Shooting ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’

Posted on June 21, 2010 at 8:07 am

One of my all-time favorite movie moments is in the original “Fantasia” (and included in “Fantasia 2000” as well), the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence when Mickey Mouse, as the trainee working for a powerful wizard, decides to try a little magic himself and enchant a broom so it will carry the heavy buckets of water from the well and give him a break. Things do not go well. The music is by Paul Dukas, inspired by a poem written by Goethe that begins:

Good! The sorcerer, my old master
left me here alone today!
Now his spirits, for a change,
my own wishes shall obey!
Having memorized
what to say and do,
with my powers of will I can
do some witching, too!

The forthcoming live action “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” starring Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel will re-create that famous scene and here the film-makers give us a glimpse of the care they put into getting it right.

Here’s another look at the fabulous original.

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Behind the Scenes

Astro Boy

Posted on March 17, 2010 at 8:00 pm

A show of hands, everyone. If you think it’s a good idea to begin a movie for children by killing off a young boy in an industrial accident as his father looks on, raise your hand. Anyone?
I didn’t think so. And yet, that is how Astro Boy comes to be in this updated version of the Japanese animated series that achieved popularity in the U.S. as a television series in various versions over the years and more recently as a computer game. The title character (voice by an Americanized Freddie Highmore) is a robot re-boot created by brilliant scientist Dr. Tenma (voice of Nicolas Cage) to replace his son Toby, who was killed at Dr. Tenma’s lab when he tried to get in to see an experiment. Devastated by the loss, the scientist creates a super-robot programmed with the memory and mind of his dead child. And then he rejects the robot as an inadequate substitute. Even if the rest of the movie were “The Care Bears Meet My Little Pony,” the loss and grief of the first 20 minutes are so totally dissonant that the film cannot recover.
It’s like “Pinocchio” crossed with “Blade Runner” as Astro Boy goes through an existential crisis in discovering that he may have Toby’s memories and emotions, but he also has hands and butt cheeks that turn into artillery. He ends up being treated as a human by robots and a robot by the humans he meets, abandoned children living on the planet that everyone else has left because it is deemed no longer habitable (and yet somehow they are able to order pizza). In the midst of all of the shoot-outs there are some moments that have charm and some images that show some wit, especially an enormous junked robot that Astro brings back to life with a charge from his blue power source (unfortunately carrying the initials of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory). But then the President (voice of Donald Sutherland) wants to use Astro’s technology for evil, and everything comes down to shooting. Any nuance or imagination or point is lost in the battle, and so is any reason to see this film.

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G-Force

Posted on July 23, 2009 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some mild action and rude humor
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Characters in peril, violence, scary dog with big teeth, scary robot, reference to parental abandonment
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	July 24, 2009

Top voice talent and good 3D computer graphics cannot make up for the fact that this film is utterly synthetic as well as crass, loud, and vulgar. Even at a brief running time of under 90 minutes, it overstays its welcome.

A team of super-agent guinea pigs, assisted by a reconnaissance fly and a computer whiz mole (Nicolas Cage), fail in a mission to find out what weapons-dealer-turned-consumer-electronics mogul Saber (Bill Nighy) is up to. So, over the protests of their human leader, Ben (Zach Galifianakis), the program is shut down by the FBI’s Kip Killian (Will Arnett). The guinea pigs and mole have to escape from a pet shop — and from children who abuse them — to prevent Saber’s diabolical plot from being executed.

The script is predictable and derivative. References to other movies like “Die Hard” and “Scarface” may amuse parents and potty jokes may amuse children but they contribute to a crass and lazy feel to the film. The 3D effects are mostly used to make the audience duck flying glass shards and spraying water. If they’re smart, they’ll just duck the movie.

Knowing

Posted on July 7, 2009 at 8:00 am

When MIT astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage in one-note mournful mode) looks distracted and thoughtful as he invites his class to debate randomness vs. determinism, you don’t have to be much of a determinist to figure out that as inevitably as night follows day, John is about to be hit with some Evidence of a Greater Plan. This isn’t determinism, the idea that events that may seem random are a part of some greater pattern. This is just predictable hogwash, and it gets even hogwashier until it arrives at an ending that manages to be inevitable, uninspired, and preposterous.

John’s son Caleb (a sincere Chandler Canterbury) attends a school that is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The ceremony involves opening a time capsule filled with drawings from children on its opening day. But the envelope Caleb is given to open does not have a drawing of spaceships. It has an apparently random string of numbers. John notices that one string is 09/11/2001 and the number killed that day. A night-long Google search later, he has assigned many of the numbers to known disasters — and figured out that the final three dates are still in the future.

And then this becomes just another big, dumb, loud, effects-driven movie. Forget determinism; if one character behaved in a rational manner, the movie would be 20 minutes long. Three dates in the future? That of course means that the first one is there to prove the theory. Next, John figures out that the next one will happen in NY. Instead of staying in Cambridge, he heads for the location so that he — and the audience — can be in the middle of a technically impressive but narratively brutal catastrophe. And then we are all headed for the big finish (and I mean FINISH), but first there is a lot of completely pointless racing around in a fruitless attempt to build some tension.

The movie sinks from dumb to offensive first when it devotes so much loving detail to the graphic, even clinical depiction of pointless calamity and second when it ultimately and cynically appropriates signifiers of religious import in an attempt to justify itself. Professor Koestler, in a world of rational determinism, this movie would never have gotten the green light. Case closed.

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National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Posted on May 19, 2008 at 4:00 pm

national%20treasure%202.jpg The first movie ended with historian/treasure-hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) triumphant, with riches, a dream house, and a dream girl, historian/knockout (and conveniently named) Abigail Chase (“Troy’s” Helen Diane Kruger). He has pretty much lost all of that as this movie begins. Meanwhile, sidekick Riley (Justin Bartha) can’t get anyone to buy his book and has learned that “the tax on $5 million in income is $6 million) as his fancy car is towed away by the IRS. It’s time to break out the treasure maps and cypher-decoders.

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