Think it’s funny to ignore that jury summons?

Mecklenburg County wants you to believe that it isn’t, but after spending an afternoon in court listening to people who ignored jury summonses, the joke seems to be on the county and the taxpayers.

For instance, some of the 40 people who didn’t show up weren’t even American citizens. The Trial Court Administration didn’t know that? Judge Albert Diaz told the people who could prove that they weren’t citizens that they weren’t fit for jury duty. You’d think that information would be given to the people who issue those orders.

But for those people who just gave a big middle finger to the court system and their jury duty, today was the day that they threw themselves on the mercy of the court and let me tell, Diaz ain’t that merciful.

There was one would-be-juror that had her stuff together. Jocelyn is a graduate student in Durham and she changed her voter registration before she was issued her jury summons. She told the judge when she received the first summons, she figured that it was in error since she’d left Mecklenburg County.
By the time she got the third one, she figured she’d better get here. It just so happened that Tropical Storm Hanna was coming too.

Jocelyn said Independence was flooded, Central Avenue was flooded and despite the fact that she left Durham with enough time to make it to court as ordered, she didn’t get to the jury staging area until 8:30 a.m. Jurors are supposed to be in court by 8 a.m.

Jocelyn brought a copy of that day’s newspaper to back up her story and her voter’s registration card.
Diaz: “Do you plan to move back to Charlotte when you graduate?”
Jocelyn: “No!”
You go girl.

But everybody wasn’t as prepared as Jocelyn. And if Diaz found that your excuses for not showing up didn’t cut the mustard, you were fined $150 — 50 bucks for each summons you ignored — and you still have to serve on a jury in January.

James tried the “I moved” spiel. He told Diaz that he was now living in Monroe. He said the summons went to his mother’s house and he doesn’t get mail there anymore.
“This is something I was looking forward to and I wouldn’t have missed a chance to serve on a jury,” he said — clearly sounding like a brown-noser.
It didn’t work.

The judge asked him if he had proof of his new address, driver’s license, utility bill or lease.

James said no.
James got fined. And since he was so hot to serve on the jury, he’s required to be back in Mecklenburg County on Jan. 12.

I guess serving on a jury is important, but having an Assistant District Attorney in a court room of people who are guilty of skipping out on jury duty when career criminals are out on bail awaiting trial just seems a little wasteful.

So, the moral of this story is when they call you for jury duty, please go. Then maybe some real criminals can get put away.

But in the words of Allen Iverson:

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Twilight

Let the Right One In

Two vampire flicks go fang-to-fang

By Matt Brunson

TWILIGHT
***
DIRECTED BY Catherine Hardwicke
STARS Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
***1/2
DIRECTED BY Tomas Alfredson
STARS Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson

Two vampire movies opening locally within days of each other — logic dictates that they be reviewed together, right? Then again, perhaps it’s a silly approach, along the lines of that perpetually raging debate involving apples and oranges.

After all, on one hand, we have a mainstream, PG-13 adaptation of a bestseller that has been all the rage among young, mostly female readers. On the other, we have an R-rated foreign-language feature that’s been the critical darling of film reviewers and independent film buffs alike. Forced to attend, many fans of Twilight (opening today) would doubtless spend the entire running time of Let the Right One In text-messaging their BFF about the boring movie they’re presently enduring, while many admirers of Let the Right One In (opening next Wednesday) would doubtless flash their presumed intellectual superiority by openly scoffing as Twilight unspooled before their jaded eyes. The truth of the matter, though, is that each side can feel comfortable with its preference, and more adventurous audience members (and most diehard film fans) can catch both titles and realize that the real lesson here is how the vampire genre continues to be potent enough to spin off in varied and interesting directions.

Working from the first novel in Stephenie Meyer’s literary franchise. director Catherine Hardwicke and scripter Melissa Rosenberg have made Twilight a love story first and a vampire tale second. Kristen Stewart stars as Bella, who moves to the small town of Forks, Washington, to spend time with her police-chief father (Billie Burke). Before long, she finds herself drawn to the enigmatic Edward (Robert Pattinson), who, like all his siblings, sports a pasty-white complexion and avoids the company of the other high school kids. But he soon discovers that he is likewise drawn to Bella, and as their relationship grows, he eventually exposes his true nature to her.

