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• SHUT-EYE (DVD MOVIE)

FEAST OF LOVE - DVD MovieThe warm, reassuring gravitas of Morgan Freeman anchors Feast of Love, a multi-character meditation on the mysteries of that oh-so-powerful emotion. Bradley (Greg Kinnear, Little Miss Sunshine), owner of a coffee shop in Oregon, thinks his marriage is idyllic--until his wife (Selma Blair, Hellboy) leaves him for another woman. One of Bradley's baristas (Toby Hemingway, The Covenant) falls head over heels for a girl who comes looking for a job (Alexa Davalos, The Chronicles of Riddick), but his abusive father (Fred Ward, Miami Blues) spells trouble for the relationship. Finally, a professor (Freeman) and his wife (Jane Alexander, Kramer vs. Kramer) struggle to find purpose in life in the aftermath of a personal tragedy. Though some scenes are a bit precious and the dialogue leans too much on semi-p! hilosophical pronouncements, viewers will find it hard not to identify with the universal trials of romance and the yearning for a family. Also starring Radha Mitchell (High Art, Pitch Black) as a real estate broker who can't stop seeing a married man. Warning: Feast of Love is predominantly about the ways of the heart, it features several fairly explicit sex scenes. Directed by Robert Benton (Places in the Heart, Nobody's Fool). --Bret Fetzer

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From "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune), here is a superb new novel that delicately unearths the myriad manifestations of ! extraordinary love between ordinary people.

The Feast of Love is just that -- a sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us. In a re-imagined Midsummer Night's Dream, men and women speak of and desire their ideal mates; parents seek out their lost children; adult children try to come to terms with their own parents and, in some cases, find new ones.

In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart Their voices resonate with each other -- disparate people joined by the meand! erings of love -- and come together in a tapestry that depicts! the mos t irresistible arena of life. Crafted with subtlety, grace, and power, The Feast of Love is a masterful novel.Among literary cognoscenti, Charles Baxter has a well-deserved reputation as one of America's finest writers. Best known for his short stories, Baxter has also produced three novels. His fourth, The Feast of Love, combines the best of both genres--with a light dusting of metafiction to sweeten the dish. The book begins with Baxter himself waking from a nightmare and going for a moonlit walk through his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. While sitting on a park bench, he is joined by an acquaintance of 12 years--and, incidentally, one of the main characters in the novel. It is Bradley who gives Baxter the name for the novel he's currently struggling to write, and even offers himself as a character:

You should call it The Feast of Love. I'm the expert on that. I should write that book. Actually, I should be in that b! ook. You should put me into your novel. I'm an expert on love. I've just broken up with my second wife, after all. I'm in an emotional tangle. Maybe I'd shoot myself before the final chapter. Your readers would wonder about the outcome.

But why stop there? Bradley goes on to suggest that he send people to Baxter, "actual people, for a change, like for instance human beings who genuinely exist, and you listen to them for a while. Everybody's got a story, and we'll just start telling you the stories we have"--a sly tip-off to the reader of this elegant, quirky, and wholly engrossing novel that the writer may be no more reliable than his narrators.

What follows is a chronicle of love--the mad kind, the bad kind, and the kind that sustains us when everything else is gone. In addition to Smith, we meet Chloé, a young waitress at Bradley's espresso bar, and her ex-junkie boyfriend, Oscar; Bradley's next door neighbors, Harry Ginsburg, an! elderly professor of philosophy, and his wife, Esther; and Ka! thryn an d Diana, Bradley's two ex-wives. The characters take turns narrating, often commenting on and correcting versions of events mentioned by other characters in previous chapters, and occasionally advising Baxter on the progress of his novel: "Don't threaten people, especially lawyers" legal eagle Diana warns "Charlie" shortly before she launches into her own story. "Don't threaten your own characters. It's for your own good. You'll wind up in a mess of litigation and... subplots." But in The Feast of Love, God is in the subplots--Oscar and Chloé's involvement in the porn industry; Esther and Harry's agonized relationship with their mentally ill son; Bradley's travails in love, art, and dog ownership. As the novel progresses, these separate strands gradually merge, and not even an unexpected tragedy can dim the luster of this moonstruck romance. For by the time Baxter brings his tale of love and loss and redemption to a close, his characters have a! ll found their way to the feast--bittersweet though some of the dishes may be. --Alix WilberWidescreen DVDSTILETTO is a sexy, action-packed thriller about Raina - a sexy femme fatale on the hunt to avenge and uncover the truth about her sister's kidnapping. When she discovers that her former lover, mob boss Virgil Vadalos (Tom Berenger), and his associates are directly responsible, she decides to take the law into her own hands, stalking Vadalos and his ruthless enforcers who corrupt the streets. Also starring Michael Biehn, William Forsythe and Tom Sizemore.

SHUT -EYE, the latest work from Writer/Director John Covert (WAITING FOR THE MAN, THE BLIND LEAD), is a hard hitting contemporary character study of family dysfunctionalism, crime and violence played out in the three flat brownstones and Mob owned st! rip joints of the Chicago underworld. Like far too many hard w! orking A merican couples, Ed and Kim are barely able to make their rent. Ed, an ex-cop, is reduced to working security for Mafia strip clubs. When members of their family steal cash that Ed is paid to protect, relatives, friends and mobsters react with deadly unpredictability.