>> The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
>> Identity Thief
>> Gangster Squad
>> Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
>> Lincoln
>> Zero Dark Thirty
>> Hitchcock
>> The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
>> Hyde Park on Hudson
>> Safety Not Guaranteed

Opening 5.10.13
>> The Great Gatsby (PG-13) [trailer]
>> Peeples (PG-13) [trailer]
>> Aftershock (Limited) (R) [trailer]
>> And Now a Word From Our Sponsor (Limited) (NR) [trailer]
>> Erased (Limited) (R) [trailer]
>> Sightseers (Limited) (NR) [trailer]
>> Venus and Serena (Limited) (PG-13) [trailer]

Coming To DVD/Blu-Ray 5.7.13
>> Safe Haven (2013) [buy]
>> Fringe: The Complete Fifth Season [buy]
>> Jack Reacher [buy]
>> Mama [buy]
>> Superman: Unbound [buy]

Las Vegas: Satan Vacations Here
by Victoria Alexander
September 24, 2012

TDH Back from Papua New Guinea, Masterchef Open Casting for Season Four, Joan Rivers. "I Hate Everyone...Starting With Me," Mother Love, Movie Reviews: The Master, Killer Joe, The Possession.

In 400 B.C. and at the height of its power, the Greek city of Sparta had 25,000 citizens and 500,000 slaves.

TDH back from Papua New Guinea. TDH has been very, very busy! The PNG trip was amazing! We took a first class, 5 star trip back in time to the Stone Age. We are off again on an Eastern European river cruise. TDH will return October 15.

We began our trip in Port Moresby at the fabulous Airways Hotel, a five star palace. On the tour we visited many tribes and then spent four days on the MV Sepik Spirit, a floating hotel. We were flown around on a private plane and stayed at the Ambua Lodge and Karawari Lodge. We stayed at the Highlander Hotel, the tourist's base for the Mount Hagen Show, where every year PNG tribes show off their tribal costumes and dances for two days. We were treated as VIPS since there were only 168 foreigners in attendance!

As we have found all over Africa, China has a big presence in PNG. PNG will be changing: Natural gas has been found and is considered to be worth $27.8 billion. But PNG needs roads. PNG's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill recently announced the Chinese government loan of $3 billion. O'Neill said most of the money will be used to fund and rehabilitate the country's deteriorating economic lifeline the 'Highlands Highway.'

We traveled on the Highlands Highway.

It starts at the coastal port of Lae in the Morobe province and links PNG highlands region, which houses some of the major resources projects including the multi-billion dollar Liquefied Natural Gas or LNG project. But it has been deteriorating as heavy traffic moving cargo and supplies for the LNG project has added more pressure to the road network. Chinese companies will be contracted to rebuild the highlands highway and construct new roads. But, as we found elsewhere, the Chinese workers keep to themselves and rarely mingle with locals.

MASTERCHEF. Shannon Leigh Turbeville of Triple 7 Public Relations knows I'm a fan of the show and in fact, watch all of Gordon Ramsey's shows, even HOTEL HELL!

Award-winning chef Gordon Ramsay, restaurateur Joe Bastianich and acclaimed chef Graham Elliot returned for Season Three of the culinary smash hit. Season Three winner Christine Ha was the show's only sight-impaired competitor and the only blind competitor in the history of reality TV. Along with the title of best home cook in America, Christine won the $250,000 grand prize and a cookbook deal.

Want to audition for MASTERCHEF? Nearly 30,000 hopefuls have already auditioned at MASTERCHEF's open casting calls. Only the best amateur cooks are flown to Los Angeles for a chance to compete for the coveted title of MASTERCHEF and the $250,000 grand prize. Well, Season Four Open Casting Calls begin in San Diego on October 6.

MASTERCHEF will once again travel across the country and give talented home cooks the chance to prove they have what it takes to make their mark on the culinary world. Open casting calls for Season Four of MASTERCHEF will be held on the following dates:

San Diego, CA - Saturday, Oct. 6
Minneapolis, MN - Saturday, Oct. 13
Nashville, TN - Saturday, Oct. 13
Chicago, IL - Saturday, Oct. 20
Miami, FL - Saturday, Oct. 20
Dallas, TX - Saturday, Oct. 27
Cleveland, OH -Saturday, Oct. 27
Los Angeles, CA - Saturday, Nov. 3
Boston, MA - Saturday, Nov. 3
New York, NY - Saturday, Nov. 10
Portland, OR - Saturday, Nov. 10

Additional details, including venues and times, will be announced soon. Visit www.masterchefcasting.com for the most up-to-date audition information.

