DVD Roundup: How to Train Scott Pilgrim?

Two of the better rated movies of the year (98% and 80% Fresh, but 90% and 85% liked them, respectively) I missed in theaters.  I wasn't impressed by either movie trailers and didn't see them, much to my dismay, as they were pretty amazing movies.  How to Train Your Dragon and Scott Pilgrim vs The World were both terrific and I wish I'd seen both in theaters since it was easy to see how they would be enhanced by the theater experience.  Dragon is the story of Hiccup, a young Viking whose island is constantly attacked by dragons, but who hasn't yet found his place in a society which values large, brutish, dragon-killers rather than the puny, inventor Hiccup already is.  During an attack, Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) manages to take down an elusive type of dragon, Night Fury, with one of his inventions.  However, no one believes him, and he goes to find the dragon, befriends him and starts learning more about dragons from "Toothless".  When he's forced into dragon-training (how to kill dragons, not train them) Hiccup excels due to all the lessons he has learned from Toothless.  However, he knows the day is coming when he'll be required to kill dragons - something he's not sure he can do.  I won't spoil the big climax, but as it's an animated movie, know that it mostly ends well.  The other major voices are Gerard Butler as his viking leader father, Craig Ferguson as Hiccup's mentor,  and America Ferrera (Ugly Betty) as the object of Hiccup's affection.  I don't much about vikings, but I didn't think they were Scottish as the accents would suggest.  Either way, the movie is brilliant - its originality is terrific, the voices are funny, and the different types of dragons add both color and humor - they're like a pet combo of horses, dogs, and cats.  Perhaps not terribly rewatchable for adults, but kids will love this movie over and over.  I wouldn't be surprised if this was finally Dreamworks' year for the Oscar with a more original story than Toy Story 3, and some of the best animation they've yet produced.  4 of 5 stars/lambs

Scott Pilgrim vs the World is based on a graphic novel and took a new approach to bringing such things to life - to not attempt to translate the world of the graphic novel into a version of reality, but rather to recreate the tone of the world in all its diversion from real life.  With sound words appearing when people hit each other, with coins appearing when a fight is won, all the other rules of video games apply.  Pilgrim (Michael Cera with his worst haircut yet) is in a band that rocks (they're part of a battle of the bands), and he lives with his gay roommate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin - hysterical!) and is dating a high school student, Knives Chau.  However, he has a dream about and then meets Ramona Flowers.  He falls for her but knows he'll have to defeat her 7 evil exes (not all boyfriends, just exes).  This is only part of where the movie moves into comic book territory - Scott can go into a room and come out having changed his clothes instantly.  The rest of the movie follows the advance of Pilgrim and Flowers romance, interrupted by battles with her exes - some from middle school to the most recent ex.  Great actors play almost all of them (a few I didn't recognize) and the battle scenes are particularly amazing.  At first I questioned how Scott knew how to fight, but once you realize everyone can do that kind of thing (it's just part of the world they're in) it stops being strange and you just accept that anything is possible.  The music is good - though some of the dance numbers felt out of place.  I'm excited to go back and listen to a few podcasts I skipped last summer (Matineecast and Frankly, My Dear specifically) that talked about the movie so I can see how it was received.  Not the greatest acting, but incredibly original in content, story, and particularly effects.  Alison Pill was especially funny as were any conversations between Culkin and Cera ("Don't want you gaying up the place")  Overall 4 of 5 stars/lambs

New Release: Megamind 3D

I've complained many times about the rural movie theaters in my area, and how when I actually have time to see movies in the theater, there's not a lot worth seeing.  However, I do get to see a lot of random stuff that way.  Which is how I ended up at Dreamworks' Megamind in 3D yesterday celebrating Veteran's Day.  There were 4 kids in the theater, my friend and me.  I love when there's no one there, but this was pretty close. I'm sure Megamind would have been improved by listening to the giggling of more children, but I have to say it was still a pretty funny flick.  It parodies all superhero movies, from The Incredibles to comic book movies and even Austin Powers and such.  Will Ferrell voices Megamind, a blue-skinned, large-headed alien who arrive on earth with his side-kick "Minion" at the same place and time as another alien who can fly and has great hair.  Well, Megamind and the boy who grows up to be his arch nemesis, MetroMan, fight - because that's what they're good at.  I think the plot tickled me most when it reaches that point of thinking about "what would happen if the bad-guy actually won".  They've done it in other movies, exploring how the Joker would run Gotham, etc. but this movie did a terrific job pushing that really far.  Megamind realizes that he was good at being evil, and he's not so good at running a city (Metro City - which he always pronounces Metrocity - rhymes with atrocity).

