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While other companies duke it out for the rights to various Italian and assorted Eurohorror properties, Elite Entertainment has been eyeing another continent entirely. Following their releases of such Australian films as The Return of Captain Invincible, Howling III: The Marsupials, and, most recently, Patrick is Rod Hardy’s After.

One of those vampire movies where the word “vampire” isn’t uttered right away, Thirst follows Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri), the descendent of Transylvanian countess Elizabeth Bathory. Kate, a cosmetics nabob of some sort, is unaware of her legacy. She’s magnitude a race of 75,000 blood drinkers gingerly distributed all the way through the globe. Neckbiting has its definite downsides. Proper as most of us wouldn’t gulp milk rearrange from the udder, feeding directly rotten of strangers has proven to be controversial thanks to diseases and various other impurities. In an essay to stave at leisure vampiric anaphylactic nauseate, a group known as the Brotherhood has established a series of blood farms. In these despondent dairies, sedated human “blood cows” are periodically drained, and their blood is processed, purified, and distributed in innocuous looking withdraw cartons. Kate is brought against her will to unified of these dairies, where she’s informed of her destiny. She refuses to have any relatively of it, seizing every possible opportunity to hold the line against and make good one’s escape. Kate’s role in the Brotherhood’s coming is too informative to wink at, and peaceful if they have to take her to the margin of illogic, they’re determined to bring her into their fold.

I was fundamental introduced to Thirst twelve years ago, following a dishonest-feature of Attack and Return of the Killer Tomatoes on USA Up All Darkness. I thought perhaps my tastes may have changed seeing as how my age has doubled since that initial viewing, but I still find Thirst to be an interminable bore. There earmarks of to accept been conflicting views as to what type of film Thirst should have been. In the disc’s commentary track, director Rod Hardy states that he was initially interested in giving the movie more of a scornful devise. However, producer Antony Ginnane was interested in establishing a more serious tone, and the end result is a movie that’s neither funny nor unnerving.

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Hanker for has the sort of concept that, if condensed to twenty-two minutes, would net an excellent episode of an anthology series like The Slump District. There’s not adequate actuality to fill an hour and a half, and the movie feels padded and repetitive as a result. There are there too sundry sequences following the same basic formula. Mrs. Cameron and Dr. Fraser squabble as to how to best proceed with Kate, with Fraser seemingly prepossessing every argument. Kate wakes up feeling all shook up, and despite the increasingly bizarre ways in which she’s exposed to blood, she refuses to indulge her desire. Following Kate’s inevitable hysterics, Mrs. Cameron whips faulty an “I told you so”, and the cycle begins anew. Splash, rinse, repeat. The large screen gets equivalent more surreal as every now goes on, and by the boundary, I genuinely had no idea what in the Gehenna was happening.

Though I’m not particularly fond of the cinema, Elite has done a miraculous job bringing it to DVD, bestowing upon it a beautiful widescreen presentation and a vigorous variety of extras.

Transamerica: Comedydrama. Starring Felicity Huffman and Kevin Zegers.
Directed by Duncan Taylor. (R. 103 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

"Transamerica" provides the frame and the occasion for undivided of the year's first-rate
performances, Felicity Huffman's as a wife trapped in a man's confederation who's
passing for female while awaiting a sex-change operation. The film is not to
the lovemaking become but about an wager that presents itself about a week before
the craftswoman: She finds out that she is a chaplain and that her teenage son is
in prison in New York.

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Though Huffman is not the only good thing in the movie, she brings so much
to it and subtly enlivens it to the extent that it's difficult to imagine it
without her. Her performance requires that she, in essence, play someone who is
playing someone else. She is really Stanley, but she has become "Bree" thanks
to a series of surgeries, a daily regime of hormones and rigorous
self-discipline. She is rigid with control, consciously moderating her voice
and tone and presenting only the facial expressions that she has mastered in
the mirror. Huffman's shoulders carry the weight of a life spent being careful,
so as to pass, so as to avoid getting beaten up, so as to avoid being treated
like a freak.

