LIPSTICK AND DYNAMITE begins with an episode of the TV series WHAT’S MY LINE” where a panel has to guess the occupation of a mystery guest.  Judy Grable signs in as ‘professional wrestler’.  Director Ruth Leitman believes throughout her well-intentioned documentary that her audience is both largely unknowledgeable of the sport and fascinated of the prospect that a wrestler could be a female.  But this assumption is as dated as the poster of this movie.

THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY traces the odyssey of half Vietnamese/half American (nicknamed with scorn as ‘less than dust’ by fellow Vietnamese), Binh (Damien Nguyen) as he leaves his homeland for the United States in search of his American father.  The film title could very well refer to Vietnam or the United States.  Beautifully shot by Stuart Dryburgh (THE PIANO and PORTRAIT OF A LADY), the film constantly reminds the viewer of executive producer Terence Malick’s (director of BADLANDS and DAYS OF HEAVEN) influence.

When the blacks in South Central. L.A. put on their war paint in David LaChapelle’s awesome new documentary, it is not for a drug or gang war that is about to be fought but for a groundbreaking new dance exploding on the streets.  RIZE introduces the viewers to a whole new vitalized world of a new dance phenomenon – clowning, krumping and stripper dance.  Fast, furious and almost too incredible to be true, this is not a trend, as one of the dancers in the doc insists, but the real thing that will exist for a very long while.

At the beginning of SARABAND, the lead character Marianne (Liv Ullmann) stares at her ex-husband, Johan (Erland Josephson) sleeping in a chair.  She has not seen him in 30 years.  She thinks aloud and speaks to the camera: “Should I go and kiss him or should I return where I came from?” “Or should I just stand here and let confusion run amok?” Master director Ingmar Bergman’s (whose 3 films FANNY AND ALEXANDER, THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY and THE VIRGIN SPRING won Best Foreign Film Oscars) trademark is composing films where nothing much goes on in terms of incident.

YES is a passionate romantic drama in the trademark Sally Potter (THE TANGO LESSON, THE MAN WHO CRIED and ORLANDO) style.  One thing for certain awaits the cineaste (rather than the regular filmgoer) that views a Potter film – challenging, thought provoking and cinematic entertainment.  The action centers on the love affair between an American woman of Irish descent and a Middle-Eastern (Simon Abkarian).  They are given no names.  She lives with her English political husband (Sam Neill), preferring to dodge each other at every instance.  Political, social, religious and humanistic issues take root testing the lovers’ relationship.