Tag: review

MOVIE REVIEW: Saving Mr. Banks

It was Julie Andrew and her husband Tony Dalton Disney personally toured Disneyland with, not Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers.

SavingMrBanks The Wife and I saw Saving Mr. Banks a few weeks ago at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, and it was well-crafted, with Emma Thompson quite good as P. L. Travers, creator of Mary Poppins. Even more impressive was Annie Rose Buckley, in her first film, as the writer as a child. I immediately “recognized” the composing Sherman brothers (played by Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak), and other performers, including Bradley Whitford as a Disney creator and Collin Farrell in the flashbacks as the future writer’s father.

So why has it taken me so long to write about this film? Was it about Meryl Streep lashing out at the memory of the real Walt Disney over his purported sexism, at an event honoring Thompson? Nah, that’s not it.

Was it that Tom Hanks was snubbed for an Oscar? Did not see Saving Captain Phillips (yet), but there were stronger folks in the supporting actor category, where his portrayal of Walt Disney would have been placed.

It’s that, from everything I’ve read, the movie is just too far from the truth for my taste. I expect biopics to combine characters, mess with timelines, and the like. This, though, is what my friend Steve Bissette called “the usual corporate product revamps of reality”, though “far less terrible than projected by many.” Bissette, citing the 1999 book MARY POPPINS, SHE WROTE: THE LIFE OF P.L. TRAVERS by Valerie Lawson:

It was Julie Andrew and her husband Tony Dalton Disney personally toured Disneyland with [not Travers], Disney made no trip to London to seal the deal (contracts were signed before Travers went to L.A. to work with the team, and were revised/renegotiated on fine points afterwards), Julie Andrews kept Travers personally up-to-date on the changes being made and fidelity to her character/books, there were no words between Disney and Travers at the L.A. premiere, the whole relationship with the limo driver is pure confection—and as a Gurdjieff devotee, Travers would have reviled the Freudian conceit of the movie.

Although, he adds:

Much of the film IS reflective of what went down, with far more attention to the actual history than most Hollywood films ever, ever give to their own… It’s clear from Lawson’s bio that Travers profited mightily and knew going in and through the process what was going to be done and was done, and did her utmost to ensure some control. The contract Disney extended and honored was extraordinary in its day and today is even moreso.

But knowing SO much is made up – the driver is the one character who humanized her – made it more disappointing, in retrospect.

Still, it LOOKED right. I bought that this was Disneyland, that these were Walt’s employees who he insisted call him by his first name.

Bottom line: you may very well enjoy Saving Mr. Banks. Indeed, I rather did, in spite of my reservations, though the aforementioned Freudian stuff was a little weird. Just don’t believe everything you see.

MOVIE REVIEW: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

I enjoyed the music of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, which included Paul McCartney’s new song, “New.”


Sunday morning, my brother-in-law calls; he’s fixing up a house in my area. His wife’s trip back from Ukraine has been delayed a day – he’s planning on picking her up at JFK airport then driving back to Pennsylvania with their daughter. With some extra time on his hands, did we want to go to the movies? He’ll pay. OK! The choice they made was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.

My family (wife, daughter, and I) meet them (BIL, daughter) at Colonie Center, and actually don’t enter the theater until the previews were already going for three minutes, then we see 10 MORE minutes of animated coming attractions, most of which convinced me NOT to see them.

By happenstance, my family had seen the first movie in the series and had liked it. This take, even in 2-D, was brighter visually, and better drawn – probably a result of a bigger budget – and I loved it. The recap of the first film was handled quite efficiently before launching into the new adventure.

Inventor Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader), who created the mess in the first film, is invited by his “idol Chester V (Will Forte) to join The Live Corp Company, where the best and brightest inventors in the world create technologies for the betterment of mankind.” Ultimately, Flint is sent on a sensitive mission involving his most infamous creation, which is creating food-animal hybrids; Chester tells him he can save the world. Flint’s supposed to do it alone, but he brings his crew, including girlfriend Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) and his dad (James Caan), with whom he finally connected at the end of film 1.