Twilight is occasionally overwrought, yet Hardwicke turns that into a blessing rather than a curse. The astute director, who previously helmed the raw and uncompromising Thirteen, understands her teen protagonists well, and rather than speak down to them (and, by extension, to the film’s youthful viewers), she allows their angst-filled behavior, their oversized emotionalism, to register as the most important thing in the world (because, to a teenager caught up in the moment, that’s exactly what it is). This ripeness in the movie’s form and content fuels the heated romance between Edward, who worries that he can’t control his bloodlust around his beloved, and Bella, who eventually declares that she wants him to lose control. The romantic sessions between Stewart and Pattinson have an aching sweetness to them, marred only by an obtrusively florid score (by the usually reliable Carter Burwell) that threatens to turn these sequences into Viagra for Teens commercials.

The movie has fun dabbling in the clichés of the high school flick, although it saves most of its innovation for bending the rules of the vampire game: Twilight’s bloodsuckers can move about during the daytime (albeit only on cloudy, overcast days), and especially interesting is that this particular clique considers itself vegetarian because its members only eat animals, not humans. There’s some late-inning action when Edward and his family must stop a “bad” vampire (Cam Gigandet) who’s determined to snack on Bella’s blood, but this part of the film feels rushed and tacked-on. Clearly, Hardwicke’s interest remains firmly on matters of the heart — a heart unencumbered by the traditional wooden stake, of course.

In the final analysis, Let the Right One In is superior to Twilight, although in the annals of vampire cinema — a rich vein that has already produced definitive flicks with Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, two wondrous Nosferatu masterworks, and even a bloodsucking ballet (Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary) — it would be a stretch to claim that it ranks in the highest echelons of the genre. But it comes closer than one would rightly suspect.

A Swedish import that uses its frozen environment to great advantage, this picture, like Twilight, shows the effect that a vampire can have on the social life of a school-age loner. Here, the central kid is Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), a 12-year-old boy who has no friends and who’s the constant target of the school bully and his sycophants. One night while hanging around his apartment complex, he meets his new neighbor: Eli (Lina Leandersson), a mysterious 12-year-old girl. Eli tells Oskar right off the bat that they can’t be friends; what she doesn’t tell him is that it’s because she’s a vampire. But Eli is every bit as lonely as Oskar, so the two end up spending a lot of time together. Oskar doesn’t always understand Eli’s behavior — for example, why eating candy makes her violently ill — but he accepts every aspect of their friendship in a matter-of-fact manner. Meanwhile, her empty stomach continues to rumble, and the other neighbors are looking mighty tasty.

From the Frankenstein creature to the wolf man, the movies have frequently given us sympathetic monsters. There have even been pitiable vampires, yet it’s possible that little Eli is the most tragic of all. With no backstory on hand, we have no idea what led to her present situation, but it’s poignant when she tells Oskar, “I’m 12. But I’ve been 12 for a long time.” Her craving for blood can’t be helped, yet it’s still chilling to watch the manner in which she descends upon one of her victims (almost as chilling as the later scene in which the victim, now tainted by vampire blood, is attacked by a roomful of frenzied cats). But it’s Eli’s friendship with Oskar that redeems her, and helmer Tomas Alfredson, working from an astute screenplay by John Ajvide Linqvist (adapting his own novel), emphasizes this connection with a lovely directorial touch: During the bloody climax, he focuses not on Eli’s blood-splattered mouth but on her twinkling eyes, ones that wrinkle slightly as she stares approvingly at the best friend a vampire ever had.

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But hamster steals the film

By Matt Brunson

BOLT
**1/2
DIRECTED BY Byron Howard & Chris Williams
STARS John Travolta, Miley Cyrus

In recent years, Disney plus Pixar has led to some terrific animated features, but Disney minus Pixar has led to yearnings to locate the nearest auditorium exit. Bolt is straight-up Disney, which would be worrisome if it wasn’t for the fact that Pixar guru John Lasseter has been handed the keys to the studio’s entire animation department. So while Bolt isn’t a Pixar production, it falls under the auspices of Lasseter (billed on this title as executive producer), and that might possibly be the reason this fast-paced confection is far better than such studio sourballs as Chicken Little and Treasure Planet.

But make no mistake: This is still a long way from the giddy heights of the Pixar pack. It mixes the ADD speed of a Nickelodeon toon project with narrative elements from The Incredible Journey, as Bolt (voiced by John Travolta), a canine who believes he really possesses the superpowers he employs on his hit TV series, gets separated from his owner/co-star Penny (Miley Cyrus) and ends up crossing the country in search of her. It’s entertaining while it lasts but dissipates from memory the moment it’s over, a condition predicated on the fact that neither the noble, stiff Bolt nor the typical toon preteen Penny are especially dynamic characters. There are some clever inside-Hollywood touches, but the lack of any real dramatic tension means that the scripters are ultimately forced to turn to a burning building to serve as the “villain” of the piece.

