Danielle Arnoux--sense that management will use the policy shift to shaft the workers. There's clearly no love lost between Arnoux and management, and when all involved parties sit around a table to discuss how to implement changes, insults fly.

Franck, eager to show his skills, suggests passing out a questionnaire to the employees to gauge their opinions and to help craft the changes. Union organizers are vehemently opposed to this move as they sniff it's a way for management to undermine union authority. Franck draws up his questionnaire, and rapidly is caught in the crossfire between the workers and management.

"Human Resources" is an excellent, thought provoking French film. While the story is fairly low-key, the consequences of Franck's presence in the factory are dramatic, and emotionally devastating for the family. As part of management, Franck's loyalties are torn, and the film explores the class dilemma he struggles with. Rejected by local young men his own age, Franck no longer belongs. He's in a moral no-man's land. Ultimately the film's strongest statements condemn a work system that saps the life and fight out of people, and once there's a hollow, spiritless shell left, the system spits them out for younger, cheaper employees--displacedhuman

real people, real issues.......2004-12-23

"Human Resources" is an excellent docudrama about labor issues in France following the instatement of the 35-hour work week (a measure taken to help remedy the country's unemployment crisis). The film has a wonderfully realistic tone and authentic characters coping with the challenges of everyday life in the modern world. Director Laurent Cantent (of the superb "Time Out") has given us as substantive a look at public issues working themselves out in individual lives as we saw in Soderbergh's "Erin Brockovich" or Sayles' "Matewan."

Raw, Strong, Personal, Socioeconomic Cinematic Experience..........2004-11-24

The film Human Resources illustrates the dilemma of when class differences clash as a young man from a lower class tries to rise to a higher class. The young man, Franck (Jalil Lespert), returns to his hometown to begin an internship for human resources at a local factory. Franck's father, a machinist, who is close to retirement, works for the same company that he is doing his internship for. Franck's childhood friends also work for the same company, and now Franck has to assume the role as a leader over the people of his past. The status change that Franck has acquired through higher academic achievement does not come with as smooth of a transition, as he expected, as it becomes a rough journey into personal socioeconomic choices.

Franck's intentions are honorable as he attempts to balance the internship at a managerial position in the human resource department with his parents and friends' social standing. But as expected a life of profiteering collides with the socially learned values that Franck has acquired from a young age as he sees the injustices committed by the company for which he is interning. Franck faces a decision of what is right and wrong, but also a decision that could destroy a potential successful future.

Laurent Cantet's vision depicts the social inequality between the rich and poor in a modern society thought the business student Franck and his choices. Cantet also displays the daily hard work of the blue-collar population, as their daily endeavors are frequently directed by the white-collar sector. Through the careful direction of Cantet the audience gets to experience a political cinematic experience, which offers much food for thought. The cinematography enhances the experience through the documentary-like style of the film as it creates an authentic atmosphere. This authentic atmosphere makes the story so much more personal to the audience, which in the end leaves the audience pondering social difference.

Great Taut Working Class Drama.......2004-09-25

This is a surprisingly strong film about labor and family relations in small French suburb. This earlier feature by one of France's rising stars of Cinema (see his exceptional TIME OUT) is heart breaking in it's depection of factory life and the mutability of family ties. With excellent real life performances the films near documentary style only adds to it's power.

Life in a Workcell - The Human Side of Lean Manufacturing

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Life in a Workcell - The Human Side of Lean Manufacturing

Manufacturer: Strategos Inc.
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Special Interests | Genres | DVD | Video

Product Description

Life in a Workcell In this unique Lean Manufacturing video you will hear from five actual workers who explain how they designed and built their own workcell. They talk about benefits to the company and the profound improvements in their work life as we follow them in their daily work. These are real people with a real story. This video shows how the human and technical elements of Lean Manufacturing interact in a complex Socio-Technical System. The results are dramatic and these are people who know firsthand. This video is the ideal introduction for the shop floor and gives important insights to supervisors, engineers and managers. Topics discussed in the video Cellular Versus Line and Functional layouts Benefits of Workcells o Quality in the Workcell o One Piece Flow o Visual Management & 5S o Wasted Motion o Communication in a Workcell o Teamwork in a Workcell Designing the Workcell Continuous Improvement o Use of consultants o Management responsibilities o Importance of Training Adjusting to the new environment Personal views & reactions to changes Measurements & Rewards Narrated by Shawn Smith

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Management vs. labor in a contemporary French setting
The price of being upwardly mobile
real people, real issues
Raw, Strong, Personal, Socioeconomic Cinematic Experience...
Great Taut Working Class Drama

Human Resources [Region 2]
Starring: Jalil Lespert , Jean-Claude Vallod , Chantal Barré , Véronique de Pandelaère , and Michel Begnez
Director: Laurent Cantet
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( H ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Mouchette - Criterion Collection
La Haine (Criterion Collection)
The Conformist (Extended Edition)
Gabrielle
Volver

ASIN: B00005QT02

Customer Reviews:

Management vs. labor in a contemporary French setting.......2007-01-15

The price of being upwardly mobile.......2005-02-24

real people, real issues.......2004-12-23

Raw, Strong, Personal, Socioeconomic Cinematic Experience..........2004-11-24

Great Taut Working Class Drama.......2004-09-25

A Systematic Approach to Hiring Employees

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A Systematic Approach to Hiring Employees

Manufacturer: Healthy Learning
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Product Description

Many employers interview and select prospective employees based on gut feeling or how they perceived that their present staff will get along with the new employee. This type of selection process may work on occasion, but, as a rule, its bound to result in poor choices. A Systematic Approach to Hiring Employees presents a detailed overview of how to select employees based on organizational/cultural fit, skill, and performance, rather than by gut feeling. The DVD also discusses the four key stages of a structured interviewing and selection process. Among the topics covered: the selection process, poor selections, cost of hiring, four key stages, profile, techniques, and decision. Produced in cooperation with the American Camp Association.

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