PREMONITION

Note: Plot details will be revealed, so here's the Spoiler Alert for those of you who haven't seen the film, and for the two or three of you who haven't seen the film's previews, which give away the entire movie.)

Hollywood entertainments, in general, aim so low that it's disheartening to chastise one for aiming relatively high. But the psychological thriller-cum-melodrama Premonition is infuriating precisely because of its lofty ambitions. For a goodly stretch of the film - nearly the entire first hour - the plotting is clever enough and the direction (by Mennan Yapo) suggestive enough to keep you focused and alert; you're eager to solve the movie's many mysteries along with its heroine. But I left the auditorium frustrated and a little bit angry, and still haven't figured out exactly whom to blame this on.

As it was a technical dress rehearsal with four days to go before opening night, it was understandable that the March 19 presentation of Quad City Music Guild's Beehive encountered a few glitches. The scene transitions were on the poky side; it was often unclear, during the frequent medleys, whether musical numbers were supposed to end with applause or not (there were a few too many uncomfortable pauses); and the sound, during Act I especially, obviously needed polish - the over-amplification on the opening number, in particular, was painful.

But when all was said and done, there was only one thing sorely missing from this presentation: An audience. Because when Beehive's performers finally get one, this thing is gonna go through the roof.

Before introducing longtime mentor Don Wooten, host Kai Swanson said of his morning's duties, "My job is simply to keep things moving along, which I'll fail at right now. I understand from the program that our next speaker has five minutes, and when I saw that on the program, I told the organizer [New Ground Theatre's Chris Jansen], 'Good luck.' Because although he is one of the most gifted communicators I have ever known, he does believe - as do the ends of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings - that anything worth saying is worth saying lo-o-o-ong."

300

Whatever its problems, and they are myriad, you can't say that Zack Snyder's 300 doesn't give you plenty to look at. Adapted from Frank Miller's and Lynn Varley's graphic novel, the film - which follow s the ancient Spartan army in a wildly violent, self-sacrificing battle against Persian forces - is filled with memorably outré images: an enormous tree and a 20-foot-high wall, both composed entirely of corpses; a triad of elephants, backed over a cliff, that plunge to their deaths; the sky blackening with what appear to be locusts, instead proving to be the incoming trajectory of thousands of steel-tipped arrows. In 300, Snyder shows a remarkable gift for graphic-novel composition, and continually keeps your eye engaged. Too bad the same can't be said of your brain.