The terrorist’s soul
Raouf, the narrator of Slimane Benaissa’s The Last Night of a Damned Soul, may be a terrorist and mass murderer, but he’s actually a pretty decent guy. He is devoted to his mother, loves his dog and his girlfriend Jenny and tries his best to understand his religion, Islam. It’s probably difficult for anyone to imagine such a sincere, sane person committing the kinds of atrocities we saw on Sept. 11, 2001, but that is exactly why Benaissa created him. The Last Night of a Damned Soul is Benaissa’s attempt to explore the psyche of a suicide bomber and to explain, as he said, “How the impossibility of 9/11 was possible.”
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The bands are back!
Finally! At 9 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 17, Gardner Lounge will revert to a noisy, crowded, music-filled concert den for the first time since last spring. For those of you who have been waiting for a free rock concert for four months, your moment has arrived. The bands doing the honors of opening this year’s line of Gardner Lounge concerts will be the hard rock bands Engine Down and These Arms Are Snakes.
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Super warm
The special effects are amazing, but cheesy moments, like escaped zoo animals prowling around the tundra of New York City, push everything a little over the top. The movie follows the story of Adrian Hall (Dennis Quaid) a paleoclimatologist, yes a paleoclimatologist, who predicts the impending storm and warns the government. Hall’s warning is ignored by the vice president, who could be Dick Cheney’s twin brother, and as a result, millions of people die. Hall’s own son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) becomes trapped in New York City in the eye of the storm. Sam struggles to survive while his father leads a desperate mission to rescue him. Sometime during the movie, Sam gets a girl and strengthens his shaky relationship with his dad. Sweet!
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