Film
ALSO RELEASED
Nightmare Before Christmas 30 (PG) 80min 0.. Tim Burton. Henry Selick and Danny Elfman's bizarrely moving 1993 Christmas tale gets a 3D makeover to bring in the shekels. General release from Fri 17 Nov.
Something New (PG) 100min 00 Kenya (Sanaa Lathan) is a beautiful. successful lawyer who laments her difficulty in finding the 'ideal black man' and then her co- worker sets her on a blind date with successful, educated. and attractive landscape architect Brian (Simon Baker) — who turns out to be white. Sparks fly. as do everyone's racial presumptions. Likeable. relaxingly paced it totally formulaic Culture clash romance. General release from Fri 24 Nov.
Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (U) 91 min 0 Tired third outing for Tim Allen as he reprises the role of Scott Calvin aka Santa. This time he‘s juggling a full house of family and the mischievous Jack Frost (Martin Short) with nausea inducing re8ults. Are Our children really so ill served by this c0untry's educational establishments that they actually like this franchised slush? And anyway in this country we call him Father Christmas not sodding Santa Claus! General release from Fri 24 Nov.
Fated (15) 91 min 00 Cack but at least ambitious low budget romantic fantasy set in Liverpool about bOuncer on the run Cal (Brendan McKay) who. after accidentally burning his brother's club down gets the calling to turn a living statue back into a beautiful yOung lady by planting a kiss on her lips. But will he do it in time? Michael Angelis. Craig Charles and Lee Boardman also star. ls right La! Selected release from Fri 24 Nov.
Jackass Number No (18) 92min 0.. More TV on the big screen as Johnny Knoxville and cohorts Bam Margera. Chris Pontius. and Steve-O line up and execute another series of wince- inducing stunts. Highlights this time around include unprotected bullfighting. the boys being blasted with riot control pellets: fellow skate video alumnus Spike Jonze in elderly-woman makeup losing his clothing in public; and Knoxville blasting off on the OutSIde of a rocket. Godammit it's funnier than it has any right to be! General release from Fri 24 Nov.
46 THE LIST 16430 Nov 2006
THRILLER ANTIBODIES (18) 122min WOO.
Devoutly religious family man and village policeman Michael Martens (Wotan Wilke Mbhring) is having a bad year. A young girl, his son's best friend. has been murdered on his patch. plus most of the village hates him because he insists that DNA swab samples are taken from all 389 residents. When legendary serial boy killer Gabriel Engel (Andre Hennicke) is finally captured by big city police. however. Michael is allowed time with him to find out if girls had also been part of his back catalogue. Engels refuses to talk to anyone but Martens. so the rural cop soon becomes central to the investigation. but the toll on him — spiritually. emotionally and physically is to be huge.
lmrnensely promising German auteur. and former editor of German movie fanzine X-TRO. Christian Alvert's second feature (after 1999's unsettling sadomasochist thriller Curiosity & the Cat) is an expertly realised. darkly engrossing affair. A superb opening sequence gives way to a thriller. which. though feted for its similarities in parts to both Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs. actually shares more ground with Sidney Lurnet's procedural policiers (Prince of the City. 0&4). Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (from a theological meltdown perspective anyway) and Wolf Rilla's remarkable minimalist adaptation of John Wyndham 's Village of the Damned.
DeSpite its excessive length and occasionally terrible script — full of arse aching exposition — and some really dodgy shouty performances (mostly from the big city pigs) Antibodies still manages to intrigue and fascinate as it details one man‘s decent into a personal hell. Alvert. who is currently shooting social worker thriller Case 39 with Renee Zellweger, is certainly a filmmaker to keep an eye on from the Deutsch Republik. (Paul Dale) I Cinewor/d Renfrew Street. Glasgow from Fri 7 7 Nov.
DOCUMENTARY/EDUCATIONAL THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA
(15) 150min 0000
If you want to know why Northern California's avian population went nuts in The Birds. or how The Wizard of Oz was able to send Dorothy home to Kansas despite being a fraudulent huckster. then this is the film for you. A collaboration between Slovenian philosopher. psychoanalyst and film buff Slavoj Zizek and English documentary filmmaker Sophie Fiennes. The Pervert 's Guide is an
illuminating. thought-provoking and very entertaining three-part Freudian examination of classic and contemporary Western cinema.
The ideas are Culled from Zizek's published writings on cinema (which he calls 'the ultimate perverts art [because] it tells you how to desire'). and here they're illustrated with film clips chosen by Fiennes. The eccentric and charismatic Zi7ek presents his theories himself. and his manic enthusiasm and earthy scatological humour is constantly charming. frequently funny and never drny academic. Enjoyable enough as these dialogues are. Fiennes gives them a marvellous cinematic twist by recreating scenes from the films and placing Zirek in them. (Miles Fielder) I GFT. Glasgow from Fri 24—Sun 26 Nov. See interview. page 44.
DOCUMENTARY K2
(12) 98min 0...
Filmed over five weeks at the Austrian concentration camp. Mauthausen. documentarian Rex Bloornstein follows t0ur guides and tourists around the site as visitors discover the drip drip accumulation of the dehumanisation process.
As the guides move from room to room explaining how when the prisoners arrived they would be stripped and shaved all over. then detail the impossmly meagre diet. the very limited sanitary conditions and. finally. the bodies crammed into the showers that doubled up as gas chambers. KZ works its way into our inner consciousness. As someone says ab0ut the instruments and devices used in the death camp. just accepting the presence of these things is 'an attack on the mind‘. One of the guides admits just how much the camp has altered his life. Since taking on the job eight years ago he's become an alcoholic. argues with his wife constantly and takes anti depressants.
A voiceover during the credits states: 'There is no need to grasp the full extent of the tragedy that took place here. There is a safety device inside you that will protect you. Otherwise
there might be the danger that one would lose one's mind.‘ This might sound very melodramatic and suggest the big statement. but the film goes out of its way to focus on the small- scale and immediate. no matter if. for the tour guides at least. the safety device isn't quite working.
(Tony McKibbin)
I Film/rouse, Edinburgh on Tue 27 Nov only
DOCUMENTARY RAMPAGE (15) 108min COO
Rampage is the middle film in a trilogy by Australian filmmaker George Gittoes. The first Soundtrack of War looked at how music plays a part in US army life in Iraq. Rampage follows Elliot Lovett. a very gifted young rapper who Gittoes met while he was serving in Iraq. back to the Brown Sub project he comes from in Miami. an area that the Lovett believes is way more dangerous than Baghdad. From this point Gittoes plays everything by ear and enters the Lovett family world where Elliot's equally talented brothers try to survive in what is basically a war 7one in America's backyard. Death. however. has a way of surprising everyone and Gittoes follows this close family through grief and their attempts to escape the ghetto.
This leisurely, impassioned and genuinely moving film takes equal influence from Steve James Hoop Dreams and Nick Broomfield's Biggie and Tupac. The trouble is that Gittoes is a kindly if awkward and unnatural presence in his own film. for at least half the film he clumsily bumbles around in search of an angle and when he finds one it almost seems to oven/vhelm him. This is. however. a raw pertrait of the struggles of the US underclass at this time of war and repression. Despite its community video feel and cheesecake Hip Hop euphoria it's still a bold attempt to really examine US street music and the machinations of the companies that are trying to translate it into dollars. As a state of the nation snap shot it deserves to be bracketed alongside Spike Lee's much feted Hurricane Katrina dOCumentary When the Levees Broke. (Paul Dale)
I Odeon Fort Kinnaird, Edinburgh from Fri 24 Nov.