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This is a 7News Doppler Max update.
I'm meteorologist Pam Dale. It has turned out to be a gorgeous day. Plenty of sunshine out there on a Boulder camera.
I'll have more sunshine in your forecast today at 5.
A new season swings into high gear. Watch out for Brendan Fraser in a World Television premiere.
Oh, my God!
George of the Jungle. ABC Premier tonight at 7, 6 Central.
The Practice. Winner of three Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series.
I wasn't thinking.
You can get this far.
And, no, it was stupid.
Not stupid, Eleanor. Criminal.
It's the season premiere that will give you everything you never expected.
The Emmy-winning drama, The Practice. ABC Premier tonight at 10, 9 Central.
7News is changing the face of local news with Mitch Jonaker, a newsman raised in Longmont.
He's covered the tough stories in Washington on the Gulf War and in Oklahoma City on the bombing and
Antroheal. After attending CU,
she's covered Colorado news for over a decade and saw what strength and community can do during the Fort Collins flood of 97.
Mitch Jonaker and Antroheal.
Coloradans covering Colorado. See them together, weeknights, on 7 News at 10.
You're scared, Natalie.
Yeah, right.
Then come on, and let's do this. Come on.
Time to raise the dead.
I can't believe this.
Alicia Wynn and Rebecca Gayhardt play students who tempt fate in urban legend, the slasher movie
that takes place on the 25th anniversary of a hushed-up campus massacre.
Now the killing has started again, and the killer seems to be deliberately reenacting the plots of famous creepy urban legends.
Guy and a girl parked out in the woods making out.
You made out with him?
Guy steps out of the car and the girl starts to hear these scratching noises on the roof.
It's her dead boyfriend hung from a tree.
Damon's in the class. He knew the myth, all right? He must have just planned the whole thing out.
Wait a second.
Isn't there another story about a guy with an axe hiding in a woman's backseat?
That's Michael Rosenbaum and Tara Reed displaying their knowledge of urban lore there.
Of course, there's always a campus dean around who wants to downplay the violence for public relations reasons.
Here, John Neville pooh-poos the fears of security guard Loretta Devine.
Well, after that suicide and what happened to the Mancini girl, now I'm having trouble locating another student, a boy named Damon Brooks.
He's been missing for some days now.
Missing? He's not missing. It's the weekend.
Some of the urban legends are played for laughs, as in this classroom scene.
Thirsty?
What's wrong? Something you might have heard about mixing, uh, Pop Rocks and soda?
Well, supposedly. There's stomach in your intestines. Everything burst.
Really? Anyone you know die this way?
Mikey. From the cereal commercial. Give it to Mikey. He'll eat anything.
And that's kind of an inside casting joke there with Robert England, who plays Freddy in The Nightmare on Elstree Pictures, playing the professor.
Slicer movies certainly look better than they used to. They used to scrape the bottom of the B movie barrel, but now they have much more skillful casts and technical credits.
But the formula is still the same. Two false alarms for every shock moment.
Of course, there's a big loud musical chord on the soundtrack every time a character is threatened.
And then after a while, you start wondering why, don't you, Gene? With a mad slasher on the loose, the characters are always creeping up on each other and then being surprised when their friends are terrified.
The movie is confidently made, but nothing special, not at the level of Scream, which I guess is the current benchmark.
It's not at that level. And it is, and people should know, very bloody, including one of my least favorite things, the cutting of a body to remove a kidney, potentially.
I just don't, I don't like all that blood. You have to know, this is real bloody.
It's amazing. I just came back from the Toronto Film Festival, where I saw some movies that were so extreme that I actually wrote in my newspaper review of this movie that the gore wasn't that far out.
And it isn't. It's amazing. And these days, you know what's funny? The real violence is in the comedies.
Well, it's amazing.
I saw it last night, and it was bloody, and I didn't like it. And I also, I hate to see the return of the slasher movie, just because of the thing that we talked about 20 years ago when we first identified it, the point of view, often, of the stalking of young women.
Yeah, but of course, it's not that way anymore, because now we don't see the stalker, and of course, in this movie, it's not exactly what you...
But I like that scene where it says, well, I can't remember my anatomy class. Is it the liver or the kidney on this side? I think I'll just remove the first organ I find. I don't know why. Call me sick.
Okay, anatomy class is over. Next movie, and our next movie is Shadrack, the film adaptation of William Styron's short story, which is both a boyhood reminiscence and, to my mind, an epilogue to slavery.
The year is 1935 in a small town in Virginia, and a 10-year-old boy recalls his own middle-class life, but also the time he spent with a neighbor family, the once aristocratic Dabney's, but fallen on hard times.
An invitation to stay at the Dabney's is as exciting as a European vacation to 10-year-old Paul Whitehurst. The Dabney parents are played by Harvey Keitel and Annie McDowell.
I'd love to have him. Oh, no, no. I couldn't impose. Please, Mother.
The centerpiece of the story is the arrival of a 99-year-old former slave named Shadrack, who appears one day in the Dabney's backyard.
What do you want? I think he said he wants to die on Dabney ground.
Eventually, reality pops up in the form of the local sheriff.
It's against the law to bury anybody on private property. Why is it against the law? I don't know why, Byrd. It just is, that's all.
Down in that field, Taz, well, people have been buried for near about 200 years. I've got an old, senile man on my hands.
He was a slave, and he was born on this place, and I've got to bury him here.
Now, our understanding of the meaning of this character is helped if you know the biblical story of the brothers, Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego, who were Hebrews who refused to worship the local gods.
