Tag: movies

MOVIE REVIEW: Ramona and Beezus

pleasant, sincere, likable, wholesome


I knew it would happen eventually: I take the daughter to a movie that doesn’t scare her (cf. Princess and the Frog, Despicable Me) or totally bore me (Alvin and the Chipmunks 2).

Ramona and Beezus is a story based on Beverly Cleary’s apparently popular children’s book series, which I had never heard of; obviously, I live in a cultural desert. Ramona Quimby (Joey King) is a nine-year-old middle child, stuck between her beautiful high sister Beatrice, who baby Ramona had dubbed Beezus (Selena Gomez – Wizards of Waverly Place), and the new baby.

Ramona, her rambunctious, free-spirited imagination on high, doesn’t know how to draw inside the lines. This is alternately interesting and frustrating to Beezus and to the parents, Robert (John Corbett – everything from Northern Exposure to My Big Fat Greek Wedding to Sex and the City) and Dorothy (Bridget Moynahan – Six Degrees). Ramona does have an ally in her Aunt Bea (Ginnifer Goodwin – Ed, Big Love), who relates to being the younger sister. Bea is horrified to learn that Hobart (Josh Duhamel – Transformers) the boy who broke her heart in high school is back in town, and Bea and Ramona agree to keep Hobart at arm’s length.

Meanwhile, in school, Ramona cannot be bothered with traditional rules, such as spelling, much to the consternation of her teacher, Mrs. Meacham (Sandra Oh – Grey’s Anatomy, Sideways).

There’s a family crisis and Ramona is asked to step up, and she really tries, but her efforts go a bit haywire. In this context, I particularly enjoyed the evolving relationship between the two title characters, and between Ramona and her dad.

Describing more would fall into spoiler territory. Suffice to say, these are the words I would use to describe the film: pleasant, sincere, likable, wholesome. This sounds like being damned with faint praise, but it is not meant to be. I enjoyed it, and I don’t regret having seen it. Don’t necessarily need to see it again, but I’m not the target audience.

The movie received a 73% positive rating, as of this writing in Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s the official site for the film.

Movie Review: Salt

Oh, look, there’s the building I used to work in! Did they manually change the highway signs or did they just correct them digitally?

I’ve been known to be a self-confessed art-house snob when it comes to movies. Interestingly, our local art house, the Spectrum Theatre, was showing Salt, the new Angelina Jolie movie that was filmed, in part, in Albany, NY, rerouting traffic for a few weeks last summer.

Let me state from the start that Salt isn’t the type of movie the wife and I tend to see. We’ve never viewed any of the Jason Bourne movies, for example. When you see a lot of a certain genre of movie (or listen to a certain genre of music), it develops one’s critical eye (or ear). Still, Salt is what we decided to see on Monday night date night.

I thought, after an intense flashback scene, the beginning of the movie was slow, giving a lot of exposition; I never felt that way again. Salt was an adrenaline rush of action and tension from about 12 minutes in until the end. About 3/4 of the way through, my wife whispered, “I’m exhausted,” and I knew just what she meant.

This is one of those Cold War dramas that seemed farfetched until the recent Russian spy scandal in real life; the difference is that this group is far more competent, insulating themselves even in the halls of government.

I started reading the reviews: “bombastic, bells-and-whistles spectacular” – check; “ludicrous but somehow credible spy thriller” – check; “As she tries to find her husband, and perhaps assassinate the Russian president, she’s not quite sure who or what she is. And neither are we. Which is precisely why the whole thing works” – check; “How many times have we seen Cruise or Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis evade pursuers or when the need arises, disable them? The sex change makes what transpires feel fresh — and unpredictable.” – double-check. Anyone who has seen Die Hard or Mission: Impossible, and I have, has seen some of these tricks before, but somehow this (mostly) worked for me.

Perhaps it’s the star power that is Angelina Jolie. Though I don’t believe I’d seen her in anything since Girl, Interrupted in 1999, she turned out to be perfect for this role; she has…PRESENCE.

The one thing that took me out of the movie – but it’s OK – is probably the thing that I came to see: the highways around Albany, during the absurdly entertaining chase scene. Oh, look, there’s the building I used to work in! I recognize the Environmental Conservation building! Did they manually change the highway signs or did they just correct them digitally? The skyline looked pretty good!

