The One Lamb

By Mark Huang


Staff Reporter

Some movies have their directors written all over them - see something
that could be a Muppet? It's got to be Lucas. Post-apocalyptic melodrama
begging to be a comedy? Costner, of course. Breasts, guns, blood, aliens,
and robots? Paul Verhoeven's your man, whether he's directing

Basic
Instinct, Robocop

, or, now,

Starship Troopers

.

Based loosely (

very

loosely) on the novel by Robert Heinlein,

Starship Troopers

follows the path of a young man as he signs up for
the army, screws up his life, and blows up the universe. Accompanied by
violent women, big guns, and Doogie Howser, our hero kicks serious alien
ass: a Verhoeven classic.

Set in a typical Heinlein future,

Starship Troopers

traces the
lives of three high school friends who enter the Armed Forces, now
dedicated to ensuring human supremacy over the galaxy. A few small
obstacles - namely, asteroid-hurtling giant bugs - are all that stand in
the way between them and a state of Terran hegemony. The future isn't dark,
however; it's a cheery "fascistic utopia," as Verhoeven likes to term it, a
cynically funny blend of the worlds of

1984

and

Demolition
Man

.

Johnny Rico, played by Casper Van Dien, is a pretty-boy high school
graduate whose parents want him to go to Harvard. His heart, on the other
hand, tells him to follow his girlfriend into the army. He can't enter
flight school like his girlfriend because of his abysmal math scores, so
his choices are either Harvard, the beach, or the mobile infantry. He
chooses the third, and the first half of the film follows his rise through
and tragic fall out of boot camp. The sudden devastation of Earth by the
forces of Bug reignites his passions, however. Armed with machine guns,
throwing knives, and no sense of tactical strategy whatsoever, he and his
platoon drop into combat on remote planets like Wyo-ming and Nev-ada to
fight for the species. From then on, it's a blood-soaked, chitin-cracking
killfest until the spectacular Final Battle.

This formula is about as old as my grandmother - but then again, my
grandmother never toted a combination M-16/Winchester, nor was she ever
ripped in two by a giant cockroach, nor did she ever handle portable
nuclear weapons with the utmost confidence. This movie, which has been
teasing the young male demographic for six months, won't disappoint those
who feel that annual sense of emptiness after the summer blockbusters end.
It's excessive: the crew of

Starship Troopers

set an all-time record
for most ammunition used during a motion picture production. It's violent:
at least every major appendage of the human body is ripped or popped off at
some point in the film. It's spectacular: ILM, Imageworks, Boss, and VCE
were all hired to produce a total of 550 special effects, compared to

The Lost World

's 170.

This movie is Verhoeven at his finest. He doesn't waste a single frame
of his allocation of nudity shots and gut spills. Like most fantastic
action movies,

Starship Troopers

is best appreciated for its action
and effects, rather than for any semblance of realism or profundity of
themes. A couple of people behind me refused to laugh at the adolescent
humor or clap when a bug did an especially good job on a platoon of human
meat. These are the kinds of people who search for meaning in Oliver Stone
movies, or enjoy anything with Bette Midler in it. Me, I like well-designed
aliens the size of bulldozers that eat brains and eject plasma. You'll find
a few of these, a lot of laughs, and more than a few occasions to worship
ILM in this fall's best action movie so far.

Directed by Paul Verhoeven

Starring Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, and
Neil Patrick Harris

A dopey, hardly poignantly bad actioner about two legends-in-their-own-minds, who bungle their way with the aid a bank depredation on behalf of a friend, stands out exclusively for big stars Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson.

Set in the wild west of Burbank, Calif, in 1996, when gasoline has gone up to $3.50 a gallon and people are getting high on something called Crystal Drano - er, Crystal Dream - Harley has two rebellious drifters (Rourke and Johnson) blowing into town to check on an old friend who’s in trouble because a bank wants to foreclose on his business, their old hangout, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Bar & Grill. The big-hearted boys go into action to rob the bank, but their stunt eventually winds up getting all their buddies killed.

Pic scores mainly in the second unit and stunt department, with hotly staged bike chases and an abundance of breaking glass, falling bodies and shoot-outs, and the production design is an asset.

As I sat down to watch this film, I was immediately struck with one burning question: Who the heck is Luciano Saber? According to the backcover blurb on this 1998 espionage thriller, he was a “United States Cryptographic Agent and decorated military soldier” and “the valid 007,” while an brochure features fashionable quotes from USAF commanders, and a few lines from what is outwardly his Air Meaning Commendation Medal Citation to save “identifying and neutralizing atop of 130 persons tangled in the use and distribution of dangerous drugs.” Saber, and his flowing Fabio-esque locks, wrote (as amply as starred) in this film, which I about we are suppositious to believe is somehow based on his alleged secret spy activities. Or perhaps not, I’m not sure.