Brad Pitt is wasted voicing Metro Man, and Tina Fey voices the female news reporter who is constantly kidnapped by Megamind in order to be rescued by MetroMan.  The movie takes the next step again and asks what would happen if the bad guy got the girl - would that even be possible, how would that work?  So Megamind decides he needs to Frankenstein himself another hero to fight - which doesn't go well (and Jonah Hill was perfect because I don't like him anyway).  Anyway, I know I'm reading a lot of meta-analysis into this kids movie, but I'm not a kid so that's what I do at kids' movies.  It was fun, the animation was really good - giving Megamind some terrific facial expressions, and I'll enjoy watching it again later.  Oh, the 3D was well used, but totally not necessary.  When big fights were going on, they'd throw things around and they'd come at you - the flying robots would hover around your head and such, but it didn't really matter.  What the 3D was AWESOME for was the Kung Fu Panda 2 trailer.  Just imagine this in 3D - awesome!

Movie Meme Day 13 - Favorite animated movie

I reviewed Wall*E when I first saw it in the theater.  Then a few weeks ago I even got to podcast with the Lambcast (episodes 29 and 30) about my love for this movie.  There are a lot of animated movies to choose from for favorite, though.  My childhood favorite was definitely The Little Mermaid.  I saw Aladdin 5 times in the theater when it came out.  And I still see all the big animated movies every year (sometimes in the theater, sometimes not).  I'm not sure what it is about Wall*E that always makes me happy and makes it easy to watch repeatedly, but whoever was responsible for the character of WALL*E plays a big part of it. 

His innocence and determination are amazingly human, and of course his devotion to a Barbra Streisand musical (Hello, Dolly) just gives him that kind of nerdy attraction ironic for a robot!  His interactions with EVE and his desire to follow "her" around and eventually hold her hand is a childlike and yet universally acknowledged.  Overall, the movie also has an environmental message that I happen to agree with - people as a whole are trying very hard to destroy the natural world, much of the time with advanced consumerism.  Individually, people are also trying really hard to stop doing exactly that, and WALL*E represents those ideals, that we can each do our part, but it's the whole that matters as much as the individual when it comes to protecting the environment. 

New Release: 3D Toy Story 3

Pixar and Disney movies are often some of the best movies of the year.  Wall*E is still one of my favorite movies of all time.  This all started back before college with Toy Story and then Toy Story 2 when I was in college.  Now, more than 10 years later, I was excited to see the third installment, and after having seen it, I'd sign up for number 4 too.  Even more exciting, I'm in the big city this week so I got to see it in a huge theater in 3D even.  I can't say the 3D added a lot too the experience, but I can't confirm that until I see it again in only 2 dimensions.  They didn't do any of the "things flying at you" for effect, which is nice, but they also didn't take full advantage of it.  Avatar and surprisingly A Christmas Carol still did it the best I've seen so far.  Anyway, the story kind of relies on having seen the previous 2 movies, but I doubt you'd actually miss anything if you haven't seen them, you'll just enjoy it.  The movie picks up when Andy, the owner of all the toys, is packing up to go to college and has to decide what to do with his toys.  Some he packs up to go to the attic (though they inadvertently get thrown away but end up at a day-care center).  He wants to take Woody (Tom Hanks) with him to college, but he ends up at the day care too.  The other toys' feelings are hurt and they decide to make the best of their new life at the day-care center, run by Lots-O-Huggin' teddy bear (Ned Beatty).  Lotso makes nice when they first arrive, but then locks them in a separate room where the terror toddlers play roughly with the toys.  Woody still wants to get back to Andy, and leaves them (going home with Bonnie who is a good kid and appreciates her toys).  Meanwhile, the day-care center turns out to be hell for new toys.  Lotso runs it with an iron fist and Andy's toys hate it there, though Barbie does finally meet Ken (the Ken-is-gay jokes alone are pretty funny).  Woody finds out how horrible his friends have it, so he goes back to rescue them and they of course break out.

