Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 50

E4 CALGARY HERALD Wednesday, July 21, 2004 ENTERTAINMENT Mess stains two careers i rP Vv, NOW SEE THIS Reviews of DVDs in stores this week Courtesy, Miramax, Herald Archive Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins can't make The Human Stain click. Courtesy, Odeon Films, Herald Archive Kim Basinger, 50, has torrid sex scenes with 18-year-old Jon Foster in The Door in the Floor. Basinger bares all for sake ofFloor into a worldwide cult, Thunderbirds offered tots a dose of science fiction with their adventure it also offered some of the creepiest puppets ever seen on TV These marvelously articulated puppets seemed to exist in a different plane. A testament to the amount of special effects that were possible before computer-generated graphics hijacked the artistic process, Thunderbirds features exquisite sets and a look that many have attempted to emulate without success. In this superb boxed set, you get two full-length feature films (Thunderbirds are Go! and Thunderbird 6 )and several featurettes that take you behind the miniatures, along with games, puzzles a special edition fridge magnet set and paper cut-outs.

Broken Wings 12 out of five Nir Bergman's emotionally biographical film deals with a family struggling to cope with the loss of the family patriarch. In any other place, this would be a straight family melodrama, but set against the explosive backdrop of Israel, everything in Bro ken Wings takes on an extra level of meaning. In this type of Mideast Ice Storm, Bergman follows several family storylines at once a young man on the verge of adulthood, a young woman struggling to deal with guilt, a mother trying to rediscover her feminine desire and a young boy pushing the edge of mortality. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen The only real drama or comedy, for that matter in this antic tale of a 15-year-old Manhattanite (Lindsay Lo-han) trying to cope with a move to the New Jersey 'burbs is in the title. What's that you say? There's no "comedy" in the title at all? Exactly.

Only fitfully amusing, thanks mainly to Lo-han's natural charisma, "Confessions" is supposed to be about a girl who learns the value of friendship and that making up stuff is wrong, but the movie tells the biggest lie of all: that life is a series of fairy-tale happy endings where the unjust are punished and the just are really cute. The Washington Post Courtesy, Warner Herald Archive Ben Stiller, left, and Owen Wilson play Starsky and Hutch. Hutch out of five Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller destroy the charm, bonding and costumes that made the TV show a sincere, gritty, cop drama. Now it's all just tedious schlock thanks to a script void of tension, drama or even jokes. Thunderbirds: International Rescue Edition out of five One of those kids shows that grows KATHERINE MONK CanWest News Service and Herald News Services The Human Stain out of five This movie may well go down as one of the most befuddling efforts ever brought to the big screen by Robert Benton.

Confounding critics since its release last year, this movie, based on Philip Roth's bestselling novel, deals with guilt, love and redemption in an odd way. An aging professor is accused of racism, leaves the college, loses his wife and falls in love with a self-loathing janitor played by Nicole Kidman. Anthony Hopkins plays the mourning professor and Gary Sinise plays a writer who watches the situation grow increasingly chaotic as the janitor's ex-husband begins to grow jealous of the new relationship. Entirely unsuccessful as a result of poor casting Hopkins could not have been more unconvincing this movie lives up to its title. It leaves an unwanted and indelible mark on your psyche.

Stellaluna out of five A baby bat is knocked from her mother's grasp, forcing young Stellaluna to find an adoptive family in a bird nest. Her nestmates are happy to accept their new sibling, but the mummy bird has one rule: Stellaluna must act like a bird, not a bat And so we have the large, moral metaphor behind this wildly popular kids' book. It's tough to be someone you aren't and it's wrong for people to force you into doing anything that's not in your nature. A sweet kid's story brought to the screen without any gaffes. Bus 174 outoffive Jose Padilha's documentary and first-ever film deconstructs the real-life hijacking of a Rio bus where 10 hostages and the driver were held at gunpoint by Sandro, a kid from the ghetto (favelas), whom the mainstream media painted as a maniacal drug addict.

Using footage from the many news organizations that covered the event live for the duration bringing Rio to a halt Padilha brings us into a surreal moment in time with razor precisioa But it's more than a hostage-taking reconstruction. He intercuts interviews with Sandro's friends, and remaining relatives, to give us background of who he was, and what drove him to such an extreme. Calgary's best seller. The Calgary Herald Classifieds make it fast and easy to sell your unwanted items. lJfllUJ)CLSiniD; 235-SELL j.uaw i.

