Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

In the Meantime

Without any question the first claim on my attention this week should be Alejandro Amenábar's The Sea Inside, one of the five nominees for the foreign-film Oscar, which opened at the Hillcrest last Friday. (Unless it should be Zana Briski's and Ross Kauffman's Born into Brothels, one of the five nominees for the documentary Oscar, which opened last Friday at the Ken and moves over to the Hillcrest tomorrow.) But between my taking my car to the shop, twice, for a new driver's-side mirror, taking my dangling arm to the doctor for an X-ray, and taking my fanny to the couch for Super Bowl XXXIX, I had time barely to see it, not additionally to say something about it. (It's not as good as the New England Patriots, I'll say that much.) The following will have to suffice.

Bride and Prejudice, directed and co-written by Bend It Like Beckham's Gurinder Chadha, is a Jane Austen-pattern fairy tale cut out of the gaudy fabric of a Bollywood musical. After pointlessly altering the first word of the familiar title, the filmmaker aggressively pushes the third word into the realm of race relations, as an Ugly American hotel king, retaining the family name of Darcy, and idly looking to acquire a property in what he views as "Hicksville, India," butts heads with a marriageable but modern-minded native ("I thought we got rid of imperialists like you"), quite impervious to the advice of her conventional mother: "Don't say anything too intelligent." (It is still a fairy tale, for all that, a long way shy of a Kipling-pattern miscegenation tale along the lines of Without Benefit of Clergy or Beyond the Pale.) The American, played or merely represented by the callow, wooden, male-modelly Martin Henderson, is so unappealing that the viewer is apt to root against détente, and is apt to think less of the immensely appealing Aishwarya Rai when she inevitably relents. The song-and-dance number of the four unmarried sisters in their pj's, "No Life without Wife," is the tipsy highpoint, though there are long dry spells during which you can almost forget that the movie is a musical.

Sponsored
Sponsored

The Wedding Date goes straight downhill from its title, a decorous double entendre referring at once to the heroine's paid escort and to the social occasion to which she is being escorted -- her baby sister's nuptials. The reason for the escort -- to enable the heroine to hold up her head in front of family and former fiancé -- has roots in psychological reality, but the roots run shallow: it would be a very cavalier woman, especially when coughing up a fee of $6000, who would wait till she was aboard the airplane to meet the man she intends to present as her new beau. The gigolo's suitability, at a single glance, as a candidate for serious romance in a frothy comedy is a gauge of the movie's superficiality. While he liberally doles out the sort of platitudes that win him the epithet of "the Yoda of escorts," as well as the sort of sweet nothings that clog arteries and rot teeth ("I think I'd miss you even if we'd never met"), his only evident asset is his surface polish. The B-list principals -- Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney -- take us no nearer a sense of reality while taking us much farther from a sense of enchantment. Under the willfully blind direction of Clare Kilner, the movie eventually earns some laughs only when it turns earnest.

Hitch, a more literal definition of a "date" movie, has the opposite problem. Rather than treating a squirmy-making situation as a harmless frolic, it spends a lot of time squirming where there is no apparent reason. An anonymous Date Doctor, working by personal referrals only, dispenses self-help slogans ("With no guile and no game, there's no girl") and empirical pearls of wisdom ("Eight out of ten women believe that one kiss will tell them everything they need to know about a relationship") to a select group of male clients carefully screened for their moral fiber and their honorable intentions. Yet the women in the movie, as the men intuitively fear they will, react to this newfangled advisor to the lovelorn, this better-dressed Cupid, as if he were the satanic spawn of Valmont and Mme. de Merteuil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Will Smith tries to apologize for his insufferable air of overconfidence by way of a cartoonish depiction of a shellfish allergy (his face swelling like a battered boxer's), a flashback to his days as a collegiate nerd, and a genuinely funny bout of inarticulacy when pleading his case to his steamed girlfriend. Director Andy Tennant sees to it that the star gets his accustomed surplus of closeups. In fact he sees to it that the B-list support team -- Eva Mendes, Kevin James, Amber Valletta, Julie Ann Emery -- get more than their share of closeups, too. In fact he sees to little else.

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, although Ong-Bak is in point of fact not a Thai warrior, is a tacky Thai martial-arts adventure about a backwater Buddha's head severed and stolen by Bangkok bad guys, and about the acrobatic rube who answers the call: "If we can't recover Ong-Bak's head, our village is doomed." The filmmaking style places a heavy emphasis on instant replays, and the martial-arts style -- which seems to be known as Muay Thai -- places a heavy emphasis on elbows, especially the elbow brought down on the crown of the head like a poleax. Tony Jaa, the would-be next Jackie Chan, has a lot of moves, but no movie around them.

