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Critic, lecturer and TV commentator Maitland McDonagh is the author of Movie Lust, Filmmaking on the Fringe, The 50 Most Erotic Films of All Time and Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento. Formerly TV Guide's Senior Movies Editor, she writes for Time Out New York, Film Comment and other magazines, and has been interviewed for many film-related documentaries. She reviews new movie and DVD releases here, and blogs about movie-related news, views and issues at Your Daily Maitland.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter •
Beasts of the Southern Wild •
The Three Stooges •
X-Men Origins: Wolverine •
The Skeptic •
State of Play •
Alien Trespass •
12 Rounds •
The Haunting in Connecticut •
Duplicity •
Knowing •
The Last House on the Left •
Watchmen •
The International •
Madea Goes to Jail •
Coraline •
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter •
Beasts of the Southern Wild •
The Three Stooges •
X-Men Origins: Wolverine •
The Skeptic •
State of Play •
Alien Trespass •
12 Rounds •
The Haunting in Connecticut •
Duplicity •
Knowing •
The Last House on the Left •
Watchmen •
The International •
Madea Goes to Jail •
Coraline •
You know slavery was the hot-button issue that drove the Civil War, but unless you've heard about the vampires, you don't know the half of it. Producer-director Timur Bekmambetov and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith deliver a canny mix of action, horror and alternate history in what should by all rights be a bona-fide blockbuster.
1818: While working alongside his father at a riverside shipping depot owned by the cruel, ruthless Jack Barts (Marton Csokas), nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln sees a terrible sight: His friend Will's parents—both free people of color—shackled like slaves and herded onto a small boat while Barts flogs their weeping son. Young Abraham runs to Billy's defense; when the dust-up is over, his deeply indebted father is unemployed. And grim though that is, the worst is yet to come: That night, Abraham sees Barts creep into the family home and hover menacingly over his sleeping mother; within days she's dead of some ghastly fever.
Lincoln grows into a bitter, hard-drinking young man (Benjamin Walker, of Broadway's Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson), consumed with the need to avenge his mother's death, and it's in a bar that he meets the stranger, Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper), who teaches him the skills he needs to be a killer. Henry also opens Lincoln's eyes to a monstrous truth…literally monstrous. Vampires aren't just the stuff of bogey tales for children: They prowl the still-New World, abetted by the willful blindness of Americans determined to put the past behind them, and by the rigors of life at a time when disease, accidents, Indian attacks and even childbirth made death a constant companion.
Once Lincoln has mastered the art of vampire slaying, Henry dispatches him to Springfield, Indiana, where he studies law and later begins to dabble in politics, finds a new friend in Joshua Speed (Jimmi Simpson), reconnects with an old one in William Johnson (Anthony Mackie) and shyly steals the heart of Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) from his future political rival, Stephen Douglas (Alan Tudyk). Oh, and he starts killing vampires who, the odd pair of wraparound sunglasses aside, look just like everyone else until they transform into shark-toothed, blood-spattered fiends.
That Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is entertaining is no huge surprise: Seth Grahame-Smith's novel (the follow-up to his surprise bestseller Pride and Prejudice & Zombies) is an audacious blend of reality and fantasy, the same delicate mix that the Russian-Kazakh Bekmambatov pulled off brilliantly in Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2006)—though not in his unfortunate English-language debut, the 2008 Angelina Jolie vehicle Wanted. And the cast is exceptionally rich in theatre-trained actors with movie experience which, as the Harry Potter franchise demonstrated definitively, can give genre fiction just the right touch of gravity without spilling over into pretention.
The surprise is how respectful it is of Lincoln's legacy, preposterous though that sounds. In Graeme-Smith's novel and screenplay (which he stripped of its modern-day framing device, the better to get straight to the bloody heart of things), vampires aren't just a pulpy metaphor for slave owners, they're the supernatural expression of pure human wickedness. Again, casting presses the point home: U.K. actor Rufus Sewell isn't camping around as ancient bloodsucker Adam. Sure, it's clear at a glance that he'd eat Twilight's sparkle vampires for breakfast, but he's as driven as Lincoln by a larger purpose, a sense of responsibility to his people—why shouldn't they have their own nation too? The film is a remarkable balancing act, pure pleasure to watch with just enough tragedy to temper the adrenaline rush.
This review originally appeared in Film Journal International.
One of the most lavishly praised films of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and a Camera d'Or winner at Cannes, Beasts of the Southern Wild teeters on the edge of embracing the cliches of "lyrical poverty" movies, but is anchored in complex reality by the performance of non-actress Quvenzhané Wallis as a motherless six-year-old forced to rely increasingly on her own wits, common sense and childish optimism after a major hurricane devastates her bayou community and her beloved father gradually succumbs to chronic illness.
To an outsider's eye, the world of the bright, sensitive, unselfconsciously intuitive Hushpuppy (Wallis) is one of deprivation, ignorance and grinding poverty. Her mother is long gone—dead, divorced or decamped for parts unknown; who can say?—her father Wink (Dwight Henry) an underemployed drinker in declining health, and her friends are a passel of equally under-parented children and scruffy animals: chicks and chickens, a rheumy-eyed Chihuahua mix, the pot-bellied pig who's probably destined for a stew pot sooner rather than later.
But to Hushpuppy, the world is a miraculous place whose beating heart is echoed in the chests of all creatures great and small, even the giant prehistoric boars her schoolteacher describes to her motley charges. Wink loves the (literally) backwater community locals call "The Bathtub," a brutally beautiful but deceptively fragile ecosystem, and whatever his faults as a parent, he's teaching Hushpuppy to live in it too. But Wink's health is precarious—he doesn't talk about it, but from week to week getting a deep breath comes harder and he's less up to the day-to-day work of scratching a subsistence living from the water and dirt—and his decision to ride out a Katrina-level hurricane rather than evacuate proves disastrous. He and Hushpuppy aren't alone when the rains stop—a handful of equally addled, obstinate lifers hunkered down in their own shacks and lived to tell the tale—but the Bathtub is damaged, the water poisoned, and emergency crews are scouring the countryside in search of survivors they can rescue and place in clean, well-stocked shelters until such time as they can be relocated, a prospect the locals regard as a fate worse than death.
Benh Zeitlin's first feature, is a stunner: You may have reservations about its depiction of catch-as-catch-can bayou poverty as an improvement over, say, the institutional poverty of the best-run urban housing project, but Zeitlin's visuals make his case. Hunger is hunger, but a feast for the soul can offset the ache of an empty belly—not for everyone, perhaps, but for those connected to a community in which a year of bayou sunsets is infinitely more nourishing than a year of fast-food fries.
A misbegotten attempt to revive the anarchic slapstick antics of the trio who scandalized generations of parents and update it for 21st-century audiences. Bottom line: However vulgar, corny and juvenile the real Stooges could be, they actually were funny.
We first meet the Stooges when a sack is rudely tossed onto the doorstep of an orphanage run by nuns. Inside are three babies whom the sisters find so adorable that they squabble—graciously, of course, as befits such pious ladies—over who gets to feed, bathe and cuddle them.
Cut to: Now ten, the boys are such hellions that the blessed brides of Jesus are reduced to squabbling rather less than decorously over who has to deal with them. After Mother Superior (Jane Lynch), whose belief in their fundamental goodness has survived a decade of challenges, discovers them preparing to perform surgery on Sister Mary-Mengele (Larry David), even she's up for getting rid of them. Enter the wealthy, childless Harters (Stephen Collins, Carly Craig), who are looking to adopt a child; with any luck the sisters can guilt them into taking the terrible trio. Of course, that means hiding all the other children, because no one in his or her right mind would choose Moe, Larry and Curly (Skyler Gisondo, Lance Chantiles-Wertz and Robert Capron) if they thought there were another option. In the end, the Harters choose Moe, only to return him when he decides he can't leave Larry and Curly and instead adopt the adorable Teddy (Jake Peck).
Cut to: Now adults, Moe (Chris Diamantopolos), Larry (Sean Hayes) and Curly (Will Sasso) still live at the orphanage, supposedly earning their keep as handymen and groundskeepers despite the fact that everything they touch sets off a chain reaction of escalating disaster: Send them up a bell tower to do repairs and you can be sure that the bell will come tumbling down and cold-cock someone. To be fair, though, they do love kids and kids love them—especially poor, sickly little Murph (Avalon Robbins)—and they're utterly devoted to the kindly sisters. So the boys are hit hard by the news that the orphanage will shut down in 30 days unless some miracle produces $830,000 to pay off its delinquent tax bill. How can they not try to raise the money?
Next thing you know, the boys immediately get themselves entangled in a murder-for-hire plot concocted by gold-digger Lydia (Sofia Vergara, of TV's American Family), who wants her much-older husband out of the way sooner rather than later. By the time their great adventure is over, they will have reconnected with the grown Teddy (Kirby Heyborne), donned drag to play nurses (apparently there are no male nurses in Stooge World), nearly killed a dolphin with a peanut, discovered the world of reality TV (Moe is tapped to join the cast of "Jersey Shore"), and exposed Lydia and her lover (Craig Bierko) for the very bad people they are.
The fact that writer-director brothers Bobby and Peter Farrelly have for years sung their devotion to The Three Stooges
Diamantopoulos, Hayes and Sasso clearly did their homework and hit all the familiar notes, from n'yuk-n'yuk-n'yuk to wooo-wooo-wooo, but not one rings true; they come off as awkward imitations rather than organic reinterpretations. And that makes the brutal violence of their gags—from eye-pokes to bitch-slaps—all the more glaringly unpleasant: Any parent who wants to relive the fun of seeing the old Three Stooges shorts on TV with his kids (and yes, it would be his; moms looking to introduce their kids to such antics are thin on the ground) would do better to invest in a DVD of the real thing.
Wolverine made Hugh Jackman a star, but the actor's best efforts — which are very good indeed — can't compensate for the fact that the first story spun off from the X-Men franchise is little more than a formulaic fantasy-action movie aimed squarely at 12-year-olds. It's far from a disaster on the order of Ang Lee's Hulk, but it achieves neither the moody grace of The Dark Knight nor the sophisticated cynicism of Iron Man.
