Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a movie that relies entirely on interpretation. Adapted from a novel by the same name, Confessions is the life story of ’70s game show host and alleged CIA assassin Chuck Barris. Skeptic viewers will scoff at Barris’ off-the- wall tales about his double life, while conspiracy theorists will be delighted by the beauty of it. As producer of “The Dating Game,” Barris accompanied the show’s winners on their European vacations as a chaperone. His book claims that he also snuck out at night to kill bad guys and steal microfilms.

Aside from the interpretation of the story, the audience will have to interpret the style of the film as well. Confessions marks the directorial debut of George Clooney and the first adapted screenplay from Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation was an original screenplay, despite Columbia Pictures’ ridiculous decision to submit it to award shows as adapted). Confessions is also Sam Rockwell’s first shot at a starring role, and he doesn’t disappoint as Barris.

For a first timer, Clooney does a great job from a technical standpoint. The colors of the film are deep and rich, and his choice of camera angles and music are near perfect. Some might find his style to be a bit flashy and overdone, and it does get a bit old by the end of the movie, but for a first time director, he deserves high marks.

Kaufman, technically known within the film industry as the whacko behind Being John Malkovich, presents his most normal screenplay to date. That doesn’t say much however, because Kaufman at his most ordinary is still more original than almost any other screenwriter. Confessions from a plot standpoint is already very creative, so the choice of Kaufman to adapt it seems a little strange, since he’s usually the one that brings the creativity with him. His script is respectable, but nowhere near the genius of Malkovich or Adaptation.

The best part of the film is Rockwell. If 2002 hadn’t been such a great year for lead actors, he would almost certainly have been a Best Actor contender. His past films include the light-hearted Charlie’s Angels and Galaxy Quest, so his turn as the multilayered Barris is surprising. He handles the character with ease, however, perfectly hitting every smile, twitch and glare. And then there’s the subject of the way overdone butt shot. If Confessions had come out a year later, Clooney’s tendency to show Rockwell’s backside in many a scene would have seemed like an in-joke, given Clooney’s own problems with his similar scene in Solaris.
Confessions is a roller coaster ride of a movie. It’d be nice to say it hits all the dramatic points as well as the comedic ones, but on more than one occasion, they fall short. There are a few laughs, in particular a scene in which an unknowing contestant on “The Dating Game” passes up a date with Brad Pitt and Matt Damon for a pudgy plaid-wearing dork.

Aside from the cameos from Pitt and Damon come supporting performances from Clooney, Drew Barrymore and Julia Roberts, as well as some documentary-style clips from Barris collaborators Dick Clark and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine. Clooney is good as Barris’ CIA connection, and Barrymore is sweet as his kooky love interest, although Roberts, of course, is as annoying as ever in her paper-thin role as a fellow government agent.

All things considered, Confessions is a huge success for Clooney and Rockwell, another plus on the records of Kaufman and Barrymore and another massive movie-ruining failure from Roberts. Someone tell her that she can’t be a cutesy love interest one week and a gritty CIA agent the next. See Confessions for interesting insight into the mind of Barris, an excellent performance from Rockwell and an impressive debut from Clooney.

Shawn Wines can be reached at shawnwines@aol.com

The Donnas
Spend the Night
***
Preps, jocks, dorks and tools watch out, these four princesses of punk have grown up to be powerhouse man-trashing icons. The Donnas, known back in the day as Raggedy Ann, and then as The Electrocutes, have stormed the mainstream scene with their latest album Spend the Night.
Quasi-famous for their constantly dissolving ’80s sound of driving Ramones punk and angsty vocals, The Donnas continue to rampage with their delightfully tacky, straight to the point, sex driven steelo. Spend the Night may not be as no holds barred as their previous albums but it still embodies everything The Donnas are – sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
Despite their raunchy image, The Donnas are poster idols to prepubescent hardcore wannabes everywhere. They’ve tossed some fabric softener into their style since 2001’s The Donnas Turn 21 , but their Caddies remain parked in the garage. You might describe this transformation to switching from ice cream to non-fat frozen yogurt – it’s not the real thing, but it’s a decent substitution (and trust me, before Spend the Night was released, The Donnas were dieting the non-fat way).
“Sellouts” you might gasp, making it to MTV’s “TRL” with their first video, but hey, at least they are selling out in record numbers at the stores. It may not be their best work, but at least all of their tracks still have that shove it up your arse edge (Editor’s note: OK.).
Put it this way, if The Donnas and Britney were in a mud wrestling match (yes, hot chicks frolicking in goo), my money would be on The Donnas any day (Editor’s note: OK.).
For man-hating women around the world, go put on “I Don’t Care (So There)” and burn your bras to the sounds and anthems of the new misogynistic revolt (Editor’s note: OK.).