Placebo Object is set in Chicago, and is the fib of a bickering group of killers, all hired by the mysterious master assassin known barely as The Sphinx, who are planning the murder of the Blemish-President. We don’t as a matter of fact see them doing much planning, in fact most of the time their goateed-chairlady Zak (Francesco Quinn) just shouts hysterically and waves his gun everywhere, basically acting twin a spoiled child with Ritalin withdrawals. Problems start when a Russian cab-driver named Aleksander Ivanov (Saber) knocks on the door of the bad guys’ secret warehouse in search of a telephone, because his car has dispirited down. When Aleksander becomes an unwilling hostage, he begins to jolly along a fool around mind games to cavity individuals against each other.

Saber’s pseudo-Robert Ludlum-styled thriller is told in a series of flash-forwards and flash-backs, which do leeway the proceedings a rather intentionally unorganized feel. The technique has been used in other films to greater success (recently seen in Chris Nolan’s Following), but its use here prevents the lewd budget describe from looking too much not unlike the in unison-routine play that it almost is, as 95% of the chatty wannabe-observe film is make a motion in the warehouse of the killers.

Spooky bits of dialogue (“This misplaced humble has to light up like a firecracker!”) flit in and out indiscriminantly, evenly balanced by Quinn’s chuckle-dignitary stroll as the group’s leader. Saber himself, when he’s not speaking in an Andy-Kaufman-as-Latka inflection, tosses out like a light his lines with an even, fairly mock deadpan that while not exactly high-caliber theatrics, displays as rigorous to a natural performance as can be set in this film over. For an unintentional comedic punch, I liked Marshall Bean’s droning Mr. Jones, the creepy CIA with man who is so nasty he won’t authorize to his subordinate use the bathroom while they are on a stakeout (“You take to pee?”).

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The film’s tagline is “Nothing is true except the lies,” which I imagine is theorized to conjure up visions of a labyrinthian world of double-crosses and secret identities. Forget that the bad guys in Placebo Effect seem so doltish that I suspect the Sinfulness-President could never hold really been in any danger, or that the parabolical assassin The Sphinx (wasn’t he in Inscrutability Men?) treads heavily on territory delivered more effectively by Bryan Singer. Admittedly, Saber’s script seems to really whack to deliver on its cloak-and-dagger guaranty, but there is so much of it in such a short amount of together that it becomes hardly comical.

Now in our sixth calendar year!
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The Last of the Blue Devils were the surviving members of the group of African American artists who popularized the jazz and blues (and rock’n'roll) sound of the mid-Twentieth Century. In the mid-1970s, director Bruce Ricker send forth dissimilar weekends filming Count Basie, Big Joe Turner, Jay McShann and their colleagues at the old musician’s fellowship hall in Kansas City, where long-ago force sessions gave descent to such classics as Chestnut O’ Clock Jump and Wave, Call off chatter and Roll.

The musicians perform and reminisce in a candid, casual scenery that allows the sometimes rivals to relax and enjoy themselves, complete with cigarettes and beer. Their inclination in the music is communicable, and only the most temper-oblivious resolve be able to resist the toe-tapping vibe of Moten Wigwagging or Jumpin’ at the Woodside. Count Basie discusses his years with Benny Goodman, Big Joe Turner thoroughly enjoys himself, and Ernie Williams emcees and dispenses pay advice to kids on the street. The overall suspicion is one of masters at play, relaxing and performing without the pretension and posturing that too oft define “behind-the-scenes” footage of established musicians. These are career conventional (albeit outrageously talented) guys, having a wonderful time together, and performance segments are allowed to run at length, with no outward pacing pressure imposed on the material. The interview segments are similarly unstructured, allowing the artists to articulate life stories, funny anecdotes and half-voiced regrets with little interference by the filmmakers.

There are, unfortunately, times when this refreshingly natural style extends a thimbleful too far into the production itself. The handheld cinematography is woefully amateurish, with besmeared lenses, bang zooms and ticklish framing that makes the film look more like a untroubled b in movie than a serious documentary. Heads are cut off, nave is uneven and manifest splices turn up in a insufficient spots. It’s telling that archival film footage oft looks better than the supplementary components, and no person of the practical is explicitly well captured, with uneven vocals and mixing during, a serious rent in a music oriented title. Helmsman Bruce Ricker also employs a Woodstock-style split-screen contraption without much successótwo badly-framed angles on the same provocation don’t make a winsome combination.

Quiet, The Last of the Smutty Devils is an important register of the Kansas City jazz backdrop; most of the greats captured in Ricker’s 1979 motion picture have since passed on. A man wishes an eye to higher quality, to be sure, but the historical value of the footage cannot be dismissed.

Regardless of the delightful and richly textured enlivenment in

Shark Allegation

, this moving picture is completely devoid of a beating heart and despite some petite, mirthful supporting performances by ancillary characters, the story is exact sick done. It's difficult to criticize such eye-popping animation, but without a group of characters that gives your heart a piece of pull, all the technological gallantry in the world can't gather a bad script good. The discussion in this film is at bottom honestly horrid, to put it bluntly.

