Who would have thought that in the middle of the longest, hottest weather we've had in New Jersey since we arrived almost a decade ago, we should have to cancel a movie due to the threat of rain. It didn't help that after a brief shower and a few cracks of thunder around tea-time, that particular evening was ultimately fine and good movie-watching conditions.
So it is time to restart our program with one of the rarest things on the planet after a tabloid newspaper with no mention of Lindsay Lohan - a movie about rugby. The only other rugby movie I can bring to mind is This Sporting Life, starring Richard Harris. But that was about the other code - Rugby League, not Rugby Union - and if you really want to know the difference, I'll explain on Saturday.
With two Academy Award acting nominations (but no win) I'm expecting some good performances. However I am filled with foreboding about the action sequences. I've written elsewhere about the difficulty of creating plausible action scenes in soccer movies, and I can provide a whole list of risible attempts (whilst Escape to Victory is recognised as laughably bad in this respect, Sean Bean's When Saturday Comes is probably worse, without including films which make no pretence of realism, like Kicking and Screaming and She's The Man).
But Rugby ? And World Cup Rugby at that ? This requires huge stadiums of african fans (probably blowing vuvuzelas) whilst the players streak across the field tackling, rolling, falling and scrimmaging in formation in support of the script. The one scene I KNOW we are going to see is the ubiquitous "let's get in a huddle and have a rousing speech" just like many American Football movies.
Morgan Freeman as Mandela ? Great. Matt 'Bourne' Damon as clean-cut, apartheid-facing rainbow warrior Francois Pienaar ? OK. Hordes of Hollywood bit players running around trying to reastically recreate top-notch Southern Hemisphere rugby union ? Uh-oh...
Sorry. Weather.com has chance of thunderstorms at greater than 50% thru this evening, so we're are gonna call it for tonight. Can you believe after all this gloriousweather we get rained out ?
Look out for a re-arranged date here or through Evite.
It's noticeable how hard the film critics are finding it to discuss the new Toy Story 3 movie (which we saw on Wednesday) for fear of dropping in a plot spoiler. Universal praise for Pixar of course, but only the bare minimum of a plot (Andy has grown up and is going off to college, so Woody, Buzz et al are shipped off to a daycare center). It really is an excellent movie, and may be the rated as the best of the bunch, if it wasn't for the novelty impact of the original Toy Story. However, all the reviews without fail have mentioned the phenomenon of grown men crying through the end of the movie.
I admit it. I sat there blubbing away at the end, feeling great rivulets running down my cheeks and into my beard. And I know I wasn't the only one. For 90 minutes the cinema was filled with the usual noises - the rustling of popcorn cartons, slurping on sodas, and the squeals of laughter and excitement at recognising genuinely funny in-jokes. Then, a noticeable - almost audible - hush descended over the cinema for the last 20 minutes - the sort of exam room silence that occurs when everyone is concentrating extremely hard on something. In this case, concentrating on not crying - or at least not giving any obvious clues that risible adult crying was taking place.
I can't really discuss why it made me cry without giving away crucial parts of the story. Without being too specific, I believe that something pulls at that part of a parent who knows that at some point - all too soon - you are going to 'lose' your kids - the ones sitting in the cinema seats next to you - to the curse of adulthood, and you anticipate the same sense of bereavement brought on by the untimely passing of a loved one. The way that Andy, Buzz and Woody handle this passing is laudable, but I think most of us adults will empathise more with the shock of Andy's mom, as she looks round his empty room and breaks down.
I often cry at movies - in some cases predictably, like Marley and Me, where you feel stupid for being so shamelessly manipulated. Field of Dreams always gets me, even though I never played baseball with my dad (I just sometimes get overwhelmed with grief at his passing - nearly 20 years ago - at the most obscure promptings...). My weirdest trigger for flowing tears at a movie was watching the little known movie The Shooting Party, when the denouement signalled the imminent loss of a whole generation of England's bright young things in the horrors of the WW1 trenches - and I was a tear-stained wreck. Maybe I used to be a much more politically sensitive soul in my youth...
So - time to man up, guys (and gals) - Do you cry at the movies ? What makes you cry
Oh, and don't forget - if you go to Toy Story 3 with your kids and you start blubbing, they will not be sympathetic in the least - just hugely embarrased at you.
Well, CARS lived up to its Pixar reputation on second showing. I was surprised to realise that, unlike most other Pixar films, I had only seen this once previously, and that was at the cinema. Since we do not own a copy of this movie, cue late, mad scramble to find DVD copy, during which quest we discovered that our local Blockbuster store has shut down, and confirmed that Public Library copies of DVDs are notoriously unreliable. Note to self - try thinking ahead and using Netflix next time.
Anyway, wonderful scenic artwork, and another great story - though, to be honest, this one did push the line between heartwarming feeling and mawkish sentimentality harder than any other Pixar film. And great vocal performances - Owen Wilson's childishly arrogant Lightning McQueen convincingly turned a new leaf, and a modest turn from OSCAR-WINNING ACTOR Paul Newman (there - that's one for you, now can you name the other six ??). It must be great fun working for Pixar, where you can liberally sprinkle in-jokes from your other movies around like pixie dust (Lightyear Tires, anyone ?)
So, onto Saturday 10th and Ali, starring Will Smith. I've seen this once before, and realised that I knew more about the Ali back story than I thought. It's a comprehensive and thorough biopic, and the one thing I do remember is Will Smith's convincing physical transformation into the great athlete. Not quite Robert De Niro's accumulation of pounds for Raging Bull, but not far off, and up there alongside Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (Andy Kaufman) and Jamie Foxx in Ray (Ray Charles).
