“Being normal is overrated,” a young boy’s friend assures him. “You’ll probably turn out to be very interesting.”
He was right. British chef and food writer Nigel Slater tells his own story in “Toast”. His mother was a terrible cook. When he suggested they try fresh produce, she explained that they were better off with canned food because you don’t know where the fresh vegetables had been. She would boil the food in the can and if it came out especially badly they would have toast for dinner. She loved Nigel with all her heart and he adored her. But he never felt close to his gruff father (Ken Stott). And then his mother died. Nigel correctly discerned that the cleaning woman his father hired (Helena Bonham Carter) was determined to be promoted to lady of the house. She and Nigel were engaged in an all-out war that was tragic but darkly comic because the battlefield was the kitchen.
This film was produced for BBC television and it assumes a familiarity with British dialect and culture that may be confusing for American audiences, even the Masterpiece Theatre-loving Anglophiles. And some family members have disputed the accuracy of Slater’s portrayal. It spends too much time on the early part of Slater’s life (played as a child by Oscar Kennedy) and not enough on his teen years (played by Freddie Highmore). The tone keeps it engaging, though, because Slater’s point of view does not get maudlin. When his stepmother is portrayed as a grasping shrew we understand that it is through his eyes as an unforgiving teenager and, as the last scene makes clear, that he recognizes that living well is the best revenge. Except for maybe being the one to tell the story.
In honor of this week’s “Real Steel,” here are 10 movie robots worth watching. The term “robot,” by the way, was invented by playwright Karl Capek in his 1920 play, “R.U.R.”
1. Transformers The first in the series was a great summer action film and I admit to tearing up when it looked like Bumblebee had been destroyed.
2. Robots An underrated gem, this charming film about a world of robots has imaginative visuals based on the work of illustrator William Joyce and a heartwarming story featuring the voices of Ewan McGregor and Halle Berry.
3. Bicentennial Man Think of it as Pinocchio played by C3PO from “Star Wars.” Robin Williams plays “Andrew Martin,” a robot who wants to be human, in this adaptation of a story and book by Isaac Asimov.
4. Forbidden Planet The first big-budget sci-fi film was inspired by Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Leslie Neilsen stars as a spaceship captain to comes to a planet where a mysterious scientist, his daughter, and Robby the robot are the only survivors of an Earth colony.
5. Robot Jox In the future, wars are conducted by gladiator-style battles between giant robots in this film starring Gary Graham, Anne-Marie Johnson, and Paul Koslo.
6. I, Robot Will Smith stars in this film based on one of Isaac Asimov’s best-known books, the story of an investigation into a possible murder of a human by a robot.
7. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence Steven Spielberg completed the film begun by Stanley Kubrick, an uneven but ambitious and visually stunning story about a robot child. The scene in the robot junkyard is heart-wrenching.
8. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World 4D Ricky Gervais provided the voice for the robot dog, which writer/director Robert Rodriguez said had so many functions he was like a Swiss army knife.
9. Return to Oz This is a much darker story than “The Wizard of Oz,” so it is not for younger kids, but it is an imaginative adventure and Tik-Tok the mechanical man is a delight.
10. Metropolis This brilliant German expressionist film from Fritz Lang was made in 1927, about a dystopian future with managers in luxurious surroundings and workers condemned to live in dungeons. A beautiful robot modeled after a kind-hearted woman from the managers group plays a crucial role.
I have one copy of each to give away. Email me at moviemom@moviemom.com with Shalom in the subject line and tell me which one you would like. Don’t forget your address! I will pick three random winners on October 11.
Rated PG for brief language and momentary historical smoking
Profanity:
Brief mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Smoking, social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:
Sad death, reference to off-screen teen violence
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
October 6, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:
B005H4TDNY
A real-life “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” this is the inspiring story of a dedicated teacher who transformed the lives of his students and the gathering 35 years later, when he was 92 years old, to perform a concert in his honor.
