The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 38

D4 MOVIES THE GAZETTE montrealgazette.com FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2009 Ratings: Not if they paid you Don't bother Borrow from a friend Worth the money Wonderful Instant Classic MOVIES AROUND THE WORLD IN DVDS MUSIC NEW RELEASES FOR HUNTING FILMS Mariah Carey Memoirs of An Imperfect Angel IslandUniversal Mariah Carey takes a page from the Janet Jackson playbook on her latest, meekly cooing her way through the disc's 17 tracks. Largely produced by Tricky Stewart and The Dream, this collection of mid-tempo and slow jams veers away from the club to touch on more personal themes, i.e., love. She expresses venom on Obsessed, with its Dr. Dre-esque bounce, and the fluttery Up Out My Face. It suits her well, or at least better than the languid whispers of H.A.T.E.U., Candy Bling and The Impossible.

She opens her voice up on the gentle swing of It's a Wrap; but like her closing cover of Foreigner's I Want To Know What Love Is, it sounds dated. The defining impression is a lack of oomph. Podworthy: It's a Wrap T'CHA DUNLEVY it: MARIAH CAREY MARTIN LECLERC NFB Moose hunters admire their kill in Pierre Perrault's 1982 documentary La bete lumineuse. 4 which starts with a fox hunt and segues into British appeasement of the Nazis. There's also Robert Altman's Cosford Park (2001), where a hunting party turns into an upstairs-downstairs murder mystery.

And fans of British Ealing Studios films will remember the famous "hunting accident" in Robert Hamer's black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), where the duke (Alec Guinness) gets his head blown off by his vengeful relative, Louis (Dennis Price), while caught in a leg-hold-trap. Speaking of hunting humans, if you have a taste for the macabre, try these: The Most Dangerous Came (1932), La traque (1975), Hard Target (1993) and Superbeast (1972). For comedy, try the BBC mini-series A Year in Provence (1993), in which a rustic peasant named Riviere loves to shoot le renard; Harry and the Hendersons (1987), where a Bigfoot survives a scrape with hunters who wind up adopting him; and, finally any Looney Tunes cartoon featuring "wabbif'-hunter Elmer Fudd (from 1940 on). But the last word goes to the animals. From their point of view, hunting is a scourge.

French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud (Enemy at the Gates) showed us what it feels like to be an orphaned bear cub in the Dolomites in L'ours (1988), and scored again with Two Brothers (2004), about jungle tigers hunted down in colonial French Indochina. "If I don't do it, somebody else will," the Aussie hunter Aidan McRory (Guy Pierce) reasons near the end of the tiger flick, which was filmed on location in Cambodia. "But I swear to you, after this is all over, I will never touch a rifle again. That's a promise." jheinrich thegazette.canwest.com A iVv i Si trapping and hunting expeditions and into their homes, where the stuffed beasts make neat wall ornaments. Weird, wonderful stuff; an Atopia DVD.

Out of the belly of Africa, Hollywood reminds us of the colonial days when hunting for sport was an honoured profession. White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) will make you hate those rich white people who used to go on safari to shoot elephants. One of them was one of Hollywood's great directors, John Huston; he bagged Dumbos while making The African Queen. Given the pseudonym John Wilson, he's played here by Clint Eastwood (who also directs). Shot in Zimbabwe; a Warner DVD.

There's also The Ghost and the Darkness, a 1996 flick starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer. Douglas's character hunts lions terrorizing the builders of the Uganda-Mombasa Railway in 1898. Canadian connection: Caesar and Bongo, two lions from the zoo in Bowmanville, Ont, played THE SHELVES JEFF HEINRICH It's hunting season again. Moose, black bear, rabbit and hare, partridge, grouse and quail the forests of Quebec are echoing with rifle fire now, and in about a month it'll also be legal to shoot white-tailed deer and raccoons, as well as coyotes, wolves and foxes. Killing wild animals for food and sport runs deep in our cul-, ture, although only a small mi- nority actually hunt: 163,000 permits were issued in Quebec last year to hunt moose, about 25 per cent more than a decade ago; small-game permits numbered about the same.

