All told, these things do not go together well to create a children’s movie – in much the same way that “Samurai Jack” was not a kids’ cartoon series – but it does make for a very interesting and inspiring film.

The story goes that the young orphan Brendan lives with his uncle, the Abbot Cellach, in Kells in Ireland.  The Abbot is near-obsessed with building a great wall around the abbey in an attempt to protect the village from the ravages of the Northmen who are notorious for raiding whatever villages they come across.  The Abbot is both overly protective and emotionally distant to Brendan, leaving the way open for Brother Aiden of Iona to step in and inspire the boy to all kinds of adventure.  Brendan is forbidden from going into the forest surrounding the village of Kells, but the need for a special berry (mistletoe) in order to make an emerald green ink drives Brendan out for the first time beyond the walls.  There he meets the true spirit of the forest and is set upon the path to his true destiny.

As the kids pointed out, the depictions of the Vikings in particular were not historically accurate, but with a story this old and favored, historical accuracy is not all that necessary.  There are no big-name voice actors, but the style is near enough to the popular animated series of our time – “Clone Wars” and “Danny Phantom” come to mind immediately – that kids may be attracted to it.  Young children might find a few of the images in particular disturbing, and overall the art is very busy and constantly moving.  (Pause the disc during the snow, for instance, and you’ll see that each of the snowflakes is a different popular Celtic knot.)  At the same time, the tween and teen group will likely find it uninteresting unless they already have a love for the subject matter.

The true split between a child’s movie and a more mature experience occurs when the story itself begins.  While there is a clear “good versus evil” plot, it gets a little lost in the personal conflicts and illustrations.  This is not altogether a bad thing, but the expectation of “animated films” to have very clear conflicts and solutions is not met here.  Fans of Celtic mythology will be delighted with this treatment of a well-documented but rarely-told tale, and those who appreciate rich yet whimsical artistry will be in seventh heaven.

Personally, I enjoyed it immensely, and I have already made a list of the people who will be receiving it as a gift for any given holiday.  I found it exciting and fascinating, and I will definitely be watching it again soon… when the kids are not around.  I can definitely see why it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but I can also see why it didn’t have more public appeal.  This is now my new favorite little secret treasure.

• The Burton-Depp-Elfman-Bonham-Carter formula is not a guarantee for success, again.  At all.
• Pretty pictures can only barely distract from a story that is woefully underdeveloped.
• If you’ve never read the original Lewis Carroll books (as most children haven’t), you will definitely miss most of the references.

I admit to having already been slightly biased before I walked into the theater to see Tim Burton’s latest installation, “Alice in Wonderland”.  This bias was derived mainly from the barrage of trailers and teasers that have been permeating the webtersphere for the last few months because, frankly, it really just didn’t seem like that much of a story.  And yet, I was willing to leave my expectations at the door and open myself up for what was touted to be a grand “re-entry” of Burton into (dare I say) credible directorship.

The problem with no expectations (or even very low expectations) is that when disappointment comes, it is a double let-down – once for not meeting expectations and again for failing to prove us wrong in expecting something bad.

Disney’s promotional department was specific in not marketing their latest “Alice in Wonderland” version as a sequel to the original story – but that’s exactly what it was.  Thirteen or so years after Alice Kingsley (Mia Wasikowska) first visited that magical place of madness and mayhem, she returns as an escape from a painfully ham-handed and oddly dispassionate moment of “stress” in Victorian England.  She’s being proposed to by a lord’s son, her sister’s husband is a dog, her aunt is crazy (does it run in the family?), and she’s being stalked and teased (politely) by a slew of people we only meet briefly and could care less about.  And this doesn’t bother us because we also do not care about Alice – who really just looks like a lady “dying of the wastes” or some other vague degenerative condition.

When you watch a horror movie or a fantasy movie, especially one where the main character is taken into a realm outside of consensus reality, there is a moment (usually early on) when they are faced with the inescapable fact of their unrealistic surroundings.  They have to come to terms with their immediate surroundings being something different and thereby make the choice to respond accordingly.  Alice seems to have maybe suffered some sort of mental deficiency along with sleep deprivation because repeated attempts to assert the world she’s interacting with as real are rebuffed – through the whole movie.

