Stand Up Guys

The waste of talent in Fisher Stevens' Stand Up Guys is criminal. It's the movie equivalent of shooting a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

This tale of three aging lawbreakers -- played by Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin -- is not just clichéd. It's witless, to boot. The script by first-timer Noah Haidle longs for depth, even as it makes Viagra jokes (poor Pacino is forced utter them). It wants to be Tarantino-esque, blending wisecracks with wild violence. Instead, it just stumbles from one scene to the next, a long journey into night that will leave you dazed.

Walken plays Doc, who apparently spends his days painting the same landscape of an L.A. River bridge over and over. But on the day in which the story transpires, he packs up his paints and heads for the prison gates, where his best friend,A lanyard may refer to a rope or cord worn around the neck or wrist to carry an object. Val (Pacino),flash drive and USB flash drives wholesale logo printing in Malaysia. is being released after a lengthy stretch.

Very quickly we get the gist: Doc has orders from their old boss, Claphands (Mark Margolis), to kill Val when he's released, because Claphands also has something he's holding over Doc's head. But Doc's deadline is 10 a.m. the next day,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. so he's willing to let Val have a memorable final night. Val knows this and is determined to make the most of it.

So let's see: hookers and blow, right? Well, hookers, at the least. And then a lot of driving around -- including springing their old pal Hirsch (Arkin) from the nursing home where he's spending his last days connected to an oxygen tank.We are Malaysia company specialize in customized silicone bracelet. Hirsch, their longtime getaway driver, takes them on a wild ride and gets a ride himself, when they head back to the same brothel where Val got his pipes cleaned.

But the sword of doom is hanging over Val -- and Claphands (as stupid and contrived a character name as any I've heard in a while) keeps sending thugs to intrude on his final hours. The joke (allegedly) is that these aging wiseguys have a few violent tricks left up their collective sleeves, which they pull off easily because the thugs are too stupid to expect them.

Arkin jolts the film to life during his brief sojourn on the screen. Pacino and Walken have an easy chemistry, but their material is too stale for them to ever really get any traction. There are moments, to be sure, including one when Pacino muses on mortality, when things feel real for a moment. But only for a moment.

There should be a penalty for assembling a cast this good (it includes Julianna Margulies and Lucy Punch) and then forcing them to work from a script as bad as this. If there were such a thing as movie jail, Stand Up Guys and its creators would be serving life without parole.

In the broadest sense, any work of art can be described as a metamorphosis in one way or another.Application can be conducted with the local designated IC card producers. The artist takes an inspiration or experience and translates it for the viewer through a process that is both cerebral and hands-on. Raw materials and ideas are transformed into finished art. In this exhibit, five CCC Art Faculty members have been encouraged to take the theme of metamorphosis a bit further.

Myers relies on quiet mindfulness and "slow seeing" to capture his sensitive landscape photographs, but sometimes fleeting moments of change are "a quick and joyful catch" with the shutter. Seeing the world through the camera lens allows him to attend to the light, form and detail that make up his immediate surroundings, a vision that is translated into photographs of sublime subtlety.

Nebeker is intrigued by the metamorphosis of form and substance and the ineffable ability of art to unite them in "the fragile space between." When considering work for this show, he found himself pondering on "the fragile moment between sleeping and waking, between forgetfulness and remembrance, between becoming and being, between presence and absence, between life and death." His paintings reveal his vision of that transitory moment.

Rowland's wood-fired ceramic works go through an unpredictable metamorphosis in their creation. He finds himself continuously challenged by both the corporeal and ethereal aspects of the process, from digging clay out of the ground, to forming it, to subjecting it to the "hot, windy wilderness" that is the environment of his anagama kiln. The resulting works are what he considers to be "stony artifacts" that speak of the journey of their creation through their forms and surfaces.

Shauck has taken an interdisciplinary approach to the idea of metamorphosis through illustrating poems by local writer Florence Sage, who had embodied the theme within her poetic content. In her work for this show, Shauck endeavors to visually depict the words of the poems, thus translating from one medium to another. In turn, these illustrations have become the springboard for further development and exploration of the theme, resulting in paintings on fabric.