Reviews

Actor Danny Glover ruins this piece of cinematic sci-fi for me. Imagine as a theatre-goer having to suspend belief and connect with a story all the while trying to deal with Glover's nutty-as-a-fruitcake politics and personal persona informing his character as, of all things, President of the United States. It was impossible for me. Glover is movie enjoyment poison for me. There is no nuance, no depth, no feeling to the viewer that he even connects to the character he is playing. I always feel as if Glover is playing his Lethal Weapon character in every film he makes. Is he too ashamed (or connected to friends in the business) that he won't return for a few acting lessons?

Today an opinion piece by world renown playwright David Mamet ("Waiting for Godot") came out, called "Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal - An election season essay". In it he notes "Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed." And he's quite correct.

Like many musicals, including -- believe it or not -- "Singin' in the Rain" and "My Fair Lady"-- Porgy and Bess is an amalgam of wonderful songs with a plot put together to give the songs ambiance and gravitas. The play itself is merely a vehicle to showcase the music. Now the plots of these song-driven classics rise above the usual fare, but it is the song list that makes the films. The only musical I know in which the songs were specifically written with a particular plot in mind was maybe "West Side Story".

Having established that arguable point, I've heard better renditions of the "Porgy and Bess" songs. Frank Sinatra, William Warfield, Ella Fitzgerald, and a dozen others come to mind. The pay-off is always the three-minute "Ol' Man River" song. Paul Robeson, a multi-talented genius in most things except politics, perhaps sings that song the best.

And then back on the shelf it goes.

This one is also out in some parts of the country today, rest of the country by the end of the month. Been there, seen this. It's called "Hair." As if we need yet another anti-war movie, like "Hair" this is a musical using Beatles songs. It takes place during the Vietnam war, and the message is that America's wars are bad, America sends its boys to die and get maimed, and we need spoiled, rich left-wing activists to show us the way. Hmmm . . . sound familiar. It's called Hollywood.

Marilyn Manson's girlfriend, Evan Rachel Wood plays Lucy, a young girl from a rich family who loses her boyfriend, killed serving in Vietnam. She drops out of school, moves to New York, and becomes an anti-war activist. She also falls for an illegal alien from Britain, Jude. He's the illegitimate son of an American World War II vet who is now a janitor at Princeton. We follow Jude, Lucy (surprise!--the convenient namesakes of Beatles songs), and her brother, who drops out of Princeton and tries to dodge the Vietnam draft--all through a musical journey, which celebrates the '60s counterculture. Because we all know the '60s brought us such great stuff like AIDS, rampant polygamous relationships, drugs, and failed everything. Also features two characters apparently modeled on Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and equally as brain-addled.

Aside from the plot, equally annoying is the cameo by Bono, who really belonged in that decade and out of ours.

Although the singing and sets in this movie are well done (and I'm no musical devotee), the anti-war message grows tinny and tired. What was a 2.25-hour movie seemed like more than four hours.

• Debbie Schlussel

"The Pursuit of Happiness" is one of the great movies of the year (perhaps the decade) and a rare product from Hollywood.

In theaters Friday, the film presents a male character and father in a positive light. And it shows the virtues of merit--not race-based preferences--in America. It is the story of the high hopes--and achievement of those hopes with hard work--that are only possible in this great country.

In a day when men are portrayed as losers and dopes, absentee fathers, and deadbeat sperm-donors who don't care about their kids, Happiness tells us the real story of most American fathers. They love their children and work hard to give them a good life.

In this case, it's the real story of Chris Gardner, a down-and-out-on-his-luck bone-scanner salesman who succeeds to become a multi-millionaire, all while raising his young son alone. Gardner's wife, the mother of his two-year-old son (in the movie, he's five), has no faith in him. After bitching and moaning endlessly and trying to kill his dreams, she leaves Gardner to raise his son on virtually no money.

Gardner, without a college education, enters an internship for stockbrokers at Dean Witter. But he's paid no money, and must raise his son and succeed in the internship while homeless. The scenes of Gardner living with his son in homeless shelters, subway station bathrooms, and cheap motel rooms are no exaggeration.

Most of all, Happiness is the story of the love of a father for his son--in the face of incredible difficulties. Every disaster in the world, every bit of bad luck happens to Gardner. The scanners he sells are stolen or fail to work, and he is arrested for unpaid parking tickets on the night before an important interview, evicted from his apartment, evicted from his cheap motel room.

Throughout all of this, it is not just his drive to succeed that motivates him. It is, above all, his love for his son, the custody of whom he refuses to give up. And although Gardner is a Black man, race is never mentioned and never plays a part in the Chris Gardner story.

Still, it is important because the Black fathers we see on television are portrayed most often on venues like the Oprah Winfrey show. To Oprah, Black fathers are absentee millionaire NBA players who cheated on their kids mothers and didn't pay child support. She's also portrayed Black fathers largely as extramarital cheaters, gospel singers addicted to porn, spending addicts, married gay men on the "down low", and assorted other highly unflattering presentations America is shown daily on her syndicated daytime talk show.

The true story of Chris Gardner did not originate on Oprah. It originated on a solid news show that doesn't engage in male-bashing, ABC's "20/20." Happiness is the story of hard work. Only one person out of many in the Dean Witter internship gets a permanent job. Gardner was the chosen one.

But Gardner did not get a break because of his complexion. He was chosen on merit alone. In the stockbroking business, race-based preferences can't help you sell stocks and make money for the company. Gardner was chosen because -- with his pluck, initiative, and drive -- he sold the most stock and financial packages for Dean Witter. In the movie -- which Gardner says is true to his life (but for the age of his son at the time)--race has nothing to do with it.

