Up & Coming Weekly

Game-changer Small-town football takes a hit in Friday Night Lights TV by DEAN ROBBINS Critics have gone wild over Friday Night Lights, a series about high school football in small-town Texas. Audiences haven’t gone wild, but it’s time to start, people. NBC has begun airing the fourth season at an uncon- ventional time, just as 2009-10 is winding down for other dramas. That should give us more of a chance to concentrate on steely Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his East Dillon Lions, who face big problems on their small patch of torn-up ground between the goalposts. This week (Friday, 8 p.m.), the Lions’ players have defected after Coach called a forfeit in the previous game. They refuse to show up for practice, and the empty Texas sky looks mighty melancholy. In the meantime, Coach’s wife (Connie Britton), the principal at rival West Dillon, blows the whistle on a star player who’s attending school illegally. Coach convinces the players to hear him out at a special Saturday night practice. He starts a bonfire in a trash can and gives an inspirational speech wor- thy of Vince Lombardi: “Who will finish this fight with me? Who wants to finish this fight? Who wants to finish this fight?” I felt stupid for yelling “Me!” before any of the characters did. American Masters Wednesday, 9 pm (PBS) The Doors tried to take rock into a dark region where reality melted into dreams and transcendence came through derangement of the senses. The results could be embarrassing (that’s the danger of such a quest), but they could also be sublime. The handful of sublime moments — that’s why we still care about Jim Morrison and company. The documentary “When You’re Strange” tries to transport viewers to that same dark region, via spooky sounds, druggy imagery and pretentious narration by Johnny Depp. This is a major mistake. If you’re telling the Doors’ story, your main job is to stay out of the band’s way. But writer-director Tom DeCillo pushes his bad-trip angle so hard that it overpowers the performance clips, as well as Morrison’s streak of humor and mischievousness. DeCillo wanted to make the documentary equivalent of The End and wound up with pure hokum. It’s best to leave the dark regions to actual artists, Tom. Miss USA Sunday, 7 pm (NBC) In recent years, the Miss USA/Teen USA organization has drawn attention to itself for all the wrong reasons. One pageant contestant was so high that she doesn’t remember being crowned the winner, and she made headlines afterward for her hard-partying ways. Another spewed such idiocy during the final question that she became an enduring national joke. And at last year’s Miss USA pageant, a contestant spoke out against same-sex marriage under the banner of family val- ues, after which she was found to have posed for sleazy pictures. Why is this so delightful? Because of the pageants’ offensive practice of put- ting women on a pedestal, as if they were perfectly virtuous and virginal. As that old-fashioned vision collides with modern-day reality, the embarrassing moments will continue to occur. In other words: I wouldn’t miss this week’s Miss USA pageant for the world. Survivor Sunday, 8 pm (CBS) The season called “Heroes vs. Villains” concludes this week, following episode after episode in which “heroes” like JT and Amanda were seriously out- maneuvered by “villains” like Russell and Parvati. The message has been clear: Villains rule, heroes drool. I’ve had fun watching this truth emerge over the course of the season, even though it doesn’t bode well for the human race in a general sense. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Better Than a Fork In Your Eye A Nightmare on Elm Street (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS A Nightmare on Elm Street (95 minutes) loses quite a bit in translation. When you take an iconic character such as this and attempt to reboot him, there is always the risk of fall- ing short. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot ended up cele- brating torture-as-pornography where the original had been ground breaking. The Dawn of the Dead remake wowed every- one by re imagining the zombie film in a way that might have been controversial, but at least succeed in scaring everyone. Honestly, if the main scare of the movie is based on the idea that you’ll die if you sleep, then the fact that I almost dozed off a few times is not a great recommendation. Not to mention the fact that the update focuses more attention on the child molestation angle than the original. I am sure this was meant to be daring and edgy, but it comes off as cheap and exploitative … far more so than the original, which holds up amazingly well over time. The film starts off in the Springwood Diner, where Kris Fowles (Katie Cassidy) and Dean (Kellan Lutz) are poor substitutes for the original film’s more interesting cannon fodder. The beginning scene establishes that when Freddy (Jackie Early Haley) kills someone in their sleep, they die for real. In between working out their dreadful trauma at the sudden bizarre death of their close friend and making stupid decisions due to lack of parental guidance, some of the teenagers hook up. Jesse Braun (Thomas Dekker) comforts Kris and Nancy (Rooney Mara) plays back and forth with Quentin Smith (Kyle Gallner). Meanwhile, some of the more interesting actors are shoved onto the back burner with nothing much to do but count their money and wonder why they agreed to do such a misguided remake. For example, Nancy’s mother Gwen (the absolutely gorgeous Connie Britton) wanders in and out of scenes like she is channeling the original, alcoholic, mother character. Quentin’s father Alan (Clancy Brown) never really develops as a strong character either, despite Clancy Brown’s overall punk rockness. A couple of throaty voiced quips later (so much for swearing up and down Freddy wasn’t going to deliver one-liners) the body count has risen and the climax awaits. On the way to the climax, director Samuel Bayer manages to telegraph every dream sequence, plot twist, and “surprise” while cheapening everything that was cool about the original. There is maybe one or two genuine scares in there, but they don’t last long and they don’t make up for the overall ham-fisted treat- ment I am attempting to sit through. That’s too bad, because there is a lot of talent going to waste on the screen. Rooney Mara is fantastic as Nancy, and I really, really wish whichever hack de- cided that Kristen Stewart deserved a career had seen Mara first, because I can’t think of a single role played by Stewart that Mara couldn’t have done better. Jackie Earle Haley is some dream casting, but Bayer doesn’t have the slightest clue how to use him in this role. At the end of the day, this is not the worst piece of trash associated with the venerated name of horror legend Freddy Krueger (that honor goes to Nightmare on Elm Street II), but it certainly isn’t worth paying regular price for either. Catch an afternoon show and spend your money on a classic Nightmare on Elm Street marathon. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com MAY 12-18, 2010 UCW 19

• Cover