Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol

Posted on December 15, 2011 at 7:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence
Profanity:	One s-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant action-style peril and violence, bombs, guns, chases, explosions, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	December 16, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	April 09, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004EPYZUS

The first live-action film from animation director Brad Bird (“The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles”) is pure adrenalin rush. It has the best stunts of the year and crackerjack mastery of pace in this fourth “Mission: Impossible” movie.

More “inspired by” than “based on” the 1960’s television series, the series features Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, an agent who operates outside even the ultra-clandestine world of spies. The most direct tie to the original program is in the presentation of new assignments. They include video as well as audio four decades later, but the recording still intones, “Your mission, should you decide to accept it…” and end by advising him that if anyone on the team is caught or killed, the US government will disavow any knowledge of the operation. And then it self-destructs — this time with a witty twist.

We begin with a classic spy setting, a document drop gone very wrong. There’s a guy with a laptop in a van. There are guards playing a card game in front of a bank of monitors. And there’s a field operative in some sort of hallway. Ethan has to be broken out of a Russian prison, and for some reason it has to happen before the end of the song, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” by Dean Martin. A meticulously orchestrated plan is amended on the spot and the guy in the van says, “I don’t know what he’s doing and for some reason I’m helping him.” What Ethan is doing is bringing another prisoner along with him. He sticks by his friends, he explains.

After Ethan is in the wrong place at the wrong time and aborts a mission that takes him to the heart of the Kremlin only to be blamed when the whole building blows up, “the Secretary” (Tom Wilkinson) shows up to say that the entire Mission: Impossible force has been shut down and it is time for “ghost protocol,” a mission that is off the books for those who are already operating off the books, kind of a spy version of double secret probation. I just have to ask — the Secretary of what? The head of the CIA has the title “Director.” Cabinet officers are hardly low profile. But he’s not around long anyway, and with the M:I force disbanded and no time, Ethan has to work with the people already there. That’s field agent Gorgeous (Paula Patton as Jane), tech guy Comic Relief (Simon Pegg as Benji), and Mystery Guest Who Says He is an Analyst But Fights Like a Field Agent (“The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner, soon to be Hawkeye in “The Avengers,” as Brandt).

They’re after a dangerous guy code-named Cobalt (Michael Nyqvist of the Swedish “Dragon Tattoo” series). He’s one of those super-villains who is not only off-the-charts brilliant but also in great shape and with outstanding hand-to-hand combat skills. And if they don’t stop him a lot of very bad stuff is going to happen. The details are not important; they’re just a delivery system for action and stunts that includes a wild chase though a sandstorm, a crazy fight scene in a parking lot with vertical conveyer belts and revolving platforms (has Bird been consulting with his old boss re “Cars 2?”), a fall into fan shaft, kept just above the sharp blades by a magnet suit, and Ethan’s heart-stopping ascension along the side of Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, 100 stories above ground with nothing but a pair of very sticky mechanical gloves — and then just one glove. What’s fun is what goes right — all the cool gadgets and clever plans. What’s cooler is when things go wrong — mechanical failures and just plain being outsmarted by a very clever bad guy. Our crew visits world capitals and a secret hideout in a train car and has run-ins with an assassin, a weapons dealer, the Russian police force, and a playboy billionaire. And of course, as all glamorous spy movies must, there’s also a pause for a big, fancy party so our crew can get all gussied up. Though I can never figure out why no one at the party ever notices our crew having conversations with the air Patton is spectacularly beautiful.

Renner is terrific in this, playing very well off of Cruise’s intensity and performing the action scenes a Steve McQueen-style economy of motion (I was pleased to see that he is currently working on a biopic of McQueen). He also shows great comic timing in a scene where he has to force himself to do something dangerous. I liked the way the story tied into the third in the series (director J.J. Abrams of III was a producer on this one). But the post-mission coda was under-scripted, with dialog that would have been out of date in the days of the television series. And even by the low don’t-think-too-hard standards of chase and explosion films, the plot has some big holes. But no one is buying a ticket for witty repartee or realism. This is just for fun and it is enormously entertaining.

(more…)

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

Posted on December 15, 2011 at 6:30 pm

The third in the series about the singing chipmunks and their exasperated but perpetually forgiving human father is a little brighter and sweeter than its predecessors. It tones down the slapstick and potty humor, meriting a family-friendly G rating.

The mischievous chipmunk trio singing pop songs in high, squeaky voices have been enduringly popular since their Grammy-winning 1958 single “Christmas Don’t Be Late,” the one where Alvin wants a huuuula hoooooooop. Songwriter Ross Bagdasarian used early audiotape technology to find the right speed – slow enough to be intelligible but fast enough for a helium-like sound to give the harmonies some buoyancy. Many recordings and an animated television series later, Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. has continued the saga of the chipmunks with live action movies starring Jason Lee as their long-suffering human father, Dave Seville.

Like the previous films, the third in the series relies primarily on recycled pop songs, Alvin’s naughtiness, Dave’s frustration, a silly bad guy (David Cross as Ian), and a couple of grown-up jokes (James Bond and the double rainbow YouTube hit) to keep the parents awake. It benefits from the welcome addition of former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Jenny Slate, best known for her viral video and book, “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.”

