Brave

Posted on June 21, 2012 at 6:00 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some scary action and rude humor
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence including scary animals with big teeth
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	June 22, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	November 12, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAII08

“Brave” is not just one of the best movies of the year for any age; it is one of the best movies ever made from a female point of view.

It has been a long time coming. Pixar’s unprecedented series of outstanding critical and audience successes has been justifiably criticized because its leading characters have almost always been white and male. While “The Incredibles,” “Finding Nemo,” and “A Bug’s Life” had important female characters (you might also include “Wall•E”), it was the male characters who were at the center of the story. With its 13th film, Pixar has given not one but two female characters center stage. As we expect from Pixar (well, as we hope, following “Cars 2”), “Brave” is smart, fun, funny, and exciting, with gorgeous settings and endearing characters. But this is something more. It gives us a teenage girl in the leading role who is not pretending to be a boy (“Mulan”), unsure of herself, or trying to attract a boy (just about every movie ever made). She is strong, independent, and completely comfortable with who she is. It’s the rest of the world she thinks needs some change.

Merida (Kelly Macdonald of “Boardwalk Empire” and “Gosford Park”) is a Scottish princess and by tradition, she will marry whichever of the sons of the local lairds bests the others in an athletic competition. But she has no interest in marrying any of them. Her mother (Emma Thompson) makes her dress up in a confining outfit that barely lets her breathe and hides her wild , unmanageable hair. But Merida splits the seams of the dress, takes out her bow, and wins her own hand. In some other movies, that would be the end. Here, it is the beginning. To split the seams of tradition the way she burst through the confines of her regal attire, Merida asks for help from a witch (Julie Walters, Mrs. Weasley in the Harry Potter movies). She says she wants to change her fate. She should have been more specific.

Things go terribly wrong, and soon Merida finds her relationship with her mother turned upside down. Merida learns what it like to have to take care of someone. Her mother has to learn something, too. Their new situation (I am trying not to give too much away here) gives the queen a chance to take a new look at Merida and see how capable and trustworthy she is, while the queen herself begins to lose her connection to civilization. And all of this is in the midst of antics from Merida’s mischievous triplet little brothers, the struggles between the clans, the witch’s travels (her voicemail equivalent is hilarious), and a very scary bear who once took part of Merida’s father’s leg and may be back for more.

Action, comedy, and heart are expertly balanced and the mother-daughter dynamic gives the story a powerful appeal. For me, it felt like a rare chance to hear a story in my native language. There was no need to translate. The wild beauty of the crags and tors of the Scottish landscape provide a bracing environment for Merida’s real and psychological journey with her mother. Merida is a winning heroine who does not define herself by getting or being a boy and it is a pleasure to share her story.

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Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Posted on June 21, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language including sexual references, some drug use and brief violence
Profanity:	Very strong and explicit language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drunkenness, drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Disturbing themes of the end of the world, some violence
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	June 22, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	October 22, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B007L6VRBM

Dr. Johnson memorably said that the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully. Part of what stories do for us is concentrate the mind by providing us with narratives that eliminate distracting quotidian effluvia and allow us to focus on one element of the story. In “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” writer/director Lorene Scafaria (“Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”) makes that concentration explicit. The world is literally ending in three weeks, and we get to see how that concentrates the minds of Dodge (Steve Carell), Penny (Kiera Knightley), and the people they meet as everyone has to decide what from their “someday” list gets moved up to “now.”

Lorene Scafaria, who wrote the lovely “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” here directs her own screenplay with a top-notch cast and a sure sense of tone and pacing. The classic elements of the journey film with a mis-matched pair on the road in search of something is kept fresh through the setting, the adventures and encounters along the way, and sensitive performances from Carell and Knightley.

As Elizabeth Kubler-Ross might have predicted, a lot of people get stuck in stage one: denial. The movie opens as Dodge and his wife hear the radio announcer promise to keep the audience up to date on the progress of the asteroid known as Matilda and its collision path with Earth, along with a countdown to the end of days and “all your classic rock favorites.” At first, most people run on automatic pilot. Dodge goes to his office and tries to explain to a client that his insurance policy does not really cover what is about to happen. “The Armageddon policy is extra.” His boss tries to fill some abandoned positions by offering promotions. People who always wanted to kill someone offer their services as assassins for hire by those who do not want to be alive when the meteor hits. Musicians put on an end of the world awareness concert. It’s like Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff and staying suspended in air until the realization hits — and then he does.

People start to get desperate. Dodge’s wife leaves him. A friend (Patten Oswalt) explains that the end of the world has made it very easy to sleep with women. Dodge’s friends have a party and try to fix him up with a woman (Melanie Lynskey) who arrives wearing all of the jewelry she was saving for the right occasion. But that is not what he wants. The world is increasingly divided between people who choose various ways to numb themselves and those who take this last chance to stop being numb.