Joan Rivers. "I Hate Everyone...Starting With Me." I agreed with everything in Joan's book. Only the great Joan Rivers would use the dedication page of her new, hilarious book in this way:

To
The Son of Sam, David Berkowitz.
Call me.

And

O.J. Simpson, who deserves another chance.
Maybe the lippy ex-wife had it coming.

"It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts." Gandhi

Movie Reviews. The Master. It's a review with footnotes! The Master is the first great, intoxicating movie of 2012. Joaquin Phoenix is fantastic and never loses the unsympathetic character of Quell. Homoerotic obsession with a very dangerous man. Hoffman plays a seductive, likeable Master. I remember the Lifespring terror tactics in the early 90s.

The criticism identifies Lancaster "The Master" Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as a con man in writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson brilliant film. The trailer's crucial line "Don't you know he's making it all up as he goes along?" highlights this evaluation.

Yes, it is clearly modeled after L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology but it is the story of its beginnings, not the feared, punishment-prone organization written about today. Dodd is not a charlatan but a highly intelligent man who has developed a system he calls "The Cause."

Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is a feral man and a recently discharged World War II Navy veteran. His life is shapeless and he telegraphs his traumatized psychological state in the way he walks, talks and carries himself. Hunched over, he looks like an emotional scavenger observing while trying to hide. He cloaks himself in clothes too big for his tensed-up body. He holds his face in a twisted way evocating a simmering violent temper. One evening he drunkenly walks on to a party aboard yacht docked in the San Francisco Bay. He passes out.

The yacht is owned by the well-known writer Lancaster Dodd, who has developed a new human potential movement, called "The Cause." Is "The Cause" any different from many other self-help groups like The Fourth Way (the fundamental principles of G. I. Gurdjieff's (1872–1949) teaching?)

KILLER JOE. McConaughey eviscerates his rom-com/MAGIC MIKE legacy with an astonishing, terrifying performance. Makes Frank Booth and Max Cady look like the choir boys of seduction. Friedkin is back!

I was briefly forewarned KILLER JOE was "well-done sexual exploitation" and "wait until to see what Gina Gershon does."

My movie companion said, after assaying the nearly-packed senior citizens who were at the first showing, "Do they know what they are in for?"

Well, I did and I still wasn't prepared!

Claustrophobic and horrifying, we both yelled out loud. And then, in shock, left the theater. No one had walked out.

Mathew McConaughey, Best Actor 2012. Gina Gershon, Best Supporting Actress 2012. William Friedkin, Best Director 2012. When performances like Colin Firth's in THE KING'S SPEECH wins Best Actor, you know I'll be the only one proposing these noxious-laden performances.

I loved director William Friedkin's claustrophobic and horrifying BUG (2006), since I believe it was all true.

Both BUG and KILLER JOE were plays written by Tracy Letts, who also wrote both screenplays. What a brilliant collaboration between director and screenwriter/playwright!

The story begins, as all Texas trailer-trash stories do, with small-time dope dealer Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) getting two grams of coke stolen from him by his mother. After getting thrown out, he goes to his father Ansel's (Thomas Haden Church) trailer and dad's wife Sharla (Gina Gershon) answers the door naked from the waist down and lets him in. She refuses to put on some pants.

Dad and step-mom keep asking Chris if he beat up his mother again. Chris is in debt now owing $6,000. Chris has a plan. Since no one will miss her, why not hire a hitman to kill his mom? The woman might be emotionally worthless, but she's got an insurance policy worth $50,000. But the beneficiary is Chris's blissed-out kid sister Dottie (Juno Temple). Suffocated by her mother when she was an infant, oxygen-deprived Dottie managed to live. But all the neutrons aren't firing.

Mom's boyfriend Rex happened to tell Chris about the policy. Why not hire legendary local police detective/contract killer Joe Cooper (McConaughey)?

Joe Cooper has perfected his menace. There is no question he is sexually depraved. In fact, he has a sign over his head saying, "Beware. I'm dangerous and I have trouble reaching orgasm normally". To read the rest of the review, go to: http://www.filmfestivaltoday.com

THE POSSESSION. As Fox Mulder's poster proclaimed, "The tooth is out there" applies here, or is that the leap-off for the sequel? It's scary and real. I know two people with similar experiences with spirits contained in non-living objects.

