Posted on December 8, 2014 at 3:55 pm
Coming next month — a long-term passion project from George Lucas, “Strange Magic” features the voices of Kristin Chenoweth, Evan Rachel Wood, Alan Cummings, Maya Rudolph, Alfred Molina, and Elijah Kelley.
Posted on December 6, 2014 at 8:00 am
Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up, has been enchanting children and their families for more than a century now. This week’s live broadcast of the Broadway musical version starred Alison Williams and Christopher Walken. And next year we’ll see Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard in “Pan,” which looks like a prequel that will tell us how Peter Pan and the Lost Boys made it to Neverland and how Hook (Garrett Hedlund) became Captain Hook.
Posted on October 30, 2014 at 8:00 am
Happy Halloween! Here are ten of my favorite movie ghosts. (NOTE: Some of these have inferior remakes — stick with the originals.)
Topper
The Uninvited
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Canterville Ghost
Ghostbusters
13 Ghosts
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is my favorite Christmas story and I love just about every version, but I think the best is the one starring Alistair Sim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpbthuKFuFAPirates of Caribbean: Curse of Black Pearl
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
The Haunting
Posted on October 23, 2014 at 5:59 pm
Filmed as though it was almost entirely one long, stunning, audacious, breathless and breathtaking shot, “Birdman” (subtitled “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance”) explodes with ideas and visions, adopting the language of dreams to explore and upend the very idea of storytelling.
Michael Keaton plays a character in superficial ways like Keaton himself. He is Riggan, an actor who has undertaken at least three impossible tasks at once. He has adapted the acclaimed but notoriously difficult and difficult to adapt Raymond Carver collection of short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Riggan and Jake, his best friend/lawyer/producer (a slimmed down and pitch-perfect Zach Galifianakis), throw out (real-life) names of possible actor replacements. The best of their generation: Michael Fassbender, Jeremy Renner, Robert Downey, Jr — but they are all in Hollywood playing superheroes. Riggan knows something about that. He played a superhero called Birdman in a series of wildly popular films. He had money, fame, success, and the kind of power all of that brings. But now he has an ex-wife (Amy Ryan), an angry daughter, a possible new child on the way, and he is risking his future on the longest of longshots, a serious play in the high-pressure world of Broadway theater, between the vicious barbs of dyspeptic, despotic critics and audiences who would rather be at the latest musical based on a movie.
Riggan and Jake argue about what to do next. The understudy? No! “It’s not like the perfect actor is just going to knock on the door!” Cue knock on the door. It is Lesley, the non-possibly pregnant actress in the show (Naomi Watts), volunteering her boyfriend, Michael (Edward Norton), who is available (he just got fired or quit or both) and wants to do it. He is a Broadway darling, a Serious Actor with a lot of fans. Jake is ecstatic. This will sell a lot of tickets.
Michael shows up with the script already memorized and able to give a dazzling performance that pushes Riggan to do his best. But Michael is also narcissistic and arrogant. His relationship with Lesley is deteriorating and he is hitting on Sam. Worse, he is sending her mixed signals, making her feel even more insecure and putting her recovery at risk. Riggan is under even more pressure externally and internally as a voice — his Birdman persona? His younger self? His future self? — is urging him, taunting him, distracting him.
It is a high wire act, the endless, dreamlike take festooned with farce-style slamming doors, fantasy interludes with monsters and explosions, sharp satire, poignant drama, and across the board performances of superb precision. As sheer, no-net, bravura filmmaking it is pure wonder, and if it raises more questions than it answers, at least they are the big questions of meaning, identity, work, love, art, and, of course, superheroes.
Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, explicit sexual references and situation, gun violence, drinking, smoking, and drug use.
Family discussion: How much of what we see in this film is “real” and how can you tell? What do you think is happening in the final scene?