Dodge meets his neighbor, Penny, an English girl who has missed the last opportunity to get back to her family. She has a mis-delivered letter from a girl he loved and lost. And she has a car. When rioters take over their building, he offers to get her to a plane if she will help him find the woman who sent the letter. Helping each other gives them purpose. Getting to know Penny gives Dodge more of a sense of being alive than he has ever had before. Dodge had always been too cautious. Penny had always been too irresponsible. Now he must take chances and she must grow up. It’s never too late.

On their journey, they see people and places from their past, including Penny’s survivalist ex-boyfriend (Derek Luke), who thinks that stockpiling weapons and canned goods will help him rebuild society. They stop at a relentlessly chipper restaurant called Friendsy’s (yes, lots and lots of flair) where the staff’s increasingly shrill Ecstasy-fueled cheeriness becomes borderline deranged. And then, even with just days and then hours left, they begin to shift from the past to the future. And, as Rabindrath Tagore wrote, “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

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Interview: Lorene Scafaria of “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World”

Posted on June 21, 2012 at 8:00 am

Lorene Scafaria wrote the screenplay for one of my favorite romances of the last several years, Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist. And now she has written and directed another romance, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” with Steve Carell and Kiera Knightley as neighbors who meet just as life on earth is about to be wiped out. I spoke to her about the role that music plays in both films (she is also a musician), and how contemplating the end of the world clarifies your priorities.

I want to begin by asking you about the music, because I know you, yourself, create music and music seems to be important in both this film and “Nick and Nora.”

It’s true, yes. I’ve got a pattern going, I think. But music is just so important to me, personally, obviously, and so I liked the idea that we’d have this sort of soundtrack for humanity in there What it really came down to in crafting the characters and everything, I just thought—what do you really want to consume at the end of the world? You know, besides as much food as humanly possible? And I feel like you know, really people dip back into music, that just is sort of a universal love for people, whatever the music may be. And so I did love the idea that certainly this girl is carrying around a bunch of records that, unless she finds the player for it, she’s just holding onto these possessions, but that this music has meant so much for her and her life that she will hold on to them. I’ve just always thought of music as a sort of collection of memories so that’s how I decided that it should be a major part of the movie. I knew I wanted it to be kind of classic rock, the kind I grew up with. I feel like friends’ older brothers got us into the Dead and Doors, really, so we were listening to that version of classic rock. I wanted to have that sense of nostalgia and feel like these could be songs that Dodge could be listening to or should be or would have if he were the kind of guy who really absorbed culture like that. They’re actually part of Penny’s collection, and so in a way I was using it as sort of dedications between the characters in a way.

The names of the characters seem very meaningful: Dodge and Penny.

Dodge, certainly, to me, is a man trying to outrun something and a guy who’s been sort of avoiding life his entire life—so Dodge felt very appropriate for him. I also loved that it was a very American name. And Penny — it’s like when you find a lucky penny. She was that little shiny copper thing for him to find. And Pen also means swan, so there’s something in there for both of them. Ridiculously, if you looked at all the names, you would find embarrassing things like that throughout. There was the character Roache that Patton Oswalt plays. He’s the kind of guy who’d survive the apocalypse, you know? The roaches of the world, they’re going to be fine.

Tell me a little bit about moving from being the writer to being the director and what you as a writer learned about writing from directing?

It’s now so much harder to write because I feel like I have this newfound perspective on it where I actually don’t feel as much of a free writer, now. I’m thinking of things a little too much from the director’s chair.

More logistically?

Yes, I’m sort of skipping ahead to, “Well, if I’m filming this…” That’s probably a good thing in the long run, to hone in on it. It’s definitely making me think so much more as a writer, now. When I started, I always wanted to direct. I directed a lot of theater when I was younger and always loved working with actors and then I made a short film a few years ago that I call the longest short, because it was like a 30 minutes. It was not something I was ever going to enter into festivals, I just wanted to prove to myself that I could maybe tackle a feature someday. With this one, I just was desperate to do it. From the very beginning I always wanted to be able to tell the story through to fruition and I can’t believe how satisfying it was. I’m a list-maker so I love to make lists and cross-things off. I’m not very organized, I just like to make lists. When we are filming something like the trucker’s scene and we get to cross something off a list. It’s been in my head for three years and it’s just so rewarding to see it through all the way. I’ve always enjoyed having a vision for the big picture and with this, so much was specific on the page. It was really fun to be able to do it all, actually.

One of the great things about your concept is that it’s tremendously clarifying; everything else drops away and you have to think about what your priorities are. I loved the way that, on their journey, Dodge and Penny meet people who deal with the end of the world in so many ways—mostly different forms of denial.