Sadly, this message is lost on Happiness star, Will Smith. In an interview with Detroit Free Press film critic Terry Lawson, Will Smith says he is upset that Michigan voters voted for Proposal Two, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which ends affirmative action in public hiring, contracting, and college admissions. Given his role as Gardner, Smith's psychobabble is jarring: "As a Black American, I am 100 percent in favor of affirmative action. But Jada (Pinkett Smith, his wife) always talks about the beauty and the pain of the true political process. She believes every paradigm ends in paradox, that the result can be the worst thing and the best thing at the same time.

The very thing that sparks one person can break another. For Chris Gardner, defeat only made him work harder and believe in himself more." But Chris Gardner didn't succeed because he got special treatment for being Black. The company he founded, Gardner Rich & Co., didn't prosper because of race preferences either. He succeeded because of hard work and resulting profits. The movie's script makes the point that equality of result is not guaranteed -- that the Declaration of Independence specifies only the pursuit of happiness as a right, not happiness itself. Gardner succeeded because he was smart, resourceful, hard-working, and dedicated to making a better life for his son.

Those should be the only reasons anyone succeeds in America--not the coincidence of birth with a certain skin tone or set of internal plumbing.

Smith--of all people--should know this. Hollywood is full of unemployed actor-model/waiters of all races. Those few who make it don't get there because of affirmative action. They made it because they appealed to the audience marketplace on merit and talent alone.

Will Smith did not initially succeed because he was "The Black Prince of Bel Air," but because he was the talented "Fresh Prince of Bel Air."

• Debbie Schlussel

The smartest among you can recognize when a film company's paid hack writes a glowing review about it being "the best in decades", "the scariest of all time", blah blah blah. The shamelessness of it is appalling -- that so many people are willing to trade their honesty and integrity in order to write something on IMDb comments. Either that or they are 13, easily impressed and have been seeing horror movies since they were 12 and a half.

The fact is that the film -- which I saw three hours ago -- is of marginal quality. It's so grainy and dark (cheaply made) that it looks like it was "filmed" on used or old videotape otherwise destined for the garbage bin. The producers were obviously aware that the story itself was so pedestrian and the effects were so second-rate that they would need to sell two known American actors -- Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland -- in order to get theaters to take a chance on showing it.

In the UA theater I was in, exactly three people showed up to see it. And that seemed just about right if numbers were related to film quality.

Save your money and wait a few weeks for it to come out as a discount DVD (don't pay more than $3.99, however).

It falls within the bottom 5% of ghost movies. And ghost movies are my favorite category of horror. Try "The Uninvited", "Lady in White", "The Innocents", or the original "The Haunting".

If you like Donald Sutherland, see him in the ghostly classic, "Don't Look Back" (when he was 35 years younger and had a better script). See Sissy Spacek in the now-campy "Carrie" instead (also about 30 years younger and just as adept, acting-wise).

Rachel Hurd-Wood plays Betsy. She's pretty and does a serviceable job in a pretty limited role.

My quick notes after viewing "Rent":

Although the singing is sometimes outstanding, the music itself is average.

Looking for a good, rousing, upbeat time? The three major characters are dying of AIDS. Gee, giddy and goosebumply already.

It is based -- so they say -- on the beautiful, heart-wrenching dramatic opera, Puccini's "La Boheme", so you would think it's has attributes of that classic. You would think so, but it doesn't.

The ending is about 50 times inferior to the ending of that great opera.

Warning: It should be an R for its drugs and drag queens, but it was generously given a PG-13 by liberal Hollywood and, in my humble opinion, as demanded by the European money that funded it just as Europe funds 70% of all U.S. films released into general distribution this year.

In short, another "out-of-touch" message movie that the mainstream will wisely avoid but the insular community of Hollywood will likely give an Award to simply because it bravely examines an alternative lifestyle as does every other movie coming out of Hollywood these days. So brave. Can we all sing the "Brokeback Mountain" polka?

This is as ground-breaking to gay film-making as "Good Night and Good Luck" is as groundbreaking to liberal history books about McCarthy. Which is to say it bows to political correctness. With some tunes.

I give it a 2 out of 10, one point because it is vaguely based on that classic opera and one point for only one good song.

If you have long bought into the popular liberal Hollywood premise that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was the "anti-Christ" of free speech -- and most of us were taught exactly that in school and still hold to it, then this film production from self-avowed liberal George Clooney will be that manipulative paean that satisfies your sense of self-righteous indignation about the mythical "witch-hunt" of the 1950's.

Fortunately for us but unfortunately for Clooney, that premise has been called into question with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the resulting release by our government in 1995 of decryptions of Soviet intelligence cables from the 40's and 50's. These cable messages, called the Venona cables, confirm Sen. McCarthy's suspicions of Soviet agents in essential government agencies.

If you examine the Venona cables, it turns out that McCarthy was right, after all.

Eleven years later and it is surprising that the release of these decoded "spy messages" from the former Soviet Union are not better-known. Hollywood, a bastion of liberalism, has no plans to produce anything that examines the Venona evidence since it will put McCarthy in a more reasonable light. Where's the entertainment value in admitting someone might have been wrongly smeared?

With the release of the Venona papers -- and eleven years later, the release of "Good Night and Good Luck", one can see Hollywood "circling the wagons" as more and more of these decryptions of Soviet messages become known and McCarthy's suspicions and allegations turn out to have been either true or well-based.

With the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991 leading to the opening of Soviet archives that had never been examined by independent scholars, the whole question of McCarthy's charges is reopened. This film addresses none of it.