If you see a lot of this genre of movie, you may feel it’s all rehashed plotlines, but we were glad to see it. If you live or lived around Albany, you must see it, if not in theaters, then certainly when it comes out on DVD, just for the ah-ha feeling you’ll have. Though if you wait for the Albany mention during the end credits, you’ll be disappointed.

Other movies using In Paradisum from Requiem, Op. 48 by Faure, in addition to Salt.

Roger Ebert’s positive review

 

The Scenario

Hair in my food?

I found this at something called Monday Mayhem, only the URL spells it “mahem”. Whatever. It’s rather like Sunday Stealing except the lists tend to be shorter. I thought this one from January was rather interesting.

1. You see a strange car pull up to your neighbor’s house every day at lunchtime. You accidentally glance into the window of the house and notice that your ‘happily married neighbor’ is fooling around! What do you do?

Well, it depends very much on my relationship with the neighbor and the neighbor’s spouse. It might be that I would do absolutely nothing at all if I didn’t know them well. If the one fooling around was my friend, I probably would mention it to him/her. If the neighbor’s spouse was my friend, I would almost certainly mention it, not to my friend, at least initially, but to the cheating spouse, with a recommendation to end the affair; whether I told my friend would depend on the actions of the person “fooling around”.

2. You are at the mall and a mom with really annoying screaming little kids is walking in front of you. She goes to give her kids a quarter for the giant gumball machine and she accidentally drops a $10 bill and doesn’t realize it. What do you do?

Say, “Hey lady, you dropped something!” Don’t know how the noisy kids factor into this. Right is right.

3. You get an email from a candy company telling you that they will send you 6 pounds of delicious chocolate if you blog about their product. When you get the product and try it you realize that it is the worst chocolate that you have ever tasted. What do you do?

It’d be one of two things: 1) I just don’t write anything at all, especially if it’s a small company, or 2) I write a negative review, probably filled with qualifiers such as “unfortunately, I found the candy pretty much inedible. I have to wonder: was this just a bad, or tainted batch, or is this what they sell regularly? If the latter, I can’t imagine long-term success.”

4. Texting while driving is one of the most dangerous and annoying things someone could do. Yet, what would you do if you were driving and listening to the radio when the announcer says that he will give $10,000 to the first person with your name that texts a message to him?

Well, assuming I actually knew where my cellphone was, if I were driving, I’d pull over at the first opportunity.

5. You’ve been invited to your boss’s house for a dinner party. It’s dark out and there is poor lighting when you get there. As soon as you get inside you realize that you have stepped in dog poop and you have tracked into your boss’s house. What do you do?

Well, it would depend on whether it was the boss’s dog. If it was, I’d say, “I’m afraid I just stepped into some dog poop” without specifying. Conversely, if I knew for sure it WASN’T my boss’s dog, I’d launch into a tirade about people who don’t curb their pets.

6. You are at a restaurant waiting for your food to arrive. You’ve waited nearly 30 minutes since the moment you placed your order when your food finally shows up. There is a hair on the top of the food. Do you send it back and wait another 30 minutes or do you deal?

I send it back and leave, paying for the drinks and salad already consumed. All the restaurant studies suggest it is the experience, not the quality of the food, that makes the most impact on whether one has a good or poor dining experience. Another half-hour wait would make it a poor dining experience, no matter how good the food was.

7. If you had the power to do so, what would be the one question that you would like to ask anyone who reads this?

Why do they call it “reality television” when the circumstances are so artificial, anything but real?
***
Exene Cervenka of the band X co-directed Bad Day (1986), a “20-minute, silent, black & white western to pay tribute to the early days of the one-reel westerns,” starting John Doe (X), Dave Alvin (Blasters), Chris D (Flesh Eaters), Kevin Costner (yes, that Kevin Costner), “now available for digital download on a pay-what-you-will basis…a portion of the proceeds from the film are going to Gulf Coast aid organizations.”

 

MOVIE REVIEW: Toy Story 3

Who WERE those three heartless Rotten Tomatoes heartless critics who didn’t like Toy Story 3?


OK, let’s get my singular complaint out of the way. My wife and I both felt that the 3-D did not particularly enhance Toy Story 3, at least when we saw it at the Madison Theatre in Albany last week. I had not read Roger Ebert’s otherwise positive review of the film, which ends, “Just don’t get me started about the 3-D.”

