Movie & TV News

[Rasputin]

Copying Beethoven (2006)

An aspiring composer of humble means, 23-year-old Anna Holtz is seeking inspiration and career advancement in the world's music capital, Vienna. A student at the music conservatory, she is recommended for a position at a venerated publisher, and, in a fortuitous turn of events, orchestrates an opportunity to work beside the greatest, most mercurial artist alive - Ludwig van Beethoven. When the skeptical...

Genres: Art/Foreign, Drama and Romance

Running Time: 1 hr. 44 min.

Release Date: November 10th, 2006 (limited)

Distributors: MGM Distribution Company

Cast and Credits

Starring: Diane Kruger, Ed Harris, Joe Anderson (III), Matthew Goode, Phyllida Law
Directed by: Agnieszka Holland
Produced by: Ernst Goldschmidt, Marina Grasic, Andreas Schmid

[Rasputin]

Happy Feet

Energetic, eyepopping and slightly soulless


"Happy Feet," the new feature-length cartoon about penguins in Antarctica, brings a Hollywood summer blockbuster mentality to animation. The characters are endearing but predictable, the plot pretty much slush, and there's some questionable stereotyping, both ethnic and sexual. But man, oh, man, those action sequences and landscapes. Watch a CGI avalanche or an animated glacier crumble into the sea. You'll hardly believe your eyes. That's how state-of-the-art this picture is — and why the flaws may not bother you.

According to the movie's mythos, all emperor penguins have their own song. Except one. His name is Mumbles (voice of Elijah Wood) and he's got, well, happy feet (courtesy of Broadway hoofer Savion Glover and a technique called motion capture). His mother, Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman, doing Marilyn Monroe), stands up for him, but his father, Memphis (Hugh Jackman, doing Elvis), suggests he not do that dancing stuff in public. "It just ain't penguin, son."

Pause for reflection: The love child of the King and Marilyn would be ... Frodo?

At any rate, being different makes him an outcast, and, as generally happens with outcasts, Mumbles ends up on a quest. After being menaced by a very scary seal (parents, take note), he hooks up with some Hispanic penguins whose macho leader, Ramon (Robin Williams, toned down and funny), thinks dancing is cool.

Somehow, this plot line morphs into another one about how the penguins are all starving thanks to pollution and overfishing by thoughtless humans. When a menacing seagull-like skua (Anthony LaPaglia) insists the tracking band on its leg was the result of an alien abduction, Mumbles decides these "aliens" must be connected to the famine and sets out to find them. They find him, and he lands briefly in a zoo — wittily portrayed as a zonked-out nirvana where the penguins stand around in a blissful stupor waiting for fish to fall into their beaks.

Writer-director-producer George Miller is the man who brought us "Mad Max" and that pig among pigs, Babe. "Happy Feet" lacks "Babe's" charm, but for edge-of-your-seat excitement, it gives "The Road Warrior" a run for its money. Along with the hungry seal — a marvel of yellow teeth and red eyes — there's an amazing sequence with a couple of killer whales. A huge rusted tanker emerges out of the mist like some prehistoric sea creature. Less dangerous but every bit as striking is a journey through a valley of humongous elephant seals (one voiced by the late Crocodile Hunter himself, Steve Irwin).

The soundtrack features everyone from Prince to the Beach Boys, with a heavy emphasis on R&B. At times, there's so much music, you wonder if "Happy Feet" isn't just an excuse to wrap a movie around a best-selling CD. But that strikes me as more Hollywood-think than Miller (as does Norma Jean's cleavage and tattoo).

"Happy Feet" is colorful, energetic, fast-moving, visually eyepopping and slightly soulless. No matter how ingeniously these animated penguins are portrayed, they just can't match the real thing. Enjoy the movie, enjoy your kids' reactions, then go home and luxuriate in the unmatchable "March of the Penguins."

