Rio

Posted on April 14, 2011 at 6:00 pm

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating: G
Profanity: None
Alcohol/ Drugs: None
Violence/ Scariness: Mild peril
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: April 15, 2011
Date Released to DVD: August 1, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN: B004HO6I4M

A South American setting and striking animation lend freshness to “Rio’s” otherwise much-traveled storyline about a pampered pet who has to learn to survive in the wild.  We’ve seen this tale many times — “Madagascar,” “Bolt,” “The Wild,” “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,”and more.  But this version is buoyed by local color — literally, with a vibrantly sun-drenched palette, along with a sensationally festive Carnival parade, and a slinky samba-liscious soundtrack overseen by Rio’s most enduringly popular musical export, Sergio Mendes.

Blu (voice of “The Social Network’s” Jesse Eisenberg) is a rare blue macaw who was captured by animal smugglers in Brazil as a tiny chick.  His crate falls out of a truck in snowy Minnesota (identified onscreen simply as “Not Rio”) and is rescued by a little girl named Linda.  He grows up blissfully domesticated and never bothers to learn to fly.  Everything he wants is within reach.  He brings Linda her glasses when she wakes up and she makes sure he has just the right number of marshmallows in his hot chocolate.  As he explains, he is not a pet; he is a companion.  And Linda says he is her best friend.

They are visited by an ornithologist named Tulio (voice of Rodrigo Santoro), who tells Linda (voice of Leslie Mann) there is just one last surviving female blue macaw (voice of Anne Hathaway as Jewel).  Unless they mate, it will be the end of their species.  Linda reluctantly agrees to take Blu to Brazil.  But smugglers show up again to steal Blu and Jewel.  Blu has to learn some survival skills and make some new friends to find his way back to Linda.

Blue Sky is the studio that produced the “Ice Age” series and it is obvious that they are glad to be done with the endless blues and grays of the ice, snow, and rock settings.  Brazilian-born director Carlos Saldanha (director of “Ice Age” and co-director of the underrated “Robots”) takes evident pride and delight in bringing his home town to the screen, taking full advantage of 3D CGI so that we can swoop around the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue atop the Corcovado Mountain and hang-glide over miles of beaches.  He has fun with Brazilian culture, too.  When Carnival revelers cross in front of their car, Linda asks Tulio if a woman in a gold-spangled costume is a performer.  “No,” he replies, “she’s my dentist.”  As the woman in the spangles happily runs off to the celebration, she reminds Tulio to floss.  And Blu provides a critique of samba music that will sound familiar to its fans.

Eisenberg’s tremulous voice is just right for Blu, giving him a neurotic, urban, understated wit.  “You know how people say ‘it’s a jungle out there?'” he complains to Jewel when they find themselves in the middle of a rainforest. “Not a good thing.”  He gets strong support from Tracy Morgan as a bulldog, George Lopez as a toucan, and Will.i.Am and Jamie Foxx as friendly birds.  The story may not be new, but in fairness it is a theme that is very appealing to children, whose entire lives are about finding themselves outside their safe, domestic environment and trying to navigate the wild and sometimes scary unpredictability of real life.

The star of the show in every respect is a cockatoo named Nigel (voice of Jermaine Clement of HBO’s “Flight of the Conchords”), one of the most masterfully animated characters in movie history.  Blue Sky Studios created a remarkable bird villain named Vlad three years ago in “Horton Hears a Who.”  It was a daunting mechanical challenge to animate the infinite complexities of dozens of wing joints and thousands of feathers but Vlad was on screen only briefly.  Here the Blue Sky animators take what they learned from Vlad much further.  Nigel is a key figure with an even more complicated structure, at once menacing and shambling, who sings, dances, menaces, and fights, all in character.  The algorithms necessary for what can only be called Nigel’s performance could probably have programmed a moon shot, and yet he seems completely natural and fluidly expressive.   Clement’s voice work is a perfect balance of mean and funny, and Nigel’s musical tribute to his own villainy is pure pleasure.

Saldanha is at his best when there are dozens of characters on screen.  Whether they are dancing or fighting, they are colorful, joyous, and meticulously choreographed.  A battle between the birds and the monkeys is exciting and funny and the opening dance number is a kaleidoscopic treat.  The climax, in the middle of a Carnival parade with massive floats and crowds of thousands is brilliantly imagined.  Blu spends most of the movie trying to get off the ground, but with Nigel and these big, showy scenes, Saldanha makes the movie soar.

