>> The Switch
>> Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
>> The Other Guys
>> Salt
>> Inception
>> Cyrus
>> The Last Airbender
>> Grown Ups
>> Toy Story 3
>> The Human Centipede

Opening 9.10.10
>> Resident Evil: Afterlife (R) [trailer]
>> Bran Nue Dae (Limited) (Not Rated) [trailer]
>> Heartbreaker (Limited) (Not Rated) [trailer]
>> I'm Still Here (Limited) (Not Rated) [trailer]
>> Legendary (Limited) (PG-13) [trailer]
>> Lovely, Still (Limited) (PG) [trailer]
>> The Romantics (Limited) (PG-13)
>> The Virginity Hit (Limited) (R) [trailer]

Coming To DVD/Blu-Ray 9.7.10
>> Supernatural: The Complete Fifth Season [buy]
>> The Office: Season Six [buy]
>> Smallville: The Complete Ninth Season [buy]
>> Jillian Michaels: Shred-It With Weights [buy]
>> Criminal Minds: Fifth Season [buy]

Las Vegas: Satan Vacations Here
by Victoria Alexander
February 22, 2010

Osama's Prodigal Son, Mongolia’s Zud, The Wolfman and Shutter Island, and more...

Osama's Prodigal Son. Rolling Stone magazine ran an interesting article on Osama bin Laden’s fourth oldest son, Omar. I’ve been reading about Omar and his much older wife for some time. They are UK celebrities.

Interviewed by Guy Lawson, I have extracted a few important passages: “Now 28, Omar is one of 11 sons of Osama bin Laden. In Growing Up bin Laden, co-authored last year with his mother and American writer Jean Sasson, Omar not only captures the insanity and cruelty inside his father's world, but also provides an intimate portrait of what it is like to be the son of a sociopath."

[Sociopath? Isn’t that purely a Western condemnation? When did Osama bin Laden take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator?]

"People recognize me a lot of times in Saudi Arabia," he says. "They say I should be proud of my father. There are millions who agree with my father. By many people, he is respected, idolized. I could face reprisals because you can't speak against your father in the Muslim world. Many people say I should not talk. But my father would never harm me."

The author describes Omar’s wife Zaina: “Sitting next to Omar drinking a virgin piña colada is his wife, Zaina, a British grandmother nearly twice his age. Short, light-skinned, with striking blue eyes, she wears an ankle-length black coat that looks like a costume from The Lord of the Rings. Zaina acts as Omar's conduit to the Western world, serving as his publicist, dresser and interpreter, hovering over his every word and rushing to deflect anything she considers damaging or inflammatory. Since they met four years ago, the unlikely couple have become tabloid fodder in England. "We are bigger than Prince Charles and Lady Diana," Omar says, shaking his head.”

Omar left Afghanistan and his father. He continues:

“My father's dream was to bring the Americans to Afghanistan. He would do the same thing he did to the Russians. I was surprised the Americans took the bait. I so much respected the mentality of President Clinton. He was the one who was smart. When my father attacked his places, he sent a few cruise missiles to my father's training camp. He didn't get my father, but after all the war in Afghanistan, they still don't have my father. They have spent hundreds of billions. Better for America to keep the money for its economy. In Clinton's time, America was very, very smart. Not like a bull that runs after the red scarf.

"I was still in Afghanistan when Bush was elected," he continues. "My father was so happy. This is the kind of president he needs — one who will attack and spend money and break the country. I am sure my father wanted McCain more than Obama. McCain has the same mentality as Bush." To read the entire article, go to: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/

Mongolia’s Need for Humanitarian Aid. I’ve got Mongolia on my Wish List, so I am very interested in news on the country.

Over half of the provinces in Mongolia are in need of humanitarian aid after extreme weather conditions – a zud - struck the country.

A zud is a Mongolian term for an extremely snowy winter in which livestock are unable to find fodder through the snow cover, and large numbers of animals die due to starvation and the cold.

It is not uncommon for zuds to kill over one million head of livestock in a single winter. A record was set in 1944, with almost 7 million head of livestock lost in a single winter. In 1999/2000, 2000/2001 and 2001/2002, Mongolia was hit by three zuds in a row, in which a combined number of 11 million animals were lost.

From late 2009 into early 2010, 80% of the country's territory was covered with a snow blanket of 20-60 centimeters. Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry reported 2,127,393 heads of livestock were lost as of February 9, 2010 (188,270 horse, cattle, camel and 1,939,123 goat and sheep). The agriculture ministry predicted that livestock losses might reach 4 million until the end of winter.

The Wolfman. The Wolfman is not a teen, thank the Hollywood god in charge of movie icons, but Del Toro’s god-awful wig was scarier than the gorefest!

Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) returns to England and the familial country estate, Blackmoor, to investigate the details surrounding the death of his younger brother. His father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), is a distant, aloof man. Lawrence’s mother’s ugly death, which he witnessed as a young boy, sent him into a depression. He was summarily sent to America to live with an aunt. Abandoned by both parents and sent away, he’s sure to have some psychological issues.

Was he busy murdering in Whitechapel?

Hence the lack of an aristocratic English accent (If only Benicio had used the incoherent, unintelligible speech pattern of his iconic character, Fred Fenster).

Talbot has lost contact with his father but is famous in America as a stage actor – a profession his father ridicules. Talbot’s return to investigate his brother’s death is a surprise, since he seems to know nothing about his father’s predilections around full moons or his brother’s life and fiancé, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt).