I liked it for what it was: a lot of funny visual jokes/food puns, and a narrative that suggests that work, in lieu of your friends, isn’t a good choice. It also suggests that hero-worship is highly overrated. The plot was serviceable, not great, but I enjoyed it, and the characters therein; my wife, and my daughter, did not. The story was not compelling enough for the Wife. It is true that the character upon which the resolution of the story fell was clear to me fairly early on. My sensitive daughter was scared by some seemingly hostile foods.

Subsequently, I listened to the Bat Segundo Show when Ed Champion interviewed writer Kathryn Davis, and about halfway through, they had a riff on the misunderstood monster. II then realized that perhaps there was more to the narrative of the film than I had originally realized.

The voice actors, which also included Andy Samberg, Benjamin Bratt, Neil Patrick Harris, Terry Crews, and Kristen Schaal, are all quite good. I enjoyed the music, which included Paul McCartney’s new song, “New,” some Mark Mothersbaugh, and Yummy Yummy” by the 1910 Fruitgum Company.

On a scale of 1 to 4, I’d give it 3 stars. Looks great, seemingly less filling (despite the food theme). The mixed positive reviews I’ve seen are mostly accurate. I do love how the storyline continues through the early part of the credits – WHY do people leave during them?

Book review: Peter Jennings – A Reporter’s Life

Peter Jennings was a sometimes a harsh taskmaster, but it was never about personal ego, it was about making the broadcast better, and it showed.

I used to watch ABC World News almost religiously and it was because of Peter Jennings. Now I find the program almost unwatchable, and I have to think that the late anchorman would probably feel the same way.

Of course, I was watching when he told us, on-air on April 5, 2005, that he had lung cancer. And I was a viewer when Charles Gibson announced he had died on August 7, and I felt a profound sense of sadness, grief that continues as the broadcast he put forth has turned, in large measure, into the infotainment that he could not stand.

Lynn Scher. ABC reporter contacted Peter’s widow, Kayce Freed Jennings, and suggested that the interviews conducted for the ABC News special, “Peter Jennings: Reporter” in August 2005 would make a good book. Kayce initially said no, so Lynn Scher did it anyway, just for the family and close colleagues, presented a year later. This convinced Kayce that a book WAS viable, not just to honor Peter, but to discuss journalistic values. The book, edited by Kate Darton, Kayce Jennings, and Scher, is a story told by some seven dozen colleagues, competitors, family members, friends, and newsmakers.

It relates his life, born in Toronto in 1938, the son of Canada’s Edward R. Murrow, Charles Jennings. Peter was smart, but a lazy student, dropping out of high school. But, because of his charisma and good looks, he finds himself in the family business in Canada. He joins ABC News in 1964, and in 1965, at the age of 26, becomes the anchor of the evening news, a job for which he was indisputably unqualified, especially against competition such as Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC, and Walter Cronkite on CBS.

He becomes a field reporter, first in Rome, then Beirut. It was he who reported live from the Olympics in Munich about the kidnapping and killing of Israeli athletes.

In 1978, ABC News created this troika anchor chair with Frank Reynolds in Washington covering the government/politics segments, Max Robinson in Chicago on domestic news, and Jennings, now the chief foreign correspondent, dealing with international news from London. By 1983, he was the sole anchor, working out of New York City.

It is at this point that the broadcast started to get good. His exacting standards, his antipathy for the soft stories, made ABC News #1. He even eschewed the O.J. Simpson trial story until he became convinced it said something about the racial divide in the United States.

Jennings often fought for extended coverage of topics that, perhaps, people didn’t know they needed to know, about AIDS, Guantanamo, religion, racism, the Arab world, and much more. He had an insatiable curiosity, and seem to act as though everyone else did, or should.

He spent 24 hours ringing in the millennium, then was on air for over 60 hours after 9/11, including a wonderful program the Saturday after, trying to explain the event to children, which I watched too because I needed someone to explain it to me. Peter had a knack, a need to make sure the story was told well, including the context in which the events took place. He was sometimes a harsh taskmaster in this regard, virtually EVERYONE said, but it was never about personal ego, it was about making the broadcast better, and it showed.