[Rasputin]

New 007 leaves franchise shaken and stirred

Imagine, if you can, you've never heard of someone named James Bond. That martinis shaken or stirred meant nothing to you. That the number 007 made no particular sense and M was just a letter in the alphabet.

Imagine you've never experienced the Wow Factor. The jaw-dropping stunts, the exotic locales, the gorgeous women, the despicable bad guys.

And then, at a multiplex near you, there appears a galvanizing new action hero — though you're not quite sure he should be counted as entirely heroic. And he's played by sexy Daniel Craig, an English actor whose name you may not know but whose charisma and extraordinary acting chops have drifted stateside in movies including "Layer Cake," "Road to Perdition," "Munich" and "Infamous" (as killer Perry Smith).

Welcome to "Casino Royale."

Based on Ian Fleming's first Bond novel — an earlier version in 1967 was made as a spoof starring David Niven and Woody Allen — the new 007 movie could be considered a re-imagining of the most famous spy in movie history. Or perhaps simply a kind of "Bond Begins."

Gone are the puerile double-entendres — funny when Sean Connery first uttered them more than 40 years ago, but a little tired now. Also MIA are the gyrating girls over the opening credits and, for that matter, the traditionally spectacular special-effects-in-the-extreme pre-credit prologue.

This Bond means business, and to make sure you know it, the picture opens with a black-and-white sequence in which Bond earns his double-0 status — that's two kills, if you please. First is a bloody bashing in a white-tiled public lavatory that's as unglamorous as a Martin Scorsese gang hit. The next one is, as our blond (get used to it) Bond notes, easier. Considerably.

Let the iconography begin. The familiar iris shot encircles him, the classic chords ring out, the movie bursts into color — and we're off and running with a Bond film worthy of, well, Sean Connery.

As always, the plot doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. A no-good named Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) makes a living financing terrorists. Certain bad bets on the stock market bring him to a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro. The inimitable M (inimitable Judi Dench) — who so far has dismissed her newest double-0 as nothing more than "a blunt instrument" — dispatches Bond to beat Le Chiffre at his own game, on and off the gaming table.

Director Martin Campbell, who gave us the very respectable "GoldenEye" in 1995, and writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, whose script has been sweetened by "Crash's" Oscar-winning Paul Haggis, approach the essential Bond tropes much as Peter Jackson did the special effects in his "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. That is, in service of plot and character. We learn how Bond acquired that spiffy Aston Martin (in a card game). How he came by his first tailored tux, thanks to M-dispatched chaperone/love interest Vesper Lynd (gorgeous and talented Eva Green). And, in the crowd-pleasing moment of a crowd-pleasing movie, what he said the first time he was asked if he liked his martini shaken or stirred. To wit: "Do I look like I give a damn?"

"Casino Royale" does just about everything right. A breathtaking chase over, under, around and through a construction site includes some fancy stuff on a gigantic crane worthy of Jackie Chan at his most agile and death-defying. (Another plus: The movie relies more on stunt men than special effects.) The extravagantly beautiful Green makes for an expert sparring partner. Told she's not his type, she flippantly asks, "Smart?"

No, he replies. "Single."

Die-hard fans may miss Q and Miss Moneypenny or the boys-and-their-toys gadgets or even the smirky tone. But in their stead is a riveting picture that, for all its globetrotting glamour and eyepopping action, demands we take this new Bond seriously.

And why not? Craig is definitely the Real Thing — dangerous, seductive, with a wired intensity that, along with his irradiated blue eyes, calls to mind Connery's sex-symbol contemporary, Steve McQueen. Roger Moore was — let's face it — a charming buffoon. Timothy Dalton brought back the menace, but was never comfortable in the role. Pierce Brosnan brought back the humor, but was ultimately too comfortable in the role.

