Spinning Into Butter

Posted on March 26, 2009 at 2:45 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language
Profanity:	Very strong language including racial epithets
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Some violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	March 27, 2009

The best of intentions and a welcome willingness to engage on the touchiest issues is not enough to keep this movie from feeling more like a seminar than a story. It betrays its origins as a play, still talky and static. But its ideas are so provocative and its approach so sincere and constructive that it is worth a look.

Sarah Jessica Parker, far away from designer duds and trying to look serious and a little mousy, plays Sarah Daniels, the dean of a small liberal arts college with a genteel, Vermont campus. Some anonymous racist attacks are leveled at a new black student and there is disagreement within the faculty and administration about how to handle it. They schedules a campus-wide meeting, but the students are not invited to speak. A local news reporter (Mykelti Williamson) wants to cover the story but the administration is furious. In the middle of all of this is Sarah, who wants to explore the issue in a substantive and constructive way and acknowledges that she has some internal conflicts she is not proud of.

The title comes from the classic children’s story Little Black Sambo, now considered unacceptably racist. In that story, the tigers chase each other so fast that they spin into butter. Here, the way that the issue is addressed — or sidestepped — leads to a similar result, with everyone racing to avoid responsibility. Out of the best of intentions, at the beginning of the film, Sarah asks a student (the always-superb Victor Rasuk) to change his racial classification from NYrican to Puerto Rican to qualify for a scholarship. It is a good lead-in to a series of discussions, confrontations, and missed communications about America’s most sensitive and least-often honestly discussed issue. The best thing about this movie will be the conversations it inspires on the way home.

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Based on a play Drama Movies -- format

A New Faith-Based Production Company

Posted on March 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm

“C Me Dance,” the first film produced by Uplifting Entertainment , a new faith-based motion picture company, will open in 200 theaters across the country on April 3. The film is being endorsed by the Leukemia Foundation and the Dove Foundation for excellence in filmmaking. The press release says:
“C Me Dance” tells the story of a teenage girl named “Sheri,” played by new actress Christina DeMarco, who has trained her entire life to dance for the Pittsburgh Ballet. As her dream comes true, she finds out she is dying from a rare blood disease.
Through the illness, God uses Sheri to bring people to Christ, but the devil tries to intervene. Sheri and her father Vince, played by veteran actor, writer and film producer Greg Robbins, are sent on a spiritual adventure to bring revival to America. The movie’s soundtrack features such recording artists as Lincoln Brewster, Eowyn, Stephanie Fraschetti and Terri Shamar.
In conjunction with the film’s release, Uplifting Entertainment is sponsoring an essay contest for middle- and high school-level students.
I like Uplifting’s stated goal: “To Inform With Delight” And I like its mission statement: “Create, produce, package, and distribute Christ centered family entertainment.” I wish them success.

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Spiritual films

Interview: Ray Griggs of ‘Super Capers’

Posted on March 25, 2009 at 5:00 pm

‘Super Capers” is a cute film about a guy with no super powers who teams up with some super-heroes in need of assistance, the “Super Capers.” The story includes good guys, bad guys, stolen gold, a wrongly accused hero, and some surprises. Writer/director/star Ray Griggs says that his mission is “to tell compelling and captivating stories to a family audience so that they may be swept away from reality and lost in the silver screen for a moment in time. I spoke with him about the film.

How did this film come about?

I did an award-winning short, but studios aren’t really inclined to put their money on someone who’s really unknown, so I had to prove myself with an independent film. I tried to use all the resources I had, so I wrote, produced, directed, and starred in it. I thought I might as well do what inspired me to be a film-maker, take a little something from people like Spielberg and Zemekis, put them all into one big melting pot. So, there’s a little bit of “Back to the Future,” a little bit of “Star Wars,” and a little bit of “Superman.” There are a lot of homages to things, like a big 80’s film. Our score is from two guys who work with the great John Williams. And of course there’s Adam West!

Yes, there is! How did it feel to have TV’s Batman, Adam West, involved?

As a kid you’re into watching the shows but don’t think you’ll be one day working with him. I really enjoyed having him as the old superhero — in an adapted Batmobile — driving the young superhero. There are a lot of touches like that, in the costumes and characters, things that adults will recognize but little kids will fall in love with without needing to know where they came from.

The trend these days seems to be superheroes who are complex and troubled, as in “The Dark Knight” and “Watchmen.” But you’ve gone another way, more light-hearted and playful.

We were breaking away from what the traditional movies do. With an independent film I could have had total freedom to do violence, nudity, whatever we wanted. But it also gave us independence to do what we wanted. I wanted it to be for little kids, to inspire them the way I was inspired. The idea comes from me as a kid, wanting to be a superhero and pretending to be one. The main character in this movie has no powers but wants to fit in. He wants it so much he pretends he has powers. A lot of us feel that way.

What superpower would you most like to have?

I’d like to fly, especially today with all the traffic!

How else does the movie reflect your own vision of the world?

Well, the G on the superhero uniform does not stand for Gruberman — it stands for God, the ultimate creator and the ultimate power.

Your short film is about Lucifer, so there is a religious element in both films.