That said, this may be my favorite of the three Toy Story movies, and we own the first two on something called VHS. It starts with a flashback scene of Andy (voice of John Morris) playing with his toys, followed by present-day Andy getting ready for college. What should he do with his frankly neglected buddies? His mother (Laurie Metcalf) has an idea that he doesn’t much care for. Andy decides to take Woody (Tom Hanks) along with him to college and put the others in the attic, but miscommunication ensues, with nearly unfortunate results.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal back on February 19 that describes the plot this way: “In Pixar’s coming movie ‘Toy Story 3,’ Woody the cowboy and his toy-box friends are dumped in a day-care center after their owner, Andy, leaves for college.” Well, not quite; I think there was intentional misdirection on Pixar’s part, rather like the wallpaper image shown above.

The toys do find themselves at the day-care center; quoting Ebert: “they think they’ll like [it], because there will be plenty of kids to play with them all day long. There seems to be relatively little grieving about the loss of Andy’s affections; he did, after all, sentence them to a toy box for years, and toys by nature are self-centered and want to be played with.”

There is a pecking order in the daycare, with the bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty) the seemingly Burl Ives-like, avuncular leader of the toys. Ultimately, the best scene in this segment may be between the clotheshorse Ken (Michael Keaton) and smarter-than-she-seems Barbie (Jodi Benson). Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) en Espanol is also entertaining.

Ultimately, the ending made my wife a little verklempt. As for me, I wasn’t nearly (sob) as (sob) affec(sob)ted (sob). Apparently, we were not alone.

No, we did not bring the daughter. There was enough “toys in peril” stuff going on in this G-rated film that we agreed that she would not enjoy it.

Oh, here’s a different kind of complaint I have: surely this movie will be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and deservedly so. It got 99% positive reviews in Rotten Tomatoes; who WERE those three heartless critics who didn’t like it? But because there is now an animated feature category, its chances of winning the big award are virtually nil. I predict a best original screenplay nomination for Michael Arndt, probably best known for Little Miss Sunshine; not brave enough to pick it to win…yet.

Y is for YES!

It occurred to me that one of the most famous uses of the word “yes” in film replicates a lie.

Sometimes, it feels like such a NO world. Things go wrong: from natural and man-made disasters to personal crises, such as illness, accidents and economic problems. Stress and strain, stress and strain. And “the power of positive thought” can’t always fix it.

Yet, today, I’m saying YES anyway! And what says YES more to me than music?!

So, I started by looking at the pop charts for songs that start with the word Yes. The first one is oxymoronic, Yes, We Have No Bananas, which charted no fewer than five times in 1923. The first version to chart went to #1. Click on HERE to hear Billy Jones with Arthur Hall & Irving Kaufman. Ben Selvin’s version ALSO went to #1. (This is sonically interesting: George Wilton Ballard on a 1927 Edisonic Beethoven Diamond Disc Phonograph.)

Also charting five times in one year is 1925’s Yes, Sir! That’s My Baby! Gene Austin’s #1 version can be heard HERE. It was also recorded by everyone from FRANK SINATRA to Ricky Nelson (#34 in 1960) and the Baja Marimba Band (#109 in 1968). A couple of non-charting 1925 versions: Dajos Bela Tanzorchester and, perhaps my favorite, Lee Morse.

A couple of YES songs charted in 1941: Yes, Indeed! by Tommy Dorsey and Yes, My Darling Daughter, by both Glenn Miller and Dinah Shore.

There are a lot more YES songs in the modern era of rock, including Yes! by Chad Brock (#22 in 2000) and Yes by Merry Clayton (#45 in 1988). But the biggest hit was Yes I’m Ready, which Barbara Mason took to #5 in 1965, only to be bested in the charts by the version from Teri DeSario w/ K.C., #2 in 1980.

Possibly my favorite YES song is Yes We Can Can, a minor hit for Lee Dorsey in 1970, as Yes We Can. Here’s the studio version, which went to #11 in 1973, and also, a Live 1974 version, featuring the composer of the song, Allen Touissant.

Oh, and there’s a GROUP called YES. Here’s Roundabout, the first song on the first YES album I owned, FRAGILE; I bought The Yes Album subsequently.

It occurred to me that one of the most famous uses of the word “yes” in film replicates a lie.

Still, I’m saying Yes. Say “yes” in your own language, be it Arabic or Bengali or Bulgarian or French or Hebrew or Italian or Japanese or Mandarin Chinese or Portuguese or Vietnamese or any other tongue you wish.

To pretty much negate a former First Lady, Just Say Yes!

ABC Wednesday

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