– Meghan Duthu

Scene Creamers
I Suck on that Emotion
**1/2

The Scene Creamers is yet another band starring Ian Svenonius of the Make Up (his other project, Weird War, co-stars Neil Michael Hagerty). For those unfamiliar with the Make Up, imagine a ’60s flavored soul dance group with revolutionary leanings, and a singer who talks, moans, pants, and howls more than he actually sings. The Make Up was fond of calling their avant-garde style “Gospel Ya-Ya.” Although this disc doesn’t quite live up to the spirit of Gospel Ya-Ya, there are still a few upbeat tracks that will get your ass shaking. This is one of those discs that you can absolutely judge by its cover, a modified 20 dollar bill with a picture of a lion fighting a wookie (I think).
Many of the tracks drag on for what seems like an eternity, too concerned with flexing psychedelic muscle to value brevity or wit.
Is it worth 12 dollars? Not if you have the Internet. But, if you do, the tracks “Session
Man” and “Here Comes the Judge Pt. II” are worth checking out.

– James Hush

Loose Fur
Loose Fur [EP]
****

If you haven’t listened to Wilco’s 2002 release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, you aren’t worth writing to. If you have, you were no doubt infatuated with the dense instrumentation conceived by Jim O’Rourke, and the simple, straightforward songwriting of Jeff Tweedy.
After meeting at the 2000 Noise Pop Festival in Chicago, the two began collaborations on YHF, and soon after, along with Wilco’s Glenn Kotche, started writing songs for their new band, Loose Fur. This self-titled EP is already a contender for year-end honors.
The trio draws together elements of ’60s pop, Americana, and acoustic balladry into a stunningly beautiful (and at times stunningly discordant) album. The disc opens with “Laminated Cat,” a song that tells the story of the four seasons, packaged neatly by a chorus that offers “a unified theory of everything.” “Elegant Transaction” is the most nostalgic of the tracks, bringing to mind a simpler time when songwriters like Nick Drake and Tim Buckley were writing folk music that was simply too good for the audiences of their day.
Jim O’Rourke really shines on the third track, “So Long,” which combines seemingly random percussion elements and haphazardly plucked electric guitars over a basic melody played on acoustic guitar. Not to be outdone, Tweedy strikes back on the next track “You Were Wrong,” an introspective ballad that brings to mind his earlier efforts on [Wilco] tracks like “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” and “Ashes of American Flags.”
The CD closes nicely with “Liquidation Totale,” a more upbeat, but still meandering saga that tells a story without the vocals of either O’Rourke or Tweedy. “Chinese Apple” is a song that almost serves as a paraphrase of the record, combining the best elements of all the previous songs into a mix-tape secret weapon. This is definitely a group to keep your eyes on as the year progresses.

– James Hush

In Life & Art’s magnificent quest to score free prody, Nintendo sent us a GameCube with lots of games and four controllers to exercise our collegiate thumbs. Did we sell our journalistic souls to play Mario Party 4 (we missed the other three)? Yeah right. We sold them for Metroid Prime and BMX XXX. See, Nintendo hopes to lure older gamers away from Bill Gates’ microserfs and Sony’s Grand Theft Auto a-alikes with blood, nudity, and suped up sci-fi reliables – not a bad business tactic in today’s carnivorous industry. Even better, the games are on bite-size discs, more proof that Stallone’s Demolition Man was eerily prophetic – where are the seashells though?

