This is fresh on my mind, because of the movie I watched on the flight back to the USA.

What are those movie scenes that stick out of you as redemptive?

The scene I'll start with is the Talent Show scene from About A Boy, which I watched on the flight back to the USA yesterday. Will sacrifices his dignity and undergoes complete public humiliation to rescue Marcus from social suicide. It becomes a turning point in Marcus' life.

I've got others. Feel free to leave any you have in the comments thread.

Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has been a hot topic in these here parts. I am of the mind that The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were brilliant movies, Signs was a very good movie, and The Village began a pattern of suckitude that continued and worsened through Lady in the Water and the awful, abysmal, torturous and unintentionally hilarious (and thereby also anger-inducing) The Happening. You can read my review of that last flick here. My parting shot reads thusly: "I want to set fire to this movie and pee on it.")

I know some of my fellow Thinklings disagree on the merits of The Village on, but I know Bird at least agreed that The Happening happened to stink on ice.

Shyamalan's latest movie is a live-action adaptation of some cartoon called "Avatar: The Last Airbender," but because of James Cameron's cinematic juggernaut, they didn't call it Avatar but just The Last Airbender. Currently, RottenTomatoes.com lists The Last Airbender with 8% "freshness." Basically this means, 97% of reviews were negative. Out of 10, Shyamalan's latest offering ranks roughly a 2.8.

What the heck happened?

Two theories:
1. Shyamalan's early brilliance was a sham. He relied on others' input and work, but somehow lost their good graces in later works when success went to his head.
2. Shyamalan's early brilliance was legit, but his success went to his head and his ego began to take over his artistic sensibilities.

I tend to believe the latter, b/c he has done some things in his movies I consider artistically irresponsible, beginning with The Village. And many astute critics noticed the palpable disdain for critics who don't "get" people who really are talented and telling "deep stories" and what-not laden into Lady in the Water. Many saw that as a defense mechanism built into the film, Shyamalan's way of saying, "If you hate this movie, it's because you're stupid and critical and don't get it."

What do you think? How did Shyamalan go from great original works to astoundingly awful adaptations?

A kid's interpretation of Herb Brooks' speech to the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team before their semifinal game with Russia (he's quoting from the movie Miracle) . . .

Masterful . . .

They're finally going to make a film adaptation of the C.S. Lewis classic The Great Divorce.
Mpower Pictures ("The Stoning of Soraya M.") and Beloved Pictures are teaming to co-produce C.S. Lewis' fantasy novel "The Great Divorce."

Veteran producer and Mpower CEO Steve McEveety will lead the production team. Childrens' book author N.D. Wilson ("Leepike Ridge," "100 Cupboards") is attached to write.

Lewis, who wrote the "Chronicles of Narnia" books and often wove Christian themes into his works, published "The Great Divorce" in 1945. Story centers on a man who learns that the sprawling, dim metropolis where he's been living is actually Hell; he hops on a bus headed for the outskirts of Elsewhere, only to discover that the one place worse than Hell, for a self-absorbed ad executive, just might be Heaven.

Mpower was created by McEveety in 2007 after he'd been a longtime exec at Mel Gibson's Icon Prods. He produced "The Passion of the Christ" and "We Were Soldiers" and exec produced "Braveheart" and "What Women Want."

(Screenwriter N.D. Wilson, btw, is pastor/wordsmith/curmudgeon Douglas Wilson's son.)

This looks fantastic!



[H/T Bride of Beau]

The original Toy Story was a groundbreaking movie, and very entertaining. Toy Story 2 was even better, with fantastic writing and great action scenes.

Toy Story 3 may be the best of the trilogy. And that's saying something.

We saw it tonight. It's seriously awesome.

The following recap of my watching experience will be more interesting than the movie itself.



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Is that Africa?



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Sigh.


Hey, did she just turn down a marriage proposal from Richard Gere? Not many woman would do that....

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Hey, I think I need to trim my fingernails later.




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Wow, this film is an amazing feat. I don't know how anyone could take a story of someone who accomplished the feat of flying across the ocean in a plane like that under such harrowing odds, after 14 people before had died trying....and make it boring. But they did it.





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Oh, look, her landing gear failed and they almost crashed. Over one hour and finally something happened.





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OK, crash already. I'm ready to get this over with.


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So she's going to die because someone one left something on all night and drained the battery. That's what this whole thing boils down to?


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Oh, look, they are showing water. That's right, why ruin a consistently boring movie with an actual crash scene. Not that I want the woman to die...I just want something to happen.


The End! Finally. It's a sad story. And what happened to Amelia Earhardt is certainly sadder, but this bore of a movie is a close runner up.

