Smooch — on the Hallmark Channel

Posted on January 23, 2011 at 9:37 pm

There’s something just so likable about Kellie Martin, isn’t there?
I’ve been a fan since her “Life Goes On” days. She has such a sweetness about her, but strength, too. I really began to appreciate her as an actress in a TV movie called “About Sarah,” where she played the daughter of a developmentally disabled woman.
I’m looking forward to her new Hallmark Channel film, Smooch, a Valentine’s Day treat about a prince with amnesia who ends up working as a nanny for the daughter of a single mom. Hmmmm, I wonder what will happen?
Watch it Saturday Feb 5 at 9, 8 Central.

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Romance Television

Gulliver’s Travels: the Animated Feature

Posted on December 22, 2010 at 1:16 pm

In the early days of animation, Disney’s biggest rival was the studio run by the Fleischer brothers, whose Betty Boop, Popeye, and Out of the Inkwell cartoons were very popular. Their first feature, released in 1939, was “Gulliver’s Travels.” While it was not as innovative or successful as Disney’s “Snow White,” which came out two years earlier, it is still a charming and delightful film with comedy, romance, drama, and music. The release this week of the new Gulliver film starring Jack Black, has prompted a new DVD release of the film in An Ultimate Gulliver Collection.

In the book, Jonathan Swift’s satiric take on the political squabbles had his tiny characters fighting over the best way to crack an egg. In this version, the plans of the rulers of the adjoining kingdoms to untie their children and their lands in marriage is disrupted because of an equally silly dispute. Which of the two countries’ national anthems will play at the wedding?

“Gulliver’s Travels” is available online. I also have one copy of the new Ultimate Gulliver Collection DVD release to give away and it is truly special because it includes not only Fleischer’s Gulliver and seven more Fleischer studio cartoons but also the early anime film, “Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon” and the adorable four-minute Gulliver movie from George Melies, the magician who invented movie special effects back in the early days of the silent era. Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Gulliver” in the title, and I will pick a random winner on Boxing Day (that’s December 26).

Easy A

Posted on December 14, 2010 at 8:00 am

Emma Stone finally gets the breakthrough role her fans have been waiting for in “Easy A.” This is the moment that takes her into the front rank of movie stars, sub-category: America’s sweetheart.

Stone has an immediately appealing presence on screen, unpretentious but utterly charming. Here she plays Olive, a girl who doesn’t yet realize that all of the things that make her feel invisible in high school are going to make her wildly beloved for decades after. She is impatient to be “interesting” and so after a thrill-less weekend highlighted by singing along to a greeting card she impulsively tells her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) that she had sex with her college student boyfriend. Problem #1: the sex and the boyfriend are both imaginary. This is the kind of mistake a teenager would make. Problem #2: this confession occurs in the ladies’ room at the high school, with no checking the stalls. This is not the kind of mistake anyone would make after 7th grade, but we have to kick that plot into gear, now, don’t we?

And so the whole school immediately knows and believes this scandalous news. Which is why Olive’s closeted gay friend tired of getting picked on comes to her with a proposition. Not that kind. He wants her to have noisy public pretend sex with him so that he can be definitively proven manly. And since her reputation is already shot, what can it hurt? And why not do the same favor for some other needy souls? And then, when it seems the whole school is judging her (conveniently, her class is reading The Scarlet Letter), she decides to sew a big red A on a bustier and see what it feels like to go from invisible to un-missable.

Stone is such an effortless charmer that she keeps the story aloft, even when Olive inexplicably turns her little adventure into a for-pay enterprise, insisting on gift cards(!) in exchange for making the reputation of the guys involved at the cost of her own. A side story involving Olive’s favorite teacher (Thomas Hayden Church) and his wife, the school guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow) is also unnecessarily tawdry. Far better are the encounters with the always delectable (and just about always underused) Amanda Bynes as the school holier-than-thou abstinence proponent and the always ultra-watchable Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s deliciously off-kilter parents. Their scenes are warm, witty, and surprising, and livelier than Olive’s romantic ups and downs. In every way, it is Stone who is the heart of this movie, and she wins our hearts as well.

The Tempest

Posted on December 9, 2010 at 8:43 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some nudity, suggestive content and scary images
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Characters get drunk
Violence/ Scariness:	Shipwreck, fighting, threats of murder
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 10, 2010
Date Released to DVD:	September 12, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004M9ZI0M

Director Julie Taymor (Broadway’s “The Lion King”) has a gorgeous visual imagination and a love of spectacle, both lavishly on display in the latest version Shakespeare’s final play, the story of a sorcerer’s revenge. But she uses it to enhance, not distract from the real magic of dazzling language spoken by magnificent actors.

