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/28646
Remember How Awesome Skyline Was? Battle: Los Angeles (Rated PG) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS Yes, we can all agree that Skyline was awesome, or, at the very least, awesomely bad. It was an honest B-movie filled with D-List actors with no pretensions to greatness. Battle: Los Angeles (116 minutes) is the film that the special effects guys Greg and Colin Strause worked on before/during/after creating Skyline. Sony Pictures Entertainment planned to sue when their movie came out before Battle: Los Angeles, with the idea that the Strause Brothers had gotten their ideas while doing the special effects for this other movie. Well, both movies employ the ever-popular, ever irritating, cinema verite shaky cam. Both films focus on an alien inva- sion in La La land. Beyond that, the films are pretty different. I would say that Skyline is an enjoyable, nerd-friendly monster flick while Battlefield: Los Angeles is a one-dimensional action movie with sci-fi trimmings. In August of 2011 gas prices in California will apparent- ly settle around $2.96 per regular gallon. So we have that to look forward to. Also, there will be meteors that turn out to not be meteors, but aliens. Much like Independence Day the government brain trust figures that out when the so-called meteors start slowing down. Some U.S. Marine beefcakes assemble at Camp Pendleton to get their marching orders, while the exposition fairy sprinkles backstory over their uni- formed heads. Our hero-by-default is Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Echkart). Nantz is getting ready to retire (Of course. Of course he is.) when he is called back into action by the alien invasion. Gosh, there sure are a lot of dudes in the Marines. Except that one blonde girl with the nice smile and the freckles, but she is basically playing the role of the one lady in uniform from the “Citizen Soldier” video, so it’s not like we’re gonna see her again. Security and Insecurity A dweeb attacks corporate firewalls in Breaking In TV by DEAN ROBBINS Usually only one sitcom works for every couple dozen that premiere, and Breaking In (Wednesday, 9:30 p.m., Fox) is that one. It finds the perfect blend of acting, writing and directing to achieve a craziness all its own. Cameron (Bret Harrison) is a college nerd who uses his amazing hacking skills for such triv- ial benefits as finding himself a faculty parking spot. But a sleazy hipster named Oz (Christian Slater) imagines Cameron in a more glamorous role: an in-house hacker for his security firm, which attacks corporate firewalls to find breach- es. Cameron has his doubts, especially when he meets his nutty new cowork- ers. One of them becomes his sworn enemy, and another victimizes him with absurdly elaborate pranks. Then there’s the resident beauty, a safecracker named Melanie (Odette Yustman) who’s oh so appealing yet oh so dangerous. “Trust me,” Oz tells Cameron, “that is one roller coaster you do not want to ride.” The cast has chemistry to burn, and Harrison is the perfect dweeb-who- must-rise-to-the-occasion-in-extraordinary-circumstances, just as he was in Reaper. Trust me, Breaking In is one roller coaster you do want to ride. Colin Quinn Long Story Short Saturday, 10 pm (HBO) The deadpan jokes start with the title. The “long story” is nothing less than the history of humanity, which Colin Quinn concisely summarizes in this brilliant one-man show, taped on Broadway. Quinn takes us from the cave- men to the Greeks to the Renaissance and beyond, in each case making canny connections between then and now. “We haven’t changed since time began,” he says, proving his thesis by comparing Caesar to a modern-day mob boss 22 UCW APRIL 6-12, 2011 and Antigone to Snooki from Jersey Shore. The transitions are seamless in this tour de force. Every nuance is obviously worked out to the microsecond, and yet Quinn still seems to be making it all up on the spot, as if he’s tellin’ ya a story in a bar in his earthy Brooklyn accent. The guy knows a ton about philosophy, religion, science and the arts, and it’s all fodder for his expertly crafted jokes. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who can make history this funny has earned his place in it. Human Planet Sunday, 8 pm (Discovery) The producers of the epic nature documentaries Planet Earth and Life take on another grand subject, people. The six-hour Human Planet recalls those earlier efforts in its length, stateliness and beauty, but it’s lacking the essential element of organization. In a six-hour show about humans — a subject many of us know a good deal about — you would hope for an interesting topic sentence and bul- let points, or at least some sense of purpose in the progression from one vignette to another. But, no, the series begins with Indonesians hunting a whale (why?), then moves to Kenyans hunting wildebeests (why?), then to Mongolians cultivating eagles (why?). For each transition, the deep-voiced narrator throws out some arbitrary connecting sentence: “Benjamin makes his living from the sea, but on the grasslands of Africa, getting something to eat calls for a different approach.” Sadly, Human Planet neglects one of humankind’s greatest creations: the outline. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM So, anyway, there are hostile aliens. The government, reasoning that California’s economy sucks anyway, decides to nuke the coast, killing the alien invaders and balancing the budget with a single stroke. Whoops … that’s how I pictured it working out. Instead, they send a handful of Marines with mental health issues to rescue hypothetical civilians from the LAPD. Their mission has a three-hour time limit, but instead of a helicopter drop to a nearby location, they head in on foot and start looking at shiny things. They make enemy contact several times and finally settle in to figure out what has gone wrong with their strategy of walking straight down the middle of the street making lots of noise. Arriving just in time to help them figure out that par- ticular mystery is an Air Force Intelligence Technical Sergeant Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez). They regroup and head to the police station where they find a grand total of five civil- ians. Which, really? That hardly seems worth the effort, even if one of the civvies is played by Bridget Moynahan. After all, the other one is played by Michael Pena, and his skill set is pretty much limited to looking befuddled. See if you can guess which one survives and which one is used for an emotionally manipulative death scene! The plot begins to wander at this point. The movie goes on, which I’m gonna blame on the writers having no idea how to end it. If you can picture enjoying Black Hawk Down with aliens in- stead of insurgents, this one’s for you. If not, then do yourself a favor and rent Skyline. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com