I’m not going to dispense needlessly obvious advice. That means that I’m not going to tell anyone that they shouldn’t go see “Sorority Row.” If someone wants to drop ten bucks at Southpoint to chuckle at the murderous antics of the vacuous and the beautiful then by all means, go stimulate that economy! Most people, however, probably won’t want to throw their money away on something that is guaranteed to be nothing more than distracting entertainment. That’s why I’m here to help sort through the movies opening in the area this weekend. The latest crop certainly looks a lot more promising than it has for some time, but we all know looks can be deceiving. So let’s look a little closer at a couple of them and see what holds up on paper (or computer screen).
-“9” (Wide Release): Director Shane Acker is treading on tenuous ground with his new feature length film, based on a popular animated short of the same name. He’s looking for elbow room among the big boys of computer animated feature films (such as Pixar), but I find it doubtful that his tale will warrant a lot of notice, much less deference. First of all, being produced by Tim Burton, it looks pretty clear from every trailer I’ve seen that it reeks of Burton’s bubble-gum gothic sensibility. Neon streaks of UV-light contrasting with smoky and dark post-apocalyptic environs doesn’t equal visual splendor anymore, at least not when it comes from Burton. It’s a recipe for a clothing line at Hot Topic more than anything else. Acker too seems to be suffering from a certain poverty of imagination. His story focuses on a group of nine rag dolls who have become animate in a future world destroyed by warfare, where machines have wiped out most of humanity. Unoriginality alert: nine protagonists; humanity destroyed by war machines. Acker was a computer animator on Peter Jackson’s final installation in the Lord of the Rings series, “The Return of the King.” It appears that he’s borrowed a few plot devices for his own purposes. The result, naturally, looks hackneyed.
-“Soul Power” (The Chelsea): In 1974 there was a widely publicized heavy-weight boxing match between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman in Zaire. “The Rumble in the Jungle,” it was so exotically named. Less known than the boxing match was a soul and funk concert that accompanied it, “Zaire ’74.” Featuring such stars as B. B. King and James Brown, the concert was meant to promote the boxing match and strengthen the cultural ties between Africans and African Americans. (The concert was conceived by the famous South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, and took place during the international uproar over apartheid.) “Soul Power” is a music documentary (it looks to be somewhere along the lines of “Woodstock” or “The Last Waltz”) that focuses on how downright funky things got in the steamy African heartland during the concert. And from the trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnDNrH0mzSE), it does look like things will get funky. At the very least, funkier than things have ever been in the squarest movie theater in the Triangle.
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