No one expected much from the kids who went to Houston’s Kashmere High School in a depressed African-American neighborhood. But a teacher the kids called “Prof” (for “professor”) showed them they could learn to play music that would take them to a national championship, international tours, and a recording that would rise the Amazon charts decades later as a CD re-release.
Prof was Conrad Johnson, Jr. In the 1970’s, as the Black Power movement was inspiring a reawakening of pride in African-American culture, Prof took the school’s jazz band and added discipline, ambition, and a lot of funk. One of the documentary’s highlights is the description of the repertoire of the other high school jazz bands of the era — mostly a lot of 1940’s and 50’s standards. When the Kashmere band, called Thunder Soul, showed up for the national championships in Mobile Alabama with their Afros and their attitude, the only black high school to compete, they caused an uproar. The judges initially tried to declare two winners but Prof insisted they go back and pick just one.
Prof’s insistence on excellence, his innovative approach, and most of all, his own example inspired several years’ of students to try harder and dream bigger. The music is genuinely thrilling but the real thrill here is seeing what a great educator can do. The love he had for music and for his students and the respect they still have for him decades later is powerful and moving. A feature film about this story is in the works and I hope it will be everything Prof deserves, but nothing will match the heart of the real-life footage, archival and new, of the people who lived it.
There I was, at the Georgetown Ritz hotel, and Martin Sheen walked into the room. President Bartlett from “The West Wing,” Kit from “Badlands,” star of movies from “Apocalypse Now” to “Catch Me if You Can,” to “The American President.” He starred in the very first movie I ever reviewed — for my school paper — “The Subject Was Roses.” He was in town to talk about his new film, written and directed by his son, Emilio Estavez, called The Way. Sheen plays Tom, an American doctor who comes to St. Jean Pied de Port, France to collect the remains of his adult son (played by Emilio Estevez), killed in the Pyrenees in a storm while walking the Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of Saint James. Rather than return home, Tom decides to embark on the historical pilgrimage to honor his son’s desire to finish the journey.
I was very impressed that before Sheen turned his attention to me, he spoke very graciously to the Ritz employee who was there to see if there was anything he needed. And then he introduced himself to me and we settled in for a conversation that was so warm and engaging I felt like we were old friends.
Sheen talked to me about his parents. His mother was born in Ireland and his father was born in Cuba, the son of Spanish immigrants. They met in Ohio in a class for people who wanted to become American citizens. They had eleven children, ten boys (one who died at birth) and one girl, and they adored each other. He adored them, and he told me that the only two places in the world where he feels completely at home, “absolutely totally secure and safe” are Spain and Ireland. “I never make a reservation; I just arrive and something happens. Haven’t spent a night on the street yet.”
Where did the idea come from for a movie about a pilgrimage along El Camino de Santiago?
It’s been there for more than 900 years and it is a national treasure. It’s one of the oldest pilgrim sites after Jerusalem and Rome, one of the top three Christian pilgrimage sites since the Middle Ages. St. Francis actually walked it. Millions and millions of people have done it. My father was a Galliego. He grew up about 80 km from Santiago. Santiago is St. James. Compostela is the Field of Stars where his remains were discovered. I grew up knowing about this path and having a romantic image of the journey. You always think you’re going to do all the someday bucket list things. Someday I still will do it!
In the summer of 2003 we had a six week break from “The West Wing.” I’d been studying on it and I thought, “This is the year!” All I had was the intention. I didn’t have any plans. I didn’t have a backpack. I didn’t even have a map. But I had studied it and read all the guidebooks and I was ready to go.