Significantly, Huffman does this across the sex divide. That's important
to remember. She is a woman playing a man playing a woman, which requires that
she not ease into playing the woman side of her own nature, even as she's
playing a man who's doing everything he can to seem womanly. And that's just
the beginning of what Huffman does. The gender ramifications are just part of
the story.

There's also the way Huffman depicts Bree reacting to her circumstances.
This is a person of obvious intelligence, who is middle-aged and from a
reasonably well-off family. Yet we see her working in menial jobs. What
happened? Were there lost years? A drug problem? We never know, and yet again,
that history is in Huffman's tense shoulders and her weary expression. She has
the essence of someone who has gone through life as an alien, desperate to be
known and yet hoping not to be noticed — someone who at the same time has
come into a certain self-knowledge and dignity, through mistakes and quiet
suffering. This isn't critical fantasizing. This is all in the way Huffman
looks, talks and moves, and she's extraordinary.

What's more, it comes as a relief to find this performance in such a
relaxed, human film, and not a social polemic. For most of the way,
"Transamerica" is a quirky comedy. Bree leaves her modest apartment in Los
Angeles and flies to New York, where she bails her 17-year-old son out of jail.
Without identifying herself as the boy's father — but rather as a lady from
the church — she sets about driving back across the country, hoping that she
might unload the boy somewhere along the way, perhaps at his stepfather's
house. The film's title refers to both transsexuality and to the journey
spanning the continent.

The gulf between Bree's bizarre appearance and her church-lady manner and
aspirations provides the source for much of the humor, and in that sense, Bree
is a little like Fred Gwynne's Herman Munster. But the movie is never mean to
her. It's equally understanding of her family, including her horrified mother
(Fionnula Flanagan) and rowdy, ne'er-do-well sister, who's played with
self-deprecating wit by Carrie Preston. The film's intelligent compassion also
extends to the son (Kevin Zegers, who is as handsome as the young Alain Delon).
The son could have been just another aggrieved young wise guy, but instead
we're aware of his real need for parental love.

In American mythology, from Mark Twain's "Roughing It" through "Thelma &
Louise," taking off on the open road has always been an occasion for
self-discovery. While Bree is not the usual hero or heroine, the road has the
same salutary effect on her, and it's interesting to watch Huffman register the
progress of that inner transformation. My only quibble with "Transamerica," not
big but nagging, is that it ends with one of the characters in a very ugly
place. Even that would be all right, if the movie acknowledged that ugliness.
Instead it glosses over it, as though everything were fine.

– Advisory: This film contains full frontal nudity, strong language,
drug use and a false penis.

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If you don't like the tone of "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," just wait five minutes and it will change. It is, at various times, a soap opera, a madcap farce, a melodrama, a crime drama and a Christian missionary tract. A film that can shift gears like that so often, and do it successfully, is a rare, surprising delight. Unfortunately, "Diary" does it painfully and awkwardly, displaying a blind ineptitude on the level of some of the worst films I've ever seen. It doesn't keep changing styles because of some grand master plan; it keeps changing because it doesn't know what it's doing. This movie is an absolute train wreck.

The main casualty in this horror show is Helen McCarter (Kimberly Elise), the wife of a prominent Atlanta lawyer named Charles (Steve Harris), who dumps her after 18 years of marriage so that he can be with his long-time mistress and their children instead. Charles is cruel and monstrous to an absurd, implausible degree, literally dragging Helen out of the house with no notice and coldly denying her any alimony, despite being filthy rich himself.

Helen finds solace in the home of her great-aunt Madea, and that's when the film turns into a badly handled, over-the-top farce. You see, Madea is one of those enormous, sassy, fast-talking old black ladies you see in movies, and she is played (as they so often are, for some reason), by a man in drag. He is Tyler Perry, writer of the stage play on which the film is based, and also the portrayer of Madea's vulgar brother Joe and Helen's cousin Brian. But Madea is clearly Perry's bread-and-butter, his Hamlet, his Mona Lisa. I see on Perry's Web site that the character has been spun-off into other plays in which she takes center stage.

