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Private Practice, Wed, 9/26 at 9 p.m. on ABC
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Private Practice, Wed, 9/26 at 9 p.m. on ABC
These guys and gals may be all over Hollywood - big screen, small screen, behind the camera, in front of it, possibly on the side of it - but they all come from the same place: the University of Pennsylvania.
There is so much blood in Smokin' Aces that Joe Carnahan makes Quentin Tarantino look like a pansy. Writer-director Joe Carnahan (Narc) weaves together a story about bloodthirsty, money-hungry hitmen trying to take down Vegas entertainer Buddy "Aces" Israel (Jeremy Piven) before he can snitch on his Mob contacts to the Feds (Ray Liotta, Ryan Reynolds). The dialogue is as fast and dirty as the gunplay in a film that is darkly funny and, funnily enough, somewhat serious, too. Unfortunately, this creates an uneven tone, as the comic violence and the serious aftershocks don't quite gel.
Street had an exclusive phone interview with Steve Carell - writer, actor, former 40-year-old virgin - on September 14 to hear his thoughts on his film and TV career. What we found is that he's nothing like Michael Scott, his awkward alter ego on The Office, the Emmy-winning NBC comedy, airing Thursdays at 8:30.
The key difference between Ice Age and Ice Age: The Meltdown is really just that everything is melting. Otherwise, it's a lot more of the same, and that is definitely a good thing. The hilarious herd is still together: Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano), Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary) and Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) -- so the good-natured, we-don't-know-why-we're-friends-but-we-are ribbing continues throughout the movie. The CGI is still remarkable; it's almost as though the animators settled on this plotline just so they could play around with a lot of water, and their joy at work only adds to our joy in the theater. And Scrat the saber-toothed squirrel is still trying to get that acorn (spin-off, anyone?).
Racial tension is sometimes a cop-out for filmmakers, a way of increasing dramatic tension while diverting the audience's attention away from poor casting. But when you do get talent on screen, well, then you need do something with the story, now don't you? In Freedomland, abundant with talent, racial tension is just one aspect of this multi-layered, twisting drama.
Street: How were you able to get into the character of the evil Bill Cox? It's something that's quite out of the norm for your career, and I was wondering what it was like and did you ever find yourself morally repulsed because you have real kids now. How did you keep the film and your personal life separate?
Playwright Michael Hollinger is a classically trained violinist, and his knowledge and background in music wonderfully envelops and reverberates throughout Opus. The play follows a string quartet as it prepares to perform Beethoven's Opus 131 at the White House. The play assembles itself through distinct sequences of events, shifting between present-day rehearsals, past arguments and interviews for a documentary.
In Annapolis, James Franco plays Jake Huard, a shipyard worker who joins the U.S. Naval Academy. Jake is a hardheaded underdog from the wrong side of the river who wants more out of life, but is held back because he thinks no one believes in him. Even though no one would watch a recruit who always follows the rules, Franco is quite charming, and it is fun to watch the rebel begrudgingly accept his role as a leader and friend.
The scenery in The New World is very pretty. The trees are pretty, the water is pretty, the sun is pretty. Point being, love is as beautiful as the landscape. Now that that is settled in the first 15 minutes, let the characters do something. But the thing about this movie is that nothing actually happens. John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher) stare longingly at each other, or after each other, as they walk together in the grass, or walk away from each other in the grass. Then there's a shot of the water or a bird or a tree. There is little dialogue -- almost everything is done through excessively yearning voiceovers -- and what is said is hardly easy to hear, what with all the lushly loud music and historically accurate accents, which apparently means mumbling what few lines an actor has. As a result, the audience is often left wondering what exactly is happening and whether the scene is taking place in a dream or in the present or in the past and oh look, they're staring at each other again and there's another shot of the river. The New World is all mood and emotion, but even if the actors are saying everything with a look, they're not saying nearly enough.
For most of us here at Penn, finding good food is a bit of a challenge. Either we are bound by a meal plan, a stringent budget, and the alluring glow of the computer touch screens at the Wawa hoagie counter. There are also those kids who long to cook, to make good meals for themselves and their friends, but who don't necessarily have the materials. Finally, Penn students no longer have to pilfer Easy Mac from unsuspecting neighbors, but rather, venture into the fine world of gastronomy via the Gourmet of Old City.
Beauford Delaney mixes styles, colors and shapes to present his unique take on the world, and his progression from creating structured cityscapes and portraits to crafting abstract visions can be seen in the exhibit Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris. The paintings are organized in clusters to reflect specific parts of Delaney's career: his early, more realistic work in New York, a partial recreation of the Pyramid Club exhibit in Philadelphia in 1947, and the abstractions in Paris. Whereas much of his early work depicted street scenes full of shapes and people, the later works are primarily just colors, reflecting the freedom he discovered in the abstract style popular in Paris. A key segment of the exhibit consists of Delaney's portraits, particularly those of author and political activist, James Baldwin. The artwork is wildly varied, from the full-body portrait Dark Rapture (1941) to the close-cropped Portrait of James Baldwin (1945) to the abstract The Sage Black (1967).
You probably walk past it all the time on your way to Monday night Quizo at New Deck, but you never actually stop inside. The Black Cat, which is under the same ownership as White Dog Cafe, is often overlooked by the majority of Penn students, but has much more to offer than most other stores around campus.
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