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:

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (PG-13)
Former Saturday Night Live cast member Will Farrell brings his custom brand of comedy to this ’70s news spoof about women entering the male-dominated world of the nightly news. Somewhere between making love to his ego and drowning in Scotch, Burgundy (Farrell) has become San Diego’s top anchor. His career is threatened when a female anchor Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) joins his team as co-anchor.
Now Showing: Halls Cinema 7, Foothills 12, Carmike 10

The Clearing (R)
This slow-burn psychological thriller and study in class warfare stars Robert Redford as a wealthy CEO kidnapped by a former employee (Willem Dafoe) and held for ransom in the forest. The businessman is forced to face his past infidelities with his wife (Helen Mirren) as she helps the FBI negotiate for his release.
Now Showing: Downtown West (Note: At press time this opening was tentative; please call the theater to confirm.)

King Arthur (PG-13)
Before he was king, Arthur (Clive Owen) and his future band of knights served in the Roman Army for 15 years. On their final mission to gain their freedom, the knights join forces with former enemies Guinevere (Keira Knightley) and Merlin to defend Britain from the Saxons and rescue the last of the remaining Roman officials in a village.
Now Showing: Halls Cinema 7, Farragut Towne Square, West Town Mall, Foothills 12, Carmike 10

The Saddest Music in the World (NR)
An eccentric melodrama set in the depths of the Great Depression. Isabella Rossellini is a Canadian beer baroness (with no legs) who holds a contest to determine the saddest music in the world (and promote her beer). A bizarre cast of characters turns up to perform a variety of surreal musical numbers. Directed by Canadian Guy Maddin.
Now Showing: Downtown West (Note: At press time this opening was tentative; please call the theater to confirm.)

Sleepover (PG)
Four teenage girls (led by Spy Kids’ Alexa Vega), sleeping over after the last day of school, are eager to shed their nerdy personas and attempt a social make-over by competing in a scavenger hunt with a group of popular girls. The quartet borrows dad’s car to run all over the city in the night-long adventure, sneaking into clubs and chasing boys without Julie’s mom knowing they’ve ever left the house.
Now Showing: Halls Cinema 7, Foothills 12, Wynnsong 16

Sold on Cold Mountain

Count me among those fans of Charles Frazier’s epic Civil War novel Cold Mountain who cried “Sacrilege!” at the very suggestion that it might be made into a movie, least of all one starring Nicole Kidman and Jude Law and directed by one of the reigning kings of overblown melodrama, Anthony Minghella (The English Patient). As rumors of casting choices and news of the film’s production in Romania circulated on the Internet, I swore on all that was precious and literary that I would never lower myself to participate in any crass, Hollywood minimalization. Up until the film’s premiere, I cast aspersions on every element I was certain would fail: How could they capture Inman as a man of great honor who abandons a war he doesn’t believe in? Or Ada’s gradual change from a Charleston belle to a North Carolina farmer? The novel succeeds through subtlety of language and delicate characterization, and film adaptations constantly abandon atmosphere for action. I proclaimed it doomed.

But I was wrong.

On the big screen, Cold Mountain (R, 2003) translates into a romantic wartime epic on the scale of Gone with the Wind. Though they exchange few words, Ada and Inman share an attraction that only results in one kiss before he marches off to join the Southern army. But it’s a helluva kiss that sustains the young people’s hopes for the future as he suffers violent battles and as she loses her father and watches their farm go to ruin.

Granted, the Southern accents are mostly bad; Law is English, and Kidman is Australian, and only Texas-born Renee Zellweger (who won an Oscar for her performance) seems to have a clue about how a North Carolinian might have sounded in 1861. But the emotion contained in moments of quiet retrospect and full-blown drama are so honest that crimes of accent are easily overlooked.

Cinematographer John Seale makes the battle scenes look like paintings of the Civil War, dusty brown fields punctuated by red flags and blue and gray uniforms. Ultimately, the filmmakers seem to do the impossible by expressing a beloved novel through the convention of modern cinema. Consider me glad to be wrong about Cold Mountain.

—Paige M. Travis