Canada, 1845: Sickly James, the young son of a wealthy landowner, lies in bed with a fever as the slightly older Victor Creed, the caretaker's boy, watches resentfully. Moments later, everything changes: One man kills another, a dark family secret is dragged into the light and James and Victor realize they're half brothers, bound by blood and mutant abilities of the fang-and-claw variety, abilities that will forever exile them to the sidelines of mainstream human society.
As adults, James (Jackman) — who eventually calls himself Logan — and Victor (Shreiber) have parlayed their formidable fighting skills and near indestructibility into careers as mercenaries, and the film's beautifully condensed credits sequence follows their relationship as it's forged and warped by the American Civil War, World Wars I and II and, finally, the mind-shattering mire of Vietnam, which thrusts the fundamental differences in their natures into a withering spotlight. Logan is at war with himself, perpetually trying to cage the beast within, while Victor (easily recognizable as Sabretooth, though never referred to by name) increasingly embraces his animal nature, wallowing in the voluptuous bloodlust his half-brother is determined to keep at bay. Victor's berserking eventually lands them in front of a firing squad, but after the failure of all efforts to execute them they're rescued — perhaps "shanghaied" is the more appropriate term — by uber-patriot Major William Stryker (Huston), who's assembling a super-squad of mutants charged with doing things no human squad would or could. Logan soon quits Stryker's "Team X" in disgust, abandoning the feral Victor to his own worst impulses.
Six years later, Logan is ensconced in Canada's back of beyond, lumberjacking by day and playing blissful off-the-grid-house with schoolteacher Kayla Silverfox (Collins) by night. But the past comes roaring back, first via Stryker,now a colonel who attempts to re-recruit Logan by confiding that a rogue mutant is killing former members of Team X, then in the form of Victor, who slinks out of the woods to kill Kayla, forcing a battle royale that leaves Logan crippled and vulnerable to Stryker's sly blandishments.
Dogged by credible rumors of on-set conflict between South African art-house director Hood (Tsotsi) and pop-panderers Richard and Lauren Shuler Donner, the film's producers, Wolverine is a film divided against itself, a disposable popcorn movie wrestling with a moody psychological drama: Look no farther than mismatched screenwriters David Benioff (The Kite Runner, The 25th Hour) and Skip Woods (Hitman, Swordfish) for proof. To their credit, Woods and Benioff distill Wolverine's complicated and sometimes contradictory back story into a coherent narrative, but the generic and eminently forgettable action sequences consistantly undermine the character-driven drama.
Upscale casting goes a long way towards elevating the pulpy material, and Jackman, Huston and Schreiber all lend respectable depth and nuance to what could easily have been two-dimensional roles. But they're swimming upstream all the way: Wolverine tries hard but never transcends its origins.
A fiercely rational lawyer's resistance to anything that smacks of the supernatural is put to the test when he moves into his late aunt's house and is faced with evidence that the place is seriously haunted.
Bryan Becket (Daly) practices law in a small, picturesque New England town and lives his life by one simple principle: If he can't prove it, he wants nothing to do with it. Bryan's artistic wife, Robin (Roth), has tried to soften his "just the facts, ma'am" attitude, but he won't budge and their marriage is increasingly strained. Bryan's heartless response to the death of his only surviving relative, an elderly aunt, sparks a brief, late-night fight with long-lasting repercussions.
Bryan uses the fact that he's the presumptive heir to his aunt's rambling, antique-filled mansion to "take a break" from family life and its messy emotional demands; his rationale, that he doesn't want the house looted while it stands empty, fools no one. But the day after Bryan moves in, his law partner, Sully (Arnold), discovers a recent handwritten will bequeathing the property to one Dr. Koven (Altman), who runs a paranormal research facility. Bryan is furious: How dare some charlatan take advantage of an old woman and, incidentally, rob him of his inheritance! That Koven proves a reasonable, diligent researcher who dismisses supernatural hocus pocus in favor of looking for scientific explanations for phenomena like ESP only stokes the flames of Bryan's fury. More determined than ever to remain in the house, Bryan blames persistent insomnia for the whispers he hears in the dark and the fleeting glimpses he catches of a strange woman; he won't so much as entertain the idea that repressed memories of his mother's death might have something to do with it.
Dr. Shepard (Herrmann), the psychiatrist who treated 5-year-old Bryan after Mrs. Becket took a fatal tumble down some stairs, suggests that therapy might help resolve the problem at its source, but Bryan prefers to treat the symptoms. Father Wymond (Prosky), another lifelong acquaintance, gently warns Bryan to be on his guard around the house, advice Bryan dismisses with thinly disguised contempt. Even Robin breaks the chilly silence between them to tell Bryan he's been talking in his sleep for years, always about his mother. Ironically, by the time Bryan is rattled enough to listen, the only person interested in talking to him is a high-strung psychic named Cassie (Saldana).
Credit where credit is due: Writer-director Tennyson Bardwell is defiantly bucking contemporary horror trends by making an old-fashioned psychological ghost story. He gets excellent production value from his locations, notably the 19th-century Batchellor Mansion in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and shows no small flair for creating suspense from shadows and suggestion. His script scrupulously proposes equal and opposite explanations for Bryan's increasingly creepy experiences, and frankly, if he'd been half as careful about his characters, The Skeptic could have been the kind of small gem horror fans live to discover. But he wasn't, repeatedly compelling supposedly mature and intelligent people to do preposterous things in order to keep the plot moving. I can believe, for example, that a 20-year-old frat boy would be dumb enough to respond to a close friend's increasing mental agitation by pranking him, but substitute a pair of sober, middle-aged lawyers and the same scenario seems false and forced. It's painful to see such a promising premise run aground on its own ambitions.
When the newspaper thriller's obituary is written, State of Play may well be cited as the genre's last gasp. Adapted from the 2003 UK miniseries written by Paul Abbot and directed by David Yates, State of Play acknowledges the grim state of traditional print journalism while remaining firm in its faith that ink-stained wretches are steadfast foot soldiers in the war against political corruption, institutional malfeasance, spin control and all forms of business as usual.
Sleek, mediagenic congressman Stephen Collins (Affleck), who's chairing a high-profile committee investigating defense-department outsourcing to private companies, arrives at the office to the grim news that his head researcher, Sonia Baker (Thayer), is dead, apparently the victim of a subway accident. Collins' palpable shock triggers rumors of an affair, which happen to be true. Veteran Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) has a personal interest in the story, courtesy of his long personal history with Collins and his wife, Anne (Wright Penn), who was unhappy with her marriage long before Collins' reckless infidelity became beltway water-cooler chat. McCaffrey and Collins have barely spoken since Collins' star began to rise, and the fact that Anne and McAffrey had a fleeting affair further complicates matters.
McAffrey's hard-nosed editor, Cameron Lynne (Mirren), is juggling old-school dedication to investigative reporting and intense pressure to attract younger readers, which has intensified since the Globe was acquired by the MediaCorp conglomerate. Her heart is with rumpled newshounds like McCaffrey, but her head tells her the future of journalism is skewed towards shiny, new-media personalities like the ]Globe's own Della Frye (McAdams), who blogs about politics from an intensely personal perspective. Lynne covers all bases by assigning both to the story: Maybe they'll even learn something from each other.
What Frye and McCaffrey learn, of course, is that there's more to the story than meets the eye. But can they put together the puzzle pieces — which include a double shooting within hours of Baker's death; PointCorps' far-reaching military and political connections; sleazy spin doctor Dominic Foy (Bateman); Collins' mentor, venerable West Virginia Senator George Fergus; Baker's trashy former roommate (Mixon); and the mystery man (Berresse) glimpsed on subway security tapes — before the official story buries the truth?
For all its noble intentions, State of Play pales beside such genre high-water marks as Billy Wilder's scorching Ace in the Hole (1951), which virtually coined the term "media circus"; His Girl Friday, whose witty patter lies lightly over a bitter dissection of media morals; sadly cynical Defense of the Realm (1985); underrated Humphrey Bogart vehicle Deadline USA (1952); tabloid-expose The Sweet Smell of Success (1957); and All the President's Men (1976), which briefly made superstars of beat reporters — it's surely no coincidence that PointCorps has offices at the Watergate. And like the Oscar-winning Traffic (2000), based on the 1989 miniseries Traffik, State of Play suffers from the constraints of cramming a miniseries' worth of intertwined storylines into a theatrical running time: Subplots are jettisoned, characters excised and combined, complications simplified. That said, director Kevin MacDonald (grandson of legendary writer-producer Emeric Pressburger, and director of The Last King of Scotland) and writers Matthew Michael Carnahan (Lions for Lambs), Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) and Billy Ray (Shattered Glass) deserve credit for recognizing producing aa thinking-man's thriller rather than a glossy roller-coaster ride like Eagle Eye (2008).
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the comfortably middle-aged It Came From Outer Space should be blushing like a schoolgirl: R.W. Goodwin and Steven P. Fisher's meticulously crafted, deadpan recreation of 1950s sci-fi movies is first and foremost a tribute to its low-budget, high minded charms.
Beyond that, though, I'm not sure what to make of Alien Trespass, which is neither a spoof nor an homage… more like a reverential ritual designed to keep the movie memories of yesteryear alive. But since the films it evokes are still around and, if anything, more available than ever with us (you can see in its entirety It Came From Outer Space on YouTube, albeit broken into pieces: start here), the past's flame doesn't seem in desperate need of fanning.