There's no reason the writers of this film couldn't beget pull the wool over someone’s eyes a little heart into their gest. The story of this take is, definitely basically, a simple instruction on the review of "material possessions aren't anything if you don't have friends." It's a good idea and at one that's been covered successfully by any number of films aimed at young audiences. But in

Shark Tale

, the opulence of the production comes into soft-soap much more importantly than the characters and their troubles.
The basic fact of this film is that the pre-eminent characters are unfit to hold any real, emotional sway with the audience. Despite Oscar's smooth moves (the "shark slaying" fish is voiced by Will Smith) and Lenny's ambrosial decision (the vegetarian shark is played by Jack Black), these two characters are often flat on the subject of comedy and each nature comes to the story with very cheap incredulity regarding dialogue or plot. Because this is very surely a comedy (or it's supposed to be, anyway), the plot could have infatuated a back-seat to the funnies…if the funnies had been in any way cheerful in and of themselves.
But neither the main characters' jokes nor their conversation and actions resemble anything more interesting than an occurrence of some nameless Saturday morning cartoon that's been rerun into the dust a million times. And not just is the talk as far from pithy as is aquatically possible, the jokes really do fall flat. Nobody's at the end of the day going to sorrow whether Oscar the shark slayer is going to invent it entirely alive. You won't care whether he gets the girl. Err, fish. And regardless of his affability, Lenny the shark won't have that much pull on your pith either.

What viewers pleasure have to fork out attention to in this glaze is the supporting performances and small set down-pieces that seal the uninteresting story's by lifeless heartbeat. Coming in first site is the duo of Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley, who play a troupe of Rastafarian jelly-fish assigned to require life troubled for Oscar. As "Bernie" and "Ernie," (a subtle reference to Bert and Ernie of "Sesame Street" fame?) Doug and Marley are the actors who will give the audience the most laughs. Much of the murkiness is spent as a waiting unflinching for their reappearance on screen.

In other best-selling supporting roles, Peter Falk makes a documentation impression as "Don Brizzi," an obsolete mob boss shark and also making waggish appearances are a bevy of famous Italian American actors in diversified second to-boss shark roles including Michael Imperioli and Vincent Pastore. The interactions between Robert DeNiro (playing horde boss shark, "Don Lino") and Martin Scorsese (playing blowfish and whale-wash possessor, "Sykes") are enthusiastically performed and risible as accurately. But supporting performances cannot fill a void that the lead stars are unable to fill.

In the lead role, Ordain Smith plays his fish personality with zeal, but owing to a script filled with pedantic and on-the-nose dialogue concerning important "life lessons," he is unable to reach beyond the very infantile course to storytelling. When the writers crave you to know that Will Smith's mark is having Gordian knot embarrassment adjusting to his unheard of life as a rich and famous fish, they have the character say that very thing. The writers don't allow the characters to show what they're sense; they unbiased insert some bland dialogue to patch up the insensible spots between the energy scenes and tell you, "Oscar is having get under someone’s skin now." Expressively, duh.

As two female fish vying in the interest of Smith's attention, Renée Zellweger and Angelina Jolie, despite previous Oscar pleasing performances, cannot make the dialogue any more compelling than can any of the other actors ill-fated passably to possess to say the flat words. It's rather pathetic that the pen fails so heavily in any case huddle, because given the beautiful visuals in this film, the characters could play a joke on been given a lot less to say and the end product weight be struck by been more affecting.

In addition to some of the entertaining supporting performances, the aspect of this fog that might keep viewers in their seats is the computer animation. Thriving far beyond the static hued visuals of their first films, the DreamWorks animation department has thrive to the suspend with some incredible visuals and textures allowing for regarding their characters that really bring the animation to life. It's a disappointment that the lay out and discussion couldn't keep a pursue the pep department's heroine. How can two inseparable pieces of a film be so uneven in their faculty separate?

Since the audio track of character voices on an animated film is most often created before the animators upon the meat of their work, it's practical that the animators simply formed the best visuals they were able to conceive, given the flat nature of the dialogue and characterizations. Be fond of divers DreamWorks productions,

Shark Chronicle

seems to be a piece of facile animation that refuses to buy into the sappy splendor of measure up to enlivening giant, Disney. But what the people behind the gest of this film fail to see, is that the Disney oblique of inserting some honest-to-goodness heart into a feature (whether animated or red-hot action), makes for an incredible film.

In so many DreamWorks spirited features, it seems homologous to the creators devotedly try to make a product as fundamentally disparate from a Disney countenance as is humanly thinkable. And that's why so many of their films close up shop to genuinely grab audience's hearts. Anybody of the only exceptions to this practice seems to have been the "Shrek" series, in which a small, vital heart absolutely exists. The DreamWorks folks need to put passion and time into their characters to definitely give Disney (and the increasingly adroit Down in the mouth Sky animators) a leave holding the baby b scan for their market share.

