MovieJuice! interviews Catherine Zeta-Jones in RealAudio. Who would have known she would be so attracted to me. Stay tuned!
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ENTRAPMENT - A-CUTE CONNORRHEA
by Mark Ramsey
http://www.moviejuice.com
May 1, 1999
You know you're in trouble when your eyes roll the minute a movie starts and the words "New York - 16 Days to the Millennium" flash on screen. Oh jeez. I'm O.K., you're O.K., Y2K, what the hey.
Forget Y2K. Personally, I'm looking forward to Y3K and the headline: "Star Wars buzz finally subsides!"
Entrapment stars Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and - truth be told - Catherine's fine, squirmy ass. So slithery was this superior posterior, no highway cone was left un-serpentined. I'd give this ass two big thumbs up, but that just doesn't sound right.
The sight of this rare derriere so impressed Simpsons creator Matt Groening, he now plans a new Fox animated series in tribute: Assarama! Special guest stars: Val Kilmer and Dustin Hoffman.
As Catherine tai-chis and ballets, doing the laser beam limbo, in a tight black leather catsuit, her gourmet-quality, British-engineered butt shouts "look at me" like Sean's gun-blazing Aston-Martin DB5 or Whitney Houston at a Bobby Brown pre-trial hearing.
I can't wait to test the inflection points on the action figure! My bun-tressed Princess Leia doll's been waiting for a same-sex partner for years - any way to escape the "Debbie Reynolds mother-in-law" doll who's still yearns for the "Eddie Fisher two-timer" doll and rants about the "That White Diamonds Bitch Elizabeth Taylor" doll.
Why does Entrapment suck? I'm not sure, but I know somehow that Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Doom, Howard Stern, and The Basketball Diaries are to blame, not the movie itself. As venerable Entertainment Weekly says, "The script is an unmellifluous hash of the prosaically obvious and the woodenly flip." Uh, exactly! And don't forget the ass!
Cathy and Sean play "Gin and Mac," which is one happy meal you won't find at Mickey D's any time soon.
Sean is king of the crooks and Cathy's the queen of the capers, the princess of purloins (with the accent on "loins"). Naturally, they fall head over heels for each other - or, in Sean's case, walker over curb.
Yes, it's like Tracy and Hepburn's ass or Bogart and Bacall's ass. Just pretend that Tracy or Bogart are old enough to be ass's long dead ancestor. Cathy, you see, was born the year man first set foot on the moon, while Sean was born the year the expression "Tippicanoe and Tyler Too" was in vogue.
Fortunately, Lucky Sean earned a berth on Noah's Ark thanks to his possession of a unique species: Impossibly jet-black eyebrows.
Just listen to this exchange:
Cathy: Sean, what's the 4-1-1 on that new Nas track?
Sean: Er, you mean music? Actually, I'm partial to Cab Calloway and the DeFranco family. And those Cowsills! Damn! When they strike up the band the dames really shake their tootsies. In my day, Puff Daddy was a fine Cuban Cigar. Have you seen that new flick "Goodbye Mr. Chips"? Jolly good fun, except for the script which is an unmellifluous hash of the prosaically obvious and the woodenly flip.
For the most part, this pair's all business. To prep for their crime, Sean trains Cathy like Burgess Meredith trained Rocky. "Crawl around on the floor blindfolded and undulate your ass, Rock!"
Together, Sean and Cathy plan and execute a daring heist, or at least a heist with some daring modern dance movements. Their goal: Steal the ugliest priceless artifact known to the art world.
Will they succeed? Will the feds catch up to them before the cellulite does? Will they rob $8 Billion from the International Blue-Screen Bank before the first tick of Y2K? Will they live happily ever after or will Cathy live forever after Sean?
I don't know about you, but my 20:20 hindsight is all derriere.
Copyright 1999 Mark Ramsey. All rights reserved. NO PORTION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.