 

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3D Animation DVD/Blu-Ray Pick of the Week Fantasy For the Whole Family Musical Talking animals

Country Strong

Posted on April 12, 2011 at 8:00 am

The husband manager of the beloved country singer just out of rehab says to her, “Do I tell you how to sing, darlin’? Hmm? Have I ever told you how to sing a song?” “That ain’t the point,” she weakly responds, and he keeps going. “Don’t tell me how to run your life. I been doin’ pretty good with it.”

That brief exchange 36 years ago in the classic Robert Altman film, “Nashville,” summarizes the new Gwyneth Paltrow film, “Country Strong.” She plays Kelly Canter, always introduced as a six-time Grammy winner, whose husband-manager James (played by real-life country superstar Tim McGraw) takes her out of rehab a month early for a series of concerts, on the theory that her brand needs more rehabilitation than her substance abuse problem.

But the incomplete rehab is not the only unfinished business. In a performance in Dallas, Kelly, then five months pregnant, was so drunk she fell off the stage. She has to regain the trust of her fans, concert promoters, her husband, and — toughest of all — herself.

To make things even more complicated and difficult, the opening acts for her new tour are Beau (“Tron: Legacy’s” Garrett Hedlund) and Chiles (“Gossip Girl’s” Leighton Meester). Kelly likes Beau. James likes Chiles. Beau and Chiles like each other. Not even a country song, much less a movie, can manage all that drama.

The music is the best part. Hedlund has a surprisingly rich singing voice, the mahogany tones giving depth and stature to an under-written character, and Meester handles her songs like the beauty pageant contestant with Taylor Swift ambitions she is asked to play. But all of Paltrow’s considerable acting chops are not up to the challenge of playing either a country singer or a substance abuser. Her toned, willowy body and elegant, urban posture are out of place and her singing voice, while pleasant and tuneful is far better suited to the saucy songs she performed on “Glee.”

As in her first film, The Greatest, writer-director Shana Feste shows a great deal of promise, but like many excited beginners, she still has not figured out how to remove the clutter from her story. Individual scenes work well enough and the songs are very good but she juggles too many relationships with too many ups and downs and the conclusion feels unearned and tacked on. Part of the power of a country song is its simplicity in telling its story, a lesson Feste still needs to learn.

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Drama Musical

Tangled

Posted on March 28, 2011 at 3:24 pm

Disney has taken a 200-year-old story from the Brothers Grimm and made it just modern enough, sassy without being snarky, fresh and contemporary without any po-mo air quotes. It’s the classic fairy tale of the girl with the long, long hair who is locked in the tower by an evil witch.

A potion made from a special flower that could heal all injuries and bestow eternal youth given to the queen while she was in childbirth somehow transmuted it special powers to the baby’s hair. Mother Gothel (deliciously dastardly diva Donna Murphy) kidnaps Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) from the castle so that she can be young forever. She raises the baby as her own daughter, telling her that she must never leave the tower because the world is a very dangerous place for a vulnerable young woman with an extraordinary gift.

Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi of television’s “Chuck”) is a dashing adventurer and a thief. There are wanted posters with (somewhat inaccurate) drawings of his face. On the run from the palace guards, he comes across the tower and thinks it looks like a great place to hide out. Rapunzel has been kept away from the world, but the world finally comes to her.

She persuades her “mother” to go on a trip and forces Flynn to agree to take her out for one day. Every year, on her birthday, she sees mysterious floating lights.  She wants, just once, to leave the tower to find out what they are.  

They stop in a pub filled with scary villains and in a musical number reminiscent of “High School Musical’s” “Stick to the Status Quo,” the thugs launch into an hilarious song about their dreams that is one of the movie’s best moments. But Flynn’s hulking former cronies, the palace guards and their super-tracker horse, and Mother Gothel are all after them, so Rapunzel’s hair will need to be part slingshot, part bungee cord, part Tarzan’s swinging vine, and part flashlight to keep them on the way to the lanterns. Even though they are often in danger, Rapunzel learns that the world is not as terrifying as she was told. And Flynn learns that the world is not as bleak as his experience had taught him.