The historically rich documentation first made available in Moscow's archives in 1992 has resulted in an outpouring of new historical writing, as these records allow a far more complete and accurate understanding of central events of the twentieth century.

Not only do the Venona files supply information in their own right, but because of their inherent reliability they also provide a touchstone for judging the credibility of other sources, such as defectors' testimony, FBI investigative files and, ultimately, Joseph McCarthy's warnings and revelations.

Through most of the twentieth century, governments of powerful nations have conducted intelligence operations of some sort during both peace and war. None, however, used espionage as an instrument of state policy as extensively as did the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Stalin directed Soviet intelligence at nearby targets in Europe and Asia. America was still distant from Stalin's immediate concerns, the threat to Soviet goals posed by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. This perception changed, however, after the United States entered the world war in December 1941. Stalin realized that once Germany and Japan were defeated, the world would be left with only three powers able to project their influence across the globe: the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States. And of these, the strongest would be the United States.

With that in mind, Stalin's intelligence agencies shifted their focus toward America.

One mission of these Soviet intelligence officers, however, was espionage against the United States. The deciphered Venona cables do more than reveal the remarkable success that the Soviet Union had in recruiting spies and gaining access to many important U.S. government agencies and laboratories dealing with secret information. They expose beyond cavil the American Communist party as an auxiliary of the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. While not every Soviet spy was a Communist, most were. And while not every American Communist was a spy, hundreds were. The CPUSA itself worked closely with Soviet intelligence agencies to facilitate their espionage. Party leaders were not only aware of the liaison; they actively worked to assist the relationship.

Information from the Venona decryptions underlay the policies of U.S. government officials in their approach to the issue of domestic communism. The investigations and prosecutions of American Communists undertaken by the federal government in the late 1940s and early 1950s were premised on an assumption that the CPUSA had assisted Soviet espionage. This view contributed to the Truman administration's executive order in 1947, reinforced in the early 1950s under the Eisenhower administration, that U.S. government employees be subjected to loyalty and security investigations. The understanding also lay behind the 1948 decision by Truman's attorney general to prosecute the leaders of the CPUSA under the sedition sections of the Smith Act. It was an explicit assumption behind congressional investigations of domestic communism in the late 1940s and 1950s, and it permeated public attitudes toward domestic communism.

The Soviet Union's unrestrained espionage against the United States from 1942 to 1945 was of the type that a nation directs at an enemy state.

Sen. McCarthy knew this.

Of course, where's the benefit to Clooney if he had to re-examine his beliefs and address how Hollywood has wrongly smeared an American senator who turned out to be patriotic and correct after all? Who in Hollywood would fund such a film? Ah, but Hollywood millions will pour into a film like this.

Move over, Michael Moore. George Clooney is now in town.

This is one of those movies where you should take the lower-digit votes seriously.

There is precious little action, lots of conversation, and the newly-resuscitated stand-by message-movie formula of "Big Bad Corporation vs. helpless little people) that is certain to capture IMDb voting much like gay-themed films are an absolute certainty to grab Oscar nominations. The movie-makers caught on to audience gullibility quite awhile ago.

The cinematography of expansive areas of Africa is indeed beautiful. However, this you can get from a nice IMAX film and probably twice as big.

Ralph Fiennes (as Justin Quayle) plays Ralph Fiennes (i.e. himself) playing another ordinary, quiet academic who serves in the British High Commission, whatever that is. And Rachel Weitz shows she's a much better actress than she showed in the two "Mummy" movies. Yes, this isn't saying much. But she's sure to get votes for playing a strong feminist character raised in an affluent family. Or she'll get votes for being a playful pregnant nude in a gratuitous scene thrown in to show, I guess, that her marriage to the Fiennes character was a sexy one.

The expository part of the film lasts ... well, the WHOLE FILM! As such, the ending is likely to disappoint. For a movie intended to be about values, one must question what the director and writer was thinking when they created(?) the ending.

"Seven Brides" seems like it spent pennies on a script, on the acting, on the film equipment and the film crew and 99% of the film budget on the seven-minute dance scene where they raise the building. Although I truly must admit it is one of the most exciting dance numbers ever put on film. But to build a whole film around one dance number is pathetic, really.

And it's only seven minutes!

Before and after that scene, everything else is just flat. Flat, flat, flat. Flatter than most actresses before they make it to the silver screen. Flatter than Roseanne's singing voice doing the Star-Spangled Banner.

Howard Keel is cool. He plays the same character in all his movies, which isn't so bad. Although I'm glad he knew to spend the better part of his career on the stage. Acting isn't his thing.

One more positive thing: The movie does have lots of color. Vivid primary colors. Costumes in Technicolor. Ooooooh!

4 stars for the dance scene.

1 star for the rest of the movie.

I have been a real fan of George Romero for years. The irony and effects of his previous zombie films were a joy and contributed greatly to my appreciation of what horror movies could be.

"Land of the Dead" is a disappointment when weighed with the hype and the comments here of the easily pleased. The special effects are better than any previous zombie film and that alone could compel horror fans to attend a screening of this latest entry. John Leguizamo is miscast and overplays the villain all too cartoonishly, with dialog that is meant to appeal to 10 year-golds. The character he was intended to play is a good one (you can tell by the dialog and script) but Leguizamo just doesn't bring out the malevolence. Only the lead played by Simon Baker is worse. Whether it's in the editing or in his acting skills (I suspect more of the latter), some of Baker's reactions appear to come out of 'left field'. (Think of the bad acting of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker and you'll get what I mean about Baker). Someone delivers a innocuous throwaway line and he emotionally explodes, but when someone says something threatening, he's calm? Is this character supposed to be a manic bipolar?