Gene Siskel used to say that he would rather watch a movie of the same actors having lunch. With Hillary Swank, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor, some might say the same. But I think I'd rather watch a movie of just their faces the first time they actually saw this snooze fest as a complete film. The mixture of horror, shock, shame, boredom and drowsiness would be far more interesting than the film itself. Sigh. Amelia deserved better.

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is the most accomplished and well-known adult with autism in the world. Now her fascinating life, with all its challenges and successes is being brought to the screen. HBO has produced the full-length film Temple Grandin, which premieres on Saturday, February 6th on HBO. She has been featured on NPR (National Public Radio), major television programs, such as the BBC special "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow", ABC's Primetime Live, The Today Show, Larry King Live, 48 Hours and 20/20, and has been written about in many national publications, such as Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, and New York Times. Among numerous other recognitions by media, Bravo Cable did a half-hour show on her life, and she was featured in the best-selling book, Anthropologist from Mars.

Dr. Grandin didn't talk until she was three and a half years old, communicating her frustration instead by screaming, peeping, and humming. In 1950, she was diagnosed with autism and her parents were told she should be institutionalized. She tells her story of "groping her way from the far side of darkness" in her book Emergence: Labeled Autistic, a book which stunned the world because, until its publication, most professionals and parents assumed that an autism diagnosis was virtually a death sentence to achievement or productivity in life.

Dr. Grandin has become a prominent author and speaker on the subject of autism because "I have read enough to know that there are still many parents, and yes, professionals too, who believe that 'once autistic, always autistic.' This dictum has meant sad and sorry lives for many children diagnosed, as I was in early life, as autistic. To these people, it is incomprehensible that the characteristics of autism can be modified and controlled. However, I feel strongly that I am living proof that they can" (from Emergence: Labeled Autistic).

Even though she was considered "weird" in her young school years, she eventually found a mentor, who recognized her interests and abilities. Dr. Grandin later developed her talents into a successful career as a livestock-handling equipment designer, one of very few in the world. She has now designed the facilities in which half the cattle are handled in the United States, consulting for firms such as Burger King, McDonald's, Swift, and others.

Dr. Grandin presently works as a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. She also speaks around the world on both autism and cattle handling. At every Future Horizons conference on autism, the audience rates her presentation as 10+.

I watched a bit of the film Temple Grandin, starring Claire Danes, tonight. Fascinating and moving stuff. I've never thought much of Danes as an actress, but that changed tonight.

I saw Star Trek (the new one) for the first time a couple of nights ago (spoilers to follow). As a serious "Trek" enthusiast -- well, at least as far as the original series goes -- I must say I thought the new film captured the magic of the original motion pictures quite splendidly, and, despite an implausible storyline (what sci-fi doesn't have an implausible storyline?) the film was a nice expansion to the Star Trek canon.

(On a side note, it's unfortunate that the new film had to succumb to the whims of an oversexed society by throwing in a "benign" sexual escapade between Kirk and some green alien chick. While Kirk was always known as a playboy of sorts in the original series, the forerunners of the series wisely chose to leave out screen-played sexual antics. I only wish J.J. Abrams and the new boys could have been so, well, logical.)

Speaking of logic, the part of the movie I enjoyed the most was seeing Leonard Nimoy back in action as Mr. Spock. I hadn't read any reviews or recaps before screening the film, therefore seeing the original Spock was a pleasant surprise. Spock has always been my favorite Star Trek character, and I was glad to see Nimoy pass the baton to the new Spock, Zachary Quinto. Certainly Quinto looks like he can develop a believable Spock character, and, perhaps 40 years from now he'll be passing the Spock legacy on to another newcomer.

While Star Trek is not a great film (like, perhaps, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), it was entertaining, intriguing, and a good, logical resurrection of Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek idea.

I found this really interesting. According to TechDirt, Napoleon Dynamite is algorithm proof. Wikipedia puts it this way:

It is surprisingly difficult to predict how viewers will react to Napoleon Dynamite as it tends to polarize audiences in a "love it or hate it" fashion. Researchers and algorithm workers at Netflix have found that they are unable to predict whether or not a particular viewer will like Napoleon Dynamite based on their ratings of previously viewed films, making it one of only a select few movies that pose this problem.

How about you? Answer two questions:

1. If you've seen Napoleon Dynamite, did you like it?
2. What's your favorite movie?

Maybe we can sort out Dynamite-liking tendencies based on common ground in favorite movies among the commenters. :-)

It's a cold and rainy one today. We stayed in. On a lark, I popped in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring extended cut this morning. I'm now 20 minutes into The Two Towers. Inspired me to go over to my old solo blog and re-read my thoughts on the three films and the comments under them. Good times.

The three movies as one epic are a masterpiece.

Michael Moore has made a movie that argues that capitalism is evil.

He is charging people to buy, distribute, and attend this movie.

The disconnect between Hollywood culture and normal people grows.