Finally, a couple of brief public service announcements. The first would direct your attention to the Fifteenth Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival, commencing tonight, the 10th, and continuing through the 20th, at the various venues of the AMC La Jolla 12, Mann Hazard Center 7, Ultrastar Poway 10, and the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center. There's little I can say beforehand that I haven't said before, including the suggestion to visit www.lfjcc.org for the complete schedule.

The second would direct your attention to something I have never before mentioned in print, nor seen mentioned, which goes by the name of the Secret Cinema Salon, convening every other Sunday night since I don't know when. Part of the "secret" of the thing is the identity of the film -- meaning the DVD or video -- to be shown and discussed, an identity only hinted at in the cryptic clues dispatched by the Secret Curator. (Write [email protected], to get on the mailing list.) I myself have never attended, but I have been intrigued. A cabal of cineastes gathering together without fanfare, to watch and to talk about "films that might not otherwise find their way to this sleepy town of ours," conjures up something of the glamour of the French Resistance or the Book People in Fahrenheit 451. To give you some idea: last month's offerings -- the secret is now out -- were two films championed by the late Susan Sontag and presented in tribute to her, Alexander Sokurov's Moloch and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. For this current month the Secret Curator has opted to break his own code in the greater interest of a Tsunami Relief fund (suggested donation: $10) and to disclose in advance the identities of two scheduled Thai films, Mysterious Object at Noon on the 13th and Last Life in the Universe on the 27th. (By the mere sound of them, they must be slightly tonier than Ong-Bak.) The time and location, as ever, will be seven o'clock at the Media Arts Center, 921 25th Street, in Golden Hill. A bit off the beaten path, but then that's the whole idea.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

San Diego Reader 2024 Music & Arts Issue

Favorite fakers: Baby Bushka, Fleetwood Max, Electric Waste Band, Oceans, Geezer – plus upcoming tribute schedule
Next Article

20 Best Online Casinos USA For Real Money (2024 List)

USA Online Casinos: Top 20 Online Casino Sites of 2024

Without any question the first claim on my attention this week should be Alejandro Amenábar's The Sea Inside, one of the five nominees for the foreign-film Oscar, which opened at the Hillcrest last Friday. (Unless it should be Zana Briski's and Ross Kauffman's Born into Brothels, one of the five nominees for the documentary Oscar, which opened last Friday at the Ken and moves over to the Hillcrest tomorrow.) But between my taking my car to the shop, twice, for a new driver's-side mirror, taking my dangling arm to the doctor for an X-ray, and taking my fanny to the couch for Super Bowl XXXIX, I had time barely to see it, not additionally to say something about it. (It's not as good as the New England Patriots, I'll say that much.) The following will have to suffice.

Bride and Prejudice, directed and co-written by Bend It Like Beckham's Gurinder Chadha, is a Jane Austen-pattern fairy tale cut out of the gaudy fabric of a Bollywood musical. After pointlessly altering the first word of the familiar title, the filmmaker aggressively pushes the third word into the realm of race relations, as an Ugly American hotel king, retaining the family name of Darcy, and idly looking to acquire a property in what he views as "Hicksville, India," butts heads with a marriageable but modern-minded native ("I thought we got rid of imperialists like you"), quite impervious to the advice of her conventional mother: "Don't say anything too intelligent." (It is still a fairy tale, for all that, a long way shy of a Kipling-pattern miscegenation tale along the lines of Without Benefit of Clergy or Beyond the Pale.) The American, played or merely represented by the callow, wooden, male-modelly Martin Henderson, is so unappealing that the viewer is apt to root against détente, and is apt to think less of the immensely appealing Aishwarya Rai when she inevitably relents. The song-and-dance number of the four unmarried sisters in their pj's, "No Life without Wife," is the tipsy highpoint, though there are long dry spells during which you can almost forget that the movie is a musical.

