My Radio Reviews on WTOP
Posted on March 7, 2014 at 8:21 am
Many thanks to Dimitri Sotis for inviting me onto WTOP to review “300: Rise of an Empire” and “Mr. Peabody & Sherman.”
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Trailer: The Boxtrolls
Posted on March 6, 2014 at 6:31 pm
Coming this fall from Laika (“Coraline,” “ParaNorman”), “The Boxtrolls” stars Ben Kingsley, Toni Collette, Elle Fanning, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade, and Tracy Morgan in the story of a community of quirky, mischievous creatures who have lovingly raised an orphaned human boy named Eggs (voiced by Hempstead-Wright) in the amazing cavernous home they’ve built beneath the streets of Cheesebridge. When the town’s villain, Archibald Snatcher (Kingsley), comes up with a plot to get rid of the Boxtrolls, Eggs decides to venture above ground, “into the light,” where he meets and teams up with fabulously feisty Winnifred (Fanning). Together, they devise a daring plan to save Eggs’ family. It’s based on Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow
Here’s an early look:
Mr. Peabody & Sherman
Posted on March 6, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Jay Ward’s irresistibly daffy cartoons of the early 1960’s were charming and witty, with a post-modern meta wink at the fourth wall, wacky puns, and jokes that kids would suddenly remember and understand years later. This reboot is smarmy, overblown, dumbed down, and off-kilter. Who thinks it is a good idea to have a movie for children about time travel begin with a trip to the French revolution and the guillotine?
Cartoonist Ted Key, best known for the Hazel character played by Shirley Booth in the television sitcom, came up with the super-genius dog, Mr. Peabody, inventor of the WABAC machine, and his boy Sherman, for Ward’s “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” In each episode, the duo would go back in time and somehow help a historical character solve a problem. In this computer-animated, 3D, full-length feature version, the wit of the original devolves into bathroom humor and slapstick. If the poster slogan is a doggie potty joke (“He makes his mark on history”), it is not a good sign.
As in the original, Mr. Peabody (“Modern Family’s” Ty Burrell) knows everything. He’s a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who advises world leaders and makes a mean cocktail. In one of the movie’s highlights, he is challenged to play musical instruments ranging from a flamenco guitar to a didgeridoo, and performs flawlessly. He has invented a WABAC machine to take Sherman back in time, where they have encountered a cake-loving Marie Antoinette, with Mr. P led to the guillotine, and an unhappy Mona Lisa (Lake Bell), refusing to smile for Leonardo da Vinci (Stanley Tucci).
He has an adopted son, Sherman (Max Charles), who attends a fancy private school, where a girl named Penny (“Modern Family’s” Ariel Winter) gets angry when Sherman corrects her answer about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, explaining that it never really happened. After a sloppy misuse of the term “sarcastic,” she insults Sherman in the lunchroom, calling him a dog because he has a dog for a father. They get into a fight, and Sherman bites her arm. Mr. Peabody is called to the principal’s office, where Ms. Grunion (Allison Janney), a representative from Child Protective Services, tells him Sherman will be removed from the home if he is not an appropriate parent.
Mr. Peabody invites Penny and her parents and Ms. Grunion over for dinner to straighten things out. Sherman shows Penny the WABAC machine that Mr. Peabody invented to take them back in time, and soon the two kids find themselves in ancient Egypt, where Penny becomes engaged to the young King Tut, until she finds out what that entrails, I mean entails (the bad pun thing is contagious–parents be warned). Soon they are zipping around through history, meeting up with Agamemnon (Patrick Warburton, hilarious as always, despite an Oedipus joke) and soaring over Renaissance Florence in one of da Vinci’s flying machines.
The time travel plot gets bogged down in time-space continuum anomaly mumbo jumbo. Then there are the father-son issues. Mr. Peabody, who wants his son to call him Mr. Peabody, has a problem with the l-word. Ms. Grunion’s blustery bullying and threats to remove Sherman from his home will make some families uncomfortable. It should also make them uncomfortable that the movie appears to portray kidnapping a woman as a romantic gesture that should make her instantly fall in love. Jokes about Oedipus and Bill Clinton are particularly disappointing. Warburton’s dry delivery and some good scenery and action sequences can’t make up for the fact that this movie is a disappointing come-down that completely misses the charm and humor of the original.