Metroid Prime
Nintendo GameCube
Rated: Teen for slime and guns
***

This game has already moved 250,000 units in the United States. Unfortunately, kids craving the ’80s (who don’t read Game Pro) might be in for a surprise when they put this in, blast Motley Crue, and slurp a Tab, since it doesn’t resemble the 2-D design of the original NES or SNES versions. Instead, it’s a first-person 3-D shooter that’s more Turok nature adventure than Quake massacre.
Once again, you’re a chick who wears a sadly geometrical metal suit with a constantly charged gun for a hand named Samus. Anyway, from the first level, when this girl’s alien craft lands at an abandoned space station, the game shows promise. Shootable space rocks float gently above your head inside a brilliantly clear, starry sky; the calm isolation foreshadowing huge confrontations with evil Morks and territorial plant-life.
After a week of playing (Metroid Prime is John Holmes long), it becomes apparent that the core objective is all about travel and not badassery. Across ancient temples, soggy jungles and scientific labs, you fight ninja-acute Space Pirates and orifice-looking organisms, only to receive new guns, energy powerups, and magical icons. This game becomes a job. The beautiful stages are realized with quarter-grubbing nostalgia, but after you backtrack across them one thousand (not an exaggeration) times to reach some newly opened door, you don’t expect anything cool to happen. Oh, more life, oh, a slightly better gun, oh, more padding for Samus’ suit.
So, besides adding another dimension, Metroid Prime is extremely faithful to its predecessors. Samus can still turn into a ball and roll around with Marble Madness chic, but after a while, it leaves you wondering why the geniuses behind this didn’t blast away a few dated conventions. For instance, a stage where the player actually flies Samus’ dope looking alien craft into an enemy lair or Top Guns it across space would be sick, but it never occurs. Instead, you land in a central zone where the other worlds are connected through caves, and you never leave.
This release gets three stars simply because the vastness is unbelievable, the graphics are crisp, vibrant, and never pixelate, and, without codes, the bosses make you earn your money back. Whatevs, it’s a good balance for the nerds and the moderate game player.

Dead to Rights
Nintendo GameCube
Rated: Mature for blood, executions, strippers in thongs, *$#@
***1/2

The real reason why I play video games is to shoot people. I sit on a lush couch that looks like it belonged to Bodhi in Point Break, waiting between classes, and I wipe out a strip club full of lookalike thugs. Dead to Rights is another Grand Theft Auto III-style knockoff, taking video games one-step closer to playing Pong beside Satan. The game is pure gluttony, from the cheesy synth theme song and polygon hot females, to the gun-selection: double clutched silencers, bazookas, grenade launchers – as good as the N64’s GoldenEye – plus a vicious, loyal canine you can release to rip open throats and retrieve guns.
In the press release for this game, the screenwriter (screenwriter?) says that the lead character, an ex-cop named Jack Slate, “reminds me of Bruce Willis in the Die Hard series.” While this type of witty remark is killing Hollywood, it’s golden here. Namco could make a billion more games starring Bruce Slate and I would play them without thinking once. The Japanese’s Metal Gear Solid sensibility – 30 percent game, 70 percent boring story – is not infiltrating Grant City, USA, the setting of Dead to Rights, and supposedly the “hardest place on Earth.”
Like Max Payne before it, the slo-mo Matrix action feature is present here. My personal favorite is using an enemy as a human shield and then executing them pointblank. In one early stage, you switch from Slate to a stripper and have to entertain gangsters by dancing. I hate The Man Show, but being able to play on the current slippery slope of the gaming world is a hilarious guilty pleasure. Break your parole and ante up.

Mario Party 4
Nintendo GameCube
Rated: For your baby brother
*1/2

Dentists should be required to have Mario Party 4 in their offices. It’s all bright and glittery and kids will forget they’re getting 10 cavities filled in 10 minutes. This game is cool if you have four people and 20 minutes. Blondes will probably dig it too.

Hunter Stephenson is partying his ass off in Los Angeles.

9-11 ruins. Faces wrenched in painful grimaces. Gruesome images of war and poverty…

Amidst all the bleak imagery and dark, brooding symbolism that have been feeding art galleries recently, French artist Benedicte Blanc manages to inject her work with a sunny dose of calmness and beauty, while still exploring the multi-layered facets of the meaning of life.

Blanc’s paintings are featured this month at The Gilded Hand, a quaint gift-shop-cum-art-gallery nested cozily amidst the hubbub of the Miracle Mile area in Coral Gables.