Still, the visual design is inventive (the film is screening in 3-D at select theaters), and kids and adults alike are sure to love the character of Rhino (Mark Walton), a portly hamster always on the go in his plastic ball. Whenever he’s on screen, you can be sure he keeps the movie rolling.

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Children confront the Holocaust

By Matt Brunson

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS
***
DIRECTED BY Mark Herman
STARS Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis

Movies about the brutality of the Holocaust seem to automatically earn R ratings, yet The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, perhaps because it’s based on a novel (by John Boyne) that was originally targeted to teen readers, escapes with a PG-13. That’s the appropriate rating, I think, since children who can handle (and learn from) the material should not be denied the opportunity to see it.

The film is fairly original in that it’s told from the viewpoint of a young German lad who unwittingly has a front-row seat to the horrors instigated by the Nazi regime during World War II. Eight-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield, just perfect) is saddened when his father, a Nazi officer (David Thewlis), moves the family from Berlin to a remote country estate. Once there, Dad’s always busy with his job, Bruno’s sister (Amber Beattie) is obsessed with her posters and photos of Adolf Hitler and his minions, and his mother (Vera Farmiga) does little more than deflect his questions about the farm across the field, a mysterious place where all the prisoners wear pajamas and billowing smoke from the chimneys constantly blackens the sky. Bored and lonely, Bruno eventually defies his parents’ orders and checks out the farm, where he strikes up a friendship with Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish boy residing on the other side of the barbed wire.

Credibility takes a serious beating over the course of this picture, which is clearly intended as a fable about how hatred can destroy even the most innocent among us. Bruno’s naiveté provides the picture with its initial childlike charm, yet the movie is complicated enough to explore the conflicting emotions among the adult characters (Bruno’s grandmother, for instance, has nothing but contempt for Hitler’s efforts). But even in its lighter moments, the picture never downplays the horror of the situation, and the devastating ending is potent enough to affect even those viewers who write it off as nothing more than a sensationalist stunt.

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Atlanta based author J.L. King made a national name for himself when he was on the Oprah Winfrey Show telling about the “down low” or the D.L.

It’s a phenomenon mostly associated with black men, but King says men of all colors and nationalities are on the D.L. — men who sleep with other men secretly while publicly dating women. King’s first book, On The Down Low, made him a controversial star. His second book, Coming Up From The Down Low, showed growth and a different side of King. But his third book is a first — completely made up. It’s his first novel and it’s fiction.

King will be in Charlotte signing copies of Love On A Two-Way Street this Saturday at 2 p.m. at Borders Books at Northlake Mall.

These days, King is honest about his sexuality. He says that he’s bisexual and has a girlfriend who understands who he is and what he does and he has a male friend who also knows what he’s getting by being with King. When he comes to Charlotte, he’s not just selling books, he will also bring his DVD Saving Our Daughters, which King says teaches young women how to love themselves and that it’s OK not to have a man in your life.

CL: Talk about writing a novel as opposed to your first two books?
King: A lot of people don’t know that I did On the Down Low and Coming Up from the D.L. then I did a book called C.P. Time. It was published by Simon and Schuster through Zane’s imprint. It was a nice book, a fun book. I always wanted to write a fiction book. I always thought I would just be a fiction writer, but life has a way making things different than you hoped they would be.

CL: Why do you think there is so much interest in the “D.L.” lifestyle?
King: That’s so funny you say that. Last night, I did a radio show, and even though the down low thing has been out, it’s been a subject of many conversations around the world. But for some reason it’s a love/hate relationship. I told my publicist the other day, I need to write another book, J.L. King, is he the most loved, hated or misunderstood. [Laughs] People see me and they show me a lot of respect or love and then I get people that say, I hate you, and they spend their entire life tying to discredit me. People love things that they don’t understand, especially when it deals with sex. There are people out there who are so trapped because they can’t explore their sexuality.

For more on the DVD Saving Our Daughters log on to www.jlking.net.

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It’s not bad enough that we have a federal government that feels free to wiretap anyone and everyone anytime they damned well feel like it, and locks people up for years without ever charging them. Now they’re out to kill us with robots.

Maybe it’s time to take your paranoia seriously, because this week, Scott Thill, writing on Alternet, reported that the Pentagon’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program recently called for contractors to design packs of robots for the purpose of — get this — hunting down “non-cooperative human subject[s].”

