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Show Wednesday. Aug. 29. 2007 StatesmanSpecinl Features Page 19 'Dedication' does romantic comedy right If you frequent romantic comedies, you are familiar with the Big Sprint. This is the climactic moment when a character comes to his senses and, as if propelled by Cupid's wings, runs halfway across town to reclaim the love he has so foolishly sabotaged. In the really scurvy rom-coms, the Big Sprint is generally followed by the Jan Stewart Newsday Reel Reviews Grade B+ is "Dedication" Big Ovation, when the kissing couple is cheered on by a peanut gallery of strangers mystically united by the shared conviction that love is al) you need. In the really enduring ones, the joy of the sprint soon dissolves into the shrug of skepticism. As Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon contemplate a lifetime of card games at the close of "The Apartment" or Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross make their escape on public transport in "The Graduate," we linger in the dark of the fade-out with one question on our lips: What now? That question has rarely resounded as loudly as it does at the end of "Dedication," whose protagonist suffers from such a bloated fear of intimacy he can barely sit in a room with himself for a minute without acting on an impulse to refurbish his surroundings. In coffee-shop booths, he habitually separates ketchup bottles from any contact with napkin receptacles, one of those metaphors-fordummies that should set off alarm bells in anyone with whom he happens to be sharing breakfast. Henry Roth, an assertively antisocial writer played with consummate snarkiness by Billy Crudup, has enough negative tricks up his sleeve to start a new subgenre of self-help literature: the self-destruct book. Instead, he cobbles together children's books with his artist buddy Rudy (Tom Wilkinson), an avuncular bachelor whose true age is betrayed by his taste in 70s pornography. After they hit pay-dirt with a kiddie tome inspired by one of their porn outings, Rudy promptly drops dead. The loss only lends more fuel to Henry's misanthropy, which goes into high-flame mode when his publisher dumps a new collaborator in his lap, a financially and romantically bereft illustrator named Lucy (Mandy Moore, in full comic bloom). Henry has Lucy's number from the get-go and he goes after her with the same cynical weaponry that has sent all of his girlfriends fleeing. They fall for each other, of course, an inevitability that is made more interesting by the casting of Moore, who seems to delight in subverting the cotton-candy pop-star image of her teen career. Part of the pleasure in seeing Lucy match wits with Henry is the suspicion that Moore lacks the technical savvy to take on a seasoned actor such as Crudup, who chomps into his character's barbed observations with the single-mindedness of a caged lion at feeding time. Screenwriter David Bromberg spits out bitingly original dialogue with such flair and seeming ease that you almost forget he's tooling around with some pretty well-worn tropes. The convention of the deceased aide-de-camp who hectors and counsels the protagonist from beyond the grave has most recently been worked over by that wonderful Canadian TV series "Slings & Arrows," while the notion of the child-inappropriate children's hero is as dated as Soupy Sales. "Dedication" is peppered with drolly passive-aggressive supporting characters and actors equipped to do them full justice. Bob Balaban as Henry's bottom-line publisher and Dianne Wiest as Lucy's enabling mother are at their idiosyncratic best. Their fearless leader is Justin Theroux, making his directing debut with aplomb and a plummy soundtrack. •rtl 'September Dawn' is heavy-handed history "September Dawn" is more likely to Desson Thomson Washington Post Reel Reviews Grade D+ "September Dawn" infuriate members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than to attract moviegoers with its inflammatory revisiting of an 1857 massacre that involved Mormons. The movie, starring Jon Voight as a gimlet-eyed Mormon bishop, asserts that church leader Brigham Young (Terence Stamp) had a direct hand in the massacre of 120 innocents who made the mistake of traveling through Mormon territory on their way to California. Directed by Christopher Cain ("Young Guns"), the film attempts to contextualize the Mormons' paranoid language and behavior — they call these clearly harmless settlers "gentiles" and "invaders" and believe they are sent by the Devil — with the jihadist attacks occurring so frequently around the world. (Much is made, too, of the Sept. 11 date of the actual incident.) Even if one gets past the movie's controversial depictions (which are based on historical facts), there is the matter of its second-rate, made-for-television fare — the poor battle choreography, the wooden editing and the cheesy writing, which makes everyone seem ridiculously on-the-nose about their dialogue and their religious beliefs. In an equally heavy-handed attempt to soften its damning characterizations, the movie centers on a good-hearted Mormon, Jonathan (Trent Ford), who falls in love with a California-bound settler (Tamara Hope) and stands up to his belligerent father (Voight), who incites the attack and even dupes a neighboring Native American tribe into starting the carnage. It's a soap opera posing as moral outrage. "September Dawn" R, 111 minutes Contains violence. Summer had some sleepers; overall good box office BY WILLIAM BOOTH The Washington Post LOS ANGELES—For the past two summers, the entertainment press wondered aloud if going to the movies was an endangered experience, as audiences stayed away in droves. The Hollywood studios blamed the theater chains (eeww, sticky floors) and the theater owners blamed the studios (psst, your movies