Cinema in Progress

The Instituto Cervantes is proud to present the second annual Cine en Construcción film series. The series starts this Thursday, Oct. 4, and continues every Thursday night through Nov. 1 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. Cine en Construcción is a collaboration between the Festival Internacional de Cine de Donostia--San Sabastián (Spain) and Rencontres Cinémas d’Amérique Latine de Toulouse (France) and is designed to promote and distribute independent films from Latin America. This year’s selection includes films from Colombia and Argentina, including La Primera Noche (Oct. 4), Fugaz (Oct. 11), Ana y Los Otros (Oct. 18), Capital Rancho (Oct. 25) and El Transcurso de las Cosas (Nov. 1). All films are free to the public and will be presented in Spanish with English subtitles. For more info, log on to albuqurque.cervantes.es.

Farrelly Brothers dig through Neil Simon’s trash for inspiration

Ever wonder what would happen if you combined Neil Simon and The Farrelly Brothers? Yeah, me neither. Regardless, The Heartbreak Kid is a remake of a 1972 Neil Simon comedy retooled by the dirty-minded siblings who gave us There's Something About Mary. The result, as can reasonably be expected, is a mixed bag in which the highbrow and the lowbrow combine to form a style that can only be called monobrow.

How can the French make an English novel less sexy?

Ah, highbrow sex. Oh, arthouse erotica. Where would we be without you? From 1967’s I Am Curious (Yellow) to 1972’s Last Tango in Paris to 1974’s The Night Porter to 1976’s In The Realm of the Senses to 1986’s Betty Blue to 1994’s Exotica to 1996’s Crash to 2003’s The Dreamers to 2006’s Shortbus (with countless stops in between), foreign filmmakers have proven that private parts can be pretentious too.

“Bionic Woman” on NBC

I still can’t figure out how “The Bionic Woman,” a 1976 spin-off of the hugely popular ’70s action series “The Six Million Dollar Man,” trumped its more popular male counterpart in the pop cultural sweepstakes. How did Jaime Sommers rate a 2.0 remake before Steve Austin? Regardless of the gender politics at play, NBC’s revamped “Bionic Woman” is a fun, if familiar, addition to today’s action-heavy TV lineup.

Week in Sloth

The Week in Sloth