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:

The Day After Tomorrow (PG-13)
Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves, floods and the dawn of a new ice age are all part of the worst-case scenario if the green house effect and global warming were to reach catastrophic levels. Paleoclimatologist (where do you get a degree in that?) Adrian Hall travels to New York City, which is buried under snow thanks to the start of a new ice age, to look for his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhall). Hall’s the only one trying to get into the frozen Apple, which has most of its population fleeing for warmer latitudes. Written and directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day), this big budget disaster pic has all of special effects and cliched one-liners you’d expect.
Now Showing: West Town Mall, Farragut Towne Square, Tinseltown USA, Carmike 10, Foothills 12

Raising Helen (PG-13)
Swingin’ single Helen (Kate Hudson) is on the verge of getting a major promotion at a big-name New York modeling agency when life throws her a doozy: suddenly, she’s the guardian of her sister’s three kids. She goes from being the coolest aunt in Manhattan to a mom on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Helping the transition is her sister (Joan Cusack) and Pastor Dan (John Corbett). With direction from Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, The Princess Diaries), the luminous Hudson may fulfill her potential for the first time since Almost Famous.
Now Showing: Knoxville Center, Farragut Towne Square, Tinseltown USA, Wynnsong 16, Foothills 12

Soul Plane (R)
After Dakwon (Kevin Hart) wins a $600 million dollar settlement for the death of his dog from an airline company, he decides to buy his own commercial airline and call it N.W.A. His new airline, marketed towards African Americans, features stripper stewardesses, an on-board dance club and a bathroom attendant. Flights captained by none other than Snoop Dogg leave from LA’s brand new Terminal X. Things get interesting when a white family headed by Tom Arnold is routed on board from a different airline. MCA is trying to market this film as a urban Airplane!, but don’t expect any real similarities other than they both happen to take place in the friendly skies.
Now Showing: Knoxville Center, Tinseltown USA, Wynnsong 16, Foothills 12

Super Series

Although it’s colder and more static than film, television does have a few advantages over the big screen, the most obvious being that it has more time to stretch out. And, in many ways, TV is more ideal for the adaptation of literature, because it can be tackled in serial format and because it relies more on dialogue.

Two of TV’s best literature adaptations are Simon Wincer’s Lonesome Dove and Simon Langton’s Pride and Prejudice. Although vastly different, both are about human communication, and the difficulty of it.

Lonesome Dove was originally written by Larry McMurtry as a screenplay for John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart, shelved, later turned into a novel and then finally a 1989 miniseries. The story is about three former Texas Rangers, trying to start anew by making a cattle drive from Texas to Montana where they plan to establish a ranch.

Surprisingly talky for a Western, the movie is enthralling. Robert Duvall seems born to play the part of Gus McCrae, an honorable and goodhearted (if slightly lazy) cowboy. The rest of the cast—Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Urich, Danny Glover, Diane Lane, Angelica Huston, Chris Cooper—also shine, but it’s Duvall’s show without a doubt. With his folksy existentialism and sharp wit, he seems like he’s playing himself.

The cattle drive, marked by the predictable conventions of the genre, focuses on the human failings that lead to them, often caused by the characters’ failure to say what they mean and express what they feel. But this is no touchy-feely melodrama. There’s plenty of blood, and not much of it has any vicarious thrill for the viewer.

Of the many adaptations of the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice, Langton’s 1995 miniseries (originally made for BBC) is considered the masterpiece. Austen’s brilliance comes from the richness of her dialogue, along with her understanding of social conventions and the way people interact, or don’t. Langton is meticulously faithful to the novel and at nearly six hours, he’s got the room to be. Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle are incomparable as Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. And the supporting cast steals several scenes, especially Alison Steadman, as the doltish, social-climbing Mrs. Bennet. The entire cast brings to life the subtleties of the characters’ pretensions, snobbish jokes, false dignities, and ambitions.

You can watch either Pride and Prejudice or Lonesome Dove over several nights, but once you hit play it’ll be hard to take a break.

—Joe Tarr

May 27, 2004 * Vol. 14, No. 22
© 2003 Metro Pulse