If you like this, try: “All That Jazz” and Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories”
Posted on October 16, 2014 at 5:56 pm
A-| Lowest Recommended Age: | Kindergarten - 3rd Grade |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for mild action, rude humor, some thematic elements and brief scary images |
| Profanity: | Some mild language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | None |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Themes of death and afterlife with some scary images of skeletons and desolation, peril including bull fights and snake bite, violence including sword fights and outlaws |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | October 17, 2014 |
| Date Released to DVD: | January 26, 2015 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B00Q599952 |
Jorge Gutierrez (Nickelodeon’s “El Tigre”) is co-writer and director of a dazzling new animated film that all but explodes off the screen in a kaleidoscope of color and energy and a love of life and storytelling and colorful characters and fantastic adventures. It is filled with the richness of love and passion and life and death and music and bullfighting and courage and family. It is a refreshing new aesthetic, inspired by Mexican folklore, with many of the characters looking as though they were carved from wood — not by trained experts and not recently. It has great songs and stunning images, covers of songs by artists from Elvis to Mumford and Sons, with a sweet new duet from Us the Duo. Plus, there is a sensational and wonderfully varied voice cast that includes Ice Cube (superbly funny and warm-hearted), Cheech Marin, Placido Domingo, and Anjelah Johnson-Reyes (“Bon Qui Qui”).
And it is very funny and a lot of fun.
Even the opening logo for 20th Century Fox has been transformed, letting us know right from the start that we are in another world, or maybe three of them.
A museum guide tells a school group the story, which begins with a wager. The afterlife has two parts: The Land of the Remembered, ruled by La Muerte (Kate del Castillo), where the newly dead are joyfully reunited with their families, and all is celebration, and The Land of the Forgotten, ruled by Xibalba (Ron Perlman of “Sons of Anarchy”), a bleak landscape where souls who are no longer cherished by the living are isolated and afraid. The two rulers make a bet over which of two boys will win the heart of the girl they both love. The winner will get to rule the Land of the Remembered.
The children grow up. Xibalba’s candidate is Joaquin (Channing Tatum), who has become a brave soldier with a chest full of medals. One he never lets anyone see was given to him by Xibalba, who is not above cheating to win the bet. It gives whoever carries it courage and invulnerability.
La Muerte is rooting for Manolo (Diego Luna), who is studying to be a bullfighter like his father and all the other men in their family, but whose real passion is for music. Both are still in love with Maria (Zoe Saldana), just returned from her studies in Spain. Maria’s father favors Joaquin, who can protect the town from the evil, predatory bandit Chacal (Dan Navarro). But Maria’s heart is touched by the romantic Manolo, even after his first attempt to serenade her turns into a disaster (hint: never let your companeros persuade you that the songs of either Biz Markie or Rod Stewart are romantic). When it looks like he will lose the bet, Xibalba cheats again, sending a poisonous snake to bite Maria and Manolo.
Manolo is killed, and finds himself in the Land of the Remembered, where he is happy to see his mother and many other relatives. But to get back to Maria, he will need to cross through the Land of the Forgotten. He meets the candle-maker (a warm and very funny Ice Cube) and a monstrous bull composed of all the bulls Manolo’s family has ever killed, makes a daring wager of his own before he gets back just in time for the arrival of Chacal.
It may seem thickly plotted at times, but that is all part of the Carnivale sensibility. And the cavalcade of incidents and characters, both living and dead, is reassuring in its matter-of-fact approach, reminding us that it is all a part of the book of life, and that we can never lose what or who we truly love.
Parents should know that this film includes Day of the Dead-inspired images with skeletons and afterlife settings, characters in peril and some violence, sad deaths of parents and grandparent (reunited in afterlife), some scary monsters and villains, brief potty humor and some mild language
Family discussion: How can you tell when you follow your parents’ advice and when to do what feels right to you? What is the best way to make sure we remember the people who are no longer with us?
If you like this, try: “The Princess and the Cobbler” and “Rio” and the documentary “Walt and El Groupo,” about the real-life trip Walt Disney and his animators took to South America and how it transformed the look of Disney animation.