This is where the movie should have ended to make it just about perfect.  However, there's more drama at a dump before they of course have a terrifically happy ending that I won't spoil (though if you didn't think it would be a happy ending, you are cynical and should see this movie immediately).  It was only about 15 minutes too long, the dialogue is fun, moves the story along, and is particularly original as stories go.  The creators play on our natural tendencies to think certain toys are bad or evil (the cymbal playing monkey has always seems menacing to me) and others are good, but then surprise you pretty well with the fact that the cuddly teddy bear who smells like strawberries is actual a toy-dictator.  I also liked the fact that the movie celebrates imaginative play rather than just watching TV or playing video games.  Bonnie makes up scenarios and her toys are used to "improv" and they might be at a Paris cafe or in a hospital.  Overall, I really liked the movie, both on its own and as an animated kids flick.  4 of 5 lambs/stars.

The Princess and the Frog: Review

After this review and Monday's Musical review, I'm sure you think I'm either a mom with school- age children, or a school-age child. Sadly, I am neither, but have maintained my affinity for animated movies. However, my need to go see them in the theater or even as soon as they're available has waned considerably. I was still excited, though, when The Princess and the Frog arrived in my mailbox recently. So while researching available population demographic datasets for Africa in the mid-nineties, I threw it in the player (I told you my work can get boring). Perhaps I'm finally outgrowing Disney, but their newest flick didn't impress me too much. It seemed like a cobbled together version of many of their older animated films, with an African American heroine, and a few fun new songs. They stuck very closely to the tried and true Disney formula - introduce characters, big opening number to explain the theme of the main characters (e.g. "Circle of Live" or "Belle"), then introduce the bad guy and let him sing his song about the evil things he's going to do ("Gaston" or "Be Prepared"). Next, the bad thing comes to pass, and our hero/ine find some new sidekicks who explain to them why life isn't really so bad (usually in the most memorable song - "Hakuna Matata", "Be Our Guest", "Under the Sea" "Prince Ali"). Then our main guy and girl fall in love, and that's the end of the songs, which is always my biggest criticism with musicals, why do the good songs nearly always occur in the first half? Finally, everything comes out right in the end. There's usually a pretty good score throughout the film too. Anyway, The Princess and the Frog follows this guide precisely.

Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) wants to open a restaurant in New Orleans in memory of her dearly departed father (the mother stays alive throughout this movie, voiced by a notable Oprah). She works really hard to save up the money ("Almost There"), but can't really figure out how to get all the way. A prince arrives in New Orleans, and Tiana's best friend Lotte (voiced by Jennifer Cody who I knew as a teen working in musical theater - so cool that her voice was awesome) wants to fall in love with a prince. However, the bad guy steps in ("Friends on the other side") and turns the prince into a frog. Now, the fairy tale we all know kicks in, he needs to get a princess to kiss him and he'll turn back into a prince. He mistakes Tiana all dressed up in Lotte's fancy clothes for a princess, but when they kiss, she gets cursed too. They escape to the bayou and meet up with a trumpet-playing gator and a Cajun firefly ("When we're human", my fav song). Of course all goes well, but I won't spoil it because it actually has a pretty good twist at the end that was unique enough to make me smile in surprise. It's a good movie, not the best, but fairly original, well voiced, very well sung, but weak on the songs. Mary Poppins has 5 songs I could name right now that are memorable, and even The Little Mermaid has a couple not to be forgotten, but I'm not sure The Princess and the Frog lives up to that legacy. It feels a bit like a copy of a copy of a copy, with some new scenes and a twist at the end, but nothing particularly new. What newness it does have comes from the New Orleans and cajun feel, though Randy Newman's score does sound a bit like watered down NOLA. 3 of 5 star/lambs