Apparently Talbot’s brother knew nothing of the werewolf roaming the countryside though he lived his whole life with his father. So when the werewolf goes on a rampage, he goes out looking for the monster and is brutally killed.

Talbot is told by Sir John to stay inside. If you are advised not to go out in the woods during a full moon and you go anyhow, whatever happens is your fault. You were warned. Talbot gets bit by the bloodthirsty werewolf and the country folk see it.

This werewolf has been in their mist for decades. Once hidden away, the werewolf now lets his “freak flag fly."

It’s best to keep the twists as a surprise and reveal that the production is quite good. I loved that the castle-house is unkempt and dirty. Sir John’s life-long manservant, Singh (Art Malik), knows about the machinations of the werewolf but doesn’t bother telling Talbot to watch out. He keeps the family’s secrets but the silver bullets polished.

The primal eldest son supplanting his father is the thematic premise of THE WOLFMAN – though Talbot is reluctant to do it once he understands the situation.

(Some scholars theorize that Jesus Christ as the Son of God defeated the Hebrew god Jahve – the volcano-god. The original character of this God: “he is an uncanny, bloodthirsty demon who walks by night and shuns the light of day.” “Moses and Monotheism” by Sigmund Freud.)

Director Joe Johnston does Del Toro no favors but it is visually stunning and the gory tearing apart of body parts is well done. Yes, I screamed several times and hid my eyes. And so is the showdown between Talbot and Sir John. I thought the storyline was, if not original, clever and interesting nonetheless.

The script by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self never explains why Talbot is so glum. Is he still depressed? Why the grudge against his father? And what about “lifting” the curse by love? If Sir John’s obsession with Gwen is integral to the development of the story, how come we never saw it?

Del Toro wanted to do this movie for a long time, but perhaps the negotiations overwhelmed the work on his character. Lawrence Talbot is weak and confused. He’s awkward with women – Gwen – and shows no insight into the nasty character of his father.

Hopkins enjoys playing evil and he’s free here to do whatever he wants without bothering to be directed. Blunt is all bent-up sexual repression on the brink of having sex with anyone, even the wolfman.

With the wolfman showing himself and chewing up the villagers, there was no way to end the tale except as done here. However, there is a sequel to be delivered and I for one say, yes. As long as it is not The Teen Son of the Wolfman.

Shutter Island. DiCaprio memorably transcends Scorsese. Depicting crazy people is always tough. They never comb their hair and the drugs, instead of making them catatonic zombies, seems to make them don maniacal faces. Didn’t sage Forest Gump say it best – “Crazy is as crazy does”?

With the exception of CAPE FEAR (Martin Scorsese had to follow the original material and De Niro’s pleasure in playing sadist Max Cody brought a strong sexual tension to the thriller), Scorsese is not a director who should be handling the horror genre. What SHUTTER ISLAND is missing is a sexual subtext which is a potent and horrifying dimension to nightmares.

In 1954, two U.S. Marshalls, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), travel to Ashecliffe Hospital, a concentration camp-like facility for the criminally insane on the remote Shutter Island. They are there to investigate the disappearance of a female child killer, Rachel 1 (Emily Mortimer).

Getting not much help from Ashecliffe’s Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) or Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), Teddy begins to question not only what is going on but why other patients are surreptitiously telling him to “run."

The only thing a spare-haired crazy didn’t do is smile at Teddy while running her finger across her throat.

As a hurricane approaches and devastates the island making departure impossible, Teddy confides that he asked for this assignment. He believes that his wife, Dolores’ (Michelle Williams) killer is in one of the wards.

And Teddy is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder due to his participation in the WWII liberation of a Nazi concentration camp. He’s having flashbacks, especially when he intuits that Dr. Naehring is a Nazi doctor brought to the U.S. through Project Paperclip. If it wasn’t for the Nazi doctors operating in the U.S., there would be no LSD-induced mind control experimentation on patients and civilians. The Nazi doctors made lobotomies popular.

The answer Teddy is looking for might be found at the lighthouse, where he is told surgeries on patient’s brains are being done. In the lighthouse he finds badly beaten George Noyce (Jackie Earle Haley) who wises Teddy up. Trying to leave the island, he runs into Rachel 2 (Patricia Clarkson) hiding in a cave. By now, he’s totally freaked out!

If director Martin Scorsese is, as has been suggested, honoring Alfred Hitchcock, he’s taken the worst part of PSYCHO – at the end when the doctor explains what happened to Norman Bates – and bogged down SHUTTER ISLAND with a tad too much unnecessary exposition. The denouement is laid out very nicely. Trust the audience – we go to a lot of movies.

The screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis (from a novel by Dennis Lehane) is paced beautifully giving DiCaprio a full landscape of emotions to explore. And he’s definitely up to the challenge. SHUTTER ISLAND is all about him and he’s fantastic.

The entire production is impressive though the music (Scorsese and music supervisor Robbie Robertson go back as far as THE LAST WALTZ IN 1978) is intrusive and awful. Scorsese, who by now has a strong relationship with DiCaprio (it’s their fourth movie together and DiCaprio will play Frank Sinatra in Scorsese’s planned bio of the icon), stumbles with the obvious heavy-handed directing. It needed a more intelligent handling and, as I mentioned, a sexual subtext.

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