Pity, then, that she's such a broad, unbelievable, hastily assembled character — or at least she is in the film (which was directed by first-timer Darren Grant but adapted by Perry). She carries a pistol and encourages Helen to go back to Charles' house and tear up the place. She is meant to be "outrageous," but I don't believe anything she does. She doesn't belong in what is otherwise a dramatic comedy built around real emotions and relationships. She belongs in an "In Living Color" sketch, if anywhere.

But the film has more problems than that. If we were talking about one out-of-place character, that would be one thing. A movie can recover from a problem of that nature. But let's continue. Charles, it turns out, used to be involved in some nefarious deeds with low-lifes, and one of them blackmails him into being his defense attorney in an upcoming case. Then Charles is shot and becomes paralyzed (!), at which point Helen must work through her feelings of hatred for him and consider helping him, since she is still legally his wife. Unfortunately, she has already met and fallen in love with a hunky man named Orlando (Shemar Moore).

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Meanwhile, Helen's cousin Brian has a wife named Debrah (Tamara Taylor, and yes, "Debrah" is misspelled like that), and she has a bit of a crack problem, and I think she lives on the street. For some reason, the movie believes that after all the mess with Helen and Charles and Madea and Orlando, we're STILL going to have room to care about ANOTHER story. To make the Brian/Debrah situation even more convoluted, Debrah doesn't want their daughter to join the church choir because it was music that got her (Debrah) on drugs in the first place. She doesn't say whether it was a church choir specifically that did it, but I like to think it was, because the image of pious altos and sopranos in choir robes passing syringes back and forth in the choir loft makes me laugh. But anyway: What the F, movie? Seriously, what the F?

After what feels like an eternity, the movie finally gets around to its hollow redemptions and trite messages, but darned if I care. The stories are illogical, the characters are badly written, and the film constantly wavers between being ludicrous and simply boring. The whole thing is a mistake from start to finish.

Grade: F

Rated PG-13, a little profanity, some vulgarity

"Shark Tale?

Dreamworks Pictures

Directed by Bibo Bergeron and Vicky Johnson

Starring Settle upon Smith, Robert DeNiro, Jack Black, Renee Zellweger, Ziggy Marley, Angelina Jolie and Martin Scorsese

Rated PG

2 Stars

Just when you thought it was safe to go invest in in the water, along comes ?Shark Tale,? a movie that bites because it?s more concerned with keeping the puns flowing than with truly telling a good alibi. Straight away occasionally I?m all for nerd, stick out-culture referencing humor, but purely when they embellish an way worthwhile scoop. If the story doesn?t work, the movie will deteriorate.

?Shark Tale? lies floundering on the depths. Granted, the kiddies will be intrigued by the vibrant vigour and more than-the-top acting style of Hand down Smith and his friends. Mom and dad may even titter every now and then at some of the humorous asides, but this isn?t joined of those model animated tales that the entirety family drive be deficient in to attend to over and over again. Unlike ?Find Nemo,? the Pixar dim that also tells a story about some funny fish with very human problems, ?Shark Gossip? tries too habit-forming to be cool and forgets here making its story toil.

Smith stars as Oscar, a bottom-of-the-food-chain type of fish who works as a say nothing scraper at the local whale wash. He?s always dreaming and scheming of bigger and better things, so when a shark is accidentally killed undivided day, Oscar takes the credit and becomes an knee-jerk media furor.

Oscar finds an doubtful ally in Lenny (Jack Black), a vegetarian shark who is perpetual away from his pop (Robert DeNiro). Lenny neglects to mention that daddy is the mob boss over all the sharks, who soon come swimming into city, looking representing a little revenge against the sharkslayer.

On nip of all this, we alight a guy triangle between Oscar, his first soul mate Angie (Renee Zellweger) and a gold-digging fish played by Angelina Jolie. Throw in Martin Scorsese as a stressed out pufferfish and two Rastafarian jellyfish thugs and you?ve got a very absorb story that is really a mugger crime caper large screen all cutsied up for the kiddies.