stink). Now? Never mind all that. Audiences, like mysterious migratory herd animals, have returned to their seats at the multiplex. The summer of 2007 is heading toward a recordbreaking season, with box office receipts currently running $3.8 billion, up 10 percent over 2006 and 6 percent over 2004, the previous most lucrative summer. For the year, the number of tickets sold (admissions) is up almost 3 percent from last year; that's really the figure to watch, as box office dollars are not adjusted for inflation and ticket prices continue to creep up. "Let's just say you're not hearing the death-of-the-movie-theater story anymore," says Patrick Corcoran, director of media and research for the National Association of Theatre Owners. Corcoran sounds relieved that earlier predictions that consumers might prefer to watch films on their cellphones and plasma screens proved premature. "It's been a really strong summer, with surprising performances by late-summer films." Corcoran is being polite. Traditionally; August has been a dumping ground for turkeys. But this July and August have been more ka-ching than flop, as each weekend launches another hit: "The Simpsons Movie," "The Bourne Ultimatum," "Rush Hour 3" and "Superbad." And while summer is typically front-loaded with likely winners, this August it is finishing with a bang. Some theater owners are even complaining that there are too many blockbusters — that this week's gotta-see movie pushes last week's hit out of the way too fast, and that maybe the summer movie season should be expanded to include April and September, so more cash could be wrung out of each success. For the first time, four summer blockbusters (about pirates, Transformers, an ogre, a spider) made more than $300 million domestically. Overall, 14 films have crossed the $100 million mark. "If Hollywood builds it, audiences will come," says Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, the movie tracking Web site. Why the big bounce? "It is purely content-driven," Gray says. And that content is often driven by youth; never underestimate the discriminating taste of a 13-year-old with an allowance. The movies audiences want to see apparently include the number three. It is the season of the sequel's sequel. "But they made sequels that people actually want to see versus sequels that people didn't want to see," Gray says. For example? Audiences were hungry for more Jack Sparrow and Peter Parker and Shrek in ways they were not for retreads like "Daddy Day Camp," the worst-reviewed movie of the summer. Originality? Not so important. We Fit Your Needs MATERNITY INSURANCE Eight of the 14 top-grossing films were sequels, while two were based on popular TV shows with a line of toys ("The Simpsons," "Transformers") and one was a do-over — "Hairspray" was previously a movie and a Broadway musical. In the next two weeks, two more sequels, "Evan Almighty" and "Rush Hour 3," will likely join the $100 million club. Perhaps the only truly original blockbuster of the summer is the rat-out-of-water animated adventure, "Ratatouille." While the box office numbers might suggest a giddy greed fest in executive suites, it all depends. "I think the main thing about the summer is that the sequels, while costing so much to make, barely performed to expectations," says Harry Knowles, founder of the filmgoers' Web site Ain't It Cool News. For example, while "Evan Almighty" might have earned $98 million at the box office, it reportedly cost $175 million to produce and market, making it the most expensive comedy ever filmed. Similarly huge amounts were spent making most of the top grossers. What else did summer reap, beyond receipts? "Oh my God, this summer is so depressing," says Jeffrey Wells of the popular film industry blog Hollywood Elsewhere. "It was hell watching these movies." Anne Thompson, a columnist for the trade newspaper Variety, subscribes to a cyclical theory of the box office. Meaning that bad stretches are often followed by good ones that are then followed by bad, as Hollywood alternatively coasts and strives. The year 2005 was weak, so "the marketing and production people were generally freaked out because the audiences weren't behaving as they were expected," Thompson says. So the creative types "went back into their bunkers and were creative." And it was not particularly robust in what is called counterprogramming, when Hollywood tosses a serious bone to adults during the hazy days of July. Audiences were not eager to see Angelina Jolie as the widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl in "A Mighty Heart" ($9 million), though Michael Moore is happy with $23 million for "Sicko," his documentary about health insurance. The art house standouts of the summer were the Edith Piaf biopic "La Vie en Rose" ($9 million), the Jane Austen romance "Becoming Jane" ($9 million) and the tale of Irish heartache and music "Once" ($7 million). None went mainstream on the order of last year's "Little Miss Sunshine." But Oscar season is just around the corner. Rent One Movie at AMC Get One Free! Ed Needhara • Rent One DVD New Release at S2.99 & Keep Movies Get One FREE DVD New Release Movie! 5 days! • Rent one "Collection " Movie idwos> km 20,000 m * we; ats 1.99, get one FREE! 25 W. 100 N. Logan 753-0333 AMC Imaging the Visual Experience Open Mon - Sat 12:00 - 8:00 PM We have a lot of competition. To meet our competitors, and hopefully beat them, we are giving away free movies with each rental. By keeping new release prices low at $2.99 and giving one new release movie free, we hope to meet Netflicks price. Keep the movies five days. Choose from hundreds of new release titles received at AMC over the last year. Or, rent movies from the "Collection" which has over 20,000 VHS and DVD titles at $1.99 each. 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