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Panic Room (Superbit Collection)

An effective exercise in "confined cinema," "Panic Room" is a finely crafted thriller that ultimately transcends the thinness of its premise. David Koepp's screenplay is basically "Wait Until Dark" on steroids, so director David Fincher ("Seven", "The Game") compensates with elaborate CGI-assisted camera moves, jazzing up his visuals while a relocated New York divorc?©e (Jodie Foster) and her daughter (Kristen Stewart) fight for their lives against a trio of tenacious burglars (Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam) in their new Manhattan townhouse. They're safe in a customized, impenetrable "panic room," but the burglars want what's in the room's safe, so mother and daughter (and Koepp and Fincher) must find clever ways to turn the tables and persevere. Suspense and intelligence are admirably maintained, with Foster (who replaced the then-injured Nicole Kidman) riffing on her "Silence of the Lambs" resourcefulness. It's not as viscerally satisfying as Fincher's previous thrillers, but "Panic Room" definitely holds your attention. "--Jeff Shannon"

An effective exercise in "confined cinema," Panic Room is a finely crafted thriller that ultimately transcends the thinness of its premise. David Koepp's screenplay is basically Wait Until Dark on steroids, so director David Fincher (Seven, The Game) compensates with elaborate CGI-assisted camera moves, jazzing up his visuals while a relocated New York divorcee (Jodie Foster) and her daughter (Kristen Stewart) fight for their lives against a trio of tenacious burglars (Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam) in their new Manhattan townhouse. They're safe in a customized, impenetrable "panic room," but the burglars want what's in the room's safe, so mother and daughter (and Koepp and Fincher) must find clever ways to turn the tables and persevere. Suspense and intelligence are admirably maintained, with Foster (who replaced the then-injured Nicole Kidman) riffing on her Silence of the Lambs resourcefulness. It's not as viscerally satisfying as Fincher's previous thrillers, but Panic Room definitely holds your attention. --Jeff Shannon

Florida 2008

OK,so here's the story of this photo... We had spent the entire day a Sea World and were waiting for the end of the night show to begin. They have this stunt show that only does a couple of performances in the evening--after dark. We decided to watch one on our way to view the fountains/fireworks. My daughter wants to sit in the "splash zone"--for those of you who have never been to Sea World, these are seats where you could get wet. In the Shamu show, for example, the killer whales come out and splash the crowd. Yes, it's a lot of water, but it comes at you as a spash, you can duck you camera gear behind you to protect it, etc.

Well, I thought the same would be true here--we might get splashed. Wrong! At the very beginning of the show, this guy comes out on a Jet Ski and proceeds to spin it around in front of us and when it's back was to us, he guns it! Basically, it turned the Jet Ski into a hose to soak the crowd. As you can see, I was filming as he made his turn. There was no place to go, no where to hide your gear. And, he made two revolutions--soaking us twice. My camera shut down! We quickly moved to dryer seats and, you'll notice, I have no more pictures of that show.

Sea World--are you listening? Two observations. The "soak zone" at this show is NOT like the other shows. Those are splashes--this was like having a fire hose turned on us! Yes--we were "warned" by the guys on stage that we "might" get wet--just like at the other shows. But it's not just like the other shows. Second, I sat through the rest of the show trying to dry and revive my camera. I did get it back. But it smelled of motor oil and gasoline the rest of the evening--so that "soak" is more than water from a Jet Ski!

And, for the record, the only soaking was this purposeful spraying of the crowd. None of the actual acts in the show got any where near to even splashing the seats...

...But, yet, the camera lives! On this trip, my "odometer" flipped over the 40,000 image mark!

Sort of an accident that happened while taking pictures of my mother's dining room for a strobist.com assignment: my camera-shy daughter came into the room from the kitchen (CL). On a lark, I took aim and fired; she tried to hide. These are usually throwaway shots, but the lighting and pose made this really interesting to me.

Strobist info: SB26 CL, fired into the corner of the ceiling; SB26 CR, bounced off the ceiling causing the shadow of the chandelier.

In the spirit of Ghost and Birth, Hannah and Benjamin (Lili Taylor, Six Feet Under and David Duchovny, The X-Files) are a happily married couple whose love is tested in ways they never could have imagined in this touching supernatural drama. But when Hannah is killed in a car accident, the couple's strong bond may be responsible for an unusual twist of fate that keeps their love alive -- at the expense of their daughter (Olivia Thirlby, Juno).

Compared to pallid supernatural romances like Ghost, The Secret is a fireball of Freudian pathos about a love triangle between parents Benjamin (David Duchovny) and Hannah Marris (Lili Taylor), and their teenage daughter, Samantha (Olivia Thirlby). Directed by Swiss actor Vincent Perez, The Secret succeeds where other cheesy ghost films fail because there is always the possibility that after Benjamin's wife, Hannah, dies in a car accident and comes back to inhabit her daughter's body, Benjamin will be lured into his daughter's arms by sheer grief commingled with desire. The film's operates with increasing tension throughout, starting when Benjamin decides to believe that Sam is temporarily not Sam, but his wife. There are sappy scenes, such as when Sam, as mother Hannah, returns to high school following the accident and flails terribly in teenage situations. But the notion of a mother spying on her daughter through possession recalls Mommie Dearest, in a great way. The real credit in this film goes to Thirlby, who in essence plays two characters well, switching identities throughout. The sexual innuendo she brings to the part adds the zest The Secret needs to elevate it from a suburban nightmare to real horror. Viewers who enjoy The Secret might also look to Argento's mother trilogy, or the recently released French horror film, Inside. That said. The Secret contains no gore and relies on psychological suspense rather than violence to construct its mother/daughter tale. --Trinie Dalton