1957: As a meteor shower lights up the sky over the Mojave desert, residents of a small desert town — including hormonal-but-decent teens Dick and Penny (Dunbar, Smyth), aspiring artist Tammy (Baird), drunken saucer-buff Wilson (McBeath), egghead Ted Lewis (McCormack) and his va-va-va-voom wife (Thompson) — see a puzzling object streak through the sky and crashes near a popular make-out spot at the edge of town. Dick and Penny, who are, naturally, in the middle of a steamy (but chaste) makeout session, hotfoot it out of there. Wilson stumbles out of his shack to great the visitors, but his close encounter scares the bejabbers out of him — maybe it was that head-to-toe silver jumpsuit. And Dr. Lewis — who, as an astronomer, owes it to science to investigate, slips out of the sleeping Lana's arms and winds up possessed by silver-suit guy, an intergalactic "Federal Marshall" named Urp, who accidentally lost a space monster — the ravenous, tentacled Ghota, which can reduce a human being to a puddle of slime without batting its gigantic single eye — and is desperate to get it back .
Lana immediately notices that her husband is acting, well, kind of crazy, speaking in the uniquely stilted cadences of '50s aliens and marvelling at stupid stuff like table salt. Urp/Dr. Lewis contrives to escape Lana's tender mercies: The Ghota is the cane toad of aliens, and must be stopped before it begins to reproduce!
Meanwhile, cops Vernon and Barnes (Patrick, Brocklebank) are besieged by reports of monsters on the loose; Dick and Penny's juvenile delinquent pal, Cody (Brooks), persuades them to revisit the crash site so he can take pictures with his dad's fancy new polaroid; and Tammy has an odd encounter with Dr. Lewis and Chief Dawson (Lauria) curses fate for visiting this nonsense on his town two days before he was due to retire.
Alien Trespass doesn't have a mean bone in its body: Fisher and X-Files veteran Goodwin are fans of vintage science fiction movies whose reach exceeds their threadbare grasp. The love is palpable. Goodwin and Fisher wrap their affectionate pastiche in a tongue-in-cheek back story told through pitch-perfect faux newsreels — scuttled by poverty-row mogul Lewis B. Goldstone after a feud with b-movie idol "M. Eric McCormack" (the grandfather of Will & Grace star Eric McCormack, wink, wink), Alien Trespass was believed lost until a print resurfaced five decades later &mdash and scrupulously reproduce the not-quite-perfect matte shots, theramin-goosed scores and endearingly unconvincing rear-projection of films like The Day the Earth Sood Still, This Island Earth and, of course, It Came From Outer Space.
The result is clever without being particularly engrossing; even as I was admiring its flawlessly, I kept thinking of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2004), which treads the same ground while managing to to be weirdly funny.
Bottom Line: Wrestling star John Cena is the dead weight that drags down this brainless but energetic action picture.
NEW YORK -- A fortuitous confluence of luck and pluck allows lowly New Orleans beat cop Danny Fisher (Cena) to arrest infernally clever Irish arms dealer Miles Jackson (Gillen), who's been leading the FBI a merry chase for three years. It's a shame Miles' daredevil girlfriend died in the process, but it was more Miles' fault than Danny's: If Miles hadn't told her to run, she wouldn't have been pasted by that oncoming car.
That is not, of course, how Miles sees it. By the time he breaks out of a jail a year later, he's masterminded a diabolical plan to make Danny, now a detective, pay ... and pay and pay some more.
Miles blows up Danny's house and car, kidnaps his lovely girlfriend, Molly (Scott), and orchestrates an escalating series of tests and puzzles via taunting cell phone calls. If Danny can survive 12 rounds of the game, Miles promises to let Molly live. If Danny fails, it's an "eye for an eye" time and Molly dies.
Danny has the enthusiastic support of his partner and best friend (White) and the self-serving assistance of an FBI team led by arrogant agent George Aiken (Steve Harris), who's still steamed over having lost the opportunity to collar Miles himself.
Daniel Kunka's script delivers plot twists galore, but the film's adrenaline-injected action set pieces trump narrative logic every time. Director Renny Harlin, who once presided over such major studio event-pictures as "Die Hard 2" and "Cliffhanger," knows how to wrangle screaming fire engines, cop cars and helicopters, so any scene involving criminally reckless driving on crowded city streets or theft and destruction of private and public property crackles. Character development, however, has never been Harlin's strong suit, so the cast is left to fend for itself.
Irish actor Gillen, who suggests a curious mix of Richard Gere and Gary Oldman, brings a devious sparkle to smirking sociopath Miles, who seems on the verge of breaking into a wee jig every time he sets Danny another apparently impossible task. If Cena were half as charismatic, Danny and Miles' turbo-charged cat-and-mouse game would be a real blast. But Cena is no Jason Statham. His stolid seriousness sucks the life right out of any scene in which he's required to speak. It's a bad sign when you repeatedly wish a runaway trolley would silence the hero.
This review originally appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.
"Some things cannot be explained," warn the posters. Well, amen to that: I'm at a total loss to explain why the claim "based on a true story" is supposed to make a movie scary, or why people persist in believing tales of supernatural hijinks long after they've been thoroughly debunked. Inspired by the supposedly well-documented account of a family's ordeal with unquiet spirits, The Haunting in Connecticut is this generation's Amityville Horror.
This review originally appeared on AMCtv's Horror Hacker site.
That most frustrating thing about writer-director Michael (Michael Clayton) Gilroy's dryly jaunty, globe-trotting spy-vs.-spy romp is that it's just good enough to make you wish it were better.
It opens brilliantly. A pair of sleekly dressed executives and their entourages converge on a private airport in the shadow of their respective corporate jets. In slow motion and without sound, the rival captains of industry hard looks, warning snarls and, finally, body blows, as their stunned minions work up the courage to separate the lions of Burkett & Randle and Equikrom. Operatic, witty and brilliantly efficient, the sequence establish the no-holds-barred war of egos against which a fiendishly complicated scam will unfold.
Dubai, 2003: MI5 hound dog Ray Koval (Owen) and steely CIA cutie Claire Stenwick (Roberts) meet at a Fourth of July shindig at the US Embassy and fall into bed like the beautiful creatures they are. Sadly, cock-of-the-walk Ray fails to realize that Claire is just after some top-secret documents, and awakes 18 hours later humiliated, outraged and suffering a major Mickey Finn hangover.
Four years later, Ray and Claire have left their respective government gigs and taken up corporate espionage: He's a last-minute addition to the team of high-tech spies assembled by ferrety CEO Dick Garsik (Giamatti) to steal the formula for a revolutionary product — it's so secret he doesn't even know what it is, beyond that it must be something to do with health and/or hygiene — developed by his sworn enemy, marketplace Darwinist Howard Tully (Wilkinson). She's the mole buried deep in Tully's security department, Whoever brings the miracle invention to market first will rule the kingdom of health and beauty aids, at least until the next big things comes along. That Ray was brought in as Claire's handler is a delicious irony neither particularly appreciates. Or do they?
Gilroy's twisty tale unfolds in a series of achronological flashbacks, each of which reveals another facet of Claire and Ray's exquisitely complicated relationship — a thing of larceny, lust and the total absence of trust. Each knows the other is a reflexive liar, constantly calculating the odds of getting away with something illegal, immoral, seductively lucrative or some combination thereof. The bitter battle of wits between Equikrom and Burkett & Randle offers the opportunity to work the long con of a lifetime: While the fat cats are busy trying to screw each other, there's room for a pair of sly mice to slip in and snatch the multimillion dollar cheese out from under their noses. The trick is figuring out where the various players' loyalties lie.
All of which promises cruel, sexy, brain-teasing fun in the tradition of The Sting, Nine Queens, The Grifters or House of Games. And it delivers, at least until the story is dragged down by the weight of Ray and Claire's oddly lifeless romance, the very thing that's supposed to add sizzle to the ice-cold mechanics of the dizzyingly complicated caper.
Pairing Owen and Roberts must have looked great on paper: Rugged animal magnetism (what a James Bond Owen could have been!) and girl-next-door sparkle spiced up with a hint of, yes, duplicity. But Roberts looks shockingly wan and haggard, while Owens oozes glumness rather than dangerous performance seems glum rather than sexual danger. There was more electricity to their pairing in the grim anti-romance Closer, where every scene they shared seethed with the potential for sex, violence or both. A romantic comedy is in trouble when there's less chemistry between the lovers than a pair of middle-aged money grubbers who have exactly one scene together.
Were you to combine the new-age wonder of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the apocalyptic revelations of the Left Behind books and films and the brilliantly nutty historical revisionism of Swiss provocateur Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods? the result might approximate this big-budget action thriller in which both faith and science are put to the test and found wanting.
A year after his wife's horribly random death, MIT astrophysicist John Koestler (Cage) is a shadow man, estranged from his deeply religious family and grimly convinced that life is a sad, pointless march towards eternal nothingness. Koestler's precocious, hearing-impaired son, Caleb (Canterbury), is the only reason he gets out of bed in the morning. And even with Caleb to keep him tethered to the land of the living, Koestler is teetering on the edge of the black pit of despair, unable to forgive, forget or move forward.
Until the 50th-anniversary celebration at Caleb's school, a tediously well-intentioned event featuring sanctimonious speeches, beatifically singing children and a guest appearance by Miss Taylor (Carter), who taught the school's very first class. She supervises the opening of a time capsule containing drawings of the far-away future of 2009 as drawn by the long-ago tykes. But while Caleb's classmates tear open long-sealed envelopes stuffed with sweetly childish drawings of rocket ships and flying cars, his contains a sheet of paper dense with numbers, painstakingly arranged in tidy but apparently meaningless rows. Creepy.
And creepier still once Professor Koestler, whiskey-fueled and sleep deprived, discerns a pattern, sets of digits that resolve themselves into dates and death tolls. The whole thing is crazy: How could high-strung schoolgirl Lucinda Embry (Robinson) have predicted every major disaster of the latter half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st? Who are the duster-clad suicide blondes lurking in the woods outside Koestler's home and what does the neurotic Diana (Byrne, of TV's Damages), loony Lucinda's daughter, know or suspect about her mother's encounters with the "whisper people" who are now murmuring blandishments in the ears of both Caleb and her own little girl (Robinson again)? And most important, why do the numbers end in October 2009?