I give the film a 6 because of the effects and my basic like for zombie films. But it is as if the biggest chunk of the budget went into the special effects and Romero's and Hopper's salaries and little or none went into dialog coaching for Baker and Argento. Dennis Hopper was excellent and I promise you will actually find yourself rooting for him to overcome despite the villainy of his character. Either Hopper should not have been cast in this in the first place since he makes all the other actors (except Big Daddy zombie and Legless zombie, who has a small role) look like beginners, or Romero should have cast actors equal to or at least half of Hopper's abilities. Here, it looks like they threw in some kids with Sir Laurence Olivier.

Romero may have given away too much control to the effects wizards and not enough to the script. I'll give him another shot to get it right.

Keep "Big Daddy zombie" (Eugene A. Clark) and Legless Zombie (David Campbell) next time around. Only Clark and Dennis Hopper were worthy of the ticket price.

Clark is not in any publicity stills nor do I see him in the 28 photos of the premiere. That's a shame. This is as much his picture as anyone else's.

Jayne Brook is undoubtedly is one of sexiest film and television actresses I have ever witnessed on the big or small screen. She evokes a sensual warmth, subtle sexual tension with leading men and casual, natural femininity that is comparable only to early Carol Lynley, very early Bette Davis or Lauren Bacall. I sometimes think Christa Miller of the "The Drew Carey Show" comes close to this type of magnetic screen presence but she doesn't do so consistently. For Ms. Brook, it is as if she was gifted by her parents some extraordinarily strong female pheromones, only 'pheromones for the eyes'.

She can dance. She can act. She makes her fellow performers shine. She has terrific comedic timing and a transparent honesty. I actually find it difficult to take my eyes off of her during her performance.

"My Mother, The Spy" is so-so. How pleasant to see Gloria Stuart in one of her final roles post-"Titanic". But the film is a good-for-the-time-being star vehicle for the radiant Ms. Brook. She is easily ready for the big time and, frankly, overdue. What a refreshing change she'd be from the inauthentic J-Lo's and Charlize's of the film world.

I'd like to see her stretch into a serious starring motion picture role. Maybe a Hollywood casting director might decide to avoid the mediocre and land this supremely talented cu-tie...

By the way, I thought Dyan Cannon did her usual excellent job, in this case, playing her mother. Even in 2000, Cannon continues to defy age comparisons as she looks so darn young!

Mildly interesting film.

Whether the scriptwriters intended it or not, the audience is left to conclude that Bridget's allure is that she's a great "shag". Certainly, it's not her aggressively neurotic personality, choice in wardrobe, or jealous nature -- all of which come up throughout the film. Renee Zellweger gives a sincere although uneven performance as a young woman who is charmingly in love and then quickly goes of the deep end for no real apparent reason. (Is she a manic depressive?)

Halfway through the film her character suddenly becomes a caricature of "addled female". Since there is nothing about her in the script except her shagging ability, it is hard to really like her. She's hopeless, naive, uncultured, unread and overweight. There is nothing charming or attractive about her that would cause her Eton-educated lawyer-boyfriend (Colin Firth) to have anything to do with her.

In the end, I'm wondering: She's a great shag according to a cad who says so. Why should I care about her and her unstable romantic life? So what?

Kinsey, who died in 1956, is author of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948). The film treats him heroically.

It shouldn't.

It ignores his pedophilia or Table 34 of his book which describes the orgasms of children. It ignores how he employed pedophiles to molest these children and record their screams and convulsions in soundproof rooms. It ignores his sadomasochism, his genital self-mutilations (which led to his death) and steers away from his pioneering work for NAMBLA. He considered Judeo-Christianity the enemy of freedom. He sought to invest sexual relations between humans and animals with a certain dignity suggesting they could achieve "a psychology intensity comparable to that in exclusive human sexual relations." (Dr. Judith Reisman, "Kinsey, Sex and Fraud" p.7).

Kinsey is reported to have favored sex with children at any age, having concluded children are sexual "from birth."

As a researcher, his methodology stank.

In short, Kinsey justified every type of sexual behavior, including bestiality and a total rejection of Judeo-Christian morality.

The whitewashing of this despicable guy makes any other comment on the film absent of integrity. I was surprised Liam Neeson took the lead role in light of a script that revises historical fact. I guess I expected better of him as a person if not an actor. As an actor, he could have demanded more truth.

The acting is so-so, the script is so-so. It's the fact it has sexual content that will raise voting scores to exaggeratedly high levels here.

All of which means it's another likely Oscar contender from the Left.

These kinds of films often get high marks from reviewers who don't want to look prudish by dinging them.

You have to be careful. Among those who are likely posting here are staff from Evolution Entertainment and Saw Productions, Inc. They are pretty easy to spot (e.g. one obvious giveaway is that Danny Glover's acting is called "amazing", "really good" or any of a number of superlatives usually reserved for real actors, not cardboard cutout types). This has become a common practice among film companies -- corporate fraud comes in many disguises, you know, not just like Enron -- since box office on a film's first weekend is so financially important and the deception needn't be carried on longer than that first week and before.

"Saw" is a made-only-for-the-quick-buck, terrible B-movie. The acting is wooden, the script is not clever, the music is blaring and uninventive, the sound is so uneven that you feel you're missing significant pieces of dialogue (you aren't). Looking around the theatre I noticed a couple of patrons having fallen asleep near the end. There is one positive: the opening credits are spiffy.

Overall, the feeling you'll leave the theatre with can probably be compared with the feeling after you vote[d] in this election. You went into the booth with high expectations and then got something completely different when it was over.

Rating: a generous 1 out of 10.

Monster claims it is "based on a true story." But it is not as true as you might think.

