Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

2005. Nick Park (naturally), writer/director. Aardman Animation and DreamWorks Animation.

First off, let me just say that I am a huge Wallace and Gromit fan and you could probably show me a video of both of them sitting around for two hours with their feet propped up on ottomans and I'd think it brilliant.

Second off, my absolute favourite Wallace and Gromit was, is, and probably always shall be A Close Shave and sad to say (as described in a previous post) I will probably compare all Wallace and Gromits to that one. I know I shouldn't, but I can't help myself.

Basically, if you're a W&G fan you must see the movie and you must own it when it comes out on DVD. In fact, I'm coming to the conclusion that some films are better on DVD than on the big screen. This one is better for DVD, I believe, because then you can rewind quickly to catch that thing in the background that you just missed, because I believe that there were several things in the film that were happening that I didn't quite catch - especially among the crowd sequences.

Other than that, I noticed that there were several sexual double entendres which really shouldn't offend me, because believe me, I've MADE enough of them in my lifetime. So, I'm definitely no prude - but breast entendres in a W&G movie was, frankly, a bit of a shock, and I felt a bit beneath the quality of this product. I suppose that makes me a purist: i.e. I expect my Adam Sandlers to have fart jokes, my Vin Diesels to have explosions, and my Wallace and Gromits to be good clean fun. Oh well. Purist is as purist likes, I suppose.

Apart from that - again, the plot twist I should have seen coming but didn't - I suppose everyone else out there will probably have guessed it before the movie even begins, but that doesn't detract from anything - because the better half of the movie happens AFTER the "twist."

The animation needs no description - it is wonderful as always. In fact, for any W&G fan that IS the attraction: the perfection of claymation. There is no other higher quality in this medium: W&G is the apex, the summit, the highest peak.

Need I say more?

As far as the wife and kids, they liked it, but felt it was a trifle slow at times. That's because it's so terribly British, I told them, and you have to BE British, I feel, not to feel a trace of boredom during a Wallace and Gromit. Just a theory.

So there you have it: Since it's still in theatres as I write this, I would say that die-hards should see it there AND buy it on DVD. Anyone else should just rent it when it comes out for a pleasant "movie night" with the kids.

VG

Love Actually

Universal Pictures, 2004. Richard Curtis, writer/director. Actors: Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, and a host of other actors whom I do not know by name but have appeared in various other fillums (I just listed the ones that I know)

oh yeah! and Kiera Knightly . . . wow! (interesting bit of personal Verble-Trivia: when my wife and I were watching Pirates of the Carribean, we had a bet as to whether the lead actress was Wynona Ryder or not . . . turned out to be Kiera Knightly and I won the bet, thankyouverymuch!)

OK, so, about the movie: it has moments of almost-brilliance, but dulled by occasional forays into things that simply aren't funny, or rather, those things that make you feel "not very right" - such as Liam Neeson, the stepdad of an 8 year old boy who just lost his mother. Directly after the funeral they're making jokes about this kid's love life! (and the writer tried to write it off by having the kid give a token line about how he "should" feel for his mom, and even though they made it seem like a long protracted illness that prepared everyone for the eventual demise, it STILL doesn't quite sit well with me, sorry.)

That, and the love of the American chick for some guy in the office - he's got almost NO lines, so you can't really feel anything for him, and even though through dialogue they've known each other apparently for years, it still comes across as stilted - especially with her subplot of not being able to have a complete love life because she's tied to some guy in a mental hospital (possibly her brother?) who calls her 24-7 and occasionally has tirades where he swings wild punches at people.

Odd.

The Hugh Grant parts are typical Hugh Grant, with him being the single Prime Minister of England, and of course the part where he pisses off the US President (Billy Bob Thornton, of all people!) was wonderful, but only because it was SUCH wish fulfillment!!! Other than that, his love interest is the object of cheap "chubbygirl" jokes, when she's not even THAT big. I hate that crap.

On the plus side, there are some touching moments - Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson - man, can that crazy lady pull off a tear jerking pose! You can simply FEEL the loneliness, and I don't know if it's her or the camera angle or what - but that was good.

BEST scene of the movie - and you have to watch it to get it - the Best Man's video of the wedding. Now that was classic. OK - I'll spoil it for you: the wife comes to the Best Man (Best Friend)'s flat to get the video, and she starts right off by admitting that she knows he never seemed to really like her, but let's just try to get along (and to tell you the truth, up until this scene you really get the sense that this guy is not only feeling like this girl stole his best friend, but you also begin to suspect that he has more than simply "friendship" feelings for his friend, if ya knowwhatImean!)