They all — with the possible exception of Moore, who sauntered through his films as if he were hosting a James Bond Film Festival, not playing the title role — worked in Connery's shadow. Craig doesn't replace the first, once-and-forever 007, but he brings a ferocity and sinewy sexiness to the part (he's naked more than Green is, most memorably in an already much talked about torture scene) that's totally new, totally right and yet takes nothing away from Bond No. 1.

OK, the movie is about 20 minutes too long. And we're not always sure who is doing what to whom or why. (Luckily, M explains all.)

Still, Craig and company have aired out 007, buffed him up and taught an old horndog some new tricks. As Vesper says to Bond, "Just because you've done something doesn't mean you have to keep on doing it."

Daniel Craig does Bond differently. He does him better. And I hope he does him for a good long time.

[Rasputin]

Robert Altman, ground breaking director, dead at 81

Robert Altman , the director of such classic films as "M*A*S*H" and "Nashville" and one of the great Hollywood mavericks, died Monday night of complications from cancer at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 81.

Mr. Altman was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, five times as a director and twice as a producer. Though he never won, he received an honorary Oscar in March for "a career," as the prize citation put it, "that has repeatedly reinvented the art form and inspired filmmakers and audiences alike." Mr. Altman also won the New York Film Critics award for best director three times.

"Altmanesque" long ago entered the vocabulary of American film. It referred to movies with large ensembles and interlocking narratives that took a skeptical view of contemporary society. Films ranging from "Boogie Nights" to "Crash," which won the Academy Award for best picture of 2005, are unimaginable without Mr. Altman's example.

Perhaps no major American filmmaker so consistently demonstrated such unpredictability in content or quality. "I don't like to repeat myself because I'm afraid I'd be late for work," Mr. Altman said in a 2001 Globe interview. "My biggest thrill is going into territory that I haven't really been in before."

His taste for risk-taking meant Mr. Altman experienced great failure as well as great success. That success was almost entirely critical; "M*A*S*H" was the only one of his more than 30 feature films to be a smash hit. As Pauline Kael , Mr. Altman's most notable champion, once wrote: "When Altman succeeds, he magically pulls a rabbit out of his hat. When he fails, it looks as if he never had anything in that hat."

Indeed, such flops as "Brewster McCloud" and "Quintet" inspired as much derision as "Nashville" did praise.

But after a career downturn starting in the second half of the '70s, Mr. Altman rebounded in the early 1990s. "A Prairie Home Companion, " Mr. Altman's most recent film, was released in June.

"When I spoke with him last week, he seemed impatient for the future," Meryl Streep, who starred in the movie, said in a statement yesterday. "He still had the generous, optimistic appetite for the next thing, and we planned the next film laughing in anticipation of the laughs we'd have.

"What a gent, what a guy, what a great heart," she added. "There's no one like him and we'll miss him so."

Garrison Keillor, who co-wrote and starred in the film, said yesterday that Mr. Altman's love of moviemaking clearly came through on the set.

"He loved the chaos of shooting and the sociability of the crew and actors -- he adored actors -- and he loved the editing room and he especially loved sitting in a screening room and watching the thing over and over with other people," Keillor said in a statement to the Associated Press

[Rasputin]

Saw III

It's Halloween again, time for another installment of When Really Bad and Disgusting Things Happen to Mildly Irritating People, better known as the Saw series. This year's model is better than Saw II, but that's not saying much. Like terminally ill psychopath Jigsaw's fiendish contraptions: Some hurt less than others, but none are much fun.

Here, as Jigsaw draws closer to death, his protégé (original Saw survivor Amanda) appears to be of an even more malicious bent. And this time around, a kidnapped doctor must keep the villain alive while he watches one final victim run through his deadly maze.

The torture, as always, is what's selling the tickets—and it shows. Saw III's production values are miles ahead of the minibudgeted original, but it only comes through here and there. Deathtraps get sumptuous tableaux and fetishistic music-video detail, while simple exposition scenes look cheap.