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------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 00:46:37 -0600
From: "The Reporter" <gregorys@xmission.com>
Subject: [MV] Movie News - 05/02/99
"Shakespeare in Love" was named Best Film, but "Elizabeth"
won the most prizes -- five -- at Sunday's 51st British
Academy Film awards. "Elizabeth"'s bountiful collection
included a Best Actress prize for Cate Blanchett. "Shakespeare"
won four awards. "The Truman Show" was compensated for
its Oscar shutout, picking up three awards, including
one for Best Director Peter Weir and one for Andrew
Niccol for Best Original Screenplay. Roberto Benigni,
who told the crowd he was full of joy, "like a watermelon,"
beat hometown favorite Michael ("Little Voice") Caine as
Best Actor (for "Life is Beautiful"), but Brazil's
"Central Station" won over "Life is Beautiful" for Best
Foreign-Language Film. "Saving Private Ryan" went home
with only two technical prizes, for sound and visual
effects.
-=> * <=-
* Elizabeth Taylor received the evening's only standing
ovation when she was awarded a fellowship by the British
Academy of Film and Television Arts. "I don't think of
myself as an actress, and I didn't think any of you did
- -- quite rightly too," she told the audience. "But it
makes me want to act again."
-=> * <=-
PARIS (AP) - David Lynch, whose "Wild at Heart" won the 1990 Golden
Palm, will be among the many well-known directors seeking glory at
the 52nd annual Cannes Film Festival. His "The Straight Story," one
of four American films in the lineup announced Thursday, faces
competition from films by Atom Egoyan, Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodovar,
Chen Kaige and Tim Robbins, among others. The festival runs from May
12-23. Egoyan, the Canadian whose mournful film "The Sweet Hereafter"
won the runner-up prize in 1997, is entered with "Felicia's Journey."
The celebrated Spanish director Almodovar will be showing "Todo Sobre
Mi Madre," or "All About My Mother," his first time in Cannes
competition.
-=> * <=-
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The eye-popping science fiction adventure "The
Matrix" remained No. 1 at the box office with $22.2 million and
spring break crowds gave Drew Barrymore's back-to-school film "Never
Been Kissed" a strong $11.7 million opening, estimates showed Sunday.
"The Matrix" starring Keanu Reeves as a computer hacker who finds out
reality isn't what it seems, has emerged as the year's second
breakout hit after "Analyze This," grossing $72.9 million in just two
weeks. It slipped only 20% last weekend. "Never Been Kissed" opened
in second place. "The Out-Of-Towners" with $5.3 million was third at
the box office. "10 Things I Hate About You" was fourth with $5.2
million and "Analyze This" was in fifth place with $5.1 million.
-=> * <=-
LONDON (AP) - Elizabethan England ruled the day at the 51st British
Academy Film Awards Sunday, with five prizes going to "Elizabeth" and
four to last month's leading Oscar-winner, "Shakespeare in Love." But
it was Elizabeth Taylor who got the evening's biggest applause as she
haltingly stepped to the podium to receive a lifetime achievement
award from the British Academy. "It makes me want to act again," said
Taylor, 67, who was born in London but has long lived in the U.S.
"But nobody will have me." Oscar-winning Italian actor Roberto
Benigni triumphed as well, winning another prize for best actor. Cate
Blanchett was named best actress for the title role in "Elizabeth,"
which won four other awards including outstanding British film of the
year.
-=> * <=-
HOLLYWOOD (AP) - You might say motion pictures got started with a
sneeze. Audiences chorused "God bless you" when they saw Thomas
Edison's grainy, black-and-white film of his employee, Fred Ott,
sneezing. Or was it a kiss that really got movies going? A film
short, "The Kiss Between May Irvin and John C. Rice," intrigued many,
but one writer found the first celluloid smooch loathsome, "magnified
to gargantuan proportions and repeated thrice." Some credit New
York's Latham brothers and their films of boxing matches. Others
point to the basement screening room in Paris where the Lumiere
brothers first showed that moving images, even silly ones of people
falling off horses, could be projected on a screen to draw thousands
curious enough to pay a franc.
