District 13: Ultimatum

Posted on February 4, 2010 at 10:07 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some violence, language and drug material
Profanity:	Some strong language (a lot of s-words)
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drugs, alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant action violence, martial arts, guns, explosions, missiles, crashes
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, inter-racial romance
Date Released to Theaters:	February 5, 2010

Cyril Raffaelli and David Belle make a sensationally appealing team in this follow-up to their hit film “District B13.” Belle is the creator of “parkour,” a stunt spectacular that turns an entire city into an obstacle course. It has become popular — the opening chase scene in “Casino Royale,” real-life competitions, and thousands of of do-it-yourself videos — something between gymnastics, acrobatics, and levitation as people jump through windows and between buildings. Raffaelli is the best movie martial arts guy since Jet Li. And they have a great chemistry as a loner and a special forces cop who join forces against pervasive institutional corruption.

There is a pointed reference to real-life institutional corruption (including a government-connected mega-corporation called “Harriburton”) but let’s be honest, this is all about the bang-bang and the bang-bang is done with a wink and a boatload of style.

It is 2016. The undesirables of Paris live in a walled section of the city, District 13. Belle plays Leito. He operates on his own but he has cordial relationships with the various ethnic factions. Raffaelli plays Damian, something of a super-cop, who brings down a powerful drug lord using his skills as a detective, strategist, fighter, and something of a disguise artist as well. When he is framed by corrupt cops and Leito comes across evidence of a set-up to start a riot in District 13, they team up.

Damian takes on batches of baddies at a time, once while protecting a priceless Van Gogh. Leito leaps across rooftops with the hang time of a helium balloon. Later on a crime boss named Tao (Elodie Yung) joins in when they assemble a coalition of gangs to prevent their home from being destroyed by missiles. Sort of.

Okay, no one is taking any of this too seriously. But the stunts and fight scenes are electric and entertaining and the film-making is kinetic and a lot of fun. For the character’s sake, I hope that happy ending holds, but for my own, I’d like to see another bunch of bad guys so Raffaelli and Belle — and Yung — can go after them again.

Interview: Taylor Firth of ‘Ice Castles’

Posted on February 4, 2010 at 8:00 am

Figure skating champion Taylor Firth makes her acting debut in a remake of the beloved 1978 film Ice Castles. The original starred Lynn-Holly Johnson as the skater who has to start all over after an accident leaves her blind and Robby Benson as her hockey-player boyfriend. I spoke to Taylor about skating, acting, and her favorite Bible verse.

When you were growing up, did you have a favorite ice skating movie?

I would have to say Ice Castles is probably my favorite. It is the most realistic. And The Cutting Edge, that was a good one, too.

Ice skating and acting both require a lot of discipline and focus. How do you work on that?

You need a lot of patience. I’m a redhead so I am quick to anger, but God definitely gives me the patience and the strength I need to do it all with a good mind and a good heart.

What have you learned from your coaches and teachers?

My coaches that I have right now are amazing people. They definitely have given me some great tips about being the best that I can be and keeping on with what I love. Sometimes there are things that you don’t want to do or things that are hard for you, but usually when you keep going with them and are determined with it, they end up being some of the most amazing experiences you’ll ever have. There are sometimes things that seem a little scary, but once you start doing them, you realize that everything was worth it in the end. It doesn’t matter what you are doing. As long as you are doing it with the right heart and the right mind and doing it for God’s glory, that is all that really matters.

So your connection to faith is very important to you.

Definitely. My figure skating is my God-given ability and so I want to use it for His glory.

And acting, too?

I don’t really know how good at it I am, but I have had some good feedback and would like to think that it is another way do do that.

As a person of faith, is it important to you to work on projects that communicate your values to the audience?

Oh, absolutely, yes! Definitely. There were some parts in “Ice Castles” that I had a difficult time doing, to play someone who is blind, to be honest about what someone who doesn’t have sight would be acting and how they would really feel. It was important to me to be sensitive to that experience, to be careful not to be offensive or portray a blind person as incompetent because they are really amazing people. My faith is a huge part of it and keeps me well-grounded.

Did you observe blind people? How did you prepare for the role?

