4 Aug - "I'm gonna strip away this mystery and expose it's private parts"

Rango (2011)
dir. Gore Verbinski (Mousehunt, 1997)

VOICES

Ned Beatty (Back to School, 1986)
Gil Birmingham (Eclipse, 2010)
Abigail Breslin (Zombieland, 2009)
Johnny Depp (Dead Man, 1995)

Isla Fisher (I Heart Huckabees, 2004)

Charles Fleischer (Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (voice), 1988)
Beth Grant (Flatliners, 1990)
Alfred Molina (Dead Man, 1995)

Bill Nighy (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 1, 2010)

Joe Nunez (Superbad, 2007)
Timothy Olyphant (First Wives Club, 1996)
Stephen Root (Ghost, 1990)

Harry Dean Stanton (Alien, 1979)

Ray Winstone (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 2005)

Good Lord! Finally I see a computer animated movie that I actually like! I feel that Rango had an interesting and compelling plot that was both intensely amusing as well as attaining a level of emotional depth that I thought was appropriate for the material. The character development was tangible and neither the thematic element nor the humor insulted my intelligence. Kiefer was so pleased when we chose this off the On Demand that he gave me a long tight hug, so clearly it was a hit with the younger audience as well, proving my long-standing assertion that you don't need to dumb down the material to make kids happy. Let's treat children like clever and insightful individuals and, God willing, they may become such.

This was fun for me last time, so I thought I'd do another brief interview with my little brother, Kiefer.

P: Can you tell me what Rango was about?

K: Well, it started out from a lizard, or should I say, whatever you want to call it, a chameleon. Is that right?

P: Yep.

K: The chameleon, also known as Rango, who's told from a armadillo that he found outside of Rango's little box in the car--he didn't have any real friends until that armadillo showed up with little tire marks on him...

P: Hang on, Kief, you don't need to give a whole play-by-play, you can just sort of sum it all up.

K: It's kind of hard to tell because it's a long story. I don't really remember most of it but I do think it's a good movie.

P: Did you like Rango better than Gnomeo & Juliet or Tangled?

K: It's kind of hard to say 'cause they're all animated, which is equal. And they're all different kind of comedies, that's equal. I can't really compare it because they're almost the same and equally divided, and they're all comedies. So I don't really know what would be better, because they're only movies and they're all animated and they're comedies and they're all, like, journeys.

P: I don't know if Gnomeo & Juliet was really a journey.

K: I said sort of like a journey.

P: OK, sorry. Did you like the way the characters talked in Rango?

K: Yeah, you could say, but I don't understand why that would be a question because different people talk in different ways. But I also wonder if all the voices are done by the same person like Looney Tunes.

P: Did you think it was harder to understand than Gnomeo & Juliet?

K: No, not really.

P: OK, one last question. What do you think is the most important thing for a really good movie?

K: Most of the time I think it would be the thrill or a journey that takes place. Or something happens to someone really poor or really alone with no friends and ends up to be in a journey for life and death, just like Jane Eyre.

Last night Kiefer and I and our Mom watched Jane Eyre On Demand. So I guess that's why he stuck it in there at the end. I guess if you think of it that way, Rango is a little bit like Jane Eyre, minus the madwoman locked in the attic. I suppose what we could glean from this is that kids don't really know what they're watching, so there's no reason the adults have to be utterly bored and maybe some of those big words are penetrating the subconscious. In conclusion: Rango = more like this please.

28 July - "Why must you wear a blue hat?"

Gnomeo & Juliet (2011)
dir. Kelly Asbury (Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron)

VOICES

James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland, 2006)

Emily Blunt (The Wolfman, 2010)

Ashley Jensen (How to Train Your Dragon (voice), 2010)

Michael Caine (Zulu, 1964)

Matt Lucas (Shaun of the Dead, 2004)

Dolly Parton (Steel Magnolias, 1999)

Maggie Smith (The Secret Garden, 1993)

Jason Statham (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, 1998)

Ozzy Osbourne (Moulin Rouge! (voice), 2001)

