plus 3, Betting on movie box office: How to win or lose - News-Leader.com

Betting on movie box office: How to win or lose - News-Leader.com
Movie review: 'Clash of the Titans' - Los Angeles Times
Movie review: Grief goes by the book in 'The Greatest' - Herald News
Movie Listings - New York Times

Betting on movie box office: How to win or lose - News-Leader.com

Posted: 02 Apr 2010 12:56 AM PDT

Two companies are proposing exchanges for betting on movie box office receipts. It's similar to how investors now trade on futures for corn and other commodities.

Trend Exchange from Veriana Ventures would require higher minimum investments than the Cantor Exchange from Cantor Fitzgerald.

In Cantor's case, a so-called hedger -- such as an investor in the movie or just a fan -- would sell futures contracts to a speculator valued at $1 for every $1 million in expected U.S. and Canadian ticket sales during the first month.

So if the market believes the next "Harry Potter" movie would make $175 million, a futures contract would initially go for $175. That opening price would be determined in an auction about six months before a movie's release.

That contract would trade higher and lower as expectations rise and fall. If box office estimates rise to $200 million because of good reviews closer to the movie's opening, holders of existing contracts could resell them for $200, making $25 in profit. Or a hedger could sell a new contract for $200 to a speculator.

If "Harry Potter" ends up making $250 million when the month is up, the speculator would gain $50 for every contract bought at $200. That $50 would be paid by the hedger.

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Movie review: 'Clash of the Titans' - Los Angeles Times

Posted: 01 Apr 2010 09:50 PM PDT

It's doubtful that records are kept about this sort of thing, but consider the possibility that "Clash of the Titans" is the first film to actually be made worse by being in 3-D.

Not that this remake of the creaky 1981 original, best remembered for a slumming Laurence Olivier and Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation monsters, was ever going to be something to write home about. At least not for anyone older than 10.

For one thing, as directed by action junkie Louis Leterrier ("Transporter 2," "Unleashed") and written by Travis Beacham and Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi, this "Clash" has dialogue so plodding that a halfway decent line like "you have insulted powers beyond your comprehension" sounds like something out of Noel Coward.

Obviously, no one comes to a movie like this for repartee, but even the action scenes, with ancient Greek hero Perseus ("Avatar's" Sam Worthington) facing off against an entire menagerie of mythical monsters, come off as lethargic and clunky.

Possibly because this film was converted to 3-D late in the game, the third dimension, especially in those action scenes, is more of a distraction than an enhancement. While some creatures, especially Pegasus the flying horse, flourish, 3-D clutters the film's innumerable battles, making them harder to follow rather than exciting.

"Clash of the Titans" is also burdened by a numskull plot notion. The idea is that though those ancient Greeks lived in a world where the gods were quite real and unimaginably powerful, these idiots decide to declare war on them, which is the short-sighted equivalent of teasing your younger brother even though he has the power to snap his fingers and turn you to stone.

Though it's not clear why they agreed to participate, having top actors play the gods -- Liam Neeson is Zeus! Ralph Fiennes is Hades! -- doesn't help things. Neeson looks lost in the godly costumes, and Fiennes, perhaps hoping no one will notice it's him, speaks largely in sinister whispers.

While the gods are going through their paces and bemoaning the absence of human worship, Perseus, a demigod like his namesake Percy Jackson in the equally pedestrian "The Lightning Thief," is making his way in the world and discovering that he is the son of Zeus.

Perseus spends years with the adoptive fisherfolk parents Spyros and Marmara (the odd couple pairing of Pete Postlethwaite and Elizabeth McGovern) who found him floating in the sea. Spyros is one of those fed-up-with-the-gods folks who is fond of ominously saying, "One day, someone is going to have to take a stand." Guess who.

Back in the Greek city of Athos, the anti-gods movement is moving full steam ahead. Then Hades comes to town and puts a good scare into the populace, telling them that unless they sacrifice their beloved princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos), he will unleash the dread Kraken -- not the most fearsome name for a monster but there you have it -- and Athos will be destroyed.

Because he is the only demigod in town and because he is irked beyond measure at the Olympians for their part in his parents' death, Perseus agrees to look for a way to kill the Kraken. He takes a crack team of warriors and adventurers with him, including the canny veteran soldier Draco, nicely played by Mads Mikkelsen.