It?s too bad that the piece is such a wreck, because the performances are customarily quite enjoyable and the overlay is visually beautiful to watch. Older audiences may really take advantage of the talkie more than the kiddies because there are so diverse pop-culture and movie references filler every frame. The tushie line is that ?Shark Libel? works as an energetic diversion, but nevertheless, it just doesn?t measure up to the standards set by most contemporary animated movies. ?Finding Nemo,? in particular, swims circles around this ?Shark Tale.?

Movie reviews by Sean McBride, ?The Big Guy,? are published Wednesdays and Fridays in the Port Arthur News. Sean the Big customer appears Fridays on KFDM-TV, Channel 6 and Monday and Thursday evenings on KWBB-TV, News at Nine. For more reviews, check out
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Reality TV on the whole is pretty weak: Artlessly directed pranks and gags aimed at the
lowest common denomiator. (I'm not saying I've never indulged in the lesser reality
shows, I'm just saying I'm not proud about it.) But if there's one guy who seems to
really have it figured out it's Mark Burnett, creator of three of the better reality
shows to air over the last few years, including fascinating culinary melodrama

The
Restaurant

and the king of all reality shows,

Survivor

. Burnett's most
obvious stamp on his work is his amazing use of editing to boil hundreds - even
thousands - of hours of footage down to an image, a cut, an instance, that sums up
everything his show is about. His other strong suit is his ability to draw compelling
characters out of the endless parade of fame whores that flaunt their dubious wares in
front of his cameras.

Of his three major shows, however, only one contains another character with the volume,
intensity and attention-grabbing self-confidence to wrench the show out of Burnett's
hands, and that's Donald Trump, the real-estate mogul/New York caricature who headlines

The Apprentice

. The premise of

The Apprentice

is, of course, that The
Donald, as he's known by his "friends" (i.e. those who read about him in Page Six), is
looking for some young turk to run one of his numerous splinter corps. With the help of
Burnett, The Donald assembles a cast of 16 wannabe business mavens to cohabitate in a
fancy suite at Trump Tower and compete in a series of tasks designed to see who can think on their
feet the best, make the smartest decisions, lead the most effectively, and come out
ahead.
This is a format familiar from dozens of similar shows and

The Apprentice

doesn't necessarily do it much differently. But it's the two men running the show who
make it special.

Having watched about the second half of this first season of

The Apprentice

when
it aired on NBC I was expecting to scan through a bunch of episodes for this review
basically to make sure the discs played and looked good. Instead I found myself once
again drawn into the complex series of back-stabs, double-crosses, shell-games and
bizarre behaviors that make up this season. While I'd trust very few of these
applicants with the task of feeding my lizard, it's interesting to see how they mix
playing at being businessmen and women with playing a reality show game. They're not
totally dissimilar pursuits but they differ in some key ways.

(WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. Do not read them if you
want to watch

The Apprentice

without knowing some important events.)

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If someone told you that one of the contestants of

The Apprentice

turns out to
be a psychopath, after the first couple of episodes you'd probably think you had Sam
pegged as the biggest wackjob. While it's true that Sam is uncomfortably insane (It's
almost like letting John Hinkley Jr. participate in a game show called "Who Wants to
Meet Jodie Foster?") no amount of couch potatoing prepared audiences for the hurricane
that became saboteur Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, a self-important former White House aide who
condescended to everyone on the show including Trump and his viceroys. Sam may have
started off the show in far left field, but his shenanigans (which endeared him only to
a couple of the more humor equipped players) got him booted early. Omarosa managed to
cling on to the show for an unbelievably long amount of time considering how hated she
was and, in the end, really affected the outcome between the two far more deserving
finalists.

Omarosa, possibly the best villain in the short history of reality TV, showed how far
you could go with so little, but it's possible that this is one area where Burnett's
hand lay heavy. Unlike

Survivor

, where the contestants choose who stays and who
goes and achievement based shows like

The Amazing Race

, where you either come in
last or you don't, the sole deciding factor of whether someone gets the boot here is
the whim of The Donald and his celebrated "You're fired." It's entirely possible that
Trump, with or without Burnett's direct input, made some decisions based on what would
make good television. And Omarosa definitely made outstanding television.