OK, so then she finds the video of the wedding, pops it in the VCR, starts watching, and after awhile she begins to notice that he has edited the tape . . . until they are nothing but shots/closeups of HER!

That was, IMHO, very well done.

And in all honesty, that's about it for Love Actually. Some nice montages - great stuff with one guy going off to America to score chicks with his British accent, and it wouldn't be so funny if it weren't so true!

Too many plot lines to make into a totally convincing movie, probably better as a novel, but generally entertaining. If you don't expect overly much you won't be disappointed.

TTFN

VG

Daddy Day Care

Eddie Murphy, Steve Zahn. 2003

Fairly funny movie. Steve Zahn definitely steals the show as the geek, Marvin, who has a natural knack for communicating with kids, and is the only person who understands what one of the kids speaks: Klingon. Best line, "How much Star Trek does that kid WATCH?!"

Nice light comedy. Leaves ya feeling good, especially about being a parent. So that's not bad at all.

VG

Wedding Planner

Jennifer Lopez, Matthew McConaghay [sp?]

Chick flick. Replete with high level improbability, that is, the guy being so . . .

so damn "noble" about his snooping around. Even though, in all honesty, the majority of us guys would like to have our women believe that our cheating is in fact that, innocent, and noble, and we would all like to have a story turn out like that: with everybody parting amicably and being so happy in the end.

Basically, the thin-line plot: Dude falls in love with wedding planner, because, a) she's hotter than his fiancée and b) they've "grown apart" and just don't realize it.

If you can get over that, you can like the film. Other than that, it's just really a nice pleasant way of spending a few hours. You can get the same effect by eating cotton candy.

But I did like the scenes of watching old classic B&W movies in the park. Where do they do that again? I'd like to check that out.

VG

Wedding Singer

Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore. 1998. Frank Coraci, dir.

The hands-down, absolute, all-time BEST Adam Sandler movie PERIOD.

Nothing much more really needs to be said, except that this movie should be part of anybody's DVD collection and you should have BOTH soundtrack CD's and play them in your car frequently and at high volume.

VG

Mr. Deeds

Adam Sandler

Another great AS movie, as they all are - this one is good with the hometown vs. big city play and although the blackfoot jokes were rather grotesque, I did like how it was worked into a lifesaving device toward the end. Plus, Winona Ryder was a good choice for a different type of love interest for our hero.

Best scene: saving the cats from the fire. Cat squeals always make me laugh uproariously for some reason. Probably because I'm a cat person.

Next best scene: Winona and the Pizza Owner lady and their "wrestling throwdown" - not because I particularly LIKE to watch women fighting, but it was interesting to see just how far Winona's character would go for love. And there were some good little one-liners in it.

And, of course, John Tuturro as the foot-fetish freaky Spaniard. Bizarre, but he's always delivers a good performance.

VG

The Waterboy

Adam Sandler

I can sum up all Adam Sandler movies in one sentence, "A bunch of fart jokes with a lot of heart!"

But that's OK. I don't like fart jokes, but I like the sweetness - Adam Sandler movies make compassion look cool, and that's really what we need more of in this world.

Waterboy's one of the standards, not the best, but pretty good. Made me actually interested in football for, oh about an hour or so. Liked Kathy Bates as his overprotective mom who deepfries the little gator babies, and The Fonz just gets cooler the older he gets.

And is the girlfriend in this movie the same actress who plays the ex-girlfriend in "The Wedding Singer" ? (which is hands-down THE best AS movie, EVER!)

VG

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Warner Bros. 2005, and I won't list the actors' nmes here because you don't really need them - these kids have become their characters and whatever movies they might make in their adult years, they are alreayd and always will be simply, Harry Ron and Hermoine. I won't go into the melancholia of "being tagged" as a teenage star, because quite simply that doesn't interest me - what interests me is the story and the movie as art.

And while usually I have been trying to separate movies from books, I have to say that it's difficult to do with these series of movies: the first two films were carbon-copies of the books and that rather set the tone for all that follows (this being a SERIES after all), and while the third one strayed a little from the plot and introduced a darker tone than the first two, it still held the same basic plot. Mostly what is missing from the 3rd and 4th movies are the character development that is evident in the book series. However, the books have grown, as Rowling wrote each one, she increased each tome by about 150-200 pages.

