Dance Flick : Widescreen Edition
- Widescreen
Stills from Dance Flick (Click for larger image)
Stills from Dance Flick (Click for larger image)
Features include:
â¢MPAA Rating: PG
â¢Format: DVD
â¢Runtime: 107 minutes
But shocking, intensely dramatized events precipitate Silk's crisis. He remarks of two students who never showed up for class, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Then, at 71, Viagra catapults Silk into "the perpetual state of emergency that is sexual intoxication," and he ignites an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia Farley, 34. She's got a sharp sensibility, "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble," and a melancholy voluptuousness. "I'm back in the tornado," Silk exults. His campus persecutors burn him for it--and his main betrayer is Delphine Roux.
In a short space, it's tough to convey the gale-force quality of Silk's rants, or the odd effect of Zuckerman's narration, alternately retrospective and torrentially in the moment. The flashbacks to Silk's youth in New Jersey are just as important as his turbulent forced r! etirement, because it turns out that for his entire adult life, Silk has been covering up the fact that he is a black man. (If this seems implausible, consider that the famous New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard did the same thing.) Young Silk rejects both the racism that bars him from Woolworth's counter and the Negro solidarity of Howard University. "Neither the they of Woolworth's nor the we of Howard" is for Coleman Silk. "Instead the raw I with all its agility. Self-discovery--that was the punch to the labonz.... Self-knowledge but concealed. What is as powerful as that?"
Silk's contradictions power a great Philip Roth novel, but he's not the only character who packs a punch. Faunia, brutally abused by her Vietnam vet husband (a sketchy guy who seems to have wandered in from a lesser Russell Banks novel), scarred by the death of her kids, is one of Roth's best female characters ever. The self-serving Delphine Roux ! is intriguingly (and convincingly) nutty, and any number of m! inor cha racters pop in, mouth off, kick ass, and vanish, leaving a vivid sense of human passion and perversity behind. You might call it a stain. --Tim Appelo
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret. But it's not the secret of his affair, at seventy-one, with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a savagely wrecked past - a part-time farmhand and a janitor at the college where, until recently, he was the powerful dean of faculty. And it's not the secret of Coleman's alleged racism, which provoked the college witch-hunt that cost him his job and, to his mind, killed his wife. Nor is it the secret of misogyny, despite the best efforts o! f his ambitious young colleague, Professor Delphine Roux, to expose him as a fiend. Coleman's secret has been kept for fifty years: from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, had fabricated his identity and how that cannily controlled life came unraveled. Set in 1990s America, where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciation and rituals of purification, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth's eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives that are as tragically determined by the nation's fate as by the "human stain" that so ineradicably marks human nature. This harrowing, deeply compassionate, and completely absorbing novel is a magnificent successor to his Vietnam-era novel, American Pastoral, and his McCarthy-era novel, I MARRIED A COMMUNIST.
Athena Colle! ge was snoozing complacently in the Berkshires until Coleman ! Silk--fo rmerly "Silky Silk," undefeated welterweight pro boxer--strode in and shook the place awake. This faculty dean sacked the deadwood, made lots of hot new hires, including Yale-spawned literary-theory wunderkind Delphine Roux, and pissed off so many people for so many decades that now, in 1998, they've all turned on him. Silk's character assassination is partly owing to what the novel's narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, calls "the Devil of the Little Place--the gossip, the jealousy, the acrimony, the boredom, the lies."But shocking, intensely dramatized events precipitate Silk's crisis. He remarks of two students who never showed up for class, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Then, at 71, Viagra catapults Silk into "the perpetual state of emergency that is sexual intoxication," and he ignites an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia Farley, 34. She's got a sharp sensibi! lity, "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble," and a melancholy voluptuousness. "I'm back in the tornado," Silk exults. His campus persecutors burn him for it--and his main betrayer is Delphine Roux.
In a short space, it's tough to convey the gale-force quality of Silk's rants, or the odd effect of Zuckerman's narration, alternately retrospective and torrentially in the moment. The flashbacks to Silk's youth in New Jersey are just as important as his turbulent forced retirement, because it turns out that for his entire adult life, Silk has been covering up the fact that he is a black man. (If this seems implausible, consider that the famous New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard did the same thing.) Young Silk rejects both the racism that bars him from Woolworth's counter and the Negro solidarity of Howard University. "Neither the they of Woolworth's nor the we of Howard" is for Coleman Silk. "Instead th! e raw I with all its agility. Self-discovery--that was the punch to the labonz.... Self-knowledge but concealed. What is as powerful as that?"