I don't hunt, but I'm fascinated by the camaraderie of hunters, by their technical expertise and by the moral issues raised by what they do. I'm also aware that hunting is something that all peo-. pies of the world -I should say I carnivores of the world have in common. I In world cinema, there are a lot of fine prey to choose from. Quebec has some fine docu-" mentaries.

La bete lumineuse (1982) is one of the late NFB di-- rector Pierre Perrault's best. A moose hunt near Maniwaki turns ugly when a group of semi-3 literate, drunken buddies turn against the new guy in the group, I who's educated and has a gift for poetry but can't shoot worth a damn. Newly remastered, the DVD goes on sale Nov 10; it's part of Volume 4 of Perrault's collect-; ed works. There's also Panache (2007), a 90-minute documentary about the backwoods of the Outaouais by Andre-Line Beauparlant. She tags along with six men on their MOVIES NEW ON Your choice of The Girlfriend Experience The great American filmmaker Steven Soderbergh's most recent adventure in his low-budget, au-teur mode is fascinating for its subject material, less so for its subjects.

Real-life porn star Sasha Grey plays a high-end Manhattan call girl who offers sex and companionship in up-market Manhattan In the weeks before the 2008 presidential election. Soder-bergh's aesthetics are spot-on the film has fabulous cinematog- raphy, sound design and loca tions. But it's as hard to feel anything for Grey as It is to empathize with guys who'll pay $2,000 an hour so someone will listen to their problems. Extras include commentary with the star and ever-voluble director, an alternate cut, and I IDNet: A Look at the Girlfriend Experience. JOHN GRIFFIN Monsters vs.

Aliens Any movie that can make us believe Reese Witherspoon could stand 10 storeys tall has its work cut out for it, but the animators behind this sweet if entirely predictable story about a secret crew of monsters made us be lieve In a gigantic gal named Susan without sweating. They also make us believe In a blue blob named B.O.B and a sexy creature from the black lagoon. But this story of lovable freaks and hostile bralnlac aliens Is really about friendship and the idea that you'd do anything to help a buddy out in a time of crisis. A great message nntl some cute animation can go a long way, and tills movie gols maximum mileage from its dog-cari'd pinniM1. DVD features lunula movie in a sepa call girl, monsters, aliens, shrink the Shot in South Africa; a Paramount DVD.

From the Australian outback, try Walkabout (1971), British director Nicolas Roeg's haunting drama of two white schoolchildren (played by his own son, Luc, and the wonderful Jenny Agutter), who are abandoned in the bush and survive thanks to an aboriginal teenager "walking about" as an initiation into manhood. There's a memorable scene of hunting a water buffalo. A Criterion DVD. From Old Europe, there's a whole sub-genre of movies about rich folks shooting up the underbrush on fancy country estates. In the best, hunting is a harbinger of wan There's Jean Renoir's La regie du jeu (1939), with its climactic slaughter of rabbits in a field; Alan Bridges's The Shooting Party (1985), adapted from Isabel Colegate's novel, in which aristocrats see who can shoot the most pheasants from the sky; and Merchant Ivory's Remains of the Day (1993), (Vincent Llndon) finds his world turned upside down when his wife (Diane Kruger of Inglourl-ous Basterds fame) is abruptly arrested for murder.

Without pulling us through the painstaking needle of justice, director Fred Cavaye simply turns up the tension by transitioning to an escape saga. Continuously surprising and filled with juicy tension, this tight little thriller proves you can still squeeze fresh juice from genre If you let your characters behave like desperate adults instead of childlike morons in a state of panic. DVD features are in French only but include audio commentary English subtitles. -km Iron Road Railroad stories are a bit like beavers to Canadians: They touch a patriotic nerve. Iron Road aspires to be a romantic epic set against the construction of a railway across the Rocky Mountains.

A story of race and oppression, slavery and freedom, the whole thing chugs along laboriously on its hackneyed tracks saved only by some good craftwork from Sam Nelll and Peter O'Toole, as well as some stunning cinematography showcasing the grandeur of the Canadian wilderness. DVD features Include cast and crew Interviews and more. km Victoria Day There's no shortage of tenderly drawn portraits of the male coming of-age experience, but for aU the examples, the end results are beginning to feel surprisingly generic. In director David Dez-mozgls's feature debut, Victoria Day, the central male on the as- Bebel Cilberto All In One Verve Emerging in 2000 with her evocative mix of bossa nova and down-tempo elec-tronica, Brazilian-American singer-songwriter Gilberto had history (as the daughter of bossa king Joao Gilberto) and cool to spare. After nearly fading away, she reemerges on jazz label Verve with this mix of breezy beach tunes and funk? Yup, that's Amy Winehouse producer Mark Ronson crafting a casually groovy backdrop on The Real Thing.

