THE FILM

After the rabid successes of “Beavis and Butt-head,” “King of the Hill,” and the cult supremacy of “Office Space,” one would think that 20th Century Fox could’ve extended some level of trust to writer/director Mike Judge when it came to his latest film, “Idiocracy.”

What’s finally being shown to audiences after two years sitting on a shelf gathering dust is a Frankenstein’s Monster of a film, pieced together by a studio looking to pull off cinema’s greatest single act of irony: they’ve dumbed down a film about dumbing down.

Private Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) is volunteered by his commanding officers to take part in an experimental hibernation program that will put him to sleep for one year. Sent under with a prostitute (Maya Rudolph), the program is eventually cut short, with Joe’s tube lost for 500 years. When a garbage avalanche ends his centuries-long slumber, Joe awakens to find the year 2505 and a whole world evolved into idiots. Branded the smartest person alive by the professional wrestler/porn star president (Terry Crews), Joe is given the task of saving America from starvation, but all he really wants is to get back to 2005.

In many ways, “Idiocracy” is similar to the hack job that Paramount pulled on Louis CK’s “Pootie Tang.” Judge’s film is something near a complete mess, with the opening 20 minutes pushed and pulled like taffy to cover what feels like 45 minutes of footage. Slapped with narration that hand-holds the viewer through storylines and important scenes we’re not allowed to see, the opening act of the film is a jarring rush of settings and characters that make little sense and lends the film a sloppy quality I refuse to believe was Judge’s intention.

Thankfully, Judge’s sense of humor does escape through Fox’s sweaty fingers. When you boil the picture down to the essentials, it’s uproarious in primitive slapstick ways and as a potent bitchslap of a social commentary. Opening with the frightening concept that America’s future is not in the hands of the most intelligent, but the most fertile and irresponsible (aka the poor), Judge’s script begins to claw away at not only America’s corporate sponsorship culture (some get paid to end every sentence with “Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.”), but their entertainment tastes as well. The number one show on television? “Ow! My Balls!” Favorite channel? The Masturbation Network. The top-grossing film of all time? “Ass.” Just 90 minutes of a man’s ass, with an occasional fart escaping.

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Judge has it out especially for Gatorade (called “Brawndo” here), using the general uselessness of sport drinks to emphasize the deceptive nature of predatory corporations, and the gullibility of consumers who will believe anything they read. Even electrolytes.

This is a world where citizens are named Frito and Beef Supreme, Starbucks is a place that only sells handjobs, Fuddruckers is considered the Mona Lisa of trash dining, and if a subject doesn’t pertain to sex or farting, nobody wants to discuss it.

“Idiocracy” eventually heads over to the political realm, turning a presidential address into a wrestling main event, and opening up the idea of capital punishment as gladiatorial fight to the death with tricked out cars, scored by a whole section of head-banging guitar stoners.

As a satire, “Idiocracy” is a cold steel blade to the gut. Judge relishes his opportunity to expose our insatiable need for stupidity, and he takes that to the most grandiose possible conclusion for maximum effect. Still, the film remains a thoroughly hilarious affair, due mostly to the cast’s glee in dragging their knuckles for a change and Judge’s satirical targets, some of which might hit too close to home for many viewers.

Even if the film contains the single biggest laugh I’ve had this year at the movies (imagine the Washington Monument pool turned into a jet-ski paradise), “Idiocracy” is a terribly muddled affair. The heart of the film appears to have been ripped out in the process of streamlining the feature for mass consumption. While Judge’s touch remains interwoven into the piece, the finished product doesn’t move the way we’ve come to expect from this director.

The picture has some potent ideas on dysgenics and where humanity is headed, and how much citizens are complacent when their lives are bought and sold; ideas that felt like they were once properly layered into a feature film. Not anymore with this version of “Idiocracy.” I don’t care how much Judge might’ve screwed up originally, if cinematic history tells us anything, it’s best to leave this talent alone

THE DVD

Audio:

“Idiocracy” is present in Dolby Digital 5.1, and makes good, dimensional use of futuristic sound effects. Of course, a majority of them are fart sounds, but you get the point. Dialogue and music are presented crisp and clean.

Visual:

Given an anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer, “Idiocracy” feels pretty cozy at home, where Judge’s intimate satiric scale can be best appreciated. Image is clean with bold color reproduction. Larger home theater screens might reveal the low-tech limitations of the scrapped together special effects more than smaller sets.

Extras:

The only supplement served up for this DVD release is set of deleted scenes, totaling less than four minutes of screentime. All are insignificant snippets, but two of them do showcase the woman in Joe’s life before he goes into hibernation. Another shows us the National Fart Museum, where kids of all ages can watch history cut the cheese.

