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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Sex, Drugs and Sympathy Anna Nicole shows surprising compassion for scandalous model Anna Nicole Smith TV by DEAN ROBBINS The TV movie Anna Nicole (Saturday, 8 p.m., Lifetime) imputes a soul to the late Anna Nicole Smith, the model and gold digger who flaunted her self-destruction in the media. Anyone who remembers the barely sentient Anna Nicole will have a hard time buying that proposition. And yet, the movie works hard for our sympathy and finally wins it. This negligible pop-culture personality has lucked into a dream team dedicated to telling her story, including director Mary Harron (American Psycho), Martin Landau as her elderly sugar daddy, Virginia Madsen as her unloving mother and Adam Goldberg as her handler throughout a years-long career meltdown. Finally, there's Agnes Bruckner as Smith herself, the small-town girl with big dreams and even bigger breasts. (Her breast implants, purchased on the eve of her Playboy breakthrough, warrant their own entrance.) Bruckner gives a physical performance worthy of Robert De Niro, taking Anna Nicole from thin to fat, healthy to haggard. She locates the starlet's humanity, such as it was, in her love for her son. She also hints at a rationale for her behavior, which seemed completely irrational during her lifetime. In short, Bruckner is more appealing in the role of Anna Nicole Smith than Anna Nicole ever was. Annie: It's the Hard-Knock Life, From Script to Stage Friday, 9:30 pm (PBS) This documentary explores the challenges of training the little girls chosen to star in Broadway's revival of Annie. At the outset, you worry that these poor kids will end up in therapy due to the pressure of 10-hour rehearsals and unreasonable expectations. An 8-year-old named Emily already has an agent, along with a mother who praises her as "professional." Should any child have to be professional at age 8? But, to be fair, the girls seem perfectly well adjusted, even after their months-long ordeal. The adults are another matter. Choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler slowly falls apart trying to teach his charges the moves to the production number "It's the Hard-Knock Life." He finally melts down during tech rehearsals as the girls lose their concentration. "If it was a cast of adults, I would tell them, 'You're letting me down,'" he confesses to the camera. "'You're FAILING!'" Clearly it's not the kids who will end up in therapy after Annie. It's their supervisors. Owen Benjamin: High Five Til It Hurts Friday, midnight (Comedy Central) Owen Benjamin offers a pleasant hour of standup comedy, free from nastiness. He tells gently absurd stories about standard subjects like male-female relations, dogs and airport security. His act brims with perceptive observations, like this one about messaging people on Facebook: "You can say anything, and if you end it with 'ha ha,' no one gets mad at you." Owen, you've got a great future in comedy. The only thing I'd suggest is working to make your jokes a bit more distinctive, ha ha. Battleground Afghanistan Monday, 9 pm (National Geographic Channel) This program gains incredible access to a company of U.S. Marines fighting the tail end of the war in Afghanistan. The camera crew puts us right in the middle of battle, as the brave Marines meet Taliban fighters on their own turf. We trudge with them through an opium field, desperately searching for cover after snipers open fire. We follow them into a night battle, with the sounds of machine guns and rockets rattling in our ears. The Marines must come to terms with the fact that they can die at any moment. "Put it in your head that you're already dead," says Sgt. Bryan Barrow. "That will take away the fear." I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these already-dead Marines don't die. Home Invasion with a Sci-fi Twist The Purge (Rated ) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS If I'm picking movies to compare The Purge (85 minutes) to, I suppose I'll go with In Time. Both are science-fiction stories in which the basic premise explores how one slight change to society changes everything else. Of course, there are a few differences. Generally speaking, I like Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey a million times more than Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. More importantly, The Purge was made with a budget of $3 million compared to the $40 million it took to vomit In Time onto celluloid. I can't say I loved it, but I sure do love the spirit behind it. Blumhouse, the production company behind the Paranormal Activity series and Sinister (among other neat little horror pics) is reportedly specializing in the micobudget film (only in Hollywood is $3 million dollars a micobudget). They produce relatively cheap and quick with minimal advertising, so they're almost guaranteed to make money. I've grown to expect at least a little bit of subversion in their films so it is with great disappointment that I report The Purge to be a pretty run-of-the-mill effort. There were several promising junctures, but ultimately this is a film that supports the status quo. The story has roots in short pieces like The Lottery, and the concept is not revolutionary. I guess you would call it high concept, since the set-up is pretty simple. In the near future the United States has successfully reduced crime and poverty by allowing one 12-hour period each year in which most forms of violence are legal. I think I would have preferred more in-depth coverage of the social changes and decisions that resulted in the titular Purge; instead, the opening credits play over footage of Purges from previous years with some vague voice-over setting up the central conceit of the film. On the one hand, the brief explanation preceding the title tells the audience what they need to know. On the other hand, I wish filmmakers could have inserted a history lesson to provide more context on how we go from the WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM economic and social realities of 2013 to the brave new world of the Purge (which, according to the security footage, has been policy for more than a few years already). I am well aware that the reason it got left out is that the filmmakers didn't really conceptualize that part, but inquiring minds still want to know. The story gets into gear on the day of the yearly Purge. James Sandin (Hawke) is heading home to his wife, Mary (Headey) after a day of successfully exploiting the fears of the uppermiddle class. It seems he has a very successful career selling home-security systems that lock down houses on the day of the Purge, which certainly makes for some interesting subtextual commentary on America's culture of fear. Wait; is it still subtextual when it smacks you in the face with all the subtlety of a hammer? Anyway, once James gets home there is some explanatory set-up. Son Charlie (Max Burkholder) plays with a live-action security toybot that resembles a mutant toy from Toy Story, daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kent) is dating an older boy, Henry (Tony Oller) and going through a rebellious, uncooperative stage. Once the Purge begins, one of its more Darwinian purposes becomes evident. Clearly, it encourages a survival of the fittest style population reduction! For example, when Charlie lets a stranger into the house on the one night of the year that murder is legal he is begging to be removed from the gene pool. Overall, the lack of a safe room in the otherwise well-secured home of the security system salesman is the most glaring omission. Other than that, there are worse ways to spend 80 minutes. Now showing at Wynnsong 7, HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Carmike 12 and Carmike Market Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandFair 15. comingweekly.com. JUNE 26 - JULY 2, 2013 UCW 17