What's Happening Now??

The Happening
More Like The Unhappening
Trailers & Mo

There’s never a dull moment, but nothing at all that interesting going on in M Night Shyamalan’s latest trifle, The Happening. You’ll be more thrilled by his previous lackluster effort, Lady in the Water [TWS review], than you will be by this, which is easily his weakest effort to date. The saddest bit of it all is that nothing really happens, unless you count one ‘jump out of your seat’ moment, endless scenes of people running from the wind and trees, and Zoey Deschannel handing in one of the worstestest performances we’ve seen this year. Had someone else directed this quarter-baked environmental disaster flick, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but audiences expect more outta M Night, and the audience we were watching it with starting booing as soon as the credits rolled. Do yourself a flavor, skip this and Netflix The Mist, where sh%t actually happen(ing)s

He’s Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today : Clerks clerk Brian O’Halloran plays a jeep driver, although you’ll only see his eyes looking through a rear-view mirror

Verdictgo: in terms of a M Night movie it’s Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

My Winnipeg
You Can Never Leave Home Again
Trailers & Mo

My Winnipeg is director Guy Maddin‘s beautifully constructed, and often hilarious love/hate poem of the town he has called home since birth. Mixing civic fact and fiction with his own family’s follies, Maddin, with his signature silent era film look in tow, creates his own surreal dream-like take on Manitoba’s capital city, past, present and future. His Winnipeg is a colorful place (shown in gorgeous black & white), filled with dark snowy nights, sleepwalkers, frozen horses, seances, man pageants, elderly hockey legends forever playing in the abandoned arena of the Jets [watch it’s demolition here] and his crotchety mother. What’s true and what’s false isn’t important, cause the mythology he presents is so filled with affection and energy that you’ll want to believe every bit of it

Up Chuk: wees suckers for any hockey player who has ‘chuk’ in their last name, and the Jets had two flamous ones, Dale Hawerchuk and Keith Tkachuk

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Encounters at
The End of The World
The Science of Nature and The Nature of Scientists
Trailers & Mo

Werner Herzog knows a thing or seven about man and his fragile relationship with nature. His films (Fitzcarraldo) and documentaries (Grizzly Man) have explored that idea ad infinitum, and with his uneven, yet engaging Encounters, he takes his probing eyes and didactic husky voice to Antarctica, to find out what the dealio. The ‘encounters’ he has down there with scientists, travelers and other inquiring minds works best when they’re out playing in the snow, but every time we’re indoors, Herzog’s mocking commentary is usually more interesting than the words his interviewees are providing. At least he knows to focus more of the attention on the breathtaking landscape of Antarctica and not on its breathless soundscape

Bowled Over: the main US base of operations down there is McMurdo Station. It aint got much, but it does have a bowling alley!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Quid Pro Quo
Spell & Wheelchair Binding
Trailers & Mo

While we saw the ending coming a kilometer away, it didn’t hold us back from being completely intrigued by Quid Pro Quo‘s story of a paraplegic public radio reporter (the vastly underrated Nick Stahl) investigating an underworld of able-bodied people who wish they were disabled, who finds love and a lot of heartache (with The Departed‘s Vera Farmiga, and her haunting blue eyes) in the process. Director Carlos Brooks may not be hitting an outright home run with his first feature, but he shows great skill and promise in piecing together this odd detective story to give this and his future endeavors a look

We Hate He: jerk actor Jacob Pitts is well on his way to joining Charles Dance & James Woods in our Screen Asshole Guild – Hall of Fame

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Das Happening is playing at a theater new Jew, while Encounters, Winnipeg and Quid are in limited release

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…