Sadly, Mike Judge is nowhere to be found on any of this disc.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m starting to sense “Idiocracy” might be the new “Superman II.” Perhaps one day audiences will be treated to Mike Judge’s full, unobstructed version of this ambitious satire, but for now, all we have is this DVD. After years of thinking we wouldn’t even get this far, it’s wonderful to finally get a chance to see what Judge had up his sleeve, and to watch what Fox was so fearful of releasing. Keep your expectations low, and there’s an often hilarious, sly little feature to be found in here somewhere.

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By Rita Kempley

January 13, 1995

"Nobody's Fool" is a gentle portrait of a hamlet in "Ironweed" country, a spot revamp of peeling clapboard and worn blacktop. The exclusively tavern in town, the Iron Horse, is like the bar in "Cheers," only the heart is as dreary as the wintry landscape of New York body politic. There is an oddball on every lounge stool.

Every night or so, the boys gather for a round of poker and long-neck Buds. Sully (Paul Newman), the title character, usually loses because that's what he does. A penny ante construction contractor, Sully has spent most of his 60 years failing at things. He's suing the only guy who gives him work, Carl (Bruce Willis), who is a regular at the game along with Sully's one-legged lawyer (Gene Saks) and Rub — short for Rubber Head — the village idiot (Pruitt Taylor Vince).

Sully, who has a good heart underneath that crusty exterior, gives the slow-witted Rub work when he can and thinks of the perpetual child as his best friend. And why not? In most ways, Sully's still a kid himself. Then with the winter holidays comes a last chance to grow up and become a father to the son (Dylan Walsh) he had abandoned as an infant.

Robert Benton, who also wrote and directed "Places in the Heart" and "Kramer vs. Kramer," has almost too much affection for this "Our Town"-like band of players. An adaptation of the novel by Richard Russo, the story is on the sticky side and the characters tend toward the adorably wacky. But Benton's unhurried pace suits the mood and should allow the actors, led by Newman and the late Jessica Tandy, to take off their shoes and relax into the roles.

The trouble is, they never really do. We're always aware that we are in the presence of Great Actors. Newman, already making room in his trophy case for Mr. Oscar, is likable as a curmudgeon, but all the dirt in the world never transforms him into a working stiff. He remains the glamorous leading man.

Tandy, luminous to the last as Sully's landlady, Miss Beryl, has a line that was sadly prophetic: "I've got a feeling God's creeping in on me. I've got a feeling this is the year he lowers the boom." But the role, her next-to-last, is a funny, life-affirming one — adjectives that also apply to the movie itself.

Whatever its faults, it is humble, adult fare and welcome in this age of grandiose children's games.

Copyright The Washington Post

The Independent Starring Jerry Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Max Perlich Screenplay by Stephen Kessler and Mike Wilkins Directed by Stephen Kessler website: www.finemanfilms.com

IN SHORT:

Some great jokes poorly executed. [Rated R for language, some
violence and sexuality. 85 minutes]

We knew there was a reason we got into this line of work. Every day, this time
of year sometimes two or three times a day, we sit in the dark. Our quest? To
find that one film whose story is succinct and clear. Whose humor is double edged
and gut buster funny. Whose technical merits — sound and cinematography and so
forth — are superlative. Again and again we watch and we wait and we hope against
hope . . . and then comes a film like

The Independent

…

…which ain't what we wuz waitin' for. Directed and co-written by

Stephen
Kessler

,

The Independent

is a comedy about the most prolific indie
filmmaker of all time. Occasionally it drops a funny line in your lap. Unfortunately,
the sloppy filmmaking is made us too tired to laugh. It may be deliberate that
this film looks exactly like what every impoverished first effort out of film
school projects tend to look like, which is crap.

The Independent

is filled
with occasionally out of focus and hand held shots and jarring jump cuts for that
"art" factor. If so,

The Independent

is way too high concept
for us. Even Troma, God bless 'em, manages to keep their cameras steady. While
the titles of the "films" and the "clips" from some of these
films are funny in and of themselves, the individual parts don't add up to the
conceptual whole.