Musical Mondays! The Little Mermaid

I can't really explain why I chose The Little Mermaid for this week's Monday Musicals, except that Pandora (online radio) kept choosing songs from it when I set up a station based on the music from "Glee" (don't judge me, work was hard this weekend). And since it's been turned into a stage show, I think The Little Mermaid fully qualifies as a musical, even though it's animated. Oh, and over at Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob and The Movie Encyclopedia, their podcast was asking questions about opinions on the big 3 animation studios (Disney/Pixar, Dreamworks, and Studio Ghibli), so the time was apparently ready to watch this again. It also makes sense in my own chronology now that I think about it. It was the second videotape I ever owned (also on Betamax) and I think I watched it every single rainy day one summer. I saw it in theaters and loved it. I think it might have been the first CD I ever bought for myself too.
Anyway, rewatching it today I was struck by how incredibly outdated the animation seems now. While it was a huge jump ahead for it's day, and was a rebirth for Disney animation and started the whole Disney Princess creations, I don't think it's animation is anything spectacular even for hand-drawn animation. It's large and colorful, though mostly block colored without much detail. Watching the trailer for The Little Mermaid 3 (a straight to DVD, I imagine) at the beginning had much more detail and precision than the feature film. While Snow White and Sleeping Beauty were also hand-drawn Disney flicks, their style doesn't seem dated today, just a classic form of animation.
However, the music is still just as awesome as I remember, even the orchestral soundtrack is terrific. "Kiss Da Girl" and "Under the Sea" sung by the reggae-inspired crab Sebastian are still terrific songs, that I've heard redone by a cappella groups as well as pop singers. "Part of Your World" is still my favorite, when Ariel sings about her collection of human paraphenalia. It always makes me smile. I probably won't do too many animated films for this weekly musical feature, but I did enjoy watching The Little Mermaid again. The Princess and the Frog are next on my Netflix queue, so I'm excited to see how far Disney has come in 20 years. What are your favorite animated movie musicals?

Avatar: Review (minor spoilers)

This is a very upfront movie, so I'll be upfront, I LOVED Avatar. I have to say the marketing of Avatar didn't do much to explain what the heck the movie is about - all I really understood was that it had blue people and flying dinosaur-like creatures, and from interviews on TV I knew that Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington were in it. But that's about all I understood. I saw the 3D version, which is spectacular, but just given the amazing visuals, I bet the 2D version is just as beautiful and entrancing. Here's a little explanation of what it's actually about: Marine Worthington arrives at a planet called Pandora (around the year 2150) where he's replacing his brother as the operator of an avatar (a Mii for the Wii crowd, or basically a physical representation of yourself that operates under your control but separate from your body) to integrate himself into the indigenous people so he can 1) learn more about them for Weaver's scientist, and 2) persuade them to abandon their homes so a company can extract a valuable ore from beneath it. Because he's replacing his brother, Worthington has no experience with either the language or customs of Pandora or the Navi (the tall blue people with tails). This works to his advantage and he begins to learn about them. He's pulled between his military commanders and the science and sociology people trying to learn as much as they can. He meets Neytiri (voiced and acted thanks to James Cameron's amazing new techniques of motion capture by Zoe Saldana) the daughter of the chief of the local Navi clan, and ultimately, his instructor in what it means to be Navi. He goes through the rites and rituals of becoming a Navi, riding an indigenous horse, flying on a raptor-type animal, and understanding the Navi's deep connection with their planet. Ultimately a huge fight goes down between the company and Navi (and you can guess what happens).

James Cameron has truly changed the art of movie-making in many ways. The ability to actually capture an actor's performance and then morph that performance into a different species with different shapes and environments is amazing. The sci-fi genre may never be the same (or many others either, given the imagination of Hollywood). However, he's still James Cameron, and wrote the movie too, so the inspiration of other movies in the past kept hitting me. The one that keeps sticking is that Avatar is what might have happened if Dances with Wolves had ended differently. However, the movie-making skill and futuristic (rather than historic) story gave Cameron the chance to tell a story without stooping to basic cliches. He only spends moments (in a very long 160 minute movie) describing how avatars work, or Worthington learning the language, or basic information about the Navi. But the collective whole of the movie gives you all the information you need to understand a beautiful story. Much of the back story is told through voice-overs from Worthington's video diaries. I went in knowing how long the movie would be, so I was conscious of when trimming might have been done, and honestly there were few moments even a couple of seconds could be cut, and definitely never an entire scene.

The acting throughout was superb. Weaver is excellent at playing a ball-busting scientist, pissed off at the conditions she's constantly fighting to get the best possible science done. The incursions the military has had with the Navi stopped her school (an easy explanation for why some Navi can speak English) and she's constantly fighting to get better things done. Her fascination with Pandora is infectious. Zoe Saldana (pictured above, left) as the only main character who is NEVER shown as human (most of the others appear in their avatars as well as human) is terrific. She's funny, tough, smart, and tries very hard to help her people work with the humans again even though it hasn't gone well in the past. And finally Sam Worthington is terrific. For a newcomer he carries the whole movie really well. I'm guessing he'll have trouble getting recognized for it since he spends at least half the movie as a giant blue man, rather than himself. His struggles with learning about the Navi and triumphs when he masters new skills are powerful to watch, while never stooping to over the top acting option. I really really liked Avatar as did the people I went with, so I give it 5 of 5 stars/lambs.

