Director: Kevin Lima
*****
Every once in a while, a movie comes along which flips convention on its head. It takes what we know, contorts it into something else and gives us a fresh experience. Just at a time when Disney films had become cliche, Enchanted came along, made fun of every tradition and allowed us to believe again, if only for a couple of hours. Princess-to-be Giselle (Amy Adams) is transported to modern day New York courtesy of her evil step-mother-to-be, Narissa (Susan Sarandon). There, she meets lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey), a man who has all but given up on the things Giselle believes in: true love forever and ever. When Prince Edward (James Marsden) braves the mean New York streets to find his beloved, a new world awaits him. And possibly a new love.
What Enchanted does so well is blend tried and true Disney ideas-lavish production numbers, animals flocking to a princess, hopelessly naive characters, an evil queen-and makes fun of them without actually making fun of them. First and foremost is Amy Adams as Giselle, quite possibly the best bit of acting from a lead actress in 2007. She is completely believable at every turn, from not knowing what a date is to taking matters into her own hands at the end. There is a naivety in everything she does, yet she isn't a stupid character. Marsden, in another of his broad and pompous characters, overacts, sometimes quite outrageously so. But we believe his personae based on what Adams brings to the table beforehand.
If there is a weak link, it is Robert, his daughter Morgan and girlfriend Nancy. They are plot contrivances and feel like afterthoughts in most scenes. Morgan especially is thrown in for apparently no good reason. She has no critical part in the narrative nor does she appear on screen in the climactic finale. Nancy, for her part, isn't given anything of substance to do, though her eventual fate jives nearly perfectly with what we know of her.
The finale, featuring Susan Sarandon in full diva mode, rings just a bit hollow and sped up, as if a certain running time had to be met instead of a naturally flowing story. It's not enough to derail Enchanted, a story about learning to be critical, but not too critical as to miss what is staring you in the face. A bit of a hammy message to be sure, but also an endearing one in true Disney style.
Well, have I got a story for you. There's no love lost between us and our neighbors on the one side (we like the other side fine)...the ones of which I speak I have complained about here before; they have the beagle who never shuts up. Endeavoring to be the good Buddhist, I smile and wave at them when I see them...but that may be a little more difficult from now on.
Sunday morning it was raining. I was in our kitchen making a lentil salad to take to my sister's for our Mother's day dinner. Our kitchen is large. Here's a picture:
Those windows look out over about five feet of yard...then a low wooden fence...then about five feet of their yard. I was working at the counter there by the sink. As I said it was raining out, so the light was on in the kitchen.
I saw the neighbor's 12-ish year old son walk by with his jackey over his head...I didn't think anything of it. They usually go to church. (Or I should say they usually dress up on Sunday mornings, I'm assuming the destination)
I often wonder what they think of us sometimes dancing in the kitchen...smooching over the sink...I know they can see in and they know we are a couple...So a few moments later, I look up from veggie chopping and the kid is back. He has his hand at his belt buckle. I think, "Oh no, is he going to scratch himself?"
Nope. He whipped it out and peed. Right there. Between the houses. Not only in full view of our lighted windows at 10 a.m. but with nothing but about forty feet of clear yard between him and the road...I fled.
I yelled, "Oh my god!"
Trent who was doing laundry in the basement said, "What?"
I repeated, "Oh my god! You will never believe waht I just saw."
"One of the neighbors naked?"
I kid you not, he actually said that. But he was just thinking of the most outrageous thing he could...and I had to tell him he was pretty much right on target.
Maybe that's why we have a patch of dead grass in the back...
Released:
October 12, 2007 (New York Film Festival)Director: Sidney Lumet
*****
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is like the ball of yarn a cat plays with. As long as both ends are tucked in and not pulled, the ball of yarn remains relatively intact. But pull a stray piece and, soon afterward, the entire thing becomes undone. Such is the case here. When brothers Hank and Andy (Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman) decide to knock over their parents jewelry store because both are in desperate need of money, they call it a victimless crime. The robbery goes horribly wrong, resulting in the fragile lives the family has created to come shattering apart, making each person do things they wouldn't normally do.
With lesser actors, director Sidney Lumet's latest outing would have rung hollow, as if the script was imposing a set of character traits on a group of actors unable to inhabit the parts. Without muttering a line of dialogue, though, we know each of the people on screen, if only in the broad sense. Hawke, as Hank, with his moppy, unkempt hair is a man at the end of his rope while brother Andy carries himself with dignity and class, despite being in well over his head as well. Then there's Andy's wife Gina (Marisa Tomei). We know her, too. She is upper class, with Andy only for the money and not real love. It is these people, and to a lesser extent Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris as the parents, we want to shake, rattle and stir. In the great pantheon of bad movie ideas, robbing your own parents store is near the top of the list.