It would almost be worth the ticket price to see the pained expression on star

Janeane Garofalo's

face as she suffers through this truly incredible bomb.
True, she usually wears a pained expression, but this one is to die for. Garofalo
plays Paloma Fineman, daughter of the aforesaid said prolific filmmaker — 427
and counting — Morty Fineman (

Jerry Stiller

). As the film begins, Morty
is trying to finish his latest epic "Miss Kevorkian" (real terminally
ill patients and an Uzi-packing

Julie Strain

). The maker of such epics
as

World War III II

and

Psycho Vet pts 1 - 3

and

Christ for the
Defense

) is trying to drum up money and hoping to land the rights to the life
story of the most prolific serial killer of all time. He's got "his people"
(which would be the solo

Max Perlich

) out trying to drum up support, and
screenings, at any film festival possible. We learn that Fineman was, at one time,
incredibly successful who lost it all on a $30 millions bomb called

The Whole
Story of America

(his wife, appropriately played by Stiller's real life wife

Anne Meara

, got the Rolls and the one great visual gag in the movie).

Aliens in the Attic movie best quality

We do give credit to Kessler for packing his film with "testimonials"
from real life directors (

Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Nick Cassavetes, Roger
Corman

) and actors (

Karen Black, Fred Williamson, Fred Dryer

) to Fineman's
prowess and abilities and general niceness — proving that these folks are smart
enough to know that you better be good to the lousy, hard workers 'cuz one day
they may be working for incredibly successful, lousy, hardworkers (we're going
with the concept of the film, that Fineman is real. Really). Kessler's best casting
decision is

John Lydon

as a film festival director in lovely Chaparral,
Nevada, who scoffs at Fineman's oeuvre. If you know Lydon's music career, and
what people said or didn't say, you'll get the joke. While the concept may be
great, what's sorely lacking is the exuberant use of sex and blood that make up
these cheapies.

As well, X-Men fanboys should note the presence of Chaparral mayor "Kitty
Storm" (

Ginger Lynn Allen

) to the mix. If you get the joke, as with
Lydon, you get it. If we repeated some of the jokes in the film to you, even out
of context they'd be funny. Hell, our notes are making us laugh. That doesn't
explain why sitting through

The Independent

is like sitting through a dinner
where someone at the table insists on telling one joke after another, all of 'em
bad ones, getting more insistent that they're funny as bomb after bomb comes crashing
down. But it was.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Nine Bucks. Were Cranky able
to set his own price to

The Independent

, he would have paid . . .

Rent as cheaply as possible. (And if anyone knows the whereabouts of former
compatriot and contributor Trent Haaga, steer him to a theater. He loves this
stuff to death.)

	Click to buy films starring Jerry Stiller
	Click to buy films starring Janeane Garofalo
	Click to buy films starring Julie Strain

Based on Clifton L. Taulbert’s critically acclaimed book, “Once Upon a Time … When We Were Colored” is a sensitive homage haze of the author’s coming-of-age in the segregated South. Actor Tim Reid makes an imposing directorial debut with an emotionally quiet saga that chronicles a important date in black communal preoccupation, limerick mostly neglected by U.S. films. Well-made production , which hand down be released by Republic on the Martin Luther King Jr. vacation weekend on a handful of screens, has some crossover appeal as family fare and should be seen in larger urban centers in the presence of landing on TV, cable and in classrooms. There are no drugs and not much physical force in this evocative handle in which black characters in truth procure to fare long lives and desire in bed of natural causes. Film as a whole stands as a significant effort to “correct” malicious telling by recording its rich traditions and perform unadorned heroes who have inspired black youngsters and paved the way in place of the laical rights motion.

Set in the small town of Glen Allan, Miss., pic presents a warm tribute to the black heritage that prevailed in the Deep South of the postwar years. Sprawling narrative sheds light on what it meant to grow up in this particular time and place.

Three-part story begins in 1946 with a baby’s birth in the cotton fields, then jumps to 1951 for the first and longest chapter. Born to a single mom, Cliff (Charles Earl (Spud) Taylor Jr.) is raised by his great-grandparents, Ma Pearl (Paula Kelly) and especially Poppa (Al Freeman Jr.), a proud, elegant man who initiates his offspring into a harsh life imposed by the whites. Poppa teaches Cliff his first words (”Whites Only” and “Colored”) and exposes him to a Ku Klux Klan parade, where the boy first experiences blatant racism. But it’s by no means a dreary, depressing childhood. Loose-knit script is laced with fond anecdotes of rich adventures like fishing trips, communal picnics, a minstrel show, trips to the neighboring “big city” and, above all, life in a tightly knit community.

Film doesn’t contain many white characters, but the few present are agreeably non-stereotypical. In the second, 1958 chapter, Cliff (Willie Norwood Jr.) helps out Mrs. Maybry (wonderfully played by Polly Bergen), a liberal woman who introduces him to literature and checks out books from a library that bars blacks. Most of Cliff’s interactions, however, are with his great aunt (Phylicia Rashad) and her son Melvin (Leon), who visit from Michigan after a long absence.

