Tiny Dancer

Any misconceptions about Happy Feet – namely, that it’s a saccharine-heavy money grab living on the tuxedo tails of March of the Penguins – should be checked at the refreshments stand on the way into the movie. In production for four years, starting about the same time that March began filming, George Miller’s CGI flick is about more than just exploiting America’s newfound love for the curious cold-weather birds. Nor is it about throwing in a few adult themes into a kid’s movie so that parents can tolerate an hour and a half in uncomfortable theatre seats surrounded by squirming children. Indeed, for all of its cute moments – and there are plenty to be had – Happy Feet asks you to reconsider your position on the power of animated films and challenges you to take notice of the way we are treating our world.

READ MORE

Because, Y’know, “Race”

In the ten-season history of The Amazing Race, no team has been reviled more than Rob and Amber, the conniving couple who appeared on two versions of Survivor before racing all the way to second place in TAR 7. Maybe they’re deserving of the vitriol; after all, they conned teams into taking a time penalty instead of finishing a Roadblock that even Rob couldn’t handle. Even so, racers regularly blast each other for the way they play the game; most recently, single mothers Lyn and Karlyn have taken a “holier than thou” attitude towards beauty queens Dustin and Kandice, especially when the models exercised their Yield option after arriving to the appropriate mat seconds before LynLyn. At home, viewers call that kind of behavior deplorable. For example, my grandmother would be broken up if the models were to win the competition after their “nasty” yielding tactics, and she’ll likely refuse to watch the all-star incarnation of the Race if Rob and Amber take another run at the million. The important thing I keep trying to stress when defending the beauty queens is that the show’s title, though goofily simple, is The Amazing Race, not The Amazing Campaign to Show Your Moral Superiority.

READ MORE

Guitar Heroes

The best way to Carnegie Hall, the old saying goes, is practice. If the supernatural plot of Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny is to be believed, one can pass right on by Carnegie Hall and start filling stadiums if he or she secures a possessed guitar pick sculpted from the chipped tooth of Satan. The Pick of Destiny is the final frontier for Tenacious D, the portly comedy metal duo comprising of Jack Black and Kyle Gass, having already conquered television in an HBO special, stereo in their self-titled 2001 debut album, and the stage in their countless tours supporting said album. And while the final product is a fine addition to the Tenacious D canon, what you think of it will depend entirely on how much you buy into the proposition that Black and Gass are the greatest band in the world and that, by extension, their movie should be top tier.

READ MORE

Higher and Higher

Okay, so maybe I don’t read as many new books as I should, and maybe the last book I read was the bastardized American cousin of High Fidelity, but I couldn’t help but revisit Nick Hornby’s debut work of fiction. What I recalled while reading the book was that it is absolutely one of my desert island, all-time top five favorite books (and the film version probably gets the same distinction).

I’ll not bore you with details of plot, because I’m fairly certain I’ve already reviewed the book. But the gift in re-reading a novel is that you already know what happens and you can more fully become immersed in the writing style. Hornby packs High Fidelity with humorous, touching, relatable prose that makes you want to never stop reading. And once it’s in you’re head, it becomes like the addictive pop single that you can’t stop repeating. You want to stick it in your CD player and put it on repeat, just so you can find new layers of it to love. I’m happy to report that High Fidelity only gets better the second time around.

Rating: * * * * *

Strange Love

Everyone has had that moment in their life when they feel like they feel like they’re living in a movie. Sure, belief in cosmic and/or spiritual forces explains the feeling for a majority of folks, but sometimes it seems like a day’s events are put together by a mind much too twisted to be a benevolent higher power. In Stranger than Fiction, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) can’t shake that feeling when, in the middle of his boring, by-the-numbers life, he begins to hear a female voice in his head. And it’s not the kind of voice that tells him what to do or predicts his next move. The voice is very eloquently narrating his life. It sounds like a can’t-miss premise, but there are plenty of places where Stranger than Fiction could misstep. The most satisfying part about watching it, then, is that it’s executed with such poise that, almost everywhere it could go wrong, it doesn’t.

READ MORE