True, serial killer Aileen Wuornos was convicted and then executed 12 years ago in Florida.

In the movie, Wuornos is presented as a killer with a soft side in a loving lesbian relationship with her girlfriend, played by Christina Ricci.

Here's the problem: If filmmakers say their movie is "based on a true story," shouldn't the heart of the story be true?

Down on Her Luck, or Brutal Killer?

Wuornos was a prostitute who hitchhiked across central Florida to find customers. In the movie, she tries to go straight but society lets her down, making it difficult for her to find a job, so she returns to the streets.

As Monster tells it, one john brutally beats and rapes Wuornos in some very disturbing scenes. When the attacker threatens to kill her, she shoots him in self-defense. When moviegoers see the graphic rape scene, many feel Wuornos is the victim. This has family members of the real victims unhappy.

Theron helped produce the film, and talks about the research she did while promoting the film. I would think the research would include talking to the prosecutor, John Tanner, who spent years investigating Wuornos and the seven men she killed.

But he was not consulted.

"You know, these men had wives. They have daughters, brothers, sons, friends," Tanner told ABCNEWS. "And anyone that sees that film is left with the impression that - at least some of the men that were murdered deserved to die and that she was acting in self-defense. It's a total lie."

Wuornos even admitted that her crimes, committed in Florida in the 1980s, were not "self-defense." During her trial, Wuornos took the stand and said she "robbed" the men and killed them "as cold as ice."

"And I'd do it again, too, I know I'd kill another person, 'cause I've hated humans for a long time," said Wuornos. She then continued to claim the men were innocent while in prison, after she said she found God.

"I want to come clean. There is no self-defense," said Wuornos. "And so I need to come clean, I need to tell the world that there is no self-defense in my cases."

When picking up her Golden Globe for her performance, Theron thanked lots of people, but she never once mentioned the families of the murdered men.

"I don't think they cared about the victims' families," said Linda Yates. Her mother was engaged to Gino Antonio, when Wuornos killed him. "[Wuornos] was just a vicious person," said Yates.

In fact, the filmmakers didn't talk to any of the victims families. Mike Humphreys' dad was also murdered. He has a problem with the way the movie was produced: "I don't think that they ought to do this to the victims out there," said Humphreys.

"This movie is portraying her as a victim," said Letha Prater. "She isn't. She was not a victim. My brother was a victim."

Most of the family members won't go to the movie.

The movie does acknowledge Wuornos killed one man who was trying to help her, but all the others are shown as johns. The families say that's cruel to them.

I confronted Brad Wyman, one of Monster's producers.

I told him that while in the movie, Wuornos' character is tied up, beaten and raped, but in reality, she said that never happened. "I believe she said that in order to actually try to expedite her own execution," said Wyman. "She really wanted to end her own personal tragedy."

Wyman said the filmmaker did her best to protect the victims in the portrayal, changing details including their license plates and the color of their cars. But they never spoke to the victims' families because, as Wyman puts it, they did not want to "unearth more tragedy in their lives."

Wyman explained why the film took liberties with some facts. "It's not a documentary. I mean in no way is it," said Wyman. "It is a dramatic portrayal searching for kind of a greater truth rather than a … a factual truth."

A greater truth than factual truth?

Give me a break.

-- John Stoessel

June 7, 2004

Unable to develop a coherent political ideology to oppose President George W. Bush, the anti-Bush cabal has turned to humor and Hollywood. The CBS Evening News borrows jokes from late-night comedy shows to jab at Bush every Friday evening, and we have just been treated to big fanfare about a new anti-Bush movie.

The thesis of "The Day After Tomorrow" is that the Bush administration has failed to protect us from global warming. According to this theory, global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions will melt the ice at the North Pole, which will then warm the Atlantic current, making Northern Hemisphere temperatures drop precipitously and bring about a new ice age within hours.

New York City is hit by a huge tidal wave and a catastrophic ice storm. It's all pretty grim; only the wolves that escape from the Bronx Zoo are having a good time.

This climate disaster might come tomorrow, 100 years from now or in 1,000 years.

Regardless, it's all the fault of our insensitive, out-of-touch president who refuses to ratify former Vice President Al Gore's favorite treaty, the Kyoto Protocol. In the movie, the president meets the fate he deserves along with everyone else in Washington, D.C.

The real bad guy is the vice president, a look-alike for Dick Cheney, who puts budgetary constraints ahead of incurring the gigantic costs of environmental regulations demanded by global-warming fear mongers. He is made to eat crow at the end of the movie, publicly confessing the error of his ways and thanking the Third World for accepting the mass migration of U.S. citizens fleeing south to escape the ice.

We must credit the movie producers for making the audience laugh out loud at the scene of Americans wading across the Rio Grande to cross our southern border illegally, begging for entry into Mexico to escape the cold. At first, Mexico tries to seal the border against the influx of Americans, but our president's cozy relationship with the Mexican president enables them to work out a deal: the United States forgives all Mexico's debts and Mexico graciously allows Americans to enter Mexico.

The hero of the movie, the scientist who predicted it all, is a man of unbelievable endurance. He warns his son to stay inside the New York Public Library because, if he ventures outside, he will freeze to death within minutes. But the father somehow walks through ice and blizzard all the way from Philadelphia to New York to join him.

The son and friends holed up in the library keep warm by burning books. The movie audience responded with lusty cheers when the volumes containing the tax code were tossed into the fireplace.

We see Manhattan covered with ice up to the roof of the public library and the arms of the Statue of Liberty, as well as tornadoes in Los Angeles, ice sheets breaking up in Antarctica, hail the size of baseballs in Japan, and snow in India. The special effects of "The Day After Tomorrow" are fun to watch, but their utter improbability defeats the propaganda message.