I really have not had much acting experience, just the kids’ drama team at church. So it was a little hard to prepare for it. But Donald is a great guy and a great director and he really gave me the tools I needed to learn what I needed to learn in a really short time.

Could there really be a blind figure skater?

Yes, I definitely believe so. I did an ice show for SABAH, Skating for the Blind and Handicapped, and there’s people that skate blind all the times, and one of the main skaters they had the year I performed with them was a girl, she was about 12 at the time, she was blind and she was doing her own solo program. She didn’t really perform the way Lexi (in the movie) does. Lexi can perform on her own because she can see light and shadows. This girl was completely blind so she needed someone on either side of the boards to say her name so she knew how far she was from the boards, but it is definitely possible.

I am really interested in the way you make your musical choices. You have selected some songs for your programs that are unusual and I think exceptionally well chosen. What do you think about when you are looking for music?

The biggest part for me is trying to get into the character of the music. It’s music that I have to listen to every day for an entire year so I have to pick something I know that I’ll be able to thoroughly enjoy skating to and show that love on the ice. Two of my favorite programs, one was jazz and I loved it. My mom actually found that piece. I didn’t like it when I first heard it because I thought it was a little strange. But my choreographer loved it so I had to put my trust in her and it became one of my favorites that I have ever done.

Another one is a song called “Prayer for Taylor” by Michael W. Smith. That’s another one of my favorites. It was a year I was having a hard time finding something. I would like something and my coach wouldn’t like it or my coach would like something and I wouldn’t like it. And then my mother was in a store looking for music and a man brought out a new CD and the song was on it. I used it for quite a few years. I was praying that I would find the right music and there it was.

What makes you laugh?

I’m a little bit of a quirky personality, I guess. My boyfriend and I laugh, and my sisters, I have three sisters, the best in the world, and they are really supportive. If one of us makes a mistake, trips up or something, we all just laugh and we impersonate people and review movie scenes of our own. One of my sisters is like a one-girl movie. She can act out scenes and knows all the quotes. And that makes me laugh.

Do you plan to do more acting?

In my perfect world, I would like to do something with the Christian film industry. I want to act some more in projects with a good moral based and I want to be a good positive role model in the world.

And what is your favorite Bible verse?

2nd Timothy 2:22 — about fleeing from the things of the world and looking to God for His guidance.

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Actors

Fame

Posted on January 12, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Less a movie than a mosaic, this remake of the 1980 classic with the Oscar-winning title anthem about the high school for the performing arts has been re-imagined for the hyper-linked and just plain hyper 21st century. As in the original, we follow the stories of aspiring performers from their first audition through four years of high school. But this time, so many characters are thrown at us that we never connect with any of them. This film is as much an artifact of its era as the dancing-in-the-streets first one, perhaps in ways it did not intend. It is a revealing reflection of its target audience: kids used to keeping up to date via tweets and Facebook status lines, the generation that cannot see the line between access to information and understanding the information’s context and import.

It indicates more than it shows, not because it is subtle, but because it is frantic, trying to follow the lives of ten students over four years in less than two hours. Narrative is pushed to one side. Even the too-brief but excellent musical numbers are chopped up and intercut not so much as an artistic statement as a recognition that society as a whole now meets the clinical definition of ADD.

The talented cast passes by so quickly it is like watching a 107-minute trailer. Naturi Naughton makes a strong impression in vocal numbers that include “Out Here on My Own” from the 1980 film. Kay Panabaker has a sweet honesty that comes across well on screen and more than any of the others she shows us the difference in her character as she grows up and gains confidence. An exceptionally strong cast of adults adds some depth to the faculty roles, including “Will and Grace’s” Megan Mullally and “Frasier’s” Bebe Neuwirth and Kelsey Grammer along with movie and theater veteran Charles S. Dutton. If only they had been able to sit down writer Alison Burnett and director Kevin Tancharoen to give them the kind of stern pep talk about craft and discipline that they give to their students, this would have been a better movie.

