Culture

Ten bucks says they fall in love, but with hilarious consequences.Twenty years ago-almost to the day-American moviegoers were introduced to Sally Albright in Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron's When Harry Met Sally. As played by Meg Ryan, she was a sunny but tightly-wound city girl who found a perfect foil in loosey-goosey misanthrope Harry Burns (Billy Crystal). Sally owed more than a little to Holly Hunter's Type-A, scheduled-crying-jag TV news producer Jane Craig in Broadcast News, but she became the standard bearer for a certain kind of romantic-comedy heroine, one we've already seen this summer in The Proposal: the sympathetic control freak.

The Ugly Truth arrives on this auspicious anniversary for the "rom-com" genre to remind us that it takes more than a list-maker with a pretty face to earn the "sympathetic" part of that character description. Katherine Heigl may be trying desperately to channel some Sally-and some Jane-into her performance, but that's not the same as giving an audience a reason to like her.
Heigl plays Abby Richter, whose occupation happens to be-watch out, Jane Craig!-a TV news producer. Overseeing a Sacramento morning show that's floundering in the ratings, she's also trying to find the perfect guy who will fit all the criteria on her checklist.

Whaddaya call this sport again? Cribbage?British comedian Stewart Lee has a skit in response to the Harry Potter franchise. To quote: "People come up to me and ask, 'Oh, did you read the new Harry Potter?' And I say, 'No I haven't read it, because I'm forty f***ing years-old, no, I did not read Harry Potter And The Tree Of NOTHING.'"

But point being, there is very little point to actually reviewing the latest Harry Potter movie. The franchise is a multi-billion dollar juggernaut, and the Hogwarts tales are so beloved across the world that the creators could probably turn out a shaky cell phone-made film of the cast drunkenly slurring through a script reading around a table at the Dog In The Pond pub in rural Sussex, with Daniel Radcliffe leaving for the bathroom half-way through not coming back, and it would still be a smash.
So, considering, it's fair that this multi-billion dollar juggernaut assumes that everyone has read the books, everyone has seen the movies and so proceeds to produce material based on this assumption. It sells. Well, this reviewer has not read the series, and has completely avoided anything more than a TV preview of the movies. Hell, this reviewer thought Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were a couple.

This is ground control to Major Bowie…your son directed this movie.The previews for Moon are misleading and for once that's a good thing. This is not a space-age horror/time-warp/psychological thriller, but rather a socio-politico commentary on the present, taking place in the not so distant future.

The film focuses on the psychological ramifications of cabin fever and the bleak outlook of the onset of cloning. Sam Rockwell plays two roles-a lone astronaut about to go home in two weeks, and his clone. Revealing the clone is no spoiler; It's all set up fairly early.
Beginning with a TV commercial touting Lunar Industries, a company that makes safer, cleaner air by harvesting moon rocks, Moon veers into strange territory almost immediately. Sam Bell (Rockwell) is the sole worker on a moon outpost, in charge of maintaining all the equipment, vehicles and the moon station itself. His only companionship is a beat-up, helper robot computer (reminiscent of 2001's HAL) named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Gerty shuffles and glides around to assist Sam at every step. Resembling a dilapidated X-ray machine, with a "kick me" sticker on his back and a yellow smiley face on a video screen to exhibit his "emotions," Gerty provides comic relief-or does he? Deception and perhaps hallucinations come into play as Sam receives mail from his wife in the form of delayed video feeds thanks to a busted communications satellite. Sam has little interest in anything but going home. But soon, one thing after another goes wrong and Sam is face to face with a cloned version of himself. Their confusion (and consequently ours) becomes the main focus as to what's next on this planetary agenda.

Animal cruelty?At the opening night screening of Brüno at the Old Mill cinema no one walked out. Not the giggling groups of teenage boys, not those engaged in middle-aged man-dates, not the hand-holding couples, not even the lady who gasped, "Oh my god" at five-minute intervals. No, the entire audience sat stalwartly through the sexual equivalent of Saw V. The mechanical dildos, the swinging penis, the champagne bottle butt plug, the anal bleaching, it was all very well received.

I don't think we can discern whether the Bend community is inured to onscreen iniquity, jaded, or actually more liberal than previously thought. Yet, there were a handful of moments when the laughter disappeared, and the audience quieted to a nervous-coughing hush-and from these moments we can learn. There are some things that can still shock, that cannot be tolerated, and so instead of the article that we had in mind (Bend's Ten Biggest Walk-Out-of-Brüno Moments) here instead is… Bend's Six Biggest Though-We-Understand-We're-Watching-Brüno-We're-Not-OK-With-That Moments.
1. The souvenir severed foot of an African elephant retrieved from an airport luggage conveyor. The illegal procurement of animal limbs for novel umbrella stands is NOT okay with the people of Bend and will be met with a dire silence. An African baby arriving subsequently in a box marked "fragile," is, however, very funny. And, with "awws" everywhere, also quite cute. From this we presume Bend to be extremely environmentally friendly.