Nevertheless, Gore, Al Franken, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., are hoping this summer disaster flick will make Americans take global warming seriously and turn it into a presidential campaign issue. MoveOn.org and the National Resources Defense Council are distributing leaflets at theaters to explain the message to moviegoers.

Environmental groups are urging Americans to do their part to save the environment by riding bicycles to the movie theater. I didn't notice any movie stars giving up their SUVs or Gore riding his bike; it is President Bush who has made news by bicycle riding.

Global warming isn't science; it's leftist propaganda to promote global regulation of our economy. If the predictions of the movie were true, it is obvious that absolutely nothing we could do - even abandoning every automobile in America - would make any difference.

In April, a team from Harvard University concluded the most comprehensive study ever made of global temperature over the last 1,000 years. The team reported that the world was much warmer during the Middle Ages, between A.D. 800 and 1,300, than it is today.

Bush is in good company in rejecting Kyoto. The U.S. Senate voted 95-0 in 1997 against Kyoto because it would cost jobs and drastically reduce the standard of living in the United States, while exempting most other countries from its regulations. The various international conferences on global warming have produced mostly hot air, and Russia gave Kyoto the kiss of death last year when Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled out, saying that Kyoto would stunt his country's economic growth.

Phyllis Schlafly

All summer movies want to create buzz, but rarely is the intended buzz "Support the McCain-Lieberman bill." The movie is "The Day After Tomorrow," the global-warming flick that aims to gin up support for the sort of greenhouse-emissions regulation sponsored by John McCain and Joe Lieberman. The premise of "The Day After Tomorrow" is as laughable as its dialogue. "I think we've hit a critical desalination point" passes for snappy repartee in the film, as global warming melts the polar ice caps. This disrupts the Gulf Stream, plunging North America into a new ice age. Tidal waves devastate New York City, which is then buried under ice and snow (ensuring the defeat, by the way, of whoever is running City Hall, since New Yorkers would never tolerate a mayor who couldn't clear the streets after a snowstorm).

Al Gore has given the movie two green thumbs up, and the left-wing group MoveOn.org is promoting it. Never mind that the movie's scenario is absurd. There is no such thing as a flash freeze that makes helicopters fall out of the air. Nor can an ice age descend in a matter of days. More sober environmentalists worry that the very ridiculousness of the film will discredit their cause.

The innocent moviegoer will be confused that a movie about global warming features so much snow. But this is keeping with the trend of global-warming advocates laying claim to any unusual weather. When winters are bitterly cold, it is a sign of "climate change." When winters are unseasonably warm, it too is a sign of climate change. It is an all-purpose phrase, since the climate is always "changing" and therefore by definition vindicating environmentalists.

That said, global warming is a fact. The surface temperature has gone up roughly 1 degree Celsius since the mid-19th century. The warming during the past 30 years might even be partly a result of manmade emissions. But we're talking very small and gradual changes that aren't causing the disruptions environmentalists sometimes hype, like extreme weather or dangerously rising sea levels.

Any regulatory fix will have only the slightest effect. Climatologist Patrick Michaels estimates that the Kyoto Treaty -- McCain-Lieberman is a watered-down version of the treaty -- would prevent only 0.07 degrees Celsius of warming over the next 50 years. The best solution to greenhouse emissions is the kind of technological innovation that Bush has put forth that has made America's economy steadily cleaner. Economic growth is the environment's best friend, creating both new, cleaner technologies and giving people the luxury to worry more about the environment and less about their own sustenance. But anti-growth environmentalists don't want to hear that, which brings us back to "The Day After Tomorrow."

Why is New York the setting for the film's most graphic mayhem? It is the iconic American city, so it's always a tempting backdrop for disaster movies. But something else might be at work. As environmental writer Iain Murray has argued, New York is the emblematic expression of America's capitalist civilization, and is therefore something of an affront to critics of that civilization, foreign and domestic.

The makers of "The Day After Tomorrow" revel in the prospect of our civilization being brought low, humiliated for its sins. In the film, desperate Americans flee illegally across the Mexican border to escape the weather cataclysm. Get the irony? After the disaster, the Dick Cheney-look-alike vice president apologizes, essentially for the fact that his country has been running a modern economy lo these many years: "We were wrong. I was wrong." Even with America's economy destroyed, even with millions dead, there is a bright spot. At the end, an astronaut comments from far above our frozen continent: "The air has never been so clear." All the SUVs are buried under the tundra!

"The Day After Tomorrow" might not be much of a movie, but it is useful for providing a glimpse into the soul of left-wing environmentalism. Pretty chilling.

• Rich Lowry

No amount of edible swag could save "The Day After Tomorrow," a $200 million disaster film that is quite the disaster, indeed.

Hilariously awful in most places, with an incoherent script and questionable acting, "Day After" will come on Friday and the question will be: Can innumerable, mind-numbing special effects, nearly all of them created on a computer and placed in what can only be called a random order, overcome sheer inanity?

It's not like I'm a snob, either. I count Emmerich's "Independence Day" - or "ID4" as it became known - as one of my favorite films. But "ID4" had a strong script with, well, developed characters.

Bill Pullman and Will Smith, not to mention Mary McDonnell, Jeff Goldblum, Vivica A. Fox and Margaret Colin, made the otherwise preposterous story of aliens invading Earth seem plausible. They each had a tremendous nobility and spoke with wit and intelligence, and there was a feeling of a common threat and an equally shared goal.

None of this, not one bit of it, is evident in "The Day After Tomorrow." This fish stinks from the head down, the head in this case being Emmerich's president (Perry King) and vice president (Kenneth Welsh).