As punishment, they were thrown into a fire, but were eventually saved by an angel. Well, like them, the character of Shadrack has survived his own fire and also wants to retain his identity.
As for the movie Shadrack, it has modest goals, and I think it achieves them through a mosaic of time and place.
Just as the slave rests by that tree, we can rest with Shadrack and are transported. A marginal thumbs up for me.
Yeah, it could have been a better movie. It is so laid back and so low energy.
Well, I don't know what energy you want from a 99-year-old slave. He wants to be buried.
I want, actually, I would like the themes of the movie to be made more clear, because he believes that this land, Dabney land, is his land too, because as a slave he worked it, and that's why he wants to be buried there.
Not to forgive his old masters, but to claim, in a way, a little bit of their turf as his own. And I think that could have been articulated more instead of the kind of behavior of the family and all the business about the legalism of whether a body can be buried on private land or not.
It just all seems to be like three arms removed from what it's really about.
I got it and enjoyed it at the pace that you're talking about.
Okay. Okay. When we come back, our video pick of the week, a lush political romance set in 16th-century Venice.
You must know pleasure to give pleasure.
Hey, you Morty Briskin.
Who's asking?
Had a hard time finding this place.
Dear Mort, you have been accepted to Harvard University and awarded a scholarship. Congratulations on all your accomplishments. You must respond, however, by May 1978.
Better late than never.
Next time, be absolutely sure. Don't just send it. Send it, FedEx.
See you in September.
I'm here. You're here. We're here.
It's time to get back to the best part of the 60s. That's right, when McDonald's introduced the Big Mac.
Buy a Big Mac or larger medium soft drink and get something groovy every time.
All the people and music and the bubbles.
Like a 49-cent Big Mac, 18-cent fries or other 1968 prices on your next visit.
To all be back.
Where can you get back with Big Mac? Did somebody say McDonald's?
It's all so...
Siskel and Ebert's Video Pick of the Week is brought to you by Nestle Raisinettes. At the movies or at home, Raisinettes.
My video pick this week is Dangerous Beauty, the story of a beautiful woman from a poor family in 16th century Venice who is guided by her mother into the life of a courtesan.
The film stars Catherine McCormick as Veronica, a young woman in love with a nobleman named Marco, played by Rufus Sewell.
He loves her too, but because of the needs of their families, they cannot marry.
You know, we cannot marry.
Why are you here?
I must marry according to my station.
Shall they forever be apart? Not according to Veronica's enterprising mother, played by Jacqueline Bissett, who provides some realistic career advice.
There's an alternative to marriage.
You'll become a courtesan.
In the movie's climax, Veronica plays a crucial role in the defense of the Venetian Republic.
Everything depends on whether or not the French king will lend Venice his ships.
And what the king does depends on Veronica. She has his number.
You yearn for my tears.
I don't think so.
I've heard it said that an ordinary courtesan seduces men's bodies while a great one seduces their minds.
Veronica Franco was an actual historical figure who greatly influenced the fortunes of Venice.
And I imagine Dangerous Beauty fictionalizes most of her story, but it makes a fascinating story all the same, especially set against the backdrop of Venice itself, that loveliest of cities.
Dangerous Beauty is in video stores right now, and it's my video pick of the week.
I believe I can call, my Space Jam buddies and I stay in close touch with MCI's Five Cents a Sunday, just five cents a minute every Sunday, alone and low rates all week long.
Call 1-800-SUNDAYS to become an MCI customer. I believe I can call.
Hey, you Morty briskin?
Who's asking?
Had a hard time finding this place.
Dear Mort, you have been accepted to Harvard University and awarded a scholarship. Congratulations on all your accomplishments.
You must respond, however, by May 1978.
Better late than never.
Next time, be absolutely sure. Don't just send it, send it, FedEx.
See you in September.
I believe I can call, my Space Jam buddies and I stay in close touch with MCI's Five Cents a Sunday, just five cents a minute every Sunday, alone and low rates all week long.
Call 1-800-SUNDAYS to become an MCI customer. I believe I can call.
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What started out like any other day in the E.R.
I thought I was gonna be sick.
Is about to become the night they will never forget.
I dare you tweet your child like this.
The night that will change their lives forever.
I gotta do it. I'm his only chance.
The night they could lose one of their own.
Why'd she do it?
It's not the rhythm.
Time down. Call it out in minutes.
The unit's looking to you, Mark.
On the next E.R.
Watch E.R. 1035 tonight here on Channel 7.
Now let's take another look at the movies we reviewed on this week's show.
Two thumbs up for Ronan starring Robert De Niro as a gun for hire pitted against international terrorists.
Two thumbs down for Pecker, the John Waters comedy that doesn't have enough of an edge.
We split on Clay Pigeons, the back roads murder comedy.
We both like Vince Vaughn and Janine Garofalo, but Roger felt it was a needlessly prolonged story.
Two thumbs down for Urban Legend, yet another scream wannabe.
And finally we split on Shadrack.
I liked its evocation of Time and Place long ago.
Roger, however, felt it was too slight an effort.
Okay, remember you can hear our reviews on the web at Cisco-Ebert.com
and our website also lists the stations that carry our show.
Next week we'll be back with reviews of more new movies including the supernatural love story
What Dreams May Come starring Robin Williams
and also Ants, a new animated film featuring the voices of Woody Allen and Sharon Stone.
Next week and until then, the balcony is closed.