Some of the
earlier boots, however, were as despicable but without the compelling nastiness: Dr.
David, a snotty MD/MBA brags about how during med school he realized that making money
was more important than treating patients, and Jason, a slum lord from Detroit, talks
about kicking tenants out because they're late with the rent (a reality of being a
landlord, but save the glee for when the cameras aren't rolling, bub.) These two were
dead-weight and get the heave-ho almost immediately.

Perhaps most amusing among the
non-starters, however, is Tammy, a wildcard who asks potential clients during
challenges embarrassing and insane questions (like if chef Rocco DiSpirito might rent a
private jet and French villa to entertain a charity raffle winner at his own expense)
since she starts out with one of the best ideas anyone has on the show: A sexually
provocative ad campaign for an airline. And in the I-can't-tell-if-she's-good-or-bad category are Heidi and Katrina. Heidi, an
abrasive loudmouth who loves dropping the F-bomb has moments of empathy (particularly when she gets some bad news from home and
handles it like a trooper) but can also grate. And Katrina, a real estate broker with a collection of mini-skirts that Heather
Locklear would find slutty, can be fun but, honey, if you have to stick your finger in someone's face and scream about what a
good person you are there's got to be something wrong.

Of the better players, there are actually some pretty decent minds at work. I'm not
saying they're brilliant every step of the way, but the players who eventually reach
the final five are all pretty sharp, from sly country boy Troy, smart and canny Amy and
dapper Kwame to affable salesman Nick and quick-thinking Bill. The end run of this
show, unlike many others, finds the most capable players dominating and, for once, the
best player does win.

One last pleasure in the cast worth mentioning is the interesting little love affair that develops between manly men Kwame and Troy. Troy's country boy charms and Kwame's urban slickness are an interesting match and their friendship (and more than a little homo-erotic closeness) really add a zing to the second half of the season. Watching Troy spot Kwame while he does basketball hoop pull-ups is one of the most oddly tender moments in any reality show I've seen. Way more intimate than anything that passes between Amy and Nick during their uncomfortably played-up dalliance.

(Ok, I'm done spoiling.)

As for the rest of the show's cast, there's nothing but quality. Trump's representatives Carolyn and George range from cranky to
bemused at the antics of the contestants. They really provide the show with an air of dignity and humor. And Trump himself is
hysterical, from his constant grandiose braggadocio to the sly self-deprecating remarks he throws in from time to time. His
horrendously tacky lifestyle (which is like gold-plated nirvana to the greedy kids in the game) and his pompous demeanor make
great TV, even if seemingly half his lines have been overdubbed to more blatantly spell out the rules of the game.

A quick
mention needs to be made of the show's only other regular cast member: Robin. She's the secretary who sits outside the boardroom
and tells the contestants when it's time to go in and find out who's fired. But her scant shots are obviously taken from a
different location and cut into footage of the contestants sitting on a set. Plus her saucy way of reading the lines "Ok Mr.
Trump. You can go in now" is just too damn funny. Every time she appears it's a laugh riot.

The DVD set replicates the show very well, including the "previously on" segments and
the final parting words. One annoying omission is the replacement of the O'Jays' "For
The Love of Money" in the opening credits with some ridiculous song. This is surely a
rights issue, but it does hurt the show somewhat. But as a comprehensive viewing experience, through all 15 episodes,

The
Apprentice

is solid entertainment. Watching the players' personalities and strategies come out through tasks ranging from
selling lemonade to organizing huge events, is really enjoyable.

VIDEO:


The fullscreen video looks slightly overly sharp. This is on-the-go reality TV, so the
image isn't always going to be perfect, but there's some additional sharpening at work
here and it results in a somewhat degraded image. (Trump's closeups, of course, are
slightly softer than everyone else's, so make of that what you will…)

AUDIO:


The Dolby Digital Stereo soundtrack is decent, if taxed at times by rough location
source material and unbalanced voice recording. It's an acceptable audio track. There
are also English, Spanish and French subtitles.

