Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
The footage in “Grateful Dawg” is raw, the camerawork is iffy and the sound bites aren’t compelling enough to warrant feature film treatment. But the music of the late Jerry Garcia and David “Dawg” Grisman–the stars of this documentary–makes this 81-minute excursion worthwhile.
The year is 2079. For more than a decade, earthlings have battled an alien force that is stronger, smarter and more deadly than anything the human race has encountered. To protect themselves from further destruction, most of the planet has been covered by an electromagnetic force-field dome designed to prevent aliens from infiltrating earth and masquerading as human beings.
What’re you doing New Year’s Eve? Let’s take a guess. You don’t have a date for the big night. Or, if you do, the two of you are dreading the thought of dealing with booked restaurants, inebriated revelers and couples trying just a little too hard to prove they’re having the best night of their lives. Then again, who wants to spend $300 for a night on the town when the economy is so iffy?
The film features hip-hop stars Method Man and Redman as a pair of pot-smoking fiends who find refuge at Harvard University. The catch is they have to maintain a 2.0 average to remain there, and without studying, they can do this only with the aid of a friendly ghost who appears when they smoke joints rolled with his ashes.
Kong is a deaf-mute assassin unable to hear his victims begging for mercy or the cacophonous roar of his gun as he completes his assignments. He quickly and meticulously silences his victims in “Bangkok Dangerous,” a beautiful, gory film in which there are no heroes–just bad guys and not-quite-as-bad guys. Directed and written by twins Oxide and Danny Pang, the film assaults your senses with its stylized brutality. Set in Bangkok, the picture depicts the squalor of the characters’ lives. There is no beauty in this Bangkok–just dank despair.
What could have been a cute comedy is hidden way, way below the surface of “Out Cold.” Just as the film teases its teen audience with the promise of almost but not-quite-there female nudity, this PG-13 movie dances with the possibility of being engaging. But a recurring cruel streak and a cliched, boring script that clumsily attempts to parody “Fight Club” and “Casablanca” trips up the fun.
The camera is focused on a group of young friends. Each is more handsome than the next. They have the kind of hard, fit bodies you only find at the Olympics or on the cover of GQ magazine. As moviegoers watch the men, filmmaker Bruce Weber relays the story on how he, at their age, was too embarrassed to change clothes in front of other boys in the locker room. He wistfully admits, “We sometimes photograph things we can never be.”
Envy me, girls. I am in Lance Bass’s hotel room and guess what? He happens to be here, too.
Never mind that we’re surrounded by his assistant, makeup artist, a handful of publicists and a photographer. I think I saw love in his eyes. OK, maybe it was just the sunlight reflecting from the windows of the W Hotel on Lake Shore Drive. But the point is, Bass–one-fifth of the phenomenally popular boy band ‘N Sync–is so charming he can even make cranky reporters smile.
“I never knew poetry was about opening your legs one minute, opening your grave the next,” says the female protagonist in ”The Monkey’s Mask.” “I never knew poetry could be as sticky as sex.” She’s quoting the words of Dorothy Porter, whose novel is the basis for this uneven Australian-made film.
What if Japan had been occupied by Nazi Germany after World War II? “Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade” explores this possibility by presenting an alternative nation. In this Japanese animated film, Tokyo is dark, bleak and industrial. The city is a war zone, with the police and military battling a small but well-trained group of elite terrorists who negotiate their way through the city’s sewer system. They employ women and children to act as decoys. They have all been trained to believe there is honor in dying for their cause.