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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Gangster’s Paradise TV by DEAN ROBBINS HBO has been ridiculed for passing on Mad Men, but Boardwalk Empire (Sunday, 9 p.m.) ought to shut up the haters. You want a drama that peers deep into America’s soul, exploring sex, commerce, gender relations, race rela- tions, politics, culture, crime and ethnicity while evoking a particular time and place? Boardwalk Empire, executive produced by Martin Scorsese, finds even better dramatic material in 1920s Atlantic City than Mad Men does in 1960s Manhattan. Prohibition has begun, and gangsters fight to control everything from the mom-and-pop stores to the Senators. Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) rules over Atlantic City’s illegal alcohol trade, doing business with gangsters like Al Capone (Stephen Graham) and Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza). The huge cast of characters also includes showgirls, Ku Klux Klan members, prostitutes, beleaguered immigrants, a suffragette and the leader of the city’s African American community. The production effortlessly evokes the period with music, costumes and vintage slang. In this week’s episode, Nucky throws himself an over- the-top birthday party, and the gangster turf wars culminate in a shocking act of violence. Most shocking of all, though, is the moment in which a character with a bit of integrity takes a quiet step to- ward corruption. Undercovers Wednesday, 8 pm (NBC) J.J. Abrams’ new series features gorgeous husband-and-wife CIA agents (Boris Kodjoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who banter and bicker while fighting smug European sadists. We’ve seen comic spy stories before, and Abrams doesn’t do anything new with the genre. The car chases and computer-aided break-ins all come on cue, and you can bet there’s a gruff supervisor and a wise-ass side- kick on hand. The biggest problem is that Kodjoe and Mbatha-Raw don’t have the chops to raise the marital comedy above the cloying level. Indeed, they make you gag with their con- stant flirting and smooching on the job. “You look cute,” he tells her as they hack into a bank’s security system. Okay, she does look cute, but we’d notice that without the incessant reminders. The Whole Truth Wednesday, 10 pm (ABC) The gimmick in this new legal drama is showing cases from both the defense and prosecution perspectives. Maura Tierney is the buttoned-down prosecutor in the district attorney’s office who nobly quotes Benjamin Disraeli: “Justice is truth in action!” Rob Morrow is the shaggy de- fense attorney who wears red sneakers to court and pleads with the jury: “Reasonable doubt? You’ve got it in spades!” Would you be surprised to learn that these fierce opponents have a romantic his- tory and possibly a romantic future? The Whole Truth is competent but not much more than that. You feel you’ve seen it all before, from the mutilated female corpses to the spittle-filled legal ti- rades to the third-act stratagems that turn the case around. Will an audience sign up for a lawyer show that doesn’t really distinguish itself from the pack? I’ve got reasonable doubt — in spades. Saved + Ten Things I Hate About You = Pretty Good Easy A (Rated PG-13) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS Easy A (92 minutes) offers one of the best movie dia- logue lines of 2010 … “I’m not a Gossip Girl in Sweet Valley High with Traveling Pants.” If they gave out awards for best movie lines (and they don’t … I just checked) that line would take home the gold. Not only because it is an unexpected and funny line, but also because it perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the movie. Easy A hangs its hat on callbacks to the ‘80s and mocking popular teen conventions. Not only are there plenty of literal clips to accompany the meta-narration, there are also visual tributes. Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) narrates her story into a webcam, complete with helpfully written out title cards so that we immediately understand that she is both quirky and a smart person. The beginning of her tale is slightly disorganized, but we are clearly dealing with movie plot exposition rather than an attempt to realistically depict how someone would tell this kind of story to a webcam audience. Unfortunately, it makes the initial disorganization come off as sloppy writing. Olive is conversating with her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka, who is coming off as a Twilight movie extra reject here). The best friend sounds like a jerk here, and continues to jerkify herself throughout the movie … I would say this is the result of Olive’s feelings towards her friend at the time of the webcam blog, but the rest of the movie doesn’t hold up that interpretation very well. Anyway, she is mocked and tormented by her closest friend until she decides to tell a little scarlet lie about losing her virginity over the weekend to a college freshman. Unfortunately, one of the school’s judgmental religious fanatics, Marianne (Amanda Bynes, who is a little old to play a high schooler) overhears the faux 20 UCW OCTOBER 6-12, 2010 confession, and feeds it to the rumor mill. When her private lie spreads, Olive becomes a school legend and finds that she likes that attention. While she is living it up on the fruits of her new reputation, she makes a friend. Brandon (Dan Byrd) wants to cash in on her reputation to improve his rep (see Can’t Buy me Love), so Olive does him a solid. She finds out that it is pretty easy to make friends and influence people by using her reputation to her own advan- tage, but her favorite teacher, Mr. Griffith (Thomas Haden- Church) cautions her to decide on an exit strategy before she gets in too deep. Later on, after Olive gets in too deep, his wife Mrs. Griffith (Lisa Kudrow) gets involved. Luckily for Olive her awesome parents (Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson) trust her to find her own way while simultaneously providing a support system (and that’s how you parent!) She even manages to avoid the cliché of alien- ating the boy she likes (Penn Badgley), although she does manage to pull off the random music and dance number cli- ché (see The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). The only real plot issue is in casting the gorgeous Emma Stone as the high school girl nobody notices without even doing the audience the courtesy of pulling her hair back into a ponytail and putting glasses on her. Will anybody believe that she could pass as average, much less unnoticeable? And in this restrictive school dress code age, are high school girls really allowed to expose their cleavage and wear corsets to class? Overall, the movie will bear rewatching, and it man- ages to elevate the teen sex comedy to a more philo- sophical level. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Boardwalk Empire peers into America’s corrupt soul