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Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 11:58:42 -0600
From: "The Reporter" <gregorys@xmission.com>
Subject: [MV] Movie News - 05/03/99
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Powered by sexual chemistry, exotic locations and
Sean Connery's roguish charm, the cat-burglar thriller "Entrapment"
nabbed the top spot at the weekend box office with $20.7 million. The
film, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as an insurance investigator who
seduces a high-class art thief played by Connery, knocked "The
Matrix" down to No. 2 with $8.7 million, industry estimates showed
Sunday. Comedies dominated the rest of the top 10, with the Eddie
Murphy-Martin Lawrence prison movie "Life" earning $6.4 million for
third place. The Drew Barrymore high school comedy "Never Been
Kissed" continued to do well but dropped to fourth place with $4.2
million, while the mobster-in-therapy movie "Analyze This" fell to
fifth with $2.2 million.
-=> * <=-
LONDON (AP) - Oliver Reed, the feisty, hard-drinking British actor
who was as well known for his antics off-screen as he was for his
performances on-screen, died Sunday in Malta. He was 61. Reed, who
was on the Mediterranean island filming a movie called "The
Gladiator," died on the way to the hospital about 15 minutes after
taking ill in a bar in Valetta, Malta police said. An autopsy will be
performed Monday, but Reed's death is not considered suspicious,
police said. Among Reed's 53 films were "Women in Love," "The
Devils," and "Tommy," all directed by the eccentric Englishman Ken
Russell. Born Feb. 13, 1938 in Wimbledon, south London, Reed was
known as a rascal whose drinking bouts were well publicized.
-=> * <=-
NEW YORK (AP) - The Force is with "Star Wars" fans and it's telling
them to hit the toy stores early and spend, spend, spend. The
most-hyped line of movie-theme merchandise in history for the still
unreleased "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" is finally
going on sale on a studio-imposed schedule and fans and retailers
aren't wasting a minute. In an unprecedented move, Toys R Us stores
around the country decided to open their doors at 12:01 a.m. Monday
for an all-night selling marathon of toys based on the movie. Some
FAO Schwarz stores planned to open from midnight to 2 a.m. Wal-Mart
and Kmart called in extra staff for their 24-hour stores to handle
the post-midnight crowds.
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 07:36:25 -0700
From: "Jason Cormier" <movieman@netcom.ca>
Subject: [MV] Entrapment Review
Going into this movie I was expecting bad things. This is always a great
way to see a movie because even if it's mediocre then it seems like much
more! Entrapment was quite entertaining. I am a sucker for 'break in'
movies (as opposed to breakin' movies) and this really satisfied my thirst
with plenty of breaking in and funky gadgets and whatzits. Connery is
plenty of fun playing Connery and Catherine Zeta has her first big hit of
the year (last year's was Zorro and later this year - The House on Haunted
Hill). So I reccomend going into the movie thinking that it will suck and
totally disregard the fact that I'm giving it a 78%.
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 04 May 1999 08:52:32 -0400
From: Mike Wagner <mwagner@up.net>
Subject: Re: [MV] Entrapment Review
To Jason Cormier,
My wife's maiden name was Cormier. What was your fathers name
and where are you from.. I have been working on a family tree and this
name might help us. We are from Michigan..
All for now,
Thanks,
Mike Wagner
e mail-- mwagner@up.net
Jason Cormier wrote:
> Going into this movie I was expecting bad things. This is always a great
> way to see a movie because even if it's mediocre then it seems like much
> more! Entrapment was quite entertaining. I am a sucker for 'break in'
> movies (as opposed to breakin' movies) and this really satisfied my thirst
> with plenty of breaking in and funky gadgets and whatzits. Connery is
> plenty of fun playing Connery and Catherine Zeta has her first big hit of
> the year (last year's was Zorro and later this year - The House on Haunted
> Hill). So I reccomend going into the movie thinking that it will suck and
> totally disregard the fact that I'm giving it a 78%.