No one will remember Knowing for its performances (wooden), plotting (careless) or underlying cosmology (bughouse crazy). But its disaster set pieces are nothing short of stunning: The plane that comes screaming out of a rain-smudged sky, one wing sparking on the asphalt as it slices through a traffic jam and explodes in a hellish fireball; the New York City subway train that goes off the rails and pulverizes steel, cement and human flesh before coming to a rubble- and dust-shrouded halt; and… well, the last is so intimately intertwined with the film's late, great twist that it's better left undescribed. Suffice it to say that the screenplay's flaws don't include failure of nerve.
To Proyas' credit, Knowing, from a story by co-writer Ryne Douglas Pearson (whose Simon Says became the 1998 Bruce Willis film Mercury Rising), is frontloaded with a pervasive sense of unease so miasmic that even Cage's mannered posturing can't entirely undermine it. But once the plot's wheels start grinding in earnest, the film follows that runaway subway train off the rails. Knowing manages to be simultaneously ham-fisted and naïve in the same way as Cloverfield, consciously toying with emotionally loaded images associated with 9/11 in the service of a b-movie plot that would have seemed hokey half a century ago.
Given the success of Alexandre Aja's 2006 remake of Wes Craven's seminal shocker, a new version of his Last House on the Left (1972), arguably the most reviled film of an era filled with cinematic outrages, was inevitable. But this new House is softer than the old House, a cautionary revenge tale in which the avengers are forced to confront the fact that they're as tainted by the outrageous cruelty of which they're capable as those they seek to punish.
Overall, Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth's screenplay follows Craven's closely: Pampered, slightly naive Mari Collingwood (Paxton), who's spending the summer with her parents, Jack and Emma (Goldwyn and Potter), at the family's isolated lake house, hooks up with her pal Paige (MacIsaac) at the general store where Paige works. City girl Mari is a straight arrow who channels her energy into competitive swimming, while the small-town Paige is a little wilder and less goal oriented; when scruffy, baby-faced stranger Justin (Clark) offers to sell them some good weed, it's Paige who leaps at the offer. Mari tags along in the spirit of being a good sport, and frets when she realizes the rundown motel where Justin and his family are staying is out of cell phone range — she's the kind of kid who actually checks in with her mom when she says she will.
A storm gathers, Paige and Justin party and Mari hangs out gamely, but the fun screeches to a halt when Justin's family comes home early. Justin's fugitive dad is a sadistic sociopath named Krug (Dillahunt, of TV's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), who was en route to a maximum security prison when his brother, Frank (Paul, of TV's Breaking Bad), and girlfriend, Sadie (Lindhome), engineered his escape, cold-bloodedly killing two police officers in the process. The fugitives are big news and their pictures are everywhere: They need to get out of town fast and need Mari's SUV, but the girls have to go.
Krug and company (the title under which Craven's version was shot) take off with the teenagers in tow, taunting and abusing them as they drive. Though terrified, Mari keeps a cool head and, after steering her abductors onto a road tantalizingly close to the sanctuary of her parents' house, makes a bold attempt to escape. It fails dismally: Frank and Sadie catch Paige just before she makes it to a busy construction site, and her desperate show of bravado so enrages Krug that he stabs her and rapes the virginal Mari; Justin watches in mute horror. As Krug and his minions regroup, Mari makes one last break for freedom, diving into the nearby lake and attempting to swim to safety. Krug shoots her in the back and leaves her to die in the water.
With the SUV damaged and the storm intensifying, Krug and his bleeding, bedraggled crew make their way to the nearest shelter, which just happens to be the Collingwood house. Jack and Emma welcome them with food, drink and medical attention — Jack is a doctor — but it's only a matter of time before they realize they're sheltering the beasts who brutalized their beloved daughter. What will they do? Well, the fact is pretty much everyone knows what they do, either because they're familiar with the original film or because they've seen the trailers for the remake, which give away the whole plot, right down to the last gruesome fillip that's tacked on to the end like a roadshow square-up reel. So it's no spoiler to reveal that Jack and Emma wreak bloody vengeance, torturing Frank, Sadie and Krug as cruelly as they did Paige and Mari.
You can see why Craven got solidly behind a Last House remake: His brutal reimagining of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring was a cri de coeur born of late 1960s disillusionment, when the Rolling Stones' concert at Altamont, the Manson family murders and the attenuated carnage of the Vietnam War came together to stain cherished American ideals with blood and cynicism. Fast forward to the Iraq War's grisly fallout, the abuses of Abu Ghraib and the cynical erosion of values wrought by the war on terror: Last House's underlying concerns, particularly the psychic toll exacted by tit-for-tat retribution, are as relevant as ever. And it's hard to imagine that 2005's Chaos, a totally unauthorized, virtually scene for scene remake of Last House, wasn't a contributing factor.
The trouble is that the tweaks and tucks made by the new Last House team — director Iliades and screenwriters Alleca and Ellsworth — all undermine the brutal directness of the original. They include the totally extraneous invention of Mari's late brother, Ben (presumably to raise the stakes on the Collingwoods' investment in their surviving child); the fact that Mari has sworn off smoking dope (read: she's an unambiguous good girl) and lives to make her way home (not a spoiler, by the way &mdash it's in the trailer); and the recasting of Justin as an innocent and fundamentally decent kid helpless to resist his domineering dad. Put it all together and you have a film designed to make audiences root for the Collingwoods to give Krug, Frank and Sadie exactly what they deserve, a satisfying thrill ride rather than a downbeat examination of the ways in which violence — even when morally sanctioned — eats away at the souls of the perpetrators.
None of which will have much to do with the success or failure of the new Last House: If it can bring in both genre buffs familiar with the original film's reputation but unwilling to watch old movies (which is to say anything made before Jaws and/or Star Wars) and thrill seekers whose curiosity is piqued by the atrocities promised by the tell-all trailers, it should do just fine.
This review originally appeared in Film Journal International.
Zack Snyder's Watchmen isn't perfect. It will not change the world as we know it. And it is not a word-for-word, image-for-image adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' insanely ambitious deconstruction of the costumed crime-fighter mythos; it isn't the movie that played in my head when I first read it, nor is it yours. But Zack Snyder's Watchmen is a first-rate adaptation of Moore and Gibbons' densely imagined, alternate pop-culture history of the world, a dazzling, Dystopian fable with a deeply dark heart.
New York, 1985: Richard Nixon is in the fifth term of his imperial presidency, the United States and Soviet Union are on the brink of nuclear war and someone has just murdered Edward Morgan Blake (Morgan), a.k.a. to some as the Comedian. To the world at large, the Comedian was an uber-patriot, a true-blue defender of truth, justice and the American way. His fellow costumed heroes know otherwise: Although a founding member of the 1940s' Minutemen, a coalition of gung-ho, first-generation "masks," the Comedian was little better than a thug with an excuse to act on his every ugly impulse. Amoral thugs with big guns being the useful tools they are, the Comedian was recruited by Uncle Sam's department of dirty deeds, who kept his image polished to a high shine. And when the 1977 Keene Act outlawing costumed vigilantes was passed, he was exempted, while fellow masks Nite Owl (Wilson), Silk Spectre (Akerman) and Ozymandias (Goode) were forced into retirement. Ozymandias subsequently went public with his true identity — self-made millionaire Adrian Veidt — and joined Dr. Manhattan (Crudup), the only true superman in the group, on a high-profile mission to promote world peace through technology. Bona fide sociopath Rorschach (Haley), whose misanthropy is matched only by his paranoia, never cared much about laws and continued to pursue his morally uncompromising crusade against the wicked.
Rorschach's quest to find the Comedian's killer is the thread on which Moore strung his intricate, non-linear dissection of five decades' worth of superhero mythology. With the exception of its opening sequence, a documentary style montage that brilliantly distills the history of costumed crime-fighters in America to the tune of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'," Snyder and screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse hew faithfully to the original's text and structure, a series of interlocking flashbacks and digressions that culminate in a scorched-earth climax that leaves no cliché behind. Not surprising, the film looks great; that it works dramatically is a tribute to its cast, Crudup in particular. Playing a costumed hero is tough enough — playing a naked, opaque-eyed, blue-skinned ubermensch dogged by existential angst and the gradual loss of his humanity is tougher, especially when your performance is filtered through layers of CGI. The unfortunate exception to the generally pitch-perfect casting is vapid hottie Akerman, whose Silk Spectre is the sum total of sleekly swinging hair and a pin-up girl costume.
It's a shame that Moore, who was conspicuously unhappy with the movie versions of his From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta, had his name removed from Watchmen's credits at the outset. It's hard to imagine a better adaptation, and it just might steer some new readers to the original.
Not since the nuclear-nightmare thriller The China Syndrome (1979) opened less than two weeks before an accident shut down Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant has a movie lucked into such eerily serendipitous timing as Tom Tykwer's icily cynical film about devious doings in the international banking industry.
Interpol agent Lou Salinger (Owen) and Manhattan Assistant DA Eleanor Whitman (Watts) have been trying to get the dirt on the Luxembourg-based International Bank of Business and Credit, a vast financial institution involved in money laundering, arms dealing and God only knows what else. The trouble is proving it, which boils down to finding an IBBC (the initials pointedly invoke a real company that went down in scandalous flames in 1991) insider whose conscience has overcome his avarice, and it looks as though they've finally caught a break. One of Whitman's colleagues, Tom Schumer (Burfield), has made contact with a high-level executive who appears ready to give up his employers. Is it coincidence that immediately after their first face-to-face meeting, a clandestine rendezvous in a Berlin parking lot, Schumer succumbs to a fatal heart attack? Salinger doesn't think so, especially after he finds a fresh needle puncture on Schumer's back, but the Berlin police refuse to investigate. Salinger's suspicions are confirmed when he finds that police reports concerning the death of an IBBC executive — in a one-car accident mere hours after Schumer's death — have been tampered with.