All things are possible with God, and nothing without him. I am grateful to God for my talent. And I feel, why not promote God — there are so many films that don’t. When you do see a Christian on television or in the movies either they are making fun of him or he’s the bad guy.

I have a comic book “prequel” to the movie and will send it to the first person who sends me an email with moviemom@moviemom.com with “Capers” in the subject line.

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Interview Superhero

Quantum of Solace

Posted on March 24, 2009 at 8:00 am

More like “The Bond Ultimatum,” this is the Bournization of Bond. He may still spend some time in a dinner jacket, but this Bond is not the cool, debonair spy who seldom misses and never questions. This Bond is almost feral. He is seldom sure but he never, ever stops.

For the first time, there is no “Bond, James Bond” introduction and no dry flirtation with the ever-reliable Miss Moneypenny. Past Bonds have seemed like infomercials because they were so overstuffed with product placement, but this version is so stripped down to essence that there is not even time for Q to demonstrate an array of new gadgets so that we can have the pleasure of anticipating each of them in action.

This is the first Bond film to be an explicit sequel, beginning where Casino Royale left off. And so, in addition to non-stop action, brilliantly staged, we get to see Bond in the process of becoming Bond. Craig’s Bond is still near-feral, rough around the edges, his fury not yet under control. In the last film, he showed himself to be damaged but capable of being vulnerable until the death and apparent betrayal of Vesper (Eva Green) left him furious and equally determined to exact revenge and to protect his heart, if not his body or his soul, from any further trauma. Yes, this time it’s personal.

The issue of betrayal arises at all levels in this movie, right from the beginning, when even allies like the Americans and the inside circle of British spies can no longer be trusted. M (Judi Dench, as tart as a Granny Smith apple) has to rely on Bond, who may be rough, edgy, furious, even brutal, but who is not conventionally corruptible.

Every era gets the Bond it deserves. Every Bond is a reflection of his times. The Cold War Bond was the last of the unabashed pre-feminism alpha males. In the run-up to the Reagan era we had the Bond of excess — overstuffed with product placement and plots so literally out of this world that Bond ended up in outer space. And now we have the Bond of the era of compromised morals and unclear alliances. This is a rebooted Bond, building to some future time when gadgets and girls and martinis may re-enter the story.

Some things are unchangeable. No “Bond, James Bond,” Miss Moneypenny, or Q, but Bond does wear a dinner jacket (beautifully) and globe-hop to an array of glamorous locations. All the better for chasing around them and blowing them up. The girl (there must always be a girl) is as bent as Bond is, also driven for revenge and willing to do or destroy anything to get it. But don’t spend any time trying to figure out what the title refers to — basically, nothing. It is the title of a James Bond short story that has no other connection to this movie.

The film is not just tough on Americans; it portrays the world as a bleak and inherently compromised place. The bad guy insists on being paid in Euros, not dollars, and the CIA is willing to sell out just about anyone for oil. But it is another, even more precious liquid that is at risk here. Bad guy Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) glowers effectively and Gemma Arterton is refreshing as Ms. (Strawberry) Fields. Her departure from the story is, as in Casino Royale, a quick visual homage to an iconic Bond image, reminding us that if our era requires a Bond more gritty and less glamorous, Craig, Dench, & Co., have delivered him.

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Action/Adventure Series/Sequel Spies

Bolt

Posted on March 24, 2009 at 8:00 am

Bolt (voice of John Travolta) thinks he is a super-dog. He and his “person,” Penny (voice of Miley Cyrus) spend their days battling the evil, green-eyed Dr. Calico (voice of Malcolm McDowell), who has captured Penny’s scientist father and has a lair defended by dozens of black-clad henchmen. Thank goodness for Bolt’s loyalty and courage and for his thunderous super-bark and heat vision, too!

But what Bolt doesn’t know is that none of this is real. He’s an actor on a television show and his “superpowers” are special effects. The director insists that Bolt must believe that it is all really happening in order to make his performance, well, believable. “If the dog believes it,” he explains condescendingly to “Mindy from the network,” “the audience believes it.”

Bolt accidentally gets shipped to New York, and for the first time finds out what the real world is like — and what he is really like, too. Even without the super-bark and the steel-melting stare, he has to find his way back to Penny.

This feels like a transitional film, as Pixar takes over Disney animation, and the seams show. Bolt is a likable character, but bland next to those around him, especially the pigeons, who deserve much more screen time, and those who accompany him on his road trip, a scraggly cat (voice of Susie Essman of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and an excitable hamster (animator Mark Walton). Bolt’s dilemma may be confusing to younger children who are still unclear with their own notions of what is real and what is pretend and may not be interested in the problems of a child star with a pushy agent. But in its best moments, it gently shows us how Bolt’s discoveries parallel those of a child in learning self-reliance.

Children have an ever-evolving sense of what is real and what is pretend. Developmental psychologists believe that it is not until age nine or even older that they are sure about whether what they see in movies and television is really true and still engage in “magical thinking” that parents can approve of (that Santa lives in the North Pole) and that is more troubling (that they caused parental discord or separation). Being able to repeat “it’s only pretend” does not mean that they understand what it means. “Bolt” is a movie that reflects this aspect of childhood.

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3D Animation For all ages