Shark Tale

is a beautiful film. But it's told without heart and equitableness, and that is its greatest and most damaging failing.

Assess by Kelsey Wyatt.
(this obscure would usually be a one-star film, but the animators genuinely
deserve more than that, so hence, this film gets two stars)

George A. Romero shows ‘em how it’s done in “Land of the Dead,” resurrecting his legendary franchise with top-air voyage visuals, terrific genre smarts and tantalizing layers of implication. Nerve-shredding fourth installment may not fully reclaim the visceral or disparaging modify of the correspondent-director’s 1978 masterpiece “Dawn of the Dry,” but it’s still a satisfyingly splattery wine and dine of guts and ideas. Conceding that Universal isn’t flogging it half as aggressively as last year’s “Dawn” remake, pic should fumble its parenthetically a via to killer B.O. with no small domestics from Romero cultists, whose devotion ordain be nothing short of zombielike.

The horror maestro has come a long way since the third film in the cycle, 1985’s “Day of the Dead,” and an even longer way since his seminal 1968 classic “Night of the Living Dead.” This time around, Romero is playing with bigger stars and a higher (though still modest) budget of about $15 million, as well as a new shooting location (Toronto, instead of his native Pittsburgh).

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That said, “Land” is a tour de force of not only independent filmmaking but independent thinking, rigorously worked out on all craft and technical levels yet enlivened by its twisted engagement with the real world.

Romero’s apocalyptic vision of an earth beset by endlessly self-perpetuating flesh-eaters remains as relevant and resonant as ever, and this time he’s even injected some not-so-subtle political invective into the proceedings. At one point Kaufman, a corrupt, gray-haired city official, declares, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” making this the second actioner in recent months, after “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” to lob a grenade in the direction of the White House.

The city in question is one of humankind’s last remaining holdouts, an island metropolis surrounded by water and electric fences that keep out the walking undead. Perched in a high tower that dominates the skyline, Kaufman (Dennis Hopper, his brow furrowed with self-entitlement) owns everything and everyone in the exclusive community of Fiddler’s Green, advertised as the place “where life goes on,” and where upper-class citizens are admitted only via waiting list. Those still outside on the streets, meanwhile, are in the early stages of revolution.

Cholo, one of several soldiers sent out on rescue missions to bring back food and supplies, sets things in motion when Kaufman refuses to let him move into Fiddler’s Green. The disgruntled mercenary (a hot-headed John Leguizamo) promptly hijacks Dead Reckoning, an armored military vehicle that holds enough firepower to bomb out the city, which he threatens to do unless Kaufman meets his demands.

In response, Kaufman commissions Cholo’s superior Riley (Simon Baker) to recover the stolen tank, accompanied by sharpshooter sidekick Charlie (Robert Joy) and gold-hearted hooker Slack (Asia Argento, putting a tough-talking spin on a familiar role).

Tension between Riley and Cholo, effectively fleshed out by Baker and especially Leguizamo, reps only one of the story’s intriguing contrasts. Both guys want out of a nightmare situation, but where Riley hopes to start over away from civilization, social-climbing Cholo wants to retreat inside, into the ranks of the city’s elite.

Romero clearly has a lot on his mind, working through issues of class, segregation, individualism and personal responsibility. As always, the scenario eerily and amusingly mirrors the times: Astute viewers will laugh at how the undead phenomenon has already become commercial fodder in the form of theme-park-style attractions and bloodsports. More chillingly, the gleaming facade of Fiddler’s Green implies an entire nation struggling and failing to lead normal lives in a war zone, turning against itself in the process.

Most suggestive of all are the zombies themselves, who have become frighteningly resourceful and smart, having learned to communicate as well as use tools and weapons. Unlike the trendy, fast-moving denizens of the recent “Dawn” redux and “28 Days Later,” Romero’s walkers still shamble along slowly, yet with an increasingly purposeful gait that makes them seem all the more human. They also look more realistically undead than ever, thanks to pic’s ace makeup team (led by Greg Nicotero) and special contact lenses that lend their eyes a bluish, otherworldly glaze.

Pic’s ideas about continual evolution and advancement extend equally to the carnage, which for most auds will be “Land’s” ultimate test. And Romero rises to the occasion with a mastery, discipline and gleeful sense of invention that shows just how far a slim budget can go given the right sensibility. Fans of the trademark spewing, sausage-like intestines will be quite appeased; few will be prepared for the semi-decapitated zombie (emphasis on semi) or the ugly disadvantages of having a pierced navel (you’ve been warned).

Romero has a way of at once honoring and updating modern horror-pic conventions, relying more here on shock cuts (with super-sharp editing by Michael Doherty) and surprise zombie ambushes than the queasy claustrophobia that pervaded “Night” and “Dawn.” The upshot, happily, is a similarly blissful sense of unease.