Salinger and Whitman finagle an interview with Italian businessman Umberto Calvini (Luca Giorgio Barbareschi), who recently pulled out of a huge arms deal with IBBC, perhaps concerned that the association might derail his political ambitions. It falls to Calvini to lay out the players and the game: IBBC's excursion into direct arms dealing has nothing to do with the profit in selling pistols and everything to do with debt. Waging war costs money, IBBC is famous for lending it to warlords, dictators and guerrilla rebels, and debt is better than a chain around the neck for manipulating and controlling nations. Not surprisingly, Calvini is assassinated shortly after, the upside being that his assassin left a footprint behind — if Whitman and Salinger can find the shooter (O'Byrne), maybe he'll lead them to the puppet master. The complications continue to multiply well into the third act, as Whitman and Salinger are constantly challenged to reassess how far they're willing to go to bring down IBBC.
Despite the fact that The International opened as the world economy was spiraling into free fall as a direct (if not necessarily deliberate) result of debt manipulation by global financial institutions, its cool reception probably had more to do with the fact that thrillers in which the bad guy is a system rather than an individual are hard put to deliver a satisfying resolution. It's easier to take out a rogue CIA agent than, say, the IMF, and even in the dyspeptic '70s the average moviegoer preferred a James Bond movie to the bleak paranoia of The Parallax View.
Tykwer's mise en scene makes it clear from the outset that Whitman and Salinger are raging against a machine of inhuman proportions: Bird's-eye views of crowds dispersing like bugs, low-angle shots of sleekly impersonal glass-and-steel office towers, panoramic images of coldly angular buildings squatting in the magnificent isolation of otherwise pristine natural beauty. The globetrotting locations change — Lyon, Milan, Berlin, Istanbul — but the proportions remain the same. Even the bravura shootout at New York's sensuously curved Guggenheim Museum, a beautifully choreographed exercise in ever-escalating mayhem, emphasizes the contrast between small, scurrying people and the building's symmetrical white ramps, as serenely curved as the ribs of a vast, indifferent ship.
Tykwer and first-time screenwriter Eric Singer take a cynical view of the world's workings, but The International isn't a hipster's oh-so-ironic riff on the establishment's nefarious wheels within wheels: Salinger and Whitmen are establishment too. There's a sadness beneath the glossy surface, the kind you hear in Leonard Cohen's whiskey-and-cigarettes growl; it's so underplayed you hardly notice it until after the movie's over, around the time you think to wonder about those incongruously literary monikers.
King of all media Tyler Perry gives fans what they want: irreverent, pistol-packin' big momma Madea, who's going to make those confused, disrespectful young people see sense if she has to slap it into them. The film won't win any new converts, but Perry knows the box-office value of preaching to the choir.
Miss Mabel "Madea" Simmons (Tyler Perry) is—as always—in a mess of trouble, because she just doesn't know how to suffer fools. Not gladly, mind you, just without making the kind of scene that winds up on the local news. This time she's ordered to undergo anger-management therapy, and if she doesn't go, her next stop is the big house.
Meanwhile, bright young assistant D.A. Josh Hardaway (Derek Luke) is shocked to find childhood friend Candace (former Cosby kid Keshia Knight Pulliam) under arrest on prostitution charges. He hasn't seen her in five years, when she dropped out of college, and there's something in their shared past that compels him to bail her out, buy her lunch and make her swear that if she needs any kind of help she'll call. None of this sits well with Josh's snooty fiancée, fellow assistant D.A. Linda Davis (Ion Overman), and the resulting tension puts a severe strain on the wedding plans, especially when Josh lets Candy sleep on his couch after she's been beaten and raped by a sadistic pimp.
As all this heavy drama is unfolding, Madea reluctantly reports for anger-management counseling and so infuriates her therapist (Dr. Phil, in one of the film's many celebrity cameos) that he refuses to see her for a second session. She then gets into a parking-space dispute with a skinny rich bitch outside Kmart, and settles the matter by taking a forklift to the woman's sports car. Madea is hauled into court again, but this time it's Judge Greg Mathis (as himself) presiding, and it's off to the DeKalb County lockup for her. And that's where all the plot strands come together: Candy is there, along with her hooker friend Donna (Vanessa Ferlito), who's actually cleaning up her act, and pavement preacher Ellen (Viola Davis), who ministers to prisoners and, at Josh's request, tried to help Candy before Candy was ready to help herself. Let's just say that Madea's special form of tough love wins over fellow inmates as diverse as cheerfully nutty serial killer T.T. (Sofia Vergara) and butch Big Sal (American Gladiator Robin Coleman), allowing her to talk some much-needed, no-bull sense into the lot of them.
Madea Goes to Jail raked in the biggest opening-weekend gross of any Perry film since his first, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, proving that it's hard to go wrong giving the people what they want. Madea is the spoonful of sugar (okay, maybe more like the 10-gallon bucket) that makes the melodrama go down, and where else are you going to see Whoopi Goldberg (with "View" co-hosts Joy Behar and Elizabeth Hasselbeck) and Rev. Al Sharpton gamely contributing fake sound bites about the gross miscarriage of justice that landed a man in a fat suit and housedress in a ladies' slammer?
This review originally appeared in Film Journal International.)
Henry Selick never got the recognition he deserved for directing the sweetly macabre Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) — given that full title, small wonder — but his 3-D adaptation of Neil Gaiman's delightfully dark children's novel should make him a household name.
Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones (voiced by Fanning) doesn't see why her parents (Hatcher, Hodgman) had to pull up stakes and move from Michigan to Oregon. She hates their new home, a gloomily undistinguished house in the middle of nowhere, with a neglected garden and an incongruously precious name: "The Pink Palace." She misses her old friends, and Wybie (Bailey, Jr.), whose grandmother owns the Palace, is no substitute, though he's better than the eccentric neighbors — twittery former music-hall actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (Saunders, French), with their Scotties (whose ages range from superannuated to stuffed) and bowls full of ossified toffy — and peculiar Mr. Bobinsky (McShane), a Russian acrobat claims to be training a mouse circus in the attic. Coraline wishes her parents were more, well, parental: They sit around the house all day writing about seeds — her mother doesn't even like gardening — and never make anything nice for dinner or buy her fun clothes. And everyone outside her family calls her Caroline, no matter how many times she corrects them.
And then Coraline finds the door. Her mother says it doesn't go anywhere — there's nothing behind it but a brick wall. But Coraline knows there must be, and indeed, she finds the key and opens it. And there it is: a slinky sort of tunnel, luridly lit in the style of Dario Argento's Suspiria, that leads back into her own home… her home the way it ought to be. Everything is new and bright and beautiful, including her parents: Coraline's Other Mother cooks her favorite foods, wears pretty clothes and never tells her to be quiet and stay out of the way. Her Other Father is fun and playful and takes her on a tour of the garden he's into a vividly colored botanical wonderland, full of pitcher plants and bleeding hearts and snap dragons that really snap. Even her toys caper and romp for her amusement. If only the other parents didn't have blank, black-button eyes… they're a little creepy, frankly. But aside from that, everything is perfect.
Coraline falls asleep in her marvelous other bedroom and wakes up in her shabby old one, but knows she wasn't dreaming. The other world is as real as this one, and she returns every night, even after the talking doppelganger of the scrawny feral cat (David) who haunts the grounds outside the Pink Palace warns that things are not as they seem. But how can she resist a world where Wybie doesn't chatter all the time — in fact, doesn't talk at all — and Mr. Bobinsky's jerboa mice perform marvelous tricks and routines, then twist and balance their furry little bodies into a living sculpture of her name? Where Miss Forcible and Miss Spink mount a theatrical spectacular just for her, complete with Victorian stagecraft and death-defying stunts? It's a little weird, two fat old ladies in scanty costumes cavorting on the flying trapeze, but it's a command performance for Coraline. By the time she realizes how right the cat is, her real world is in danger and she must be braver and smarter than she ever imagined if things are to be put right.
Like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride, Coraline was created using old-fashioned stop-motion animation, the painstaking frame-by-frame manipulation of puppets and props within a meticulously constructed world. Stop-motion breathed life into Willis O'Brien's soulful King Kong and the much-loved monsters of Ray Harryhausen; fans (of whom I'm one), love its unrepentant physicality. It produces a palpable sensation that you're seeing something real that neither classical cel animation nor CGI can; every time I hear someone marveling at how real computer-generated images look, I think of the many times I've been pulled out of live-action movies by a flock of CGI birds flapping across a real sky. And 3-D makes Coraline's meticulously imagined world look even more eerily inviting; Selick refrains from throwing things at the lens in favor of filling up the background with the kind of intricate, delightful details that make repeat viewings as fresh as the first.
Like virtually all mainstream American animation, Coraline is meant for children. But it's neither infantile nor condescending. It has a moral — the same moral as The Wizard of Oz and Through the Looking Glass &mdash without being preachy or sanctimonious, and bypasses the cynical formulas that makes so many animated features so headache-inducing. It assumes that a good, multilayered story will hook kids as surely as garish visuals, antic pacing and coarse jokes about bodily functions, and adults without recourse to pop-culture gags and nudge-nudge, wink-wink double entendres. And Coraline is scary, like the tales of Hans Christian Andersen and E.T.A. Hoffmann: Actions have consequences, enchanted worlds are filled with hidden danger and lessons are learned at a price. Magical kingdoms are rooted in the fantasies children invent to correct reality's incomprehensible complications and unfairness; as soon as they begin to understand the delicate reckonings that make adult life so frustratingly complicated, the feckless fledglings are on their way back from never-never land, tougher and better equipped to weather life's storms. The door in the wall is half-sized, just right for a child, but the Coraline who eventually emerges is halfway to adulthood, ready to work with the reality of flawed parents and imperfect friends. And in the end, Coraline's Other Mother is no more frightening than the witch in Snow White and Peter Pan's Captain Hook; she's just scary enough that her comeuppance is truly, righteously satisfying.
member, Alliance of Women Film Journalists