Here’s more paranoia fodder: when the Pentagon realized the project was mentioned on its Web site, it pulled it immediately — but not before the writer downloaded the whole thing. According to the SBIR’s specs, the “Multi-Robot Pursuit System” would contain “a software and sensor package to enable a team of robots to search for and detect human presence in an indoor environment.”

So are your friends and mine at the Pentagon bringing to life sci-fi movies about armed robots and killer artificial intelligence? Are machine armies and murderous cyborg gangs in our future? Whether the answer is yes or no, the Pentagon wants to pay someone here and now to come up with working models. Welcome to the exciting, new world of mixing videogame mindsets with Pentagon pork.

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Here are the top 5 posts of this past week:

1. Get some help planning your Thanksgiving meal:
How big of a turkey do I need?

2. Exciting news for the N.C. Music factory:
Live Nation, putting music in the Music Factory

3. Guest blogger Mary C. Curtis:
What does it mean to be a Southerner?

4. Pictures from the Proposition 8 protest at the Government Center in Uptown last Saturday:
Protesting Prop 8 locally

5. This past weekend, Dixie’s turned 10, and CL’s Brittney Cason was there:
Happy Anniversary Dixie’s Tavern!

And here are other notable blog posts for your enjoyment:

• A week of Mary C. Curtis
• Yes, Charlotte, there is college football here
• Live Review: Charlotte Music Awards
• Charlotte man to play in Homeless World Cup

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Friday, Nov. 21

Food: Beaujolais Nouveau Wine Tasting Festival
Levine Museum of the New South
Viva la France! And viva la French wine, Lindt chocolate, jazz quartets, and a night to enjoy the sweetness of it all! Get your tickets now, and drink your fill on Friday.

Film: Twilight bites into cinemas, along with Bolt, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and Ashes of Time Redux.

Music: Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson combine forces to rock the 2 Worlds, 2 Voices Tour at Time Warner Cable Arena.

Saturday, Nov. 22

Arts: Rabbit Hole
Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte
Family conflicts take center stage in this Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatic play, brought to you by some of the finest actors in Charlotte.

Music: Squonk Opera’s Charlotte: The Opera features plenty of Q.C.-themed humor.

Food: Try the new whole wheat pizza-pie at Brixx Wood Fired Pizza.

Sunday, Nov. 23

Music: Anthony Hamilton
Amos’ Southend
Charlotte’s own soul man comes home, promoting his soon-to-be-released CD The Point of It All. Find out how the Queen City’s favored son feels about his homecoming in CL’s music lead.

Arts: The Soweto Gospel Choir pays a visit to Blumenthal.

Food: Fight the sudden chilly weather with this Chili recipe.

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Award-winning writer Mary C. Curtis (formerly of The Charlotte Observer) served as a guest blogger on The CLog all this week. In case you missed any of the stellar work she churned out for us, here are links to all the pieces we posted:

1. What does it mean to be a Southerner?

2. Can I have some Prozac with that bailout?

3. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it

4. There’s no such thing as bad publicity

5. In the new news business, is there still reason to give thanks?

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It’s almost Thanksgiving, when columnists take the easy way out and list what they have to be thankful for. I’ll spare you. But it’s been fun hearing from readers, surprised to find me in Creative Loafing and wondering where I’ll turn up next. I’m thankful for that.

The news about newspapers is just about the same as the rest of the economy. Any meeting of journalists resembles a wake nowadays — but not always.

Recently, I traveled to Cambridge, Mass., for the 70th anniversary of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. I got a chance to catch up with my former Observer colleague, Tommy Tomlinson, who is enjoying his academic year and his vacation from newsroom angst. My fellow Fellows from my 2005-2006 year there showed up in force for a mini-reunion of our own. (The guy from Albania won the prize for farthest distance traveled.)

They’re still practicing journalism, but in different ways. One of them, Charles Sennott was a foreign correspondent at the Boston Globe. In a complicated world where people need more not less information, newspapers are shutting down overseas bureaus to save money. Sennott is now executive editor of Global Post, a Web-based news organization that will provide daily coverage by its own correspondents around the world when it launches early next year.

It’s just one example of ventures trying to fill the news gap.

Thanks to an election season with North Carolina in the spotlight, I got to explore the online landscape. My work appeared on Essence.com, The Root, EbonyJet.com, Black America Web, the Nieman Foundation and NPR.org. It’s a start. My friend and colleague Carlton Hargro, Creative Loafing’s editor, is encouraging me in my multi-platform adventures. He’s also providing the forum of CL as I make my way.

So Carlton, in keeping with the season, thank you.

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