Up: Review of a short film

There have been lots of live-action shorts made into real films. The most recent example I can think of is Frozen River which premiered as a short film at Sundance and was made into a longer film after that. It feels like the new Pixar movie Up was a 15 minute short film that they decided to make into a feature-length film. I say this because the best part of the movie was the first 15-20 minutes, essentially before the thunderstorm. The little boy explorer meets a kindred spirit in Ellie at their clubhouse. Then occurs one of the most movie montages in movie making (particularly animated) as we see them fall in love and age and finally our hero, Carl (terrific Ed Asner), old and alone in his house as the neighborhood is turned into a skyscraper. Carl overcomes being thrown out of his house by taking it away (his career had been a balloon seller at the zoo) with a huge set of balloons. On his floating front porch he finds he's accidentally taken with him a young explorer named Russell. This is where the movie pretty much loses its amazing magic - the kind that lifts you above the ruin that is Wall*E's world or makes you want Toys to triumph. Up becomes just a really good kids movie after the thunderstorm whisks our heroes away to South America. Good triumphs over bad, and the talking dogs are fun seems to be all you need for the rest of the film. If you have kids, take them. 3.5 of 5 Lambs/Stars

Monsters vs Aliens review

A blog friend commented that Dreamworks animation has been making the same movie over and over with Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and now Monsters vs. Aliens. The idea that they're all about it's only what's on the inside that counts. So I started thinking about the other animation studios and what they seem to keep redoing. Pixar's theme seems to be "friends can make anything happen". From Toy Story to A Bug's Life and Nemo, even Cars, all hinge on the fact that the hero needs his or her friends to help solve the problem. Disney has had the theme of motherless (sometimes completely parentless) heros or heroines all the way from Snow White through The Lion King. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if Dreamworks keeps spinning out the same theme. And I still liked the newest entry.

Monsters vs Aliens has been accurately summarized in the commercials, but there are actually lots more details in the film. Susan (Reese Witherspoon) is hit by a meteor on her wedding day and grows to be huge, renamed Ginormica by the military who have been keeping strange monsters for decades. Susan gets put in a secret military facility with the other monsters: Dr. Cockroach (a mad-scientist experiment gone wrong, Hugh Laurie), the missing link fish man (Will Arnett) and BOB (a gelatinous blob, hysterically done by Seth Rogan). Oh, and there's a huge insect-like dinosaur that follows bright lights around. Susan is locked up with them. This ends Act One.

Act Two starts with the alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) who wants to get back the mineral that crashed into Susan so he can rule the world. He sends a huge robot to earth to get it back. The monsters are set free to try to battle this robot and save San Francisco. Since Monsters aren't actually bad things (and thus you must look deeper to see their inner beauty) of course they win the day, and are allowed to be freed. However, fitting into society isn't easy when you're 50 feet tall or really strange looking. So they're sent off again. End of Act Two.

The Final Act involves our heros heading to Gallaxhar's ship to destroy him before he can take over the world and destroy Susan to get his power back. I won't give it all away, but I really liked it. It was funny with small lines dropped for the adults in the audience (Dr. Cockroach invoking "Hawking's Chair" in amazement) and BOB dating Jell-O to make the kids laugh. All the kids in the audience laughed really hard and many of the adults. Overall it was a fun way to spend an afternoon. 3.5 Lambs/stars

