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Music Reviews
Bela Fleck—Drive (Mobile Fidelity) [SACD]
Adrienne Maxwell  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
I don't know how many banjo players you can name, but I can come up with two: Bela Fleck and Roy Clark (and I had to cheat to get Roy Clark-before a trip to IMDB.com, it was "that guy from Hee-Haw"). Even if you've never heard of Bela Fleck, you've probably heard his music, as he's appeared on a ton of pop and jazz albums. He's won Grammys in the country, jazz, classical, and pop categories, but his roots are pure bluegrass.
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A Dirty Shame—New Line
Gary Frisch  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 3
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
I've never been a fan of John Waters. In fact, I thought the guy was dead. But I suspect that his latest effort will try even his ardent admirers' patience. Sexploitation films definitely have their place in cinema history; but peppering such a film with name talent—albeit B-list talent like Tracy Ullman and Johnny Knoxville—is a misguided attempt to lend legitimacy to a genre that's best left in the underground. It's like putting a fancy sign on a porn store.
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Mr. 3000—Buena Vista
Tony DeCarlo  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 3
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
If 3,000 hits is an automatic induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, what do you do if you only had 2,997? Go back to the team and get those missing hits—even if you haven't played in nine years and you're 47. That's the situation that Stan Ross (Bernie Mac) is in. He's alienated everyone, and he's egotistical, selfish, and immensely charming. Mac captures the swagger, cockiness, and self-promotion that some athletes revel in today. During the course of his comeback, he has a second chance with an ex-flame and ESPN reporter (Angela Bassett) and a second chance with the team after he realizes what's really important.
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Swimming Upstream—MGM/UA
Adrienne Maxwell  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 2
Swimming Upstream tells the true story of Australian swimmer Tony Fingleton, who must overcome poverty and a cruel, alcoholic father in his quest to become the best swimmer in Australia. The story is one we've seen many times in different incarnations. The difference here is that, because Fingleton penned the screenplay and the book on which it's based, events aren't always as tidy and pat as Hollywood would like them to be. We don't get the big ending we're expecting, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
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The Woodsman—Columbia/TriStar
Amy Carter  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 3
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
Kevin Bacon stars as a convicted pedophile who has served his time and is moving on with life in Philadelphia. To add the necessary dramatic twist, his apartment is located directly across the street from a school. The dark but equally fair-to-all-sides movie is Nicole Kassell's directorial debut, and she handles the responsibility well. Kyra Sedgwick, Benjamin Bratt, David Alan Grier, and the wonderful Mos Def round out the excellent cast.
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The Sea Inside—New Line
Christy Grosz  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 4
A sad but strangely triumphant story, The Sea Inside follows the life of a quadriplegic who spent nearly three decades fighting for his right to assisted suicide. Javier Bardem plays the resolute man, poet Ramon Sampedro, who was paralyzed in a diving accident in his late teens and struggled with the Spanish government until 1998. Although writer/ director Alejandro Amenabar never attempts to justify Sampedro's decision, he draws a multifaceted character whose reasons for choosing to end his life make sense, no matter which side of the debate you might fall on.
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Ocean's Twelve—Warner Brothers
Amy Carter  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 3
Audio: 3
Extras: 0
For those of you out there who are anticipating an even bigger party than the fun that was Ocean's Eleven, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. The beauty of the first film was that everything came together in the end, and you left feeling like you'd really been privy to geniuses at work. Everything, and I mean everything, was part of the big picture. Ocean's Twelve just makes you scratch your head. What happened to these seriously smart guys? How in the world did they end up in this situation, and where's the big heist that made the first film so much fun? But, most importantly, who thought it would be funny for Julia Roberts' character to pretend to be Julia Roberts? Has Hollywood completely lost its mind?
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House of Flying Daggers—Columbia/TriStar
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 5
Audio: 5
Extras: 2
House of Flying Daggers is, in many ways, similar to many other martial-arts movies you've seen (most notably, the crazily popular Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). It has all of the action and incredible fight sequences we've come to expect from the best Hong Kong exports. From a visual standpoint, though, it has more in common with the stylized color works of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. And what visuals they are. In Hero, director Yimou Zhang used massive amounts of color. Sometimes entire shots would be one color. Here, that is rarely the case, but color is no smaller a tool—just a more finely honed one. The story is of a love affair between an assassin and a policeman as a war builds around them.
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Geoffrey Morrison Blog
More CES Coverage
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jan 11, 2006
Here are the rest of the pictures I took at CES . Well, the rest that were worth anything. I have a few other products I saw at the show that I’ll talk about later, probably Friday.
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Kinsey—20th Century Fox
Adrienne Maxwell  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
Video: 4
Audio: 3
Extras: 2
If nothing else, Kinsey shows us just how far we haven't come since Alfred Kinsey first published his books on human sexual behavior in the 1940s and '50s. When we see the sex photos that Professor Kinsey shows his students during his first college course about sex, we're just as shocked as they are that we're actually being allowed to see them-and that the MPAA didn't slap an NC-17 rating on the film as a result. In a manner befitting the subject, writer/director Bill Condon provides a straightforward, almost clinical examination of Kinsey's life, which succeeds primarily because of the wonderful performances by Liam Neeson as Kinsey and Laura Linney as his wife Clara.
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