Miroslaw Baszak’s nuanced lensing, finding endless varieties in a predominantly gray palette, accentuates Arvinder Grewal’s chilly production design at every turn. Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek’s score is serviceably grim, with repeated patterns that evoke the restless walk of the damned.

• 
  
  
• • 
    Xan Brooks
    
  • 
    The Guardian
    
    ,
    Friday 17 October 2008

Aiming low … Free Jimmy

1. Free Jimmy
2. 
   Production year:
   
   2006
3. 
   Country:
   
   Rest of the world
4. 
   Cert (UK):
   
   15
5. 
   Runtime:
   
   86 mins
6. 
   Directors:
   
   Christopher Nielsen
7. 
   Cast:
   
   Emilia Fox, Jim Broadbent, Kyle MacLachlan, Phil Daniels, Samantha Morton, Simon Pegg, Woody Harrelson
8. 
   More on this film
   

Free Jimmy is a sledgehammer Norwegian animation that metes out all manner of cruelty to dumb animals, not least the ones in the audience. Jimmy, it transpires, is an emaciated, smack-addicted circus elephant that finds itself pursued across the tundra by squabbling stoners and bungling animal rights activists, pausing only to suffer shuddering spasms of withdrawal beside heaps of gray rocks. Reportedly a cult smash in its homeland, this joyless enterprise has since undergone a lipstick-on-a-pig makeover, courtesy of an "English translation" by Simon Pegg that sounds as though it was written in haste and recorded at the read-through. I watched in a state of stupefied horror.

Genre(s):
Engagement / Adventure / Play / Thriller

Columbia
|| NR - 96 minutes - $19.94 || April 25, 2006

Reviewer:

Brian Oliver

|| Posted On: 2006-07-09

.:: F I L M ::.

S P E C I A L
.: F E A T U R E S :.

A U D I O &
.:: V I D E O ::.

.:: O V E R A L L ::.

.::TALKING PICTURE INFORMATION::.


Official:

Antoine Fuqua

Writer(s):

Ken Sanzel (written by)

Thrust:

Chow Yun-Fat, Mira Sorvino, Michael Rooker, Jurgen Prochnow

Theatrical Release Date:

February 6, 1998

.::DVD INFO::.


Supplemental Substance:

• Director's Commentary
• HBO Making-of: Where the Action Is*
• Deleted Scenes
• Alternate Ending
• Chow Yun-Fat Goes Hollywood*
• Theatrical Trailers

Technical Information:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Widescreen (2.40), Widescreen (2.35)
• English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese

.::THE COAT::.

Note:

Images presented in this review are from the Extended Cut.

Plot

(from DVD back cover): After he betrays Mr. Wei, the ruthless crime boss who hired him to avenge his son?s death, professional killer John Lee (Yun-Fat) goes on the run. Enlisting the aid of beautiful document forger Meg Coburn (Sorvino), Lee attempts to return to his family in China before they are victimized by his betrayal. However, Wei?s army of ?replacement killers? is hot on his trail, and now both he and Meg are targets of their impressive firepower…

Making his first appearance in American cinema, Chow Yun-Fat makes a grand entrance in a movie that quite frankly, isn?t all that well put together. For his part, Yun-Fat has some charisma and the lovely Mira Sorvino (Oscar winner) certainly makes the film at least bearable. The problem is,

The Replacement Killers

boils down to poor story and direction execution and not the acting (since movies like these don?t exactly need top notch thespians anyway).

One thing the movie does have going for it, though, is it must?ve set the world record for the number of spent shell casings. As a fan of your typical mindless action-ers (i.e.

The Fast and the Furious

,

Swordfish

and

xXx

, to name a few), I can?t begrudge

Replacement Killers

for some major firepower and a ton of dead bodies. I guess there lies why I enjoyed the film despite issues with the story;

The Replacement Killers

has that irresistible cool factor that makes nearly any sloppy script work.

In regards to whether this extended cut makes the film better than the theatrical version, I?d say overall, a little bit. Many added scenes are just characters talking about plot points we already know about thereby making it redundant. However, a couple extra scenes do add depth into each of the main characters? back-story, and Meg?s (Sorvino) in particular was heart wrenching.

In all, if you?re seeing the movie for the first time, I don?t think you?ll think the movie is better, but for fans of the film who have seen it before, the new stuff is noticeable. We?re not talking about a new cut a la

Lord of the Rings

or

Kingdom of Heaven

, but there?s still something there…

.::SPECIAL FEATURES::.

Unfortunately, they didn?t bother adding anything to this disc save for two featurettes? already available on the special edition (marked with an *). What, were people either unavailable and/or embarrassed to record new interview footage or commentary?

Director Commentary

- Director Antoine Fuqua sits down and gives some insight into how he came aboard the project (his first one, before which he directed music videos and commercials), working with Yun-Fat and Sorvino and other minor trivia. For the most part, the track is dry listening and needed someone else in there to spur on more lively conversation.