Kung Fu Panda: Review

I liked Kung Fu Panda. I didn't get to see it in the theater (mostly because it was a hard sell to my movie viewing partner), and it actually might have been more fun watching it with lots of kids. There's a lot of slap-stick humor with the panda falling down, breaking things, etc. And Jack Black couldn't have been a more appropriate choice to voice Po, the Panda. He's the son of a duck (that sounds like it should be an insult, but it isn't) who runs a noodle shop. However, in his heart he's always wanted to be a famous kung fu master. We start the story on the day that the kung fu master of the village in China, Oogway, is going to announce which one of the apprentices (Tigress, Mantis, Crane, Monkey, or Viper) will be made the master of the Dragon Scroll, and thus the ultimate Kung Fu master. Through a series of misadventures, our Panda Po is selected. He begins training to be a master with Master Shifu because the evil Tai Lung has escaped prison and seeks the Dragon Scroll and only the master of the Dragon Scroll can defeat him and save the valley. Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogan, and Jackie Chan voice various characters. It has terrific animation, beautiful scenery (reminiscent of Mulan, which I've always loved), and a captivating story. The final message is that it's within anyone to be anything, but it's sometimes hard to find a path to one's Kung Fu talent. 3.5 Stars/LAMBS

Twofer Tuesdays Top-Grossing Reviews: 1995 and 1992

Year: 1995
Film: Toy Story
Box Office Gross: $191,773,049
Awards: Nominated for 3 Oscars (before Best Animated Feature was a category) including winning an award for Special Achievement for a feature length computer animated film
Actors:Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger

This movie holds up even though computer animation has made leaps and bounds since this movie was completed. It was an innovative concept as a script even before we were awed by the new techniques behind animation which most people only notice when they're bad, not that they're amazingly new. I just read that Joss Whedon helped write the screenplay, which was nominated for an Oscar which, with Finding Nemo, are the only animated films nominated for best original screenplay. The characters they created were iconic toys, but given voices that seemed totally appropriate (wouldn't you assume that Mr. Potato Head spoke like Don Rickles?) and then sent on an adventure to return to the little boy who loves them. It's a great story, and deserves the accolades heaped upon it. This description of Buzz Lightyear sums it up for me.



Year: 1992
Film: Aladdin
Box Office Gross: $217,350,219
Awards: Nominated for 5 Oscars (before Best Animated Feature was a category) including winning 2 awards for Original Score and Best Original Song for "A Whole New World"
Actors: Scott Weingner, Robin Williams, Linda Larkin, Jonathan Freeman, and Gilbert Gottfried

Aladdin was the first movie I saw in the theater more than once. I think I actually saw it 5 times in the theater (back when movies cost $2 for kids) I liked it so much. Robin Williams' comedy as the genie was terrific and started the trend of big stars voicing characters in animated movies. I'm not sure this movie holds up as well for grown-ups because I've only seen it once since I was a kid, and most of the other animated movies I love I still watch. I'm still surprised this movie was the highest grossing for 1992, even over Batman Returns (the one with Penguin and Catwoman), Home Alone 2, and Lethal Weapon 3. Okay, maybe I'm not surprised.

Tuesdays Top-Grossing Review: 2004

Year: 2004
Film: Shrek 2
Box Office Gross: $436,471,036
Awards: Oscar nomination for Animated Feature and Best Original Song "Accidentally in Love"
Actors:Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, John Cleese

This is was the highest grossing sequel until The Dark Knight came along breaking all kinds of records. It expands the story of the original Shrek, our green, ornery ogre who has fallen in love and married the Princess Fiona who is also an ogre. Now they have to return to the Kingdom of Far, Far, Away to see her parents. They're of course shocked that their daughter is an ogre and married to Shrek. The King (John Cleese) hires Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) to get rid of Shrek and of course they become friends. However, the real Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) still wants to be Fiona's husband and works with the Fairy Godmother (the brilliant Jennifer Saunders from AbFab) to get rid of Shrek. Lots of hilarity ensues, I think Puss is terrific, the swashbuckling kitty who uses his cuteness to win fights when he knows he's losing. Ultimately, this movie didn't really do much more than the first one. The first was incredibly original, riffing on traditional fairy tale characters and ideas. This one does take that a little further with the new characters, but not a lot further. A good sequel, but not a fantastic stand alone movie.