I left the screening and asked my husband, "Do you think it would be dangerous to talk about "Alfred?"

I know that there are objects that house spirits. THE POSSESSION is based on the true story of a wine container sold several times on ebay that has a dibbuk – a Jewish evil spirit - inside of it. The ebay seller documented the tales associated with the box and people bid on it. It has been offered a few times by various sellers and now resides with Jason Haxton, Director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri. Haxton, who is still the box's current owner, allegedly offered to give the box to producer Sam Raimi and his team, but they turned him down. "They were too afraid of having the actual box," Haxton said. "Nobody wanted to house it." Pictured: The original Dibbuk Box.

Stan Wertlieb, one of the film's producers, confirmed Haxton's statement: "At our first Dibbuk Box production meeting, Sam Raimi said it would be best to have the actual box in our possession while we worked on the movie. The question was raised about who would be the caretaker for the box while it was here. In a room of ten, nobody would volunteer, each using a different excuse to avoid exposure to the box's curse."

Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a college basketball coach, was so obsessed with his career his wife Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) divorced him three months ago after a long separation. Stephanie has taken up with a handsome dentist Brett (Grant Snow), who has practically become a member of the household with includes 10-year old Em (Natasha Calis) and teenager Hannah (Madison Davenport). Stephanie seems to really like Brett and he is very present in her and the girl's lives. Pictured: The film's Dibbuk Box

Clyde mopes around. He's a good guy who didn't give Stephanie enough attention though now he looks at Stephanie like a lovesick puppy.

While not wholly accepting the divorce, Clyde finally moves into a house in a brand new under-construction development. Clyde and the girls stop at an old lady's garage sale and Em is drawn to an ornate box – The Dibbuk Box! To read the rest of the review, go to: http://www.filmfestivaltoday.com

Mother Love. It is a true fact that if you want to know how good a man will be as a husband, see how he treats his mother.

Gene Simmons's pride swells then and now when talk turns to his mother, not to mention her being the theme of one of his first songs, "My Mother is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World." From Black Diamond: The Unauthorized Biography of KISS

In Playboy's June 2009 issue "Transformers" star Shia LaBeouf told Playboy that his mom is the sexiest woman he knows. "She's an ethereal angel," he says of his mother, a former ballerina. "Nobody looks like that woman. If I could meet my mother and marry her, I would. I would be with my mother now, if she weren't my mother, as sick as that sounds."

Speaking of Shia, who is starring along with Tom Hardy in the just opened LAWLESS, it has been reported that he will star in Lars von Trier's erotic drama Nymphomaniac. And the sex scenes will be real not "acted out" sex.

"I sent him videotapes of me and my girlfriend having sex and that's how I got the job," the 26-year-old actor said during a recent appearance on Chelsea Handler's E! network show.

The 26-year-old actor signed on to star in the controversial Danish director's latest project, an erotic two-part drama that begins production this month and will be released in two cuts, one more sexuality explicit than the other.

"The movie is what you think it is," LaBeouf tells MTV News. "It is Lars von Trier, making a movie about what he's making. For instance, there's a disclaimer at the top of the script that basically says we're doing it for real. Everything that is illegal, we'll shoot in blurred images. Other than that, everything is happening."

Von Trier's first film since 2011's Melancholia, an apocalyptic drama co-starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nymphomaniac, will chronicle the sexual adventures of a woman throughout her life.

As to why LaBeouf took the Nymphomaniac job: "Because (von Trier's) dangerous. He scares me. And I'm only going to work now when I'm terrified."

Lars Von Trier, who famously spent his 2011 trip to Cannes getting himself banned from the festival for all of eternity in all universes because he went on a rant that culminated in him expressing sympathies for Hitler and jokingly declaring himself a Nazi.

It's not Shia's first time at the rodeo. Shia left nothing to the imagination when he stripped down totally naked without any shame for the Icelandic indie act Sigur Ros' music video ‘Fjögur Piano.'

I've watched it. I like it. It's beautifully strange. http://www.youtube.com

If you would like to contact me about this column, or be included on my private distribution list for a weekly reminder, just email me at Masauu@aol.com.

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