Unlike Pullman in "ID4," this president is a bumbling idiot, a puppet manipulated by his evil, self-motivated vice president. I guess this is supposed to be a clever reference, but it backfires instead, disarming the film and undermining it critically.

You see, when America is imperiled in a disaster film, it's the president to whom we turn as the moral compass. The hero - in this case, a poorly conceived one played by Dennis Quaid - can have all the adventures, but he must report ultimately to a fair and wise leader.

For example: If Batman walked in on Commissioner Gordon taking a bribe, all hope would be lost. That's what happens in "Day."

Quaid's storyline doesn't help matters. His Jack Hall is a "climatologist" who knows that global warming may catalyze a new ice age. When tornados hit Hollywood and start ripping up other cities instantaneously, he still lets his moody high-school-age son (Jake Gyllenhaal) go to New York on a school outing.

After the son leaves, and Quaid realizes that the world may be ending, he decides that in order to bond with the boy he will brave the calamitous floods, blizzards, hurricanes and tidal waves bearing down on the Northeast corridor and walk - yes, walk, if he must - from Washington, D.C. to Manhattan just to show the boy he cares, he really, really cares.

His trek replaces Diane Keaton's walk through the snowy Russian woods in "Reds" as the most ill-conceived hike in movie history.

For some reasons that are unexplained, Quaid takes with him on this quest two buddies who you know will not make it. This is supposed to be noble just because it's noble.

Do these men have families of their own? Do they owe Quaid's character some debt? The answer to each of these questions is: We never know.

Is Jack's son either perilously young or terminally ill? No, and no. He is fully grown and able to take care of himself, or at least wait until the catastrophe passes to be reunited with dear old dad.

The rest of "Day After" is simply a rehash of past triumphs. The special effects are clearly from the Emmerich school: lots of stopped traffic, yellow cabs' horns honking furiously, crowds running in all directions from the oncoming horror of meteor-sized hail.

You've seen it before in "ID4" and "Godzilla." Whole cities are demolished and flood waters rise to the tops of buildings while the main characters fret that "things are getting really bad out there."

You'd think when the sea level rises to the chin of the Statue of Liberty people would be smart enough to evacuate themselves, if they are not already dead. But there's no logic at work here.

There's also a peculiar insensitivity, I think, to those of us who lived through September 11.

In "Day After," downtown New York, in an aerial view, is flooded with water and then snow. The whole thing resembles the billowing smoke that poured between the canyons of buildings on that horrible day from real life. Later, survivors are seen waving from rooftops of buildings, a grisly reminder of the tragic souls who made that mistake at the World Trade Center hoping for safety.

New Yorkers do not need to see our city in this condition, whether or not it's fantasy. I'd rather fly on the wings of soaring birds with Harry Potter than relive those grim images as entertainment.

The premiere last night, by the way, was preceded by a "red carpet" of fake snow which Fox sprinkled on the steps of the Museum of Natural History. The guests included Quaid, Gyllenhaal (along with his famous sister Maggie and their parents, plus the younger Gyllenhaals' respective beaux: Kirsten Dunst and Peter Sarsgaard), the lovely Sela Ward (she plays Quaid's wife, the Mary McDonnell role), Michele Lee (who came with "Good Morning America" film critic Joel Siegel), plus Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, and Julianne Moore and Bart Freundlich.

I was told by an off-duty member of the NYPD that there were three security teams employed by Fox in addition to the police.

"And it's not like there are any really big stars here," observed the very nice cop, who wore a 9/11 pin on his lapel.

Then he changed his mind. "Don't let Dennis Quaid hear me saying that."

-- Roger Friedman, FoxNews

Greg Kinnear sets a movie record for the number of times one actor can grab the lapels of another actor in 90 minutes or so and push him up against the wall. This is what passes for acting here, and counting the number of times De Niro is grabbed by the lapels of his tweed coat and pushed against a wall or thrown to the floor is the real suspense in this piece of garbage. I can't say any of the actors are cast well or miscast since this script goes nowhere. Rebecca Stamos-Rjin needs a different hairstyle, Greg Kinnear is no longer blonde, and Robert DeNiro no longer feels the necessity of picking a script of any real meaning.

You will be supremely disappointed in this film. It says nothing, explains nothing, develops nothing, leads to nowhere, appears low-budget, and is a waste of money.

DeNiro can be forgiven a clinker or two, but Kinnear is treading on thin ice. If you want horror, this ain't the place.

Did the production run out of ideas? Did it have any in the first place?

Rebecca Stamos-Rjin's one-line performance seems to be "Adam!" repeated a hundred times.

If you want the movie this film was trying to be, you want "The Changeling" with George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere, which had special effects like this stinker doesn't.

No wonder the production company needed to drum up business for the film by planting a false website called The Godsend Institute on the internet. It needs all the help it can get. Save yourself the money you work hard for in order to see something better.

One-half star out of five.

Mick is likeable and so would any film about him. This is no exception.

It may have been more interesting had the filmmakers followed a typical day in the life of Keith Richards or the musically deeper Charlie Watts. The sublimination of ego and resulting wisdom, the varied interests -- including his high-powered jazz ensembles -- of Watts, the creativeness in those guitar licks of Richards. I'll take the compositional and musical arranging experiences of these other band members over the arse-jiggling antics and posing of the likeable pro in the frontlight. Great band. Maybe the greatest.

No, it is not a documentary.

As others have said, the injustice here is not so much to the viewer, but as to the independent producers of real documentaries. They struggle in a field which receives little recognition and financing. They are protected by Academy rules limiting the documentary competition to nonfiction.