Guided by the ageless but attractive Io (Gemma Arterton) and dogged by the horrific Calibos (Jason Flemyng), Perseus and his pals take on an entire Noah's ark of inhuman adversaries, including enormous scorpions on steroids called scorpiochs and the deadly Medusa, which turns out to be more or less a snake in a bikini top. Even the beloved mechanical owl from the 1981 version makes a cameo.

As played by Worthington, who's making a career of sullen heroes, Perseus insists he wants to defeat the Kraken as a man, not a god, which is a bit of wishful thinking that we all know can't be sustained forever. Neither, as it turns out, can our interest in this middling effort. When the most thrilling thing about a film turns out to be its title, even unleashing the Kraken won't be payoff enough.

kenneth.turan @latimes.com

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Movie review: Grief goes by the book in 'The Greatest' - Herald News

Posted: 31 Mar 2010 11:43 AM PDT

If you caught Miley Cyrus' "The Last Song" and you still have not cried your eyes dry, the see-how-we-mourn melodrama "The Greatest" might serve to wring out the last of your tears.
First-time writer-director Shana Feste's psych-101 study shows us the sloppy, lingering process of grieving can play out on a neat and tidy timetable, where everybody gets a catharsis and returns home healed.

While Feste tugs — or yanks and claws — shamelessly at those proverbial heartstrings, her story of a teenage son's death is made tearily tolerable by grim, intense though sometimes excessive performances by Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon and Carey Mulligan.

Continuing a breakout year that brought her an Academy Award nomination for "An Education," Mulligan is the greatest thing about "The Greatest," her quiet, magnetic grace anchoring a lot of other elements that easily could have blown up into one long ululation of anguish.

The next-greatest thing about the movie is co-star Aaron Johnson, potentially on the verge of his own breakout year with two lead roles, in the hilarious superhero comedy "Kick-Ass" and as the young John Lennon in "Nowhere Boy."

As departed teen Bennett Brewer, Johnson shares sweet, aching moments of new love with Mulligan's Rose that really help viewers grieve along with those he leaves behind after he's abruptly snatched away.

Bennett and Rose's long, shy high school courtship plays out in fleeting flashbacks that are the most authentic and moving moments of "The Greatest."

After they finally come together for one night, a car wreck takes Bennett's life, leaving his parents, Allen and Grace (Brosnan and Sarandon) to do the familiar dance of mourning we've seen a few too many times on screen, one spouse stiff-arming away his grief in denial and the other immersing herself in hers.

Then Rose comes calling to say she's pregnant with Bennett's child. She's welcomed into the Bennett household by Allen, while Grace stews and resents her presence.

The only place Grace finds solace is at the hospital bedside of the coma-stricken man (Michael Shannon) whose car struck her son's and who was the last person to speak with her boy.

Feste weaves in a younger, black-sheep-ish brother (Johnny Simmons), an underachiever with a drug problem who of course feels invisible to his parents in the afterglow of his "martyred" brother. And he has his own contrived mini-drama with a grief junkie (Zoe Kravitz) he meets in a counseling group.

Like a college creative-writing project, "The Greatest" is overloaded with little symmetries, stagy outbursts, strained revelations, a finale that mends too cleanly. People grieve in their own ways, but "The Greatest" showcases only the biggest, most theatrical varieties.

The movie might have resonated more if it threw out some of the grief-counseling cliches and let the idiosyncrasies of the characters dictate more of the drama.

But if all you want is a good cry, "The Greatest" will comply. Tears are infectious, so when actors this good bawl their eyes out, more than a few people in the audience will sniffle and sob along with them.

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Movie Listings - New York Times

Posted: 01 Apr 2010 03:09 PM PDT

Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/movies.