*Chow Yun-Fat Goes Hollywood (19:40)

- A long featurette with archive interview footage with various cast and crew talking about how big Yun-Fat is in China and his making his way to Hollywood, plus the differences in making a movie in Hong Kong versus Los Angeles or New York City.

*The Making of The Replacement Killers (9:38)

- This HBO making-of featurette is standard fare that does not go into much depth about how scenes were shot and really the casting process. I don?t expect much from these but given the amount of gun play, they?d have something on that.

Deleted/Extended Scenes

- Four of these are extended while one is a true deleted scene and all but maybe one are put back into the extended cut. Thankfully, unlike

A Knight?s Tale

, the new cut does have footage not included here.

Alternate Ending

- Nothing really changed other than Chow Yun-Fat shows his appreciation to Mira Sorvino at the end by kissing here before walking off down the airport terminal.

There are also

theatrical trailers

and

previews

for this and other Sony releases.

EXTENDED/DELETED SCENES

I tried to keep the descriptions short and to the point so you will see a lot of the same words used. All beginning times and duration are estimates. Times in parentheses (ex: 1:46 is one minute, 46 seconds or 0:20 is 20 seconds; start times are as this HOUR: MINUTES: SECONDS). Also, there are some SPOILERS within.

0:16:20 - Extra couple lines of dialogue (0:16)

0:16:50 - Extra shot: Wei watching daughter-in-law/grandson (0:09)

0:17:18 - Eddie chews out his crew (0:26)

0:21:09 - Alternate/Extended take: Meg explains what she needs (0:25)

0:27:24 - Extra lines in police interrogation room (0:13)

0:28:10 - Extra line (NA)

0:29:08 - Extra line (NA)

0:29:19 - Extra line (NA)

0:29:39 - Extra line (0:09)

0:30:47 - Extra line (0:06)

0:34:54 - New scene: Meg asks John why he?s in trouble with Mr. Wei; Meg tries to escape (1:22)

0:46:10 - Extended scene: One replacement killer looks menacingly at a little girl (0:38)

0:47:26 - Alternate scene/shots: John explains situation; some more background (4:04)

0:52:31 - New scene: Replacement killers introduced to Wei/Meg and John talk, more background (1:46)

1:01:56 - Extended scene: Bad buy complains, while on stakeout, to hurt the kid if he turned on the blender one more time. Graphic/cruel dialogue. (0:23)

1:04:55 - Extended scene: John lashes out after Alan dies. (0:09)

1:05:40 - Extended scene: Meg?s background, brother abused by step-father (1:56)

1:20:23 - Extended scene: John (basically) admits he cares for Meg (0:04)

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.::AUDIO & VIDEO::.

Sound:

Both features have the standard Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that sounds all right with bullets flying around every 5 seconds, but a movie like this would?ve benefited from a DTS track as well.

Picture:

Here?s where things get interesting as I had not only both editions but the 1998 one, in front of me. I took screen caps of the same scene on each disc and made a composite to see any differences between transfers. Going from the 1998 to 2001 versions, I noticed the coloring was softer but still looked great (an upgrade) but from 2001 to 2006, for some reason it the colors were washed out. In this extended cut, faces that had warmth and colorful background both lost some intensity.

Also of interest, the old transfer was in the original 2.35 aspect ratio whereas this is now 2.40 (I imagine to properly fit the new scenes).

You can take a look at a comparison image of all three different versions

here

.

.::ENTIRE::.

If you like these shoot-em-up action flicks that have little regard for story, then

Replacement Killers

is for you. The extended cut presents some actual character depth lost theatrically so it is at least a worthwhile viewing. Personally, on the technical front, the original transfer was better to look at and it would?ve been nice if they carried that over here. But, if you can find this disc cheap ($10 or less), then go ahead and pick it up.

Go into any supermarket, and there's Britney, smiling from the cover of at
least two magazines. Adults might forget her between TV commercials, but she
has been, for years, whispering nonstop into preteen and pubescent ears.
"Crossroads" is a chance to eavesdrop on what she's been saying.

She plays Lucy, a virginal high school valedictorian who loves to sing. Her
father (Dan Aykroyd) wants her to become a doctor, but she's conflicted. She
feels she's just not a doctor, and not yet a singer, either.

There has always been a disconnect between Spears' offstage and onstage
personae. When not singing, she cultivates the image of a scantily clad but
chaste young lady. But onstage she acts like every sailor's pal when the
fleet's in.

At a pop concert, this disparity can work. Music blurs edges, elevates
personality and pushes everything into the dimension of fantasy. But a movie
makes everything literal. So in "Crossroads" we home in on a wholesome young
thing, then see her bumping, grinding and groaning as though in a state of
arousal. What is this about?

Lucy and two of her old friends hook up with a young man and drive cross-
country to Hollywood. Their driver (Anson Mount) has a prison record for
violating the Mann Act. So now he's taking three underage girls over multiple
state lines. Give the man credit. He finds a crime he likes, and he sticks
with it.