Stephen Merchant (The Invention of Lying, 2009)

Patrick Stewart (The Plague Dogs (voice), 1982)

Hulk Hogan

Jim Cummings (Castle in the Sky (voice: Disney English version), 1986)
Julie Walters (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, 2010)

Another pick by Kiefer! You can probably imagine the plot setup, red gnomes v. blue gnomes, and, no, there isn't a tragic ending. There are some cute one-liners and I liked the pink lawn flamingo. The take home message was that feuding is wholly unproductive, on the other hand, there was absolutely nothing creative about this movie, and nothing was accomplished by its existence. I wish the entertainment industry would get its act together and stop shoving bullshit down children's throats, because movies like this, while they are a little bit funny and have a transparent moral and lots of bright colors, aren't teaching them anything and are utterly uninspirational.

I think maybe it could have been saved if the Romeo and Juliet thing was less literal. We love the forbidden love theme. We loved West Side Story. Instead someone barfed out the sparknotes version of Shakespeare and tacked on a happy ending instead.

However, they did manage to make a movie that Kiefer liked. So I decided to interview him about it.

P: Kiefer, what did you think of Gnomeo and Juliet?

K: It's the same thing except there's red and blues and they're gnomes. Except they don't die at the end. I think it was pretty good. I don't know why it's good. I just seem to sort of like it.

P: What do you know about Romeo and Juliet?

K: I don't really know exactly because it's hard to remember all of it. At the Renaissance Fair the tale was told, but that was a week ago. I don't really remember. All I know is that at the end Romeo think Juliet is dead and so he sacrifices himself and then it was just a drink that made her go to sleep and so she killed herself.

P: Do you like happy endings or sad endings

K: No, I like both.

P: Why?

K: Why? Because no matter what ending it is. If it's a sad or it's a happy ending, it either turns out to be one thing or the other.

P: That's the truth. Having seen Gnomeo and Juliet, are you more interested in reading Shakespearean literature?

K: Well, it doesn't really make me interested because I don't really have the time. Because I'm reading a book right now in a series I really like, Percy Jackson series, and then I have to start the Redwall books. I might, but I'll probably take a little more time. I might get interested when I'm older if I get history class.

P: What did you learn

K: I just wanted to watch it. I didn't really learn anything because I heard the tale at renaissance camp. I just heard a different version, with gnomes. They just turned the Montague blue and the Capulet red. It's just kind of confusing to have different things like red, blue, Montague and Capulet because there's four different things, red, blue, Montague and Capulet. In the gnome movie they only have one Montague and one Capulet. In the real version they have a whole family of Montagues and Capulets. It turns out to be almost the same in a more gnomeo version.

P: But what about how fighting tears people apart, and the importance of forgiveness?

K: Well if you just understand it won't turn into violence, but then if it gets a little bit rough violence will turn into more violence. But it could just lead to being more ashamed of your own self.

P: From the mouths of babes...

26 July- "Let's just assume for the moment that everyone in here doesn't like me"

Tangled (2010)
dir. Nathan Greno, Byron Howard (Bolt, 2008)

VOICES

Mandy Moore (The Princess Diaries, 2001)

Zachary Levi

Donna Murphy (Spiderman 2, 2004)

Ron Perlman (Hellboy, 2004)

M.C. Gainey (The Haunting, 1999)

Jeffrey Tambor (Flypaper, 2011)

Brad Garrett (A Bug's Life, 1998)

Paul F. Tompkins (Magnolia (voice), 1999)

So much for a summer filled with catching up on all the high-culture cinema I missed in the theaters the first time around. Instead I've pretty much been caving whenever my little brother wants to pick the evening's movie (he's 8!). Yesterday my Momma went to a dinner party or something, so it was a Kiefer-Paris day. I asked him what he wanted for dinner in advance, and he said chicken wings. So I made some really nice wings roasted with garlic and sweet onion, and then Kiefer helped me make a honey-mustard sauce. We also had cucumber salad and coconut-mango-strawberry smoothies. Am I the best big sister?? Preliminary polls suggest that yes, I am the best big sister. Then we took Timber to the dog park and Kiefer practiced catching with his new lacrosse stick, and then we came home and Kiefer asked if we could watch Tangled. And so we did.

