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"10, 000 BC" doesn’t deliver on its promise of epic action

Summer's Forecast
Summer Moore
Special to the Post Independent
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado

“10,000 BC”

Two out of four suns

Did you know that in 10,000 BC a small group of villagers in the mountains spoke perfect English? They also had domesticated horses.



Do not let the previews or title of this movie fool you as it did me. This is a far cry from the special effects epic the trailer led me to believe. Granted, director Roland Emmerich (“The Day After Tomorrow”) has a few good scenes, the most memorable being the one from the preview where our hero faces a saber-tooth tiger.



However, most of the film is spent following a young man on his journey to manhood and is frankly very boring. It is all about love, which would have been fine if it was done is a more passionate way. Instead the hunter D’Leh (Steven Strait) falls immediately in love with Evolet (Camilla Belle), who gets kidnapped by the “four legged demons” (men on horses) and therefore he leaves the mountains to save her.

His journey is entertaining enough, especially when they hit the jungle and are attacked by what looks like giant, rabid turkeys. Then they run into the saber-tooth tiger which is done well.

The cat is ferocious, and gargantuan.

I would have rather seen the movie I expected. One where there was no dialogue and was full of over-the-top effects. To be honest the slight English accent was killing me for most of the film. The fact that D’Leh kept saying “many moons” did not make it real for me.

“Dan in Real Life”

Three out of four suns

Writer and director Peter Hedges (“About a Boy”, 2002) sticks to his European style with this fresh comedy about an advice columnist who cannot figure his own life out.

With stars Steve Carell and Dane Cook, the first thing that comes to anyone’s mind is physical comedy. After all, that is what these two are good at. The big surprise here is that this film possesses real heart. The only scene where we get any Carell-type comedy is the dance-off, which is funny but feels a little out of place here.

Instead, Carell’s Dan is a nothing like his “The Office” character. Dan is a widower with three young girls who is clueless on how to raise them alone. When he meets the woman who could show him how, he realizes she is dating his fitness-instructor brother (Cook).

What Hedges does best though, is show us how endearing Dan is and how we all can relate to his insatiable girls who refuse to make it any easier on him. As far as romantic comedies go, this one is worth watching.

“Big Love” (2006) (TV Series)

This week I am going to take us in a different direction. I recently rented the first season of the show “Big Love.” It was fantastic. Starring Bill Paxton as a husband of three and father of seven, this drama is clever in its own right.

The best thing about HBO is that this network shows us sides of lifestyles that we never thought of. “The Sopranos,” for example, made us fall in love with a mob boss, and here the same thing happens with a Utah-born, uber-religious, practicing polygamist.

Summer Moore is a recent University of Colorado graduate who has grown up in Glenwood and moved back recently to work and live in Aspen. She has been obsessively watching movies all her life and has been reviewing them for the last two years. You can easily find her at Blockbuster or aimlessly wandering the movie section of Target. Feel free to express your opinion on any of her reviews by writing to the paper or posting a comment on the website, http://www.postindependent.com.


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