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Show Great Student Loaners. Sound of Thunder' is a loud failure BY KEVIN THOMAS Los Angeles Times HOLLYWOOD - Director-cinematographer Peter Hyams' ambitious but majorly Kevin Thomas ^appointing "A Sound ^H^^^HH^^^^M^^^_H^^M of Thunder suggests two things: one, that a largescale sci-fi disaster movie must have state-of-the-art special effects to have a prayer of succeeding; two, even if an enormous budget were available for the most spectacular effects imaginI Grade D able, the timelier-than-ever {"Sound of[Thurider" Ray Bradbury short story upon which this movie is based might well have been brought to the screen far more persuasively in animation instead of live action. Indeed, it's possible to imagine "A Sound of Thunder" as a knockout Japanese anime. The film in turn demonstrates two hard truths: first, that despite all the experience, dedication and energy of Hyams and a team of HoUywood experts, the Czech Republic's venerable Barrandov Studios, source of many a Czech film classic, is not up to creating world-class special effects; even though the picture was long in post-production; second, that for all his accomplishments, Ben Kingsley can be an insufferable, over-the-top harn without strong material and firm direction. It's 2055, and Kingsley's Charles Hatton is the superrich proprietor of Chicago's Time Safari company, which for an exorbitant fee, offers a time-travel hunting expedition back 65 million years when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Leading the expeditions is Dr. Travis Ryer (Edward Burns), who believes that time travel With our low rates, it pays to borrow a carfromus. Enterprise has lots of loaners for students 21 years and older. Pick the wheels you want from our selection of newer makes and models. We'll give you a great rale designed tofityour college budget, especially on weekends. So for your next dale night, weekend getaway or replacement car, call Enterprise. We'll steer you right. Pick Enterprise. We'll pick you up! 1 aoo rent-a-car will allow him to secure DNA in order to revive long-extinct species. (It also seems that sometime in. the next half-century a virus will wipe out virtually all wild animals not in captivity.) Apparently, Ryer's responsibilities during the expeditions and his idealistic scientific passions so occupy his attention that he somehow manages to overlook what a ruthless huckster and greedy jerk Hatton is. Hatton has managed to steal the technology developed by physicist Dr. Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack) that makes the time travel possible, and she tries to sound the alarm that under Hatton's control the technology inadvertently could trigger evolutionary catastrophe. The rules of the safaris into the prehistoric age are: Don't change anything in the past, don't leave anything behind; and above all, don't bring anything back, because any of these things could mess up the existing course of evolution in unimaginable ways. When a tiny object has been brought from a safari this triggers a series or time waves," which wash over Chicago, recreating evolution with increasing speed as each wave crashes. In short, Chicago B M O R E REVIEWS IN TODAY'S DIVERSIONS overnight becomes a tropical jungle inhabited by dinosaurs, giant bats and the like. What's there to do but for Ryer and Reed to join forces to locate the foreign object and travel back in time to set evolution back on its course? Virtually nothing in "A Sound of Thunder" is convincing, although Burns and McCormack deserve credit for their determination. The picture looks as murky as its story line, the sound is tinny, much of the dialogue is flat or confoundingly technical or merely risible, and most everything on the screen looks patently fake. As a disaster movie, "A Sound of Thunder" really is a disaster. The 'House'that Hugh Laurie built BY MICHAEL O'SULLIVAN The Washington Post Hugh Laurie, who can be heard on the big screen as VOUR ONE STOP, LOOK GOOD, FEEL 6000 538 SoufA Jllaitt Jloqtin 435.753.9492 Unlimited Tanning in Jamaica, Hawaii, Cancun or the Bahamas til 2006 for just S99! Magic Tans just $14 with Student ID! Check out our September specials at wwwtropicalhydes.com. DIALOGUE presents "New Voices" A Cash Awards Program for Young Writers We will consider manuscripts based on dissertations, theses, research-based articles, completed term papers, senior or graduate projects, personal essays, short stones, poetry, and visual art. See our website for complete details. • Submissions accepted for review receive afreejear's subscription to DIALOGUE. • Pieces accepted for publication are awarded $300. Submissions office e-mail: dialoguemss@aol.com Never heard of DIALOGUE? it's almost forty years old. Discover this progressive, peer-reviewed, independent quarterly journal dealing with Mormon history, social science, humanities, religion, science, and art. To help with your studies and research, buy our new DVD containing all articles in volumes 1-37 www.dialogue journal, com the voice of Gutsy the pigeon in the feature-length kiddie cartoon "Valiant," is up for an Emmy Award this month for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. What's perhaps more interesting to note than the British-born, Cambridgeeducated actor's nomination is the fact that the television series in which he stars, "House, M.D.," did not get a similar nod from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for outstanding drama series. That isn't to say that the medical-mystery drama-whose first season has just come out on DVD from Universal Studios Home Entertainment, and whose second season premieres Sept. 13 on Fox—didn't deserve one. The show, each episode of which centers on the efforts of Laurie's Dr. Gregory House to diagnose a difficult medical condition, more than holds its own in a crowded field of "C. S.I/'-style competitors. But what makes "House, M.D." unique, and propels the show forward, is Laurie's portrayal of the caustic, misanthropic, eye-rolling, pain-pill-popping and piano-playing medical genius who has been known to prescribe cigarettes to a patient suffering from inflammatory bowels. Like other great TV eccentrics—Tony Shalhoub's obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk comes most immediately to mind—Laurie's performance goes way beyond