Tuesdays Top-Grossing Reviews: 2000

Year: 2000
Film: How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Box Office Gross: $260,031,035
Awards: 1 Oscar for makeup, nominated for 2 others
Actors: Jim Carrey, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Baranski, Molly Shannon, Directed by Ron Howard

I was really surprised that this movie took in the most money for 2000. It was up against quite a few movies that entered our culture and were of much higher quality even for being blockbusters than The Grinch. The next 6 highest grossing films in 2000 included: Castaway, M:I 2, Gladiator, What Women Want, The Perfect Storm, and Meet the Parents. Each of these films is better and more worth watching again than The Grinch. Bringing the classic Dr. Seuss Christmas story to live-action rather than the wonderful cartoon would have been an incredible challenge, but extending it by using material from neither the book nor the cartoon was really the downfall. Jim Carrey was terrific, over the top, and scary but actually transforming within that huge costume to become lovable at the end. The rest of the story was more than a little silly, beyond being childish. It was boring for adults and a little creepy for kids. The sets, props, and costumes were also over the top, glitzy, contrived to look like their frozen literary counterparts rather than creating a flowing real world version of Who-ville. Overall, I didn't like this movie and don't seek it out at Christmas, though I'll watch the cartoon nearly every year.

WALL E and Robot Love

Everyone's been writing about how great the new Pixar movie Wall-E is, and I won't be any different. It's sort of the animated love-child of Star Wars (only Episode 4) ET: The Extraterrestrial, that was raised by 2001: A Space Odyssey. Our hero Wall-E is left on Earth for 700 years to help clean up garbage left by a Walmart-esque explosion of consumerism. All the humans have left to tour the galaxy in a luxury space ship until all the WallEs are finished cleaning. Wall-E creates massive buildings of garbage and finds little treasures along the way (reminded me of Ariel in The Little Mermaid collecting her human thingymabobs and whatchamakalits). He particularly likes a video of Hello, Dolly and his greatest aspiration is to hold hands with someone he loves. Since he's alone on Earth with only a cockroach, he just continues dreaming. However, a space probe lands on Earth, and EVE gets out. She seems to be searching for something, and she and WALL-E meet and try to communicate (though in the constant struggle that is technology upgrading, they don't quite speak the same language). However, WALL-E falls for our giggly EVE. He shows her his treasures (a light bulb, a Rubik's cube, etc.) and even a plant he discovered. She shuts down and waits for transport, because she's obviously been looking for plant life again. They end up on the human space ship where people have stopped walking (they are carted around all day and waited on by robots). The robots haven't quite taken over, but you can feel HAL wanting to reprimand Dave from time to time. Of course since the movie is Pixar all things work out well, but the climactic fight scene is awesome. You want humans to figure out they've lost something, and you want Robots to find love. It's a great movie that everyone should see. Little kids will love it. My heart nearly melted toward the end when a very little kid in the theater wondered aloud to his mom, "Will WALL-E be okay?" It's a testament to the heart-warming qualities of the movie that I didn't want to kill the kid for talking at the theater. No special circle of hell for me...WALL-E saved me. 5 LAMBS/stars

Simpsons Movie

I liked The Simpsons Movie (which I just caught on DVD) more than I've liked catching new episodes lately. It's a funny story where Homer of course does something ridiculously stupid that ends up getting the whole family in trouble. They escape a dome put over Springfield and move to Alaska. Of course they decide to come back and save Springfield. I won't tell you the end cause that would spoil it. There are tons of really funny jokes throughout - "Clap for Alaska" causing an avalache - that are exactly what makes the Simpsons unique unto itself. It's nothing bigger than the average episode, but it's great entertainment if you're a Simpsons fan. It's so chock-full of little jokes that I think it'll stand up well to repeat viewing. I don't think it deserved the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature - there were surprisingly lots of other animated movies that were much better. 3 of 5 stars, but if you already like the Simpsons it's about a 4.5.

Oscar Predictions: Best Animated Feature

This was posted on the LAMB website today as part of the series of movie bloggers predicting the Oscars.

The Oscar nominations came out last week, and I for one was pleasantly surprised about most of the actor nominations and movies. I'll probably be disappointed by the actual winners because they won't be the ones I want, but I doubt I'd be surprised. Anyway, one category I was particularly surprised to see such a small selection and relatively odd choices was best animated feature, which I was assigned to discuss for the LAMB Oscar Event. As expected Ratatouille was there. However, I was not expecting the other two, because other awards events hadn't included either of them. First, Persepolis was probably just not quite on the radar of the other awards, but the buzz and importance of it obviously penetrated the Oscar voters. The second one was Surf's Up, which I thought was just another penguin movie that had missed the year of the penguins (I loved March of the Penguins and thought Happy Feet was good, but I think penguins have been done now). The movies I expected to be there beyond Ratatouille were not, including The Simpsons Movie, Bee Movie, and Shrek the Third, which had all been nominated for other awards.