Concluding segment is the most overtly political, revolving around Cleve (Richard Roundtree), a decent ice man who sparks a flame of racial protest in the community when his livelihood is threatened by discrimination.

Yarn is rich in incident and character, but the overly episodic structure presents a problem: Protagonist Cliff often gets lost in the maze, and the narrative fails to register the effects of the dramatic happenings on his psyche and soul.

Neophyte helmer Reid is sensitive to his outstanding performers, but he gives the story too monotonous a pace. “Once Upon a Time” lacks the magical and touching quality of the film “Sounder,” which it resembles thematically. But its evocative texture and multinuanced context, magnificently recorded by John Simmons’ alert camera, honorably compensate for its weaknesses.

A bloody but ungenerous-known chapter of Mormon history gives head Christopher Cain plenty of ammo for a stinging attack on religious extremism in “September Appearance.” With song eye determined on current period events, this handsome indie Western damningly recounts the 1857 slayings of 120 settlers enthusiasm through Utah, but the didactic presentation, grim speechifying and tacked-on affection story all indicate a less-than-beneficial gaze at for the audience’s intelligence. Limited commercial prospects will depend on the film’s genius to take advantage of Mormon outrage — the louder, the better — with its provoked and contentious outlook of a still-disputed tragedy.

Taking a page from “Titanic” and “Pearl Harbor,” Cain and co-scenarist Carole Whang Schutter have cooked up a doomed romance as an easy point of entry for young auds in particular. Pic otherwise aspires to a certain degree of authenticity, especially in its climactic re-enactment of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, details of which were drawn from the written confession of John D. Lee (the only person ever convicted and executed for his role in the atrocities).

The film goes one step further, alleging a cover-up of the fact that the killings were ordered by Lee’s adoptive father, Brigham Young. As played by Terence Stamp with an ugly, ever-present scowl, the man who presided over the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death in 1877 emerges onscreen as a pitiless, self-righteous monster, with a band of fanatical followers ever in his grip.

Chief among these followers is Jacob Samuelson (Jon Voight), the bishop and leader of a Mormon community in southern Utah. When a California-bound wagon train arrives, led by kindly Capt. Fancher (Shaun Johnston), Samuelson allows the settlers to rest in the nearby Mountain Meadows for two weeks, but secretly instructs his sons, Jonathan (Trent Ford) and Micah (Taylor Handley), to keep a close watch on these “Gentile dogs.”

Unlike Micah (a naive but precocious little polygamist), Jonathan is the story’s token Mormon with a conscience — good-looking, sensitive, the only man in town without a wife or two. He easily befriends the pioneers, employing his devastatingly sexy whisper to tame first a wild stallion, then the heart of a fetching blonde lass, Emily (Tamara Hope); she, in turn, helpfully quotes Scripture (”Judge not, lest ye be judged”) that leads Jonathan to question his father’s absolutist ways.

First half of “September Dawn” is middling frontier soap opera, marred by occasionally stilted dialogue and thesps who aren’t always at ease with the period diction. But the pic darkens irrevocably as Samuelson and the townsfolk descend into maniacal bloodlust: Convincing themselves that the settlers were involved in the murder of Joseph Smith (played by Dean Cain, the helmer’s son, in gray-toned flashback) and other Mormon prophets, they demand justice in the form of “blood atonement.”

A violent montage, overlaid with excerpts from Young’s own writings, elucidates this chilling doctrine — that sinners must be redeemed not through faith in Christ, but through their own bloodshed.

Perversely, then, Young, Samuelson and their hysterical ilk see themselves as mercy killers, meting out salvation in the form of death. At Samuelson’s insistence, Lee (Jon Gries) pressures the local Paiute Indians to attack the wagon train, but the resulting siege merely sets the stage for a bloody coup de grace that leaves no doubt about the true villains of the piece.

Auds may rightly recoil from the graphically staged finale, with its almost fetishistic focus on the guttings of women and children, all shot in slow-mo and edited together in a flurry of impressionistic dissolves. It’s not torture porn; it’s massacre porn.

Cain’s portrait of sanctimonious hypocrisy is certainly unflinching, encouraging viewers to draw their own parallels between modern-day and Latter-day terrorists (and carefully emphasizing that the Utah slayings took place on Sept. 11, 1857). But the pic is ultimately less interested in understanding its Mormon characters than in demonizing them, and a ham-fisted obviousness undermines scene after scene (such as one that juxtaposes the travelers’ heartfelt prayers with Samuelson’s fire-and-brimstone denunciations). Nor does the pic convey any insights into the psychology of extremism, aside from some choice moments in Voight’s persuasively complex performance.

