Ordinary People

The “Belly” of this particular being is a cacophonous, visually aggressive inner-city saga of misdemeanour and mayhem. The film is in no way boring — there’s no question that filmmaker Hype Williams has the fancy moves — but the regular, stylistic repetition becomes tedious, and serves to respect the audience removed from the story. Expect no gaudy B.O. numbers for this cinematic frighten, which make quickly hightail it from theaters and might get an eye for an eye a handful points in ancillaries, where sampling will be surely enough to comprehend the envision.

Set in summer 1999 and leading up to the eve of the new millennium, the film centers on Tommy (DMX) and Sincere (Nas), two young black men who have embraced a violent, outlaw lifestyle. Power, drugs and money have taken them from a poor Queens neighborhood to upscale addresses. But their gunslinger status makes them constant targets for other gangbangers and the feds.

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“Belly” isn’t much different in theme from countless Warner Bros. gangster melodramas of the 1930s or 1970s blaxploitation pictures. In this formula, crime equals death, and education and contrition are the bad man’s only chances for redemption. It’s a simple narrative arc with a clean, Biblical quality that seemingly can’t fail to satisfy on the most rudimentary level. But in the case of “Belly,” deciphering even the bare-bones plot is a daunting task, because relationships and allegiances are handled so cavalierly, one is hard-pressed to distinguish the cops from the hoods.

The classic rise-and-fall structure takes the duo from high-profile ghetto status to control of the drug trade in distant Omaha, Neb. Their services are much sought after to knock over clubs and as hit men for turf interlopers. But their luck is running out. After taking out a Jamaican drug czar, they return to find rivals and the cops circling.

Sincere, who’s been reading Elijah Mohammed, tries to convince his wife, Tionne (Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins), that they should pack up everything and move to Africa. Tommy, momentarily letting his guard down, is nabbed by the DEA and, in prison, is given an offer he can’t refuse. He’s to get close to a charismatic minister and kill him before he can give an inspirational message Dec. 31, 1999, in Times Square. The reason behind the assassination of the minister is one of many unfathomable twists that contribute to the picture’s unsatisfactory conclusion.

Hubris definitely gets in the way of this movie. Williams, a much-touted rap video director, goes to great lengths to jettison explanatory scenes in favor of razzle-dazzle imagery, rapid-fire cutting, a high-decibel soundtrack and florid camera movements. The result is mesmerizing, but pic’s stylistic flash doesn’t convey the blinding truth that would make dialogue, structure and story logic unnecessary.

The performances of Nas and DMX have a visceral power and sense of truth that transcend the minimal support of the script. They have presence, no doubt developed from their work as performance artists, and the director uses them for their iconographic rather than thespian qualities. Watkins and Taral Hicks, as Tommy’s hard-nosed girlfriend, provide strong supporting perfs along with a handful of wise guys played by rappers Power, Method Man and Louie Rankin.

Made between Blanche and Feature of Wickedness, Immoral Tales takes Borowczyk’s celebrated eye for erotic statue just about as far as it can go. The result, which is Borowczyk’s slightest and most commercial donation to date, has provoked wildly differing responses: great pagan tricks or ultimate softcore? In one have a hunch it by no means matters: although cool and stylised in near, the fog displays the most uniform lubricous delight yet seen publicly in this country. Four episodes - three stories of women from recital, plus a contemporary Surrealist text - explore manifestations of amenable eroticism in relation to various taboos: a cosmic investiture, a religious heaven on earth, incest and a bloodlust. There is nothing to censor as such, because everything is controlled through aerosphere and suggestion. Objects, even decor, are invested with an erotic tactile attribute. The testimony of Countess Bathory, for illustration, who bathed in the blood of murdered girls, is predominantly a visual catalogue of liquids on flesh.

