Despite the amazing difficulty of shooting this film, including the North Carolina heat and hard-to-reach location shots, watching it is a beautiful and altogether memorable experience. The real center of this movie is the deep beauty of the Blue Ridge mountains. (I watch it and get homesick.) It is beauty and meaning transmitted without words. Its English and French, American Indian and Frontiersman live together in a mythological world, a rude eden, where the Platonic forms of the good, of courage, of eros and beauty, of savagery and violence all come close to the surface of things and allow themselves to be glimpsed in the expression of faces, the inclination of eyes. The main actors, Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe are beautiful without the help of Los Angeles. There is also the amazing linguistic intelligence demonstrated by the American and Canadian Indian actors, Wes Studi (Magua) and Dennis Banks (Ongewasgone). Wes Studi did a magnificent job in his role of Magua. Magua is our own ID, pushed up against the equally heartless Europeans and in competition with Day-Lewis’ Nathaniel Poe. It goes without question that the 20 seconds of eternity captured in the face of Jodhi May is captivating beyond description. Warning, the reel “Promontory” by Trevor Jones can get stuck in one’s head for a lifetime.

This movie is low on plot and high on fun. Watch it for the camp. Enjoy the way Besson uses elements from the sci-fi movie tradition and adds so many little touches of his own, for example, giving the security guard on board the flying cruise ship a personality and lifting him out of merely a stock character. Some silly sophmoric sexual innuendoes. Jovovich’s performance, when you get over what you think her performance will be, is actually very good. Willis could read a phone book. They did this project for the after wraps party.

unfunny, unmemorable, lots of bad language and some nudity. You keep waiting for the film to get better, it never does. Slow and slower. Why did this project attract so much talent? You know it is bad when the best thing about it is the CGI fish. At best it is a treatment of Fatherhood, but even that is going some 100 fathoms deeper than this ever gets. Do yourself a favor and watch the Discovery channel.

James Schmidt’s critical study focuses on the significance for social theory of the writings of [Maurice Merleau-Ponty], and casts new light on his achivements. It explores the ways in which Ponty anticipated many of the philosophical trends that would emerge in the decade after his death and examines his views on such questions as the relationship between phenomenology adn the social sciences, the nature of our relations with others, and the degree to which the phenomenon of linguistic expression can serve as a paradigm for the writing of history. By showing how Ponty’s views evolved through a dialogue with contemporaries Sartre, Lukacs, Levi-Strauss and Lacan, this book provides a comprehensive re-examination of the work of Ponty and offers an introduction to some of the most important currents in contemporary social thought.

Sting hit a groove right after “Nothing Like the Sun” (IMHO his best solo work), and 10-Tales fits well within it. Quirky character stories. Scattered, depressing, English-major references. “Fields of Gold” is its best track.

Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenback, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.

In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. “It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom,” Mann wrote. “But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist’s dignity.”

This is the second of the “Three Colors” trilogy “Red” “White” and “Blue”; the colors symbolizing liberty, equality and fraternity. White, therefore, was written around the destructive dynamics of a relationship based upon great inequality. The main characters are entrepreneurs, capitalists, passionate people, able to make independent choices. What unites them is their love for each other, sort of. Because of the inequality of their sexual desire, the love between them is unconsummated. Kieslowski seems to be asking whether equality is possible with and without love. Ultimately, he ends on a dark, Hobbsean note: revenge and control is stronger.

As Kieslowski’s last film, “Red” pulses with life. In the opening scene, the mechanization of a failed telephone call is split open to reveal the heart-blood desire for the Other person within a community of similar desires. Though the pacing is slow, and the story somewhat predictable, it holds the attention and provokes some good conversations with friends and one’s spouse.

Unfortunately, its subject – the beat generation – and language is too cold-war to be of any real use and interest in the 21st century.

Kick represents the high-point of INXS’ pop-rock, with its snappy distorted riffs and brass-embellished melody lines. More than this, however, Michael Hutchence seemed to be reaching beyond his subjects. His lyrics began to take on a sense of the transcendence and wonder behind the ordinary, and to embrace a sense of mission thereby (albiet crudely).