Well-scouted Calgary locations are beautifully photographed by Juan-Ruiz Anchia, showing off sun-dappled pastures and mountainous landscapes to good effect, though a dearth of establishing shots deny the pic a coherent sense of geography. William Ross’ elegiac, sometimes overpowering score provides sturdy support throughout.

IN THE CUT

Directed by Jane Campion

Rated R, 118 minutes

The clown has always wanted to play Hamlet. Michael Jordan had to assay baseball, opera singers can't be proof against the urge to do burst ballads, actors run for clear office, and public officials try their hands at acting. Who can blame Meg Ryan for wanting to drop-kick over the America's Sweetheart traces and freedom a little down-and-dirty sex? The fact is, she's somewhat all right, with the sex and with the character, and so is her costar, Mark Ruffalo. The blameworthy, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our head.

Jane Campion ("The Piano") has always been tense to the Freudian raw-alleys of female sexuality, but in the past she's haunted a more distilled type of alley. Here she's plunging into the slasher-thriller style, and her instincts have gone all haywire. Her camera setups are self-consciously arty, her plot setups are self-consciously obvious, there are gaps in the editing and holes in the inferential. There's language to bring a blush to the cheek of a staff sergeant; and of procedure there are buckets of blood.

Ryan plays Frannie Avery, an English teacher in a lower Manhattan inner-see intoxicated junior high school. She's trying to interest her students in Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse", which is a stiff challenge. When they hear that only one woman dies in the publication, the kids are scornful. "How many women would have to fail for it to be a good enrol?" she asks, and after some reflection, a student answers "Three."

Frannie's passion is language. She jots down lines from the poetry-in-the-subways cards ("I inadequacy to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees"), and meets a certain of her students, a conceitedly African-American kid named Cornelius Webb (Sharrieff Pugh) in a bar to motivate him for circle slang (we learn the word "meeow", but not what it means.) During their session she excuses herself to go to the bathroom, a system located down a drab staircase with an ominously closing door. In in truth we can't be sure it's round down there. She on no account finds it. She finds as a substitute for a man getting said sex from a woman with blue fingernails. She can't make out his face in the shadows, but she can exhort out a tattoo on his wrist. He can see her face, although, if the annul camera angle lighting is anything to go by, and she spends piles of immediately experience there and watching.

The next date Blue Fingernails is dead - "disarticulated", in the catchy relating to employed by James Malloy (Ruffalo), the homicide detective assigned to the occurrence. The word means to separate body parts at the joint, and the victim's head is not discovered in the same neighborhood as the victim's blue fingernails.

He interviews Frannie, who offers no tidings, but sends out enough pheromones to prompt him to ask her into the open. She demurs, and waits to talk it over with her half-sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a dim, frantic creature who lives in a flea trap above a stripe nightspot. Pauline and Frannie both seem to have unerring bad instincts about men, but Frannie at least has learned not to perform on hers right away. "Why don't you just call to mind a consider about going to bed?" she advises her sister, and we comprehend what she means from some self-reward we've seen her indulge in the night before. Pauline's advice is at most the antithetical: "Nod off with him," she says, "if only over the extent of the limber up."

So Frannie goes absent from with Malloy, and his straighten is not of the "what spring does to the cherry trees" variety, but it's colorful and to the point. I'm not unfaltering regarding the control procedure in this. I don't know whether a cop investigating a serial homicide would expect out a latent witness on their first meeting. I'm not sure a cop and his partner would usher said little ones woman into their cruiser and then turn the feeling morose with their communication while hardly paying her a tittle of detect. I'm not convinced that, after a night of torrid sex, he would leave her apartment just as she's getting convenient money to present him his first solid lead in the case, or that even a hardened homicide cop would be in the mood pro phone sex right after cataloguing some disarticulated body parts in a blood-soaked laundromat. But it takes all kinds.

It's a brave performance by Ryan, who wears Jane Fonda's wig from "Klute" and nothing else in some pretty muggy scenes. Ruffalo too bares all; Campion's not the sort of director to spare the mankind what she asks of the woman. Both actors do a curious job of baring character as well, but the characters they're acknowledged are too amorphous to admit uncontaminated lines in the outline.

Campion is an intelligent director, and she manages a few upstanding moments, but she loses her detail amongst the blood and shadows of the thriller class. Cinematographer Dion Beebe gives her a lighting scheme out of "Seven", but the camera jiggles as if the entirety thing were being shot on the downtown local. The screen is strewn with symbols, and unrelated close down b close-ups that assert to portend, but portend nothing. The consolidate of potential grotty guys is small, and easily disarticulated, and the indecision peters out early.

