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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Ballerinas Are Messed Up Black Swan (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS Darren Aronofsky is a competent director with a long list of arthouse specials. I admit to watching his films; I also admit that I have never watched any of his films twice. After watching Black Swan (108 minutes) that may change. It works as a companion piece to critical darling The Wrestler and takes a visual cue from its grainy 16M style. It is also reminiscent of metaphorical science fiction romance The Fountain. The story is set in New York, of course. A ballet company is preparing for their new season by replacing the current diva, Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) and raising one of the background dancers to prima ballerina. The top contender for the coveted position is Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman). Portman is surprisingly adept at playing the shy girl just beg- ging to be Svengalied, since she so often shines in roles that highlight her unmistakable poise. A new company dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), is introduced. Her presence destabilizes the already wobbly Nina. Lily and Nina form the points of a triangle completed by director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel). Leroy is unwilling to cast Nina in his new production of Swan Lake until he pushes her too far and finds out that this kitten has a whip! Even after she is cast she is far better at playing the innocent, fragile White Swan than the sexual and devious Black Swan. Lily, on the other hand, mean girls her way into the position of understudy, and stands poised to step into the twin roles at the first opportunity. Or does she? One of the greatest strengths of the film is the inability of the audience to separate Nina’s fantasy from everyone else’s reality. Much like the psy- chological thriller Repulsion (if you loved Black Swan, Netflix Repulsion im- mediately, if not sooner), the camera forces us to accept the insanity of the protagonist as reality. Nina is overwhelmed by the pressure of her new posi- tion, and more than a little naïve. Her mother (Barbara Hershey) doesn’t help matters with her bizarre drawings and inability to interpret the meaning of a closed bathroom door. Of course, her mother’s overprotectiveness is a bit more reasonable in light of Nina’s history of self-mutilation and erratic behavior … and her hallucinations involving both Doppelgangers and bloody wounds that suddenly ap- pear on her body. Kunis is totally believable in her role, and it is hard to tell if Lily is friend or foe. In a pivotal scene, the two opposites attract while gooseflesh ripples across the thighs and neck of Nina. It seems as if Nina will finally throw off the shackles of M-O-M, but her grip on reality is tenuous. The things that she sees become more grotesque as the story of Swan Lake infects her perceptions. Losing her grip on reality releases her from her dry and technical perfection, allowing her to finally embrace the pas- sion required to successfully dance the role of the Black Swan. The ballet is nothing special until Nina becomes the Black Swan for the second act. The third act moves inevitably into the tragic conclusion of both the ballet and the movie. The only real issue is with the final line of the movie, which comes off as anticlimactic after such a wrenching finale. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com Who Was that Masked Man? As a kid, I loved watching deadly-earnest superhero shows and then fighting criminals in a bath-towel cape. Back then, I would have loved The Cape (Sunday, 9 p.m., NBC), with its serious ap- proach to masks and secret identities. To be honest, I love it now. It’s nice to see a superhero production that isn’t ultra-ironic or ultra-violent, but just a straightforward story of a square-jawed dude with an odd fashion sense saving his city from ugly French and British baddies. The square-jawed dude is incorruptible cop Vince Faraday The Cape offers old-school superhero pleasures TV by DEAN ROBBINS (David Lyons), who’s framed to look like a supervillain and then killed by the real supervillain. But wait! He’s not really dead, just hiding out among carnival folks who school him in the mystical uses of a cape. Vince reemerges as a masked avenger, with help from a blogger named Orwell (Summer Glau). Department stores had better stock up on bath towels after The Cape pre- mieres. I predict a run on them. People’s Choice Awards Wednesday, 9 pm (CBS) After the Tea Party victories in the November elections, anti-elitism is in. That’s good news for the populist People’s Choice Awards, which allows ordinary Americans to choose the best movies, music and TV of 2010 rather than letting the snobby “experts” do it — you know, the ones who’ve dedicated their lives to these art forms. Thus, we get nominations for actors like Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson, who can’t act; comedy nominations for Sex and the City 2 and Valentine’s Day, which aren’t very funny; and singing nominations for Justin Bieber and Ke$ha, whose stardom has little to do with singing. Okay, I admit it — I’m already missing elitism. Bob’s Burgers Sunday, 8:30 pm (Fox) WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Fox struck gold with The Simpsons and has been trying to replicate it ever since. Bob’s Burgers is the latest attempt at an animated dys- functional-family gross-out comedy with a moron-slob father and smart-aleck kids. If The Simpsons makes it look easy, though, Bob’s Burgers reminds us how many ways such a project can go wrong. A crude drawing style renders the characters as chinless mon- strosities who are hard to look at for a half-hour. The flavorless voice acting emphasizes whininess. And the script mistakes witless sick jokes for edginess. Bob’s Burgers is set at a cruddy hamburger joint run by hairy- armed loser Bob and his vile family. In a typical gag, the little girl ex- plains to a customer that “the burger of the day is ‘The Child Molester.’ It comes with candy. Get it?” To be honest, I don’t get anything about Bob’s Burgers. Episodes Sunday, 9:30 pm (Showtime) This new series brilliantly satirizes Hollywood by viewing it through the eyes of two British outsiders. Sean (Stephen Mangan) and Beverly (Tamsin Grieg) are riding high as the producers of a hit TV comedy in England. A Hollywood mogul (John Pankow), professing love of their work, entices them to move to Los Angeles so they can ride even higher with an Americanized version. Wryly mocking themselves in that sane British way, Sean and Beverly make the move to what seems like palm-tree paradise but is soon revealed as hell. The mogul has never actually seen their work, just intuited that it could be a money- making property to exploit. The sane Brits slowly go insane in the face of moronic production assistants and ill-considered changes to the show. They almost scream in horror when they hear the mogul’s idea for the starring role: Matt LeBlanc, playing himself. We Friends-loving viewers, on the other hand, scream in ecstasy. JANUARY 5-11, 2011 UCW 17