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From: "ADDA CHILE" <addachile@email.com> Subject: SOLICITE REGLA DE REGALO Date: 03 Feb 2003 13:56:23 <html> <head> <title>Untitled Document</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <body bgcolor=#000000 ><body bgcolor="#000000" > <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tr> <table width="775" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#000000">  <tr> <td width="11" height="472"></td> <td width="750" align="center" valign="middle" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div align="center"><a href="mailto:oferta2@addachile.com"><img src="http://www.dominia.cl/images/email2.jpg" width="515" height="378" border="0"></a></div></td> <td width="14"></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="23"></td> <td valign="middle" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div align="center"><font color="#000000" size="-1" face="Arial"><strong>Contáctese con nosotros a nuestro <a href="mailto:oferta2@addachile.com">e-mail </a>o visítenos en <a href="http://www.addachile.com">www.addachile.com</a></strong></font></div></td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="37"></td> <td valign="top" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> </td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="26"></td> <td valign="middle" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div align="center"><font color="#000000" size="-2" face="Arial"><strong>El Volanteo por Mail de Dominia se realiza según la legalidad vigente.<br> Si no desea recibir más información de nuestros servicios, envíe un correo <a href="mailto:%20descontinuar@email.com">aquí</a></strong></font></div></td> <td></td> </tr> </table> </body> </html> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] RUSSIAN ARK / **** (Not rated) Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:43 GMT RUSSIAN ARK / **** (Not rated) January 31, 2003 The Marquis: Sergey Dreiden Catherine the Great: Maria Kuznetsova The Spy: Leonid Mozgovoy Himself: Mikhail Piotrovsky Orbeli: David Giorgobiani Alexander Chaban: Boris Piotrovsky Himself: Lev Yeliseyev Himself: Oleg Khmelnitsky Wellspring presents a film directed by Alexander Sokurov. Written by Anatoly Nikiforov and Sokurov. Running time: 96 minutes. No MPAA rating (unobjectionable for all). BY ROGER EBERT Every review of "Russian Ark" begins by discussing its method. The movie consists of one unbroken shot lasting the entire length of the film, as a camera glides through the Hermitage, the repository of Russian art and history in St. Petersburg. The cinematographer Tillman Buttner, using a Steadicam and high-def digital technology, joined with some 2,000 actors in an tight-wire act in which every mark and cue had to be hit without fail; there were two broken takes before the third time was the charm. The subject of the film, which is written, directed and (in a sense) hosted by Alexander Sokurov, is no less than three centuries of Russian history. The camera doesn't merely take us on a guided tour of the art on the walls and in the corridors, but witnesses many visitors who came to the Hermitage over the years. Apart from anything else, this is one of the best-sustained ideas I have ever seen on the screen. Sokurov reportedly rehearsed his all-important camera move again and again with the cinematographer, the actors and the invisible sound and lighting technicians, knowing that the Hermitage would be given to him for only one precious day. After a dark screen and the words "I open my eyes and I see nothing," the camera's eye opens upon the Hermitage and we meet the Marquis (Sergey Dreiden), a French nobleman who will wander through the art and the history as we follow him. The voice we heard, which belongs to the never-seen Sokurov, becomes a foil for the Marquis, who keeps up a running commentary. What we see is the grand sweep of Russian history in the years before the Revolution, and a glimpse of the grim times afterwards. It matters little, I think, if we recognize all of the people we meet on this journey; such figures as Catherine II and Peter the Great are identified (Catherine, like many another museum visitor, is searching for the loo), but some of the real people who play themselves, like Mikhail Piotrovsky, the current director of the Hermitage, work primarily as types. We overhear whispered conversations, see state functions, listen as representatives of the Shah apologize to Nicholas I for the killing of Russian diplomats, even see little flirtations. And then, in a breathtaking opening-up, the camera enters a grand hall and witnesses a formal state ball. Hundreds of dancers, elaborately costumed and bejeweled, dance to the music of a symphony orchestra, and then the camera somehow seems to float through the air to the orchestra's stage, and moves among the musicians. An invisible ramp must have been moved into place below the camera frame, for Buttner and his Steadicam to smoothly climb. The film is a glorious experience to witness, not least because, knowing the technique and understanding how much depends on every moment, we almost hold our breath. How tragic if an actor had blown a cue or Buttner had stumbled five minutes from the end! In a sense, the long, long single shot reminds me of a scene in "Nostalgia," the 1982 film by Russia's Andrei Tarkovsky, in which a man obsessively tries to cross and recross a littered and empty pool while holding a candle which he does not want to go out: The point is not the action itself, but its duration and continuity. It will be enough for most viewers, as it was for me, to simply view "Russian Ark" as an original and beautiful idea. But Stanley Kauffmann raises an inarguable objection in his New Republic review, when he asks, "What is there intrinsically in the film that would grip us if it had been made--even excellently made--in the usual edited manner?" If it were not one unbroken take, if we were not continuously mindful of its 96 minutes--what then? "We sample a lot of scenes," he writes, "that in themselves have no cumulation, no self-contained point ... Everything we see or hear engages us only as part of a directorial tour de force." This observation is true, and deserves an answer, and I think my reply would be that "Russian Ark," as it stands, is enough. I found myself in a reverie of thoughts and images, and sometimes, as my mind drifted to the barbarity of Stalin and the tragic destiny of Russia, the scenes of dancing became poignant and ironic. It is not simply what Sokurov shows about Russian history, but what he does not show--doesn't need to show, because it shadows all our thoughts of that country. Kauffmann is right that if the film had been composed in the ordinary way out of separate shots, we would question its purpose. But it is not, and the effect of the unbroken flow of images (experimented with in the past by directors like Hitchcock and Max Ophuls) is uncanny. If cinema is sometimes dreamlike, then every edit is an awakening. "Russian Ark" spins a daydream made of centuries. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] DELIVER US FROM EVA / ** Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:31 GMT DELIVER US FROM EVA / ** February 7, 2003 Eva: Gabrielle Union Ray: LL Cool J Kareenah: Essence Atkins Tim Williams: Mel Jackson Jacqui: Meagan Good Cynda: Yuri Brown Focus Features presents a film directed by Gary Hardwick. Written by Gary Hardwick, James Iver Mattson and B.E. Brauner. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (for sex-related dialogue). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT "Deliver Us From Eva" is the other movie of the same weekend based on a romantic bet. See my review of "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" (in today's WeekendPlus) for my general comments on this unhappy genre. It has the advantage of being about one bet, not two, preserving at least one of the protagonists as a person we can safely like. But it proceeds so deliberately from one plot point to the next that we want to stand next to the camera, holding up cards upon which we have lettered clues and suggestions. The movie stars two tall and striking actors, Gabrielle Union and LL Cool J, who have every reason to like each other anyway, even if Union's brothers-in-law were not paying him $5,000 to take her out, make her fall in love, and move with her to a town far, far away. They can't stand the woman. Well, hardly can we. Union plays Eva, oldest of the four Dandridge Sisters. After the untimely death of their parents, Eva took upon the task of raising the girls, and has never been able to stop giving the orders--no, not even now that they're grown up. The sisters are Kareenah (Essence Atkins), who won't get pregnant, on Eva's orders; Bethany (Robinne Lee), who Eva won't let live with her cop boyfriend, and Jacqui (Meagan Good), who is married to a mailman who always feels like there's postage due. The Dandridge Sisters like their local fame and kind of enjoy being under Eva's motherly thumb. The director, Gary Hardwick, often films them cresting a hill, four abreast, hair and skirts flying, arms linked, while straggling after them are their luckless men, left in the rear. Much of the action centers on a beauty parlor, serving, like the title location in "Barbershop," as the stage upon which daily soap operas are played out to loud acclaim or criticism. The Dandridge family logjam is broken, as we can easily foresee, when Eva actually begins to fall for that big lug Ray (played by LL Cool J, who says after this movie he is changing his name back to James Todd Smith, a victory for punctuationists everywhere). He wins her over by admiring her spicy beans, which are too hot for the wimps she usually dates. If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, the way to a woman's heart is through adoring a recipe that only she thinks is edible. But let's back up. The problem with their love affair, of course, is that although Eva loves Ray and Ray loves Eva, Eva is certain to find out about the bet, causing a scene of heartbreak and betrayal that would be moving if I hadn't also seen it in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" and every other movie in history where lovers begin with secret deception and arrive at the truth. Any two lovers with the slightest instinct for each other, with the most perfunctory ability to see true romance glowing in the eyes of the beloved, would not have the fight because they would not need the fight. They would know their love was true. I live to see the following scene: She: "You mean ... you only went out with me on a bet!?!" He: "That's right, baby." She: "Well, you won, you dumb lug. Now haul your lying ass over here and make me forget it." Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS / *1/2 Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:33 GMT HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS / *1/2 February 7, 2003 Andie: Kate Hudson Ben: Matthew McConaughey Tony: Adam Goldberg Spears: Michael Michele Green: Shalom Harlow Lana Jong: Bebe Neuwirth Phillip Warren: Robert Klein Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Donald Petrie. Written by Kristen Buckley, Brian Regan and Burr Steers, based on the book by Michelle Alexander and Jeannie Long. Rated PG-13. Running time: 112 minutes. Opening at local theaters BY ROGER EBERT I am just about ready to write off movies in which people make bets about whether they will, or will not, fall in love. The premise is fundamentally unsound, since it subverts every love scene with a lying subtext. Characters are nice when they want to be mean, or mean when they want to be nice. The easiest thing at the movies is to sympathize with two people who are falling in love. The hardest thing is to sympathize with two people who are denying their feelings, misleading each other, and causing pain to a trusting heart. This is comedy only by dictionary definition. In life, it is unpleasant, and makes the audience sad. Unless, of course, the characters are thoroughgoing rotters in the first place, as in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (1988), in which Steve Martin and Michael Caine make a $50,000 bet on who will be the first to con the rich American played by Glenne Headley. They deserve their comeuppance, and we enjoy it. "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" is not, alas, pitched at that modest level of sophistication, and provides us with two young people who are like pawns in a sex game for the developmentally shortchanged. He works at an ad agency. She works for a magazine that is Cosmopolitan, spelled a different way. She pitches her editor on an article about how to seduce a guy and then drive him away in 10 days. He pitches his boss on an idea that involves him being able to get a woman to fall in love with him in 10 days. They don't even Meet Cute, but are shuffled together by a treacherous conspirator. Now of course they will fall in love. That goes without saying. They will fall in love even though she deliberately creates scenes no man could abide, such as nicknaming his penis Princess Sophia. She allows her disgusting miniature dog to pee on his pool table. She even puts a plate of sandwiches down on top of the pot in their poker game, something Nancy would be too sophisticated to do to Sluggo. He puts up with this mistreatment because he has his own bet to win, and also because, doggone it, he has fallen in love with this vaporous fluffball of narcissistic cluelessness. That leaves only one big scene for us to anticipate, or dread: the inevitable moment when they both find out the other made a bet. At a moment like that, a reasonably intelligent couple would take a beat, start laughing, and head for the nearest hot-sheets haven. But no. These characters descend from the moribund fictional ideas of earlier decades, and must react in horror, run away in grief, prepare to leave town, etc., while we in the audience make our own bets, about their IQs. Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson star. I neglected to mention that, maybe because I was trying to place them in this review's version of the Witness Protection Program. If I were taken off the movie beat and assigned to cover the interior design of bowling alleys, I would have some idea of how they must have felt as they made this film. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] LOVE LIZA/ *** (R) Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:34 GMT LOVE LIZA/ *** (R) February 7, 2003 Wilson Joel: Philip Seymour Hoffman Mary Ann Bankhead: Kathy Bates Denny: Jack Kehler Maura Haas: Sarah Koskoff Tom Bailey: Stephen Tobolowsky Brenda:Erika Alexander Sony Pictures Classics presents a film directed by Todd Louiso. Written by Gordy Hoffman. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated R (for drug use, language and brief nudity). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT Diane Lane, who worked on Philip Seymour Hoffman's second movie, remembers that the cast almost tiptoed around him, he seemed so fragile. He's a bulky man, substantial, and yet in many of his roles he seems ready to deflate with a last exhausted sigh. It is a little startling to meet him in person and discover he is outgoing, confident, humorous. On the other hand, who knows him better than his brother Gordy, whose screenplay for "Love Liza" creates a Hoffman role teetering on the brink of implosion. Hoffman plays Wilson Joel, a tech-head whose wife has recently committed suicide, although it takes us a while to figure that out. He presents a facade of conviviality in the office, sometimes punctuated by outbursts of laughter that go on too long, like choked grief. His home seems frozen in a state of mid-unpacking, and he sleeps on the floor. Eventually he stops going in to work altogether. What he feels for his late wife is never usefully articulated. She left a letter for him, but he has not opened it; her mother, played by Kathy Bates, would like to know what it says, but what can she do to influence this man whose psyche is in meltdown? Wilson gives the sense of never having really grown up. One day he begins sniffing gasoline, a dangerous way to surround himself with a blurred world. He doesn't even have grown-up vices like drinks or drugs, but reverts to something he may have tried as a teenager. The movie proceeds with a hypnotic relentlessness that hesitates between horror and black comedy. Searching to explain all the gas he's buying, he blurts out that he needs it for his model airplanes (this would have been a teenager's alibi). A friendly co-worker thinks maybe this is an opening to lure him back into life, and sends over a relative who is an enthusiast of remote-controlled planes and boats. This sends Wilson careening into a series of cover-ups; he has to buy a model airplane, he finds himself attending remote control gatherings in which he has not the slightest interest and finally, after a series of events that Jim Carrey could have performed in another kind of movie, he finds himself inexplicably swimming in a lake while angry little remote-controlled boats buzz like hornets around him. "Love Liza," directed by Todd Louiso, is not about a plot but about a condition. The condition is familiar to students of some of Hoffman's other characters, and comes to full flower in "Happiness" (1998), where he plays a man who lives in solitary confinement with his desperate and antisocial sexual fantasies. Sex hardly seems the issue with Wilson Joel, but he seems incapable of any kind of normal socializing, other than a kind of fake office camaraderie he might have copied from others. The mystery is not why Liza killed herself, but why she married him. The purpose of a movie like this is to inspire thoughts about human nature. Most movies do not contain real people; they contain puppets who conform to popular stereotypes and do entertaining things. In the recent and relatively respectable thriller "The Recruit," for example, Colin Farrell doesn't play a three-dimensional human, nor is he required to. He is a place-holder for a role that has been played before and will be endlessly played again--the kid who chooses a mentor in a dangerous spy game. He is pleasant, sexy, wary, angry, baffled, ambitious and relieved, all on cue, but these emotions do not proceed from his personality; they are generated by the requirements of the plot. Leaving the movie, we may have learned something about CIA spycraft (and a lot more about the manufacturers of thrillers), but there is not one single thing we will have learned about being alive. Al Pacino is the co-star of that movie, defined and motivated as narrowly as Farrell is. In a new movie named "People I Know," he plays a breathing, thinking human being, a New York press agent driven by drugs, drink, duty and a persistent loyalty to his own political idealism. We learn something about life from that performance. Pacino teaches us, as he is always capable of doing in the right role. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a teacher, too. You should see "Love Liza" in anticipation of his new movie "Owning Mahowny," which I saw at Sundance this year ("Love Liza" was at the 2002 festival, where it won the prize for best screenplay). The Mahowny character is at right angles to Wilson, but seems similarly blocked at an early stage of development. Observing how Mahowny, an addicted gambler, relates to his long-suffering fiancee (Minnie Driver), we can guess at the ordeal that Wilson put Liza through. He's not cruel or angry or mean; he's simply not ... there. His eyes seek other horizons. In an age when depression and Prozac are not unknown, when the popularity of New Age goofiness reflects an urgent need for reassurance, Hoffman may be playing characters much closer to the American norm than an action hero like Farrell. We cannot all outsmart the CIA and win the girl, but many of us know what it feels like to be stuck in doubt and confusion, and cornered by our own evasions. There is a kind of attentive concern that Hoffman brings to his characters, as if he has been giving them private lessons, and now it is time for their first public recital. Whether or not they are ready, it can be put off no longer, and so here they are, trembling and blinking, wondering why everyone else seems to know the music. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] SHANGHAI KNIGHTS/ *** (PG-13) Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:36 GMT SHANGHAI KNIGHTS/ *** (PG-13) February 7, 2003 Chon Wang: Jackie Chan Roy O'Bannon: Owen Wilson Chon Lin: Fann Wong Charlie: Aaron Johnson Artie Doyle: Thomas Fisher Rathbone: Aidan Gillen Wu Chan: Donnie Yen Jack the Ripper: Oliver Cotton Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment present a film directed by David Dobkin. Written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Running time: 107 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for action violence and sexual content). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT "Shanghai Knights" has a nice mix of calculation and relaxed goofiness, and in Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, once again teams up two playful actors who manifestly enjoy playing their ridiculous roles. The world of the action comedy is fraught with failure, still more so the period-Western-kung fu comedy, but here is a movie, like its predecessor "Shanghai Noon" (2000), that bounds from one gag to another like an eager puppy. The movie opens with the obligatory action prologue required in the Screenwriter's Code: The Great Seal of China is stolen by sinister intruders, and its guardian killed. The guardian of course is the father of Chon Wang (Jackie Chan), who, as we join him after the titles, is sheriff of Carson City, Nevada, and busy ticking off the names of the bad guys he has apprehended. Hearing of the tragedy from his beautiful sister Chon Lin (Fann Wong), Wang hurries to New York to join up with his old comrade in arms Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson). The movie's plot is entirely arbitrary. Nothing has to happen in Nevada, New York or its ultimate location, London, although I suppose the setup does need to be in China. Every new scene simply establishes the setting for comedy, martial arts, or both. Because the comedy is fun in a broad, genial way, and because Chan and his co-stars (including Fann Wong) are martial-arts adepts, and because the director, David Dobkin, keeps the picture filled with energy and goodwill, the movie is just the sort of mindless entertainment we're ready for after all of December's distinguished and significant Oscar finalists. The plot moves to London because, I think, that's where the Great Seal and the evil plotters are, and even more because it needs fresh locations to distinguish the movie from its predecessor. The filmmakers click off locations like Sheriff Chan checking off the bad guys: The House of Lords, Buckingham Palace (fun with the poker-faced guards), Whitechapel and an encounter with Jack the Ripper, Big Ben (homage to Harold Lloyd), Madame Tussaud's. Charlie Chaplin and Arthur Conan Doyle make surprise appearances, surprises I will not spoil. For Jackie Chan, "Shanghai Knights" is a comeback after the dismal "The Tuxedo" (2002), a movie that made the incalculable error of depriving him of his martial-arts skills and making him the captive of a cybernetic suit. Chan's character flip-flopped across the screen in computer-generated action, which is exactly what we don't want in a Jackie Chan movie. The whole point is that he does his own stunts, and the audience knows it. They know it, among other reasons, because over the closing credits there are always outtakes in which Chan and his co-stars miss cues, fall wrong, get banged and bounced on assorted body parts, and break up laughing. The outtakes are particularly good this time, even though I cannot help suspecting (unfairly, maybe) that some of them are just as staged as the rest of the movie. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BIKER BOYZ / ** (PG-13) Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:39 GMT BIKER BOYZ / ** (PG-13) January 31, 2003 Smoke: Laurence Fishburne Kid: Derek Luke Soul Train: Orlando Jones Dogg: Kid Rock Anita: Vanessa Bell Calloway Motherland: Djimon Hounsou Queenie: Lisa Bonet Stuntman: Brendan Fehr Wood: Larenz Tate DreamWorks presents a film written and directed by Reggie Rock Bythewood. Running time: 111 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence, sexual content and language). BY ROGER EBERT "Biker Boyz" has an idea, but not an approach. The idea comes from an article in Los Angeles New Times about motorcycle clubs that meet for scheduled but illegal road races. The members are affluent enough to maintain expensive bikes (even mechanics are on the payroll) and polite enough that the movie's language slipped in under the ropes at PG-13. Many but not all of the boyz are African-American; some are still literally boyz but others are men in their 40s, and the (unexplored) subtext is that these are successful men who enjoy the excitement of street racing. Not much mention is made of jobs, but you can't buy and maintain these machines without a good one. We meet Smoke (Laurence Fishburne), longtime undefeated champion of street racing, and his mechanic Slick Will (Eriq La Salle). Slick's son is Kid (Derek Luke). Smoke's longtime fierce competitor is Dogg (Kid Rock). Races involve money (bets go to $5,000) and, even more significantly, racing helmets: If you lose, you hand over your helmet to the guy who beat you. All of this is intriguing material, but the movie doesn't do much with it. There are several races in the film, but they don't generate the kind of pulse-quickening suspense that the races did in "The Fast and the Furious," a four-wheel street-racing picture, did. As a general rule the right people win for the right reasons, and during some of the races the spectators inexplicably cluster at the starting line, so there's time for soul-to-soul conversations at the finish line. Some of those involve a secret revealed halfway through the film; stop reading now unless you want to learn that Kid's mother Anita (Vanessa Bell Calloway) tells him, after the death of the man he thinks is his father, that Smoke is his real father. This leads to less trauma and more niceness than you might think, in a movie that is gentler and tamer than the ads might suggest. Even insults, when they are traded, seem more written than felt. This is the third film I've seen Derek Luke in, after "Antwone Fisher" and the Sundance 2003 hit "Pieces of April." It's his least significant role, and yet confirms his presence: He's a rising star, all right, with a particular way of holding back, as if sizing up a situation to find the best entry point. Like Denzel Washington, who cast him as Antwone, he'll spend most of his career playing nice guys. (Does he have a "Training Day" in him? I can't tell from here.) Laurence Fishburne is a strong presence in the central role, but the character isn't very interesting; he's good at racing, he's not a bad man, he has few complexities. Vanessa Bell Calloway, a crucial woman in both men's lives, has a kind of sultry power that suggests if she ever got in a bike, she'd have all the helmets. I think what happened here is that the filmmakers were fascinated by the original article, did some research that hooked them on this world, and then trusted the world would be enough to power the movie. It isn't. We need a stronger conflict, as we had in "The Fast and the Furious," and better and more special effects (the crashes all seem to happen at a distance). The father-son scenes have an earnestness and sincerity that would be right in another kind of movie, but seem like sidebars to the main story. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE QUIET AMERICAN/ **** (R) Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:37 GMT THE QUIET AMERICAN/ **** (R) February 7, 2003 Thomas Fowler: Michael Caine Alden Pyle: Brendan Fraser Phuong: Do Hai Yen Inspector Vigot: Rade Sherbedgia Hinh: Tzi Ma Joe Tunney: Robert Stanton Bill Granger: Holmes Osborne General The: Quang Hai Mr. Muoi: Ferdinand Hoang Miramax Films presents a film directed by Phillip Noyce. Written by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan. Based on the novel by Graham Greene. Running time: 118 minutes. Rated R (for images of violence and some language). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT The Englishman is sad and lonely. He suffers from the indignity of growing too old for romance while not yet free of yearning. He is in love for one last time. He doesn't even fully understand it is love until he is about to lose it. He is a newspaper correspondent in Saigon, and she is a dance-hall girl 30 or 40 years younger. She loves him because he pays her to. This arrangement suits them both. He tells himself he is "helping" her. Well, he is, and she is helping him. His name is Fowler, and he is played by Michael Caine in a performance that seems to descend perfectly formed. There is no artifice in it, no unneeded energy, no tricks, no effort. It is there. Her name is Phuong (Do Hai Yen), and like all beautiful women who reveal little of their true feelings, she makes it possible for him to project his own upon her. He loves her for what he can tell himself about her. Between them steps Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), the quiet young American who has come to Vietnam, he believes, to save it. Eventually he also believes he will save Phuong. Young men like old ones find it easy to believe hired love is real, and so believe a girl like Phuong would prefer a young man to an old one, when all youth represents is more work. Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American (1955) told the story of this triangle against the background of America's adventure in Vietnam in the early 1950s--when, he shows us, the CIA used pleasant, presentable agents like Pyle to pose as "aid workers" while arranging terrorist acts that would justify our intervention there. The novel inspired a 1958 Hollywood version in which the director Joseph Mankiewicz turned the story on its head, making Fowler the bad guy and Pyle the hero. Did the CIA have a hand in funding that film? Stranger things have happened: The animated version of "Animal Farm" (1948) was paid for by a CIA front, and twisted Orwell's fable about totalitarianism both East and West into a simplistic anti-communist cartoon. Now comes another version of "The Quiet American," this one directed by the Australian Phillip Noyce and truer to the Greene novel. It is a film with a political point of view, but often its characters lose sight of that, in their fascination with each other and with the girl. A question every viewer will have to answer at the end is whether a final death is the result of moral conviction, or romantic compulsion. The film is narrated by Caine's character, in that conversational voice weary with wisdom; we are reminded of the tired cynicism of the opening narration in the great film of Greene's The Third Man. Pyle has "a face with no history, no problems," Fowler tells us; his own face is a map of both. "I'm just a reporter," he says. "I offer no point of view, I take no action, I don't get involved." Indeed, he has scarcely filed a story in the past year for his paper, the Times of London; he is too absorbed in Phuong, and opium. The irony is that Pyle, who he actually likes at first, jars him into action and involvement. What he finally cannot abide is the younger man's cheerful certainty that he is absolutely right: "Saving the country and saving a woman would be the same thing to a man like that." As luck would have it, "The Quiet American" was planned for release in the autumn of 2001. It was shelved after 9/11, when Miramax president Harvey Weinstein decided, no doubt correctly, that the national mood was not ripe for a film pointing out that the United States is guilty of terrorist acts of its own. Caine appealed to Weinstein, who a year later allowed the film to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival, where it was so well received by the public and critics that Miramax opened it for Oscar consideration in December. Now it goes into national release, on what appears to be the eve of another dubious war. It would be unfortunate if people went to the movie, or stayed away, because of its political beliefs. There is no longer much controversy about the CIA's hand in stirring the Vietnam pot, and the movie is not an expose but another of Greene's stories about a worn-down, morally exhausted man clinging to shreds of hope in a world whose cynicism has long since rendered him obsolete. Both men "love" Phuong, but for Pyle she is less crucial. Fowler, on the other hand, admits: "I know I'm not essential to Phuong, but if I were to lose her, for me that would be the beginning of death." What Phuong herself thinks is not the point with either man, since they are both convinced she wants them. Fraser, who often stars as a walking cartoon ("Dudley Do-Right," "George of the Jungle") has shown in other pictures, like "Gods and Monsters," that he is a gifted actor, and here he finds just the right balance between confidence and blindness: What he does is evil, but he is convinced it is good, and has a simple, sunny view that maddens an old hand like Fowler. The two characters work well together because there is an undercurrent of commonality: They are both floating in the last currents of colonialism, in which life in Saigon can be very good, unless you get killed. Noyce made two great pictures close together, this one and "Rabbit-Proof Fence," which I reviewed last December. He feels anger as he tells this story, but he conceals it, because the story as it stands is enough. Some viewers will not even intercept the political message. It was that way with Greene: The politics were in the very weave of the cloth, not worth talking about. Here, in a rare Western feature shot in Vietnam, with real locations and sets that look well-worn enough to be real, with wonderful performances, he suggests a world view more mature and knowing than the simplistic pieties that provide the public face of foreign policy. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] FINAL DESTINATION 2 / *1/2 (R) Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:40 GMT FINAL DESTINATION 2 / *1/2 (R) January 31, 2003 Clear Rivers: Ali Larter Kimberly Corman: A.J. Cook Thomas Burke: Michael Landes Evan Lewis: David Paetkau Tim Carpenter: James Kirk Nora Carpenter: Lynda Boyd Kat: Keegan Connor Tracy Rory: Jonathan Cherry New Line Cinema presents a film directed by David R. Ellis. Written by J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence, gruesome accidents, language, drug content and some nudity). BY ROGER EBERT "Look, we drove a long way to get here, so if you know how to beat death, we'd like to know." So say pending victims to a morgue attendant in "Final Destination 2," which takes a good idea from the first film and pounds it into the ground, not to mention decapitating, electrocuting, skewering, blowing up, incinerating, drowning and gassing it. Perhaps movies are like history, and repeat themselves, first as tragedy, then as farce. The earlier film involved a group of friends who got off an airplane after one of them had a vivid precognition of disaster. The plane crashes on takeoff. But then, one by one, most of the survivors die, as if fate has to balance its books. That movie depends on all the horror cliches of the Dead Teenager Movie (formula: teenagers are alive at beginning, dead at end). But it is well-made and thoughtful. As I wrote in my review: "The film in its own way is biblical in its dilemma, although the students use the code word 'fate' when what they are really talking about is God. In their own terms, in their own way, using teenage vernacular, the students have existential discussions." That was then, this is now. Faithful to its genre, "Final Destination 2" allows one of its original characters, Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) to survive, so she can be a link to the earlier film. In the new film, Clear is called upon by Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook), a twentysomething who is driving three friends in her SUV when she suddenly has a vision of a horrendous traffic accident. Kimberly blocks the on-ramp, saving the drivers behind her when logs roll off a timber truck, gas tanks explode, etc. But is it the same old scenario? Are the people who she saved all doomed to die? "There is a sort of force--an unseen malevolent presence around us every day," a character muses. "I prefer to call it death." The malevolent presence doesn't remain unseen for long. Soon bad things are happening to good people, in a series of accidents that Rube Goldberg would have considered implausible. In one ingenious sequence, we see a character who almost trips over a lot of toys while carrying a big Macintosh iMac box. In his house, he starts the microwave and lights a fire under a frying pan, then drops his ring down the garbage disposal, then gets his hand trapped in the disposal while the microwave explodes and the frying pan starts a fire, then gets his hand loose, breaks a window that mysteriously slams shut, climbs down a fire escape, falls to the ground and finally, when it seems he is safe ... well, everything that could possibly go wrong does, except that he didn't get a Windows machine. Other characters die in equally improbable ways. One is ironically killed by an air bag, another almost chokes in a dentist's chair, a third is severed from his respirator, and so on, although strange things do happen in real life. I came home from seeing this movie to read the story about the teenager who was thrown 25 feet in the air after a car crash, only to save himself by grabbing some telephone lines. If that had happened in "Final Destination 2," his car would have exploded, blowing him off the lines with a flying cow. There is a kind of dumb level on which a movie like this works, once we understand the premise. People will insist on dying oddly. Remember the story of the woman whose husband left her, so she jumped out the window and landed on him as he was leaving the building? The thing about "FD2" is that the characters make the mistake of trying to figure things out. Their reasoning? If you were meant to die, then you owe death a life. But a new life can cancel out an old one. So if the woman in the white van can safely deliver her baby, then that means that someone else will be saved, or will have to die, I forget which. This is the kind of bookkeeping that makes you wish Arthur Anderson were still around. Note: The first "Final Destination" (2000) had characters named after famous horror-film figures, including Browning, Horton, Lewton, Weine, Schreck, Hitchcock and Chaney. The sequel has just two that I can identify: Corman and Carpenter. