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'TOY STORY 3'
FINDING PIXAR'S BEST
By Sean Chavel
It would seem to be an impossible task for any critic, or exhaustive DVD collector, to pick a favorite Pixar film (eleven entries to date). At least not until you've watched a particular selection three or four times, watched it alone, with a loved one, or with your entire family accompanied by a jumbo popcorn bowl. But I have found mine. Toy Story 3 is my favorite Pixar film after seeing it only once. I happen to think that it is a perfect film, and I need not a second viewing to certify my declaration. I nearly forgot what it was like to attend a film that contained a hundred laughs. The film's laugh-to-minute ratio is unparalleled and yet the heart and soul of every character is explicit in many wonderful ways.
With childlike intuition, the writers of this third installment are submerged into the myths and branding of every character, every toy: Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head, Hamm the pig, Rex the dinosaur, Slinky Dog, Ken and Barbie, the (obsolete) Chatter Telephone, the Bookworm, and of course, Woody and Buzz Lightyear (Tom Hanks and Tim Allen respectively). If the toys are alive - when humans aren't around - then they must see everything from a ground level, and from a human boy's bedroom level, and the writers and its director Lee Unkrich (overtaking John Lasseter's seat) captures their microcosm world with fantastic, boundless wit.
That's not to say that "Toy Story" (1995) and "Toy Story 2" (1999) didn't also contain many sublime moments of small toys in a tall world, they remain golden in Pixar's retrospective. The predecessors had such dazzle and freshness when it was first released, but this newest addition somehow unearths, well jokes, at a deeper and more imaginative level if you can believe it, with aging toys trying to adapt in a convalescent Sunnyvale type of retirement while at the same time belong in some place where they are given human love. "Toy Story 3" is going to be a hefty worldwide blockbuster, no doubt about it, but if there are a few out there reluctant to attend because they think they are just going to get more of the same then it must be said: You are only depriving yourself unadulterated joy if you skip this.
The prelude is a fantasy cliffhanger (just as "Toy Story 2" did) that is rock 'em and sock 'em, but we are soon back in Andy's bedroom only after a montage that shows him growing up, but now on the verge of taking off to college. This means that the toys are either going up to the attic for permanent storage or going off to donation. Andy and Andy's mom, two imperfect humans with imperfect communication, get confused as to their agreement of where the toys go. And Woody is the one toy selected to attend Andy to college while the rest will meet another fate.
That other fate is a Daycare Center where they will be loved by more a few dozen rugrats. For Buzz Lightyear and the rest, this new destination will be paradise but minds are changed abruptly as soon as 21st century daycare kiddie monsters roughhouse the toys - playtime does not equal fun time. Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear (Ned Beatty) is the overseer of this community, so when adults and kids go home at night he is less sweet and chubby and more gruff and bossy. The story has fun with satirizing camps and prisons, as well as a police state with Lotso (short name) as Big Brother. Ken is like the Gestapo of the camp dishing out special privileges to the high-maintenance Barbie who uses the art of fashion as an ultimate means of empowerment.
In a way the entire message of the movie is about identity-shifting - with its characters compromising themselves under a new ownership, not an individual ownership but a community property ownership that is the Daycare Center. Woody wisely foresees that his family is being broken up and divided like low-grade commodities, and the Daycare Center is the grounds of a stock exchange (toys are used, more often abused while traded in the hands of copious humans, but not loved).
As characteristic of him, Woody reacts swiftly to overthrow Lotso and to lead his family of toys to exodus. In the meantime, Buzz falls victim to mainframe pre-programming that only makes his good time heroics more debonair. This adventure of revolt will delight kids, but on a more adult level it takes on existential meaning: If the toys are obsolete in Andy's world, then where in the world can they live now?
As usual of Pixar cleverness, the twists and turns tap its characters to make bold new decisions while embarking onto strange new lands - ordinary land to us, the unknown to them. While I was worried that the film was taking its characters into a place way too trashy (excuse the pun) in its final act, the filmmakers extract its setting as a perilous destination of doom. As Woody's gang faces their apparition of Inferno, a collective heart is discovered amongst the toys that is as touching as anything found in Disney animated classics. And the animated art itself is as imaginative as to final scenes of "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957), an eternal sci-fi classic that modern audiences might have unfairly neglected. Check it out.
The anxiety at the conclusion is genuine, but the cheerful and triumphant feelings an audience will discover will be unmistakable here. Walt Disney has not fulfilled the promise of old-fashioned, good-hearted entertainment with their roster lately (fear the drudgery of both "Prince of Persia" and "Alice in Wonderland"). But here arrives an exception that Disney (and its division Pixar) takes you to a brand new wonderful world once again. And it's - you read it here - a perfect creation.