She also performs a gently thumping, bilingual cover of Bob Marley's Sun Is Shining. But for the most part, Gilberto is content to let the songs drift in, like the tide on a sunny day Don't fight it. Podworthy: Chica Chica Boom Chic T'CHA DUNLEVY Lisa Cermano Magic Neighbor Young God Lisa Germano Inhabits a dream world -one that moves in slow motion, often populated by hazy apparitions. But Magic Neighbor is more lucid, less alien, with arrangements that aren't as likely to drift in and out of focus. If that means Germano's addictively narcotic atmospheres are downplayed, it also means her intimacy is even more heightened than usual Her lullabies for troubled souls remain meant for lights-off seclusion, and there are still fantasy-land touches (Simple's off-kilter merry-go-round soundtrack is simultaneously comforting and worrisome).

But there's also a renewed emphasis on Germano's warm violin, and Snow's glacial piano is typical of how she can release cascades of emotion from just a few delicate notes, -k-k-k-k Podworthy: Snow JORDAN ZIVITZ Paramort Brand New Eyes Fueled by Ramen Now that Hayley Williams Is nearly 21, and her band, Paramore, has sold more than a million copies of its 2007 album, romance isn't her main predicament For Paramore's third studio album, Brand New Eyes, she and guitarist Josh Farro also wrote songs about ambitions, wrecked friendships, the disillusionment of celebrity and the tensions that threatened to tear apart the band last year. On Brand New Eyes, Paramore has pushed Itself harder, buttressing Its old abilities and flexing some new ones. The buzz-saw punk rhythm guitar that opens Brick by Boring Brick could propel an entire song, but within moments a high guitar line crowns it, and Williams sweeps them both aside 1th a melody of her own. Like most of the album's songs, It's catchy enough to carry Paramore on to Its next Identity crisis, kkkk Podworthy: Brick by Boring Brick JON PARELES, NEW YORK TIMES and a queen PASTS PRESENTLY TOP DVD RENTALS AS OF SEPT. 27 1.

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Bones: Season 4 BLOCKBUSTERAMAZON. CACAZETTE sembly line of experience Is Ben Spektor (Mark Rondall), a teenager stuck between two worlds: his Russian immigrant family, and his new world love of hockey and all things Canadian. When Ben gives the school bully drug money, bad things happen, forcing Ben Into a cycle of guilt and remorse. Victoria Day feels more like the grown-up remembrance of pubescence than the sustained primal scream It really is because Ben Spektor never really loses It, leaving the drama entirely doughy In the middle. DVD features Include roil, Interviews with cast and crew, select clips and more.

-km rate package, B.O.B.'s big break, as well as modern monster moviemaking, deleted scenes, filmmaker commentary and more. katherine monk Shrink This movie about a successful L.A.-based psychiatrist had so much potential to be a scathing satire of vanity and self-obsession that its failure to conjure any comedy or decent drama only makes the disappointment more palpable. Kevin Spacey brings what he can to his pot-smoking, chronically depressed doctor, but without a supporting cast capable of framing his performance, the movie leaks tension and winds up flatter than a white flour tortilla. DVD features include deleted scenes, interview with director Jonas Pate and more. km The Queen and I In Nahld Persson Sarvestanl's feature documentary about her early political activism and latent education after leaving Iran as a refugee, we see that old enemies can find friendship If they decide to listen, empathize and move forward.

Sarvcstanl befriends none other than Farah Diba, the wife of the dead and exiled Shah of Iran. The former queen Is a fascinating subject, and a gracious one, given how much access she allows the one-time protester and filmmaker. A chatty movie that Is a great example of how gender roles shape the liu'ger world. DVD features Include subtitles and more. km Pour Elle (For Her) A regular literature professor.