Screen Gems | Coming this week on TV and at the movies
Posted on Thu, Aug. 07, 2008
SMALL SCREEN
Larry Flynt: The Right to be Left Alone (9 p.m. Thursday, IFC) -- Smut peddler or First Amendment paladin, helpful political gadfly or just plain jerk, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt has inspired a lot of rancorous opinions over the years. This documentary isn't going to settle anything, especially your blood pressure, but it's an interesting chronicle of 30 years of free-speech fireworks.
Baghdad High (9 p.m. Monday, HBO) -- HBO gave four Iraqi teenagers video cameras and asked them to document their senior year of high school. Lots of what came back could have been taped at any American high school: chatter about Britney Spears, hairstyles and hot jeans. Lots of it, we should pray, never will: planning the route home to avoid roadside bombs, wondering if the electricity will ever come back on, debating whether to flee the city for their lives.
Inside the Koran (9 p.m. Tuesday, National Geographic Channel) -- If the Koran is about mercy and tolerance, as many Muslims argue, how can it be used to justify suicide bombings and Internet decapitations, as other Muslims claim? The answer, according to this documentary on the history and theology of Islam: ``The Koran is like a big store, a supermarket. In this book, you are able to pick different answers. You are able to make peace, according to the Koran. You are able to declare war.''
China Inside Out: Bob Woodruff Reports (10 p.m. Wednesday, ABC) -- As the world prepares for the Beijing Olympics, a special edition of Primetime devotes a full hour to how China is using its new wealth to leverage itself into a global political power. ABC reporter Bob Woodruff -- who got his start in journalism working as a translator during the Tiananmen Square uprising -- visits Brazil, Angola and Cambodia to forge alliances based on shared economic interests. Oh, and don't forget the United States, where the Chinese are funding nearly $1 trillion in debt.
True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet (9 p.m. Saturday, Lifetime) -- R&B singer JoJo plays a Lohanesque teenybopper star who, after a stint in rehab, goes incognito to try to resume a normal life in Hellhole, Ind. Well, maybe it's Fort Wayne, but you get the idea. Geometry. Gym. Friends who've never slept with Charlie Sheen. It's, like, worse than Baghdad High.
-- GLENN GARVIN
BIG SCREENPineapple Express (R) -- The buzz is good (no pun intended) on this action-oriented stoner comedy about a pot dealer (James Franco) and his best customer (Seth Rogen) who run afoul of a drug lord (Gary Cole) and the cop (Rosie Perez) on his payroll. David Gordon Green (George Washington) directs and Judd Apatow (Knocked Up) produces.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (PG) -- The bond between four high-school friends (Blake Lively, Alexis Bledel, Amber Tamblyn and America Ferrera) who share a magical pair of jeans carries on through their college years.
American Teen (PG-13) -- Filmmaker Nannette Burnstein spent a year recording the lives of five high-school seniors in a small Indiana town. Like The Breakfast Club, only it's real.
Hell Ride (R) -- The motorcycle gang flick meets the spaghetti western in this tale of a gang of bikers (Larry Bishop, Michael Madsen, Vinnie Jones and Eric Balfour) out to avenge the murder of one of their own. Dennis Hopper and David Carradine co-star, giving this gang some street cred.
-- RENE RODRIGUEZ
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