★ 'AJAMI' (No rating, 2:00, in Arabic and Hebrew) This Israeli nominee for the 2010 Oscars is a tough, multistranded crime drama set in a mostly Arab neighborhood of Jaffa. (A. O. Scott)20100401

'ALICE IN WONDERLAND' (PG, 1:48) Mia Wasikowska plays Alice, Johnny Depp does the Mad Hatter, and an entertaining Helena Bonham Carter takes on the role of the Red Queen in Tim Burton's busy, garish, periodically amusing repo of the Lewis Carroll hallucination. (Manohla Dargis)20100401

'THE ART OF THE STEAL' (No rating, 1:41) In his hard-hitting documentary about a high-cultural brawl, the director Don Argott explores the past and present stakes in the fight over the revered Barnes Foundation and its extraordinary art collection. (Dargis)20100401

★ 'AVATAR' (PG-13, 2:46) With his latest, James Cameron has turned one man's dream of the movies into a trippy joy ride about the end of life — our moviegoing life included — as we know it. A song to the natural world that was largely produced with software, an Emersonian exploration of the invisible world of the spirit filled with Cameronian rock 'em, sock 'em, the movie is glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged. (Dargis)20100401

'THE BLIND SIDE' (PG-13, 2:00) Sandra Bullock does good, and then does good some more in this true story of a rich white family that adopts a homeless young African-American football prodigy. (Scott)20100401

★ 'BLUEBEARD' (No rating, 1:20, in French) In her sly, bifurcated rethink of this freakily morbid fairy tale, the French filmmaker Catherine Breillat ("Romance") focuses on Bluebeard and his dangerously curious wife, along with two little girls in the modern era who revisit the tale. (Dargis)20100401

'THE BOUNTY HUNTER' (PG-13, 1:46) Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler play ex-spouses reunited by unlikely circumstances in this crude little action-romance, which is to the old studio comedies of remarriage what a clay pigeon is to a bald eagle. (Scott)20100401

★ 'BROKEN EMBRACES' (R, 2:08, in Spanish) Exuberant melancholy from Pedro Almodóvar. A blind writer (Lluís Homar) is pulled back into his past, when he was a filmmaker in an ill-fated love affair with an actress played by Penélope Cruz. (Scott)20100401

'BROOKLYN'S FINEST' (R, 2:05) This rough, sprawling, pulpy tale of three compromised cops goes haywire at the end, but until then the Brooklyn locations, Antoine Fuqua's sinewy direction and a handful of strong performances — from Don Cheadle, Richard Gere and Wesley Snipes, among others — keep it jumping. (Scott)20100401

'CHLOE' (R, 1:36) Sex, nudity, nasty emotional mind games — and yet somehow no fun at all. (Scott)20100401

'CITY ISLAND' (PG-13, 1:40) Set in the tiny fishing village at the northern tip of the Bronx, Raymond De Felitta's professionally executed farce revolves around a blue-collar clan with more secrets than filters. Playing a corrections officer who longs to act, juggling a chubby-chasing son and a rebellious daughter, Andy Garcia is the embodiment of disappointed middle age. But anyone unaware that the arrival of a long-lost illegitimate son (Steven Strait) will be the catalyst for a contrived — and supremely noisy — group hug/confessional probably hasn't been to the multiplex in a very long time. (Jeannette Catsoulis)20100401

'COP OUT' (R, 1:50) Kevin Smith directs Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis in a woefully uninspired variation on the cop-buddy-action-comedy genre. (Scott)20100401

'THE CRAZIES' (R, 1:41) The problem with "The Crazies" is that it's not crazy enough. Breck Eisner's remake of George A. Romero's 1973 eco-horror film, about the release of a manufactured virus into the water table of a rural town, is serious, respectable and neither very entertaining nor very scary. (Mike Hale)20100401

★ 'CRAZY HEART' (R, 1:51) An old country song — whiskey, women, second chances — about an old country singer, played with sly, exquisite craft by Jeff Bridges. (Scott)20100401

'DANCING ACROSS BORDERS' (No rating, 1:28, in English and Khmer) Charity is always double-edged, but you wouldn't know that from this determinedly cheerful, no-frills documentary assembled by Anne Bass, a prominent Manhattan patron of the arts. Plucking Sokvannara Sar, a happy teenager, from his home in Cambodia and installing him in the School of American Ballet in New York, Ms. Bass lauds his dedication in the face of years of alienation and exhaustion. Watching him, viewers will see either a very fortunate young man or a beautiful protégé dancing as fast as he can to please everyone but himself. (Catsoulis)20100401

'DIARY OF A WIMPY KID' (PG, 1:31) Somehow, on the trip from page to screen, all the wit and insight has been drained from Jeff Kinney's popular children's book, leaving behind some gross-out humor and a sickly, self-pitying attitude. (Scott)20100401