EXTRAS:


There's a pretty comprehensive list of extras on the final disc. While the screener
disc did not feature the extras in final format and may not reflect the exact content, it did give a decent sense of the
roughly two hours of bonus features that make up a really enjoyable package.

There's a behind-the-scenes segment that
features Burnett and Trump talking about getting the show together. It includes a tour of the living suite when it was still raw
space led by Trump. Revealingly, it shows that the boardroom set was inside the suite, which means that when The Donald said
"It's either up to the suite or down to the street" he was half-fibbing. Also Burnett talks about how he got the idea for the
show while watching ants swarming during a taping of

Survivor

. Interesting.

Another great extra is a highlight reel for each candidate that includes footage from the initial tape submitted to the show,
auditions, and the show itself. There is some very interesting stuff in here. Additionally, submission tapes for each candidate
are included (with some editing by the producers.) It's tough to know why some were chosen, with the half-assed tapes they
submitted (Nick in particular) but some like Katrina, Amy and Kwame put together very funny pieces on their favorite subjects:
Themselves.

Some of Trump's cliche-ridden advice snippets are compiled into one segment but more interesting is a sequence with advice from
Carolyn and George, who didn't always get to fully voice their opinions during the show.

The complete parting words from
all the fired contestants are included (they appear in truncated form during the season in the closing credits of each show) as
do additional interviews with each candidate offering advice to future contestants.

A nice set of interviews with the two
finalists is included, although a promised preview of the upcoming second season was not on the screener disc.

A couple of different segments with outtakes and segments that didn't make the final cut are included, as is a lame music video
for the crappy theme song that appears on the DVD (but didn't appear in the broadcast.)

FINAL THOUGHTS:



The Apprentice

is a suprisingly excellent show. With two strong personalities at the helm and a cast of type-As, there's
no doubt that all the clashes were inevitable. This could make a good rental or the extra features might make it worth a
purchase.

Other Reviews:

• 
  Aaron Beierle
  
• 
  
  Blake Kunisch
  

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The print review won’t run until Friday, but, again, since “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” is in theaters starting today, here’s my review.

“Phoenix” is even more of a crushing disappointment coming on the heels of the best movie yet, 2005’s “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” Newell’s film took inspiration from Rowling’s zesty literacy. In the wrong hands – and it can’t be a good sign that Yates is returning for 2008’s “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” film – her saga can be as lumpy and bland as gray porridge.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The brilliant cinematography in this slasher thriller is what takes
it out of the ordinary realm of such gory thrillers and makes it into a
diverting artistic venture. Esteemed cult director, Donald Cammell (Performance/Demon
Seed/The Wild Side), has never quite lived up to the potential he showed
in the masterpiece he co-directed, “Performance.” He tragically
in April 1996 shot himself through the head, mirroring the bizarre ending
scene of  “Performance.”

In “White of the Eye ” Cammell
shows an artistic eye for odd details that he catches with his sexy camera,
as he heads to the Tuscon, Arizona, area and follows a gruesome, woman
hating, serial killer around.

The film opens as an attractive, wealthy housewife leaves Goldwaters
Deparment Store and is followed home by a psychopath. Her last phone conversation
to a friend is a complaint about her haircut. Her bad hair day will pale
in comparison to what happens next, as the unseen psychopath ritualistically
slices her up and leaves on the table an ancient mystical Indian sign.

Detective Charles Mendoza (Art Evans) investigating the crime scene,
is impressed by the Picasso cubist style murders of the killer. This is
the second such ritualistic killing in Arizona within the year, but this
time there is a break in the case as truck tire tracks are found at the
scene and the police are able to say for sure that there were only 44 sets
of those expensive tires recently sold in the Arizona area and they have
the names of all the owners.

Paul White (David Keith) is an expert soundman, an artist in putting
in upgraded stereo equipment for his wealthy clients. The half-Indian native
of the former mining town of Globe, who has been a good citizen as an adult
but who has a criminal record as a juvenile, is now a suspect because his
tires match those at the crime scene. It is now up to the cops to track
down all the other tire owners and narrow their field of suspects.