Throughout "Crossroads," director Tamra Davis finds ways to show Spears off.

She appears in her underwear twice in the first 15 minutes and carts out her
trademark zany look — eyes crossed, tongue out. She sings "I Love Rock and
Roll" in a karaoke bar and never stops giving us renditions of "I'm Not a Girl,

Not Yet a Woman," which is the worst kind of bad song. Bad and catchy.

In the end, "Crossroads" is a lot like Spears herself. It cultivates not
the illusion of wholesomeness, since no one's buying it, but the pretense of
it. Yet examine the movie's message, and it's pretty insidious. We see Britney
taking off on a cross-country trip without her father's permission, hanging up
on Dad when he tells her to come home, and sharing her bed with an ex-con, who
looks as if he's 30. And the movie doesn't present this as naughty or even
adventurous.

Rather, it presents this as the behavior of a nice girl who's a little on
the nerdy, conservative side. If this is a nice girl, this is not good news,
though not yet a disaster.

Advisory: This film contains sexual situations and coarse language.

– Mick LaSalle

'SUPER TROOPERS'


Comedy. Starring Jay Chandrasekhar, Brian Cox. Directed by Chandrasekhar. (R.
100 minutes. At Bay Quarter theaters).

.

The members of the comedy troupe Broken Lizard are frat guys who've matured,

but only slightly. Their comedy "Super Troopers" is more sophisticated than,
say, "American Pie 2," but they've still got the good sense to know you can't
have a romp without a little raunch.

The dirty jokes provide the funniest moments in this oddly sweet comedy
about jokester highway patrolmen. That's right, "Super Troopers" makes those
officers in the mustaches and aviator shades — the ones who pull you over and
say, "Did you know how fast you were going?" as if you didn't — into comic
and even sympathetic characters.

Broken Lizard founder Jay Chandrasekhar, the movie's director, plays the
lead patrolman with the reassuring comic presence of Ray Romano. He's the most
levelheaded of the Vermont state troopers, who toy with stoned teenagers and
play dumb word games to ease their boredom. What little plot exists concerns
the troopers' rivalry with local police encroaching on their strip of highway.

The first part of the picture is so tame that you wonder about the "R"
rating, with innocent tomfoolery like a rookie trooper being doused with
whipped cream. Then the sexual high jinks begin. A running gag involves a
German couple in a hot Porsche who show there's more than one way to be fast.
There's also a bit about bestiality that's beautifully done — and bestiality
is hard to do well.

Mostly, "Super Troopers" is plain goofy. When a trooper joins a local
policewoman on a drug case, he says, "We can be like Cagney and Lacey." When
she points out that those were two women, he says, "OK, I'll be Lacey."

Brian Cox, the great Scottish actor, revels in the role of the chief, who
knows when to reprimand his charges and when to join them in an old-fashioned,
sirens-blaring drunk.

"Super Troopers" miscalculates with jokes about Afghanistan and the Taliban.

Since the movie played Sundance more than a year ago, the references
obviously predate Sept. 11, which also means there was plenty of time to edit
them out.

.

This film contains raw language, drug and sexual humor.

– Carla Meyer

'RETURN TO NEVER LAND'


Animation. Directed by Robin Budd. Written by Carter Crocker and House of worship
Mathews. (G. 72 minutes. At Bay Area theaters).

.

Peter Pan is still a Lost Boy. Captain Hook still wants his hide. And Wendy
Darling is grown up with two kids of her own.

"Return to Never Land," the Walt Disney Pictures sequel to "Peter Pan,"
picks up the threads of the 1953 Disney animated feature — based on the James
M. Barrie classic — and jumps forward to World War II, when Wendy and family
are living through bombings, blackouts and evacuations.

Her son Daniel, roughly 5, is adorable and frisky. Daughter Jane, about 12,
is a gloomy spoilsport who dismisses her mother's tales of Peter Pan and
Tinker Bell as "childish nonsense." Only when she's kidnapped by Captain Hook
and taken to Never Land does Jane learn the power of faith and enchantment.

This is pleasant, safe entertainment that ought to appeal to kids younger
than 10, especially to girls, with its female-empowerment fantasy. It's got a
good heart and a buoyant spirit, familiar characters and a nice message about
keeping one's heart open to experience and magic.

Compared with such computer-animated features as "Toy Story," "Shrek" and
"Monsters, Inc." however, "Return to Never Land" seems dated and ordinary. The
standard for animation was raised significantly by those recent films from
Pixar and Pacific Data Images, in technical terms but also in humor, hipness
and character definition.

Going back to "Never Land," then, feels a bit like taking a ride in an old,
bumpy Studebaker. The plot is predictable and formulaic, the colors muted, the
music forgettable and the action pokey.

Since the focus is on skeptical Jane, the Peter character remains sketchy
and undeveloped. Foppish Capt. Hook is played for laughs: crying "Cast off,
you mangy dogs" with theatrical elan, then quivering like custard when a giant
octopus occupies the deck of the Jolly Roger.

