1 o m's
By Thomas LeClair
Film Critic
tjll9lgpsu.edu
Hide and Seek -
Twentieth Century Fox presents
a film directed by John Poison.
Written by Ari Schlossberg.
Starring Robert De Niro, Dakota
Fanning, Famke Janssen,
and Elisabeth Shue. Running
time 100 minutes. Rated R (for
disturbing images and violence).
Well, the start of the 2005 film
season is mediocre at best. John
Poison's previous film, the 2002
teen thriller, Swimfan, used the
standard cliché horror tactics
to scare high schoolers. Now
Poison uses the same formula
with talented actors, not to scare
using the film or the story itself,
but by making us not want to see
another film with these once A
list actors.
The story, as written by Ari
PBS warns about swear words
By David Bauder
AP Writer
The public broadcaster is distrib
uting "clean" and "raw" versions
of next Tuesday's "Frontline"
documentary about the Iraq war,
titled "A Company of Soldiers,"
and is warning it can't insure sta
tions against FCC fines stem
ming from the language.
It's an example of the televi
sion's industry's continued un-
"We're upset that
we're put in the po
sition of having to
make a special cir
cumstance of this
and PBS is put in
the position of not
being able to have
viewers see this."
-David Fanning,
PBS producer
certainty about Federal Commu
nications Commission standards
for language and content, and a
real-life echo of last fall's decision
by 66 ABC affiliates not to air the
movie "Saving Private Ryan."
The documentary contains 13
expletives spoken by soldiers.
"Frontline" producers decided to
leave them in because it present
ed a true picture of how these
men and women react to the fear
and stress of war, said David
Fanning, the show's executive
producer.
The producers also made a sep
arate version of the documentary
with the words edited out, for use
Tonifoole
Schlossberg, involves a widower,
Dr. David Calloway (De Niro)
and his young daughter, Emily
(Dakota Fanning), who move far
into the New York wilderness to
escape the urban lifestyle and try
to start their lives over after the
suicide of David's wife, Emily's
mother. The two start their "new"
lives; David is keeping a log of
Emily's progression, and Emily
is playing with her new imaginary
friend, Charlie.
David and Emily are introduced
to their next-door neighbors who
are in a similar predicament; they
just lost their child, who judging
by the pictures on the mantle,
looks like she passed away from
leukemia. As the film progresses,
Charlie forces Emily to watch him
commit horrific acts, and gets
into serious problems with David,
who thinks Emily is committing
these acts herself as a protest
to the loss of her mother. Emily
is now on her own, trying to stop
Charlie from killing her, or David.
by some of PBS's 170 stations in
more conservative parts of the
country. "Frontline" is produced
by Boston's WGBH, which will air
the raw version.
Instead, PBS decided to send
the clean version out to all of
its stations. The raw version will
also be made available, but sta
tion managers will have to make
a special effort to tape it in ad
vance.
PBS is also warning its stations
that if they want to put them
selves at risk of an FCC fine for
language, the system can't in
sure them, said senior program
ming executive Jacoba Atlas. To
air the raw version, stations must
sign a statement acknowledging
NMMliiiMiWtheil
"It's a financial decision," Atlas
said. "It's not a decision that re
flects on the merit that we think
the film has."
Fanning said he wished this was
something that PBS could take
a stand on, but understood why
not.
"I'm not upset about PBS," he
said. "We're upset that we're put
in the position of having to make
a special circumstance of this
and PBS is put in the position of
not being able to have viewers
see this."
Since station managers were
only informed of this on Thurs
day, Atlas said she had no count
on how many stations would air
each version.
Next Wednesday, PBS is re-air
ing the HBO movie "Dirty War,"
about a terrorist attack in Lon
don, and will alter a scene to
avoid showing the front of a nude
woman being scrubbed down af
ter a fictional chemical attack.
This movie raises a lot of
questions. Most movies that do
that tend to be good because the
process of thinking is involved
and usually adds a whole
new dimension to the movie
afterwards. The problem this
movie has is it leaves the audience
with unanswered questions that
other films would have answered
in order to spare a person from
a swirling vortex of possibilities.
Some unanswered questions will
not be shared in this review as to
the fact that it will give away plot
twists and spoilers.
The film has two things that
are solid, a constant change in
mood and tension to keep us
guessing what is really going on,
and the talented acting of Dakota
Fanning. However, mood and
character changes happen so
frequently, we do not have time
to fully absorb what we just saw
in order for it to logically make
sense. Too many things were left
out of this final cut. If it was for
30th anniversary of 'SNL' prompts documentary
By Larry McShane
AP Writer
Lorne Michaels just referred to
it as "The Show," even before it
was a show.
"Saturday Night Live" was Mi
chaels' baby from its birth in
1975. And now, with his child
marking its 30th birthday, NBC
is airing a two-hour documentary
about the show's first five classic
years, the era when its cast was
"the Beatles of comedy," as Dana
Carvey says near the documen
tary's start.