But as gory as this film is, the story is even messier. Saw III devotes an inordinate amount of time to filling in gaps from previous entries, leaving you ample time to wonder: If all these flashbacks are necessary to understanding the previous two films, why did we bother watching them in the first place?

The plot is as convoluted as Jigsaw's Rube-Goldberg-by-way-of-de-Sade contraptions—and just as rigged. Ostensibly crucial information is withheld from the audience for no other reason than to provide a "Gotcha!" at the end.

Saw III, like Jigsaw's traps, is needlessly, superfluously cruel, an intricate puzzlebox that once solved is revealed to have been empty all along. The only way to win his games is not to play.

[Nutcase]

I Know That I Am

Despite the fact that much of the footage—shot in secret and smuggled out of Iran—was captured and presumed destroyed by local authorities, 'I Know That I Am' exists thanks to the tenacity of director Peyman Khosravi.

I Know That I Am reveals the little-told story of trans queers in Iran. Vilified by society and without support networks outside their small communities, theirs is one of survival against the odds: according to law, sexual “deviancy” is punishable by hanging. Through interviews with government officials, human rights advocates and trans people themselves, the film constructs a telling, important portrait of queer struggles amidst profound cultural restrictions.

Peyman Khosravi /Iran/Canada /2006
Total time: 70 min

here is some footage:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF_WOnSndgQ"]YouTube - I know that I AM[/ame]

An interview with Peyman Khosravi and Babak Yousefi by Karen MacKay

My interview with Peyman Khosravi and Babak Yousefi can be summed up by one word – inspiring. I was inspired not only by the film that I had the opportunity to screen before it was completed, but also by the personal struggles that director Peyman Khosravi has encountered to ensure that the story of the individuals in his moving documentary I Know That I Am would reach viewers around the globe.

Peyman had worked for fourteen years in Persian media in Iran when this film project ended his career and forced him to leave the country. One could say that the telling of a story of a group of transsexuals has effectively ended Peyman’s life as he knew it. He not only had to leave a prominent career, but he also had to leave his family and friends without even being able to say goodbye. When I asked him if he had any regrets, he said that he had none. Although he left his family and life behind Peyman noted that he feels happy and proud that he can give voice to a group in society that has no place, that he is able to tell the truth about the oppressed. It had become his responsibility to tell their story and to ensure that the work was the loudest voice as oppression doesn’t allow for sound.

He lost over 70% of the film that he had shot in the six months working with the individuals featured when his house was raided just before he had been forced to leave Iran. But Peyman later remarked that I could say in this article that only 30% of the pain comes across. He is also remorseful that of the footage that was lost some was of an individual who had suffered the most and who ultimately killed themselves – a story he had hoped to have been able to tell. But the story that he does tell is one that is candid, serious and passionate. It made me question my understanding of the Iranian culture, as well as made me want to learn more.

In the interview assisting as interpreter was Babak Yousefi who is working with Peyman in editing and also giving financial support for the film. Babak had just recently met Peyman and after watching eleven straight hours of footage he said that it was no question he would become involved with the project. Babak, who has been in Canada for most of his life, said that in watching the footage it had changed his opinion of his background and he no longer has respect for the government or the people who would watch this oppression and not do anything about it.

I can not put into words the struggle, the pain or the strength of character of the individuals in the film. It is a documentary with no narration and simple cinematography so that you as the viewer can take from it what you will. Peyman feels he has no right to say what you should take away from the film, but that he hopes the viewers will feel for one second what it feels like to be a stranger in your own family and country. He said what makes him sad is that no matter how well the film gets across no one can fully understand the pain Iranian transsexuals experience waking up with no hope, with reaching out a hand for help only to have everything taken from them.

Neither Peyman nor Babak wanted to seem pessimistic but they said that the burden is now on their shoulders to not only get the film screened in as many festivals as possible, but also to ensure that help is sent back to the transsexual community in Iran; that they each have the realization that they may be risking their lives, but that this project is a bigger cause than life.