'THE ECLIPSE' (No rating, 1:28) A moody little number from the Irish playwright Conor McPherson about a widower (Ciaran Hinds) distracted by possible ghosts and by a visiting novelist (Iben Hjejle) who's somewhat haunted herself by a former lover (Aidan Quinn). (Dargis)20100401

'AN EDUCATION' (PG-13, 1:40) Jenny, a London schoolgirl in the early 1960s — played with verve and brass by Carey Mulligan — learns the ways of the world at the hands of an older gentleman (Peter Sarsgaard), who turns out to be sleazier and less worldly than he seems at first. Adapted by Nick Hornby from a memoir by Lynn Bradley and directed by Lone Scherfig, this film is a bit too charmed by its own period atmosphere to take account of the uglier implications of the story it tells. (Scott)20100401

'THE EXPLODING GIRL' (No rating, 1:20) Zoe Kazan is a young woman with epilepsy and a handful of minor-key social and romantic troubles in Bradley Rust Gray's sweet, diffident tale of a lazy college-student summer in New York. (Scott)20100401

★ 'THE GHOST WRITER' (PG-13, 2:00) A delectable high-grade pulp entertainment, directed to near-perfection by Roman Polanski and beautifully played by the entire cast, about a ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) who's hired to help finish the memoirs of a controversial former British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan).The last writer — uh-oh — washed up dead. (Dargis)20100401

'THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO' (No rating, 2:32, in Swedish) As the tattooed, nose-ringed, scowling computer hacker of the title, Noomi Rapace more or less looks the part that the filmmakers don't let her fully play in a slack, second-rate Swedish adaptation of the Stieg Larsson best seller. (Dargis)20100401

'GODSPEED' (No rating, 1:38) Directed with gothic flair by Robert Saitzyk, this weird, wordy but oddly compelling thriller follows a bereaved faith healer (Joseph McKelheer) and a redheaded siren (Courtney Halverson) into the Alaskan wilderness. Balancing a hyperbolic screenplay with restrained special effects, the filmmakers transform the area around Anchorage and Wasilla into a playground for damaged souls and Old Testament mischief. (Catsoulis)20100401

★ 'GREEN ZONE' (R, 1:55) Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, working in the breakneck, laconic style of the "Bourne" movies, revisit the early days of the Iraq war. Without straying from the conventions of the action-thriller genre, the film offers a tough accounting of political malfeasance and strategic misjudgment. It's about time. (Scott)20100401

★ 'GREENBERG' (R, 1:47) Ben Stiller is hard to like, Greta Gerwig is hard to resist, and Noah Baumbach's moody, digressive study in midlife stasis and generational confusion is difficult not to love. (Scott)20100401

'HARLAN: IN THE SHADOW OF JEW SÜSS' (No rating, 1:39, in German, French and Italian) The sins of the father weigh heavily and sometimes scarcely at all in Felix Moeller's documentary about the family of the director Veit Harlan, who thrived under National Socialism and directed the notoriously anti-Semitic film "Jew Süss." (Dargis)20100401

★ 'HOT TUB TIME MACHINE' (R, 1:33) The anguished cry of a lost generation of men, now in their 40s, seeking to reconnect with the pleasures and perils of youth. No, really. But with a lot of dumb jokes. (Scott)20100401

★ 'HOUSE' (No rating, 1:27, in Japanese) A 1977 haunted-house freakout from the Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi about seven teenage girls, who, during an increasingly violent and surrealistic trip, encounter a hungry piano and a bouncing severed head. (Dargis)20100401

'HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON' (PG, 1:30) The usual kiddie-animation story of a misfit boy finding himself and saving the world, but the bold and exquisite 3-D animation lifts this DreamWorks Animation production out of the realm of the ordinary. (Scott)20100401

★ 'THE HURT LOCKER' (R, 2:10) In this tense, insightful film about a United States Army bomb-disposal squad in Iraq, Kathryn Bigelow has made a crackerjack action picture that is also a drama of character, psychology and ideas. Jeremy Renner, as a soldier who approaches danger with the conviction of an artist and the compulsiveness of an addict, is simply amazing, and the rest of the cast, notably Brian Geraghty and Anthony Mackie, is nearly as strong. (Scott)20100401

'THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS' (PG-13, 2:02) The most recent circus to pop out of Terry Gilliam's head is a full three-ring affair, complete with puffs of smoke, glitter and grunge, some hocus-pocus, mumbo jumbo and Heath Ledger's final screen performance. (Dargis)20100401

'THE LAST STATION' (R, 1:52) Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer), in the twilight of his life, bickers with his wife (Helen Mirren), who fights with her husband's disciples (led by Paul Giamatti), all of it witnessed by a young secretary (James McAvoy). If you like to purchase acting in bulk and literary prestige at a discount, this is the picture for you. (Scott)20100401

'LBS.' (No rating, 1:39) Six years after it was first shown at Sundance, this earnest little indie about a young Brooklyn man's battle with obesity finally arrives in theaters. Carmine Famiglietti, who wrote the script with the director, Matthew Bonifacio, and plays the protagonist, lost more than 100 pounds while the movie was being shot; unfortunately, that's the most interesting thing about the film. (Hale)20100401

★ 'MID-AUGUST LUNCH' (No rating, 1:15, in Italian) One of this film's deepest satisfactions is its characters' complete lack of rumination. It is a group portrait of older people who are comfortable with who they are, savoring the pleasures of food and companionship, and living in the moment. The movie glows. (Stephen Holden)20100401

★ 'MOTHER' (R, 2:09, in Korean) The fourth feature from the sensationally talented South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho ("The Host") involves a ferocious mother (a monumental Kim Hye-je) who turns detective when her son (Won Bin) is arrested for murder. (Dargis)20100401

'NORTH FACE' (No rating, 2:01, in German) This German mountain-climbing drama, set in 1936 and based on fact, is transfixing in the way that well-told life-and-death adventure tales inevitably are. It is the film's more mundane elements that are problematic. (Holden)20100401

'OUR FAMILY WEDDING' (PG-13, 1:40) Strident and sickly sweet, Rick Famuyiwa's cartoonish feature follows the nuptials of a Mexican-American daddy's girl (America Ferrera) and an African-American doctor (Lance Gross). Leaving no racial stereotype or stale joke unturned, the movie is a train wreck of nonstop ethnic slurs and painful miscasting (Forest Whitaker as the degenerate father of the groom). And please don't ask what happens when the goat gets into the Viagra. (Catsoulis)20100401

★ 'A PROPHET (UN PROPHÈTE)' (R, 2:29, in French, Arabic and Corsu) Jacques Audiard directs this thrilling French film about a young convict (Tahar Rahim) whose prison sentence becomes a moral education as he learns to smuggle, to read, to murder, to survive. Two of his best teachers are the prison system itself and a gang leader played by the tremendous Niels Arestrup. A must-see. (Dargis)20100401

'REMEMBER ME' (PG-13, 1:53) Love means never having to say you're sorry, particularly to the audience, in this lugubrious romance-family melodrama starring Robert Pattinson, a possibly promising screen performer in desperate need of an acting intervention. (Dargis)20100401

'REPO MEN' (R, 1:51) To audiences starved for quasi-medical gore, this gruesome dystopic satire should help fill the void left by "Nip/Tuck." (Holden)20100401

★ 'THE RUNAWAYS' (R, 1:42) A biopic about the '70s teenage all-girl rock band — loose, messy and passionate, with fine performances from Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie, the group's lead singer and sex symbol, and Kristen Stewart as the Joan Jett, the quiet, disciplined guitarist. (Scott)20100401

★ 'THE SECRET OF KELLS' (No rating, 1:15) This animated film about a famous Irish illuminated manuscript is an exquisite showcase of hand-drawn animation techniques. The story is more conventional, but the delicacy and panache of the director Tomm Moore's imagery make the movie special. (Scott)20100401

'SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE' (R, 1:45) Jim Field Smith's film about a nebbishy airport security guard and a gorgeous, kind, hockey-loving blonde is part over-the-top gross-out comedy and part soggy romantic comedy. In either case, it's out of its league. (Hale)20100401

'SHUTTER ISLAND' (R, 2:18) Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! It's Martin Scorsese's weakest movie since "Bringing Out the Dead." (Scott)20100401

