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What Nobody Expects
A startling film combines the talents of two filmmakers.
-Cindy Fuchs

Michael Moore
-Sam Adams

Home on the Range
Bowling for Columbine may be scattershot, but it hits plenty of targets.
-Sam Adams

Adam's Crib
Adam Sandler plays a manchild (again), but troubled (for once), and gives P.T. Anderson a boost.
-Sam Adams

New

Continuing

repertory film

showtimes

October 17-23, 2002

screen picks

Exhumed Films Rises (Fri., Oct. 18-Sat., Oct. 19, 11 p.m., doors at 10, $12 each night, Cinemark Theatre, Lions Head Plaza, 711 Evesham Road and White Horse Pike, Somerdale, N.J., www.exhumedfilms.com) The popular South Jersey horror showcase dodged a bullet this week. Though its old home, Pennsauken's Hoyt's, was abruptly shut down two weeks ago, they've found at least a temporary new home for this weekend's shows and Nov. 1's Halloween showcase: the Cinemark in Somerdale, N.J. This weekend's shows are a pair of doozies -- Friday is a crash course in horror landmarks, with Alien, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; Saturday's "Living Dead Marathon" includes the original Night of the Living Dead, Dead & Buried, Dead of Night and Dead/Alive (made by Peter Jackson before he turned hobbit on us). Make the trip and congratulate the Exhumed fellas on their tenacity.

Women Make Movies at 30 (Thu., Oct. 17-Sat., Oct. 19, 7:30 p.m., $5-$8.50, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) The 30th anniversary celebration of the storied media advocacy group, which brought a wide-ranging showcase to Bryn Mawr a few months back, continues with three nights of female-friendly programming at The Prince. Thursday night's program focuses on portraits, with subjects ranging from a 17-year-old British lesbian to the death of a filmmaker's 2-year-old sister. Friday night's pop-focused collection includes You've Got Junk Mail, from Termite TV's Anula Shetty, and Grrlyshow, a history of feminist zine-making, not to mention a dozen delightful handmade shorts by Martha Coburn, whose tactile animation is accompanied by typically skewed Jad Fair music. The weekend concludes with a music-focused program, including Mother Dot's Philadelphia, a portrait of Philly jazz icon Dottie Smith by Scribe's Malkia Lydia and Ryan Saunders (Bacchanal Time), and If You Call Them, a collaboration between choreographer Tamara Xavier and director Tina Morton (Girls Like Us).

Sugar-Charged Saturday Morning Supershow (Fri., Oct. 18, 8 p.m., $6, Moore College of Art & Design, 20th and Race sts., 215-568-4515, ext. 4099) Speaking of anniversaries, Secret Cinema continues its 10th anniversary jubilee with this reprise of its classic Saturday morning showcase, including appearances by the Banana Splits, H.R. Pufnstuf and The Harlem Globetrotters. SC head Jay Schwartz promises "very little overlap" with last year's Print Center program.

Señorita Extraviada (Mon., Oct. 21, 7 p.m., free, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) Lourdes Portillo's chilling documentary focuses on the Mexican border town of Ciudád Juarez, where nearly 250 young women, most working in the factories that supply cheap goods to the U.S. and elsewhere, have been murdered in an extraordinary string of vicious assaults that the police are nowhere near solving, even after years on the case. Portillo can do no more than suggest various identities for the killer (or killers), but the movie effectively conveys both the authorities' general lack of interest in solving the crime, their tendency to blame the women for dressing "provocatively," the extent to which the maquiladora culture creates a world where individual lives are expendable, and the terrible toll all this takes on the families of Ciudád Juarez.

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The 48-Hour Film Project (Tue., Oct. 22 and Wed., Oct 23, 7 and 9:30 p.m., Prince Music Theater, www.48hourfilm.com) If you see an out-of-breath gang of people in baseball caps and sunglasses lugging a camera around town this weekend, they might just be trying to make a movie, and quick. The 48-Hour Film Project hits Philadelphia as the fifth in a six-city tour, with 22 teams of local filmmakers (already chosen) given a genre, a prop, a character, a line of dialogue, and two whole days to make a five-to-12-minute movie from scratch. Sounds more like a recipe for disaster than genius, but then triumphing over adversity has been the cornerstone of a lot of great art. See for yourself Tuesday and Wednesday, when the results are screened to the public.

Middle East Week (Wed., Oct. 23-Sun., Oct. 27, free, International House) The film portion of this weeklong exploration of Middle Eastern culture doesn't begin in earnest until Wednesday, but don't forget the opening film: In the Shadows of the City, a look back at the war in Lebanon which interweaves documentary footage with dramatic action. The 8 p.m. screening is preceded at 6 p.m. by an opening reception with Bitar's food and an exhibit of photographs by Hazami Sayed, a Lebanon-born Philadelphian.

The Young Ones: Every Stoopid Episode ($59.98 DVD) It's a little hard to describe the appeal of this early-'80s British sitcom without lapsing into hyperbole, or falling on your back, twitching your legs and drooling. Consisting of 12 legendary episodes (two six-episode seasons' worth), the show does things that, even 20 years later, American sitcoms only wish they could do -- like, say, killing off every member of the cast at the end of an episode (which happens more than once). If you thought the cast of Seinfeld was unlikeable, try these four on for size: there's Rick (Rik Mayall), the snotty, bad-poetry spouting pseudo-anarchist; Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson), the randomly violent punk; Neil (Nigel Planer), the hapless hippie; and Mike (Christopher Ryan), the supposed player who's still living with a houseful of malcontents. Although they're all students, they never go to class, living off their government checks and arguing incessantly, pausing occasionally to hide from a South African vampire or introduce that week's musical guest. The Young Ones isn't so much a parody of a sitcom as it is an attempt to destroy the form once and for all; the action regularly, and randomly, cuts away to everything from disgruntled medieval knights to a science lab where the house is being studied under a microscope. (The precarious placement of a laboratory snack leads to a rather messy conclusion of that episode.) Plucked from London's alternative comedy scene, the cast -- which also includes the brilliant Alexei Sayle as a parade of vastly different characters, all of whom are supposedly related -- attack their roles without the slightest whiff of sentiment: it's like they're competing to see who can come up with the most horrid, vile characterization. What makes all this funny, instead of amazingly depressing, is how clever each thinks they are: when the house's plates start mysteriously disappearing, Neil has a brainstorm -- nail them to the table. Mike mocks him, not for the idea, but because he's not doing it properly, and lords it over him when he succeeds in getting a nail clean through -- that is, until Mike realizes he's driven the nail straight through the table and into his own leg.

The series has sporadically been available on video over the years, and I have vivid memories of watching it on MTV in the '80s, but this is the first time "every stoopid episode" has been lumped together for us Yanks. The set's third disc includes pilot episodes for the two succeeding series created by the same actors and writers -- Filthy, Rich and Catflap and Bottom -- but you can't stop wondering when Vyvyan dyed his hair back from orange, or why Neil finally took a bath. Return instead to those 12 episodes, and watch them incessantly; memorize every detail. Wisdom awaits, like this immortal chestnut: "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence." Words to live by.

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