A JL a ijr Be A Big Fish JAMIE PORTMAN CanWest News Service BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. It was the day they were filming the first of the sex scenes and Kim Basinger was nervous. This, in spite of the fact she was no stranger to the process. After all, the steamy kinkiness of her scenes with Mickey Rourke in 9 Weeks remains an entrenched part of Hollywood folklore. But The Door in the Floor was a different proposition, and it had the potential of being highly controversial with moviegoers.

SPOTLIGHT After all, it was The Door plunging Basinger, in the Floor 50, into some tor-opens Friday rid scenes with 18-in theatres year-old Jon Foster scenes that were pivotal to this film about the pain and grief of family loss, but that were also guaranteed to earn it a Restricted rating. "I've been through this many times and it's not ever easy or fun," Basinger says reflectively. She notes that, even though such moments are carefully choreographed to the point where the participants will never forget they are merely acting, they are always a challenge to do. But she was doubly concerned on this occasion because of Foster's age. "I'm so fond of him and protective of him which is just the opposite to most of these situations because usually I've worked with men who are very protective of me.

So this was quite the reverse. But Jon was a trooper, just a lovely guy." Yet she also knew these sequences were essential to the movie's integrity and she decided to be as matter-of-fact as possible about them. "And you know what?" she laughs. "I couldn't have chosen a better partner! "I said: 'Jon, let's just do this thing. Come It just sort of happened in a natural fashion.

I said: 'It's just a scene. Just do And they did it. The Door in the Floor, opening Friday in Calgary, is writer-director Todd Williams' adaptation of one section of John Irving's best-selling A Widow For One Year. It's a tragi-comic examination of the complexities and ambiguities of personal relationships and of how one troubled couple deals with the emotional wounds inflicted on them by a family tragedy. Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) is a successful children's book writer confronted with the erosion of his own marriage to Marion, played by Basinger.

His own egocentric behaviour and open womanizing is part of the problem: a deeper cause is the continuing grief both experience as the result of the death of two sons in an accident. They both love their remaining child (Elle Fanning), but their estrangement from each other continues to grow as Marion withdraws into emotional loneliness and isolatioa Todd Williams sees The Door in the Floor as a film about how love is defined by loss. Basinger sees it as a film about people forced to confront "the depths of truth." Author John Irving sees it as an examination into "how people get over things: how they recover, or don't recover, from what they lose. "But, in resolving these emotional issues, the film strikes out on its own controversial path. Foster's character is Eddie a sexually naive teenager ostensibly brought to Ted's beach house to work as his assistant but instead destined to be the catalyst who dramatically alters the dynamic of this troubled family.

Eddie brings this about because of his sexual yearning (complete with masturbatory fantasies) for Marion a yearning that reawakens her own sexuality. It's not only the nude bedroom encounters that make the material provocative. There is also an incestuous subtext: Part of Eddie's attraction for Marion is that he reminds her of her dead son. There's also the mounting evidence Ted has engineered this May-December affair because he hopes it might actually save a troubled marriage. "I Who says that Fly-In fishing trips are exclusively for the wealthy? Right now there has never been a better time to experience the rugged beauty, and phenomenal fishing off Canada's west coast.

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JUT tl 2333T.I tin LET THE GAMES BEGIN! Let's Kick It Off! The 2004 Alberta Summer Games and ATCO Gas invite you to join us today from 10:00 PM for the ATCO Gas Torch Relay. Over 80 local kids will run the Torch from Okotoks, through the MD of Foothills and into High River. The Relay begins at the Foothills Centennial Centre in Okotoks at 10:00 AM, continues North on Southridge Drive, up 2A to the Okotoks Overpass. It then heads South down Highway 2 through the MD of Foothills, up the High River Overpass and onto 12th Ave in High River. The Relay then turns right onto 5th Street, left on 3rd Ave, takes another left onto Macleod Trail and ends in George Lane Park.

Come out and cheer on our young runners as they proudly carry the Torch. The Torch will continue it's trek on Thursday, July 22 at the Opening Ceremonies where it's journey will end with the lighting of the Games Cauldron! I SOSElIIaffiH fey To all the VOLUNTEERS: Thank you all so much for the time, effort and energy you have contributed to these Games! Without you, these Games would not be happening. To all the SPONSORS: Thank you for supporting Alberta's young athletes and the community! Your generous donations of funds and services have made it all possible. To all the PARTICIPANTS: Welcome! It is our wish that your time here at the 2004 Alberta Summer Games will leave you with memories that will last a lifetime! Play Hard, Have Fun and LET THE GAMES BEGIN! In the Spirit of the Games, The Board and Staff of the 2004 Alberta Summer Games. calgary SCien.Ce centre 701 -11 St SW Call 268-8300 for more info www.calgaryscience.ca Supported by: ALBERTA LOTTERY FUND OOftSYUDCif AA494270-M.