What the film doesn't tell us-at least not all at once-is why they do it. Instead of being a simple whodunit story, the script throws that question out of the window at the outset. We know who it is. But why? That's the great mystery. And once those answers come, in the form of segments devoted to each character leading up to and after the robbery, they are whole people. Not terribly brilliant people, but complete. Even at this point the film doesn't fade to black, allowing us to ruminate on what they have done. We are forced to follow them to their ultimate destruction. Remember that yarn? It is pulled to such lengths there is no ball anymore, just a mess of tangles and waste.
Lumet gets perhaps the best work out of Hawke since Dead Poet's Society, as he is continually forced to carry the emotional burden of the film. Perhaps a bit overreaching in some scenes, he isn't strictly a bad person, just caught up in events he can't do anything about, trying to be everything to everybody. Hoffman is more restrained, lashing out only at the end. Tomei is wonderfully understated, knowing full well hers is a supporting part and not where the camera is going to be focused for any prolonged period of time. A minor gripe: the slam cuts which shift the perspective of the film come on suddenly, just as we're becoming comfortable with what we're seeing. Maybe that's the point, though. To make sure we're not comfortable watching a group of people dig their own graves.
Released: April 18, 2008
Director: Nathan Frankowski
*****
As hosted by Ben Stein, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" purports to
tell the story of why the creationism theory is "under attack." Quite
simply, as we´re told in the film, the upper levels of scientific
academia are slavishly attached to evolution and Darwin, rejecting any
and all contrary opinions. Several professors and scientists recount
their excommunication from the scientific community after merely
mentioning intelligent design.
*****
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed Review
I'm no longer homeless and no longer disconnected from the rest of the world!!
Its quite unnerving in this modern age to be with TV or Internet for an extended period of time. I know, I'm lucky that I have a nice home to live in and access to satellite TV and the Internet, but to suddenly be without is a bit isolating. At my lowest point, I sat outside a closed Starbucks with my laptop so that I could check email with my HotSpot account.
There's still lots of boxes to unpack and lots of stuff to write about. But, for now, it just feels good to know that I am connected once again!
Director: Stephen J. Anderson
*****
Meet the Robinsons carries many of the hallmarks of a Disney film (a theme of family, non-fatal action, eccentric characters) yet misses a rather big one: heart. That's not to say the computer animated film isn't a fun ride with enough in-jokes to present and past Mouse House projects; by the end, though, we're left feeling a little empty. After he is left on the doorstep of an orphanage as a baby, brainy Lewis puts off one adoption family after another with his crazy inventions. One day, he travels to the future with a boy named Wilbur. Someone has stolen a time machine from Wilbur's garage and he needs Lewis to help him find it.
From a pure children's perspective, the film is colorful, fairly action packed and potentially mesmerizing. But with complex themes like time travel and a past self meeting the future one, the story proper inevitably goes over their heads. The script is so concerned with making sense of going forward in time and giving us enough wacky characters it never bothers to explain what it's doing. Not even a half hearted attempt. This isn't a simple story like Snow White or even Toy Story. Full of paradoxes and "what if's," it plays on our sympathies more than it has any right to.
See, since Lewis doesn't know who his mother is, he forces Wilbur to take him into the past to see her in exchange for his work in the future. Throughout the film, we're told all the spiky haired boy wants is to have a family. It's a point driven home more times than anyone can count, making him a caricature, a stereotypical kid in the adoption system. But there's nothing else there. He's smart and puts himself first. Yup, great character development. We get marginally better from his roommate, affectionately known as Goobs, who gets an actual storyline from beginning to end.
One technical matter, though: if Lewis stops the bad guy in the future and goes back to change said bad guy's past (hence making him a good guy), does that not alter future history and kill a person? And why does future Lewis not remember his son Wilbur going back in time to visit his past self?
This isn't a total wash. The film zips along fairly well, keeping the audience engaged throughout. Various gags are actually funny (note the big-headed, small-handed T Rex) and there is an interesting concept buried in the material. A whole cadre of writers (9 credited, not including William Joyce) is the major problem, with a whole lot of elements thrown in "just because." Is this worth the 95 minute investment? Yeah, you could do worse. Just put your brain on hold and enjoy the vibrant-if untextured-pictures.
Matt and I have returned from our big family gay-cation, minus some earrings I bought for Mother's Day and a library book that mysteriously disappeared.
On
Thursday, May 1, we flew to Vegas on Southwest. Upo0n arrival, we checked in at The Plams, an off-Strip property that we had seen on a segment of Great Hotels on The Travel Channel. The Palms definitely lived up to its billing as a hip hotel for the ytoung and hot. I declare I have not seen that many hot, shirtless studs in all my life. It was a guidofest for sure.