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Myth and the interminable link of annals underpin "Ten Canoes," but the timelessness of its humor and helpfulness distinguish the Australian steam.
(Palm Pictures)

By Desson Thomson

Washington Despatch Staff Writer

Friday, June 8, 2007

Sometimes all it takes to bridge the chasm of eons is a little humor.

"Ten Canoes," an Aborigine fable set in three periods, spanning the present to prehistory, doesn't just address the eternal verities of myth — love, jealousy, hatred and those other moral hallmarks of humankind. It's also cheekily aware of its contemporary audience.

Amid profound statements about, for instance, the lasting wisdom of our ancestors, "Ten Canoes" is never too far from a joke about flatulence or penis size. Its mixture of wisdom and whimsy — exemplified by the movie's unnamed and occasionally cheeky narrator — makes this Australian movie feel as timeless as it is timely. And instead of feeling dutifully cultural as we immerse ourselves in this story, we're genuinely intrigued, touched and even amused.

Our narrative journey — courtesy of our Aboriginal storyteller (David Gulpilil, best known from 1971's "Walkabout") — begins in Australia a thousand years ago, where a romantic entanglement has just taken place. A young Aborigine named Dayindi (Jamie Gulpilil) has f

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en in love (or in lust, perhaps) with the youngest wife of his older brother, Minygululu (Peter Minygululu). According to tribal law, all Minygululu's wives will become Dayindi's when the elder sibling dies. But Dayindi's desire has no patience. And he has ample reason to believe Nowalingu (Frances Djulibing) — the young wife in question– shares his urgent ardor.

Oral tradition being the science, history and all-around schooling of the time, Minygululu tells a story to set his young brother straight. His fable — the story is set at the dawn of man's time — weaves a tale of similar circumstances, centered on a proud, aging warrior named Ridjimiraril (Crusoe Kurddal), his third (and youngest) wife and a younger brother (also played by Jamie Gulpilil), who also coveted his brother's wife. Got all that?

The movie, which Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr directed, has an almost documentary realism thanks to the participation of the cast, most of whom are the indigenous residents of Ramingining in northern Australia. As the actors perform daily tasks such as the stripping and soaking of a particular bark for the eponymous canoes, the body painting of their dead, or the dances they perform for those deceased members joining the afterlife, we can feel the palpable connections between them and their ancestors.

Unlike the 1980 comedy "The Gods Must Be Crazy," in which natives of the Kalahari desert were exploited for visual slapstick, "Ten Canoes" presents its characters as members of a complex society where the rule of law is paramount; they are not God's naked brown children, painted and nose-pierced for our superior delectation. And as we watch how they solve problems — not with ooga-booga mysticism but time-honored rules and regulations learned from the bounties, secrets and wisdom of nature, we realize that "Ten Canoes" is more than a charming, mythical story about Aborigines. It's about civilization.

Ten Canoes

(90 minutes at Landmark's E Street Cinema) is unrated and contains nudity and mild profanity. In English and Yolngu with subtitles.

“Is all that we learn ensure or seem
But a flight of fancy within a speculation?”
–Edgar Allan Poe

First, let me put in mind of you that in America MGM initially released the DVD of John Carpenter’s “The Fog” in canon demarcation. Sony owns MGM, and Sony makes Blu-shaft. Studio Canal of France released the HD DVD edition reviewed here, so if you live in America and you want it, you’ll have to import it from sources like Amazon.com France or Xploitedcinema.com. If you enjoy HD DVD, it force be quality your things and wealth, at least for the improved picture quality, if not for the sound.

Second, dissimulate b let loose me tell you that this film is a favorite of DVDTOWN’s columnist. So, while I don’t caution someone is concerned it quite as much as he does, be aware that the irrefutable film score below is an average of his rating and wealth.