Silk's contradictions power a great Philip Roth novel, but he's not the only character who packs a punch. Faunia, brutally abused by her Vietnam vet husband (a sketchy guy who seems to have wandered in from a lesser Russell Banks novel), scarred by the death of her kids, is one of Roth's best female characters ever. The self-serving Delphine Roux is intriguingly (and convincingly) nutty, and any number of minor characters pop in, mouth off, kick ass, and vanish, leaving a vivid sense of human passion and perversity behind. You might call it a stain. --Tim Appelo
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about! Silk would have astonished his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret. But it's not the secret of his affair, at seventy-one, with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a savagely wrecked past - a part-time farmhand and a janitor at the college where, until recently, he was the powerful dean of faculty. And it's not the secret of Coleman's alleged racism, which provoked the college witch-hunt that cost him his job and, to his mind, killed his wife. Nor is it the secret of misogyny, despite the best efforts of his ambitious young colleague, Professor Delphine Roux, to expose him as a fiend. Coleman's secret has been kept for fifty years: from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, had fabricated his identity and how that cannily controlled life came unraveled. Set in 1990s America, where conflic! ting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest th! rough pu blic denunciation and rituals of purification, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth's eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives that are as tragically determined by the nation's fate as by the "human stain" that so ineradicably marks human nature. This harrowing, deeply compassionate, and completely absorbing novel is a magnificent successor to his Vietnam-era novel, American Pastoral, and his McCarthy-era novel, I MARRIED A COMMUNIST.
Captain Alex Hunter and his highly trained commandos, along with a team of scientists, are fast tracked to the hot zone to find out what went wrong. Meanwhile, the alluring petrobiologist Aimee Weir is sent to follow up on the detection of a vast underground reservoir. If the unidentified substance proves to be oil, every country in the world will want to know about itâ"even wage war over it. Or worse.
Once suspended into the caves, Alex, Aimee, and the others canât locate a single survivorâ"or even a trace of their remains. Nor is there a energy source, only specters of the dead haunting the tunnels. But soon they will discover that something very much alive is brewing beneath the surface. It i! s a force that dates back to the very dawn of timeâ"an ancient terror that hunts and kills to surviveâ¦
Captain Alex Hunter and his highly trained commandos, along with a team of scientists, are fast tracked to the hot zone to find out what went wrong. Meanwhile, the alluring petrobiologist Aimee Weir is sent to follow up on the detection of a vast underground reservoir. If the unidentified substance proves to be oil, every country in the world will want to know about itâ"even wage war over it. Or worse.
Once suspended into the caves, Alex, Aimee, and the others canât locate a single survivorâ"or even a trace of their remains. Nor is there a energy source, only specters of the dead haunting the tunnels. But soon they will discover that something very much aliv! e is brewing beneath the surface. It is a force that dates bac! k to the very dawn of timeâ"an ancient terror that hunts and kills to surviveâ¦
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Andie needs to prove she can dump a guy in 10 days. Ben needs to prove he can win a girl in 10 days. Now, the clock is ticking - and the year's most wildly entertaining comedy smash is off and running in this irresistible tale of sex, lies and outrageous romantic fireworks! !