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Women's Nike Rev Mesh Shorts
Buy Online & Pick Up In-Store
With a flirty cut, and an oversized Nike logo graphic, the Nike Rev Mesh Shorts are fun to workout in and feel great, too.
Their mesh construction offers breathability so you don't overheat, while the thick waistband will keep them snug in place so you don't have to worry about them sliding around. Perfect for practicing on the track, or just hanging out in, the Nike Rev Mesh shorts are a comfortable option for any activity you want to wear them to.
- FABRIC: Mesh
- FIT: Short, low waist
- CARE: Machine wash

subset: commoncrawl


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Battle of Champions: Gamboa vs Salido
Collection of photos from September 11th's Battle of Champions at The Palms in Las Vegas. read more »
Gamboa - Latin Fury 12
Pics of Yuriorkis Gamboa from Latin Fury 12. read more »
Margarito in Texas
Antonio Margarito is headed to Texas... follow him on his journey. read more »
Donaire's Media Day
Nonito Donaire puts on a show in front of media and fans at the Undisputed Gym in San Carlos, Ca. Donaire faces Wladimir Sidorenko on Dec 4th at the Honda Center. read more »
Top Rank Live - Magdaleno vs Jimenez
Jan 22 Top Rank Live - Texas Station, Las Vegas read more »
Rios Workout
Brandon Rios is in Dallas to prepare for his fight against Omri Lowther read more »


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International Student and Scholar Services is the office which bears the overall institutional responsibility for international students once they are admitted to the University of Colorado at Boulder. We also help departments bring in visiting scholars and researchers to the University of Colorado Boulder.
International students and scholars with questions concerning their legal status or other issues pertinent to their stay at CU Boulder can come to the office of International Student and Scholar Services, email an adviser, or call us at (303) 492-8057. We will do what we can to answer questions and help with a smooth transition into American university life.
ISSS provides immigration advising for students and scholars at the University of Colorado Boulder. We can also assist with cultural adjustment issues during your stay in the US. Our office coordinates events serving students and scholars on campus.
Disclaimer: U.S. immigration laws are very complex. The information contained in these files is designed specifically for students and scholars at the University of Colorado Boulder. Immigration laws are constantly changing, and even though we will attempt to keep these files up-to-date, we cannot guarantee their completeness or accuracy. The information contained herein is not intended to create an attorney/client relationship nor can it be construed as legal advice. Please meet with an adviser in International Student and Scholar Services before making applications or seeking benefits.
There are seven advisors in the office to advise international students and scholars on a variety of topics ranging from immigration to housing as well as a Program Assistant and Admin Assistant. The staff refer to other on-campus or off-campus offices when a student has need of services unavailable through International Student and Scholar Services. The staff of ISSS are:
Walk-in hours are from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday.
Summer hours for walk-ins are 9 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday.
OFFICE LOCATION: Center for Community (C4C), Suite S355
MAILING ADDRESS: 123 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0123
Phone: +1 (303) 492-8057
Fax: +1 (303) 492-5185
After Hours Emergency Phone: 303-653-1672


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Colette Greybear, 49, of Fort Totten, N.D., passed away on Thanksgiving Day morning, November 22, 2012 at her home in the loving care of her family. The Wake for Colette will be held on Tuesday, November 27 at the Fort Totten Recreation Center, Fort Totten beginning at 5 p.m. The procession to Fort Totten will leave on Tuesday at 4 p.m. from Wal-Mart. Funeral services for Colette will be held on Wednesday, November 28 at 10 a.m. also at the Fort Totten Recreation Center. She will be laid to rest at St. Jerome's Cemetery, rural Fort Totten. Gilbertson Funeral Home, Devils Lake
Location, ST | website.com


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|There are no video walkthroughs for The Scourge Project on X360 at this time. If there are any video walkthroughs for this game recorded from a different console, they will be displayed above.
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Comme Des Garçons
short sleeve blouse
Out of stock
Unfortunately this item is out of stock
White polyester short sleeve blouse from Comme Des Garçons featuring a crew neck and tiered ruffle trim throughout.
Designer Style ID: GMT0260512
Farfetch ID: 10606991
- Height:
- 173
- Bust/Chest (cm):
- 81
- Waist (cm):
- 66
- Hips (cm):
- 91
- Model is wearing size:
Models Measurements
- Composition:
- Polyester 100%
- Composition:
- Cupro 100%
Your order will be shipped directly from the boutique to you. Farfetch ships worldwide, and you will be able to track your order at any time. The cost of shipping your order will be calculated at the checkout.
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Delivery duties are included in the item price when shipping to all EU countries plus USA, Canada, China, Australia, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Singapore, Republic Of Korea, Kuwait, Qatar, India, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, U.A.E., Japan.This means all import duties are included in your order, so the price you see is the price you pay. You will not receive an additional duty bill from the courier to receive your shipment. If you are ordering from within your own customs zone or country, import duties will not be applicable anyway, however you may have to pay VAT or local Sales Taxes where applicable (for the UK and USA these are included at the checkout).
Delivery duties are not included in the item price when shipping to all other countries. This means you may be liable to pay import duties on receipt of your order.
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You have 14 days from receiving your order to return the item to the boutique using our free returns pick-up service. We strongly recommend that you book your free returns pick-up within 7 days of receiving your order to ensure that it arrives back to the boutique in time. Please note for standard orders we can only collect returns from the same country to which your order was delivered. For click and collect orders we can collect your return from the country your order was delivered to and also the country of the original boutique you ordered from. Click here to read our full returns policy.
Rei Kawakubo's avant-garde, conceptual designs for Comme des Garçons have prompted even the harshest critics to view contemporary fashion in a different way. The designer's one-woman war against conformity has drawn comparisons with Chanel and Balenciaga.
Joan Shepp
Philadelphia , United States
Joan Shepp, her daughter Ellen, and their team of style connoisseurs curate one of Philadelphia's most dynamic concept stores. The boutique has been at the forefront of fashion since 1971, showcasing an eclectic mix of designers.


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AUSTIN (February 14, 2013)--The Republican leadership of the Texas House is proposing a change in the rules to block Democrats from forcing a vote on funding for public schools.
Next week lawmakers are scheduled to vote on an emergency spending measure to cover a budget deficit for Medicaid, the health program for the poor and disabled, and Democrats want to use that bill to also restore $5.4 billion in cuts to public schools.
But state Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, proposed a rule Thursday that would block any attempt by Democrats to force a vote on public education spending.
Republican lawmakers don't want to be forced to vote against raising public education spending.
The rule Hunter proposed is extremely unusual and breaks with the tradition of allowing lawmakers to offer amendments to spending bills, no matter the cost.