"It wasn't rape rape." -- Whoopi Goldberg

Define Artist. Not so easy to do. Now define pedophiliac child rapist. Pretty simple. If Polanski had been, say, a bus driver in Cleveland who had fed Quaaludes and Champagne to a thirteen-year-old girl and then raped and sodomized her, I doubt Jack Lang would be so quick to tell the rest of us about the privileges that come with driving a bus. Jack Lang doesn’t care about bus drivers. Jack Lang cares about Artists.

Let me tell you a few things about the rape of a child. It happened to me. I was raped by my drunken father at the age of four, before the drunken eyes of my mother, so I know what I’m talking about.

That is from a powerful commentary called Polanski's Victim and Me.

At a Salon article arguing the same thing, one of the more ridiculous commenters suggested those who are calling for Polanski's release must be a bunch of Republicans.

Um. Yeah. Woody Allen, Stephen Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Scorsese, the French minister of the Arts, et. al. All Republicans, I'm sure. ;-)

Kudos, btw, to French director Luc Besson -- the auteur behind stylized action films like the Transporter series, The Professional, The Fifth Element, and one of my favorite movies of the last year, Taken -- for refusing to sign the petition of artists calling for Polanski's release. "Nobody should be above the law," Besson said.

I admit it. I'm a Brad Pitt fan. (I feel like I'm special, because I became a fan listening to him read a Cormac McCarthy book before he was famous.) I like him so much that I enjoyed his other long epics. "Legends of the River", "Fall Runs Through It", and even "Meet Joe Black" where he plays the incarnation of death. (OK, I admit it, I liked Legends of the Fall and Meet Joe Black...)

And here he is again...playing a guy who dances with death.

The premise of a man who ages backwards intrigued me. I know that the Man-Child thing has been done before. (Big, Forrest Gump, and Robin Williams and Martin Short have done their versions.) But the execution on this one is creepy.

It's really a movie about death and death and life and death and death. (In that order.) In fact, a death seems to accompany every new stage in Benjamin's reverse life as he marches towards his own babyhood, which will be his death. It's weird knowing when he will die. Think about it. If you start your life at the end of your life, then you know where the end will be...at the beginning.

It's a love story...Benjamin is born as an old man. When he's just a few years old (7?) he meets a young girl. They become friends because mentally they are the same age.... As he grows younger physically and she grows older, they eventually "meet in the middle."

I don't know what's creepier: the fact that at the end and beginning of their lives, one is an old adult and the other is a young child, or the brothel scene.

It's been done before in movies. Some man decides that a young man needs to "become a man" and takes him to a brothel. But here the young man is mentally young, and physically old. I don't know what freaked me out more: that Benjamin was mentally a child when this was happening, or that he was physically an octogenarian. It managed to be yucky on at least two levels at the same time. Yipes.

Usually each scene skips a few years and you move with Benjamin as he grows up and grows young simultaneously. It's a pretty long slow process. On the upside, trying to figure Benjamin's chronological age versus his physical age can keep the viewer mentally occupied. At least it gives you something to do.

For me, watching people die, and progress towards death just wasn't any fun. Not that all movies have to be fun, but if it's going to be serious, it should at least be interesting. As an exploration of life and death, there really wasn't anything new here, unless you count the creepiness.

The Wizard of Oz turned 70 the other day. Something about that movie has always freaked me out. I seriously can't stand it. It's just plain creepy. As far as I'm concerned The Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory can both die a slow, painful death.

I'm actually happy that none of my kids will ever see The Wizard of Oz this side of their 18th birthday. If you feel the grace to watch that film, be blessed. I'll watch Star Wars Episode II again before I walk down the yellow brick road one more time.

Every time someone asks me how I want my hamburger, this scene plays in my head. (You only need to watch from 00:30 to 1:00)


That's Dirk Benedict (AKA Faceman and Starbuck)in 1981. This movie is about a Vietnam vet who comes to a small town, has trouble fitting into society, has run-ins with the locals and ends up having to use his army skills to fight and survive. (This movie came out 2 years before Stallone's "First Blood")

I saw it when I was in middle school on HBO and I've never forgotten the hamburger scene. Do you have a particular movie scene that replays itself at particular moments? For example, every time someone asks you your name you picture Mandy Patinkin saying, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Tell me under comments.

If this is intentionally awful, it is brilliant.

Fantastic movie. Seriously.
Some scenes of peril, so maybe not ideal for itty bitty ones.
But it's a sweet, exciting, funny, heartwarming movie. And smart as all get out. The writing and performances are fantastic.
Even if you don't have kids, go see it.

At this point, I'm not sure Pixar can do any wrong.

This one's for Bird and Shrode and all you other Trekkies out there.

Star Trek Fans Bash New Film as "Fun, Watchable"


Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'