I enjoyed the narrative, and the various remembrances, interspersed with words from Peter Jennings, made it a surprisingly interesting book to read.

Movie review: The Spectacular Now

But then a road trip really crystalized the narrative for me, making what has come before much more significant.

Last Friday, the Daughter was still with the neighbor, the Wife and I were back in Albany, and it’s HOT out. Let’s go to the movies at the Spectrum in Albany to see the 1 pm showing of The Spectacular Now. We’d recently seen the previews, and I knew it had reviewed well. It was directed by James Ponsoldt, and written by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, based on some young adult novel by Tim Tharp I had never heard of.

Sutter (Miles Teller) and Cassidy (Brie Larson) are that popular couple in high school, a fun, hard-partying duo. She breaks up with him, though, for reasons he doesn’t initially understand. He crashes into the orbit of Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a nice girl, who he befriends, somewhat out of pity, and ends up in a rebound romance with her.

Sutter believes in the spectacular now, that growing up isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. His mom won’t even tell him where his dad is, and he thinks that geometry stuff that Aimee is trying to tutor him in is useless anyway. Yet he has an interesting streak of honesty and integrity that disarms people around him.

Telling more would probably give away too much. The coming of age movie went along, interesting and pleasant enough. But then a road trip really crystalized the narrative for me, making what has come before much more significant.

The performances are great. Miles Teller I had never heard of, but Shailene Woodley was wonderful in The Descendants. Also strong were Jennifer Jason Leigh as Sutter’s mother (a long way from Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Kyle Chandler. Halfway through, I didn’t think the movie was spectacular, but by the end, I thought it was at least very good.

MOVIE REVIEW: Blue Jasmine

How much of the past can we shed, and how so, before we cross that line between lying and just moving on?

It’s true: after over 30 years of watching Woody Allen movies, I have had to limit myself to those that review well. That’s because bad Woody Allen films are perhaps more painful to me than the bad films of other writers and/or directors.

I watched Midnight in Paris, which I liked. I avoided To Rome with Love, because it was critically savaged. Perhaps if I were seeing as many movies as I did 15 or 16 years ago, I would be more willing to take cinematic risks. Blue Jasmine got mostly great reviews, and understandably so.

But the title Jasmine is a bit difficult to like. She’s this odd mixture of two characters, one real, one fictional. She’s part Ruth Madoff, the wife of Bernie, the Ponzi scheme king, who claims that she was oblivious to his financial shenanigans that ruined other people’s lives. She’s also part Blanche DuBois of Tennesse Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, with her suddenly needing the kindness, if not of strangers, then of her estranged, lower class, sister Ginger living a continent away.

Is it just a coincidence that the BLANCHE character is played, and brilliantly so, by Cate BLANCHETT? She will likely get some nominations, come awards season. Ginger is played by Sally Hawkins, who I enjoyed in 2010’s Made in Dagenham. She’s also fine here as a character trying to negotiate between her beau, Chili (Bobby Cannavale), and her sister.

Necessarily to the plot, the storyline goes from present to past, no more effectively when Jasmine is in a second-hand guitar shop and discovers the reason for yet another estrangement.

Also very good in their roles are Alec Baldwin (who looks a little too much like that guy from 30 Rock), Peter Sarsgaard, and a great revelation to me, Andrew Dice Clay, a comedian I could not stand in his heyday, whose character may be the moral center of the whole story.

I should say that, at the end of the film, I am sympathetic to Jasmine, just a bit. And worried.

The movie got me thinking about the process of reinventing oneself. How much of the past can we shed, and how so, before we cross that line between lying and just moving on? Movie stars used to do it all the time; Marion Morrison became JOHN WAYNE, and Norma Jean Baker, MARILYN MONROE, for good or ill. I do have some examples in mind from my circle of acquaintances, but it’s not for me to say.

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