The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • 89

Haunting German film tells beauty-and-beast love story MOVIES emergency tracheotomy under a truck isn't quite the same as a kiss, Bodo does bring her back to life. And he is also a beast, albeit a gorgeous one, hiding behind his thorny manner. This haunting film is not without violence (of course, the same can be said of the Grimms' collection)! and the outcome hinges on a bank robbery that seems destined to go awry. The mechanics of the heist definitely lend tension to the thoughtful, leisurely paced drama. But the suspense is sustained by the mystery behind his silent tears and her haunted eyes.

Hv yri i IB waaw By RITA KEMPLEY The Washington Post Franka Potente galloped through Germany's "Run Lola Run," a marathon of mutability that played with reality as though the universe were a video game. "The Princess and the Warrior" is everything "Run Lola Run" wasn't. A dreamy love story, it represents a major change of pace for both actress and "Lola" writer-director TomTykwer. Potente's Sissi Movie review drifts through "The Princess this mesmer- and the Warrior1 izing fable of Starring: Franka Potente, Benno and Stubborn Furmann. love.

C-J Rating: A shy, SO-MPAA Rating: R. Cially awk-Disturbing images, ward nurse language and some who WOTirS sexual content. wno wonts and lives in a Showing: Baxter Avenue. In German psychiatnc with English subtitles, hospital, (2:1) Sissi has been sheltered from the real world. She almost moves on to the next one when she's hit by a truck and Tracking him down is the easy part.

But Bodo (Benno Furmann), a small-time crook with a big chip on his shoulder, isn't interested in being found and refuses to open his door, much less his heart, to this strange young woman. He has known passion and suffered the consequences, and he isn't about to give in to love or give up his pain. Most women would avoid this grenade of a man, but Sissi has spent a lifetime quieting explosive personalities. And though her response is different, she has her own powerful demons: She's literally stiff from suppressing her rage. Maybe they were meant to be together, even if they didn't meet cute.

On one level "The Princess and the Warrior" is really a grown-up fairy tale. She is the story's princess, sleepwalking through her days. While an jL ma wmw JwfcJf; i Franka Potente portrays the shy, socially awkward Sissi. trapped underneath, unable to move or breathe. As she lies there drowning in her own blood, the man who caused the accident comes to her rescue, then disappears.

When she recovers and re-. turns to the hospital, Sissi realizes that she no longer belongs there. Certain that they share a common destiny, she becomes obsessed with finding her mltMSmtltauM, now SHOWING I 869-3600 I I 368-6454 409-4700 II 9-eSe irilTl)2ll-30OOl I 326-0086 11938-3771 -W M.U NSYNC was certainly entertaining in. I 1 but concert had little substance I (VI NADIA MICHELLE STIFLER FINCH KEVIN VICKY OZ JESSICA MUSIC HEATHER JIM'S DAD By SCOTT ROBINSON Special to The Courier-Journal We take back what we said about "NSYNC looking just like the Osmonds. Compared to what we saw at Cardinal Stadium last night, the Osmonds were the very soul of authenticity and spontaneity.

Not that NSYNC's Pop Odyssey tour Preview tSST 'NSYNC the contrary, the capacity crowd screamed like the Beatles had just landed. But while the premier boy band's show does recall the homogenized, teeny-bopper legacy of its toothy Mormon forefathers, this stuff they're strutting today bears no resemblance at all to what we used to call a pop concert. You'd have to be hiding in a rain forest somewhere to be unaware of the impact this prefab ensemble has made on pop music. This tour, in support of the group's new album "Celebrity," reeks of that success: world wars have ended with less fanfare. And we're still not certain whether or not there was anything there to lose in the trans- about anything.

Cuts from "Celebrity" were pyrotechnically rendered, but ultimately as soulless as "Bye Bye Bye" and the rest of the canon. NSYNC's material never rises to the level of the production, however impressive the latter might be. Artistic growth for these guys is recycling the lyric digi-digi-digi as didya-didya-didya. These songs have all the melodic force of soft drink commercials, all the lyricism of Baywatch. We have nothing against techno-pop's adolescent forms per se.

Meticulous choreography, street attitude and looking good can indeed be art, in the hands of, say, Janet Jackson. But NSYNC gives us nothing but form. Digital vacuum is still vacuum. We're finally left with exactly that which fueled the Osmonds' success puppy love. What we find indigestible about last night's incarnation is that whatever sentiment may have been lurking there was buried beneath the trappings of a stock market commodity, wrapped in technology more suited to the launching of space shuttles.

Is that really what it's all about? Jation. Justin Timberlake, JC Cha-sez, Joey Fatone, Lance Bass and Chris Kirkpatrick certainly have their act down. They sang and danced themselves into a frenzy from the first round of explosions and smoke bombs to the final cascade of fireworks over the encore. But as they kicked and sweated through abridgements of "Tearin Up My Heart," "God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You" and other old hits, prancing around a stage so huge the Rolling Stones couldn't have found their way around it, there was an undeniable air of programming. We loved the monstrous digital video screen backdrops.

But we could have done without the inane interactive skits, the ponderous biography, and the interspersed video clips, all of this ultimately does little more than distract us from the fact that this event really isn't THIS SUMMER ITS ALL ABOUT STICKING TOGETHER. HOI JMm i IBM ASMS 1IIMI1 nnumn lllllliil tiiiMiiuti in iff mtc I HfiCi WK hi KSuEMKHimimii mmi km SIM II WlllliiillillilMBIllfflifll SOUNDTRACK FEATURING Ml MM MP III MM IN STORES NOW STARTS TODAY TatMrool rw-eeaTl i 83771 1 9 tMQ 1 riwiwil Friday, AUGUST 10, 20017 Weekend EXTRA Page 21.