On Friday, I went to see Everyday People at the Prince (and again, got the same seat as I had for the three previous movies). It was a quiet little character piece revolving around the various employees of a diner in Brooklyn, Jewish owned and primarily serving the black customers who now populate the neighborhood. A conglomerate is coming in and gentrifying the neighborhood and has been wooing the owner of the diner to sell so he can replace it with condos, a Banana Republic, a Hard Rock Cafe and as he later tells one of his associates "The Brooklyn Diner" (a company from Manhattan) for "authentic diner food" which "this neighborhood could use" (which he says while SITTING IN THE DINER!).

Good acting all around. It is unfortunate that since there aren't breasts bared, guns blazing, alien creatures, zombies or bleeding, battered Jesuses, this movie will probably go largely ignored by the American populace. However, I hope that someone gets a chance to see it (whether it just ends up on the Sundance Channel or IFC or whatever).

On Saturday night, I returned to Philadelphia to see Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and it was a hoot! Trashy, silly, exploitive, filled with gratuitous female nudity, over the top dialogue ("It's my happening and it freaks me out!" one character exclaims when guests arrive at his debauched party) and has GREAT music written for it (badly lip-synched by the women who portray the rock group) and even includes a cameo by the Strawberry Alarm Clock playing themselves as the rock band at the party at the beginning of the movie (they perform, among other songs, their hit "Incense and Peppermint"). It was a blast!