I think this would have been really cute if it had been animated for realzies (I mean with pencils and shit) but as it was it was still okay. It seemed like there had been a half-hearted attempt to add in some musical numbers in the style of classic Disney animated motion pictures, but these songs were sporadic, unmemorable, and sort of awkward to sit through.

Rapunzel is such a familiar story I'm surprised it hasn't been interpreted into a movie already, but it has and I just missed it. I suppose the reason for that is that it's sort of an uneventful story. How much can you elaborate on a girl trapped in a tower? It would seem to follow the formula of the older Disney movies, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, passively waiting for their princes rather than much more dynamic characters like Jasmine, Ariel, and Belle, who are adventurous and gutsy. This movie solves that problem by giving Rapunzel and MacGuffin-sort-of-goal, to see the floating lights in the sky on her birthday, which are in fact lanterns released by her royal Ma and Pa mourning their missing princess. In ths way, while Rapunzel is fearful of the world and utterly naive, she also has a determination which allows her to conquer her conflicts. Flynn Ryder, her roguish love interest, is more often in need of Rapunzel's assistance than the other way around.

But in my opinion, this story omitted the most compelling part of the Rapunzel story, which is the beginning, when the pregnant mother, in the intensity of her hormonal cravings, demands that her husband steal the rapunzel growing the neighbor's garden, and when he is caught, the punishment is that the parents must give up their child to their neighbor, who was a witch. In this way, the parents weren't blameless. They were greedy and so they lost their kid. In this movie, instead of craving the rapunzel plant, the mother is very sick and requires a magic flower hidden by the witch, which she uses for everlasting youth. I think the key is that the witch uses the flower sustainably, while the royal family destroys the flower while using it to save the queen. The princess is born with the remnants of the magic flower, which gives her hair healing properties as long as it is uncut, at which point the power is lost, and so the witch conspires to keep Rapunzel in a tower and never cut her hair, so the witch may continue to use the magic to retain her youth.

So the parents are portrayed as blameless and the witch as greedy, but really they are the same, because if such a magic flower exists, it should be used to help many people, and not just one person. The Queen destroyed the magic flower because she thought her life was more valuable than the witch's or anyone else's, but they don't talk about that. This is a good vs. evil story.

24 July - "Oh-llo?"

Megamind (2010)

dir. Tom McGrath (Madagascar, 2005)

voices

Will Ferrell (Stranger Than Fiction, 2006)

Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading, 2008)

Tina Fey (Ponyo (voice), 2008)

Jonah Hill (Strange Wilderness, 2008)

David Cross (Small Soldiers, 1998)

Ben Stiller (The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001)

J.K. Simmons (Burn After Reading, 2008)

A couple things come to mind when I'm thinking about how to start this one. The first is that I really just don't care for these chintzy computer-animated movies with the bright colors and the vomitingly (I made that an adverb) predictable ending and the complete and utter lack of charm.

I guess it was like, six or eight months ago when a fella asked me if I wanted to see this with him. I like it when someone asking me out has already picked the movie (or whatever the plan is, since a friend of mine told me that movie as a first date is bullshit because you're supposed to be engaging with each other) - but if we are going to see a movie I like it when the guy has already chosen one because it seems lazy otherwise. As if, hey I want to hang out with you, can you organize an interesting and fun evening? No, I say, if you want my company so bad, you gotta do the legwork.

Anyway, so my normal M.O. is to agree to whatever movie my prospective suitors suggest, because at that point I'm more interested in the person than the movie (a surprising confession, I know. This is why I ended up seeing Superman Returns TWICE in the theaters! But I still think the worst date movie I ever sat through was Enchanted, which ended up being quite pleasant when I watched it later on DVD with some girlfriends, so yeah, I think the company you've got during a movie is important)

I am having a hard time getting to the point. The point is that even though it usually doesn't matter to me what movie a guy picks, and even though I hate picking date movies, and even though I really liked this guy and wanted to go out with him, I was still like, Hells no, I don't wanna see Megamind, I will call you back in 20 minutes with a revised itinerary. We ended up seeing It's Kind of a Funny Story instead; it was a rather arid week for cinema in Athens, but I thought it was a reasonably good choice. It didn't work out, though, c'est la vie.