It begins as Dave, the three original chipmunks, and their female counterparts, the Chipettes, board a cruise ship (intrusive product placement alert) for a much-needed vacation (cue the Go-Go’s). As usual, Alvin keeps getting into trouble and Dave keeps apologizing for the chaos Alvin leaves behind. Their old nemesis Ian shows up on the ship, too, in a pelican costume. There’s an amusing nightclub scene on the ship when the Chipettes are challenged to a dance-off to the inescapable earworm “Party Rock.”

When a kite mishap carries the chipmunks out to sea, Dave and Ian go after them via parasail and everyone ends up cast away on a remote island with only one inhabitant, the stranded Zoe (Slate). Yes, time for Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor.”

This is the best part of the movie as the chipmunks are pushed outside of their usual personas. When the cautious, bookish Simon is bit by a toxic insect, he has a temporary personality change, announcing he is now a dashing French-accented daredevil. Without Simon to act as leader, Alvin has to stop being “the fun one” and be responsible for taking care of the others. Chipette Jeanette learns that she can be more than “the pretty one” and rely on her intelligence and resourcefulness, especially after they discover hidden treasure, another Chipette is chip-napped, and a volcano starts to erupt.

Top voice talents Justin Long, Jesse McCarthy, Amy Poehler, Anna Faris, and Christina Applegate are wasted as the chipmunks, their sped-up voices unrecognizable. The same could be said for musical numbers. Upbeat tunes by edgy performers like LMFAO, Lady Gaga, and Pink are homogenized into indistinguishable rhythmic buzz. For kids, the familiarity, the silliness, and Dave’s unconditional love even when the chipmunks get into trouble make it appealing. For adults, the best it has to offer are nostalgia and a running time under 90 minutes.

(more…)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Posted on December 15, 2011 at 6:26 pm

There are spy stories with glamor and chases and explosions and answers. And there are spy stories like this one, murky, gritty, grubby, complicated. The brilliant BBC miniseries version of the the book by John le Carre opened with the grim-looking Russian matryoshka nested dolls, a perfect image for this Cold War era story of a traitor at the heart of British intelligence. The original miniseries, with Alec Guinness as the exiled spy called back in to find the mole was known for being both superbly made and almost impenetrable. I watched it four times before I felt confident that I had some idea of what was going on. And now it has been remade in a fraction of the running time. Its production design is brilliantly done and there are moments of extraordinary power and artistry but it is even harder to follow. Yes, the difficulty is part of the point. While one of the reasons we love movies and indeed stories of all kinds is that they make sense of a complicated and ambiguous world, and you can even make sense by pointing out the complicated and ambiguous nature of things, this movie does not have the time or the scope to tell this story effectively and suffers by comparison with the superior earlier version.

Gary Oldman plays the Guinness role of the ironically named George Smiley. He is a spy who was once close to “Control” (John Hurt), the head of British Intelligence, officially known as MI6 but referred to by everyone as “the Circus.” Smiley was pushed out of the Circus, which is why when one of their agents is double-crossed, shot, captured, and tortured, that someone in the top levels is giving secrets to the Soviets, Smiley is the only senior spy who is not a suspect, and thus the only one who can investigate. Control tells him it is one of five men, and he assigns code names to them based on the old nursery rhyme: tinker, tailor, soldier, poorman, and beggarman. Smiley is helped by a young agent named Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) and a rogue agent named Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), as well as a visit to a retired MI6 head of research (Kathy Burke in the film’s best performance).

But nothing is as straightforward as that paragraph suggests. Everything is codes within codes and what is not said or shown is more important than what is. The atmosphere is the most important character in the film. The production design by Maria Djurkovic powerfully evokes the era as Britain adjusts to post-WWII economic struggles and its rapidly shrinking role in international affairs with its dingy institutional spaces and ironically child-like vocabulary. The scenes set at an office Christmas party are dead-on and deadly, the mirthless drinking and sad little decorations. The contrast between the smallness of that world and the enormity of the end-of-the-world issues in those early days of WMDs is conveyed better by a hand-lettered sign in a grimy office than by the the big reveal about who has been providing secrets instead of gathering them.

(more…)

Interview: Nancy Stafford of ‘Christmas with a Capital C’

Posted on December 15, 2011 at 8:00 am

The beautiful and talented Nancy Stafford (“Matlock”) stars in the heartwarming Christmas with a Capital C, now available on DVD. She spoke to me about the movie and about the way her faith leads her to projects that share her message of faith and God’s love for each of us.

Tell me about the character you play in this movie.

