Home Media Magazine - November 18-24, 2007 - (Page 19) www.homemediamagazine.com REVIEWS parties. There’s a lot of earnest talk about their responsibility to nurture his talents, but their real interest is in what his precocity means for them — to whit, no end of pride and fame. The only interesting and unusual narrative wrinkle in Vitus’ awkward (but again, in no way atypical) coming-of-age story is an interlude during which he fakes normalcy after a freak accident. Everyone is temporarily fooled and Vitus is afforded a brief-but-enriching peek into what his life might have been like were he not a genius. As for the rest, there’s not much new under the sun, but Vitus is still as satisfying as this narrow genre usually allows. – Eddie Mullins I VITUS Street 11/27 Sony Pictures, Drama, B.O. $0.2 million, $29.95 DVD, ‘PG’ for mild thematic elements and language. Stars Bruno Ganz, Teo Gheorghiu. W hat is the sustained appeal of child prodigy movies? They are more predictable than Westerns, and not nearly so diverting. Every cinematic whiz kid, from Little Man Tate to Searching for Bobby Fischer, is essentially the same, which is to say preternaturally gifted (at chess, mathematics, the piano, etc.) and a constant source of headaches for their parents. It is the parents, of course, who differ most from film to film. They are the only real X factor. But rich or poor, fawning or indifferent, they tend to run up against the same question: What, if anything, should they do about little Einstein’s gift? Should it be nurtured or discour- aged? Should he be thrust into the limelight — Mozart is always the reference point here — or should they permit him a normal childhood? Fredi Murer’s Vitus is no different from what has come before. In fact, it might be the apotheosis of the genre. At the age of six, little Vitus (Fabrizio Borsani) is an avid reader of encyclopedias and possessed of a musical gift at the piano that his parents delight in showing off at I DOING TIME FOR PATSY CLINE Street 11/27 BFS, Comedy, B.O. $0.001 million, $24.98 DVD, NR. Stars Matt Day, Miranda Otto, Richard Roxburgh, Tony Barry, Roy Billing. hen you think about it … I’ve been in prison longer than Johnny Cash,” says the hero of this dramatic comedy that carves a brutal trail between a young man’s lustful desires for a seemingly vulnerable woman and his fantasy to become a country-western singing star. No matter — Ralph (Day) is determined to endure — whatever the consequences may be. The film opens on a lonely farm somewhere in the Australian Outback, where Ralph clearly has made it known to his salt-of-the earth parents that he is destined to be the next big American country vocal star. He embarks on a journey with a little help from his folks in the form of an airplane ticket to Nashville. While waiting at the crossroads to hitch a ride, Ralph meets the infamous mythical music devil Boyd (Roxburgh) and his angelic sidekick Patsy (Otto), who quickly seize upon his naivete. Here is where the plot twists intertwine rapidly and to the very point of amalgamation. The trio loses a high-speed pursuit with the local “W Outback sheriff; Patsy escapes and Ralph and Boyd begin a long psychic journey together in a small country jailhouse cage. As the hickish cage shrinks, their imaginations blossom, exponentially. Before you know it, Patsy and Ralph are cutting a record from an original tune called “Dead Roses,” and Boyd has hooked them up with a performance at the Grand Ole Opry. Just then, reality hits, and Ralph has a hard choice to make in pursuit of his dream. The song performed by Day as the credits roll sums it up best: “When you wake up in the morning, hear the ding-dong ring. You go marchin’ to the table, it’s the same darn thing; spoon and fork upon the table, not a thing in my pan. If you make a crack about it, you’re in trouble with the man … Let the midnight special shine its light on me.” – Brett Sporich November 18–24, 2007 Home Media Magazine 19 http://www.homemediamagazine.com http://www.eyeofthedolphinthemovie.com http://www.eyeofthedolphinthemovie.com
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