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Show Specialfeatures Page 24 PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The road to advanced video, Internet and phone services is bumpy — and the bumps can be almost as big as refrigerators. As cable and phone companies race to upgrade services or offer video for the first time, they're doing it by installing equipment in boxes on lawns, easements and curbs all over American neighborhoods. Telecommunications rollouts have always been messy, but several Telecom companies raise ire over utility boxes towns and residents are fighting back with cries of "Not in my front yard I" AT&T Inc.'s nearly fridge-sized units, which route its new U-verse video product to customers, are drawing particular ire. A few caught fire or even exploded. AT&T said it has fixed that by replacing the units' backup batteries. That's not much comfort to David Crommie, who thinks the boxes are an eyesore. Crommie, who is president of Monday, Aug. 25, 2008 a San Francisco neighborhood group called the Cole Valley Improvement Association, complained after seeing some boxes sprout in town and managed to delay AT&T's plans to install up to 850. AT&T now is expected to reapply for an exemption to the city's environmental-review procedures. "We have nothing against the technology. We just don't want that delivery system," Crommie said. "It's 19th century packaging for 21st century technology." AT&T's rival Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, apparently thought so too. It ran ads in Illinois calling the cabinets "giant utility boxes." In most locations, U-verse cabinets are 4 feet tall, 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep. AT&T didn't think it was funny and sued Comcast in March for running a "false, deceptive and disparaging ad." Race: This race is over soon O continued from page 22 "Death Race," has been framed for a crime he didn't commit, killing his wife. Of course, Ames has been shanghaied into Hennessey's prison, where she presides over the automotive blood sport with chilling calm and an infuriating little smile, dealing death to the desperate drivers in a cruel bid lor high drama and ratings. Of course, each driver in the death race is entitled to a navigator, who of course are all long-legged, big-chested bombshells in tighty-tight shorts. Except for the gay driver, who has a boy navigator. Death Race! It's to the credit of director Paul W.S. Anderson ("Alien vs. Predator," "Resident Evil," "Mortal Kombat") that he is so fixed on the race that he doesn't bother to follow through on the bigotry. After learning early in the film that Ames's main foil, Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson), may have a thing for the fellas, the idea is-dropped, and Machine Gun Joe is remasculinized just in time for... the death race! Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Anderson and misogyny, which he focuses on with the same single-minded attention he reserves for decapitations, explosions, profanity and sexual humiliation. Allen hasn't just accidentally gotten herself caught up in one god-awful but forgettable film. She is participating in an atrocious spectacle o f woman-hating. Every detail about her dress and deportment — the perfectly tailored skirts and jackets, the perfect coif, the stiff back and the decisive manner — sets Allen apart from the grubby mob of prisoners. She emerges as the perfect standin for a career woman, the one men hate because she got ahead, went up the ladder and seems to hold all the cards. She's the woman who drives by in the nice car, making deals on her cellphone, as the steel plant shutters its rusty gates and casts you adrift in unemployment. Or perhaps Allen's role has nothing to do with class envy and lunch-pail misogyny. She is, after all, a television producer as well as a jail warden. Perhaps this is really Hollywood's own venture into violent fantasies against women, dressed up and imputed to the NASCAR crowd. In any case, it's an odious role, a feminine effigy waiting to be torn down and trampled under the boot of male rage. The saddest thing is that "Death Race" has nothing to say about the present. It isn't just a remake of a 1975 film, it's a time warp back to 1975, to the anxieties sparked by the gas crisis, rampant inflation, woman's lib and the decay of American industrial might. A remake might ask, what are today's anxieties? And how can a death race address them? But this isn't a film that asks questions. Death race: That's all you need to know. — "Death Race" (105 minutes) is rated R for strong violence and language. rge used textbook inventory University BOOK « STORE> *.' Z- ..TUftfe. 1* * «' |