'Grown Ups' is a needed burst of goofy fun
By Steve Persall
Maybe the summer swelter is melting my brain, but Adam Sandler and four other showboats desperately needing a hit had me laughing at Grown Ups more than expected.
Let's give credit where credit is due. It's not the heat; it's the stupidity.
Grown Ups is everything that a payday among comedian friends will be: Not much of a stretch beyond the goofy personas that made them famous, improvised at times to a fault. The movie was obviously a ball to make. The thing is: That feeling is contagious for about an hour, which is long enough to overlook the third act's flop sweat.
Grown Ups stars a Mount Rushmore of mocking comedy - Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade and Kevin James - with molehill Rob Schneider on the side. They play lifelong pals clinging to memories of winning a youth basketball championship 35 years ago. The team celebrated at a luxurious lake house, doing woodsy things that kids do. When their beloved coach dies, the team and their loved ones reunite at the lake for Fourth of July.
Characters are outlined in the first 10 minutes and barely change. Lenny (Sandler) is a successful Hollywood agent whose wife (Salma Hayek) wants to ditch the reunion and fly to Milan for fashion week. Kurt (Rock) is a Mr. Mom, keeping a tidy home for his pregnant, working wife (Maya Rudolph).
Eric (James) is self-conscious about his weight, with a wife (Maria Bello) still breast-feeding their 4-year-old son. Rob (Schneider) is a New Age nerd with a bad toupee and a lover (Joyce Van Patten) nearly twice his age. The lone bachelor is smarmy Marcus (Spade), and it's easy to see why.
Despite its setting, Grown Ups doesn't play many of the usual outdoor pratfalls (James' rope-swing mishap aside). I'm happy to report that not a single actor is attacked by a forest critter or sinks a canoe. Sandler and co-writer Fred Wolf get creative with a funny game called arrow roulette that no one should try at home, and cooking bacon on a bug zapper, which maybe you could.
The movie also contains its unfair share of coasting comedy: Hayek with toilet tissue stuck to her shapely derriere, a flatulent granny (Ebony Jo-Ann) and two - count 'em - two O.J. Simpson jokes. There's also the big game that wraps up most wilderness romps, although Grown Ups gets extra credit for employing a basketball rematch rather than a camp competition.
What kept me laughing is the genuine camaraderie among Sandler's posse, the way they almost play themselves that perfectly suits this slim material. Their conversations as characters sound like smack talk among one-upping pals, with nothing off-limits. Often when comedian buddies make movies together the results are terribly inside jokes, not the least of which is that they're being paid to loaf. Grown Ups lets us in on that gag, and occasionally makes it work.
'JONAH HEX'
MISH MASH
By Sean Chavel
Moments before Jonah Hex began the publicist announced that the film was only 83 minutes in running time and right then, it curried favor from me - for a moment. By the time the opening scenes were over it becomes certain that it would have been better if the filmmakers put another five minutes back in, with the exposition tripping over itself in jarring smash cuts. Are filmmakers afraid audiences are going to be demanding refunds within the first five minutes if there's not enough bam! pow! zonk! thrown in to hammer you over the head?
With the title role of Hex, this is Josh Brolin's attempt to go mainstream with this DC Comics-fueled western, and for the first time, he looks uncomfortable. For those unaccustomed, Brolin has starred in "No Country for Old Men" and "Milk." He has a scarred face, with latex tissue stretching over the cheekbone over the mouth - the tissue looks like an elastic band. Brolin is designated to speaking in a low groan the entire movie.
Hex is commissioned by the government to hunt down Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, "Burn After Reading"), but it is likely Hex would hunt down Turnbull even if he wasn't commissioned - it was Turnbull as a matter of fact who scarred Hex's face and killed his family in front of his eyes. Malkovich delivers what is perhaps the least interesting performance of his career, although with his long-flowing greasy hair that hangs over his menacing scowl of a face, he seems like a candidate to play Judge Holden if Hollywood ever makes a movie out of Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian." Besides the makeup and hair job, Malkovich never appears dedicated to this part.
I wasn't a fan of Megan Fox in "Transformers," but I am a male, and I was gaga over seeing her for the first time in a corset. She plays Lilah, the prostitute. She gets offers to leave the sordid lifestyle all the time but turns them down. "I don't play house," Lilah explains. Hex is her favorite customer, and she foresees a future with him. Keep in mind, Fox doesn't have many scenes in the movie, so if you too are a male that might disappoint you. She is a supporting character, not a lead. There is a moment where she looks better than she has ever looked in the movie, but director (hack) Jimmy Hayward holds the shot for about 1.5 seconds.