In the last moments of my interview Peyman remarked that it makes him emotional and anxious that he couldn’t speak English better so that he could scream about the atrocities that he became privy to. But his screams and those of the individuals have been put onto film. When you see the lives they are forced into, merely by being who they are, I can only hope that you may feel the need to scream.

[Rasputin]

Stranger Than Fiction

The ingenious celluloid mischief wrought by the new movie "Stranger Than Fiction" summons up all kinds of predecessors. Charlie Kaufman's twisty, mind-bending "Adaptation" and "Being John Malkovich," of course. But also "I Heart Huckabees," with its eccentric characters playing it perfectly straight, and "The Truman Show," with its notions about living an authentic life. Plus, a couple of Steve Martin pictures: "All of Me," in which he shares a body with Lily Tomlin, and, most of all, the madly romantic "L.A. Story."

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), our ironic narrator (John Hurt) tells us, is "a man of infinite calculation" — a straighter-than-straight-arrow IRS auditor who always brushes his teeth 76 times (38 back and forth and 38 up and down), goes to bed every night at precisely 11:13, and knows exactly how many steps there are between home and the bus stop.

Then, one Wednesday, he hears a voice inside his head. A woman's voice, accurately describing everything he does and, he notes, with a much better vocabulary.

Harold seeks help from literature professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who asks him questions like, are you the king of anything? Eventually, they identify the voice — she's Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a reclusive, once-famous author who hasn't published anything in 10 years.

Worse, she's known for killing off her protagonists. Unless Harold can change his life from a tragedy to a comedy, Hilbert warns, his future might be all used up (as Marlene Dietrich says in "Touch of Evil").

First-time writer Zach Helm has created a clever, literate script that unravels a bit near the end. Most of "Stranger Than Fiction" is marvelous — funny, outrageous, occasionally poignant. But Helm tries to resolve too many things in the last few scenes, and the picture loses some of its heady dexterity.

Director Marc Forster ("Monster's Ball," "Finding Neverland") has cast the movie beautifully. Along with Ferrell, Hoffman and Thompson, there's Maggie Gyllenhaal as a tax-dodging baker — she'll pay for swing sets and shelters, but not defense and corporate bailouts — whom Harold audits and falls in love with. And Queen Latifah as a kind of literary enforcer dispatched by Kay's increasingly impatient editor to help Kay finish her book. "I will gladly, quickly help you kill Harold Crick," she says.

Still, the crux of the movie is the trio of stars as they work their way through Helm's intricate existential conceit. Cloaked in a whirl of cigarette smoke and self-loathing, Thompson's Kay is a concise and witty portrait of a forlorn individual who needs to change her own life into a comedy. Ferrell brings that same childlike, slightly bumbling openness he had in "Elf" to Harold; a scene in a guitar shop is both hilarious and touching.

Best of all is Hoffman's odd-ball academic, who can't initially figure out what character Ferrell might be — though he quickly rules out Hamlet, Frankenstein's monster and Scout Finch. And when Harold mentions the phrase, "Little did he know," Hoffman exults, "I've written papers on 'Little did he know!' I've taught classes! Given seminars!"

Little did we know that Hoffman would mature into one of our finest character actors. If I were writing his life story, there'd be a best supporting nomination in the very near future.

[Rasputin]

The Departed

In the past few years, it seems as if Martin Scorsese has been trying very hard to make films that can't readily be identified as, well, Martin Scorsese films. "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator" are certainly good movies, but they lack the mugs, goombahs and made-men of such from-the-heart Scorsese classics as "Mean Streets" and "GoodFellas."

"The Departed" is a Scorsese film and proud of it. And that's part of what makes it so very good. That, and a swell script by William Monahan and a dream cast headed by Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson.

A hugely successful 2002 Hong Kong thriller, "Infernal Affairs," provides the blueprint that is essentially a tale of two moles. Or brother rats, if you like.

