Movie Reviews, etc.
from the LA Times:
Sen. Barack Obama accused rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today of attempting to “hoodwink” and “bamboozle” voters into thinking she was the front-runner by offering him the second slot on her ticket.
from yours truly:
What are you trying to say? That supporting Hilary is akin to supporting bad CGI and implications of racism? Oh, actually, that makes sense.
Ratatouille just beat out Persepolis for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars (boo) and then it showed up from Netflix yesterday! Since it beat such an awesome (if subtitled) movie and has been advertised as The Best Reviewed Movie Of The Year, I was hoping it would be pretty great. But it was pretty mediocre.
The oh-so-complicated plot involves a rat named Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) who wants to be a chef so he teams up with this kid named Alfredo Linguini (oh, great name.) who has a job in a kitchen but is completely inept at cooking. Together, they have to save the restaurant without letting people know that a rat is actually doing the cooking. I know, you’re totally in suspense right now, but I’m not going to spoil it for you!
Ok, I will.
The restaurant gets shut down by the health inspector but it’s OK because they open a new restaurant that magically doesn’t have to adhere to health codes and everyone lives H.E.A. Also, they convince a critic to stop being a jerk and Alfredo falls in love with Jeanine Garafalo who has a French accent. (The movie takes place in Paris, but most of the people & rats aren’t French for some reason).
So, it’s no Toy Story - in terms of story or voice talents - but it’s OK, not bad, great for kids probably.
Hey, a movie that I don’t feel compelled to tag with ‘misogynist’! Hooray!
Actually, I sort of love this movie. I saw it on accident because Atonement was sold out and didn’t know anything about it except someone “heard it was good” and “was based on a graphic novel or something.”
So.
Yes, it is animated. Yes, it is based on a graphic novel. Yes, it is good.
Persepolis is the story of a young woman who spent her early childhood in Iran, during a lot of political upheaval, and was eventually sent to France because there was too much turmoil and danger in Iran. The story starts in the middle, then goes back to the main character, Marjane’s, early childhood and through her adolescence. It not only taught me a shitload of Iranian history (while still being monstrously compelling), it’s also a really sweet story of a girl growing up that I could totally relate to! Also, how fucking adorable is the animation:
That’s the little girl (Marjane) pretending she’s Chairman Mao or possibly Jackie Chan. I don’t remember specifically, but sooooo cute!
I like princesses, big song productions and McDreamy as much as the next girl. If not more. But 2 hours? Come on.
What is the deal with Jason Lee? I always think I like him. But I’m pretty sure that he can’t act. Like at all. I’m sure it’s hard to act with like fake chipmunks and stuff - but it can’t be harder than it is to act like you like Shannen Doherty.
But David Cross was awesome. Per usual.
Beowulf in 3D cost like $3 more than Beowulf *not* in 3D. But it comes with glasses. In my opinion, there should be a lot more movies that come with accessories.
Besides that, I went into Beowulf with basically no expectations. Well, that’s kind of a lie because I basically expected it to suck. I was surprised because it really didn’t suck. It wasn’t great - it was okay and I wasn’t bored out of my mind and it was kind of interesting to look at - as much because of Angelina Jolie dripping in gold as because it was in 3D. I was a little distracted from the story (not very complex or anything) by trying to figure out who all the actors were (is that John Malkovich? It is!).
I was never assigned this book in high school (god knows I wouldn’t have read it anyway) but I have the gist of it now enough that I could probably answer a Jeopardy! question about it, and isn’t that what’s most important, after all?
Is it just me, or does this poster kind of give you a headache? It’s so busy and brash and loud and colorful but something is most definitely missing. It doesn’t make me think whimsy and magic, it just makes me glad I don’t have a kid to drag me to see this cheesy piece of crap.
Once a prime-time lens that hilariously magnified the cracks in our crumbling society, The Simpsons has kind of sucked balls for about as long as Tupac has been pretending to be dead. Hype said that writers from “the good years” were used for the movie, but I had still resolved not to attend unless it hit greater than 90% on rottentomatoes‘ cream of the crop (it didn’t).
Still, I somehow found myself scheduled to see the film’s midnight showing at the ArcLight’s Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Unfortunately, the crew I rolled in with centered around an omega-list celebrity high on his recent (non)mention half-way down the user-submitted sightings page on defamer. He wasn’t so bad, but his entourage (literally) kept shouting “We’re with someone FAMOUS!!!!” to any fellow ArcLight patron that would listen. This farcically Los Angeles bullshit made me decide to abscond before I could be further disappointed by the actual film.
Thus my “The Simpsons Movie” experience was as follows:
We were seated.
Some ArcLight douche came out and performed his best improv of “Howard Dean introduces The Simpsons Movie with too much enthusiasm and ruins his career… BYAAAAH!”
The lights went down, I got up, took a piss, and left.
I give the ArcLight dude an F+, the ArcLight men’s room an A-, and Empire Records a B+ for being somewhat generation defining and fun, but a bit overrated.