So I watched it because I wanted to watch something On Demand with my lil bro, we also saw Tangled (upcoming!) and we may resort to Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2. It was fun with him because we laughed at the funny jokes, but, honestly, this movie was artless, it wasn't cute at all, it was pandering and easy and heavy-heavy and clumsy, like someone who's trying too hard to be your new best friend and I just wanted to be alone after the whole confrontation.

My brain is all over the place right now. Still sick in bed, by the by.

17 Dec - "If I have to hear any more of his ridiculous owl jokes..."

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010)
dir. Zack Snyder

VOICES
Jim Sturgess (21, 2008)
Helen Mirren (National Treasure:Book of Secrets, 2007)
Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, 1993)
Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003)
Hugo Weaving (The Wolfman, 2010)

You'll recall I have been eagerly awaiting watching Legend of the Guardians since I first heard of it. Well, I finally got to watch it On Demand last night and you know, it exceeded all of my expectations.

I guess there was never a big fuss about this movie because no one (well, presumably some people) ever heard of the books it was based on. I'd like to point out that even though Legend of the Guardians was based on THREE books in a larger series, the plot still flowed smoothly and unforced, unlike certain adaptations of novels concerning schools of witchcraft and wizardry.

Besides being about owls (which are awesome) what we've got here is a classic adventure story about a group of misfits teaming up to defeat a great evil. Isn't that the essential formula behind The Goonies (1985), Lord of the Rings (published 1954), and Star Wars (1977)? Not that this is even almost as awesome as one of those movies, but I think they could all hang out at the same cafeteria table, get it?

The story is about a young barn owl named Soren, who is kidnapped with his brother Kludd (obviously sinister) by some race-supremacist owls who think that barn owls should rule over all other owl kingdoms. This is a picture of barn owls. Kludd, who has self-esteem issues (I think of him like the younger brother in American History X (1998)), swiftly turns to the dark side, but Soren makes a gallant escape with a super cute elf owl (elf owls live in cacti) They team up with a burrow owl and another kind of owl (??) yo seek the help of a legendary group of owl warriors sworn to protect owl kind, but end up playing a critical role in rescuing masses of enslaved owlets (those are baby owls) from the evil Pure Ones (those are the villains I referenced before). So you've got a great good v. evil, triumph of the underdog kind of story. Great success.

13 Oct - "all we can do is run and hope that we are fast enough"

The Secret of Kells (2009)
dir. Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey

VOICES
Brendan Gleeson (Mad-Eye Moody, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007)

So I started watching Paranormal Activity last night around 10pm - but then it got to that part (Night #3 I think) when the camera slowed down at 2:09am and then there was a scary noise and I thought "Oh no! Something terrifying will happen and it's NIGHTTIME and I'm HOME ALONE" so I quickly turned it off and watched The Secret of Kells from my bathtub instead.

I'll try again some sunnier time.

Secret of Kells reminded me of some of the movies Hayao Miyazake makes. Actually, it was a lot like Princess Mononoke in that there's this dichotomy between where the people are (Kells Abbey) and the Forest (Which is where that Pixie-girl on the poster lives). The Abbey is under the threat of an imminent invasion by Vikings, to protect the Abbey, the Abbot builds an enormous wall and he forbids anyone to go outside of it. The other monks complain that the Abbot has forgotten the true purpose of the order, which is to make books, and he makes the monks spend all their time building instead. So, stuff happens and he learns the error of his ways.

The artwork is awesome. They really play around with perspective and depth and incorporate a lot of Celtic symbols into the trees. There's one scene where Our Hero has to defeat a monster which resembles nothing so much as the "snake" game you probably have on your cell phone, but stunning. That was my favorite part. My only critique is that the snake monster didn't have a long enough scene.