Up & Coming Weekly

May 06, 2014

Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.

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MAY 7-13, 2014 UCW 7 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM A Tale of Two Movies by PITT DICKEY Movie fans, today we shall compare and contrast two current movies. Bears by Walt Disney and Under the Skin, Scarlett Johansson's recent skinless skin flick. We saw both of them the same weekend. One was great and one was unbearable. Nothing is impossible. Being of proudly Philistine taste in movies, I did not think a movie in which Scarlett Johansson takes off her clothes could be boring. I was wrong on so many levels. It was boring. They said it couldn't be done. They said nobody could do it. But Scarlett's movie, Under the Skin, managed to do it. The movie is a plot-free themeless pudding consisting of a series of scenes that show Scarlett looking comatose. Scarlett plays a good looking alien who comes to Earth to dispose of lonely men. She drives around Scotland in a mini van picking up guys and then taking them back to her apartment. Men are so gullible, they will get into a mini van with a beautiful woman when they could just continue walking in the rain. Once the guys get back to Scarlett's poorly-lit apartment she starts to take off her clothes. Like puppy dogs, they follow her through the apartment but the floor becomes some sort of black tar into which they sink and disappear. There is a lot of gloomy techno music. For reasons known only to the director of the movie, periodically there are scenes of someone riding a motorcycle that have nothing to do with Scarlett. The motorcycle scenes may have been out takes from Easy Rider that didn't make it to the final cut. They do serve as filler like tofu in a vegetarian burrito. They add nothing to the movie but bulk. At one point Scarlett picks up a guy who wandered in from the Elephant Man movie. He's got some pretty grim facial disfigurement going on. We are talking Belle and the monster from Beauty and the Beast with this guy. I had some hope she may be nice to this fellow due to his major issues. Nope. She drops him into the tar pit in her apartment just like all the rest. Under the Skin is the illegitimate child of David Lynch's Eraser Head and Mullholland Drive but without a plot. Eraser Head was an industrial horror movie that came out in 1977 that was so difficult to watch I could only see it in 5-minute chunks. Mullholland Drive had Lynch's usual confusing story which ultimately comes together at the end. Under the Skin puts the port in portentous and the calm in calamity. Scarlett goes to a diner and orders a piece of cake. The camera lingers on the cake on her fork so long you feel you are in a dentist's chair. This is an important piece of cake. The cake shows more emotional range than Scarlett. She takes a bite and throws up. Cut to random motorcyclist again. Scarlett eventually has a run in with a bad woodsman from Snow White who rids us all of this meddlesome alien. At the end of the movie, the audience just sat there in stunned silence, either asleep or wanting two hours of their lives back. On the other hand, Bears is better than outstanding. I am a sucker for Disney true-life adventures and this is an excellent one. Bears stars Sky, an Alaskan brown bear momma and her two cubs, Scout and Amber. It's tough being a cub in the land of tooth and claw. Lots of other critters don't think of you as cute, but rather as lunch. We have a hulking villain, Mangus, who is the biggest, baddest, brown bear around. A hungry timber wolf keeps trying to enjoy bear cub sushi. We took my wife's 93-year-old mother, Donna, to see Bears and she loved it. If you have a kid or a senior relative, take them to see Bears. Even if you don't have such a relative, go see Bears anyway. The Alaskan scenery alone is worth the price of admission. The story takes our bear family from the birth of the cubs through their first year of life. We have leaping salmon. Bears caught on sand bars as the tide comes in. Exciting bear fights. Bear dilemmas. A baby bear riding on the back of her momma bear. A clam stuck on the claw of one of the cubs. An actual plot. Bears has got it all. If you only see one movie about our ursine brothers all year, go see Bears. Under the Skin was unbearable. Bears bears watching. PITT DICKEY, Attorney, Contribut- ing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. The City of Fayetteville makes curbside pick-up convenient. Recyclables go in your Blue Cart, but don't bag them. Put all types of recyclables together, loose in your cart. Use blue carts for recyclables only. And recycle everything you can. Learn more about all the things you can recycle – including aluminum foil, wrapping paper and more – at CityofFayetteville.org/curbside/. 433-1FAY (1329) When it comes to littering, please keep it … then can it! And help keep our great city clean and beautiful.

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