"Live from New York: The First
5 Years of Saturday Night Live,"
which airs 9 p.m. EST Sunday,
is no cut-and-paste collection of
clips.
Instead, writer-director-pro
ducer Kenneth Bowser delivers
Lorne Michaels, producer of "Saturday Night Live," has been the show's
guiding force since its beginning in 1975..
Entertainment
r y o
timing reasons, which would not
make sense considering it is only
an hour and forty minutes, then
when it comes out on DVD, these
scenes should be put in place. If
it was the final screenplay, then
it is Ari Schlossberg's problem;
leaving the audience not in a
state of shock, but in a state of
confusion. If there is one thing
that can be said about this film,
it makes us think. It is up to us
to determine how much thinking
is necessary in order to fully
understand what was just seen.
Check out the next
Tom's Tomfool
ery of Cinema for
a review of the
new movie Con-
stantine, starring
Keanu Reeves
a documentary that mixes clas
sic bits with extensive interviews,
peering into the madness behind
those 90 minutes of magic that
started Saturdays at 11:30 p.m.
It's not altogether new territory.
"SNL" was already the subject of
several books, including the ac
claimed oral history done in 2002
by The Washington Post's Tom
Shales and co-author James An
drew Miller.
But there's still plenty worth
while, from long-unseen musical
clips to stories from guest hosts
such as Steve Martin to tales
of Dan Aykroyd entering a pitch
meeting with a chain saw - and
then cranking it up. There are
new interviews, offering brutal
honesty.
Michaels recalls his first meeting
with John Belushi: "He told me he
didn't do television. We didn't hit
Photo courtesy of Google Images
The Capital Times, February 21, 2005
f Cinema
In the thriller Hide and Seek, Robert De Niro stars as Dr. David Cal
loway, who is trying to start his life over with his daughter Emily after
the suicide of his wife.
it off." Eric Idle remembers the
comedy team of Al Franken and
Tom Davis: "They were always
whacked out of their skulls." Gar
rett Morris, the lone black cast
member, poignantly recounts
his outsider status: "Fifty percent
was my fault."
The documentary places the
show in the context of the times:
Vietnam, Nixon, drugs. And it il
lustrates the groundbreaking at
titude brought by its original cast,
"The Not Ready for Prime Time
Players."
"We had a chance," explains
Chevy Chase, "to parody and
take down television."
Though they didn't entirely suc
ceed, they had plenty of suc
cesses - and a few funny failures.
On opening night, announcer
Don Pardo botched the cast's in
troduction. "The 'Not for Ready
Prime Time Players,"' the familiar
voice intoned.
The show's lair on the 17th
floor of NBC's Rockefeller Cen
ter headquarters was more dorm
room than office, with cast mem
bers and writers moving in. "A
huge playpen," says Monty Py
thon's Idle, a host from the early
years.
The skits that made the show
a phenomenon are included:
Chase's racially charged job
interview with guest host Rich
ard Pryor, Aykroyd's memorable
"Jane, you ignorant slut," Belushi
in various modes of Samurai.
And there are some long-forgot
ten, edgy skits. Burt Reynolds, as
a Roman centurion on the make,
approaches Laraine Newman
with this come-on: "I couldn't help
not notice that you're very svelte.
What's your name?"
Photo courtesy of www.moviesonline.ca
"Anorexia," she shoots back.
The documentary touches on
drug abuse and the pitfalls of ce
lebrity. Cocaine, Aykroyd says,
was "affecting the work, the per
formances and the quality of the
scripts."
There's a rare clip from Bill Mur
ray's 1975 screen test, when he
failed to make the cut for season
one. After he replaced Chase, the
show's first break-out star, Mur
ray began receiving hate mail.
He quickly proved a more than
able replacement.
The musical clips evidence the
days before the Ashlee Simpsons
of the world took the "SNL" stage,
with performances by Patti Smith,
the Band, Randy Newman, Ray
Charles and others included.
Quibbles? Murray and Jane
Curtain don't participate. Both
are missed. There must be guest
hosts with better tales to tell than
Penny Marshall. And the seg
ment on "SNL" romances could
have been replaced by some
thing on Andy Kaufman, one of
the show's early guests and great
innovators.
In the end, as the documentary
makes clear, fame and money
took everything apart. Cast mem
bers traveled with entourages,
hired limousines, worked behind
closed doors. When the Rolling
Stones showed up to play in sea
son four, it was more a signal of
trouble than success.
But even the end of this era was
greeted with a sly grin by some
on the staff. "I remember seeing
the girl I was with getting hit on by
Keith Richards, and that's when I
knew," recalls Jim Signorelli, who
did many of the show's early par
odies of commercials.