The story is told in flashback, as it goes back to an earlier time
when Paul is asked to fix a damaged car stereo system by a bickering New
York City couple heading to Malibu Beach. The attractive Joan (Cathy Moriarty)
is ticked off at her violent boyfriend, Mike (Rosenberg), and purposefully
damages his prized car stereo system. They find Paul’s trailer and he is
able to fix the stereo. He soon befriends Mike and goes hunting mule deer
with him. He will later on walk off with Mike’s woman, as it seems there
was an immediate attraction between the two.

Mike has disappeared from the scene for the last 10 years. Paul and
Joan have a young girl (Danielle Smith) and seem to be madly in love with
each other, though Joan is a wee bit jealous that a rich movie actress
who happens to be a stunner, Ann Mason (Alberta Watson), has eyes on her
man. Assuming that Paul is having hanky-panky with Ann she spies on him
and spots his truck at her residence, and she lets the air out of his tires.

The next day Paul is questioned by the detectives, as there was another
ritualistic killing of an attractive woman who happens to be the next-door
neighbor of Ann Mason. But Joan provides him with an alibi and the detectives,
though, still suspicious, let Paul go for the time being.

The question posed asks if Paul is being framed for the killings
or is he the killer? The only other logical suspect, whom the police don’t
know about, is Mike. He has returned to live in an abandoned mine telling
Joan, whom he accidently meets in a gas station, that he is a changed man
after spending some hard time in Attica prison and has come back to Globe
to trace his Indian roots.

The film’s title refers to an Apache legend about those who look
into the eye of violence close-up, which allows the mystical eye to be
on them. But, as a film about mysticism, it fails to materialize as anything
but so much nonsense.

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For a film that has such a weak story and fails to be absorbing as
a character study this is, nevertheless, a well-crafted visual spectacle.
It features an array of beautifully stylized color co-ordinated scenes
and out-of-the-way shots that create a bizarre atmosphere that fits the
brooding mood of the film. If it is the mystery story itself that you are
looking for, I’m afraid you will be disappointed as it adds up to nothing
much. But in those visual shots…there is a real passion for filming a
ritualistic killing. It might disappoint some who think Cammell could have
made something more than a slasher film; but, then again, his strength
as a filmmaker is through his eye. Even in this low-rent film, his images
remain strong and his themes have a strange complexity. His visions are
oddly effective, even when they shouldn’t be.

JG Ballard’s autobiographical narrative, about his experiences in the WWII Japanese concentration camps in China, is a mild reading of the events he witnessed; Spielberg’s is milder still. young Jim Graham (Bale) is Ballard, an obnoxious expat brat separated from his parents as the combat overwhelms Shanghai. His world of balsa-wood models and servants is blown apart and replaced by prison camp brutality. Stripped of its sci-fi trappings, Ballard’s manual is about what shits we may become in order to outlast. Spielberg includes a strand of populist heroism, till even this fails to dent the awful message. And the budget makes itself seen, as does Bale’s superlative Jim.

Aliens in the Attic movie download bluray

Paris, the beginning of the century…

After a lush but uneventful party Jean (Pascal Greggory) discovers a small letter placed on the top of his desk. In it his beautiful and utterly sophisticated wife Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert) has confessed that her heart now belongs to a different man. Overtaken by uncontrollable emotions Jean collapses - his heart racing, his hands visibly shaking. Later on he saunters to Gabrielle’s room only to find out what the letter has already revealed. She is gone!

But a few hours later Gabrielle is back. She walks in the room where Jean has been trying to recollect his thoughts and slowly looks at him. Her big eyes are begging for forgiveness. The lover she has left behind is not the man Gabrielle wants to spend the rest of her days with. Jean is surprised, hurt, and quickly taken over by anger.

Directed by Patrice Chereau (Queen Margot) Gabrielle is a film that seems to have created an enormous amount of mixed feelings between those who follow French cinema and the work of Isabelle Huppert in particular. The unconventional manner in which the story is being told (the actors’ lines resemble old-fashioned French poetry) and the fact that the film resembles a theater play with its short introductions before each of the main acts indeed suggest that Patrice Chereau was looking for something special. The complex characters he created in Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train (1998) and the sense of loss we witnessed in Son Frere (2003) are most certainly detectable in Gabrielle. Yet, the film is far more advanced than everything else Patrice Chereau has been previously involved with.