Word of warning - this movie is rated R, and according to the IMDB review this is largely due to the use of the F-word 5 times. I've included that link below. Also, it's also very long (a tad over 2 and a half hours).
I love Pixar. They can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned. A recent article in Wired Magazine describes the creative process they use. It's a fascinating read, but the key phrase in my mind is "Day 1 / The first challenge: coming up with a great story." That says it all really. There is some great technology, a remarkable attention to detail, some quality voice actors (7 Oscar winning actors have voiced Pixar characters, alongside countless Oscar nominees) but above all else - they start with great stories. Further, a thing I've always admired about Pixar movies is that they are treated like real movies - they are constructed with attention to plot, camera angles, lighting, character development - just like a 'normal' movie. There is nothing two dimensional about Pixar animation.
(BTW - can you name those 7 Oscar winning actors ? Randy Newman doesn't count - not an actor - and an extra special bonus point if you can tell me which one should be marked with an asterisk.)
Anyway, I may be reversing a recent trend with this showing. Whereas recent movies have not lived up to the rosy remembrances I have on second showing, for me Cars was not that memorable first time around. Whereas I can quote huge chunks of dialogue and anticipate scenes from Finding Nemo and Toy Story, I'm hoping that my vagueness about this movie will be rewarded with an experience that exceeds expectations. Kid appropriate reviews below.
Over the last couple of weeks we've been blessed with some perfect, open-air movie viewing weather, but the movies themselves have been mixed. It really is strange talking about a movie like Bend It Like Beckham (which you've seen a while back) beforehand as a preview, and then afterwards as a review. Given how much we want to like the movies we pick for Film Club, we often suffer from the puncturing of our high expectations and rose-colored memories. Like I said before, Bend It Like Beckham really isn't a movie about soccer, it's a movie about Indians living in the UK which happens to have soccer in it. All the good humour (and there is plenty) comes not just from the clashing of cultures, but mainly from the adopted and adapted behaviours of Indian families trying to maintain their traditions in the northwest suburbs of London. The most jarring aspect of the movie was the, well, dreadful perfomance of Keira Knightley. I forgot quite how bad she was, overacting like a posh English school girl who only got into her end-of-year Sixth Form play because she knows the cool girls in the Drama Society. I'm quite sure her subsequent success was not based on her performance here.
Our "special edition" showing of Happy Feet on behalf of the Hopewell Valley Youth Chorale was much better. We moved the screen out into the middle of the yard, which made for a more expansive experience. And the movie lived up to the broader scale. There are a decreasing number of opportunities for Robin Williams to play...well, Robin Williams, but animated penguins doing wisecracks is a gimme for him, and he delivers.
The music is terrific, there are some brilliant Glee-like mashups and the dialogue is as snappy as an episode of The West Wing. Thoroughly enjoyed this one, the only downside is my increasing annoyance at the cracked prism inside the projector lens which kept putting a greenish cloud of fog over the vast, snow-white Antartic landscape (impressive even as animation). Time for a whip-round as they say in England...
Goldenballs is the affectionate nickname bestowed on her famous husband by Victoria Beckham, and shared with the world via Michael Parkinson's sofa. And next week, in a special FIFA World Cup edition, the Film Club will be showing Bend It Like Beckham. Appropriately, Beckham makes only a small cameo appearance in archive footage - much like his involvement with the England squad in South Africa...
The movie is charming, and not really a football (oops, I mean soccer) movie as much as it is about diversity - a whole array of cultural and ethnic minorities striving against the status quo to have a voice - phew, that sounds a bit profound. It is actually a good laugh, and was the breakthrough movie for both Parminder Nagra (ER) and Keira Knightly (those Pirate movies...)
Join us around 8pm on Saturday 12th for the movie. Or feel free to join us earlier in the afternoon for England v USA - kick off 2pm. If you've never watched a major soccer international, then what better way to start than in a big partisan group cheering their country on...did I hear you ask which country ?
With all the press noise on this movie emanting from the "will-she, won't-she ?" saga of Sandra Bullock's Oscar chances, I needed a reminder that behind her ultimately successful individual performance, there was a movie in there. So, was it actually any good ?
The Blind Side - the true story of NFL's Michael Oher difficult upbringing and Leigh Anne Tuohy's successful intervention therein - has many of the 'hallmarks' of a movie on Lifetime TV. For a start, it's a true story of triumph over adversity - the lifeblood of that channel. Movies with ready-made story lines where the ultimate victory is assured can often produce lazy writing. It's probably why so many of those obscure bio-pics are reduced to daytime pap. The writer doesn't have to focus on plot development, since its already done for them (For example, we know Michael will get his GPA up over 2.5, otherwise he won't get his scholarship - and we would never have heard of him). There must be compensation for this in the writing of the characters, and the performance of the actors.
Whilst Sandra Bullock does a good turn in her role, and Quinton Aaron as Michael was almost as good (not sure why he was ignored by the Academy in the same year Gabourey Sidibe was toasted to the rafters...?) some of the other characters were straight out of a sitcom, never mind a Hallmark movie. The cheeky, wise-cracking young brother, wheeling and dealing with the prospective college coaches, the sympathetic warm-hearted teacher who sees the good in Michael and turns the other cynical teachers around, the feisty, matronly tutor with the hint of a dark background (Kathy Bates reprises her role as Libby Holden in Primary Colors)..? Per-lease...
Ultimately, there is nothing to see here but the two leads. It's a nice movie - with such strong source material it stood every chance of being so. And there are some funny moments, mostly from Tim McGraw's eye-rolling acceptance of his wife's inevitable dominance over family affairs. Only Sandra Bullock, Quinton Aaron, and the higher production values afforded to an Oscar run movie, elevated it beyond channel 140 on my Verizon FIOS box.
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