In my notes, I wrote down that there is no subtle scene to explain Malkovich's motivation. I don't know what I was referring to, but pointedly, there are no subtle scenes. There is little motivation beyond the surface motivation. There is also a dream flashback inserted into the movie twice, as if you would forget. Visually the movie is not always boring, but storywise it is. Get rid of the groans and you have a story that is simplistic.
Maybe the original comic book explained more and provided depth. Don't write in and complain that a film critic has to have thoroughbred knowledge of every comic book ever written, that would take forever, and besides this is film criticism, not comic book criticism. But "Jonah Hex" is such nonsensical mish mash that for the first time it prompts me to take back some of the things I said about "Watchmen" (there you have it), which although I disagree with the ideology of that film at least it had characters with emotional layers and a more complex objective.
"Jonah Hex" all lies in the collapse of its director who didn't have a clear cut vision and so decided to mimic the crappy queasy cam and smash cut aesthetics of other current trash filmmakers. This is a self-conscious effort made to heap in on the bandwagon success of others. Hayward should go back to animation where his career started. Your movie sucks, Hayward, and sucks all the more because you didn't try to at least imitate a paramount like Quentin Tarantino or Sergio Leone; you tried to imitate an amalgamation of every creative sell-out in Hollywood.
John Rabe: The German as a Good Guy
By Gerry Furth-Sides
“John Rabe” is German writer-director Florian Gallenberger's David and Goliath heart-pounding film. It is the true story of a small international committee responsible for saving half the population of Nanking, China in 1937 when the Japanese military was bent on terrorizing and destroying the city in order to show their brutality and strength.
Gallenberger brings to the screen with remarkable restraint, just as entertaining a fact-based, classic epic as any of the currently popular fantasy and cartoony pictures. A cross between "Shindler's List and "Blackbook," the experience is both transporting and hair-raising. And it inevitably asks the question, "what would I do in these circumstances?"
The film is based on Rabe's personal diaries that were published years after the war as "The Good German of Nanking." The austere, middle-aged civilian, Rabe, reluctantly goes about his quiet, heroic civilian deeds even after given the choice of returning home to Germany when his factory is about to be closed down.
Having joined the Nazi Party in order to obtain funding for a school in China, John Rabe makes better use of his party affiliation clout and business acumen to create and then supervise one of the International Safety Zones during the Japanese devastation of Nanking. The zones save over 200,000 lives while 300,000 lives were lost.
High energy, international film director Ballenberger had no support in making the film from Germans, Chinese or Japanese. He says, "it was touchy in all three of those countries. For Germans (and the allied countries!) it's a 'Nazi' who's the hero. For the Japanese, the Nanking massacre's a big taboo, (they) don't mention it there, they don't have to apologize, they did not take over, and so forth). For the Chinese…Japan is China's main economic partner now. And in the film it is the Chinese who are victims, and who need the help of foreigners to survive. Now, China now wants to see itself as a powerful, strong nation, who doesn't need the help of anyone.
Gellenberger made the film "to pay tribute to Rabe and because I think it's still an important story today, especially when people are not standing up for what's right, because he did something which was pretty outstanding….he fought for what he thought was right," and surprising as it was overcame the odds.
One early and most surprising image in the film is Rabe's brainstorm to use a giant Nazi flag to deflect Japanese bombers away from desperate civilians crammed into the Siemens factory grounds. The twists and turns of the story only begin here. Rabe, eventually exonerated by the Allies because of his good deeds, also died impoverished.
The natural and convincing multi-lingual cast that easily switches from one language to another, is awe-inspiring in terms of globalism.
Leading German actor, Ulrich Tukur, portrays Rabe as the ultimate German bureaucrat, fair yet condescending to his employees, who becomes the embodiment of the saying that war brings extraordinary things out of ordinary people. Dagmar Manzel plays Rabe's loving, devoted wife , who bears in spirit and looks an uncanny resemblance to Liz Sheridan, Seinfeld's mother) and brings out the romantic in him.
Steve Buscemi is nothing less than brilliant as cynical, worn out American physician Dr. Robert Wilson, who Rabe chooses as his deputy. Teruyuki Kagawa as Prince Asaka, uncle of the Emperor, architect of the devastation, barks out every venomous order, typical of the Japanese language style that showed power.
Other committee members are romantic, young, embittered diplomat, Dr. Georg Rosen (Daniel Bruhl) who embodies the disenfranchised yet loyal German Jew and Valerie Dupres (Anne Consigny) is the idealistic French College Director. Lovely, lithe Zhang Jingchu is a bold College student and photographer who risks death and the rapacious Japanese to feed her brother.