>
> [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
> [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ]
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 09:50:33 -0600 (MDT)
From: Scott Renshaw <renshaw@inconnect.com>
Subject: [MV] REVIEW: ELECTION
ELECTION
(Paramount)
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein, Jessica
Campbell, Mark Harelik, Molly Hagan, Delaney Driscoll.
Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Tom
Perrotta.
Producers: Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa, David Gale and Keith Samples.
Director: Alexander Payne.
MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes, sexual situations, drug use)
Running Time: 101 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
This is how I know I'm dealing with a film of uncommon intelligence:
ELECTION resists the tidy summations in which most films are all-too-eager
to wrap themselves. Like many recent films, it is a comedy set in a high
school, but it's more than just the latest high school comedy. It deals
with a student body election, but it's not really _about_ a student body
election. It's a film in which characters narrate much of the story, but
it doesn't use that narration in a conventional way. Like director
Alexander Payne's previous film CITIZEN RUTH -- if to a somewhat less
successful degree -- ELECTION is a satirical scalpel that refuses to let
you know exactly when or whom it's going to cut.
It's spring at Omaha, Nebraska's Carver High School as ELECTION
begins, which means it's time for elections for the next year's student
body officers. The prime candidate -- and apparently _only_ candidate --
for student body president is Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), an
extracurricular machine who sees the office as her destiny. Seeing things
a bit differently is Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), a civics teacher
and student government advisor that Tracy rubs the wrong way. In an
attempt to make the election less of a foregone conclusion, McAllister
convinces injured football hero Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to mount a
challenge, which in turn generates the "third party" candidacy of Paul's
alienated younger sister Tammy.
It would have been easy enough for ELECTION to turn into a broad
comedy about adolescent peer politics, and it _still_ would have been more
insightful than most teen comedies. Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor,
working from Tom Perrotta's novel, have bigger targets in mind. They use
the Carver High election as a microcosm not just of high school life, but
of politics on a much grander scale. Tracy Flick's campaign casts her as
a political cousin of our current president, seeking election as a "you
really like me" validation rathern than out of a desire to serve; even her
nomination speech parrots the naming-of-names, I-feel-your-pain personal
touch. Tammy, meanwhile, rallies the disenfranchised minority behind the
idea that nothing changes but the names in conventional governance. Even
the ridiculous posters, filled with little more than sloganeering, seem
disturbingly similar to national election campaigning. It's savvy,
cynical, and very funny.
Even more effective is Payne's use of that old literary device the
"unreliable narrator" as counterpoint to his direction. McAllister,
Tracy, Paul and Tammy take turns explaining their take on the events of
the film, each one mouthing words that don't quite match their his or her
actions. McAllister describes his personal and professional contentment
as he sifts through a trunk full of pornography; sexually-confused Tammy
explains that "I'm not a lesbian, I'm attracted to the _person_. It's
just that all the people I've been attracted to have been girls;" Tracy
describes her mother's actions on her behalf in a way that shows she's
being programmed for greatness. Only Paul, perhaps too dense to be
duplicitous, seems pure of heart. As he did in CITIZEN RUTH, Payne
explores the way we convince ourselves that our motivations are pure, even
when we don't really understand what our motivations are.
If Payne stumbles anywhere, it's in his choice to focus much of the
film's second half on McAllister's domestic troubles. Tammy's character
in particular is abandoned by this choice, letting the school
administration's reaction to her unconventional candidacy off the hook too
easily. But ELECTION is too smart to be derailed by this problem, too
clear-eyed in its study of good intentions muddled by psychological
baggage. With surprising sympathy towards all his flawed characters,
Alexander Payne creates a furiously funny film in which his surrealistic
directing touches keep the audience off-guard. He understands that in a
world where people can't even summarize themselves in a neat-and-tidy
sentence, we can't expect to summarize the movies about them that way.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 electile dysfunctions: 8.
