Up-date

Rehearsals for EMMA are going well – excellent cast, and tonight the choreographer comes to teach us 19th century line dancing.  That should be fun.  Fitted costumes yesterday.  We’re getting there.

REVIEW: CARS 2

On a beautiful summer afternoon, yesterday, I went to see the new Pixar animated film CARS 2.  It’s a sequel that’s better than the original.  The animation is fantastic with a lot of action – races, and chases, and things, and the story is fast-moving, funny, and clever.  Mater, the dimwitted tow truck and Lightning McQueen, both from the original, CARS, go to Europe for a World Grand Prix, visiting Paris, London, and other cities along the way, and get involved in some foreign intrigue with a couple of sophisticated British sports cars involving an alternative fuel, Allinol.  And there is a nice, if brief, tribute to the late Paul Newman, who played the Hudson Hornet in the original.  The strong cast includes the voices of Michael Caine, Owen Wilson, and Larry the Cable Guy.  It’s great fun and gets a socks up 8.  With time and opportunity, I then went to see MIDNIGHT IN PARIS again.  I liked it even better the second time.

Three Reviews

Yesterdady was movie day. First I went to the theatre to see two comic book movies, GREEN LANTERN, based on the DC Comics character, and then X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, based on the Marvel Comics series.  I grew up on comic books, but only vaguely remember Green Lantern; clearly he wasn’t one of my favorites, and wasn’t one of the more popular comic heroes.  Having that in mind, the film makers spend the first third of the movie filling in the back story of how Green Lantern became Green Lantern.  Actually, he’s only one of many Green Lanterns throughout the universe, each of whom has a ring with the power to do all sorts of amazing stuff.  The ring is powered by a green lantern, and it’s the ring which selects the defender,each of whom has to protect his/her portion of the universe from the evil Parallax – a smoggy cloud with an evil face.  The plot is too convoluted to try to summarize, and it is confusing and hard to follow, but who cares, this is a movie about special effects, which are great.  It does have a very scary villain, a wimpy scientist taken over by the Parallax,who is really, really, scary and creepy.  Nonetheless, Hal Jordan, a great if  irreverent test pilot, is selected by the ring to be earth’s Green Lantern, and in addition to fighting crime, he has to try to save his universe from Parallax.  The movie runs about two hours and is mild fun.  It is pretentious, the dialogue silly, the acting fairly mundane, and the special effects fantastic.  Blake Lively (Is that really her name?) plays Hal’s girlfriend in a truly worthless role, and Tim Robbins give a wooden performance as Hal’s father.  It gets a 5.5 and is not as bad as some other reviewers have said; it’s much better than THE GREEN HORNET, and see it in 3D if you can.

I then stepped into X-MEN: FRST CLASS, just as it began.  This is a much better movie than GREEN LANTERN, and the special effects are almost as good.  It pretty much fillls in the back story of the X-Men who have already appeared in several movies as adults. In this movie they’re teen agers just learning to deal with their special “talents” and being recruited by a young Prof X (and we learn how he came to be confined to a wheel chair)  As the movie develops the viewer is introduced to each of the X-People as they take on their various guises – half for good and half for evil, with some switching back and forth.  This prequel has some contradictions from the earlier movies, but they’re not distracting.  The film is set in 1962, and the Cuban Missile Crisis is an important part of the plot.  The young actors are all pretty good, and January Jones, who plays Emma Frost, who can change herself into a diamond body, is gorgeous!  Kevin Bacon makes for a good James Bond type villain, and Michael Fassbander is excellent as Erik, who beocmes Magneto.  It’s all great fun and gets a socks up 7.9.

Since it was book club night, I picked up a honey mustard chicken sub and went home to see what was on Movies on Demand.  I saw that THE TOWN was still available, and since I’ve read several reviews saying how good it is, decided to watch that.  The Town is a suburb of Boston (I think – everyone has a Boston accent), and it’s essentially a police procedural.  The movie begins with a very long bank robbery that introduces a gang of four, led by Ben Affleck, who take a hostage (Rebecca Hall), later turning her loose  (Come to think of it,  there was no reason for taking a hostage other than to set up the plot).  Affleck has no qualms about being a bank/armored truck robber, but he wants out of the business – which is cohorts don’t want to happen.  Meantime, he tracks down their hostage to make sure she can’t do the gang any harm.  So he picks her up in a laundromat, and very shortly they fall in love (of course).  The rest of the movie follows their growing relationship as the FBI works at tracking down the gang as they continue to rob banks and armored cars.  There is a lot of foul language, some fairly graphic sex, and the story is fairly original and not too predictable.  The actors do a lot of mumbling which is hard to understand.  Blake Lively was also in this film as a former lover of Affleck’s character, and Affleck directed the film.  It was fairly engrossing, so I give it a socks up 6.7.