Alice isn’t the only one that suffers this kind of addiction to seeing things through painfully myopic lenses:  every character makes their decision on whether or not she’s “THE” Alice, and they stick by their guns through the whole story, regardless of evidence to the contrary.  And then, in the last scenes, as though someone realized that they were running out of film, suddenly everyone is ready to rally to her support in suddenly deciding to take on what was only the day before a preposterous and ridiculous responsibility.  There was no moment of insight, no visible “ah-ha!”, save for the aggressive exposition delivered with as much grace as that sledge-hammer could be by the delightful Alan Rickman – and “aggressive expositions” are only effective if the character receiving such blunt-force trauma can be seen to be moved by it.

As the story not so much unfolded as plodded along like a brain-damaged ox with only half a load of hay, I kept expecting these moments of conflict or conversation to ignite a light of reason and understanding would flicker to life and maybe provide the characters with some depth, if not direction.  It just didn’t happen.  By the time Alice came to real-ize her true situation, it was way too late to credit her with any kind of intellectual acumen.  Every scene seemed to exist solely for the purpose of leading to the next scene… but never to a plot that we could be bothered to invest emotionally in.

Now, don’t get me wrong: if you’re a Tim Burton fan, you will enjoy a rather pedestrian stroll (pun intended) through his usual signature imagery of curly-q branches and horizontal stripes.  He’s got a particular feel, a special tone, so when you know that Burton’s at the helm, you know what to except every time.  And yet, even as interesting as the atmosphere was, it still struck me as bland and annoying colorless.  Even the scenes and elements that were supposed to be more colorful and splashy as part of the delineation between environments came across as uninspired and boring.

The exception – and isn’t he always? – was the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp).  I only say he is an exception because he was colorful.  He was loud, he was exaggerated, he was… Captain Jack Sparrow.  Or rather, he was Captain Jack when he wasn’t Willy Wonka or Sweeney Todd.  This is yet another entry into the long list of evidence that Tim and Johnny have some kind of weird relationship off-screen that convinces Johnny to take on these roles.  The leading odds are on blackmail, followed closely by some kind of weird cult attachment.  Yes, friendship and mutual respect are also on the list, but they’re only taking bets at 40 to 1.

It has just enough odd violence (eye-gouging, mainly) to make it probably unsuitable for very young children, and it’s entirely too ponderous for the average adult to find it interesting more than once, if even that.  Fans of Lewis Carroll’s work will find it easy to follow, but if you haven’t read the book in the last six months, you’re really going to find yourself wondering just what the heck they’re mumbling about.  If you have read the book in the last six months, or paid any attention to the other derivations of the story such as American McGee’s Alice or even Disney’s original feature-length cartoon from 1951 (yes, it really has been that long), you’re going to wonder where the heck the rest of the characters are.  Too much is left to inference, and what is said directly isn’t taken seriously – so how can we?

As far as it being in “glorious 3-D”, I don’t really see how the story was better served by the format.  It was easy to see, however, the comparatively poor job that was done with the CG of Crispin Glover’s Knave of Hearts (what was up with that?!?), not to mention the horses and other pixel-bound figures.  Of the $250 million that it took to make this movie, I’m guessing that most of the budget went to getting A-list actors – but then their potential was clipped short by a pretty bad script.  It’s really a crying shame that more didn’t go into making it a better all-around experience.

If you’re already a fan, you’re going to go see it – I know that – but just don’t get your hopes up.  It’s a pretty-once, but it has neither the depth nor the grace to be more than that.

Save Ferris, just the way it was!

Ferris has common sense, even if maybe he didn’t seem to in the 1986 classic of the adventures during his infamous “Day Off“.  Matthew Broderick recently sat down with Cinematical to talk about many things, including Broderick’s new film “Wonderful World“, and, of course, the conversation turned to the iconic teen landmark.