I try not to judge too harshly what it is that everybody would want to do in that situation, especially because everyone is dealing with their own mortality at the same time. I sort of loved that the two of them have these “higher callings” in a way—you know, at least they’re about human contacts and relationships and regrets and closure and all of that, and those always seem like the truest pursuits. I did so much research on what people would do, talking with as many people as possible about what would you do, what would you take with you, what would you want to hold in your hand? And you know, there were some very interesting answers across the board, but the most common was to be with family, to be with friends, to be with your loved one. I really liked exploring what happens if one person doesn’t really have that loved one, where do they go? And I do think someone like Dodge certainly would chase the past. I think most people would, I’m not sure everybody would be like, “I’m going to meet somebody new!” She’s lived her life much more to the fullest than he has, but has maybe her own regrets, like seeing her family.

One of the things that’s nice about it is that Dodge would not have done his some-day thing if not for Penny. She gave him a reason.

Yes, and through something so tragic. I don’t think any of this would’ve happened without the end of the world. That’s the kind of thing that is interesting. Sometimes the most tragic moments in your life, you’re like—“Why is this happening to me?” and it takes a little while, but then you think, “that might’ve been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

If you’re a writer, that’s where you get your material.

It’s all therapy for me. You’re just seeing my glorified therapy session.

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Happy Summer Solstice!

Posted on June 20, 2012 at 6:58 pm

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Interview: “Brave” Producer Katherine Sarafian

Posted on June 20, 2012 at 3:55 pm

I love Pixar’s new movie, “Brave,” and it was a thrill to be able to talk to the producer, Katherine Sarafian, who told me what she learned from her trip to Scotland, what it meant to have a female lead character, and what matters most at Pixar. And of course about the HAIR!

Merida is such a wonderful heroine!

It was really important to us that we create a girl who did not want to be a boy. There are so many movies about tomboys. She’s proud to be a girl, she likes wearing dresses, she’s quite feminine, and she is adventurous and likes driving things forward.

I remember Brad Bird telling me that the biggest technical challenge in “The Incredibles” was Violet’s hair. And that was relatively short and very straight. Here you have a heroine with a magnifient head of unmanageable curls! It must have taken as many lines of code as a moon launch!

It was was quite intricate. The character is this untamed, wild child teen. When she walks into the room, before she even opens her mouth, we wanted you to know who she is, with that kind of presence and that rare shade of red. It speaks to what a unique type of lass this is going to be. The story required it and the technology didn’t really exist, so we had to build it, based on what we learned on previous films. Brad Bird saw this and said he was jealous of how much we could do with the hair! We really had an opportunity to let her act with the hair and had it as part of her character.

Tell me what your job was as producer.

I was responsible for bringing it in on time and on budget, assembling the crew of people, selecting the voice talent, working with the scoring, and keep everyone motivated over the long haul — six years. I really try to get the director’s vision on screen.

What was your most difficult challenge?

The number one biggest challenge in all Pixar films is the story. It’s really really hard to tell a good story. It’s easy to shoot the first draft of any script. It’s hard to say the first draft is the starting point of a long creative odyssey with a lot of twists and turns and challenges. We do it the hard way. We never give up on making the story the best it can be. And that’s hard, a lot of toiling in the trenches of story for a long time. It’s easy to fall into stereotypes of a teenager and conflict with parents. But it is harder to make rounded characters and appealing and where they both grow and learn, and the kingdom and its mythology is all in there, too.

You were the producer of one of my favorite Pixar shorts, “Lifted.”

It was fun because it was without words, so every language can understand the idea of a teacher and a student in a sort of driver’s ed test on a spaceship.

And the short with this film is also worldless.

Yes, it’s an Italian family story called “La Luna,” but it is also very universal.

You have wonderful voice talent in the film.

We’re thrilled with our cast. Billy Connelly and Emma Thompson as the king and queen brought the heft and weight and importance of a royal family but also the warmth and humor and heart of parents. It would be easy to make the queen unappealing and the king a buffoon, but you really wanted them to have that rounded quality, real rulers with real problems and real heart. And Kelly MacDonald has a beautiful voice and key into her teenage self so wonderfully well, and great humor, too.

Did you go to Scotland to research this film?

We had two significant creative research trips and I also went back for voice recording. We trekked through the highlands in late 2006. We studied the Gallic history and the rhytym of the accents and hiked through the dark forests and touched the heather and the guys even took a dip swimming in the loch. It helped us understand the setting of the story better. Scotland is almost a character itself in the movie. The region is steeped in storytelling and folklore and myth. The land itself has such diversity to it. The glaciers melted and showed off this volcanic landscape with jagged peaks an crags and rocks and because of the dampness everything is covered in something, lichen and moss, so it’s totally softened. There’s something growing on every surface. And there’s design everywhere, very tactile, very rugged, Pictish carvings and ancient patterns, and the standing stones. The texture of the land is very rugged. And it changes so much and it moves so much from very wet areas and very rich areas to very barren, stark areas. It changes and moves so much and that influenced every area of our story, the weather, the light, and the landscape change. The story is about a journey and change and setting it there made sense to us. The ruggedness of it and the dark forest made it a place for big adventures and it was a great place to set the story.

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