Director of photography Jurgen Jurges and Production designers Juhua Tu, Xinram Tu, Marcus Wellendorf, Editor: Hansjorg Weissbrich bring the story to life on screen in a production that counted at least a dozen participating companies. Laemmle Theatres.
The Spirit of Romi Dames
By Kenyth Mogan
Romi Dames is best known as the spoiled socialite Traci Van Horn on the hit Disney Channel series Hannah Montana she has also lent her voice to Disney's animated series Phineas and Ferb and Kick Buttowski. Off set Ms. Dames spends a lot of her time donating to charities. She recently took part in a telethon befitting the United Way and is the Master of Ceremonies as the upcoming event for Special Spirit at the Moonshadow Ranch in Shadow Hills California on June 26th. Special Spirit is an organization who uses horseback riding as a type of therapy to assist special athletes in overcoming their challenges. You can visit their website www.specialspirit.org to learn more about this great program.
Tickets for the event are $20.00 in advance, $25.00 at the door and children 6-12 are $5.00 and anyone under six is free.
I was able to catch up with Ms. Dames to chat about the event, acting, and her plans for the future.
When was the moment that you knew you wanted to be an actor?
When I was nine, I saw an ad on a bulletin board for auditions for the musical "Annie" at our local community theater. I begged my parents to take me. It was my first auditioning experience, and I got the role of Molly, one of the orphans. After the first performance in front of a live audience, and I was hooked.
What went through your mind?
I'm getting SO much attention right now! This is awesome!
Were you nervous?
I've gotten nervous for every acting gig ever. It doesn't go away, but the nervous adrenaline before a performance is what gives you the euphoric high of success in the end.
What did your family think?
My family was always incredibly supportive. They've always encouraged me to follow my dreams and pursue this crazy career in acting--not the stereotypical reaction you would expect from an education-driven Jewish father and a Japanese mother. (Yes, I am a Jap-Jap…a JAP squared…) We didn't have a car, and my dad took the bus all over town with me to get to auditions and sit in a corner through my rehearsals.
What was it like walking on set of Hannah Montana for the first time?
It's always fun to walk on set for the first time because it really gives life to the script for me. The sets they do on Hannah Montana for my Traci parties are really incredible. They do an amazing job. My favorite set was probably the one they did for my party in the episode 'My Boyfriend's Jackson and There's Gonna Be Trouble' where I threw the party for my cat, Madonna. Everything was pink, plush, and sparkly. I wanted to live on that set.
As far as charities are concerned, why Special Spirit?
Special Spirit is important to me because one of my best friends has Asperger's Syndrome (one of the highest functioning forms of autism). He was diagnosed at a very young age and was treated throughout his childhood. By the time I met him as a teenager, I didn't even realize he was autistic, that's how well the therapy worked. Special Spirit is a therapeutic equestrian riding center that treats kids with autism through horseback riding.
What is the best thing about being involved in this type of charity?
I just love kids, and I have a great time hanging out and meeting them!
What are you looking forward to most about this event?
This event is a ton of fun--I hosted it last year, and we all had a great time! We partied the night away devouring the yummy bbq and dancing along to the teen bands that perform. The event has a very intimate feeling, even though there were a lot of people, I really felt like I got to meet and say hello to everyone. This year I will have some really fun celebrities on stage with me: Ken Davidian ("Borat", "Get Smart") & Tania Gunadi (Disney's "Aaron Stone"). I really encourage everyone to come out, it's a great time and for a great cause--and definitely make sure to say hi to me!
What other types of charities are you involved in?
I really like working with organizations that are specifically targeted at youth. Covenant House is one of my favorites: they're a homeless youth center that provides not only shelter, but also medical facilities, job training, and classes taught by industry professionals. I'm also a StarPower ambassador with the Starlight Foundation, and I volunteer my time with a group called Let Them Play.
Last summer you taught acting classes to kids, are you going to be doing that again?
I love teaching improv to kids! We all have heard that the arts programs in schools are drastically cutting funding, so I go in to junior & senior high schools in my neighborhood and teach improv workshops. I definitely plan on doing that again.
Last Christmas you released your first single Christmas List (of Excuses) what was that like?
I had never done anything like that before, and I had a great time! I worked with two very talented songwriters, Lenna Bauerly and Eric Palmquist. We sat around the pool last summer thinking up lyrics that made us laugh, and then put it together in the recording studio.
What's next?
I wish I knew! That's probably one of the hardest parts about being an actor-the instability of not knowing where your next job is coming from. But I wouldn't give it up for anything.
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