We applied the $20 dollar trick, which got us an upgrade from a standard room to a 1, 000 sq. ft luxury suite.
We had dinner at N9ne Steakhouse, which served us incredibly tender steaks that melted in our mouths despite having been overdone.
The next day, Matt's parents arrvied and all four of drove off in a rented SUV to the Grand Canyon, a 5-hour drive away.
Trent and I were talking the other day about how funny it is that when a movie maker wants to make a character from middle America or from some place totally innocuous, they usually make them from Ohio. "Heathers" takes place in Ohio...Sometimes the movie makers even choose Dayton--did you know "Rocky Horror Picture Show" is set in "Denton" a Dayton clone?
Well, I agree Ohio is pretty much the milk in the icebox of the country.
Why here, we have so much trouble making up names for our towns, we pull them from other states and countries. We've got a Springfield (like everyone else). We've got a London, a Williamsburgh, a Dover, a Concord...but sometimes we like to put our own Ohio-spin on it...exert our individuality and creativity by pronouncing it differently...
Growing up I knew about Bellfountaine (Bell-fountin) and Versailles (Ver-Sales) and Lima (Lyma)...but just recently Trent came across Houston...not pronounced like the venerable town in Texass...but "House-tun"
And my favorite...just heard it today: Russia...in O-HY-O we pronunciate that "Roo-Sea-Ah"
Ok, it might have been a little cold...
That's ice on Squawpan Lake...and that is snow Mr. Trent is standing in. Well, after a winter of 197 inches of the stuff, it's bound to take a while to melt. We had two kinds of home made donuts (yum!) and I had a lobster roll and fried clams (yum!) We played lots of Upwords & did crossword puzzles while talkign and watching TV (some Canadian).
Trent got to spend his birthday with our northern nieces Taylor & Sophia. I got many videos with the new camera. I'm hoping the one of Trent and Sophia playing horsey came out because it was hysterical. Trent and Taylor invented a new game...one of Trent's quotes from Bugs Bunny is "I'm a fiddler crab! Why don't you shoot me? It's fiddler crab season!" from the cartoon "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!" wellll, Taylor was walking like a puppy so Trent showed her how to walk like a fiddler crab--that somehow devolved into "Fiddler Crab Wrestling"
Which Taylor wanted to play at every chance. That and she wanted to make episodes of "Taylor TV" with the new video camera.
Got to go out to camp, but not stay :-( maybe next time. Got to visit the Grandmas and spend lots of time with Grenda and Roger. I even saw six moose--mooses--meese Well, to be truthful I think two of them were repeats (the same moose over successive days) but they were my first!
Flying was a pain...driving is a pain...maybe we should just STAY next time! :-)
Sold ten more copies of my book over the weekend! Do you have yours yet? ;-)
Director: Brad Silberling
*****
The first film in history to be released via internet download while playing in theaters, 10 Items or Less strives for an indie-quirk attitude, yet loses it within the first twenty minutes of the production. For the next hour, it is a rumination on the differences between the working and upper classes. It's too bad the interplay Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega display in the grocery store early on is moved outside that establishment later in the film; the down and out market is a wondrous place filled with rich possibilities for dark humor.
And there's the problem: this movie is billed as a comedy when it really isn't. Sure, watching Freeman as an out of work actor watch Vega's Scarlet go about her rudimentary cashier job doesn't sound funny, though it is his wide eyed disbelief over her menial tasks which makes the sequence a pleasure to watch. (Not to mention director Silberling allows the actors to act in unbroken takes throughout the film.) An entire film could have been made inside the market, centering on the people there and Freeman's reactions to each of them. Truthfully, that's where the movie should have been set, not in car washes and interviews, trailer parks or car hoods.
However, the finished product is what we're given. 10 Items or Less turns into each of them teaching the other something important about life. Scarlet, stuck in a dead in job with a dead end husband, brings Freeman back to earth, walking him through a world he has never known. For his part, Freeman is happy go lucky, without a seeming care in the world...a lesson he imparts on Scarlet. She is perpetually negative, finding reasons not to do the things she should be doing. Take a job interview. The pair go into Target-a wonder for Freeman-where he "puts her together," casting her in the role of an office manager. He's soft and delicate with his young ward, pushing her to think of herself in a positive light. But it's dreadfully boring.
Freeman and Vega develop an easy rapport in 82 minutes, inhabiting both their characters fully. Considering they are are the leads and only actors with any appreciable screen time, the relative success of the production rests squarely on them. Silberling's direction is functional, considering the film was shot in 15 days on a "nothing" budget. His greatest achievement is knowing when to allow the scene to continue uninterrupted, making this truly an actors film. Despite the acting and directing, it's the script which lets us down in the end. Too indie, too high minded, too art house.
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