One, Colin Sullivan (Damon), is deeply embedded in the Massachusetts State Police Department. The other, Billy Costigan (DiCaprio), has newly infiltrated the Irish mafia led by the savage and irrepressible Frank Costello (Nicholson).

In a scenario worthy of Dickens, Colin was recruited at a soda fountain as a kid by a suspiciously friendly Frank who took him under his wing like a surrogate father. He did so, we quickly learn, for the sole purpose of raising his own private rat — an insider who can tip him off whenever the cops are coming his way.

Billy, who also grew up in south Boston, was all but fated to become one of Frank's boyos. To change that was one reason he went into law enforcement. But as far as avuncular Capt. Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his hard-nosed assistant, Sgt. Dignam (Mark Wahlberg, in a firecracker of a performance), are concerned, Billy's "tainted" background makes him the perfect choice to go undercover.

The kicker? Each is assigned to find the mole inside their respective group. Or, as Colin exults to his mentor, "Hey, Frank! I gotta find myself!"

Billy isn't quite as enthusiastic. Now that Frank and his lieutenant, Mr. French (Ray Winstone, solid), know there's an informer, they're liable to do anything. Begging Dignam to pull him off the job, he explodes, "Do you want him to chop me up and feed me to the poor?"

These two marvelous actors make the most of their contrasting characters — Damon's cock-of-the-walk smoothie versus DiCaprio's scared-stiff sacrificial lamb. It's also a nifty bit of countercasting since Damon (the "Bourne" movies aside) is generally cast as the "innocent" and DiCaprio as the brash know-it-all.

Yet each is the other's doppelganger, too. Both spend most of the movie getting out of one tight spot after another. In one sequence where Billy shadows Colin, trying to see his face, they even wear almost identical baseball caps and hooded sweatshirts. They're so good, they accomplish the small miracle of preventing Nicholson from stealing the movie.

Not that he doesn't try. Sporting a devilish "The Witches of Eastwick" goatee, his eyebrows working at hyper-speed, the legendary actor cavorts through the picture, having so much fun that, at times, he teeters on doing, well, a Jack Nicholson impersonation.

Nicholson flirts with showboating, but how can he help it when he's given so many great bits. In one scene, he asks an underling about his mother and the poor man sighs she's dying. Nicholson snaps back, "We all are. Act accordingly."

"The Departed" is Scorsese acting accordingly — fast, fluid and light on his feet. He's helped enormously by Monahan's clever adaptation, which firmly transplants the action to south Boston. For instance, one character quotes Freud: "The Irish are the only people impervious to psychoanalysis."

Bet that wasn't in the Hong Kong version.

Still, much of the movie is vintage Scorsese. A severed hand with a wedding ring still on it. Wahlberg rat-a-tat-tat-ing expletive-loaded lines with Joe Pesci aplomb. Conventional gangster wisdom along the lines of what Mr. French tells Billy after the newcomer smashes a bottle over the head of someone sitting next to him at a bar. "There are guys you can hit and guys you can't," he cautions, sounding like a concerned Boy Scout leader.

"The Departed's" only flaw — and it is, perhaps, inherent in the concept of adapting a Hong Kong shoot'em-up — is that the film never ripens into something deeper than its splendid cat-and-rat game. Surrogate fathers and fatherless sons are underlying themes, but the emphasis remains on the guns, guts, corpses and, in this case, cellphones.

That said, the movie is still one of the best of the year — a gangster Grand Guignol in the histrionic manner of Cagney's "White Heat" or "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels." Dazzlingly done, with a welcome gloss of comic panache, it's the sort of thing Scorsese does better than any other major director in Hollywood.

Maybe one day Oscar will realize that.

And act accordingly.

[Rasputin]

Deck the Halls Movie Review

The best that can be hoped for with a movie like "Deck the Halls" is that it might be a funny "Christmas w ith the Kranks" -- a painless, amusing seasonal diversion. Tough luck: It's possibly even worse. How come the talk-radio blowhards never bring movies like this up when they're inveighing against the War on Christmas?

