Weather disasters, serial killers, Blues Brothers highlight spring films

Whether searching for silver screen entertainment on or off campus this spring, University students will have a variety of films to choose from, encompassing many genres and cultures.

This semester's on-campus films are picked by a committee of three people. Larry Wentzel, office assistant for the Graduate Student Association, said the GSA film committee tries to plan screenings of both English-language films and international culture films for each weekend.

"We try to schedule films to coincide with such events as Black History Month, Women's History Month and gay, lesbian and bisexual Pride Week," Wentzel said.

Most of the GSA films are features that ran in theaters last year, including Smilla's Sense of Snow, Brassed Off and Mother Night, based on the Kurt Vonnegut novel.

"We try to round it out to get many cultures represented -- we've got African, Asian, European, Mexican films -- all the way around," Wentzel said.

Because all the films are sponsored by the University Park Allocation Committee, admission will be free.

But students who cannot wait for films to arrive on campus will have plenty to choose from at local theaters this semester.

Because he enjoys movies that provide as much pure escapist entertainment as possible, Terry Swanger, employee of Video Center, 304 W. College Ave., said he is eagerly anticipating the release of the Joel and Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski.

"I'm excited to see anything that they do-- every film they've done so far has been so dramatically different from the others," he said of the creative duo responsible for off-beat fare such as Fargo. "You never know what they'll do."

But movie fans won't have to wait long for some other potential blockbusters to hit theaters.

Opening today is the thriller Hard Rain, starring Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater and Randy Quaid, who slosh around flood conditions in a mid-western town while struggling to find more than $3 million in cash.

Also hitting theaters this weekend is Primal Fear director Gregory Hoblit's latest effort, Fallen, a serial killer thriller starring Denzel Washington.

Hard to miss will be the Jan. 23 premiere of Spice World, a Hard Day's Night-style movie based on a week in the life of the hugely popular British quintet, the Spice Girls.

Other anticipated films include several that will hit theaters Feb. 6. That busy weekend will see the release of John Landis' musical comedy Blues Brothers 2000, starring Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman, and The Replacement Killers, starring Mira Sorvino and Chinese action star Chow Yun-Fat in his first English-language picture.

Also opening that weekend is The Gingerbread Man, directed by Robert Altman of M*A*S*H and Short Cuts fame. The film, based on an original screenplay by novelist John Grisham, stars Kenneth Branagh, Embeth Davidtz and Robert Downey Jr. Grisham's first original screenplay tells the story of a lawyer who saves a waitress from her stalking, paranoid-schizophrenic father.

Fans of romantic comedy and Adam Sandler will have to wait until Feb. 13 to see him woo Drew Barrymore in The Wedding Singer. In the film, set in 1985, Sandler plays a wedding singer who convinces Barrymore to leave her fiancee for him.

In mid-February, Barry Levinson's Sphere, based on the Michael Crichton novel, opens, with Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson studying a strange orb at the bottom of the sea.