There are adventures and exchanges of confidences, and more encounters with the thieves, the guards, the horse (one of the movie’s wittiest additions to the story), and the witch on the way to an exquisitely beautiful release of the lanterns, one of the loveliest moments on screen all year and well worth the 3D glasses. Tuneful numbers from Alan Menken (“Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast”) with witty lyrics from Glenn Slater sound more like show tunes than boomer-friendly pop, especially when delivered by Broadway star Murphy. The classic gloss they give the story nicely frames more modern touches like the computer-enhanced animation and spunky heroine. Disney has given us another princess worthy of its canon.

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3D Animation Based on a book For the Whole Family Musical
‘Memphis’ Comes to Movie Theaters — Special Event

‘Memphis’ Comes to Movie Theaters — Special Event

Posted on March 22, 2011 at 9:43 pm

The Broadway smash hit, “Memphis,” Tony Award-winner for best musical, is coming to a movie theater near you. NCM Fathom and Broadway Worldwide are presenting an exclusive Broadway musical event in more than than 530 movie theaters for four nights only: Thursday, April 28; Saturday, April 30; and Tuesday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m., with a special matinee on Sunday, May 1 at 12:30 p.m. (all times are local). This is the first time a current Tony Award-winning Best Musical will be presented in movie theaters while concurrently running on Broadway. In addition to the electrifying musical, audiences will be treated to an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the musical that won four 2010 Tony Awards and continues to play to sold out houses on Broadway. “Memphis” was captured live in performance with the original Broadway cast for this special Fathom event presentation.

Tickets are available at participating theater box offices and online. For a complete list of theater locations, prices and additional information — including cast photos and other details —visit the NCM Fathom website (theaters and participants are subject to change).

“Memphis” takes place in the smoky halls and underground clubs of the segregated 50’s, where a young white DJ named Huey Calhoun (Chad Kimball) fell in love with everything he shouldn’t: rock and roll and an electrifying black singer (Montego Glover). It is an original story about the cultural revolution that erupted when his vision met her voice, and the music changed forever. Bursting off the stage with explosive dancing, irresistible songs and a thrilling tale of fame and forbidden love, this incredible journey is filled with laughter, soaring emotion and roof-raising rock ‘n’ roll.

This is the first time that audiences across the country will have the chance to see the Broadway cast of an award-winning musical while the show is still playing in New York. “Memphis’ will launch a U. S. national tour in Memphis, Tenn., in October 2011 at the Orpheum Theatre.

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Based on a play Musical

Lord of the Dance 3D

Posted on March 16, 2011 at 6:20 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: All Ages
MPAA Rating: G
Profanity: None
Alcohol/ Drugs: None
Violence/ Scariness: None
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: March 17, 2011

The best seat in the house for one of the most popular shows on the planet is “Lord of the Dance 3D,” a concert film that puts the viewers on stage with the thunderously percussive Irish dancers starring and under the direction of Chicago-born Michael Flatley, the show’s “creator, producer, director, and star.” And of course, Lord of the Dance.

There’s no dramatic tension here, either on or off-stage. They try — Flatley explains at the beginning that this show attempted the impossible and everyone said it couldn’t be done, now the pressure is really on because they are coming home to Dublin. But the graphics that open the movie remind us that it has already sold out the biggest venues in the biggest cities in the world and it is fair to expect that an Irish dance show will do pretty well in Ireland.

And there is a folklore-ish sort of storyline in the dances, with a glittery jester-clad sprite waking the dancers with a flute, followed by some sort of good and evil battle that climaxes as the sprite’s flute is snapped in pieces and Flatley’s sparkling Lord of the Dance belt is ripped from his waist. Do you think he can dance it all back to victory?

At its cheesiest, which is very, very cheesy, the battle of the dancers is reminiscent of a (more) twinkle-toed version of Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video with a bit of the Sharks and Jets from “West Side Story,” if the Sharks costumes were inspired by “Star Wars.” It is almost relentlessly entertaining, with wild stage effects that include shooting streams of sparks and images in lights timed to each tap, and many very lovely legs in very, very short skirts dancing up a storm.

It would have added more interest to give us a sense of what goes on backstage and meet some of the almost interchangeable dancers. I would love to have seen the rehearsals to find out how they create the impeccable precision of the dozen and more taps per second as they all but fly across the stage. But the movie keeps us at a distance, seeing only what the live audience sees.

It’s unlikely to thrill those who are not already fans. But the throngs who love to see Irish step-dancing will find that up-close and 3D is an excellent way to enjoy the show.

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3D Documentary For the Whole Family Movies -- format Musical
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