The fascination that people have had with magic goes
back to before recorded history. Tales of people who could do things that go
beyond the laws of nature are found in every human culture in every era of time.
There is also one aspect of magic that is consistently part of the stories;
beautiful women. In films there was Kim Novak?s portrayal of a witch in ?Bell
Book and Candle?. On television there were shows like ?Bewitched?. The
combination of beauty and the supernatural is a provide way to ratings. One show
of this genre stands above the rest ?Charmed?. It is about three sisters who
discover they are powerful witches. The show lasted for eight years; longer than
any other television shows with female leads. Of course, when a show lasts this
long there is bound to be many changes along the way. This series managed to
thrive with major alterations in the main and ancillary cast, producers and
creative directions. It was resilient and that showed how it retained a loyal
fan base. There was a spark of imagination in this series that set it above many
imitators. The creators of the show did more than make a TV series; they created
an entire universe complete with its own set of rules and mythology. This is
what works best with fans of the fantasy genre. I happen to be one and when a
bunch of us get together we discuss the minutia of such universes. ?Charmed? was
rich in this; there was entire tapestry of back stories and fully drawn
characters to populate this universe. Like most television series each of the
eight seasons have found they way to DVD releases. If you wanted to get them all
it would cost about $320 retail and take up over eight inches on your shelves.
Now CBS Paramount has come up with an alternative and it is fantastic. The
entire series is in one special edition set retailing for about $250. Those out
there with more DVDs than room will be glad to know it is in the form of a book
and takes up two inches; albeit the height is much greater. This is not only a
great series to have but this is the best possible way to have them all. Many
series have run for a long time but this one tells a story that requires all the
seasons to tell.

The story starts out in season one with the Halliwell
sisters, Prudence (Shannen Doherty), Piper (Holly Marie Combs) and Phoebe
(Alyssa Milano). After the death of their grandmother Penelope Halliwell (mostly
played by Jennifer Rhodes) who was affectionately called ?Grams? by the girls.
She left them a large house in San Francisco where she raised the sisters after
the death of their mother Patty (Finola Hughes). As soon as they are reunited
they old fights and bickering start up but has to be put on the back burner when
the discover that besides the house they inherited supernatural powers. Prue can
move things with her mind; Piper can stop time and Phoebe gained the ability to
have premonitions of the future. They find out that they are witches and
together they will fulfill a prophecy of becoming the ?Charmed Ones? the most
powerful good witches in history. This initial season was naturally the
introduction to the character traits and universe that will pervade the series.
Prue as the oldest always considered herself the head of the family. She worked
for an auction house. She was the overachiever and control freak. On the
opposite end of the spectrum is the youngest sister Phoebe. She was the free
spirit of the sisters. She left home to get away from the controlling nature of
Prue. Caught in the middle was Pipper. As the middle sister she had to
constantly play the part of mediator between her warring siblings. He dream was
to work as a chef in her own restaurant. This first season explored the way the
ladies dealt with their new powers, responsibilities, destiny and personal
lives. Usually this season fell back on the freak of the week format with the
sisters vanquishing a demon or evil warlock. We are also introduced to their
magic book, the Book of Shadows, kept in the attic. It is the combined knowledge
of generations of witches in their line.

Romance was always key to the stories in this series.
Men seemed to come and go but one would stick; Leo Wyatt (Brian Krause). At
first he seemed to be the local handyman helping to fix up the manor. It turned
out that he was a whitelighter; an angelic being charged with protecting good
witches. He falls in love with Piper and they eventually have two son; breaking
the family tradition of daughters. As children of a witch and whitelighter the
boys were destined to be extremely powerful and sought after by the root of all
evil, the Source. The relationship of Leo and Pipper and their sons would drive
much of the following seasons. Another significant other in the mix is Cole
Turner (Julian McMahon). He initially appears as a sympathetic district attorney
but is later revealed to be a powerful demon Belthazor (Michael Bailey Smith).
He wavered between good and evil and at one point became the Source. He would
marry Phoebe but even after they divorced he stuck around for awhile.