Based on Joseph Conrad’s novel The Return (credit goes to Anne-Louise Trividic as well) Gabrielle offers brilliant performances by the two leads: Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory. Stricken by Gabrielle’s infidelity Jean transforms into a man determined to hurt the woman he once loved, only doing so with the tact a true gentleman is expected to possess. Pascal Greggory is irresistible as Jean and his verbal abuse aimed at Gabrielle, a never-ending tirade of bitter words, utterly impressive.

Isabelle Huppert, playing the faulty wife Gabrielle, is once again at the top of her game. Her acting, so powerful I wish Bergman would have filmed her at least once, is nothing short of spectacular. Her facial expressions particularly during the second act of the film are as moving as the ones she conveyed while playing Erika Kohut (The Piano Teacher).

I am also equally impressed by the enormous emphasis on detail Patrice Chereau has demanded for Gabrielle. The fabulous cinematography by Eric Gautier who also helmed Olivier Assayas’ Clean (2004) and Arnaud Desplechin’s Rois et Reine a.k.a Kings and Queen (2004), and the superb costumes are no doubt fantastic. Last but not least the decision to film portions of Gabrielle entirely in black and white and then counter them with colored “reality”-fragments works to perfection.

Awards/ Recognition:

In 2005 the film won Cesar Awards for Best Costume Design (Caroline de Vivaise) and Best Production Design (Olivier Radot). During the same year the film was also nominated for Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

How Does the DVD Look?

I have a fairly good idea what has happened here! Seville-Canada have ported the excellent French double disc produced by Arte!! And that is where pretty much all of the good news end! The bad news is that the Seville producers have cropped the film from its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 to 1.78:1 (a maddening new trend meant to appeal to the new and digitally “sophisticated” crowd of 16:9 TV owners). Needless to say to me this equates the same old PAN-SCAN philosophy Blockbuster and Co. were supporting during the VHS era.

To Seville-Canada and their producers: the DVD medium is clearly not meant to support such travesty!

Furthermore, this Canadian disc also appears to be a PAL-port and even though “ghosting” is not as intrusive as we have witnessed on other discs it is there. “Combing” is also visible and those of you with progressive set-ups are in for some nasty surprises. Aside from that the Canadian print does retain all of the strong qualities seen in the French print (which we already reviewed here): good contrast, no print damage, steady colors, etc. Yet, what good is it that the film is now available to Canadian and US film fans when it has been hacked and ported in such disturbing manner.

How Does the DVD Sound?

I don’t see too many issues of concern here. The DVD comes with two audio options: a French 2.0 and 5.1 DD mixes. Needless to say the DTS track from the Arte double set is not present on this Canadian disc. I did not notice any distracting pop-ups or hissing but yet again this is an area where the Canadian disc lacks as well. There are no French subtitles on this disc only optional English (white) subtitles.

Extras:

This single Canadian disc retains only a few of the massive extras found on the double Arte set. None of the extras are subtitled in English. What we have here is the commentary by Patrice Chereau and Anne Louise Trividic, and a collage of short interviews/comments with Patrice Chereau, Pascal Greggory, and Isabelle Huppert.

Final Words:

This Seville-Canada produced R1 release of Patrice Chereau’s Gabrielle is nothing more than a quick and cheap attempt to make a few extra (Canadian) dollars. I am puzzled as to why Seville have decided to crop the film from 2.35:1 to 1.78:1. Perhaps they felt the need to edit Chereau’s vision. Could that be it? If anyone has a logical explanation please feel free to contact me! This being said I would clearly recommend (to both Canadians and Americans) that you either wait for the American release courtesy of IFC films or if you happen to be region-free then get the spectacular French double set by Arte reviewed on this site. I like Seville Pictures and their selection of films, the company has a very diverse catalog of world cinema, but clearly I can not endorse such a poor release. For the bravest of all: RENT IT.