The play’s Duke-turned wizard Prospero now becomes Prospera (Dame Helen Mirren), the wife of the Duke who was so distracted by her study of magic that her position was usurped by her husband’s brother, Antonio (Chris Cooper). She escaped with her daughter Miranda, with the help of the king’s adviser, Gonzalo (Tom Conti). For twelve years, they have been living on an island, cared for by a sprite named Ariel (Ben Wishaw) and the son of a witch named Caliban (Djimon Hounsou). Miranda barely knows that any other world exists.

Returning home by ship after a wedding, Antonio, Gonzalo, the King (David Straithairn), and their courtiers encounter a storm called up by Prospera, and they are shipwrecked and separated, each fearing all the others have died. Promising Ariel and Caliban their freedom if they help her, Prospera directs — and misdirects — the bewildered survivors. She puts Miranda in the path of the king’s son, Ferdinand (Reeve Carney), and they fall instantly in love. Prospera is delighted, but pretends to be angry and orders him to hard labor: “this swift business I must uneasy make, lest too light winning make the prize light.”

Meanwhile, the king and Gonzalo are searching for Ferdinand, with Antonio and the king’s brother, Sebastian (Alan Cumming), who realize that if they can kill the other two, Sebastian will be king. Prospera stops them with magic.

And then there is Trinculo (Russell Brand), the jester and Stephano (Alfred Molina), the drunken butler. They find Caliban, who is happy to switch his allegiance to them, especially when they give him his first taste of liquor.

Mirren is fiery and magesterial, holding her magic staff to the sky and commanding Ariel and Caliban. But she shows us Prospera’s devotion to Miranda and recognition that she contributed to her fate by allowing herself to be too caught up in magic to notice that Antonio was betraying her. She understands that the price for this greatest display of her art and her gifts so that she can return home will be to give it all up forever. The young lovers are a little bland, but the rest of the cast is exceptional — and surprisingly organic, considering that it includes classically-trained British stage actors like Mirren, Cumming, and Molina with American performers Cooper and Straithairn, three-continent Honsou and all-around wild child Brand. The visual touches perfectly evoke the themes of order and chaos, with Escher-esque steps vertiginously reaching bannister-less up the walls, found object-based props, and Prospera’s final costume, a fabulous mixture of natural material and tight, civilizing straps and stays.

Knight and Day

Posted on November 30, 2010 at 12:05 pm

As refreshing as a cool drink of lemonade on a hot day, “Knight and Day” has just what we want from a big summer Hollywood summer movie: glamorous locations, even more glamorous movie stars, lots of crazy stunts and chases, a couple of romantic smooches, and of course some really big explosions.

It helps to have Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, two stars with smiles that can fill a 40 foot screen. Wisely, screenwriter Patrick O’Neill and director James Mangold (“Walk the Line”) create the whole movie around what these two performers do best, which is have fun on screen and make it fun for us, too. Their effortless charm gives off enough sizzle to keep things going between stunts.

Cruise plays Roy Miller. We see right away that he’s really good at hand-to-hand combat and running and jumping and shooting. And apparently he is also very good at lying, which is why we do not know whether to believe him when he says he is the good guy. Neither does the person he says it to, a vintage car restoration expert named June (Cameron Diaz). They first run into each other, literally, at the airport. She is on her way to her sister’s wedding. Coincidentally, they bump into each other twice, once before going through TSA security, once on the other side. Don’t think it’s a coincidence? You just might be right!

Cruise and Diaz seem a bit relieved to have a chance to be silly in a summer popcorn movie, after less-than-successful efforts at serious drama (“Valkyrie” and “My Sister’s Keeper”). Both are adept at hitting the sweet spot that keeps the tone light, even in the midst of mowing down bad guys. There’s a lot that doesn’t work in this movie, including repeated scenes of characters being drugged (though Diaz makes a truth serum scene amusing with her matter-of-fact delivery), a distracting amount of jet-setting all over the globe, and literal overkill of legions of bad guys. That title, really? And surely they could do better for the talented Paul Dano (“There Will be Blood” and “Little Miss Sunshine”) than yet another nerdy genius with a universally coveted invention. But there is a lot that works. Diaz and Cruise have a natural chemistry and easy equality that is just plain entertaining. They bring enough conviction to the story to keep us believing and rooting for them without taking it so seriously that we start second-guessing the storyline. Supporting players include the always-welcome Viola Davis, Peter Sarsgaard, Celia Weston, and Marc Blucas. The stunts are expertly staged with Cruise and Diaz clearly right in the middle of it all, not checking their email back in the trailer while stuntmen do anything more strenuous than opening a door, and I have to say, they are summer movie crazynutsfun. It’s not as easy as it looks to combine action, comedy, and romance (I’m talking to you, Killers). But Diaz and Cruise show us how both characters want more of what the other has, without making too big a deal out of it. And they make it seem not just normal that you’d interrupt a deadly chase to capture a hugely valuable little doo-hicky to attend a wedding, but rather sweet.