The Prodigy full movie bluray

At the end of season three Doherty left the series.
Instead of coping out and just replacing her with another actor like the other
witch oriented TV show, ?Bewitched? or trying something like her looks were
magically altered they producers did the right thing and killed off the
character. This opened a whole new direction for the stories. Since the power of
the Charmed One was the power of three this was now broken. The evil underworld
was certain that the threat of the Charmed Ones was broken. Unknown to nearly
everyone Patty had an affair with her whitelighter which resulted in a daughter,
Paige (Rose McGowan). In many ways this revitalized the series. Paige had to
come to grips with her new found powers, the ability to ?orb? or move objects,
and a brand new family. It also reinvented the familiar roles of the remaining
two original sisters. Piper was now the eldest and in charge. Phoebe was moved
from the irresponsible youngest to the role of mediator and mentor. Paige would
have a lot of difficult in the major changes in her life but eventually embraces
her dual magical heritage and becomes the headmistress of the other realm?s
magic school. In the penultimate seventh season the secret the sisters have kept
for so long came out forcing them to fake their own deaths and take on magical
disguises. This hindered their ability to openly fight evil so they take on a
young witch, Billie Jenkins (Kaley Cuoco). She is rebellious and strong willed
always trying to do things her way. The final episode ties up all the loose ends
and gives a brief look into the future of the Halliwell clan; a satisfying
conclusion to a well crafted series.

CBS Paramount has out done everyone with this full
series set. They have been releasing several DVD collectors? editions of popular
television series but this one is truly special. There are two ways to get this
set; the standard edition and the deluxe edition. Both hold all 49 discs which
encompasses all eight seasons plus a special previously unreleased disc of
extras. Both are in the form of the Book of Shadows. The standard edition
measures 8? by 11 1/8? by 2.5?; the deluxe comes in at a massive 12.5? by 15? by
2 5/16?. They may seem expensive but when you consider the per disc cost they
are less than the individual season sets. I have to admit that even after
receiving thousands of DVDs this one impressed my before I opened the shipping
package. There was a weight to this I have never encountered before. The quality
of the book is about that of a standard hard cover novel. Besides the pages that
hold the discs there are other pages directly from the show?s Book of Shadows.
They included spells and facts about some of the major demons and evil creatures
that appeared in the show. The episodes are listed in the same old style font
giving the book a look of being old and magical. Two colored ribbons are
provided to keep your place as you work your way through the series. Season
eight has its own special extras disc and there is a series oriented
retrospective extra collection. Like many of you have my share of special
collector?s editions. This one redefines the word special; it is in every way.
This is not only a full series it is something that will grace your bookshelves.
CBS Paramount has reset the bar for all DVD collector?s sets to come.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Texas tycoon Howard Hughes’ entrance to Hollywood as a filmmaker
results in an action-packed airplane film that started out as a silent
and then was altered to be a talkie to keep up with the new technology.
It took three years to film and a number of directors were signed on at
various stages of filming to aid the green Hughes, they included Luther
Reed, Edmund Goulding, Marshall Neilan, Howard Hawks and James Whale (hired
on as dialogue coach for Jean Harlow, but actually directed a good part
of the film). Hughes poured a fortune into the production (projected to
be $4,000,000), hoping to make the best flying movie ever (better than
Oscar winner for best picture Wings-1927). Though the film was better than
could be expected, it was still done in by its uninteresting love triangle
story, risible dialogue and its lavish but cheesy circus-like production
values. Its action scenes are what give the film a lift. They include a
Zeppelin raid on London and a spectacular WW I dogfight with as many as
thirty planes. There’s also the launching of the career of the young American
actress Jean Harlow (who replaced the heavy accented Norwegian actress
Greta Nissen when the film became a talkie). Harlow stars as the floozie
who is miscast as a Brit and though disappointing the directors with her
limited ability, has one of the most memorable lines in film when she asks
co-star Ben Lyon if he would be shocked if she slipped into “something
more comfortable.”

It opens in Munich, just before the First World War, with idealistic
Oxford student Roy Rutledge (James Hall) visiting his German classmate
Karl Arnstedt (John Darrow), along with his hedonist brother Monte Rutledge
(Ben Lyon). The two Brit brothers are played by Americans, who never convince
they are Brits. Monte is caught having an affair with the wife of the Baron
von Kranz (Lucien Prival) and is challenged to a duel, but the cowardly
Monte flees the country and his place is taken by his stand-up brother.
Roy is wounded in the duel.

With the outbreak of war, Karl is called into the German army and
flies a German Zeppelin that targets Trafalgar Square. The English brothers
quit Oxford to sign up for the British Royal Air Force. The sexy but untrustworthy
teenager Helen (Jean Harlow) meets her soulmate Monte while soused in a
bar, and they hit it off. Roy also pines for her.