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Musical Remake

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Posted on January 5, 2010 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for brief mild language
Profanity:	Brief schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence, no one hurt
Diversity Issues:	Issue of pressure on women to be cute and perky instead of strong and smart
Date Released to Theaters:	September 18, 2009
Date Released to DVD:	January 5, 2010
Amazon.com ASIN:	B002WJI2QQ

When things go very, very wrong in this movie, as they so often do, we get to see a series of television news broadcasts from around the world showing the destruction of various iconic monuments, as we so often do. And then something different happens. One of the newscasters points out that this particular un-natural disaster seems inexplicably and improbably primarily directed at national landmarks. So this is a movie with a sense of humor about itself and its audience.

As long as you don’t expect it to have much to do with the story or illustrations in the classic book by Judi and Ron Barrett, you can settle in for an entertaining and, yes, delicious family film. In the book, instead of rain and snow, food falls from the sky in the town of Chew and Swallow. In this movie, we get to see how that came to be.

It begins, as so many stories for children begin, with a kid who feels like an outsider. Flint Lockwood (as an adult the voice of Bill Hader of “Saturday Night Live”) is a curious kid who likes to invent things but does not always think things through. His spray-on shoes are so indescructable they never come off. His gadget to allow Steve the Monkey to speak works perfectly well; it’s just that Steve doesn’t say much worth hearing. His mom believes in him, but after she dies he just has his dad, all eyebrows and mustache (and voice of James Caan) thinks he should just give it up and come to work with him in his sardine shop.

Sardines are the sole product of Flint’s town, called Swallow Falls. But then, disaster happens. Everyone figures out that sardines are yucky. And so the town falls on hard times. Can one of Flint’s inventions save the day?

Well, not really. An invention to turn water into food goes awry when it is shot into the air and the next thing the town knows, what once was rain, snow, fog, and hail is now pancakes, sushi, BLTs, and jellybeans. The mayor (voice of B-movie star Bruce Campbell) sees this as a chance to revitalize the town’s economy through tourism. And as a chance to eat a lot of food and get very fat. The former mascot of the town’s previous sardine industry, the now-grown “Baby” Brent (voice of SNL’s Andy Samberg) sees this as a threat to his popularity. And a junior employee at the Weather Channel who wants to be a newscaster (Anna Feris as Sam Sparks) thinks she has to hide her brains and curiosity to get people to like her and sees this as her chance to show what she can do.

That is a lot to sort out, not to mention a fabulous mansion made of Jell-O and some action sequences involving space travel and a peanut allergy. But it is all handled well without getting frantic or losing its sense of fun. This is a fresh and clever film, with both wit and heart, a family delight, more fun than a hailstorm of jellybeans followed by pizza flurries.

Taking Woodstock

Posted on December 15, 2009 at 7:00 am

This is a movie about what went on in the community near Woodstock while the concert that would forever be known by that name was happening. And a happening. In other words, this is a footnote movie. It tries to make the town a metaphor and counterpoint, a sort of counter-counter-culture, with reactions to and some participation in the sex, drugs, and rock and roll that was going on nearby, but it is impossible to watch it without wanting to ask the characters to move to one side because they are obstructing our view of Jimi Hendrix.

Those who remember the now-iconic moments from the classic documentary may enjoy seeing a few brief in-jokes (the interview with the port-a-potty guy, the nun flashing the peace sign) and some will appreciate the combination of vision and happenstance that led to the festival and its place in public consciousness as a marker for a generational shift. But director Ang Lee (“Brokeback Mountain,” “Sense and Sensibility”) falters when he tries to tie it all to his favorite theme of the internal struggle with repressed desires.

Jonathan Groff is sweetly beatific as concert organizer Michael Lang and Liev Schreiber is nicely matter-of-fact as Vilma, a pistol-packing cross-dressing vet. But the best parts of the movie are the details around the edges. The story of Elliot (a likable Demetri Martin), a Greenwich Village decorator caught up in the struggles of his parents’ failing Catskills motel is not involving or illuminating enough to hold the screen. His New York Jewish parents, despite the best efforts of Brits Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman, are the usual bickering stereotypes. Emile Hirsch is the usual crazed Vietnam vet stereotype. A troupe of college actors is there only to show Elliot’s interest in the arts and to take their clothes off. An LSD trip sequence is, as LSD trip sequences are, more boring than listening to someone else telling what happened in his dream. And it is difficult to feel any tension when some of the neighbors try to stop the concert because we all know how it turned out.

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Based on a true story Drama