Sponsored
Sponsored

The Wedding Date goes straight downhill from its title, a decorous double entendre referring at once to the heroine's paid escort and to the social occasion to which she is being escorted -- her baby sister's nuptials. The reason for the escort -- to enable the heroine to hold up her head in front of family and former fiancé -- has roots in psychological reality, but the roots run shallow: it would be a very cavalier woman, especially when coughing up a fee of $6000, who would wait till she was aboard the airplane to meet the man she intends to present as her new beau. The gigolo's suitability, at a single glance, as a candidate for serious romance in a frothy comedy is a gauge of the movie's superficiality. While he liberally doles out the sort of platitudes that win him the epithet of "the Yoda of escorts," as well as the sort of sweet nothings that clog arteries and rot teeth ("I think I'd miss you even if we'd never met"), his only evident asset is his surface polish. The B-list principals -- Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney -- take us no nearer a sense of reality while taking us much farther from a sense of enchantment. Under the willfully blind direction of Clare Kilner, the movie eventually earns some laughs only when it turns earnest.

Hitch, a more literal definition of a "date" movie, has the opposite problem. Rather than treating a squirmy-making situation as a harmless frolic, it spends a lot of time squirming where there is no apparent reason. An anonymous Date Doctor, working by personal referrals only, dispenses self-help slogans ("With no guile and no game, there's no girl") and empirical pearls of wisdom ("Eight out of ten women believe that one kiss will tell them everything they need to know about a relationship") to a select group of male clients carefully screened for their moral fiber and their honorable intentions. Yet the women in the movie, as the men intuitively fear they will, react to this newfangled advisor to the lovelorn, this better-dressed Cupid, as if he were the satanic spawn of Valmont and Mme. de Merteuil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Will Smith tries to apologize for his insufferable air of overconfidence by way of a cartoonish depiction of a shellfish allergy (his face swelling like a battered boxer's), a flashback to his days as a collegiate nerd, and a genuinely funny bout of inarticulacy when pleading his case to his steamed girlfriend. Director Andy Tennant sees to it that the star gets his accustomed surplus of closeups. In fact he sees to it that the B-list support team -- Eva Mendes, Kevin James, Amber Valletta, Julie Ann Emery -- get more than their share of closeups, too. In fact he sees to little else.

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, although Ong-Bak is in point of fact not a Thai warrior, is a tacky Thai martial-arts adventure about a backwater Buddha's head severed and stolen by Bangkok bad guys, and about the acrobatic rube who answers the call: "If we can't recover Ong-Bak's head, our village is doomed." The filmmaking style places a heavy emphasis on instant replays, and the martial-arts style -- which seems to be known as Muay Thai -- places a heavy emphasis on elbows, especially the elbow brought down on the crown of the head like a poleax. Tony Jaa, the would-be next Jackie Chan, has a lot of moves, but no movie around them.

Finally, a couple of brief public service announcements. The first would direct your attention to the Fifteenth Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival, commencing tonight, the 10th, and continuing through the 20th, at the various venues of the AMC La Jolla 12, Mann Hazard Center 7, Ultrastar Poway 10, and the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center. There's little I can say beforehand that I haven't said before, including the suggestion to visit www.lfjcc.org for the complete schedule.

The second would direct your attention to something I have never before mentioned in print, nor seen mentioned, which goes by the name of the Secret Cinema Salon, convening every other Sunday night since I don't know when. Part of the "secret" of the thing is the identity of the film -- meaning the DVD or video -- to be shown and discussed, an identity only hinted at in the cryptic clues dispatched by the Secret Curator. (Write [email protected], to get on the mailing list.) I myself have never attended, but I have been intrigued. A cabal of cineastes gathering together without fanfare, to watch and to talk about "films that might not otherwise find their way to this sleepy town of ours," conjures up something of the glamour of the French Resistance or the Book People in Fahrenheit 451. To give you some idea: last month's offerings -- the secret is now out -- were two films championed by the late Susan Sontag and presented in tribute to her, Alexander Sokurov's Moloch and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. For this current month the Secret Curator has opted to break his own code in the greater interest of a Tsunami Relief fund (suggested donation: $10) and to disclose in advance the identities of two scheduled Thai films, Mysterious Object at Noon on the 13th and Last Life in the Universe on the 27th. (By the mere sound of them, they must be slightly tonier than Ong-Bak.) The time and location, as ever, will be seven o'clock at the Media Arts Center, 921 25th Street, in Golden Hill. A bit off the beaten path, but then that's the whole idea.

Comments
Sponsored
Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

San Diego's Uptown Planners challenged by renters from Vibrant Uptown

Two La Jolla planning groups fight for predominance
Next Article

Best Sports Betting Sites - 10 Online Sportsbooks Ranked for 2024

Best Sports Betting Sites (2024) - Reviews of TOP Online Sportsbooks
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.