In France, the brothers fly a captured German plane on a risky mission
to bomb a munitions dump and have success. Later their plane is shot down,
and they are captured and questioned. A German general, the same one Monty
cuckolded in a civilian life, offers to spare their lives if they tell
of the British plans. Monty is willing to do so, but Roy has to shoot his
brother in order to stop him from blabbing. The Germans then execute Roy
by a firing squad. His noble deed allows the Brits to attack the Germans.

The indulgent, slow-moving, lethargic war story becomes reduced to
a study of the brothers and their different character traits. Its melodramatics
are cornball, but those aerial scenes are first-rate. The film was very
popular, but still couldn’t bring in a profit due to its high costs.

Independent writer/director Todd Solondz became an underground and critic love with Desirable To The Dollhouse (1995) and Cheerfulness (1997), a pair of films that pushed a raffle of uncomfortably taboo hot buttons with a inflamed, wide-eyed look at the subtleties of the hazardous side of human behavior. It’s all yon angst and awkwardness with Solondz, and he has certainly kept his streak going with Storytelling, a film that, while not as singularly bleak as Happiness (and noticeably less chatty at a chilly 87 minutes), is one that piles on a depressing succession of downbeat plot twists. Cinematographer Frederick Elmes, no stranger to dysfunctionalism after working on The Ice Storm and Blue Velvet, captures an equal combine of bonny and ugly moments together, over again with a more unflinching eye than many viewers would probably care to go to. The film is split into two sections: Fiction and Non-Fiction. What this means is that we be undergoing two separate, unaffiliated stories being told here, and Solondz uses the drift of storytelling (hence the title) as the link between the two.

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Fiction (which runs a scant twenty-seven minutes) is hither Vi (Selma Blair), a vacant-sparkling college student who is involved in a sex-fueled relationship with gazabo swot Marcus (Leo Fitzpatrick), who happens to have cerebral palsy. The pair both wait upon a document savoir faire prearranged by the brutally frank Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom), a Pulitzer Plunder-winning African-American author. When Mr. Scott viciously verbally dissects and attacks Marcus’ straight story about his love for Vi, the already awkward relationship between the two lovers is destroyed. What follows is Vi’s search allowing for regarding redemption with a one-night coppice that results in a disturbing sexual run-in that becomes the guide for a item that leaves her even more lacking in than when she began.

New Stripe has included both the unrated and R-rated versions of Storytelling on this disc, and the only major argument between the two is the treatment of the aforementioned coition place with Vi. The unrated kind (while not graphically explicit) was apparently too much pro the ratings board to bless the photograph with an “R” and, oddly adequacy the R-rated type sports a Solondz-endorsed red rectangle completely covering the copulation act.

Non-Fiction is the second tale in Solondz’s latest dark imagination, and is extremely the centerpiece of the film, operation practically an hour in interminably. Down and wrong documentarian Toby Oxman (Paul Giamatti) is looking to affirm a film approximately send-Columbine teenage life in suburbia, and when he stumbles upon the crumbling Norman Rockwell-ian Livingston family, he discovers more than he bargained to save. On the show up, it would seem to be an idyllic life for Marty (John Goodman) and Fran (Julie Hagerty), and their three boys: disenfranchised high school superior slacker Scooby (Mark Webber), athletic freshman Brady (Noah Fleiss) and overly inquisitive fifth-grader Mikey (Jonathan Osser). But of seminar the odds of finished delight in a Solondz film is a scarce commodity, and when Toby uses Scooby as the focal prong of his documentary, stability and normalcy quickly fall to the wayside.

Comas, homosexuality, dysfunctional families, unfulfilled dreams, college admissions, selfishness, hypnosis, religion, plundering, and murder all figure prominently in Non-Fiction, and Solondz continually dishes out an in all cases-increasing array of troubling events that conspire together to deject the Livingston set.

Non-Fiction has the benefit of an anomalous cast, especially a perfectly downtrodden, but eager, Toby as played by Paul Giamatti. His phone parley during the opening of the split, when he is describing his downward career spiral since high faction to a former classmate, is a marvel of bitterness and self-effacing pity. John Goodman, donning a doublet of heavy horn-rimmed glasses, is a 1950s dad facing 2001 crises, and he provides a finely suppressed rage throughout. Steve Railsback (Helter Skelter), Franka Potente (Branch, Lola, Run) Mike Schank (American Movie), and equanimous Conan O’Brien (as himself) pop up in brief, but momentous cameos.

Storytelling will never be considered “the feel well-disposed movie of the year” by any means, but that wasn’t the filmmaker’s intent, either. As is Solondz’s panache, this is another dose of depressing reality barely disguised by a thin mask of normalcy.