Metro Pulse Online: Movies, Past &Amp; Future

Armed only with his mysterious mental connection to the feral minds of studio executives, the Movie Guru reveals just how good or bad this week's new releases will be:

Breaking All The Rules
After getting dumped by his girlfriend, Quincy (Jamie Foxx) writes a best-selling book suggesting that guys break up with their girlfriends before they can get hurt. Quincy’s cousin (Morris Chestnut) asks Quincy to help him break up with his girlfriend (Gabrielle Union), but in the process, Quincy falls for her.
Now Showing: West Town Mall, Carmike 10

Kitchen Stories
In the early ‘50s, Swedish scientists are commissioned to observe bachelors living alone in Norway in a study to determine the best housework techniques. The scientists sit perched high in chairs in the corners of the subjects’ kitchens, not allowed to speak or come into any kind of contact with each other. Observer Folke (Tomas Norstrom) and subject Isak (Joachim Calmeyer), two aging men, completely ignore the rule and become good friends in this definition of offbeat comedy.
Now Showing: Downtown West

Latter Days
When friends of Christian (Wes Ramsey) bet that he can’t seduce one of their new neighbors—three Mormon missionaries—the West Hollywood party boy lays the charm on Aaron (Steve Sandvoss), a wholesome but sexually confused Mormon. Christian exposes Aaron’s darkest secret, and the two fall in love, only to be torn apart by Aaron’s religious family.
Now Showing: Downtown West

Monsieur Ibrahim
Surrounded by the Stax music and New Wave film, 16-year-old Momo (Pierre Boulanger) is coming of age in a working class neighborhood in early 1960s Paris. When he’s abandoned by his depressed father, Momo looks to Monsieur Ibrahim (Omar Sharif), the quiet and wise Sufi, who runs the neighborhood grocery, as his spiritual role model. The Jewish boy and his Muslim elder find a common ground that idealizes as it evokes an easier era.
Now Showing: Downtown West

Troy
Hollywood delivers big action, big budget and a big wooden horse in this $200 million version of the Trojan War based on The Iliad. Prince of Troy Paris (Orlando Bloom) has an affair with Helen (Diane Kruger), the queen of Sparta, which tees off hubby King Menalaus (Brendan Gleeson). He and brother Agamemnon (Brian Cox), King of the Myceneans, raise a huge army and vow to bring Helen back. They also enlist Achilles (Brad Pitt), a warrior driven by lust for glory and power, to destroy Troy and its protector, the noble Prince Hector (Eric Bana). Read the review.
Now Showing: West Town Mall, Farragut Towne Square, Foothills 12, Carmike 10, Tinseltown USA

Multi-Dimensional History

Dance, theater, music and film are modes of storytelling that relate narratives of a personal or historical nature. Combining these approaches in a strong example of community creativity, The George Washington Carver Project is both a history lesson and a work of art.

Produced by Bill Landry of The Heartland Series, the 52-minute GWC Project is part documentary, part school play. Landry narrates historical footage of Carver, the freed slave who walked hundreds of miles across the Midwest in the 1890s to find a school that would accept a black student. These film clips from the archives of

Tuskegee University, where Carver worked and did agricultural research alongside Booker T. Washington, are interspersed with dancing, singing, and theatrical performances by students of Austin East Fine Arts and Sciences Magnet School, Beaumont Honors Academy and the Episcopal School of Knoxville. Although they run roughshod over most of their lines, the young actors are enthusiastic; the dancers are particularly impressive, evoking the African dancing of the slaves and the hunch-backed ambling of cotton pickers.

Carver is presented as an achiever of almost mythical proportions—a scientist, painter, pianist and “an American hero” who “revolutionized the economy of the South” by introducing the peanut crop as a soil-enriching alternative to cotton. Knoxville actor Autry Davis portrays Carver in the live performance segments. His grandfatherly quality lends a cuddly accessibility to the historical figure.

The multimedia production, which has been distributed to schools for showing in classrooms, ranks somewhere above a homemade video and slightly below a fully professional documentary. But its rough spots are forgivable due to the sheer accomplishment of the collaboration. To celebrate the life and achievements of George Washington Carver—and the artistic efforts our friends and neighbors have made on his behalf—the production will air on local public television WETP/WKOP Channel 2 on Sunday, May 16 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, May 23 at 1 p.m.

—Paige M. Travis