The previous year, my brother had died. I’m the seventh son and this was the guy ahead of me. We were “Irish twins,” and very close. We were inseparable. I said. “Enough funerals, let’s celebrate.” I organized a family reunion for the siblings on what would have been my mother’s 100th birthday, God rest her soul, in her village in Ireland. We got everybody there from all over the place and it was a wonderful celebration. We had mass in chapel and celebrated for three days. I invited everyone to come to Spain to walk the Camino, but no one would come with me! Taylor is Emilio’s oldest son, and he came with me. He’s our tour manager here today. He was just 19 then. And I have a friend, Matt Clark, I’ve known longer than my wife. He appears in this film as the priest my character thinks is a rabbi. He’s like a brother to me so he went with us to Ireland and came with us to Spain. He and Taylor and I were in Madrid trying to figure out how to do it in two weeks. You can take horses and you can take bicycles and you can walk it, but in two weeks it is impossible. So my sister suggested we rent a car and drive along it for future reference.
We stopped in San Pedro de Cardeña, the town in the movie where the boy steals my bag. It’s where El Cid is buried. We took refuge in a bed and breakfast that night and there was a pilgrim supper, with people from all over. The family was serving dinner and the youngest daughter, Julia, walks in and she looks at Taylor and Taylor looks at her and they fall instantly in love. They’re married now and they live there. I came home without a grandson!
That sealed our fate. I had a grandson that completed the cycle of his grandfather, my father, who left Spain in 1916 and sailed to Cuba and then came to America. And now his great-grandson, Taylor, is back in Spain. This is a real family story. And I still yearn to do the pilgrimage without a camera or a phone, someday.
I told Emilio when I got back that he had to check it out and he knew if he was going to see his son he had to go to Spain.
In this era of airplanes and the Internet, why do pilgrimages still matter?
It is about relieving yourself, removing yourself from a comfort zone. It is about finding balance, about seeing honesty transcendence, about uniting the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh. No matter who you are, religious, spiritual, agnostic, we are all looking for balance. Pilgrimage allows the opportunity to challenge ourselves. If you don’t do something that costs you something, what is its value? You start out and make plans and you pack a big back, I need this, I need that. And then you get there and you start taking things out of your pack. You cannot give that stuff away. The other pilgrims do not want it. But you learn that you do not need what you thought you did. You start leaving things along the way. Every little refugio along the way has libraries of books in every language on earth that people have brought and left behind. And then your interior journey begins and you begin to let go of all of the stuff you have been holding onto that weighs you down. Everything you have accumulated that is burdening you. And you begin to free all of the hatred and envy you have been keeping. “Please let me forgive this person.” You own this journey and you begin to become yourself.” Please do not let me reject love.” And you realize that a conscious rejection of love is the universal sin. Pilgrimage confirms our life’s journey.
Tell me about being directed by your son.
He had no hesitation about telling me what to do! Absolutely no hesitation. I adore him. He’s my closest friend. He lives just down the road from us. He started an organic garden and now a vineyard. He was always a storyteller. He started writing plays in high school. He’s the best director — for me anyway. He knows where all the buttons are and he knows if I am faking it. He loves me enough to risk my wrath by telling me the truth. No other director could know me the way he does and love me enough to make sure I do it right. He wrote the part for me and it is about a father and son. The Irish have a phrase: We never get over our fathers and we’re not required to. For good or ill, you’re stuck with the father. My father was 6’5″. I grew up with this giant. I left home at 18 and came back a year and half later and realized he was only 5’6″.
In the future, wars are conducted by gladiator-style battles between giant robots in this film starring Gary Graham, Anne-Marie Johnson, and Paul Koslo.
This is a much darker story than “The Wizard of Oz,” so it is not for younger kids, but it is an imaginative adventure and Tik-Tok the mechanical man is a delight.
with managers in luxurious surroundings and workers condemned to live in dungeons. A beautiful robot modeled after a kind-hearted woman from the managers group plays a crucial role.
, directed by J.J. Abrams.
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and explore the Holy Land with 
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. Sheen plays Tom, an American doctor who comes to St. Jean Pied de Port, France to collect the remains of his adult son (played by Emilio Estevez), killed in the Pyrenees in a storm while walking the