The Wichitan - Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls Texas

MIDWESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY | February, 2, 2005

ENTERTAINTMENT

Polson's Latest Release Delivers Dark Obscurity
'Hide and Seek' one film should not be sought
Jason Kimbro | Staff Reporter

Poor Bobby De Niro. His career is being kept afloat by the likes of Ben Stiller and Barbara Streisand. Now, the geriatric superstar has teamed up with the newest superstar to have just learned the joys of potty training, Dakota Fanning. The little girl who cannot act like a child, but does wonders acting like a child who acts like an adult.
Sadly enough, that is about the nicest thing I could say about this week’s movie, “Hide and Seek,” a collage of bad direction, bad writing, and overused clichés.
From “Swimfan” director, John Polson, this movie’s victims are taken through the drudgery of psychological terror in the most uninspired and god-awfully annoying way.
Lost in the oblivion of what is soon to be De Niro’s career, here’s the gist:
Daddy is a successful psychologist. Well, at least he is successful enough to move his daughter and himself into the biggest house on the lake in some sleepy New England village called Westchester.
Daddy, whose name is David Callaway (Mr. De Niro himself), had to move his daughter away from their Manhattan condo to escape the memories of her mother who killed herself, scarring the daughter, Emily (Dakota Fanning), for life, or so it seems.
Not long after moving into their lovely home, daddy meets a beautiful, young woman named Elisabeth (Elisabeth Shue, same name, same person, maybe?). She has a niece who daddy wants daughter to be friends with so it makes entry into auntie much easier.
They also meet their creepy neighbors-with-a-secret, and the nosey sheriff-without-a-personality (Dylan Baker, everybody’s favorite pedophile from the flick “Happiness”). Emily meets someone new as well. Someone who everybody thinks is her imaginary friend brought upon by the emotional impact of losing her mother and seeing her dead and bloody body in the tub.
Her new friend’s name is Charlie. Charlie is so much fun! He likes to play games like “let’s make daddy miserable!” What loving daughter wouldn’t want to play such a game!
Well, amidst the array of boring and typical characters, we have a boring, choppy excuse for a thriller with a boring, overused excuse for a twist at the end. After the twist is revealed, the circumstances involved drag on for way too long. By this time, you will just want this terrible experience to end.
Oh, and the movie has Famke Janssen who is always a treat, well almost always.
I have seen more entertaining films on the USA Channel many years ago when all it showed was crap. I yawned fairly consistently, waiting to see a great twist at the end, but I was let down by something I have seen too many times before in people like Johnny… well… I don’t want to give it away, as if it is something worthy of seeing.
There might be a little degree of eeriness involved here, but as for other atmospheric pressures brought upon my emotions, I would have felt more from a cardboard box. The producers even sunk as low as to have a loud, screeching cat jump out of nowhere to give you the willie jillies.
Hey, that sounds like a good name for candy. Willie Jillies! From the Dupont corporation! The candy that coats your tongue in chemically engineered liquids!
Anyway, back to the faecal flick.
Acting was okay. De Niro, though his future looks as bright as a dead man’s colon, did a fairly decent job as the daddy. Fanning, well, she does decent for her age, I suppose, but she needs to realize she is playing the part of someone her physical age, not someone the age she is being forced to be due to Hollywood pressures. Poor Drew Barrymore.
And finally, we come to story and plot. I wouldn’t even wipe my own bum with the script, for I feel the leftovers would be more deserving. That is all I have to say about that, other than I now wish I could give a grade less than an “F.” This makes “Paparazzi” look like a contender. Nah, what am I saying? “Paparazzi” blew!
And there you have it, folks! My first raunchy, horrid, terrible review of the year! Now that we have got this one passed us, let’s move on to the future! A future full of more horror movies (at least 8 on the top of my head coming out in the next few months) and reviews of movies I didn’t really want to see, but since I am wrapped around my lady’s ring finger, my female readers will either be very happy, or very angry.
Danke!

Angell from the Dark Side
Richard Carter | For the Wichitan

Early in 1979, a former heroin addict and once ‘60s pop star released “Broken English,” her first album in ten years. It may be the one time in pop music that an artist actually found herself after smack.
Since that comeback album, Marianne Faithful has released a series of mostly well-received CDs. Her new record, “Before the Poison,” features songs written and produced by Nick Cave and P.J. Harvey.
It’s sounds like another promising work.
As Faithful continues to work as a meaningful artist over the last quarter century, her former intimate Mick Jagger and his band continue to fade since their 1972 album “Exile on Main Street.”
Given the typically overbearing narcissism and artistic laziness of aged rock stars, it’s good to know a few survivors learned from the hard times, and found some new meaningful ways to express things.
What happened to the Stones? Have you seen them lately? No one has seen the Stones live—or at least that band that used to mean something--since the early Mick Taylor days.
Instead there’s now some 60-year-old guy wearing a silk disco outfit walking funny around the stage and audience members joking about Keith’s last blood transfusion.
On the other hand, Faithful remained faithful to herself and to her music, by discovering a muse beyond the expressive capacities of pop music (Kurt Weill). I like Chuck Berry a lot, but there’s only so far that nostalgic guitar lines can be twisted.
The end for bands happens when they lose the capacity to be honest with themselves, their music and their listeners.
And timeless music depends on this.
A first album by a woman with a sense of the past, language, emotions, harmony and musical phrasing may be the first must-have album of the year.
Recorded nearly three years ago on her own dime, Tara Angell’s first record, “Come Down” shows an artist who’s musically sound, literature savvy and who’s spent some serious time on the dark side of life.
If her voice might remind listeners a little bit of Faithful, I don’t imagine this similarity is an affectation. Rather, Angell’s voice is her own, and her stories and her life are also (like any serious artist) her own.
“Come Down” is not a happy album, but then it’s not a conscious downer either. Her songs seem to strive to find listeners who can relate to the feel and the emotions. She has the honesty of Cat Power, with the musical sense of a diverse and tastefully developed record collection.
What’s in this record collection is up to the listener to decide. But a lot of people have been singing this woman’s praises already, and the comparisons range from the words of early Bob Dylan and the down of early Black Sabbath.
Absurd maybe, but her finely arranged songs grow on you, while the melodies infectiously eat their way into your heart. It might remind listeners a little of the new folk that’s sweeping the better underground New York clubs.
If contemporary music too often wants to live off past glories, Angell instead takes fragments of her life and mature musical vocabularies to say some something meaningful to more people than a few hip crowds with too much time on their hands.
I like this album an awful lot.