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/354806
JULY 30 - AUGUST 5, 2014 UCW 17 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Spreading the Wealth #RichKids of Beverly Hills gives us entrée to a luxurious lifestyle by DEAN ROBBINS In the reality series #RichKids of Beverly Hills, the rich kids aren't icky in that Kardashian way (Sunday, 10 p.m., E!). They're smart and self-aware, even self- mocking at times. As a result, you don't laugh at them, but with them. It's fun to hang out with Dorothy, Morgan, EJ and the gang as they make snarky conversation, take ironic selfies and, in the second-season premiere, plan a fabulous trip to China. Season two also delves into real emotions as Dorothy tries to make sense of her relationship with reluctant boyfriend Cooper. Meanwhile, the screen fills with social- media-style graphics and sound effects as the friends obsessively text each other, finding the perfect hashtag for every occasion. I'd call #RichKids of Beverly Hills a guilty pleasure, but the series is so fun that I feel no guilt whatsoever. #WelcomeToAugust The Honourable Woman Thursday, 10 pm (Sundance Channel) "We all have secrets. We all tell lies," coos the narrator in the languid opening sequence of this new miniseries. As if in a dream, we watch a man assassinated by a waiter in a luxurious dining room with his two young children by his side. Fast forward 29 years. The children have grown up and taken over their father's business in London: supplying arms to Israel. It's the kind of work that can get a Jewish zealot killed, but the kids have changed the focus to reconciling Israelis and Palestinians. Nessa (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is the brains of the operation, a smart, driven, articulate woman who has just been appointed to the House of Lords. She has many enemies, though, from Israelis to Palestinians to English protesters. A sense of menace hangs in the air. Dreaminess and menace are the keynotes of this eight-part spy thriller — an intriguing combination. Director Hugo Blick is an esthete with a taste for fluttering white curtains and mournful violin music, but he also hooks you with potboiler elements like kidnappings and suicides. Most of the characters have secrets, as the narrator suggests, and by the end of the first episode we haven't quite figured out what they're hiding. I can't wait for The Honourable Woman to reveal more of its own secrets. Masters of Illusion Friday, 8 pm (CW) In Houdini's day, magic was on the cutting edge of mind-blowing spectacle, and magicians in puffy-sleeved shirts passed as sex symbols. In the era of Google Glass, driverless cars and other real-life sorcery, magic shows are more of a quaint curio, but I'm still excited that the CW is reviving Masters of Illusion. The magic variety show, now hosted by Dean Cain, will roll out the classics: levitating, walking through walls and vanishing, complete with beautiful assistants and lots of silky fabric. It's nice to know that, even in a time of digital miracles, there's still a place for artfully concealed wires and hidden compartments. Bring on the puffy-sleeved shirts. Director/screenwriter Scott Derrickson piqued my interest way back in 2000 with Hellraiser: Inferno and won my heart with Sinister in 2012. The Exorcism of Emily Rose didn't do much for me, but a whole lot of people really seemed to like it. He's done some other odds and ends — including the execrable Day the Earth Stood Still remake. Deliver Us From Evil (118 minutes) seems more like an Emily Rose afterthought than an extension of his existing body of work. Possibly this is because Derrickson actually wrote Deliver Us From Evil more than ten years ago — before the successful release of Emily Rose. After reading some interviews, it seems that after the success of that film and the success of his indie horror Sinister two years ago, he was able to re- write his original script to take advantage of an expanded budget, not to mention incorporating some new perspectives on horror. The film is based on Beware the Night, a memoir co-authored by NYPD Sergeant Ralph Sarchie and journalist Lisa Collier Cool. Depending on your belief system, you might take the "memoir" designation more or less seriously. Sarchie wrote the source material after his retirement, and discusses anecdotes that span more than a decade. Deliver Us From Evil, on the other hand, compresses the accounts into a shorter time span, ties them together with a central demonic thread and takes a number of liberties with the story. While the narrative does touch on his relationship with the demon-fighting Bishop McKenna (Father McKenna in the film), there is no mention of his partnership with famed paranormal investigators, the Warrens, at all. That might get picked up in a sequel, but judging by the box office and critical reaction there's not much chance of a sequel getting made. Sergeant Sarchie (Eric Bana) is a police officer and he's burnt out, possibly because he suffers from some sort of sunlight-deprivation depression. You see, it rains a lot in the movie version of The Bronx and he works nights. During a patrol he and his partner — wait — is that — Joel McHale from The Soup and Community playing his partner? It is. Well that's just distracting. Anyway, they respond to a call and wind up wrestling with an abusive spouse. This case is the first in a line of increasingly disturbing calls. Eventually, the guys end up in the Bronx Zoo. Interestingly, at least to me, this is the first movie filmed on location in the zoo since 1980's Altered States. Hijinks ensue, and they eventually find a woman on her knees clawing desperately at the earth. It's seriously creepy. Back at the station, Sarchie meets Father Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez). In an amusing twist, the Father is an ex-junkie who drinks, chain-smokes, does topless push-ups and checks out women in bars. I guess you'd call him a progressive? Sarchie continues to track down leads and finds himself coming full circle, connecting the woman at the zoo to a dead body in somebody's basement, and finally back to the domestic abuse case that opened the film. Overall, it was a letdown after Sinister, but not entirely unenjoyable. If movies like The Conjuring are your thing, give it a try. Never Bring a Knife to a Fire Ax Fight Deliver Us from Evil (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upand- comingweekly.com. 910.484.6200.