I love this movie and I love my character! I play the heart and soul of the film, all due to the fabulous work of Andrea Gyertson Nasfell, who wrote the movie. I play the wife of the mayor of a small town in Alaska, played by Ted McGinley. We’re the kind of town where everyone gathers together at Christmas big time and we have a tradition of putting the nativity scene in the city park. And then a long-time childhood friend comes back to town and challenges us with a legal battle to remove the religious display from city property and gets an injunction, the town is split. Some people think we ought to make it more inclusive and get rid of the name “Christmas” but others say “we can’t let these folks to roll all over us.” My character is the one who brings some reason and some heart. She says instead of being combative and argue our way into agreement, why don’t we put our feet to faith and allow our actions instead of argument be the thing that is louder? Why can’t we be Jesus with skin on and do what Jesus said He had come to do, to be Emmanuel, the God with us, and be the heart and soul and mind of Christ for the people around us. The whole city launches a Christmas with a Capital C campaign of acts of kindness and service. We give away hot chocolate and wash people’s windows and do things for the homeless and those who have a little less. It changes the heart of the Grinch character but it also changes the whole town. I love the film because it makes the world recognize how ridiculous it is to try to take Christ out of Christmas but it is also a message to the church. It’s not to say we should not stand up for truth and righteousness but it is to say that our positive actions, our loving response to the people around us, even those who don’t agree with us, that changes people’s hearts.

Your character really tells people to start with themselves and that will change people more than arguing with them.

I got to say the best speeches in the film!

Tell me about your “Grinch” character.

Daniel Baldwin, one of the bad Baldwin boys. He’s a lovely guy, but plays a hardened character who grew up in the town but has gone off and seen the world and has had some unfortunate run-ins with Christians who have turned him off big-time. I can relate to that. I grew up in the church myself but when I went to college and didn’t have to go to church I chose not to. I had some issues with what I saw as hypocrisy in the church. So I get it! I was a prodigal for 15 years before I darkened the door of a church again. So I know there are a lot of people who don’t have a problem with Jesus but they have a problem with the church. So this guy comes back and he is hurt and disappointed and he does not want to participate or have it in his face. But he is a hurting and broken man. He has some vulnerability. So in the story when our daughter gives him cookies and it’s such a literal picture of her peeking in the window and seeing what was really happening in his house, like peeking into his soul and seeing that he is destitute on the inside.

Is it important to you that the projects you work on reflect your faith?

Yes, it is terribly important to me. I have been blessed to do two faith-based projects. For a lot of years I did not want to do them. I have been lucky enough to have some success in secular marketplace and only in the past few years I have seen Christian films that can hold up in the marketplace of films, that are looking better and better. But even though I have done secular work my faith has still been the driving force on what I choose to do. It dictates everything I do in life. I am not going to do anything that is counter with a Kingdom value. Over the years, as a result, I’ve worked less and less, but God is gracious and won’t let me leave the business. Part of it is the projects I turn down and part is just the roles for women over 50 in Hollywood. But I am speaking a lot and doing conferences and retreats and writing books and ministering to women, so my world is more spread out.

Do you have a favorite Bible verse?

There are so many! But I love Isaiah 61. They are life verses for me. They resonate to my heart and have been transforming for me. When the old prophet Isaiah is telling of Jesus coming, the pre-incarnate Christ talking through this prophet saying. “I’ve come to preach the good news, bind up the broken-hearted…oil of gladness instead of despair.” The great exchange we get when we have a life in Christ continues to touch me.

I’d love to hear about your new book.

I love this book! It’s called The Wonder of His Love: A Journey to the Heart of God. It’s a 30-day devotional that invites the reader to dive into the heart of God and discover 30 aspects of His love we might not always see or understand. Each one is on 30 different ways that God loves us. It’s really personal but people really seem to respond to it. I love women and I minister to women and my first book was for women but this one is for everyone, men and women, not a chick book. I write what I need. When I started writing Beauty by the Book: Seeing Yourself as God Sees You it was because I desperately needed to be reminded of who I am in Christ. I needed to assured and reminded of my value and my true worth, not based on what I look like or what I have or how I perform but on how He says about me me. The same thing with this book. I needed in my own life to be reminded of God’s actual, unshaking, immeasurable love for me. As I pored over scripture, I just saw it flying off the page. I started writing down a list of the aspects, the qualities of God’s love, His nature. I thought, if I need this, maybe someone else needs encouragement. When I’m walking through shadow times and in heartache or pain or disappointment, when it seems He cannot see me, when I can’t see His love at all, it is steadfast and always there.

Simon, Theodore, and….Alvin: “Christmas Don’t Be Late”

Posted on December 13, 2011 at 8:00 am

As the latest Chipmunks movie opens up this week, we remember how it all got started, with the Grammy-winning 1958 song, “Christmas Don’t Be Late:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=917SpFHHUU0&feature=related

The singing chipmunks were created by songwriter Ross Bagdasarian, who had appeared in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, “Rear Window” (as the piano player across the courtyard, playing one of his own compositions) and had some success as the co-writer of the Rosemary Clooney hit, “Come On-a My House” and writer/performer of the novelty song, “The Witch Doctor.” He came up with the idea of recording songs at high speeds to make the voices sound amusingly squeaky. The 1958 song “Christmas Don’t Be Late” was his first chipmunks recording and he played Dave and did all the voices, naming the three chipmunks after record executives. Later recordings used women’s voices. His son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr., is now responsible for bringing Alvin, Simon, Theodore and their long-suffering manager Dave to a new generation.