Broderick’s take on it?

Cinematical:  “What if they asked you to cameo in it? Would you be averse to that?”

Broderick:  “I probably wouldn’t enjoy that. I would rather leave what we did as our thing.”

YES!  A voice of reason in a sea of insanity!  There’s a “Mannequin” reboot, “Footloose” and “Red Dawn” are coming out this year (again), and then there’s the “A-Team” and comic book movies and book adaptations…

It does my heart good.

But what happened before they were moved to District 9? Wouldn't you like to know!

According to the fine folks over the L.A. Times (via Chris Campbell over on Cinematical), Neill Blomkamp is intrigued by the idea of doing a prequel to his underdog success “District 9“, possibly before or instead of doing a sequel wherein the true hero of the story returns.  (If you don’t know what I mean, you probably haven’t seen it yet, which means you need to high-tail it out the door and pick up the Bluray ASAP!)

Unlike other prequels we’ve been privy to, such as “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”, there is a certain class and talent that goes into telling the story before the story.  It requires a kind of eye towards continuity that allows the masterful to weave a deeper appreciation of the original tale, and that is much harder to pull off successfully than you might think.  The good news is that the original story was so simple in its empathic invocation that a prequel could provide a lot more meat to what is already a compelling universe for us.

The bad news is that it could make the original look like a two-bit amateur production.  Seriously – imagine if these guys actually had a budget!  Think of the amazing things they could do!

At any rate, no decisions have been made, though the intention for the team to continue is clear.  We like that.

Didn't know that Chris Hemsworth was a blond, didja?

When it comes to major summer releases, the projected dates are set out at least a year in advance because there are only a limited number of screen that can or will host particular movies on the hottest weekends of the year (literally and figuratively).  And it’s a cut-throat business, too, man:  the photons weren’t even settled in on the announcement that “Spider Man 4″ is on hold

as it awaits a “screenplay that doesn’t suck” when Paramount-Marvel announced that they’ll be moving the release of “Thor” up two weeks to that coveted May 6th timeslot.

Now, at the same time, “Thor” only begins shooting in a week.  Traditionally, even that two-week difference in over a year can create a massive amount of pressure to get the job done and done right.  In their favor is a brilliant slew of seasoned professionals, though:  Kenneth Branagh in the director’s chair working with Natalie Portman, Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Hopkins and Sam Jackson – and it just… well, I won’t say “gets better from there”, but I will say “presents an interesting potential that we can only hope will make a splash for the woefully under-represented Norse god of thunder”.

As another testament to the intense competition of those coveted release dates, within nanoseconds (we’re guessing) of “Thor” taking the “Spider Man 4″ spot on May 4th, “Pirates of the Carribean 4″ moved up to take Thor’s old May 20th spot.  This puts “Thor” in a bind if it can’t wrap production on time because the next available weekend might end up being no earlier than late June… and that loses a lot of profitable weekends, especially if it has to go up against another comic movie with possibly a wider fan-base, “Green Lantern“, due out June 17th.

Really, does this look like Ryan Reynolds to you?

Yesterday, it finally came down that Warner Brothers has given the go-ahead to the Green Lantern movie, as told by Karen Goulekas in her blog.  This counts as being in “the nick of time” since they’re set to start filming in ten weeks, and I’m sure there’s a lot of work that needs to be done for Karen as the Visual Effects Supervisor.  You may recall appreciating her work from “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Spider-Man” (or, some of my personal favorites, “Strange Days” and “The Fifth Element”).

The projected 2011 summer blockbuster is helmed by Martin Campbell whose work on a Bond film (“Casino Royale”, my favorite!) and a couple of Zorro flicks suggests that he may have a handle on the human inside the hero.  Hal Jordan, the first Green Lantern from Earth, will be played by Ryan Reynolds (“Smokin’ Aces”, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”, and “Van Wilder”), which might be an interesting choice… and by “interesting”, I mean, “I’m a little scared but trying to have faith in their casting decisions.”

At any rate, they have a very aggressive June 17th, 2011, release date set.  More as it develops.