Parents should know that this movie has a lot of potty humor, some crude jokes, cartoon-style peril and action including a guillotine and a taser, a character is presumed dead but later shown to have survived, a woman is captured as a romantic gesture, and child protection services challenges an adoption and attempts to remove a child from his home.
Family discussion: If you could go back to any time in history, what would it be? Who would you want to meet? Why was Penny so mean?
If you like this, try: The original series
A Sneak Peek at Disney’s new “Pirate Fairy”
Posted on March 6, 2014 at 5:45 pm
From the world of “Peter Pan” comes “The Pirate Fairy,” a swashbuckling new adventure about Zarina (voice of Christina Hendricks), a smart and ambitious dust-keeper fairy who’s captivated by Blue Pixie Dust and its endless possibilities. When Zarina’s wild ideas get her into trouble, she flees Pixie Hollow and joins forces with the scheming pirates of Skull Rock, who make her captain of their ship. Tinker Bell (voice of Mae Whitman) and her friends must embark on an epic adventure to find Zarina, and together they go sword-to-sword with the band of pirates led by a cabin boy named James (voice of Tom Hiddleston), who’ll soon be known as Captain Hook himself. With laughter, heart, magic and thrills, “The Pirate Fairy” sets sail April 1, 2014.
300: Rise of an Empire — The Real Story
Posted on March 6, 2014 at 8:00 am
This week’s release “300: Rise of an Empire” is a highly fictionalized version of a real-life episode in ancient Greek history that included a massive sea battle. It is a “side-quel,” depicting events that occurred around the same time as the famous battle covered in the first “300” movie.
In 480-489 BC, King Xerxes of Persia was determined to conquer Greece. In preparation for the next surge, he had his people bridge the Hellespont, the present-day Dardanelles, with two bridges were supported by ships as pontoons, with a the causeway laid across them. When they were destroyed in a storm, Xerxes ordered the designers of those bridges executed and that the Hellespont itself be given 300 lashes as punishment. Xerxes was making progress when a Greek slave was sent with a message intended to deceive him — he told Xerxes that the Greeks were weak and not able to oppose him. Historynet.com says:
On the morning of September 20, 480 BC, the main body of the Persian armada, about 400 triremes, moved toward the showdown. Xerxes sat on his golden throne high atop the contested area and watched the battle develop.
The Greek fleet was arranged from the Athenians on the left of the line to the Corinthians to the north, covering the Bay of Eleusis, the Pelopponesians on the right and the ships of Megara and Aegina in nearby Ambelaki Bay. The majority of the Greeks’ 300 triremes were hidden from the approaching Persians’ view by St. George’s Island. To draw the enemy well into the shallow water and narrow confined around Salamis, Themistocles ordered the 50-ship Corinthian contingent to hoist its square sails and feign retreat. Once the Persians were drawn in, the Greeks, in ordered line, would surround them. The Persians’ greater numbers would be no advantage in the narrows. Even worse, they would have no room to maneuver.The Greeks began to sing a hymn to the god Apollo as they struck the Persian vanguard in its exposed left flank. When the commanders of the leading Persian ships realized that they were trapped and began to backwater, the caused a tremendous crush of confusion, because those ships coming behind them had nowhere to go. Aeschylus, remembered as the father of literary tragedy, fought both at Marathon and Salamis. He later described the scene as similar to the mass netting and killing of fish on the shores of the Mediterranean: ‘At first the torrent of the Persians’ fleet bore up: but then the press of shipping hammed there in the narrows, none could help another.’
The Greeks kept outside of the tangled Persian mass and struck virtually at will. The Persian ships seemed more suited for action in the open sea-they were larger, sat higher in the water and were loaded with approximately 30 marine infantry or archers, as opposed to 14 aboard each Greek ship. Therefore, the top-heavy vessels fell easy prey to the bronze rams of the Greek triremes in those confining waters.
The Phoenicians in Xerxes’ fleet broke under the relentless Greek pressure and many of them ran their ships aground. Several of those Phoenicians hurried to the great king and said that the Ionians were the cause of their defeat. Xerxes had watched the Ionians perform well and ordered the Phoenicians beheaded for lying about their allies.
The battle continues to be studied by those who care about military history and strategy and it continues to capture our imagination thousands of years later.