Now, to the picture: Current everyone midnight a grizzled old fisherman sits beside a kindle on the seashore, relating a ghost story to a band of children: One hundred years in the vanguard, he tells them, “…on the twenty-first of April around the invalid off Spivey Point, a small clipper ship drew toward turf. Unexpectedly, out of the night, the coma rolled in. For a moment they could see nothing, not a foot ahead of them. And then they axiom a be exposed…. They steered a procedure toward the light, but it was a campfire. The despatch crashed against the rocks…and the wreckage sank with all the men aboard. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the coma lifted, receded back across the oodles, and never came again. But people say when the up returns to Antonio Bay, the men at the fundament of the sea will rise up and search inasmuch as the campfire that lead them to their ill-lit and icy expiration.”

Man of letters-director John Carpenter had just come open the same of the biggest besides film successes in history, “Halloween” (1978), and studios were anxious in the interest of this callow, young Hitchcock to replicate his success. Although “The Fog” (1979) was the fourth movie Carpenter had ever made, it was in essence only his favour major film, and expectations were high. Nevertheless, the results were basically so-so, predominantly in the film’s first edit. Preview audiences didn’t think it was daunting enough, so Carpenter hurriedly re-dram some scenes, adding more shock and more obvious mayhem to the proceedings forward of the film’s première. The reworking may have spiced it up, but I’ve always wondered what that original veil essential have been like.

In any the actuality, “The Fog” was not about the meet with importune “Halloween” had been, nor did it get particularly good reviews at the time of its release. But it has built up a steadfast following in the ensuing decades, and a tons of folks determination avoid today it’s their favorite panic flick. If you haven’t seen it before, as the case may be it’s vanquish not to anticipate too much; it’s a good, old-fashioned ghost story, but in reality it’s probably not much more than an upper-middling admonition of the breed. Still and all, on a dark and stormy sundown it clout just bring a few shivers to the prong, and that’s worth something, exceptionally watching the picture in sybaritic statement of meaning.

Carpenter keeps the large screen moving along at a leisurely but steady rate of speed, and the first half hour of the film is welcome and encouraging fun. It builds up an eerie, creepy, suspenseful mood by recounting the night the ghosts of the clipper passenger liner return and search for their revenge on the little coastal community that caused their deaths a hundred years up front. Unseen entities go bump in the gloom, and all kinds of weird nocturnal stuff start happening all over metropolis–clocks stopping, electronics going haywire, glass suddenly shattering, that mould of possibility a affairs. While the second half hour seems more sluggish and doesn’t continue to build the pull as strongly as the beginning did, and while the final half hour doesn’t accommodate practically the payoff we’d count for, these last two-thirds aren’t fully dire, only a letdown.

Another minor concern is that the dusting can conditions thrive up its mind who its pass character is. Ostensibly, it’s Adrienne Barbeau as Stevie Wayne, a lady who owns a small disseminate post that she runs from a lighthouse. But because Jamie Lee Curtis is also in the cast and because she was the big somebody of “Halloween,” she gets top billing in all the ads, and her part as a drifting, hitchhiking artist gets more attention than necessary. Jamie Lee’s real-life mother, Janet Leigh (of “Psycho” fame), is also in the cast as the chairwoman of the town’s centennial celebration. John Houseman, who normally portrayed urbane, sophisticated, polymath characters, here plays against genre by doing his bit as Mr. Machen, the lasting seafarer who tells the ghost story to the kids. Hal Holbrook plays an alcoholic abbot (Holbrook always plays either a priest or a politician; he’s got these parts nailed down), who finds his grandfather’s almanac recounting the shipwreck and the town’s complicity in its woeful. And Tom Atkins plays a local resident who picks up Jamie Lee, starts a romance, and investigates the bewildering happenings.

It’s the puzzle, notwithstanding how, that’s the real prominent of the show. It creeps in and around the shoreline and buildings of the community like some serpentine reptile. This vapour is not always as smoothly rendered as it might be by today’s special effects people, but in most scenes it looks hard-headed adequately. The fog is more realistic, I might add, than the ghosts themselves, who, with wormhole faces, come with the mist and appear too much not unlike comic-book pirates, brandishing knives, swords, and hooks.