Born in Paris, Blanc also spent time in Britain after growing up in a French castle. Always a lover of the arts, she worked in theatre before switching over to painting and sculpture. Blanc tackles a wide range of subjects, from nature settings to portraits, making her a true renaissance woman in painting. Interestingly, she enlivens her work with earthy elements, from the delicate roses that dot some of her paintings to the ash and rust she often fuses into the pigment.

Her flower paintings are aesthetically pleasing, mingling dusky pinks and soft greens into the ghostly blossoms. “Roses are not perfect, and I like to depict the rose as a couple days old – it captures the beautiful imperfections of the flower,” Blanc said.

In portraiture, Blanc purposefully eschews depicting actual faces, instead illustrating wispier, generic visages. “The faces represent the fleeting nature of impressions,” she says, gesturing to a picture of a face floating behind the page of a book, “similar to the mental picture of characters one creates when reading.”

Blanc strays from the beaten path of oil and acrylic and enhances her work with a variety of other nature-created mediums.

“Ash creates a wonderful shade of gray,” Blanc says, pointing to the carefully formed dark smudges that border her paintings. She also makes her own rust through oxidation, and uses wax as a symbol of protection and preservation.

Blanc always pins her themes back to the fragility of life. “Everything traces back to the mineral,” she comments, “even life. I focus on the cyclic nature of life – how the whole process is a spiral.”

According to Blanc, it’s unfair to ask her to name her favorite piece of hers: “The last one I have done will always be my favorite,” she explains. “Each painting is like a trampoline that inspires me to work harder on the next one.”

Also currently featured at The Gilded Hand is a series of wallpaper by Italian artist Emanuele Viscuso. Characteristic of the trompe l’oeil (“trick of the eye”) style, Viscuso’s wallpaper is intended to deceive the viewer into believing the objects depicted are actually the objects themselves. In this case, a stunningly realistic portraits of a bookcase wraps the walls, creating the plausible illusion of mahogany shelves stacked with tomes.

Check out these two shows at the Gilded Hand, 165 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables, through February 13. For more info, call 305-442-1445.

Jessica Misener can be reached at jessm02@yahoo.com.

Tonight
Time to get chuggin’: the First International Beer Festival is taking place on Ocean Drive, Miami Beach opening tonight through February 2. Offering a selection of 300 beers from around the world, plus gourmet food and a variety of music, this is the hotspot to get smashed. Starts at noon. $25 in advance, $35 at the gate for a sampling glass, 20 2oz. samples and food. 305-754-5886.

If you can’t afford the cover at the beer festival, but still want to get hammered, hit up Monty’s, 2550 S Bayshore Dr., Miami, for happy hour, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. The Pain Killers are lethal. 305-858-1431.

Hard Rock fans: The Scorpions, Whitesnake and Dokken perform at Coral Sky Amphitheatre, 601-7 Sansburys Way, West Palm Beach. $18.50-$41.50. 561-793-0445.

Saturday February 1
Get your drink on at Churchill’s, 5501 NE 2nd Ave., Miami, and watch shows by UFC, Middle Finger Mob and The Hangovers. 305-757-1807.

Check out this one-night multi-media art event, Surreal Saturday at PS 742, 1165 SW 6 Street, Little Havana, 9 p.m.-midnight. Photography and video installations by Ben Carillo, Dino De La Vega, Charlemagne Rigau and Ivan Santiago. Performance art by Merlin Gutierrez, Bampy Joe & His Amazing Monkey Show and DJ sets by Bobby D (WVUM) and Karakter. Students pay $5.

Sunday February 2
INSIGHT Sundays at Ouzo’s, 71st & Rue Vendome, Miami Beach, with DJs Karakter, Bobby D, Kurt J Random, Contra, Nebuloso and Polaris twisting hip hop on the one and twos. Starts at 11 p.m. Cheap drinks. 305-586-9734.

Saturday February 8
Life & Art finally puts up or shuts up with the bash to end all bashes. We’re hiring Cabin 5 to drop a gazilion (tentative) kegs on the heads of freshmen. This is it, the party you’ll tell you kids about a year from now. “I met your mom at L&A’s Cabin 5 bashy bash, i wish I had never come.” Suckers. Details coming soon. Start telling your girl friends and girlfriends.