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Because lyophilization dries a product from the frozen state under temperature controlled conditions, the refrigeration system's process capabilities and performance are critical to a successful commercial lyophilization operation. Part 1 of this article outlines recent trends in pharmaceutical manufacturing and their impact on the evolution of refrigeration technology in lyophilization. It also explains the advantages and disadvantages of choosing a refrigeration system that uses liquid nitrogen instead of mechanical compressors, and its affect on the overall operation. Part 2 of this article, to be published in the December 2007 issue of BioPharm International, will detail design and performance considerations for cryogenic nitrogen refrigeration in a freeze-dryer. The relative cost affect of choosing a cryogenic versus a mechanical refrigeration system will also be discussed as related to the lyophilization process.
Key advantages driving the growth of lyophilization as a preferred fill-and-finish step include the enhanced stability of freeze-dried powder, the ability to remove solvent with minimal heating and concentration effects, the relative ease of aseptically processing a liquid in a freeze-dryer, and rapid and easy dissolution of the product upon reconstitution. All these advantages facilitate minimizing the time to market of a novel therapeutic agent, establishing an early marketing lead, and collecting increased revenues. Disadvantages of this method include increased handling and processing time, the need for a sterile diluent upon reconstitution, and the cost and complexity of related equipment, including its operation and maintenance.1,3,5,6
However, since the early 1990s, cryogenically refrigerated freeze-dryers have been claiming an increasing market share.7–11 These reliable, flexible, and well-proven systems use liquid nitrogen (LN2) or cold gaseous nitrogen (GN2) to cool the components of the freeze-dryer.
In recent years, both the efficiency and flexibility of cryogenic refrigeration systems for freeze-drying have further increased, and their cost of ownership has decreased.8–11 With these improvements, LN2/GN2 systems are ready for mainstream processes. In this article and the subsequent cryogenic lyophilization article, we outline key considerations to help users make informed decisions about what type of refrigeration is best for a particular lyophilization situation.


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Commission votes to alter meeting times
January 4, 2013
PARKERSBURG —Members of the Wood County Commission voted 2-1 Thursday to alter their meeting schedule. Under the new format the commission will meet Mondays from 9 a.m. until noon or until finished....
It is time for everyone to take responsibility for our actions. Being elected to the County Commission, you were trusted to do what is right for the County, not what is right for your private lives. I would love to have a job that pays $37,000.00 a year for approximately 17 hours of work each month, and that is if there are no Monday holidays. Back in the day, the commission, met twice a week, all day on Tuesdays and half a day on Thursdays. It was decided that they were missing out on Monday holidays so they moved the meeting day to Mondays while still meeting all day. Recently, the Monday meetings were changed to half day meeting. Now the commission has reduced the Thursday meeting to only one a month. Come on guys, if you don't want to be there then resign. Let someone that cares about the county have the job. My job requires me to be there 40 hours a week and I don't make $37,000.00. I know people that have part time jobs and make no where near that amount. Do the right thing!
6 Agrees | 1 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
All work and no play makes our county commissioners dull boys. By all means, let's let them play more and work less so they will be less dull and make better decisions in the future.
3 Agrees | 2 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
If they cut meetings they need to cut pay. They cut 23% of meeting so pay should be cut by same amount. So accordingly, they should only make $29,000 a year. The same percentage of meetings cut.
8 Agrees | 1 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
I have to agree with Gainer, "We waste a lot of time."
We have wasted soooo much time "working" with the County Commission on trying to do something about the gun range on Gihon Road. Most people in the area agree that the gun range on Gihon Road is a bad idea. The Sheriff's Dept. can't doing anything about and says we have to talk to the commissioners. The commissioners throw up their hands and basically say, "What can we do?!" 3 x $37,000/year -- money well spent!! Wouldn't want to "waste YOUR time!"
8 Agrees | 4 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
I f they want to cut meetings,fine. BUT.... Cut salaries accordingly.
14 Agrees | 1 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
As long as Dunn and Gainer are in office, it will keep that way. It won't change until the next election
10 Agrees | 2 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
Hey DUNN & Gainer why don,t you just have the county mail you your 37000 ayear. Then you wont have to come in at all.While you are at it why not give yourself a pay raise.You have already proven that neither one of you care about or want what is best for the county only care about yourselfs
17 Agrees | 2 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
we just have uninspired leaders all around us
15 Agrees | 4 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
Steve Gainer is a better commissioner than Rick Modesitt was, Good change Wood County
2 Agrees | 18 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
if they cut out thur meetings, then how can dunn say "we are not really cutting any meetings"? If Gainer can't attend meetings, he should resign.
19 Agrees | 4 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
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The Department of English offers undergraduates the chance to explore a wide array of literary works—poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction—from the traditions of British, American, and Anglophone literature. We have richly varied offerings in creative writing, in the study of film and other media, and in journalism, rhetoric, and theater. Our classes encourage exploratory thinking and conversation, always aiming to increase the students' knowledge, their skills in reading and critical analysis, and their strengths as writers. The department offers opportunities for independent research and internships within both the university and the Rochester community, and we maintain close connections with other undergraduate programs in Comparative Literature, Film and Media Studies, Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, African and African American Studies, Theater, and Literary Translation Studies.
Students wishing to major in English can choose from four distinct tracks: English Literature; Creative Writing; Theater; and Language, Media, and Communication. Double majoring in English and in another discipline—Astronomy or Philosophy, Political Science or Music—is common for our students. Many combinations are possible. The English Honors Program offers students the chance to write an extended honors thesis—critical or creative—in their senior year. We also offer minors in four areas: English Literature, Creative Writing, Journalism, and Theater, as well as a diversity of clusters for students seeking to fulfill the cluster requirement in the humanities. Students with questions about any of these programs or possibilities should contact the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies.
English majors do many things after graduation. Some of our majors have gone on to do graduate work in literature or creative writing, or in other fields in the humanities and the social or natural sciences; others have made careers for themselves in teaching, journalism, and publishing. And yet others have pursued advanced degrees and made a career in medicine, law, and business. In all cases, the capacities that students have developed in English classes—a love of words, an appreciation of creative expression in different media, a sense of history, an ability to write and read critically, suppleness of imagination, an understanding of how stories and metaphors work and why beauty moves us—provide crucial tools for work and life. For a report on the lives and careers of former English majors, and how these were shaped by their work in the major, click here.
English majors at Rochester have traditionally been very involved in the cultural life of the university community. Many participate in theatrical productions on campus, whether overseen by the UR International Theatre Program or separate performance groups; others work on the undergraduate literary magazine, Logos, or are involved with the Campus Times. The Undergraduate English Council (UEC) sponsors numerous intellectual and social events for English majors and minors. These events complement the department's rich program of outside speakers, including its longstanding reading series, the Plutzik Reading Series, which has brought to campus some of the most distinguished poets and fiction writers of the twentieth century, some of whom have offered special seminars or master classes in creative writing during their time at Rochester.


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"It's about having a job. But it's also about having a roof over your head," says Democratic candidate for governor Virg Bernero. He's calling now for a foreclosure moratorium.
"For people that are being thrown out of their homes, it matters. It's a serious issue. It's not something that should be on the back burner," he says.
At a Detroit Economic Club gathering Thursday, Bernero calls it Michigan's biggest issue right now. He directly addresses banks preying on people in danger of losing their homes.
"If you are part of the problem, if you're part of the Wall Street greed, then you and I are going to have a problem," he says.
Bernero's opponent, Republican Rick Snyder, agrees foreclosure issues are serious. He talks about what he considers even more pressing.
"Number one on that list is the need for more and better jobs," Snyder says. "Government's role is not to create jobs, it's to create an environment where jobs can flourish."
The two men didn't share the stage at the same time, but they were asked the same questions from the audience of economic club members and high school students. One question-- what has your opponent said about you that's not true?
"The whole thing about outsourcing," Snyder says. "Those are untrue. At Gateway I'm proud of my record. I helped grow a company from a few hundred to 10,000 when I was managing the company."
"They've got another one out that talks about our unemployment rate. In Lansing, we're the second lowest in the state. Did unemployment go up? Of course it did, it went up throughout the entire state. It just went up less in Lansing," Bernero says.
This isn't the last time this week the two men will be under the same roof talking about their campaigns. They're scheduled to square off in a televised debate Sunday night at 7:00.


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AIA congratulates conferees on the fiscal year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (H. R. 4310) for completing their work and producing a final conference agreement that supports our warfighters and helps sustain our defense industrial base in a time of uncertainty. We urge the House and Senate to pass the agreement and President Obama to sign it into law. The bill resolves several issues in conference in ways that continue to uphold the capabilities of the U. S. aerospace and defense industry, including:
While these are all positive developments for our economy and national security, it is critical that Congress and President Obama now come to a bipartisan compromise that removes the mindless threat of sequestration budget cuts, which would undermine implementation of our strategic initiatives, curtail investment and cost 2.14 million jobs across the whole economy in 2013.


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Indian people watch high tide waves as they stand at the Bay of Bengal coast in Vishakhapatnam, India, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013. Hundreds of thousands of people living along India's eastern coastline were taking shelter Saturday from a massive, powerful cyclone Phailin that was set to reach land packing destructive winds and heavy rains. (AP Photo)
India has begun sorting through miles of wreckage after a cyclone roared ashore, flooding towns and villages and destroying tens of thousands of thatch homes along the eastern coastline.
But officials say the country has been spared the widespread loss of life that many had feared. Officials say they know of only seven deaths. Most of them were killed by falling branches or collapsing buildings in the rains ahead of the cyclone.
The final death toll is almost certain to climb, and parts of the cyclone-battered coast remain isolated by downed communication links and blocked roads. But initial indications are that the government's evacuation of more than 600,000 people saved many lives.
The top police officer in the Orissa district says "damage to property is extensive." But he says "few lives have been lost." Orissa was the district worst hit by the storm.