The story goes that Bad BlaKe (Jeff Bridges) is a country music singer whose career has never done him well.  He has the prerequisite elements in his life: four failed marriages, estranged family, beat-up pickup truck, alcoholism, a long string of one-night stands… and success still eludes him.  He knows it’s not his music, though, because his protégé Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) is filling up whole arenas with the songs that Bad wrote.

Yes, they call him Bad.  Or Mister Blake, but mostly Bad.

Then, one night in Santa Fe, he meets Jane (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and she inspires him to… well, make biscuits and be friendly, but that’s about it, at first.  We already know that he’s an alcoholic (preliminary buzz and the synopsis already told us that), but it seems like Bad’s only issue with his addiction is that it can be a little expensive and he’s usually pretty broke.

It was suggested that “Crazy Heart” would deliver a hard-core, one-two punch to the gut with some kind of brilliant heart-wrenching battle for sobriety.  Unfortunately, that just never happened.  Whether it was through odd and uneven pacing, or through the unrefined and unconvincing performances of Gyllenhaal and Farrell, the message was carried nearly exclusively by Bridges, but he was so involved in telling the story that some of the message got understated.  The chemistry that one expects to see in a meaningful romantic connection was completely absent between Bridges and Gyllenhaal, which was even more unfortunate since so much screen time was devoted to scenes wherein we see way too much 57-year-old flabby man boobs.  Add to that the slipping accents of both younger actors and their seeming unmitigated fear of being in Jeff Bridges’ presence, and the illusion of the relationships with Bad for each of them is shattered.

On the other hand, the relationships with Robert Duvall as Wayne, the bar owner in Houston, and James Keane as Bad’s manager were the actual interactions that made the story of recovery realistic and believable.

For all that I found it slow and sometimes bordering on boring, there was a visceral element that was more real and meaningful than all the “You Kill Me’s” and “Clean and Sober’s” out there.  When Hollywood takes on issues like sobriety and addiction, it is generally either trivialized or sensationalized.  “Crazy Heart” took a hard look at a man whose entire life had already been ransacked by alcohol addiction, regardless of the “entertainer” aspect.  Bad Blake could have been a cook or a janitor or a traveling salesman, and the only change in the story would have been the career of the protégé that surpassed him – but maybe that’s really the point.  He could be anyone.  Anyone can suffer that loss, anyone can face that failure, and anyone can make the choice to fix it.

Ultimately, “Crazy Heart” is an excellent art film, with its own quirks and idiosyncrasies of understatement and lingering visual clues.  It’s hard to say if this is going to get a nod from the Academy as a whole because there is an overabundance of significant flaws, but I would be stunned if Bridges did not get a nomination for Best Actor.  His performance was the best part of the movie, which I suppose is the idea, but it’s hard to tell if his performance is brilliant on its own, or by comparison.

I want to love the whole thing more, but I just can’t.

From 9 am until 11 am on Saturday, December 19th, 2009, 100.3 Jack FM and Lionsgate’s “the Spy Next Door” will be running a toy drive for Bryan’s House Charity.  Directly from the press release:

“…Anyone who donates a new, unwrapped toy in support of Bryan’s House will get a free THE SPY NEXT DOOR poster, while supplies last, and can register to win a Jr. Spy Kit and one of five family four-packs of  guaranteed tickets to see the screening in January! THE SPY NEXT DOOR is the new family action comedy starring beloved martial arts star Jackie Chan and opens nationwide on January 15th, 2010! …

Additionally, licensed, insured drivers who donate get a free spin in a choice of an Aston Martin, Bentley, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Porsche or Rolls Royce! Santa Claus will be on-site for photos, and yummy holiday treats will be given away.

Now, how cool is that? Hang out with the guys from JackFM, grab some swag from “the Spy Next Door” (did we mention Jackie Chan was in it?), and register to win the test drive of a lifetime when you bring a new, unwrapped toy… which is nothing compared to the overwhelming joy you feel when you help out children in a foster home who have been diagnosed with HIV and other severe developmental conditions.