Review: SUPER 8

SUPER 8 is a lot of fun.  It took me back to the “horror” movies I loved in the fifties.  It’s sort of a combination of “ET,” “The Goonies,” and “It Came from Outer Space.”  There are some serious lapses in logic in the story, some pretty foul language for kids to be using, and some bloodless violence, but I still injoyed it a lot.  It’s a simple story. A group of 6 middle school kids are filming their own horror film near railroad tracks, and as they’re filming, a train wreck occurs (it must be the longest lasting train wreck in history), and the wreck is caught on their film.  On the train is an alien who is trying to “go home.”  The alien escapes from the train and strange things begin to happen in town, and the kids have to save the day.  Most of the special effects are well done, although a couple were pretty weak.  The kids are great.  Elle Fanning is every bit the actress her sister Dakota is in a wonderful performance as the token girl.  The boy who plays the leader of the kids is fantastic and very believable.  There are a couple of jump-out-of-your-seat moments, and the story keeps moving to its inevitable conclusion.  I enjoyed it thoroughly and give it a socks up 7.9.  Be sure to stay to watch the kids’ final movie during the credits.

While in St. Louis over the week end we went to see a Shakespeare in the Park production of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.  The acting and staging were first rate, but for some odd reason it was set in the 1950’s, which I found a distraction more than anything.  Good show, though.

Happy 49th anniversary to the love of my life, Beth.  49 years ago today it was a brutally hot 95 degrees in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin – but what a joy.

REVIEW: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

I just came from seeing MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, Woody Allen’s new film, and it flew up to number 2 on my list of all-time favaorite movies.  It’s a movie that seems like it was made specfically for me.  I was totally enthralled and can’t wait to buy it.  It has shades of Allen’s THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, and thus requires the willing suspension of disbelief, but it’s worth it.  The movie begins with a rather long montage of scenes of Paris, many of which I have visited, and it took me right back ; it was like going there again.  The cinematography of Paris throughout the movie is exceptional.  The cast is excellent across the board, and since Allen wrote and directed it, it is filled with his dry wit, which I love.  Owen Wilson plays a hack writer visiting Paris with his fiance (Rachel McAdams) and her parents.  He loves walking in Paris at night (who wouldn’t), and one night (and every night thereafter) at midnight he is picked up by a vintage Peugeot and whisked back into the 1920’s (and sometimes the 1890’s) where he parties with all of the famous expatriate writers and artists, including Ernest Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein (wonderfully played by Kathy Bates), Lautrec, Rodin, Monet, Matisse, Dali, and on and on.  To be expected, he falls in in love with a gorgeous woman who is Picasso’s mistress.  The story shifts back and forth in time as he tries to work out his relationship with both women, and then deciding in which time period he wants to live.  Allen really makes the most of the Paris setting, and accurately depicts the 20’s.  The costumes are gorgeous, the settings lush and crowded, and the acting superb.  On a scale of ten, it gets a socks up 15.  warning – if you go to see it at the Oriental, I recommend parking in the public lot just south of the theatre.  F inding parking on the streets, most with one hour limit, is horrendous.

REVIEW: KUNG FU PANDA 2

KUNG FU PANDA 2 is that rare creature – a sequel that’s better than the original.  Yesterday I had a private showing (no one else wanted to see it yesterday?!) and thoroughly enjoyed it.  There are a lot of laughs plus a well written story.  Po (Jack Black), the Kung Fu Panda, was found by his foster father, a goose, and has no idea where he came from, so part of the movie is a quest to find his origin and identity.  The main plot has an evil albino peacock, Shen (Gary Oldman), trying to take over China by harnessing fireworks.  So Po and his five kung fu companions have to try to stop the evil Shen and his pack of wolves.  The art and animation are fabulous, and the acting is excellent. In addition to Black and Oldman, the cast of voices includes:  Dustin Hoffman as Masster Shifu (Po’s guru), Victor Garber as Master Thundering Rhino, Jean-Claude Van Damme as Master Croc, Dennis Haysbeck as Master Storming Ox, Angelina Jolie as Tigress, Jackie Chan as Master Monkey, Lucy Liu as Master Viper, and a cast of thousands.  It’s a fun movie, worth seeing in 3D, that is never boring, and I give it a socks up 8.