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"I read it just about every day. I make sure I read a book or two just about every day," said Alex Guillen.
A charred Hebrew Bible is one of the few things Guillen says was spared by an accidental fire that destroyed his house at 3269 North Shore Drive in Toomsuba.
Since it happened three months ago, Guillen has been sleeping in a tent in a tool shed by the burned house. With no electricity or indoor plumbing, Guillen says it appears his prayers are being answered.
"Mr. Guillen, we want to bring you a trailer here that you can stay in and then you'll have time to fix up your building," said Shirley Deville with Multi-County Community Service Agency.
Officials from MCCSA are spearheading an effort to purchase a FEMA trailer for Guillen.
"Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am, with all my heart," said Guillen when asked if he would like to have a trailer.
"He has clothing, food and food for his dogs. We just need monetary donations to help purchase a FEMA trailer," said MCCSA Community Service Director, Letha Dunn.
Family and friends of Guillen say since the fire, they've asked him to stay with them, but he turns down the offers.
Guillen says there are two main reasons why he doesn't want to leave. One reason is because he doesn't want to leave his five dogs. The other reason is because he's afraid that thieves will steal his belongings.
According to Guillen after the fire three months ago, thieves sifted through the ashes and stole a number of things.
"I've been here 45 years and I've never accepted nothing from the government," said Guillen. "I feel in my heart that there are enough people in this country right now who need help more than me.
To know that there are people in the world that will help someone in need, it's great! It feels good."
The FEMA trailer is expected to cost between $2,500 and $4,000.
Donations may be mailed to the MCCSA office at 2590 Sellers Drive, Meridian, MS 39301. When donating, please specify that the donation is for the Alex Guillen Fund. MCCSA's phone number is 601-483-4838.
Response to this story from individual members of the community and organizations has been overwhelming.


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PARKERSBURG - The officers involved in the shooting of a fleeing suspect at the Grand Central Mall Thursday are veteran investigators who have served the Parkersburg Police Department well, Police Chief Joe Martin said Thursday.
Martin identified Detective P.M. Edelen as the officer who shot and killed 24-year-old Steven Lewis Pfalzgraf, last known address of 604 32nd St., Parkersburg, when Pfalzgraf allegedly turned his car toward the detective and drove forward. That happened after Pfalzgraf dragged Parkersburg Detective J.M. Stalnaker when the officer reached into his vehicle to try to get the key out of the ignition.
The incident happened after Stalnaker and Edelen pursued an alleged purse snatcher out of the mall food court and the suspect got into Pfalzgraf's car. The detectives and several other area law enforcement officials were undergoing Homeland Security Department training in the mall at the time.
Article Photos
Photo by Evan Bevins
In his office Thursday, Parkersburg Police Chief Joe Martin discusses the circumstances surrounding the shooting of a suspect by police Detective P.M. Edelen Tuesday at the Grand Central Mall.
The West Virginia State Police are investigating the incident. Parkersburg Police still plan their own internal investigation, but Martin said what he's been told by the state police so far indicates the officers' actions were proper.
"I feel very confident that our officers acted within the scope of their duties and the policies and procedures of our department," he said.
"(Edelen) feared for his safety as well as the safety of Detective Stalnaker," Martin said. "He presented his weapon in a defensive manner to prevent harm to himself or Detective Stalnaker."
The detectives have been placed on administrative duty- "mostly it's data entry and answering phones," the chief said, while the matter is reviewed and to give them time to process and deal with what's happened.
"For them to be put in a situation to take another human's life, it's difficult for them," Martin said.
Edelen is a five-year veteran of the Parkersburg Police Department, while Stalnaker has been with the force for 12 years. Neither has had any disciplinary issues, Martin said.
"They've been exemplary officers in the patrol division and investigative division," the chief said. "They're seasoned investigators. ... They both have always displayed good judgment."
The officers were participating in a surveillance exercise in the food court when a woman called for help, Martin said. The detectives saw a man fleeing with the woman's purse and they pursued him, identifying themselves as police officers, investigators have said.
The man ran into the parking lot and got into a car driven by Pfalzgraf. Stalnaker attempted to pull the key from the ignition, and Pfalzgraf allegedly put the vehicle in motion, dragging the officer with him.
Martin said Stalnaker could have suffered career- or even life-threatening injuries, but he was fortunate enough to be treated and released from a hospital that evening.
Pfalzgraf then turned the vehicle toward Edelen and drove toward him, the chief said.
Although the officers were in Vienna rather than Parkersburg, Martin said he doubts it occurred to them they were outside their usual jurisdiction. A police officer is a police officer whether on duty or not, he said.
"I was glad they acted," Martin said. "It's unfortunate how it turned out. ... I have no doubt in my mind that if they hadn't acted, we would have been ridiculed or criticized for that."
Pfalzgraf's vehicle continued on to the parking lot at Toys "R" Us before stopping. Two passengers - identified by police as husband and wife John and Jenna Ragalyi of New Matamoras- fled the scene and later turned themselves in to Parkersburg Police. John Ragalyi is the suspected purse snatcher.
The Ragalyis have been released as the investigation continues and potential charges are considered.
"It may take some time before there are any charges," said Lt. Michael Baylous, with the West Virginia State Police.


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Police in New Jersey today arrested a man who surreptitiously climbed Seaside Heights' submerged Jet Star Roller Coaster, and planted an American flag at the top.
Speaking with News 12 New Jersey, the mother of 38-year-old Chris Angelo of Lakewood said he had been displaced by Superstorm Sandy and was seeking to draw attention to Jersey Shore recovery efforts.
Diane Angulo said her son, a tree service owner, had planned to remain atop the coaster for several days, but State Police managed to talk him down after only a short while.
He was subsequently handcuffed and transported away from the scene by police van.
After his mother told the news station she would not bail him out, several viewers reached out to help. "This is America," one viewer said, "I'd like to definitely post some cash to the guy."
[photo via @LoverBoyGenius]


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JAN 16, 2013 - Yahoo! News
A Must Read - Share
One of the beauties of winter is that it's citrus season. Sure, you can get citrus all year, but it never tastes as good as it does right now. Now is the time to eat every citrus fruit you can get your hands on. We're all used to eating oranges, clementines, and tangerines on their own or as part of a dessert, but they're also wonderful in savory dishes, too. Here are 8 savory recipes that use citrus. - By Elizabeth Stark and Brian Campbell MORE ON BABBLE 31 healthy foods to add to your diet this year 16 skinny soups to warm up with this winter 41 copycat recipes from your
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Bachman Proximity Device Request Form: The Bachman parking structure has security gates at each entrance. A student must go to the Bachman Parking Office on the 2nd floor, submit the form and receive their proximity chip in order to open the gates. The Bachman Office will also be the site to purchase occasional use permits or daily permits for parking at Hillcrest. Thornton does not have gates (no proximity chip is needed); occasional use or daily permits can be purchased at the Thornton Cafeteria or Machines in the Employee Parking Lot.
Evaluations: All students must complete a brief confidential online Nursing Student Evaluation (please select correct evaluation for your rotation).
General Clinical Rotation Student Evaluation
Leadership Rotation Student Evaluation
Project Documentation IMPORTANT: In addition to the evaluation, if a student worked on a project during their rotation enter a brief description about the project. It will assist us in maintaining valuable information on how nursing students are contributing to our organization!
We value your feedback and will use results to make any needed improvements and gather useful data.
Computer Security Agreement: Please have each student and faculty complete this agreement ONLINE prior to starting assigned rotation. Information Services will assign computer access once received.
Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreement: Please have each student and faculty complete agreement and submit to the Nursing School Liaison.
UC Learning Center: Access the UC Learning Center under NON-UCSD Employees. Username is the DOB (date of birth) and the last 4 numbers of the Social Security # (with no spaces) for a total of 12 digits (mm/dd/yyyy+last 4 of SS#). Students and Faculty must complete ALL courses assigned under CURRENT REGISTRATION tab. PRINT certificate of completion and submit to Nursing School Liaison.
Faculty Orientation Record: All NEW faculty must complete the Faculty Orientation Record if they have not taught at UCSD before. Please submit completed form to Nursing School Liaison prior to assigned rotation.
PYXIS Access Request: All students and faculty administering medications must complete the PYXIS Access Request form (be sure to select a password). Please add (upper right hand corner) name of faculty, school, all units for rotation and start and end dates. Submit completed forms to Nursing School Liaison prior to starting assigned rotation.
Student/Faculty Document Checklist: Faculty may use this as a tracking tool to ensure all required documents are collected for each student. Submit form with required documents to Nursing School Liaison.
Student Nurse Extern II: Externships are available for students currently enrolled in an affiliated nursing school externship program. ADN students must have completed 3 semesters (be in 4th semester by the start of externship. BSN Students must have completed 4 semesters (be in 5th or 6th semester by start of externship. Externships are an unpaid commitment for a total of 120 hours. Complete application and email with required documents to email@example.com. All fields must be completed for consideration. If you are not attending an affiliated school please do not apply as we cannot accept your application.
Student Orientation Day Sign-In Sheet: Faculty to submit completed sheet with student signatures to the Nursing School Liaison.
Student Orientation Record: Type and email Student Orientation Records to Nursing School Liaison. UCSD can accept Student Orientation Records emailed with SS#. For schools that do not allow SS# to be emailed faculty will email the Student Orientation Record without SS# and ALSO fax a copy with SS# to Nursing School Liaison.
Judy Fernandez
Fax: 619-543-7397
UC San Diego Medical Center
200 Arbor Drive
8th Floor, Room 804,
San Diego, CA 92103-8929
UC San Diego | School of Medicine | Health Sciences