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] MORVERN CALLAR / ***1/2 (Not rated) Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:41 GMT MORVERN CALLAR / ***1/2 (Not rated) January 31, 2003 Morvern Callar: Samantha Morton Lanna: Kathleen McDermott Boy in Room 1022: Raife Patrick Burchell Dazzer: Dan Cadan Sheila Tequila: Carolyn Calder Cowboy Pictures presents a film directed by Lynne Ramsay. Written by Liana Dognini and Ramsay. Based on a novel by Alan Warner. Running time: 97 minutes. No MPAA rating (intended for adults). BY ROGER EBERT In the opening scene of "Morvern Callar," a young woman awakens next to the body of her boyfriend, who has committed suicide during the night. Lights blink on their Christmas tree. His blood is all over the floor. His presents for her are still wrapped and under the tree. On his computer he has left a suicide note ("It just seemed like the right thing to do"), instructions on how to withdraw money from his account, and the manuscript of a novel that he wants her to submit to a list of publishers. Morvern reads the note, opens the presents (she likes the leather jacket), and walks out into the winter gloom of Glasgow. She stands for a long time on a train platform, until a pay phone rings. She listens to the stranger on the other end of the line and finally says, "I'm sure he'll be all right." That night, she dresses sexy and meets her best friend, Lanna, for a night at the pub that ends with drunken, confused sex with strangers. The boyfriend's body remains on the floor. Morvern is played by Samantha Morton, who like Isabelle Huppert has a face that can convey enormous emotions without visibly changing. Because she reveals so little, we are drawn into her, fascinated, trying to read her thoughts. You may remember Morton as the musician's deaf-mute girlfriend in Woody Allen's "Sweet and Lowdown," or as the pale, limp "pre-cog" in Spielberg's "Minority Report." Here she is a working class girl, prisoner of a thankless job in a supermarket, whose boyfriend is better educated and more successful. One of the mysteries of the early stages of "Morvern Callar" is Morvern's behavior after finding the body. She cries, inwardly and privately, but such is her aura that we don't know if she's crying for him, or for herself. He left money for a funeral, but after several days, when she can ignore the body no longer, she cuts it up and throws it away. There is a closeup of the computer screen as she deletes his name on the title page of the novel and types in her own. Is she heartless, crazy, or what? I think the answer is right there in the film, but less visible to American viewers because we are less class-conscious than the filmmakers (the director, Lynne Ramsay, is the daughter of a bartender; Samantha Morton is a survivor of foster homes). Consider. Morvern lives in her boyfriend's fairly expensive and comfortable Glasgow flat, but still works at the supermarket. If they were truly a couple with a future and had been together for some time, isn't it reasonable to expect that she would no longer be holding onto that job? My guess is that their relationship began fairly recently, based on sex between incompatibles and fueled by a lot of drinking, and that by killing himself he has, from her point of view, shown how unimportant she was to him and how lightly he took their relationship and his life. (When a young person who is not dying or in unbearable crisis commits suicide, it is often an act of selfish unforgivable egotism.) By signing her name to his novel, Morvern is sending a message beyond the grave: I will not clean up this mess and finish your life for you. She will begin to live her own. Unfortunately, she has few resources. She lacks even her friend Lanna's (Kathleen McDermott) gift for silly aimless hedonism. After she actually sells the novel, she uses the publisher's check to buy them both a package holiday in Spain, where Lanna is skilled at drinking, partying and getting laid, but Morvern is a ghost at the feast, a silent, inward person who looks not so much sad as disengaged. Her style is passive aggressive. She withholds herself, is not quite present. She sits at times alone and silent, and we feel she is not alone with her thoughts, but only with her feelings. There is the sense that she broods about hurt. We have little idea what her early life was like, but when we learn that Samantha Morton never talks about her own foster childhood, we are bold enough to wonder if the sense-memories she draws upon for the performance have converted her early years into Morvern's. The movie doesn't have a plot in the conventional sense, and could not support one. People like Morvern Callar do not lead lives that lend themselves to beginnings, middles and ends. She is on hold. Somehow, in some way, she's stuck in neutral. The gray-brown tones of her life in Glasgow reflect her emotional habitat, and the bright colors of Spain cause her to wince in pain. She can only handle so much incoming experience at a time. "Sorry, Morvern," her boyfriend wrote in that note. "Don't try to understand." What a bloody condescending jerk. Yet she is not drifting because of his death. She drifts anyway, and always has. What great wrong has made her so damaged? We watch Samantha Morton so closely, with such fascination, because she is able to embody a universe of wounded privacy. This is Lynne Ramsay's second film, after "Ratcatcher" (1999). That one was about a small boy living with the guilt of a terrible act. Her short films include one in which two small girls, half-sisters, trying to understand the wreckage of the marriages that created them. She has been signed to direct the film of Alice Sebold's best-seller The Lovely Bones, narrated by the ghostly voice of a young girl who has been raped and murdered. These stories all seem to explore similar dread lifescapes. Why she knows it so well we cannot guess, but she does. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE ISLE / *** (Not rated) Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:44 GMT THE ISLE / *** (Not rated) January 31, 2003 Hee-Jin: Jung Suh Hyun-Shik: Yoo-Suk Kim Eun-A: Sung-Hee Park Mang-Chee: Jae-Hyung Cho Middle-aged man: Hang-Sun Jang Empire Pictures presents a film written and directed by Ki-Duk Kim. Running time: 89 minutes. No MPAA rating (extreme sexual situations, adult themes, violent behavior). In Korean with English subtitles. BY ROGER EBERT The audiences at Sundance are hardened and sophisticated, but when the South Korean film "The Isle" played there in 2001, there were gasps and walk-outs. People covered their eyes, peeked out, and slammed their palms back again. I report that because I want you to know: This is the most gruesome and quease-inducing film you are likely to have seen. You may not even want to read the descriptions in this review. Yet it is also beautiful, angry and sad, with a curious sick poetry, as if the Marquis de Sade had gone in for pastel landscapes. The film involves a lake where fishermen rent tiny cottages, each on its own raft, and bob with the waves as they catch and cook their dinners. It is the ultimate getaway. Once they have been delivered to their rafts by Hee-Jin, a woman who lives in a shack on the bank and operates a motorboat, they depend on her for all of their supplies, and for the return to shore. She also sometimes brings them prostitutes, or services them herself. Hee-Jin (Jung Suh) does not speak throughout the film, and is thought to be a mute, until she utters one piercing scream. She is like the heroine of "Woman of the Dunes," ruling a domain in which men, once lured, can be kept captive. Most of the time she simply operates her business, ferrying the fishermen back and forth to their floating retreats. The men treat Hee-Jin and the prostitutes with brutality and contempt, even making them dive into the water to get their payments; that these women are willing to work in this way is a measure of their desperation. Hee-Jin is indifferent to most of the men, but becomes interested in Hyun-Shik (Yoo-Suk Kim). Because we share his nightmares, we know that he was a policeman, killed his girlfriend, and has come to the floating hut to hide and perhaps to die. Watching him one day, she sees that he is about to commit suicide, and interrupts his chain of thought with sudden violence, swimming under his raft and stabbing him through the slats of the floor. They develop what on this lake passes for a relationship, but then he tries suicide again (you might want to stop reading now) by swallowing a line knotted with fishhooks and pulling it up again. This leads to a sex scene I will not describe here, and later to an equally painful sequence involving Hee-Jin's use of fishhooks. It is not uncommon for South Korean films to involve sadomasochism, as indeed do many films from Japan, where bondage is a common subject of popular adult comic books. The material doesn't reflect common behavior in those countries, but is intended to evoke extremes of violent emotion. It also dramatizes hostility toward women, although in "The Isle" the tables are turned. Between these two people who have nothing in common, one of them mute, sex is a form of communication--and pain, this movie argues, is even more sincere and complete. Why would you want to see this film? Most people would not. I was recently at a health resort where a movie was shown every night, and one of the selections was Pedro Almodovar's "All About My Mother," which involves transgendered characters. "Why," a woman asked me, "would they show a movie with things I do not want to see?" She is not unusual. Most people choose movies that provide exactly what they expect, and tell them things they already know. Others are more curious. We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds. The way I read "The Isle," it is not about fishhooks and sex at all. It is a cry of pain. The man on the raft, as we have seen in flashbacks, is violent and cruel, and he killed his girlfriend because he was jealous. Of course jealousy is the face of low self-esteem. The woman sells her body and dives into the water for her payment. Her power is that she can leave these hateful men stranded on their rafts. I believe that Hee-Jin comes to "like" Hyun-Shik, although that is the wrong word. Maybe she feels possessive, because she saved his life. His second attempt, with the fishhooks, reveals the depth of his sad self-loathing. When she employs the fishhooks on herself, what is she saying? That she understands? That she feels the same way too? That even in agony we need someone to witness and share? The film, as I said, is beautiful to look at. The little huts are each a different color. The mist over the water diffuses the light. What a lovely postcard this scene would make, if we did not know the economy it reflects, and the suffering it conceals. Now there's a subject for meditation. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE RECRUIT / **1/2 (PG-13) Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:46 GMT THE RECRUIT / **1/2 (PG-13) January 31, 2003 Walter Burke: Al Pacino James Clayton: Colin Farrell Layla: Bridget Moynahan Zack: Gabriel Macht Ronnie: Mike Realba Instructor No. 1: Dom Fiore Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Roger Donaldson. Written by Roger Towne, Kurt Wimmer and Mitch Glazer. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence, sexuality and language). BY ROGER EBERT 'The Recruit" reveals that the training process of the Central Intelligence Agency is like a fraternity initiation, but more dangerous. At one point would-be agents are given a time limit to walk into a singles bar and report back to the parking lot with a partner willing to have sex with them. Uh, huh. As for the Company's years of embarrassments and enemy spies within the ranks? "We reveal our failures but not our successes," the senior instructor tells the new recruits. Quick, can you think of any event in recent world history that bears the stamp of a CIA success? The senior instructor is Walter Burke, played by Al Pacino in a performance that is just plain fun to watch, gruff, blunt, with a weathered charm. He recruits an MIT whiz-kid named James Clayton (Colin Farrell), who turns down a big offer from Dell Computers because he wants to know more about the fate of his late father, a CIA agent. Or maybe because he uses a Macintosh. Clayton is taken to The Farm, a rustic hideaway somewhere in Ontario, doubling for Virginia, where during the entrance exam he locks eyes with the lovely and fragrant Layla (Bridget Moynahan). He also meets Zack (Gabriel Macht), a former Miami cop who speaks English, Spanish and Farsi. The training process involves a series of Bondian sequences in which the agents learn such skills as blowing up cars: (a) throw bomb under car; (b) detonate. They are also taught about biodegradable listening devices, weapons usage and how to shadow someone. And they are told of an agency superweapon that (I think I heard this right) can plug into an electric socket and disable every digital device connected to the grid. Agents: Be sure Mr. Coffee has completed his brewing cycle before employing weapon. The early scenes in the film are entertaining, yes, because Pacino works his character for all its grizzled charm, and Colin Farrell is not only enormously likeable but fascinates us with his permanent four-day beard. His chemistry with Layla is real enough, but come on: When he walks into that bar to pick up someone, doesn't it occur to him that it is hardly a coincidence that Layla is already there? Mata Hari would make mincemeat of this guy, but the girl shows promise; as Marlene Dietrich usefully observed, "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." Still, it's intriguing to see these young trainees learning their job, and to hear Pacino's observations, which are epigrammatic ("I don't have answers. Only secrets."), hard-boiled ("They show you your medal. You don't even get to take it home."), complacent ("Our cause is just") and helpful ("Nothing is what it seems. Trust no one."). Pacino's character wisely sticks to political generalities, so that the film can play in foreign markets; the closest it comes to current events is in the mention of Farsi, which is the language of Iran, although, as Michael Caine likes to say, not many people know that. The first two acts of the film are fun because they're all setup and build-up, and because the romance between James and Layla is no more cornball and contrived than it absolutely has to be. The third act is a mess. It saddles Pacino with the thankless role of the Talking Killer (not that he necessarily kills). That's the guy who has to stand there and explain the complexities of the plot when any real CIA veteran would just blow the other guy away. By the time Pacino wraps things up, we're realizing that the mantras "Nothing is what it seems" and "Trust no one," if taken seriously, reveal the entire plot. There is however a neat little misunderstanding at the end that earns a chuckle. The movie was directed by Roger Donaldson, who does political thrillers about as well as anyone; his "Thirteen Days" (2001), about the Cuban missile crisis, and "No Way Out" (1987), about a scandal in the Pentagon, were gripping and intelligent, and "The Recruit" is so well directed and acted that only a churl such as myself would question its sanity. It's the kind of movie you can sit back and enjoy, as long as you don't make the mistake of thinking too much. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gene Ehrich <gene@ehrich.com> Subject: [MV] Shallow Hal - question Date: 10 Feb 2003 21:16:23 -0500 Does anybody know if Gwyneth Paltrow played the part of her fat self (with makeup of course) [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Heather <hedden99@mindspring.com> Subject: Re: [MV] Shallow Hal - question Date: 10 Feb 2003 23:17:57 -0500 Yes, Gwyneth Paltrow wore a fat suit, to play her fat self. However, a large woman stood in for Platrow, during some of the body shots (like the diving board shot). Gene Ehrich wrote: > Does anybody know if Gwyneth Paltrow played the part of her fat self (with > makeup of course) > > [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] > [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "ADDA CHILE" <addachile@email.com> Subject: SOLICITE FONDO-PANTALLA DE REGALO Date: 13 Feb 2003 13:40:22 <html> <head> <title>Untitled Document</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> </head> <body bgcolor="#000000"> <body bgcolor=#000000 ><body bgcolor="#000000" > <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tr> <table width="650" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">  <tr> <td width="650" height="544" align="center" valign="middle" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div align="center"><a href="mailto:oferta3@addachile.com"><img src="http://www.dominia.cl/images/email3.jpg" width="650" height="544" border="0"></a></div></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="23" valign="middle" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div align="center"><font color="#000000" size="-1" face="Arial"><strong>Contáctese con nosotros a nuestro <a href="mailto:oferta3@addachile.com">e-mail </a>o visítenos en <a href="http://www.addachile.com">www.addachile.com</a></strong></font></div></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="37" valign="top" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="26" valign="middle" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div align="center"><font color="#000000" size="-2" face="Arial"><strong>El Volanteo por Mail de <a href="mailto:%20dominia@adsl.tie.cl">Dominia</a> se realiza según la legalidad vigente.<br> Si no desea recibir más información de nuestros servicios, envíe un correo <a href="mailto:%20descontinuar@email.com">aquí</a></strong></font></div></td> </tr> </table> </body> </html> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] DAREDEVIL / *** (PG-13) Date: 16 Feb 2003 04:30:14 GMT DAREDEVIL / *** (PG-13) February 14, 2003 Matt Murdock/Daredevil: Ben Affleck Elektra: Jennifer Garner Kingpin/Fisk: Michael Clarke Duncan Bullseye: Colin Farrell Franklin Nelson: Jon Favreau Urich: Joe Pantoliano Jack Murdock: David Keith Young Matt: Scott Terra Twentieth Century Fox and Regency Enterprises present a film written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for action/violence and some sensuality). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT T he origin is usually similar: A traumatic event in childhood, often involving the loss of parents, leaves the future superhero scarred in some ways but with preternatural powers in others. "Daredevil" came out of the Marvel Comics stable in the same period as "Spider-Man" and both were altered by accidents, which gave Peter Parker his spidey-sense, and blinded Matt Murdock but made his other four senses hypersensitive. They grew up together in Marvel comics, sometimes sharing the same adventures, but you won't see them fraternizing in the movies because their rights are owned by different studios. "Daredevil" stars Ben Affleck as the superhero, wearing one of those molded body suits that defines his six-pack abs but, unlike Batman's, doesn't give him dime-sized nipples. His mask extends over his eyes, which are not needed since his other senses fan out in a kind of radar, allowing him to visualize his surroundings and "see" things even in darkness. By day (I love that "by day"), he is a lawyer in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan. By night, he tells us, he prowls the alleys and rooftops, seeking out evildoers. Of these there is no shortage, although most of the city's more lucrative crime is controlled by the Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan) and his chief minister, Bullseye (Colin Farrell). There must be a woman, and in "Daredevil" there is one (only one, among all those major make characters, although the fragrant Ellen Pompeo has a slink-on). She is Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner), who, like her classical namesake, wants to avenge the death of her father. By day, she is, well, pretty much as she is by night. She and Daredevil are powerfully attracted to each other, and even share some PG-13 sex, which is a relief because when superheroes have sex at the R level, I am always afraid someone will get hurt. There is a rather beautiful scene where he asks her to stand in the rain because his ears are so sensitive they can create an image of her face from the sound of the raindrops. Matt Murdock's law partner is Franklin "Foggy" Nelson (Jon Favreau). He has little suspicion of who he is sharing an office with, although he is a quick study. Another key character is Ben Urich (Joe Pantoliano), who works for the New York Post, the newspaper of choice for superheroes. Daredevil has the ability to dive off tall buildings, swoop through the air, bounce off stuff, land lightly and so forth. There is an explanation for this ability, but I tend to tune out such explanations because, after all, what do they really explain? I don't care what you say, it's Superman's cape that makes him fly. Comic fans, however, study the mythology and methodology with the intensity of academics. It is reassuring, in this world of inexplicabilities, to master a limited subject within a self-contained universe. Understand, truly understand, why Daredevil defies gravity, and the location of the missing matter making up 90 percent of the universe can wait for another day. But these are just the kinds of idle thoughts I entertain during a movie like "Daredevil," which may have been what the Vatican had in mind when it issued that statement giving its limited approval of Harry Potter, as long as you don't start believing in him. Daredevil describes himself as a "guardian devil," and that means there are guardian angels, and that means God exists and, by a process of logical deduction, that Matt Murdock is a Catholic. Please address your correspondence to Rome. The movie is actually pretty good. Affleck and Garner probe for the believable corners of their characters, do not overact, are given semi-particular dialogue, and are in a very good-looking movie. Most of the tension takes place between the characters, not the props. There is, of course, a fancy formal ball to which everyone is invited (Commissioner Gordon must have been at the rival affair across town). Affleck is at home in plots of this size, having recently just tried to save Baltimore from nuclear annihilation and the world from "Armageddon," but Garner, Farrell and Duncan are relatively newer to action epics, although Garner did see Affleck off at the station when he took the trail from Pearl Harbor to New York, and Duncan was Balthazar in "The Scorpion King." They play their roles more or less as if they were real, which is a novelty in a movie like this, and Duncan in particular has a presence that makes the camera want to take a step back and protect its groin. The movie is, in short, your money's worth, better than we expect, more fun than we deserve. I am getting a little worn out describing the origin stories and powers of superheroes, and their relationships to archvillains, gnashing henchmen and brave, muscular female pals. They weep, they grow, they astonish, they overcome, they remain vulnerable, and their enemies spend inordinate time on wardrobe, grooming and props, and behaving as if their milk of human kindness has turned to cottage cheese. Some of their movies, like this one, are better than others. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE JUNGLE BOOK 2/ *1/2 (G) Date: 16 Feb 2003 04:30:17 GMT THE JUNGLE BOOK 2/ *1/2 (G) February 14, 2003 Featuring the voices of: Baloo: John Goodman Mowgli: Haley Joel Osment Shanti: Mae Whitman Ranjan: Connor Funk Bagheera: Bob Joles Shere Khan: Tony Jay Mowgli's Father: John Rhys-Davies Lucky: Phil Collins Walt Disney Pictures presents an animated film directed by Steve Trenbirth. Written by Karl Geurs. Running time: 72 minutes. Rated G. Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT "The Jungle Book 2" is so thin and unsatisfying, it seems like the made-for-DVD version, not a theatrical release. Clocking in at 72 minutes and repeating the recycled song "The Bare Necessities" three if not four times, it offers a bare-bones plot in which Mowgli wanders off into the jungle, is threatened by a tiger and a snake, is protected by a bear, takes care of his little girlfriend, and sings and dances with Baloo. There's none of the complexity here, in story or style, we expect in this new golden age of animation. It's a throwback in which cute animals of no depth or nuance play with the hero or threaten him in not very scary ways. As the film opens, Mowgli (who once, long ago and at another level of literacy, was the hero of stories by Rudyard Kipling) lives in a village and is forbidden to cross the river. But "you can take boy out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of boy," we learn. Whoever wrote that dialogue must have gone home weary after a hard day's work. Mowgli (voice of Haley Joel Osment) and his little village playmate Shanti (voice of Mae Whitman) do, however, venture into the forest, where Mowgli's old friend Baloo the Bear (John Goodman) is delighted to see him, although a little jealous of all the attention he is paying to Shanti. Maybe Baloo should discuss this problem with a counselor. They dance and sing and peel mangos and then Mowgli and/or Shanti wander off alone to be threatened by the tiger and the snake (whose coils are cleverly animated), and to be rescued by Baloo, with a reprise or two of "The Bare Necessities." In a time that has given us Miyazaki's great animated film "Spirited Away" (also a Disney release), parents have some kind of duty to take a close look at the films on offer. I got in an argument at Sundance with a Salt Lake City man who sells software that automatically censors DVDs in order to remove offending scenes and language. (Theoretically there could be a version of "Fight Club" suitable for grade-schoolers, although it would be very short.) By this yardstick, "The Jungle Book 2" is inoffensive and harmless. But it is not nutritious. A new book argues that the average American child spends twice as much time watching television than interacting with his parents, and movies like "The Jungle Book 2" are dimwitted baby-sitters, not growth experiences. If kids grow up on the movie equivalent of fast food, they will form an addiction to that instant action high and will never develop the attention span they need to love worthwhile fiction. Disney can do better, will do better, usually does better. To release this film theatrically is a compromise of its traditions and standards. If you have a child in the target age range, keep them at home, rent an animated classic or Miyazaki's great "My Neighbor Totoro" and do them a favor. Roger Ebert's review of "My Neighbor Totoro" is in his Great Movies series at www.suntimes.com/ebert. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] LOST IN LA MANCHA/ *** (R) Date: 16 Feb 2003 04:30:16 GMT LOST IN LA MANCHA/ *** (R) February 14, 2003 Featuring Terry Gilliam, Jean Rochefort, Bernard Bouix, Rene Cleitman, Johnny Depp, Benjamin Fernandez, Toni Grisoni, Vanessa Paradis and Philip A. Patterson. IFC presents a documentary written and directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (for language). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples... History does not record whether these words of King Lear passed through Terry Gilliam's mind as his beloved film about Don Quixote turned to ashes. It is hard to believe they did not. "Lost in La Mancha," which started life as one of those documentaries you get free on a DVD, ended as the record of swift and devastating disaster. Gilliam, the director of such films as "Brazil," "12 Monkeys" and "The Fisher King," arrived in Spain in August 2000 to begin filming a project he had been preparing for 10 years. "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" would star Johnny Depp as a modern-day hero who is transported back in time, and finds himself acting as Sancho Panza to old Don Quixote, who tilts at windmills and remains the most bravely romantic figure in Western literature. "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" was budgeted at $32 million, making it the most expensive production ever financed only with European money, although, as Gilliam observes, that's "far below what a film like this would usually cost." In the title role, he had cast Jean Rochefort, the tall, angular French star of more than 100 films, including "The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe" and "The Hairdresser's Husband." Rochefort arrives on the set looking suitably gaunt and romantic, and showing off the English he has learned during seven months of lessons. The first day of the shoot begins ominously, Someone has forgotten to rehearse the extras, who are yoked to Depp in a chain gang. F-16 fighter planes roar overhead, spoiling shot after shot. Gilliam's optimism remains unchecked, and we get a notion of the film from his sketches and storyboards, and his conferences with members of the production team. There's an amusing episode when he casts three men as giants. Day two involves a change of location and an adjustment in the shooting schedule. The actors have arrived late in Spain, but are on hand, and as Gilliam and his first assistant director, Philip Patterson, juggle the schedule, a location becomes too windy and dusty. And then all hell breaks loose. Thunderheads form overhead, and rain begins to fall. Then hail. Winds blow over sets, tents, props. A flash flood crashes down the mountain and turns the area into a muddy quagmire. The damned jets continue to fly. Gilliam and his team regroup and are able to cobble together a shot involving Don Quixote on his horse. But "did you see Jean Rochefort's face as he was riding on the horse? He was in pain." So much pain, as it develops, that although the actor is an experienced horseman, he can not mount the horse alone, and needs two men and an hour of struggle to get himself down from it. Rochefort flies off to Paris to see his doctors, and the company shuts down, except for a day when they go through some motions to impress a busload of doomed visiting investors. Rochefort will be gone three days, a week, 10 days, indefinitely. His problem is described as two herniated discs. Or perhaps prostate trouble. Like vultures, the insurance agents begin to gather, followed by the completion bond guarantors, who step in when a film goes over budget. There are discussions, not with the optimism of Don Quixote, about what constitutes an act of God. Midway through the second week of the shooting schedule, with brutal swiftness, "The Man Who Killed Quixote" is shut down. Some films end with a whimper; this one banged into a stone wall. The camera often rests on Gilliam's face, as the enormity of the disaster sinks in. "The movie already exists in here," he says, tapping his head. "I have visualized it so many times..." But that is the only place it will ever exist. Many films play dice with nature. I once stood in a barren field outside Durango, Colo., as workers placed thousands of melons on the ground, because the melon crop had failed, and the movie was about a melon farmer. I watched on the Amazon as an expensive light and all of its rigging slowly leaned over and fell forever beneath the waters. Once in the Ukraine, I waited for days with 20,000 extras, all members of the Red Army, who were dressed as Napoleon's Old Guard--and who could not be filmed without a lens that was being held up in customs. There are many sad sights in "Lost in La Mancha." One comes when the producers try to evoke the oldest rule in the book: "Fire the first assistant director." Gilliam stands firm behind his longtime assistant Patterson. It is not his fault. Day by day, it becomes increasingly clear that the film will never be made. Finally comes the shot of props being sealed into cardboard shipping boxes and sealed with tape. Maybe they are destined for eBay. Other men have tilted at Quixote's windmill. Orson Welles famously spent years trying to piece together a film of the material, even after some of his actors had died. Peter O'Toole starred in "Man of La Mancha" (1972), not a good movie. Of that production I wrote: "I've always thought there was a flaw in the logic of 'Man of La Mancha.' What good does it do to dream the impossible dream when all you're doing anyway is killing time until the Inquisition chops your block off?" Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] GODS AND GENERALS / *1/2 (PG-13) Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:16 GMT GODS AND GENERALS / *1/2 (PG-13) February 21, 2003 Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson: Stephen Lang Gen. Robert E. Lee: Robert Duvall Lt. Col. Joshua Chamberlain: Jeff Daniels Sgt. Thomas Chamberlain: C. Thomas Howell Sgt. "Buster" Kilrain: Kevin Conway Gen. John Bell Hood: Patrick Gorman Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock: Brian Mallon Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film written and directed by Ronald F. Maxwell. Based on the book by Jeffrey M. Shaara. Running time: 220 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sustained battle sequences). BY ROGER EBERT Here is a Civil War movie that Trent Lott might enjoy. Less enlightened than "Gone With the Wind," obsessed with military strategy, impartial between South and North, religiously devout, it waits 70 minutes before introducing the first of its two speaking roles for African Americans; "Stonewall" Jackson assures his black cook that the South will free him, and the cook looks cautiously optimistic. If World War II were handled this way, there'd be hell to pay. The movie is essentially about brave men on both sides who fought and died so that ... well, so that they could fight and die. They are led by generals of blinding brilliance and nobility, although one Northern general makes a stupid error and the movie shows hundreds of his men being slaughtered at great length as the result of it. The Northerners, one Southerner explains, are mostly Republican profiteers who can go home to their businesses and families if they're voted out of office after the conflict, while the Southerners are fighting for their homes. Slavery is not the issue, in this view, because it would have withered away anyway, although a liberal professor from Maine (Jeff Daniels) makes a speech explaining it is wrong. So we get that cleared up right there, or for sure at Strom Thurmond's birthday party. The conflict is handled with solemnity worthy of a memorial service. The music, when it is not funereal, sounds like the band playing during the commencement exercises at a sad university. Countless extras line up, march forward and shoot at each other. They die like flies. That part is accurate, although the stench, the blood and the cries of pain are tastefully held to the PG-13 standard. What we know about the war from the photographs of Mathew Brady, the poems of Walt Whitman and the documentaries of Ken Burns is not duplicated here. Oh, it is a competently made film. Civil War buffs may love it. Every group of fighting men is identified by subtitles, to such a degree that I wondered, fleetingly, if they were being played by Civil War Re-enactment hobbyists who would want to nudge their friends when their group appeared on the screen. Much is made of the film's total and obsessive historical accuracy; the costumes, flags, battle plans and ordnance are all doubtless flawless, although there could have been no Sgt. "Buster" Kilrain in the 20th Maine, for the unavoidable reason that "Buster" was never used as a name until Buster Keaton used it. The actors do what they can, although you can sense them winding up to deliver pithy quotations. Robert Duvall, playing Gen. Robert E. Lee, learns of Jackson's battlefield amputation and reflects sadly, "He has lost his left arm, and I have lost my right." His eyes almost twinkle as he envisions that one ending up in Bartlett's. Stephen Lang, playing Jackson, has a deathbed scene so wordy, as he issues commands to imaginary subordinates and then prepares himself to cross over the river, that he seems to be stalling. Except for Lee, a nonbeliever, both sides trust in God, just like at the Super Bowl. Donzaleigh Abernathy plays the other African-American speaking role, that of a maid named Martha who attempts to jump the gun on Reconstruction by staying behind when her white employers evacuate and telling the arriving Union troops it is her own house. Later, when they commandeer it as a hospital, she looks a little resentful. This episode, like many others, is kept so resolutely at the cameo level that we realize material of such scope and breadth can be shoehorned into 3-1/2 hours only by sacrificing depth. "Gods and Generals" is the kind of movie beloved by people who never go to the movies, because they are primarily interested in something else--the Civil War, for example--and think historical accuracy is a virtue instead of an attribute. The film plays like a special issue of American Heritage. Ted Turner is one of its prime movers and gives himself an instantly recognizable cameo appearance. Since sneak previews must already have informed him that his sudden appearance draws a laugh, apparently he can live with that. Note: The same director, Ron Maxwell, made the much superior "Gettysburg" (1993), and at the end informs us that the third title in the trilogy will be "The Last Full Measure." Another line from the same source may serve as a warning: "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here." Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] OLD SCHOOL / * (R) Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:33 GMT OLD SCHOOL / * (R) February 21, 2003 Mitch: Luke Wilson Frank: Will Ferrell Beanie: Vince Vaughn Nicole: Ellen Pompeo Pritchard: Jeremy Piven Mark: Craig Kilborn Heidi: Juliette Lewis Lara: Leah Remini DreamWorks Pictures presents a film directed by Todd Phillips. Written by Phillips, Scot Armstrong and Court Crandall. Running time: 91 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexual content, nudity and language). BY ROGER EBERT Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn clock in at an average age of 34, which is a little old to be a frat boy. It is not their age but their longevity, however, that I question. In "Old School," where they occupy a series of off-campus party houses, they follow lifestyles more appropriate for the college students in "Flatliners." Anyone struck in the jugular by an animal-disabling tranquilizer dart and then rolling into a swimming pool is not likely to have to face the kinds of questions about retirement confronting the hero of "About Schmidt." There is a type of older student who never seems to leave the campus. Some are actually graduate students, some are "finishing their thesis," others are gaining job experience (i.e., are bartenders or drug dealers). I graduated from Illinois, returned 10 years later, and found my old friend Mike still at his usual table in the Illini Union, drinking the bottomless cup of coffee and working the crossword puzzle. Wilson, Ferrell and Vaughn do not play this type of student. They are not really students at all, in fact. Wilson plays a businessman who returns home early to discover that his fiancee (Juliette Lewis) is hosting an orgy. Ferrell is engaged to be married and Vaughn is married. They stumble into founding their own fraternity after discovering by accident that you can get a lot of action if you throw nude wrestling matches in K-Y jelly. "Old School" wants to be "National Lampoon's Animal House," but then don't they all. It assumes that the modern college campus is a hotbed, or is it a sinkpit, of moral squalor, exhibitionism, promiscuity, kinky sex and rampant rampantness. Perhaps it is. I have also heard, on the other hand, that the politically correct modern male undergraduate, terrified of sexual harassment charges, must have a notarized statement in hand giving him permission to even think about getting to first base and a judge's order authorizing him to advance to second. (All women in movies set on such campuses are issued at birth with a blanket license to kick groins.) Unsure of myself, I avoid altogether the question of "Old School's" veracity and move on to its humor, which is easier to master because there is so little of it. This is not a funny movie, although it has a few good scenes and some nice work by Ferrell as an apparently compulsive nudist. It follows the same old story about a bunch of fun-loving guys who only want to throw orgies and meet chicks, and a young fogy dean (Jeremy Piven) who wants to spoil their fun. One of the cute co-eds is played by Ellen Pompeo, who was so absolutely wonderful in "Moonlight Mile." She should not be discouraged by this sophomore effort. Even Meryl Streep had to make a second movie after "Julia." Oh, and I just found the title right here: "The Deer Hunter." The movie has been slapped together by director Todd Phillips, who careens from scene to scene without it occurring to him that humor benefits from characterization, context and continuity. Otherwise, all you have is a lot of people acting goofy. The movie was screened before an "invited audience" in a Michigan Avenue theater, where two small groups of audience members laughed loudly at almost everything, and just about everybody else waited politely until it was over and they could leave. Critics are sometimes required to see comedies at such screenings because we can appreciate them better when we see them with a general audience, and to be sure, I learn a lot that way. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] DARK BLUE / *** (R) Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:14 GMT DARK BLUE / *** (R) February 21, 2003 Sgt. Eldon Perry Jr. : Kurt Russell Bobby Keough : Scott Speedman Deputy Chief Holland: Ving Rhames Jack Van Meter: Brendan Gleeson Sgt. Beth Williamson: Michael Michele Sally Perry: Lolita Davidovich United Artists presents a film directed by Ron Shelton. Written by David Ayer. Based on a story by James Ellroy. Running time: 116 minutes. Rated R (for violence, language and brief sexuality). BY ROGER EBERT Two cops. One a veteran, one a rookie. One corrupt, the other still learning. Two sets of bad guys, one pair guilty of a heartless crime, the other pair guilty, but not of this crime. Two women, one a disillusioned wife, the other a disillusioned girlfriend. Two superior officers, one rotten, the other determined to bring him down. All the action takes place in the final days before the Rodney King verdict was announced in April 1992, and in the immediate aftermath, when the LAPD abandoned some neighborhoods to looters and arsonists. "Dark Blue" is a formula picture in its broad outlines, but a very particular film in its characters and details. It doesn't redeem the formula or even tinker with it very much, but in a performance by Kurt Russell and in some location work on the angry streets, it has something to say and an urgent way of saying it. The movie is based on a story by James Ellroy, a novelist who knows Los Angeles like the back of his hand, just after it has been stepped on. The screenplay for "L.A. Confidential" came from him, and a lot of hard-boiled fiction, punched out in short paragraphs, as if he has to keep ducking. He's been trying to get this story made into a movie for so long it was originally set during the Watts Riots. The update works better, because the King verdict fits more neatly with his police department ripe for reform. Russell and Scott Speedman star as Perry and Keough, two detectives who prowl the streets like free-lance buccaneers; we know this type and even the veteran-rookie relationship from "Training Day," "Narc" and many other movies. The older cop explains you have to play tough to get things done, and the younger one tries to go along, even though he keeps failing the Hemingway test (it's immoral if you feel bad after you do it). They're the street agents, in a sense, of top cop Jack Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson). He has a couple of snitches he's protecting, and after they murder four people in a convenience store robbery, he orders Perry and Keough to frame and kill a couple of sex criminals for the crimes. Now young Keough, having balked at his first chance to execute a perp in the streets, gets a second chance. The movie surrounds this situation with a lot of other material--too much, so that it sometimes feels hurried. Perry is married to one of those cop wives (Lolita Davidovich) who is stuck with the thankless task of telling him he just doesn't see her anymore ("You care more about the people you hate"). Keough is dating a young black woman (Michael Michelle) who insists they not tell each other their last names. A man who sleeps with a woman who will not reveal her last name is marginally to be preferred, I suppose, to a man who will sleep with a woman who tells her his name but he forgets it in the morning. The good cop, Deputy Chief Arthur Holland, played by Ving Rhames, knows Van Meter is crooked and has to decide whether to stay and prove it, or take an offer to become police chief of Cleveland. Meanwhile, the clock ticks toward an "innocent" verdict for the cops who were videotaped while beating Rodney King. (This does not stop the police academy from scheduling a promotion ceremony at the very same time, so that everyone will be in the same room when they are required for the big scene). I'm making the film sound too obvious. It follows well-worn pathways, but it has a literate, colloquial screenplay by David Ayer ("Training Day," "The Fast and the Furious"), whose dialogue sounds as if someone might actually say it, and the direction is by Ron Shelton ("Blaze," "Bull Durham"), who marches us right up to cliches and then pulls them out from under us. Above all, the movie has the Kurt Russell performance going for it. Every time I see Russell or Val Kilmer in a role, I'm reminded of their "Tombstone" (1993), which got lost in the year-end holiday shuffle and never got the recognition it deserved. Russell has reserves he can draw on when he needs them, and he needs them here, as Perry descends into self-disgust and then, finally, understands the world and the role he has chosen. There is a late shot in which we look over his character's shoulder as Los Angeles burns all the way to the horizon. It takes a lot of set-up to get away with a pay-off like that, but Shelton and Russell earn it. "Dark Blue" is not a great movie, but it has moments that go off the meter and find visceral impact. The characters driving through the riot-torn streets of Los Angeles provide some of them, and the savage, self-hating irony of Russell's late dialogue provides the rest. It is a clanging coincidence that the LAPD would be indicted just at the moment it was being exonerated, but then that's what the movies are for, sometimes: To provide the outcomes that history overlooked. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] INTACTO / **1/2 (R) Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:18 GMT INTACTO / **1/2 (R) February 21, 2003 Sam: Max von Sydow Tomas: Leonardo Sbaraglia Federico: Eusebio Poncela Sara: Monica Lopez Alejandro: Antonio Dechent Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Written by Fresnadillo and Andres M. Koppel. Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (for language, some violence and brief nudity). In English and Spanish with English subtitles. BY ROGER EBERT The Spanish film "Intacto," like the recent Sundance entry "The Cooler," believes that luck is a commodity that can be given and received, won or lost, or traded away. Most people have ordinary luck, some have unusually good or bad luck, and then there is a character like Tomas (Leonardo Sbaraglia), who is the only survivor of an airplane crash, beating the odds of 237 million to 1. (I am not the statistician here, only the reporter.) The movie involves a man named Sam (Max von Sydow), who survived the Holocaust and now operates a remote casino at which rich people bet against his luck, usually unsuccessfully. So unshakable is his confidence that he will remove one bullet from a chamber holding six and then bet that he will not die. That he is alive to be a character in the movie speaks for itself. Von Sydow, who in "The Seventh Seal" played a game of chess with Death, believes that he will lose his luck if the wrong person looks on his face at the wrong time, or takes his photograph. To guard himself, he must often sit in a closed room with a hood over his face. We wonder, but he does not tell us, if he thinks this is a high price to pay for good fortune. He has a young man named Federico (Eusebio Poncela) as his confederate; Federico also has good luck, and searches for others who have his gift. When Sam steals his luck, he goes searching for a protege of his own and finds Tomas. The single-mindedness of these men assumes that winning at gambling is the most important thing in the world. Certainly there are gamblers who think so. Another of the Sundance entries, "Owning Mahowny," starred Philip Seymour Hoffman as a Toronto bank clerk who steals millions in order to fund his weekend getaways to Atlantic City and Las Vegas. He has a winning streak at roulette that in its intensity of focus has a kind of awesome power. In "The Cooler," William H. Macy plays a man whose luck is so bad that he is employed by a casino to merely rub up against someone in a winning streak; then his luck changes. The two North American films are pretty straightforward in telling their stories. "The Cooler" involves an element of fantasy, but it involves the story, not the visual approach. "Intacto," directed by the talented young Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, is wilder visually, using the fractured narrative and attention-deficit camera style that can be effective or not, but often betrays a lack of confidence on the simple story level. The story involves another more human element, centered on Sara (Monica Lopez), a cop who is chasing Tomas while grieving a tragic loss of her own. Will his luck protect him? What happens when it's luck vs. luck? I admired "Intacto" more than I liked it, for its ingenious construction and the way it keeps a certain chilly distance between its story and the dangers of popular entertainment. It's a Hollywood premise, rotated into the world of the art film through mannerism and oblique storytelling. The same ideas could be remade into a straightforward entertainment, and perhaps they already have been. There's a fashion right now among new writers and directors to create stories of labyrinthine complexity, so that watching them is like solving a puzzle. I still haven't seen Alejandro Amenabar's "Open Your Eyes," which a lot of people admire, but when I saw Cameron Crowe's American remake, "Vanilla Sky," I knew as I walked out of the theater that I would need to see it again. I did, and got a different kind of overview and liked the film. I liked it the first time, too, but through instinct, not understanding. When you solve a film like this, have you learned anything you wouldn't have learned in a straight narrative, or have you simply had to pay some dues to arrive at the same place? Depends. "Pulp Fiction," which jump-started the trend, depends crucially on its structure for its effect. "Intacto," which is not as complex as the other films I've mentioned, may be adding the layer of style just for fun. That is permitted, but somewhere within that style there may be a hell of a thriller winking at us. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE / ZERO STARS (R) Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:39 GMT THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE / ZERO STARS (R) February 21, 2003 David Gale: Kevin Spacey Bitsey Bloom: Kate Winslet Constance Harraway : Laura Linney Zack: Gabriel Mann Dusty: Matt Craven Berlin: Rhona Mitra Braxton Belyeu: Leon Rippy Duke Grover: Jim Beaver Universal Pictures and Intermedia Films present a film directed by Alan Parker. Written by Charles Randolph. Running time: 130 minutes. Rated R (for violent images, nudity, language and sexuality). BY ROGER EBERT "The Life of David Gale" tells the story of a famous opponent of capital punishment who, in what he must find an absurdly ironic development, finds himself on Death Row in Texas, charged with the murder of a woman who was also opposed to capital punishment. This is a plot, if ever there was one, to illustrate King Lear's complaint, "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when Eminem simply will not do. David Gale is an understandably bitter man, played by Kevin Spacey, who protests his innocence to a reporter named Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet), whom he has summoned to Texas for that purpose. He claims to have been framed by right-wing supporters of capital punishment because his death would provide such poetic irony in support of the noose, the gas or the chair. Far from killing Constance Harraway (Laura Linney), he says, he had every reason not to, and he explains that to Bitsey in flashbacks that make up about half of the story. Bitsey becomes convinced of David's innocence. She is joined in her investigation by the eager and sexy intern Zack (Gabriel Mann), and they become aware that they are being followed everywhere in a pickup truck by a gaunt-faced fellow in a cowboy hat, who is either a right-wing death-penalty supporter who really killed the dead woman, or somebody else. If he is somebody else, then he is obviously following them around with the MacGuffin, in this case a videotape suggesting disturbing aspects of the death of Constance. The man in the cowboy hat illustrates my recently renamed Principle of the Unassigned Character, formerly known less elegantly as the Law of Economy of Character Development. This principle teaches us that the prominent character who seems to be extraneous to the action will probably hold the key to it. The cowboy lives in one of those tumble-down shacks filled with flies and peanut butter, with old calendars on the walls. The yard has more bedsprings than the house has beds. The acting in "The Life of David Gale" is splendidly done but serves a meretricious cause. The direction is by the British director Alan Parker, who at one point had never made a movie I wholly disapproved of. Now has he ever. The secrets of the plot must remain unrevealed by me, so that you can be offended by them yourself, but let it be said this movie is about as corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of Saddam Hussein. I am sure the filmmakers believe their film is against the death penalty. I believe it supports it and hopes to discredit the opponents of the penalty as unprincipled fraudsters. What I do not understand is the final revelation on the videotape. Surely David Gale knows that Bitsey Bloom cannot keep it private without violating the ethics of journalism and sacrificing the biggest story of her career. So it serves no functional purpose except to give a cheap thrill to the audience slackjaws. It is shameful. One of the things that annoys me is that the story is set in Texas and not just in any old state--a state like Arkansas, for example, where the 1996 documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" convincingly explains why three innocent kids are in prison because they wore black and listened to heavy metal, while the likely killer keeps pushing himself onscreen and wildly signaling his guilt. Nor is it set in our own state of Illinois, where Death Row was run so shabbily that former Gov. George Ryan finally threw up his hands and declared the whole system rotten. No, the movie is set in Texas, which in a good year all by itself carries out half the executions in America. Death Row in Texas is like the Roach Motel: Roach checks in, doesn't check out. When George W. Bush was Texas governor, he claimed to carefully consider each and every execution, although a study of his office calendar shows he budgeted 15 minutes per condemned man (we cannot guess how many of these minutes were devoted to pouring himself a cup of coffee before settling down to the job). Still, when you're killing someone every other week and there's an average of 400 more waiting their turn, you have to move right along. Spacey and Parker are honorable men. Why did they go to Texas and make this silly movie? The last shot made me want to throw something at the screen--maybe Spacey and Parker. You can make movies that support capital punishment ("The Executioner's Song") or oppose it ("Dead Man Walking") or are conflicted ("In Cold Blood"). But while Texas continues to warehouse condemned men with a system involving lawyers who are drunk, asleep or absent; confessions that are beaten out of the helpless, and juries that overwhelmingly prefer to execute black defendants instead of white ones, you can't make this movie. Not in Texas. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE SON (LE FILS) / **** (Not rated) Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:41 GMT THE SON (LE FILS) / **** (Not rated) February 21, 2003 Olivier: Olivier Gourmet Francis: Morgan Marinne Magali: Isabella Soupart Philippo: Remy Renaud Omar: Nassim Hassaini Raoul: Kevin Leroy Steve: Felicien Pitsaer New Yorker Films presents a film written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. No MPAA rating (no objectionable material). Running time: 103 minutes. In French with English subtitles. BY ROGER EBERT "The Son" is complete, self-contained and final. All the critic can bring to it is his admiration. It needs no insight or explanation. It sees everything and explains all. It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy as I have ever seen. I agree with Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic, that a second viewing only underlines the film's greatness, but I would not want to have missed my first viewing, so I will write carefully. The directors, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, do not make the slightest effort to mislead or deceive us. Nor do they make any effort to explain. They simply (not so simply) show, and we lean forward, hushed, reading the faces, watching the actions, intent on sharing the feelings of the characters. Let me describe a very early sequence in enough detail for you to appreciate how the brothers work. Olivier (Olivier Gourmet), a Belgian carpenter, supervises a shop where teenage boys work. He corrects a boy using a power saw. We wonder, because we have been beaten down by formula films, if someone is going to lose a finger or a hand. No. The plank is going to be cut correctly. A woman comes into the shop and asks Olivier if he can take another apprentice. No, he has too many already. He suggests the welding shop. The moment the woman and the young applicant leave, Olivier slips from the shop and, astonishingly, scurries after them like a feral animal and spies on them through a door opening and the angle of a corridor. A little later, strong and agile, he leaps up onto a metal cabinet to steal a look through a high window. Then he tells the woman he will take the boy after all. She says the boy is in the shower room. The hand-held camera, which follows Olivier everywhere, usually in close medium shot, follows him as he looks around a corner (we intuit it is a corner; two walls form an apparent join). Is he watching the boy take a shower? Is Olivier gay? No. We have seen too many movies. He is simply looking at the boy asleep, fully clothed, on the floor of the shower room. After a long, absorbed look, he wakes up the boy and tells him he has a job. Now you must absolutely stop reading and go see the film. Walk out of the house today, tonight, and see it, if you are open to simplicity, depth, maturity, silence, in a film that sounds in the echo-chambers of the heart. "The Son" is a great film. If you find you cannot respond to it, that is the degree to which you have room to grow. I am not being arrogant; I grew during this film. It taught me things about the cinema I did not know. What did I learn? How this movie is only possible because of the way it was made, and would have been impossible with traditional narrative styles. Like rigorous documentarians, the Dardenne brothers follow Olivier, learning everything they know about him by watching him. They do not point, underline or send signals by music. There are no reaction shots because the entire movie is their reaction shot. The brothers make the consciousness of the Olivier character into the auteur of the film. .. So now you have seen the film. If you were spellbound, moved by its terror and love, struck that the visual style is the only possible one for this story, then let us agree that rarely has a film told us less and told us all, both at once. Olivier trains wards of the Belgian state--gives them a craft after they are released from a juvenile home. Francis (Morgan Marinne) was in such a home from his 11th to 16th years. Olivier asks him what his crime was. He stole a car radio. "And got five years?" "There was a death." "What kind of a death?" There was a child in the car who Francis did not see. The child began to cry and would not let go of Francis, who was frightened and "grabbed him by the throat." "Strangled him," Olivier corrects. "I didn't mean to," Francis says. "Do you regret what you did?" "Obviously." "Why obviously?" "Five years locked up. That's worth regretting." You have seen the film and know what Olivier knows about this death. You have seen it and know the man and boy are at a remote lumber yard on a Sunday. You have seen it and know how hard the noises are in the movie, the heavy planks banging down one upon another. How it hurts even to hear them. The film does not use these sounds or the towers of lumber to create suspense or anything else. It simply respects the nature of lumber, as Olivier does and is teaching Francis to do. You expect, because you have been trained by formula films, an accident or an act of violence. What you could not expect is the breathtaking spiritual beauty of the ending of the film, which is nevertheless no less banal than everything that has gone before. Olivier Gourmet won the award for best actor at Cannes 2002. He plays an ordinary man behaving at all times in an ordinary way. Here is the key: ordinary for him. The word for his behavior--not his performance, his behavior--is "exemplary." We use the word to mean "praiseworthy." Its first meaning is "fit for imitation." Everything that Olivier does is exemplary. Walk like this. Hold yourself just so. Measure exactly. Do not use the steel hammer when the wooden mallet is required. Center the nail. Smooth first with the file, then with the sandpaper. Balance the plank and lean into the ladder. Pay for your own apple turnover. Hold a woman who needs to be calmed. Praise a woman who has found she is pregnant. Find out the truth before you tell the truth. Do not use words to discuss what cannot be explained. Be willing to say, "I don't know." Be willing to have a son and teach him a trade. Be willing to be a father. A recent movie got a laugh by saying there is a rule in "The Godfather" to cover every situation. There can never be that many rules. "The Son" is about a man who needs no rules because he respects his trade and knows his tools. His trade is life. His tools are his loss and his hope. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. 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