In fact, when I read the Goblet of Fire (at, what wazzit? a whopping 800 some odd pages? or was that Order of the Phoenix? - whatever . . .) I thought that this would almost have to be two movies, it's so freakin' long. Or at least a four hour movie, and even in these days of monster blockbusters that last longer than your average German opera, that's still would be a whopping story.

However, this movie distills the book down into 2 and a half hours, which is relatively long enough to tell the story - and even though I tried to separate it from the book, I realized that I had a deeper appreciation for the movie than those who had never read the book. Namely the kids, my wife, and several people at work who also saw it (each of those related that their kids filled them in on the gaps in the story, because of their knowledge of the written tale).

Which must be listed as a shortfall of the film: a work of art is supposed to relate a tale without needing supporting outside knowledge, or at least give a person a sense of understanding what it is trying to say. Otherwise it cannot be considered a "freestanding" objet d'art (if you will allow me to slide in some bad French, there!)

I had even had the inkling of it throughout the movie, especially during the contests - which I had so sincerely enjoyed in the book: these contests, with the 14 year old Harry, being much younger than the other contestants, showed true and earnest heroism for the first time in his life. It really showed a maturation point on the character (this is what I brought to the movie), yet the film just seemed to "gloss" over that. However, I haven't yet decided if that's an unfair expectation from the movie or what.

Lastly, I can understand the strange ending - the meeting with Voldemort seemed forced, as though it was a dramatic shift from the rest of the film. It almost mad eyou feel as though you'd gone out for popcorn and walked into the wrong theatre, that's how utterly discordant it seemed. More than likely not enough devices were used to properly prepare the audience for the eventual encounter.

And then, of course, there's the public yammering about how these kids are now 17 and playing 14 year olds and how they look too old now and all that . . . well, that can't really be helped now, can it? No. You can't stunt growth (at least I don't think we can yet!) and I certainly don't want them to rush the movie to make them before these kids have full beards, because I'd rather have a halfway decent product instead of something hackneyed and harried. So, this is where the "willing suspension of disbelief" comes in, and the enjoyment of the movie is untouched by this "maturity of the actors compared to the characters" point.

For me, simply stated: I liked the movie. I understand how other people might not like the movie.

However, I loved the book and think that everyone who reads the book will be well-pleased.

TTFN

VG

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Stephen Spielberg's masterpiece, that's right, and as I showed my wife this film for (her) first time, I was amazed at how dated the thing seemed to be.

What was amazing when I was younger is now . . . kitchy!

From the toy robot that starts up to the keyboard that flashes lights across a billboard to a visiting space ship.

I mean, these guys were holding up microphones attached to hand held CASSETTE players for goodness sake!

Remember those?

That was cool! It was like an amalgam of seventies technology.

My favourite part in the movie was when the scientists were just figuring out that what was being transmitted to Earth was coordinates . . . (OK, nevermind that the aliens would use a HUMAN mapping system and then transmit it in code for us to decipher - that falls under the topic of "suspension of disbelief" and is entirely another discussion altogether) . . . and then these guys go into another room, knock a giant globe off its support, ROLL the monstrous thing into another room, and then begin to measure it with a metal compass!

I thought . . . jeez! Today they'd just go to Google Earth and have a picture of the Devil's Tower downloaded in about two seconds!

So . . . in order to appreciate the movie, and to take it for what it was, I had to, in a way, view it as a person would view a period piece. For example, nobody wonders why they don't use semi-automatic weapons in Pirates of the Carribean, now, do they? Of course not! You set the technology in the era in which the movie is set.

I did that with Close Encounters of the Third Kind . . . I imagined that the movie had just been made, only it was set in 1977 - as kind of an "historical" piece about an alien-human contact. Thus, in an instant, the movie (for me at least!) became immensely enjoyable again, instead of instilling in me a sense of tragic nostalgia for an innocence long vanished in the deluge of decades of decadence.

(Like the assonance?)

And, of course, regardless of how you watch this film, it still stands as a legend in sci-fi: in that it fully explores that purely human drive to investigate and explore, and it still remains one of the few alien-human contact movies to have absolutely NO overtones of "invade and conquer."

Also, as I stated in the first paragraph, even though I like several other Spielberg films better (E.T., Raiders of Lost Ark, AI) and hate several others much more (Empire of the Sun - RETCH!), I still feel that this one can probably considered his true masterpiece, if only for the sheer "crafting" of the movie itself.


VG