For children, there's something irresistible in seeing a stern authority
figure like Hook exposed and humiliated. What better fun than ripping off the
big man's pants, literally in this case, and subverting his silly facade of
control and superiority?

Veteran voice actor Corey Burton doesn't have quite as much fun with the
part as Hans Conreid did in the 1953 cartoon, or Australian actor Cyril
Ritchard in the 1950s musical "Peter Pan" with Mary Martin. He doesn't quite
pull off that absurd, campy pomposity.

But with so little else to distract us in "Return to Neverland," he's a
blessing.

– Edward Guthmann

'SCOTLAND, PA.'


(Dark comedy. Starring James LeGros, Maura Tierney, Christopher Walken.
Directed and written by Billy Morrissette. (R. 102 minutes. At the Lumiere).

.

In "Scotland, Pa.," former actor and novice filmmaker Billy Morrissette
transplants "Macbeth" to a 1970s burger joint populated by losers in their 30s
who booze it up and race Camaros when not plotting coups.

It all sounds way too cute, and sometimes it is. The film works more as a
concept than as a collection of funny lines, and some comic premises bomb
outright, like the "three hippies" standing in for the three witches. But
"Scotland, Pa." succeeds because of the cast's communal vibe of arrogant
stupidity.

Pat McBeth, the counter girl at Duncan's restaurant, is the sharpest tack
among the mouth breathers. She's played by Maura Tierney, Morrissette's wife
and the fine TV actress from "ER" and "NewsRadio." Tierney has always been
sexy in a sensible-shoes, matching-401(k) kind of way, but here she really
lets loose. Her Lady Macbeth is a libidinous puppet master who prods her
dullard fry cook husband, "Mac" (James LeGros), into murder so they can
install a drive-through. Nobody said progress came without sacrifice.

When Mac gets passed over for the manager's job, his wife sees red, and the
restaurant owner lands in the deep fryer. You probably have some idea of what
happens next: The McBeths turn the restaurant into a gleaming fast-food palace,

but their respective psychoses and a detective named McDuff impede their rise
to town pillars.

Christopher Walken, a master at genial evil, makes McDuff as inscrutable as
Tierney's Pat is transparent. When the scheming Pat flirts with the lawman, he
appears to respond shyly. It's hard to tell who's scamming whom, but the smart
money's on McDuff.

LeGros slowly transforms his character from dunderhead to calculating
killer, and he makes a good comic foil for Walken. As Mac's pal Banco, Kevin
Corrigan wears his "ugly guy" glasses from "Walking and Talking" and reeks of
squandered potential.

The picture gets an enormous boost from music by '70s working-class heroes
like Bad Company and Three Dog Night. The songs evoke a very specific era —
after Vietnam and before disco — and move along but never overwhelm the story.

Having a sensitive young football player intently listen to Janis Ian's "At
Seventeen" near a poster from "Cabaret" says more than any dialogue ever could.

Advisory: This film contains violence, raw language, sexuality.

– Carla Meyer

'THE TOWN IS QUIET'


Theatre arts. Starring Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Julie-Marie
Parmentier and Gerard Meylan. Directed by Robert Guediguian. (Not rated. 132
minutes. In French with English subtitles. At Bay Area theaters.)

.

"The Town Is Quiet" is an audacious film, set in contemporary Marseille.
Writer-director Robert Guediguian has created a strange mosaic of a plot, most
of it surrounding a middle-aged woman with an unemployed alcoholic husband and
a desperate junkie daughter.

There isn't the usual story. Rather there are incidents occurring over a
small period of time to a handful of characters. Only later, perhaps, does one
realize that these events have one point of similarity: They are emblematic of
some fundamental decay at the heart of urban life. Something isn't rotten in
Marseille. Everything is rotten in Marseille.

Ariane Ascaride plays Michele, who works every night in a fish market, only
to come home to a miserable household, in which she has to listen to the
bitter recriminations of her wastrel husband and care for her daughter's
illegitimate infant. Anything bad that can happen in "The Town Is Quiet"
happens. In one scene, Michele walks in to find the daughter (Julie-Marie
Parmentier) turning tricks in the living room.

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Michele is appalled, but as her daughter's dependence on heroin becomes
more acute, and the need for money more desperate, she herself decides to try
prostitution. At 300 francs a pop, she starts seeing a hapless cabdriver.

At times, Guediguian's film seems almost as if it's about to slide into
utter absurdity. He keeps upping the stakes and piling on shocks until it
borders on the ridiculous. Yet his strategy keeps him one step ahead of his
audience throughout, and the shocks never quite seem gratuitous. Always, one
gets the sense that this film is coming from some place real, and terrible.

.

Advisory: This film contains violence, nudity, sexual situations and harsh
language.

– Mick LaSalle

This article appeared on page

D - 3

of the San Francisco Chronicle