The saddest part is that "Deck" wastes four comic talents ranging from the near-genius (Matthew Broderick, Danny DeVito) to the inspired (Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth ) to the charming (Kristin Davis of "Sex and the City"). The quartet is stuck in a suburban dopey-dads-and-savvy-moms holiday vehicle that appears to have been assembled from the spare parts of failed sitcom pilots.

Broderick is uptight Steve Finch, an optometrist in the fictional small town of Cloverdale, Mass. DeVito is lowdown Buddy Hall, the car salesman who has just moved in across the street. Davis and Chenoweth are their better halves, respectfully dewy and brassy. There are children, too, but I'll save the actors the embarrassment of identifying them (except for the hubba-hubba teenage twins played by Kelly and Sabrina Aldridge of the MTV reality-model show "8th & Ocean"; between the two, they have half a decent career ahead of them).

Steve is a control freak who has his seasonal activities mapped out from Dec. 1 onward ; he's the town "Christmas guy" who venerates tradition and shrinks from the tacky. Buddy, of course, is tackiness incarnate: He wants his house so covered with lights that it can be seen from outer space. Literally. The film's jaundiced gag is that the townsfolk love Buddy's 5,000-watt schlock -- the cars are backed up for blocks -- and this prompts his rival to break out the heavy artillery.

Broderick and DeVito were made for this sort of tit-for-tat odd-couple comedy: the former's serenely retentive, the latter's joyfully expulsive. The script by Matt Corman, Chris Ord, and Don Rhymer hems them in with witless cookie-cutter dialogue and stale situations, though: Christmas trees caught on fire, runaway sleighs, old ladies catching a snowball in the chops. When Buddy brings on a live camel for a creche, you can tick off the minutes before Steve ends up slimed with dung.

John Whitesell doesn't so much direct as manage traffic, and "Deck the Halls" never builds the snappy momentum needed for even B-grade farce. Like "Kranks," this is just one more complacent, sold-out Christmas product, a thin layer of Hallmark sentimentality surrounding a cynical core.

The great holiday films, like "A Christmas Story" or the original "A Miracle on 34th Street," do exactly the opposite: They melt doubt with earned emotion and slowly work their way from the specific to the timeless. The last thing we see in "Deck the Halls," by contrast, is the good townspeople of Cloverdale lighting up the season with their cellphones.

[Rasputin]

Arthur and the Invisibles (2006)

Ten-year-old Arthur has a lot on his plate: a real estate developer is about to snap up his grandma's home--and there's no way Arthur's going to hang around for his parents or grandparents to sort out the problem. Maybe the solution lies in his grandpa's treasure, which is hidden somewhere on the "other side" in the land of the Minimoys. The creatures that inhabit this world are just a tenth of an...

Genres: Art/Foreign, Kids/Family, Animation and Adaptation

Release Date: December 15th, 2006 (wide)

Distributors: The Weinstein Company

Cast and Credits

Starring: Freddie Highmore, Mia Farrow, Calvin 'Snoop Dogg' Broadus, David Bowie, Penny Balfour
Directed by: Luc Besson
Produced by: Luc Besson, Emmanuel Prevost

[Rasputin]

National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj (2006)

Taj heads to England's Oxford University to further his studies while also showing the uptight student body how to have a good time.

Genres: Comedy and Sequel

Release Date: December 1st, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive crude sexual content, some nudity and language.

Distributors: MGM Distribution Company

Cast and Credits

Starring: Kal Penn, Shobu Kapoor, Dan Percival, Holly Davidson, Anthony Cozens
Directed by: Mort Nathan
Produced by: Kal Penn, Daniel Spilo, Andrew Panay

[Rasputin]

The Nativity Story (2006)

The two-year period of Mary and Joseph's life, which culminates in their leaving Nazareth and journeying 100 miles to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus.

