ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT Monday, February 5,2007 Page 4 • ARTS Monday, Feb. 5 Concert Wind Ensemble Pops Concert $5 to $10 7:30 p.m. Libby Gardner Concert Hall Lecture Dr. Matthew Whitaker, "Race, Reform and Revolt in a Desert Metropolis" Free 7 p.m. Salt Lake City Library (210 E. 400 South) I say, good chap, cheers to 'Girls Gone Wild' and all such ribald displays of nubile young nymphs. I love sex." Peter O'Toole toasts to salaciousness in "Venus." Peter O'Toole shines as a slightly creepy, but sort of cute, elderly gentleman in 'Venus' Chris Bellamy The Daily Utah Chronicle There are certain things that old people can get away with that no one else can. We seem to give them a free pass on things like, I don't know, being racist. Or dropping F-bombs in public restaurants. Or copping a feel on an attractive 18-year-old woman. They're just so cute when they do it, you just can't get mad at them. After all, they're going to die soon. So why not let them have their fun? That theory is applied to Roger Michell's "Venus," a pseudo-May/December (or, rather, early February/late December) romance between Maurice (Peter O'Toole), an aging actor, and Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), an aimless teenager who comes over to cook and take Maurice on walks. Now before you get all grossed out, let me make this clear: This is more an affair of the heart than anything else—a last grasp for ari aging man whose life of sexual conquests has long since come and gone. So that's settled: No adorable. When he's around Jessex. sie, he walks around with the There is a connection be- wide-eyed, mischievous look of tween Maurice and Jessie. "He's a 4-year-old who just got caught nice to me," she admits at one opening his Christmas presents point, suggesting that kindness two weeks early. is something that Peter O'Toole doesn't come is one of the "Venus" easily where she greatest and most Miramax Films comes from. natural actors Directed by Roger Michel! He pampers of all time, and Written by Hanif Kureishi her, he t>uys her while his perforStarring: Peter O'Toole, things, and in mance as MauJodie Whittaker, Leslie Phillips return (or perrice is certainly Richard Griffiths haps because she no "Lawrence and Vanessa Redgrave needs an emoof Arabia," this Rated R795 minutes tional connecis a gentle and Opened Feb. 2,2007 tion herself) she passionate role Three out of four stars lets him hold her that allows him ••• hand or kiss her ample opportuon the cheek. nity to show off If that sounds more than a lit- his comic timing and emotional tle creepy...we 11, it is. But it also depth. There is, and always has makes for an interesting char- been, something in O'Toole.'s acter dynamic and a different eyes unlike any other actor of his kind of romance than we usu- generation. ally see. Maybe even a different I can't tell if it's a sense of inkind of love. Maurice is shame- finite joy or sadness. Or perhaps less in his desires toward Jessie, it's just the knowledge that he's and we might think he's just a better at his job than anyone else dirty old man if he weren't so is. O'Toole also plays well off a series of other veteran actors— his old friends and fellow actors, Ian (Leslie Phillips) and Donald (Richard Griffiths), and, in the warmest sub-plot of the movie, the relationship with his ex-wife, Valerie, played by the great Vanessa Redgrave. Though "Venus" is being hyped as O'Toole's probable last chance at winning a competitive Oscar (he was nominated for Best Actor), it should not be confused with a great movie. Late developments draw attention away from what the movie is about, and maybe Maurice's creepiness should have at least been acknowledged, if not toned down. But director Roger Michell has a good feel for his characters, as he did in his much better 1999 romantic comedy, "Notting Hill." Maybe "Venus" won't be quite enough to get O'Toole that elusive Oscar. But if nothing else, it's a fitting reminder of the giant that he was, and is. c. be lla my @ chronicle.utah.edu Take me to the morgue Christopher Wallace The Daily Utah Chronicle Everyone wonders what happens when we die. It is one of life's most fundamental, unanswered questions—unless you decide to donate your body to science. In that case, Mary Roach's book Stiff can tell you exactly what can happen in the bizarre afterlife of your corpse. Stiff is the type of book that makes you want to get your body to the crematorium before it even gets cold. Otherwise—since you've probably been persuaded by save-alife ad campaigns to do the right thing and hand over your organs and tissues posthumously in a "You: Everything must go!" sale— Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers By Mary Roach Norton you'll end up on a bunk in a stack freezer, whittled away bit by bit, an eye here, a hand there. • While Roach describes in detail the morbid and unsettling aspects of the physical body we leave behind (and what scientists do to it), she is delicate and precient enough to show respect for the dead as (former) people and dissociate the corporeal from the spiritual. The book opens with Roach going behind the scenes at UC-San Francisco into a room filled with disembodied heads resting in roasting pans atop rows of tables. Roach is introduced to Yvonne, the lab manager/de capital or who is wary of squeamish journalists watching the medical students practice surgery on the heads. There, Roach meets "Ben"—the name strangely given to a head on which two plastic surgeons-intraining are performing a facelift. The students tell Roach that they name the heads in an effort to humanize them out of respect for the person to whom the head was once attached, while at the same time objectifying the parts of cadavers enough to be able to i * y : ; - .'•.-;":'••"•' . • .., .',•: .-; . practice their craft on them without losing too much sleep. Later, Roach See S T I F F Page 5 THE CURIOUS LIVES OF HUMAN CADAVERS MARY ROACH dumb "The Messengers'* Columbia Pictures Directed by the Pang Brothers Written by MarkWheaton Starring: Kristen Stewart Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller and John Corbett Rated PG-13/84 minutes Opened Feb. 2,2007 Two out of four stars ••• Some people are haunted in 'The Messengers' Aaron Allen The Daily Utah Chronicle The following real-estate ad was originally featured in The North Dakota Herald, submitted by an eerie wisp of ghostly, revenge-seeking vapor that identified itself only as "Grrroooaann." For clarity's sake, this ad could also be considered a review of the movie "The Messengers," in case you were desperately looking for one. Do you love wide, open spaces and a gorgeous view of the rolling, North Dakota mountains? Are you looking to transplant your soonto-be -resentiul family from their comfortable city life to a lonesome life of plowing fields far, far away from anyone who could hear them scream? Are you just plain asking for it? If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then do we have a house for you! Located dozens of miles from the nearest town—but centrally located hi the deepest, darkest, most despairing pit of the supernatural—is a lovely fixer-upper. Don't mind the snaking ivy and foreboding crows that cling to the outside of the house like a death shroud—the inside will delight your inner Vincent Price! Perfect for an unsuspecting family of four, which might include a father (Dylan McDermott), a mother (Penelope Ann Miller), a rebellious teenage daughter (Kristen Stewart) and a 2-year-old boy (Evan and Theodore Turner) with a talent for seeing angry specters. Such a talent might come in handy, what with all the strange noises and doors that open of their own accord in your new home. Your rebellious teenage daughter may even claim to see ghosts—the rotting, wheezing, gray-skinned ghosts of a mother and her two children who were brutally murdered by her whacked-off-his-gourd h u s b a n d but your duty as a good parent is to simply ignore her terrified state. After all, your daughter's probably just having nightmares about some stupid horror movie she watched the night before, like "The Grudge," which has a plot that sounds awfully identical to what she claims See MESSENGERS Page 5 i