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Smith's ninth feature is the first he hasn't written; the script was written by Robb and Mark Cullen, who've done a lot of TV series work (Heist, Lucky, Las Vegas). Smith has acknowledged he took this gig for the money and because he likes the genre. The first impulse is more evident here than the second. His strength has always been less in camerabatics, or even directorial competence, than in the creation of wayward characters with a little heart and filthy-funny mouths. He can't do that with a rote screenplay by other people. Blindfold...
There he is, in vivid black and white, onstage at Las Vegas' new Aria hotel-casino, squalling "Blue Suede Shoes" on a gigantic screen behind a jukebox-shaped set. Below him, eight musicians serve as his amped-up house band while a dozen dancers practically leap out of their tight pants and pedal pushers. At center stage is a huge shoe, which another half-dozen revelers use as a trampoline, performing double somersaults in time to the music. The King looks down, smiling as if in approval of this spectacular union of two crucial elements--one past, one present...
From his first concert series at the International Hotel in 1969 until his death in 1977, Elvis was Las Vegas. Glammed up in sequined duds that would make a showgirl or Liberace envious, he pleased his aging audience, singing his early hits that once had the musk of sexual revolt but by then were golden oldies. And while he redefined Sin City's notion of a headliner show, the town changed Presley as well. At the end, the kid from Tupelo, Miss., may have been more Vegas than Elvis...
...very smart choice of songs covers both the canonical ("Heartbreak Hotel," "Jailhouse Rock," "Burning Love") and the merely fabulous ("Got a Lot o' Livin' to Do," which accompanies an ecstatic amusement-park bit with high-bouncing superheroes). Of course the climax is "Viva Las Vegas," with 40 Elvis impersonators and a dozen chorines filling Mark Fisher's staircased set and the Big E back onscreen, overseeing the riot of color and movement...
...race for re-election - "is going to rise and fall on his own," says Sabato. "Appearances by Obama probably won't make much difference." But Obama probably isn't helping; he recently irked Nevada natives by warning Americans not to spend precious dollars on a trip to Las Vegas - a cutting criticism for a city whose lifeblood is tourism. Opponents seized on the remark. Danny Tarkanian, the son of former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian and one of Reid's potential Republican opponents, dubbed the meeting between the President and the majority leader a "socialism summit...