mere shtick, with each episode peeling away a little more of House's anger to reveal his broken humanity, in a way that, say, Ted Danson's similar character on "Becker" never really did. The three-disc, 22-episode set includes a handful of mostly lukewarm extras* in which the cast (which includes Omar Epps and Robert Sean Leonard) and crew (e.g., director-producer Bryan "X2" Singer) sing the show's praises. And although a tour of the set is nice, the place it's most tempting to go is inside the title character's head. But the question of what exactly makes House tick, and what is going to tick him off next, is the mystery that keeps "House, M.D." so haunting. Studios take note of online DVDs BY ELAINE DUTKA Los Angeles Times HOLLYWOOD - Studio executives like to think they're in the business of giving people what they want. The challenge isfiguringout just what that is — a never-ending quest in Hollywood. Research, carried out before a movie's release, focuses on speculative criteria such as people's awareness of given titles and which they most want to see. For home video however, two Internet operations,, the retailer Amazon.com and the DVD rental pioneer Netflix, provide insight not only into public appetites but how a movie will actually perform when it hits the video stores. By placing real orders for material they want to buy or rent, consumers are voting with their pocketbooks, industry analysts say. And with the big titles, their choices reflect on the effectiveness of a studio's marketing campaign. Release of DVD sets of the TV series "Charmed" and "MacGyver" were accelerated because of consumer demand, said Michael Arkin, senior vice president of marketing for Paramount Home Entertainment. And when the 1954 "The High and the Mighty" rose to the top of Amazon's pre-sale list in July, he knew something was afoot. "This 50-year-old movie took off, not only on Netflix and Amazon but across the board," Arkin said. "Those lists are opinion polls of a sort, earpieces into buyers* tastes. It's a way of taking the pulse of the public, checking it on a daily basis." The companies, along with Web sites such as DVDTalk and TVShowsonDVD, haven't replaced less sophisticated forms of communication between the public and the studios such as phone calls, letters and e-mails. Nor have they dislodged traditional market research. But they help publicize a movie and are effective marketing tools. Netflix informs studios which of its 50,000 titles its 3.2 million subscribers put in their "queues," to be mailed when the product comes out. And Amazon's Top 100 List, updated hourly, reflects sales rankings of future releases as well as current fare. "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith" and "Batman Begins" are Nos. 2 and 4 on this week's chart, though they won't be out until Nov. 1 and Nov. 18, respectively. One of the company's goals is to help build the DVD business, said Laura Porco, Amazon's general manager for merchandising, North American media. More than 50 million people purchased an item from Amazon in the last 12 months, the company says. And there's an ongoing dialogue with Hollywood entities "big, medium and small." "Before we came along, no other retailer made sales ranks transparent to consumers and vendors," she said. "No one knew what a new VHS would do once it got to retailer locations. Studios had to wait until Day 1, 2 or 3, when retailers' reports came back. Our rankings tell them how their product stacks up against the competition. And our 'wish lists' — consumer requests for movies or TV shows not on DVD — help the industry prioritize what to bring out." Mike Dunn, president worldwide, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, checks Amazon.com at least once a day. Just as Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan refers to "wholesale inventories," Dunn says, he looks to the Top 100 list to gauge the economics of a title — particularly off-center films often squeezed off the shelves of many video stores. "I saw 'Napoleon Dynamite,' 'What the Bleep Do We Know?' and 'Roswell,' a rather obscure TV series, pre-booking really well," he said. "We got our ducks in a row so we wouldn't be caught short. Amazon is a great bellwether, tipping us off on the upside of some of the less obvious titles. The rankings show which of the small movies have a lot of juice, so surprises aren't surprises. "Wish lists, however, are less relevant today than they were in the past," he adds. "Two years ago, we'd look at them and get to those titles earlier rather than later. But now many of our hidden jewels have already been unleashed. Most of today's requests are more reflective of personal preference than mass demand — cult films such as 'Myra Breckenridge,' which we ultimately released." With the exception of an occasional "March of the Penguins," studios buy, produce and distribute mostly mainstream product, said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix, which charges subscribers $17.99 a month for an unlimited number of titles. "Yet interest in socalled specialty films is broader than they think. The Oscar-winning documentary 'Born Into Brothels' has been rented by one out of every 10 of our subscribers, though it was small, boxoffice wise. And 'Super Size Me,' another documentary, outperformed 50 theatrical films in the. same period." ; That goes to prove that the Netflix demographic isn't typical of the American populace, some industry observers contend. What appeals to its discerning subscriber base, they maintain, isn't what sells at Wal-Mart (whose online rental business was taken over by Netflix). That's not entirely true, Sarandos says. While its clientele is slightly higher in income and education, it is more mainstream than it has been. The first million were net-savvy early adapters and film aficionados, eclectic in their movie '• choices, he says. But new members are more j likely to have been renting at Blockbuster the \ day before. | Netflix' subscribers, however, are older than ' the theatrical audience. "Million Dollar Baby" [ and "The Aviator" were much bigger on DVD than in theaters, rented by adults who don't go ! to the theater anymore, Sarandos said. And the Clint Eastwood drama "Mystic River" is the company's all-time top-renting film. Netflix adds a title to its database when a • DVD See page 23 |