Weekend: Movies on the Edge: The Final Chapter

THE COLOR OF PARADISE (PG) (90 min.) -- Two years ago, Iranian director Majid Majidi made a quietly charming film called Children of Heaven that turned a simple loss of shoes into a child's moving adventure. The same heartfelt touch makes The Color of Paradise an equally pleasant experience.

This is the story of Mohammad, a blind 8-year-old boy played with uncommon screen purity by Mohsen Ramezani. Mohammad is a good student returning to the countryside for summer vacation with his widowed father (Hossein Mahjub) and grandmother (Salime Feizi). Dad doesn't have the patience to care for his son's needs. The boy interferes with his plans to marry into wealth.

The first clue of this occurs when school is dismissed and Mohammad is the last child picked up. This is also when Majidi's special touch with the simplest action emerges. Mohammad passes the time simply listening, leading to a minor adventure that speaks volumes about his personality.

Many filmmakers would use sound effects to place us into Mohammad's perspective. Instead, Majidi heightens the visuals to lovely effect, imitating the way sound is sharpened in the ears of a sightless person. Our eyes sense the natural wonders of Mohammad's world while he only hears them. Mohammad listens to the sound of rustled leaves, a prowling cat, a bird's worried tweet, and discovers a baby bird fallen from his nest.

His reactions to those sounds -- rapt expressions and acts of kindness -- make us appreciate what we're seeing even more. The Color of Paradise makes nature a supporting player, coaxing more drama from a fragile story.

Those times when Mohammad soaks in his surroundings are poetically effective. More so than the domestic drama, with the father shuttling his son to the care of a blind carpenter despite Grandma's concern.

A late brush with danger may seem like an easy way out by jaded American moviegoer standards, just like the climactic foot race in Children of Heaven, which also worked despite our supposedly better instincts.

Farsi language with English subtitles. Opens today at Beach Theater. A-

* * *

CECIL B. DEMENTED ( R) (84 min.) -- The notion of John Waters tossing acid into the face of Hollywood convention isn't a new idea for a movie. Baltimore's favorite son has done it for decades, though in a fashion less calculated and shrill than that of his new farce, Cecil B. Demented.

Waters defies the studio/star system each time he makes a film. He once turned dirty home movies with his pals into a form of art and commerce. The money factor attracted studios and big stars, and Waters still thrived on his own silly, perverse terms. What could possibly upset him enough to make a frantic rant like Cecil B. Demented?

Nothing, really. Waters isn't as angry as the volume of his actors suggests. Whatever inspiration to be found here is outdated, considering the independent film explosion. This is a movie that Waters should have made 20 years ago, before he changed from a gross-out rascal into a cranky cog in the system, before he became "respectable," a term lightly used to describe his technique and taste.

Cecil B. Demented is tame stuff compared to Waters' early underground works or even his most recent film, Pecker. The latter comedy made solid points about the freedom of artists and the pitfalls of fame. Cecil B. Demented misses that prickly satire, opting for bumper sticker slogans and Hollywood caricatures done to death on shows like Saturday Night Live.

Stephen Dorff plays Cecil, a lunatic independent filmmaker who, along with his motley crew, kidnaps snooty star Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith, cooing venom). They force her to bleach her hair and act in an anti-Hollywood film shot on the fly. The plot is pure terrorism against studios churning out sequels like Gump Again and French classics dubbed into English.

Honey briefly resists, then falls into character. She joins the gang on a series of tiresome robberies and vandalism and becomes a celebrity folk hero, something along the lines of Patty Hearst's brainwashed escapades, a point hammered home with a cameo by Hearst.

Several other one-note jokes are repeated to inconsequence. When Honey meets the crew, everyone walks by her and displays a tattoo of the name of a famous maverick director. It's amusing the first few times, but Waters continues through all 11 crew members. The studio assaults are unimaginative excuses for Dorff to scream more twisted platitudes about the very sort of dull movie entertainment this becomes.

A few bright spots emerge: Alicia Witt dumps her teen dream image to play a porn star who can't stand Cecil's decree of celibacy until the film wraps. A climactic sequence at a drive-in finally ignites some of Waters' roustabout energy, allowing Griffith a nice setup for the line we've been waiting for: "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Demented."

Mostly, the film seems like a halfhearted effort to offend from a filmmaker who has done it longer than anyone else. After the Farrelly and Wayans brothers' recent transgressions in taste, Cecil B. Demented seems like a knock-knock joke.

Opens today at Tampa Theatre. D+

* * *

THE TARGET SHOOTS FIRST (NR, probably PG-13) (70 min.) -- Christopher Wilcha didn't plan to be a corporate shill exploiting his generation. Things just worked out that way.

Wilcha simply needed a job in 1993. His ability to explain why Nirvana was cool to a Columbia House employment interviewer led to a marketing position with the world's largest music clearinghouse. CD orders had leveled off, and the suits upstairs figured a new division devoted to alternative rock 'n' roll could be profitable.

The Target Shoots First, the best offering yet from the Movies That Move series, is a wry indictment of Columbia House practices and selling out in general. Wilcha carried a videocamera to work each day, capturing the petty squabbles and mole hill mountains of corporate employment.

Yet, something deeper emerges than just raging against the machine. Wilcha realizes that, for a few months, he sold his soul to the devil. In fact, the devil still owns rights to his image, seen in monthly selection magazines long after he quit. It's a deal he regretted even as it unfolded.

"Punk rock is about saying no to commercialism," Wilcha muses at one point. On another occasion he admits, "We not only made it seem that consuming is cool, we made it seem like an act of defiance."

Some ploys are amusing, like dropping the word "heavy" to describe metal bands, or combining Alice in Chains and Beavis and Butt-head into one great deal and struggling to come up with just the right catch phrase to hype it. Others are soured by greed, including a segment when the suits want to market Kurt Cobain's suicide without actually mentioning the word "death."

Wilcha makes the camera another participant in staff meetings and mandatory company picnics. The old guard at Columbia House doesn't understand his calm subversiveness. The company appears greedily misguided about music, stealing artists' royalties like Napster with a 401(k) plan. Wilcha admirably mimics the deadpan cynicism of Michael Moore's documentary exposes.

One show only, 8 p.m. Sunday at the State Theater, 687 Central Ave. in St. Petersburg. Tickets are $5. Grade: B+

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