Sunday February 9
Soulful crooner Erykah Badu performs at Level, 1235 Washington Ave., Miami Beach. 8 p.m. $35.

Yeah man, let’s party: CKY change the world by saying bad words
The members of Camp Kill Yourself don’t put on g-strings and bunny costumes and glide around parking lots in shopping carts. CKY isn’t “Jackass.” People like to think they wipe feces on each other with Steve-O, since drummer Jess Margera’s brother, professional prankster Bam, used CKY’s music in his homemade skate/prank videos (CKY, CKY2K and, yes, CKY3), but they don’t.
Sure, the band got a healthy nudge into the mainstream spotlight when their track, “96 Quite Bitter Beings,” played during the “shopping cart scene” in last October’s Jackass: The Movie, but CKY is more concerned with their dark, deafeningly legitimate Metal sound.
Lead singer Deron Miller’s rough vocals and pulverizing lyrics on their latest album, Infiltrate.Destroy.Rebuild, not only win fans, but also campout in the minds of listeners. Named after an imagined horror film, the band has suitably terrorized the Warped Tour (they’ve been kicked off twice for protesting prices, among other things) and trashed nearly all below par hard rock bands in the music industry.
This is a Life & Art interview with CKY’s bassist Vern Zaborowski.

Q: On the track “Plastic Plan” off your new CD, am I right to say that it’s about changing the world?
CKY: You know what, I think that everybody has a different interpretation of the songs. To me, we live in this plastic plan. It’s made fake by corporations and [CKY] is just trying to bend this thing and make it our way.

Q: Would you say that that sums up the mission of the band? To strive for change in the music industry?
CKY: Sure, that is engrained in us. That’s pretty much what CKY wants. We want change. We’re all sick of complaining about it and now we’re finally in the position where people can hear us, so we’re going to let our opinions be heard.

Q: Would you guys say that you’re revolutionists?
CKY: I think that we definitely have revolutionary ideas. I think that the music industry is gonna fall apart whether it’s with help from us or not. We’re going to fucking strive to get what we want, and to change the world and to make it a better place and a more interesting place for people who listen to music. I feel sad for all the people who get force fed all that crap.

Q: The MTV sheep?
CKY: Yeah, the sheep. They just keep running into the wall, dude, and they can’t get back out.

Q: And Carson Daly is the shepherd.
CKY: Oh, man. I hear he’s a dork, if you couldn’t tell. If I’d ever have to meet him, I’d want my fist to be in my pocket because I’d want to punch him right in the gut.

Q: What was it like touring with Axl and Guns N’ Roses?
CKY: Man, it was fucking fun. Axl is fucking cool and Buckethead and Brain are heroes of ours.

Q: What do you think about a lot of the bands today like Linkin Park who try to pass themselves off as a metal band?
CKY: Just let them do their own thing and they’re all going to crap out in a few years. I saw Linkin Park for the first time when we were waiting for our video (“96 Quite Bitter Beings”) to come on MTV. You know their break video, (in whiny voice) “Everything you say to me?” He’s trying to look so mean to the camera. I just rolled my eyes back and said, “Oh, God, this is why I haven’t watched MTV in years.”
Q: What would the Camp Kill Yourself horror movie be like?
Q: Not like Scream 3, I hope.
CKY: Oh God, no. I don’t think that it’d be jokey. It’d be a real movie, but it’d be a crazy fucking slashy movie with lots of blood and gore.

Q: It seems that in the media you guys are still closely associated with the “Jackass” crew . . .
CKY: Oooh, you said the “J” word.

Q: Well, do you want to be known just for the band, and not some television show or movie?
CKY: We pretty much do that. We’ve never done any of the “Jackass” shit. If people associate us with that, then they’re idiots. When “Jackass” first came out, and you’d go on the “Jackass” website, there were all of these questions about the show and most of them were wondering what song was playing during the shopping cart skit, which was kinda funny because people didn’t have any questions about the show. They could care less. They just wanted to find out what the song was.

Q: We should party when you guys come down to Fort Lauderdale in February.
CKY: Yeah, man. Just come up to us and say, “Hey, I’m Kevin, I interviewed you, fuck-face,” and we’ll fucking party.

Kevin Dean can be reached at biigdeano@aol.com.