Sahara Master explorer Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey) takes on the adventure of his life when he embarks on a treasure hunt through some of the most dangerous regions of North Africa. Searching for whal locals call "The Ship of Death", a long lost Civil War battleship filled with coins, Pitt and his wisecracking sidekick (Steve Zahn) use their wits and clever heroics to help Doctor Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz) who believes the ship may be linked to mysterious deaths in the very same area.Failure to Launch
The plot of Failure to Launch is utterly implausible, yet the movie is thoroughly fun. Tripp (laid-back Matthew McConaughey, Sahara, Dazed and Confused) is a 35-year-old man who still lives with his parents (Kathy Bates, Misery, and ex-quarterback Terry Bradshaw)--and they aren't happy about it. Eager to get him out of the nest, they hire Paula (Sex and the City's Sarah Jessica Parker), a professional motivator who feigns rel! ationships with boy-men so that their improved self-esteem wil! l lead t hem to leave the nest. But Tripp's not the usual insecure shut-in Paula's used to, and as sparks fly, Paula finds herself losing her professional distance. This sort of set-up drove classic screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s; once you embrace the absurdity, the movie zips along with a surprising balance of humor and bittersweet shadings. Failure to Launch gets a huge boost from the supporting performance of Zooey Deschanel (Elf) as Paula's housemate Kit--part sourpuss, part tomboy, and entirely sexy and winning. McConaughey and Parker have enjoyable chemistry and carry the movie well, but Deschanel is an oddball romantic-heroine-in-waiting. Also featuring Bradley Cooper (Alias) and Justin Bartha (National Treasure). --Bret Fetzer
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Kate Hudson twinkles as the heroine of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, a magazine writer assigned to date a guy, make all the mistakes girls make that drive guys awa! y (being clingy, talking in baby-talk, etc.), and record the process like a sociological experiment. However, the guy she picks--rangy Matthew McConaughey--is an advertising executive who's just bet that he can make a woman fall in love with him in ten days; if he succeeds, he'll win a huge account that will make his career. The set-up is completely absurd, but the collision of their efforts to woo and repel creates some pretty funny scenes. McConaughey's easy charm and Hudson's lightweight impishness play well together and the plot, though strictly Hollywood formula, chugs along efficiently. At moments Hudson seems to channel her mother, Goldie Hawn, to slightly unnerving effect. --Bret Fetzer
Sahara
It took more than 25 years for another Clive Cussler novel to come to the screen after the financial and critical disaster of Raise the Titanic. Based on Cussler's oddly landlocked adventure, Sahara finds the author's hero, Dirk Pitt (Matthe! w McConaughey)--a sort of all-American, high seas variation of! James B ond--in Africa looking for a Confederate ironclad ship that impossibly might have ended up there. Soon he and his faithful sidekick Al Giordino (Steve Zahn) are lost in another adventure, discovering a deadly contaminate being tracked by a beautiful doctor (Penelope Cruz). The results are checkered: there's no one outstanding sequence, but the action is enjoyably varied, while the thrills are mild yet not bombastic or gratuitous. The cast are all adept in their roles, yet the only one who sparkles is the scene-stealing Zahn, cast against type; McConaughey, who also produced, knows he might be starting a franchise character and plays it safe. He's never as dangerous as Cussler's hero is on the page (except in his introduction), and in fact, the whole movie plays towards comedy, infused by a soundtrack of 70s FM radio monsters. Cussler fanatics may not like this lighter fare, especially with the archeological portion (a Cussler strong point) not fully embraced, but with a very! , very likable cast and colorful settings, Sahara is a kindler, gentler action film that has all the elements in place for a better, more memorable franchise if anyone cares to attempt it. --Doug ThomasMatthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson go for the gold (and the diamonds, emeralds and rubies) as a just-divorced couple who bicker and banter their way through an adventure- and laugh-packed undersea treasure hunt. McConaughey is Finn, in love with his ex (Hudson) and in deep with gangster Bigg Bunny. After eight years of searching, Finn gets a clue to the whereabouts of the Queenâs Dowry, a fabulous fortune that mysteriously disappeared in the Caribbean in 1715. Now all he has to do is get the gold, get the girl and get going before Bigg Bunny gets him. Directed by Andy Tennant (Hitch), Foolâs Gold glitters with danger, action, romance, comedy, great one-liners â" and a great time to be had by all!The "gold" of the title refers to an elusive pirate's booty, ! but it just as easily could mean the sun-washed glistening sho! res of F lorida, or the sumptuously tanned bodies of its appealing stars, Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. The whole film is awash in golden highlights, and the scenery and cinematography make the experience akin to taking a tropical holiday. Hudson and McConaughey reprise the chemistry they first exhibited in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, sparking and tangling and kvetching, while all the while the audience knows, of course, they adore each other and are perfect for each other. McConaughey is a dreamer, on the trail of a sunken pirate's treasure, and Hudson his now-ex-wife, a historian who prefers life to be a little more sedate. McConaughey, as Finn, delivers impassioned speeches to Hudson, as Tess, saying, "You want history? It's in the ocean, lady!" Before you can say Romancing the Stone, Tess and Finn are grudgingly reunited in search of the booty. If the plot doesn't contain many surprises, the froth of the stars' chemistry is amiable and makes for a perfect d! ate movie. Scuba divers may find McConaughey's antics below the surface to be wildly unbelievable and usually fatal, but in the end viewers will root for him to surface, and recapture the heart of his lady love. --A.T. Hurley