No excuses, here’s a map:
View Larger Map

From a business point of view, it kinda makes sense.  We’re back at that phase of history where space is fascinating again.  We’re discovering planets outside of our own system, we’re learning more about the integration of relativistic and quantum models in physics (important for understanding black holes in particular), and there’s even talk from the White House (very quietly, admittedly) about another moon mission or more space work.  The science fiction trend recently has been awfully cartoon-y (and, in some cases, just awful), so maybe it really is time to dust off one of the original “outward thinking” scripts of the science fiction boom.

Frankly, for the outrageous budget Disney had for “the Black Hole” at the time ($20 million), it pretty well bombed at the box office.  It only reads as doing more than breaking even now, thirty years later, and there’s really no way to dress it up for re-release as Disney is doing for most of its other older titles (“Sleeping Beauty”, “Little Mermaid”, etc.).  There was the 25th anniversary VHS/DVD release five years ago, but all that really did was bring back the embarrassment of what was, honestly, a boring and kind of creepy movie.

That’s right, I said it.  “Boring”.  Being boring is the cardinal sin of any movie, period, and “the Black Hole”, for all its resonant scifi themes, was just… not that exciting.  It was slightly disturbing, it was darker than normal fare for “kid movies”, but I think Disney was having something of an identity crisis at the time.  On one hand, they had the “family movie” reputation to try to honor, but they were really trying to go in a different direction.  I never considered “the Black Hole” to be a kids’ movie, but maybe it got lumped in thanks to the Disney name.  I even remember my parents talking about it and deciding that it was a little too much for the likes of me (and I was precocious).

Is this going to be a good move for them?  Given the box office and craft-worthy success of their recent titles (“Race to Witch Mountain” being the most immediately memorable), this could be a good move.  I just hope “Tron: Legacy” doesn’t get short-changed with the talents’ split attention.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

(NOTE: This is not to be confused with the other “Black Hole” project by David Fincher that had Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary of “Beowulf” fame in the writers’ seat and would be produced by Paramount.  That project has actually been knocked back with Gaiman and Avary out of it entirely.  Just letting you know.)

As the last two installments of the Harry Potter movie series loom ever closer, there’s a lot of speculation about how the story is going to be modified, and one of the hints that We Who Have Read It are noticing off the bat: Didn’t Ron stay home pouting while Hermione and Harry went off on their wacky adventures?  Maybe it’s an early scene we’re given a glimpse of in today’s USA Today, or maybe they’re adjusting the story to include (almost) everybody’s favorite ginger.  (I personally would not mind that, so long as it wasn’t at the expense of the deeper parts of the tale.)

Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson in the first official production picture from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

Here’s what I found interesting, though.  There’s mention that a scene exists where Ron’s affection for Hermione is challenged by a curse wherein he sees Harry and Hermione in a pretty hot-and-heavy embrace and… wait for it… Harry’s naked.

Come on, man.  We all got to see the posters for “Equus” (since few of us were lucky enough to live in a place where we could see it onstage), and we get the message.  Dan is a big boy, a grown-up, a real adult.  He has all the appropriate parts necessary for reproduction.  (Also, he’s not circumcised.)  He should be justifiably terrified of being type-cast as “that wizard kid”, but isn’t going way far in the other direction?

Dan Radcliffe isn’t the only one, though.  Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) took on a “bad boy” role in “Cherrybomb”, a film festival treat that recently got a distributor and should be out next year.

The girls are being a little more pragmatic, it seems.  Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) both have started university, presumably to nudge the future in their favor.

BBC News had an excellent set of interviews with the stars recently that suggested that one of the best things to come out of the “Harry Potter” series isn’t happening on screen at all.  In our current age of celebrity meltdown everywhere we turn, it seems that these kids we’ve watched grow up through the years at Hogwart’s are really genuinely solid, level-headed people who will likely provide a completely different kind of inspiration in the future: as examples of how to handle success well and avoiding the pitfalls of over-inflated egotism.

Well, we can hope.  I’m rooting for them.