Since I do not live in a major metropolitan area, Persepolis will not be coming to my theater before the Oscars. However, a fellow movie blogger (Ferdy on Films)has written an extremely thorough review of the movie, which I draw on for my description. Persepolis follows the story of a woman reminiscing about her childhood in Iran and then in Europe. She wants to be modern and likes many things from outside Iran - Bruce Lee, punk music, ABBA, etc., all of which are forbidden after the rise of Islamic law. She is sent to live with family in Vienna, which doesn't work out. She grows up and still feels like an outsider, so she returns to Iran, but still doesn't find what she's looking for. It's described as a coming of age tale of an outsider who can't find a home to belong. It's based on graphic novels and the animation is obviously derived from the feel of graphic novels, being mostly black and white with a comic-feel of the animation. I think it's a remarkable story, and a new kind of animated movie to be made, but I'm not sure it's worthy of the Oscar. The animation is not spectacular or particularly nuanced, and holds on to the graphic novel and never really leaves the 2-dimensional space.

I was very pleasantly surprised watching Surf's Up. First, it's not a traditional cartoon story about penguins. It's an animated, (obviously) fictional, documentary about surfing penguins. There are interviews about the main character, a surfer named Z who died in a tournament a while ago. The main interviewee, Cody (voiced by Shia LeBoeuf), idolized the lost Z and is coming to compete in the tournament. He comes from Antarctica and has never been able to prove how good a surfer he is. The documentary people follow his journey to get to the Z memorial tournament. Cody arrives, gets hurt on the big waves on Pen Gu Island. Luckily there is a life guard, Lani (Zooey Deschanel) around to save him and then take care of him with the help of a washed up surfer (Jeff Bridges - perfectly channeling "The Dude" from time to time). The washed up surfer shows him how to make a new surf board that will help win the whole thing. Of course the washed up surfer turns out to be Z, who faked his death so as not to lose to the younger Tank. Cody and Tank compete, along with Chicken Joe (perfectly voiced by Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder), and of course I won't tell you who wins. Cody and Lani fall for each other and Z re-emerges to save the day. The reason this movie really struck me is both the style and the animation. The mockumentary could easily have been done by Christopher Guest and his recurring cast of kooky characters, but it happened to be animated penguins. So the script is really sharp with lots of funny bits, though most of it being as predictable as a Christopher Guest mockumentary. They did a good job creating a diverse cast of characters using many different species of penguins. It was the animation that really awed me - it was animated such that it was a camera capturing the images - with only one thing being in focus at a time. The person talking would be in focus, but the background would be blurry. It really came into a 3-D perspective and kept the idea that it was a documentary going throughout. Excellent choice by the Oscar committee, and probably overlooked by many in the theaters. However, I don't think it will win either.

I do think the Oscar will go to Ratatouille, and for a change, I think it also deserves it. The animated offering from Pixar, Ratatouille, was notoriously hard to sell - it's about a rat and the title is a stew that most people have never heard of. There are a hundred titles that would have made the movie easier to sell - "Underground in Paris", or "The Little Chef" (a phrase even used in the film). However, people flocked to this movie and loved it. Basically, it's a terrific story about being true to yourself, but trying to realistically find yourself at the intersection of different worlds. It's everything the Disney/Pixar movies have always been about - with the addition of pretty exceptional animation. This is the first CGI-animated movie I've ever seen that creates people with realistic facial expressions and twitches. Unfortunately, that skill extends to creating too-realistic shots of a very nice family of rats swarming out of a man-hole, or across a floor. That's where the heebie jeebies came in - I actually had to look away twice. It's the story of a young rat, Remy, who knows he could make better food than the garbage his kind are stuck with. He seeks out the restaurant of his favorite chef in Paris, the deceased Gusteau (who comes to him in hallucinations to tell him what to do). Of course a rat is not allowed in a restaurant kitchen, so he teams up with a lowly garbage boy and they start creating magnificent dishes that raise the declining status of the restaurant, making everyone happy. Ultimately, Remy's family accepts him for his "foodie nature" and Remy and the garbage boy create wonderful food in a kitchen no one is allowed to see. It doesn't cater too much to any one demographic, and is easy to enjoy by all - particularly if rats don't give you the heebie jeebies. I think it has spectacular animation, a fun storyline, and will win the Oscar.