Yet Bowling is fiction. It makes its points by deceiving and by misleading the viewer. Statements are made which are false. Moore leads the watcher to draw inferences which he must have known were wrong. Indeed, even speeches shown on screen are heavily edited, so that sentences are assembled in the speaker's voice, but which were not sentences he uttered. Bowling uses deception as its primary tool of persuasion and effect.

A film which does this may be a commercial success. It may be entertaining. But it is not a documentary. One need only consult Rule 12 of the rules for the Academy Award: a documentary is a non-fictional movie.

The point is not that Bowling is biased. No, the point is that Bowling is deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive.

In the DVD version, Moore has even altered a caption that he fictitiously inserted into a 1988 Bush-Quayle campaign commercial -- one of a number of misstatements and deceptive arguments criticized when the film was released. Ironically, on the same day the DVD was released, Moore issued a libel threat against his critics on MSNBC's "Buchanan & Press," saying, "Every fact in the film is true. Absolutely every fact in the film is true. And anybody who says otherwise is committing an act of libel."

Capercaillie is Scotland's most successful Celtic folk-rockers.

The Collection is a scant 70 minutes (for the money - $22.48 + tax Amazon OR $26.38 + free shipping/tax Deep Discount DVD, choose your poison).

Five videos open the Collection. Fifteen live tracks from 1992 concerts at the Capital Theatre in Aberdeen and the Nairn Harbourfest follow. The product was originally issued on VHS as Two Nights of Delirium. Of the videos, "Breisleach" opens with a gentle atmosphere, leading into hit singles "Coisch a Ruin" and "Waiting for the Wheel to Turn." "Miracle of Being" is a detour into AOR, while the final video, "Ailein Duinn," is from the film Rob Roy (film clips are shown during the music).

The concert footage is less polished, more vibrant and rousing. The hits repeat, while 13 other tracks enthusiastically mix Clannad-style synthesizers and Celtic mist with Scottish folk updated to include some funky bouzouki-playing. Karen Matheson's vocals are the centerpiece - clear and crystalline.

The band has cancelled many live dates and this makes this collection more anticipated than it might be otherwise.

Scottish location shots are enjoyable.

I didn't get to hear pro-2nd amendment advocates speak or review the distortions of Moore. The film does a disservice to (a) facts, (b) the N.R.A., (c) Charleton Heston, (d) America.

How is this called a "documentary"? What does it document other than Michael Moore's subjective, liberal whacko opinion?

This is a live outdoor concert performed on a rainy eve at Knebworth stadium in Hertfordshire, England on June 21, 1980. It lasts 70 minutes. This concert is the last time all of the Beach Boys -- Brian, Mike, Carl, Dennis, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston -- would appear together on a UK stage. The tour was intended to promote the release of the Beach Boys' "Keepin' the Summer Alive" album.

The DVD includes one special feature: comments from band members on 11 of the 21 songs performed on this particular evening.

The 21 songs performed in about 70 minutes: California Girls, Sloop John B, Darlin', School Days (the Chuck Berry tune), God Only Knows, Be True To Your School, Do It Again, Little Deuce Coupe, Cotton Fields (a bad idea of Al Jardine's), Heroes and Villains, Keepin' the Summer Alive, Lady Lynda, Surfer Girl, Help Me Rhonda, I Get Around, Surfin' USA, You Are So Beautiful (a thankfully brief tribute song awfully sung by drummer Dennis Wilson before the band's encore), Good Vibrations, Barbara Ann, Fun, Fun, Fun.

The boys are in good harmony. The music could have definitely use more bottom and definition but, for 1980, not bad. Several times Carl and Mike pay tribute to Brian sitting at the piano for his songwriting talent, which is nice. Brian is in good voice but keeps his eyes on the keys and the stage.

There is little between-song patter -- not a drawback, actually. A slight criticism is given to the rhythm of a few songs which appear sometimes rushed (in a good rock n' roll way) and sometimes abnormally slower, sometimes both within the same song, and one's attention is drawn to Dennis Wilson's behavior behind the drums.

The harmonies are definitely crisp, well-rehearsed, and the audio picks them up through the density of the music.

Clearly, Carl Wilson is in charge of the band, as he counts down the songs and handles much of the lead guitar work and vocals. Perhaps the most professional musician on the tage this evening, it is sad to think he passed away in 1998 of cancer at age 52. Thereafter, and without his leadership, the Beach Boys would splinter into oft-warring factions. He could take special pride for his contributions when Elton John inducted the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Dennis Wilson appears "wired" behind the drums. He plays in an undisciplined fashion, much like a wild man. He would be fired two years later and here one might see why -- appearing somewhat out-of-control. The liner notes mention that Dennis barely participated in the making of the "Keepin' the Summer Alive" album being promoted by this concert tour. He would drown in Marina del Rey, California a couple of years later and shortly after his ouster from the band.

The crowd clearly seems to enjoy the performance and joins in some sing-alongs led by Mike Love, who seems like he could have used a nap before the set. He becomes more animated toward the end.

Unseen on this DVD is the line-up of other bands which took the stage that summer day: the Blues Band, Lindesfarne, Santana, Elkie Brooks, and Mike Oldfield (of "Tubular Bells" fame).

Extensive DVD liner notes are by Mike Grant in June, 2001.

For the songs, the musicianship, the production, the harmonies and the nostalgia, I give a score of 8. For the slight feeling that the band was looking at this as its last performance plus Dennis' solo and drumming, subtract one point but only one point: overall score 7.

Enjoyable. Worthy of owning. This DVD was available at a local discount merchant for $10.99. Add as much bass as you can and turn it up!