Genres: Drama and Politics/Religion

Release Date: December 1st, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: PG for some violent content.

Distributors: New Line Cinema

Cast and Credits

Starring: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Oscar Isaac, Ciaran Hinds, Shaun Toub
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
Produced by: Catherine Hardwicke, Michael Rich, Tim Van Rellim

[Nutcase]

American Fugitive: The Truth About Hassan

When in 2001 Iranian director Mohsen Makmalbaf’s feature film Kandahar was acclaimed in Cannes and shown around the world, the international press picked up on a surprising appearance. The film’s African-American “doctor” was in fact a man called David Belfield, wanted in the United States for murder, and now living in exile in Iran.

American Fugitive: The Truth About Hassan tells the story of this wanted man, an American—known in Iran as Hassan Abdulrahman—who says: "There is life after America." Through this story of an unrepentant assassin who openly accuses “the real culprits,” another tale emerges: that of covert networks, international political manipulation, and state-sponsored violence.

In Washington D.C. in the summer of 1980, at the behest of Iranian intelligence, an African-American named David Belfield shot dead Ali Akbar Tabatabai, the former press attaché and representative of the Shah at the Iranian embassy. Tabatabai was thought to be involved in a plot to kill the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and topple the new regime.

American Fugitive: The Truth About Hassan tells the story of a young African American's sudden awareness of race in the United States in the aftermath of the killing of Martin Luther King, and of his long-running personal confrontation with Uncle Sam that began with the Black Power movement of the 1970s and the rise of Islam in the United States. The confrontation continues to this day, as David Belfield alias Dawud Salahuddin alias Hassan Abdulrahman remains on the FBI's most wanted list.

Exiled in Iran for the last 25 years, Hassan is a sharp-eyed observer and first-hand witness to several of the events that have shaped relations between Islamic Iran and his native America. His story is also that of US domestic and foreign policies and their role in the Middle East crisis.

In American Fugitive: The Truth About Hassan, we meet Americans who question their country’s domestic and foreign policies and their impact on the conflict between the Western world and Islamic countries. Featuring interviews with Joseph Trento, an investigative journalist specializing in espionage, Gary Sick, who served on the National Security Council staff of President Carter, and the assassinated man’s twin brother, the film raises grave questions about the convergence between Iran 's conservative clerical rulers and their neo-conservative counterparts in Washington.

American Fugitive: The Truth About Hassan provides rare insight into one of the most critical issues of our time, and into the soul of a man with no place to go.

Quebec – Canada, 2006,
Digital Video,
Color,
75 / 52 min.

Researched, Written and Directed by
Jean-Daniel Lafond

[Rasputin]

Apocalypto (2006)

Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.

Genres: Action/Adventure

Release Date: December 8th, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: R for sequences of graphic violence and disturbing images.

Distributors: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Eagle Pictures (Italy)

Cast and Credits

Starring: Dalia Hernandez, Mayra Serbulo, Gerardo Taracena, Raoul Trujillo, Rudy Youngblood
Directed by: Mel Gibson
Produced by: Ned Dowd, Vicki Christianson, Mel Gibson

[Rasputin]

Blood Diamond (2006)

Set against the backdrop of civil war and chaos in 1990's Sierra Leone, Danny Archer, a South African mercenary, and Solomon Vandy, a Mende fisherman are joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond that can transform their lives. While in prison for smuggling, Archer learns that Solomon--who was taken from his family and forced to work in the diamond fields--has found and hidden the extraordinary...

Genres: Drama, Romance, Thriller and Crime/Gangster

Release Date: December 8th, 2006 (wide)

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence and language.

Distributors: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures International

Cast and Credits

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly, James Purefoy, Arnold Vosloo
Directed by: Edward Zwick
Produced by: Len Amato, Benjamin Waisbren, Kevin De La Noy