'A SINGLE MAN' (No rating, 1:39) Colin Firth, with a magnificent depth of feeling, plays the grieving, closeted gay professor of the film's title in Tom Ford's ambitious and touching adaptation of the 1964 landmark novel by Christopher Isherwood. (Dargis)20100401

'THE OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2010' (No rating; running time for each program: 1:41) Three of the five live-action nominees deal with children in peril, which means that the other two don't have a chance. The animated field features the return of Wallace and Gromit, who, as usual, leave everyone else in the dust. (Scott)20100401

'VALENTINE'S DAY' (PG-13, 1:30) A dire romantic comedy directed, in a manner of speaking, by Garry Marshall, that lacks romance and comedy but not famous grinning, grimacing faces (Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Foxx, Shirley MacLaine). (Dargis)20100401

★ 'VINCERE' (No rating, 2:08, in Italian) In his sustained, alternatingly exhausting and aesthetically exhilarating howl of a film, the veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio brilliantly personalizes Mussolini's rise to power through a fictional retelling of his seduction and catastrophically violent betrayal of his reputed first wife, Ida Dalser. (Dargis)20100401

'WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY' (PG, 1:26) This moderately engaging documentary about the renaissance of Disney animation during the golden decade (1984-94) that yielded "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" is a sly retrospective exercise in corporate self-congratulation masquerading as an insider's tell-all. (Holden)20100401

'THE WHITE RIBBON' (R, 2:25, in German) Germany before World War I: child abuse, class resentment and other seeds from which Nazism will sprout, presented in gorgeous black and white and with dour self-importance by Michael Haneke, the most be-laureled scold in modern European cinema. (Scott)20100401

Film Series

FILMS BY MARTÍN REJTMAN (Wednesday and Thursday) Two deadpan, absurdist comedies by the Argentine director who helped stake out the new, independent cinema in his home country. "Silvia Prieto" (1999) is centered on a woman (Rosario Bléfari) who finds her identity slipping away on her 27th birthday (Mr. Rejtman will be present for the 7 p.m. screening on Thursday), while "The Magic Gloves" (2003) follows a livery driver (the popular singer-songwriter Vicentico) as he circulates through a city of disaffected eccentrics in a doomed attempt to get a toehold in the one-size-fits-all glove business. Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village , (212) 505-5181, anthologyfilmarchives.org; $9. (Dave Kehr)20100401

THE GROUNDBREAKING BILL GUNN (Friday through Sunday) This survey of Gunn's too-brief career as a pioneering black writer and director in Hollywood includes his best-known film, the 1973 vampire parable "Ganja & Hess," to be presented Friday at 6:50 and 9:15 p.m. in its complete 100-minute version, recently restored by the Museum of Modern Art, and introduced by the film historian Pearl Bowser. Saturday brings "The Landlord," directed by Hal Ashby from Gunn's screenplay about a rich white boy (Beau Bridges) who buys a house in a changing Brooklyn neighborhood. Sunday offers the rarely revived 1970 film "The Angel Levine," in which a celestial visitor (Harry Belafonte) drops in on a working-class Jewish couple (Zero Mostel and Ida Kaminska). Jan Kadar ("The Shop on Main Street") directed from Gunn's adaptation of that Bernard Malamud story. On Sunday at 2 p.m. there will also be a free VHS presentation of "Stop" (1970), Gunn's first directorial effort — a wife-swapping story set in Puerto Rico that was shelved by the studio that produced it. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn , (718) 636-4100, bam.org; $12. (Kehr)20100401

MAD, BAD ... AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW (Friday through Sunday) A tribute to the taboo-shattering Japanese actresses of the 1960s and '70s continues Friday with two films by the always interesting Yasuzo Masumura, "Seisaku's Wife" (1965) and "A Wife Confesses" (1961), both starring the elegant Ayako Wakao. Saturday and Sunday bring five films with Meiko Kaji, the Japanese specialist in vengeful females, including two installments of her "Female Convict Scorpion" series and both parts of Toshiya Fujita's "Lady Snowblood," a spectacularly stylized action tale that was one of Quentin Tarantino's inspirations for "Kill Bill." The series continues through April 18. Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, Manhattan , (212) 715-1258, japansociety.org; $11. (Kehr)20100401

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