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.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/103721
Extra Pulpy Goodness Django Unchained (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS My feelings on Django Unchained (165 minutes) are mixed. It's a Tarantino movie, and if you have any love for Tarantino you will enjoy his take on the Spaghetti Western. If you think Tarantino is an overrated dialogue driven hack … then you might still like this movie. His major problem is overusing the N-Bomb. I don't want to ban the word, but when it's the only descriptive term he ever uses it gets pretty boring. Is he going for shock value? It stopped being shocking about 30 minutes into Pulp Fiction. Somebody get him a dictionary! The film opens on a scene highlighted in the previews. Bounty hunter Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz) comes upon slave drivers and finds the one particular slave he needs to identify his prey The Brittle Brothers, Django (Jaime Foxx). By the way, those with sharp eyes will notice that one of the slave drivers is played by James Remar, who shows up later in the film in a different role. It says something about Waltz's ability to play silently menacing that from the moment he appears on screen I am waiting for him to do something sadistically horrible to somebody. Anyway, he gains ownership of Django in name only, promising that he despises slavery and will free him officially once he gets his bounty on the Brittle Brothers. Along the way to the Tennessee plantation where the brothers are hanging out, Schultz finds out that Django was being sold by his former owner because he secretly married another slave, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and they ran away together. Schultz is beguiled by the tale and promises to help Django get his wife back. The two work together throughout the winter. This part of the film drags a little bit, even if it does highlight the snowy mountains of Wyoming to great effect. I am not even sure they are highlighting the right part of the story, since Django is apparently a crack shot with minimal training and has but a brief moral misgiving before grasping the life of the bounty hunter wholeheartedly. The training montage out of the way, the narrative shifts to the quest to rescue Broomhilda from Calvin Candie's (Leonardo DiCaprio) plantation, Candyland. It seems that Calvin trains male slaves to fight to the death and purchases female slaves to serve as prostitutes. While implying the sexual violence, Tarantino manages to restrain himself from lingering over the details, a surprisingly mature decision. He showcases his strengths here. First, most of the dialogue is clever, quippy and eminently quotable. Second, Tarantino does what he does best behind the camera — he takes iconic images from classic exploitation fare and kicks up the contrast and scope. Check out how he turned Lady Snowblood into Kill Bill — he creates the same visual poetry by referencing The Great Silence in the sweeping snowscapes featured midway through Django. Can you imagine what he would do with a film like Turkey Shoot or The Big Bird Cage? (FYI—Turkey Shoot features a werewolf that just sort of shows up midway into the film driving a jeep and it must be experienced to be believed). However, his shtick is fraying around the edges. He specializes in highlighting the disenfranchised characters usually left behind in your average Hollywood flick, but here Jaime Foxx and Kerry Washington both seem underutilized. Too much of the early film is spent with Dr. Schultz the bounty hunter though I have no idea how much of that is from the original, which I still haven't seen. Now showing at Wynnsong HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing 7, Carmike 12 and Carmike Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandMarket Fair 15. comingweekly.com. When English Professors Kill The Following features the world's most unlikely evildoer TV by DEAN ROBBINS I've always argued that a Kevin Bacon performance is never without merit, no matter the production. But I've finally lost the argument with the premiere of The Following (Monday, 9 p.m., Fox), a horror series from Kevin Williamson of Scream fame. It's written so badly that even Bacon bombs as a detective with a permanent Joe Friday scowl. Williamson strained his brain to come up with the most brilliantly sick scenario ever seen on TV. He's achieved "sick," all right, but not "brilliant." Even with one gruesome scene after another, it's hard not to laugh at the idea of a diabolical English professor on an ornate killing spree inspired by Edgar Allan Poe works like "The Raven." Would you believe that this evildoer can command his legion of cult followers to tattoo Poe quotations on their bodies and stab themselves in the eye? Or that Bacon's character sleeps with the psychokiller's wife while trying to crack the case? Didn't think so. Will Kevin Williamson still be a Hollywood player after The Following flops? Quoth the raven: Nevermore. Archer Thursday, 10 pm (FX) A whole generation of people were raised on earnest cartoons like Jonny Quest and Super Friends, featuring crudely drawn heroes with square jaws, no inner life and a clear-cut sense of good and evil. For them (okay, us), Archer is the cartoon series to enjoy in adulthood. The crudely drawn spy hero has the squarest of jaws, but his pursuit of the bad guys is freighted with adult baggage. Despite his rugged physique and manly voice, Archer has all sorts of human foibles. And despite the cartoon's innocently retro look and score, it's loaded with sex, drugs, profanity and violence. Oh, and most important of all: irony. At the start of season four, Archer (voice of H. Jon Benjamin) is plagued by amnesia. How to cure him? "This isn't The Flintstones," says the resident WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM scientist at spy headquarters. "We can't just wang him over the head with a frying pan!" Oh, but they can, and they will. That (((WANG!!!))) is music to my ears. King of the Nerds Thursday, 10 pm (TBS) This reality series pits nerd against nerd: videogame experts, comic-book lovers, science geeks, heavy-metal enthusiasts and others likely to begin speaking Orc at the drop of a hat. They're eliminated in geeky competitions until the ultimate nerd is left standing. In the words of one contestant: "You can cut the tension with a light saber!" You might expect King of the Nerds to condescend to these stringy-haired, socially challenged folks, but it actually sets out to valorize them. True, there's irony aplenty in putting the nerds on a pedestal, but it's all done good-naturedly. I proclaim the series a success — and believe me, as a TV blurb writer, I know a little something about nerds. Prosecuting Casey Anthony Saturday, 8 pm (Lifetime) This TV movie effectively recaps the controversial 2011 trial of Casey Anthony, who was accused of killing her two-year-old daughter. It tells the story from the prosecutors' point of view, arguing that Anthony committed the crime and lied shamelessly about it. Rob Lowe communicates the state attorney's righteous anger at a mother who would do such a thing. There's only one problem: The jury found Anthony not guilty, based on the lack of hard evidence and a credible motive. Prosecuting Casey Anthony essentially retries the case and pronounces Anthony a murderer, reasonable doubt be damned. Lifetime did the same thing to Drew Peterson in a 2011 TV movie (also starring Lowe), convicting him even before his trial had taken place. In today's America, we're all innocent until proven guilty on basic cable. JANUARY 16-22, 2013 UCW 17