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| Syd |
 Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2023 10:01 pm |
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Ernest and Celestine are a bear and a mouse in a dual civilization where bear civilization is the upper world and mouse civilization is the lower world. Mouse civilization has great achievements due to dentistry. You see, the Mouse Fairy collects the baby teeth of bears, particularly incisors, for implants so the mice can go on gnawing. (Oddly, the bears generally detest mice but still have the legend of the Mouse Fairy. The mice have the legend of the Big Bad Bear.)
Ernest the Bear wakes up from hibernation with no food, so is reduced to panhandling without a permit. Celestine the Mouse is having a singularly unsuccessful night out collecting teeth, partly because she is more interested in fantasies of friendship between mice and bears. She introduces Ernest (to avoid her being eaten, which is hardly enough nourishment for a bear) to a candy shop, where he eats his fill (and probably has a diabetic coma).
Now this candy shop is run by a Papa Bear who liberally dispenses sweet to Baby Bears, except for his own son, because you don't want to rot your teeth, do you? And across the street is his wife the dentist (bear dentist in this case) who specialized in implanting teeth to replace those rotted by sweets (she has quite the display). And Celestine needs 50 teeth for her career in dentistry, and Ernest owes her a huge favor...
The poster shows them in mug shots, so you can see where this is going. But there a lot of books in this series, a tv series and a sequel, so I wouldn't worry about it. The artistic style is watercolor drawings like you might find in a children's book, which is appropriate because that is where this comes from. I found it utterly charming and recommend it even if you have to steal a child to watch it. (I haven't been caught yet.) Sometimes simplicity is bliss.
I'd probably best point out that this was deservedly nominated for an Oscar. (It lost to Frozen, which is okay.) I'd love to see a film like this win sometime over the computer animated spectacles. It's not just how technically accomplished the animation is, but how well it served the story and how strong the story is. This is a good example of how an apparently simple animation style can support a strong story, as is the short film, "The Danish Poet", which has a simple animation style and is one of the finest animated films ever. Or, if you want to break your heart, "Father and Daughter." |
Last edited by Syd on Wed Dec 20, 2023 1:28 pm; edited 1 time in total
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2023 9:11 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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| Incidentally, when the fact of their perfidy becomes apparent, due to circumstances Celestine the mouse is captured and tried by the bears (and the bears have to be reminded that they are scared of mice--except, of course of the Mouse Fairy), and Ernest is captured and tried by the mice (who have to be reminded that they are terrified of bears). To bring Ernest to trial, the mice resort to the method the Lilliputians used to capture Gulliver, which didn't work that well either. As I said, charming. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2023 11:47 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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For reasons I can't fathom, I want to see E&C. Good review, in conveying the charm. I will steal a child... actually I have a 37 year old child who likes animation so all I really have to do is casually mention the dentistry. Kind of a Robert Frost Road not Taken thing.
I just watched Painkiller, with Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler. Pretty uneven in tone, with ham-handed tries at satire mixed in with the evils of oxycontin, so I wouldn't recommend. Some good supporting performances from West Duchovny (as a pretty sales rep for Perdue Pharma)(yes, she's David's daughter) and Uzo Aduba, as a US attorney who goes after the company. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| grace |
| Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2023 5:53 pm |
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
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| Fun fact: My first real job was at Purdue Frederick, and my desk was two down from Dr Richard's office. I will still likely check Painkiller out despite the tepid review, if only to see who's been sitting at my desk. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2023 11:30 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Fun fact indeed. The miniseries sort of advances the idea that the evil (or its cousins, clueless privilege and cynicism) really lay at the very top, fish rots from the head and all that. Here's hoping you don't have to check out painkillers after checking out Painkiller.
I noticed a week or two ago the Supreme Court had put a stop on some Sackler bankruptcy deal that would have given them future immunity from all civil suits. Don't know if that will remove a soft landing for them or not. I'd vote for taking away Dr Richard's smoke alarms (an eccentric theme explored in the miniseries). |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2023 8:41 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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"Now is it true you been injecting yourself with semen from baby pigs?"
Riggan denies it, of course.* Yes, I'm watching Birdman again.
*I imagine he waits till the pigs are adolescent. And uses young boars. Maybe. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2023 8:33 pm |
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Rewatched Birdman which is full of great performances. (I'd forgotten Andrea Riseborough is Laura and how good Amy Ryan is in her small part.) It's also often hilarious, and not just in the famous scene in which Riggan (Michael Keaton) has to walk through Times Square in his underwear. Oddly, he doesn't incorporate this into the stage production. Keaton, Emma Stone and Edward Norton richly deserved their Oscar nominations (I'm still bewildered Keaton didn't win), but Naomi Watts and Amy Ryan could have received nominations as well. In short, a solid cast.
I don't think I'd go to a production of the play he's doing, which is based on a Raymond Carver short story, but since I've seen Short Cuts, I may well already have.
I note at no time does Birdman wind up in Alcatraz. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2023 8:54 pm |
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| It also has a good performance by Zach Galifianakis, which I would have sworn was impossible. Iñárritu is a really great director. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 7:58 pm |
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A Day in the Country is a short and rather slight film by Jean Renoir based on a story by Guy de Maupassant. A dairyman and his family, particularly his wife and his daughter and her fiance, are taking a day in the country and stop by a riverside restaurant where two young men take an interest in the two women and determine to get them on the river and seduce them. (The fiance is afraid of boats and the girl's father is a bit oblivious.)
This film was left incomplete in 1936 due to weather problems (there's a rainstorm coming on all afternoon) which may explain why it's only 40 minutes long. It was edited into an actual film by Renoir's producer and released in 1946. Particularly good is Sylvia Bataille, charming, beautiful and somewhat innocent, and you wonder why she's engaged to Antoine, who seems feckless at best.
Beautiful to look at, with some of the men made up to look comic, but there are scenes that I really wish were in color. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2023 11:28 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Watched The House of Small Cubes which inexplicably won the Oscar for Best Animated Short and was trying to understand why, but it did get to me as one of the saddest films I've ever seen. It's about an old man who is building cubes to shelter him from the memories of his past, and once the memories flood him out, he builds another cube to further shelter himself. But one day he drops his pipe, and has to retrieve it, which means he has to dive and face memories of his lost love and their children.
Okay, so maybe it's not inexplicable that it won the Oscar, but I can't help but think that it would have been a greater and more depressing film in the hands of a more competent animator. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2023 10:27 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Get Out, Jordan Peele's sci-fi horror allegorical surreal racial farce
Saw it again with a visiting relative and it held up well for a second viewing even though I knew the creepy developments that were coming. As kind of a meta observation on casting, I really like Josh on the West Wing being the seemingly benign father of the girlfriend who morphs into a mad scientist. And Daniel Kaluuya is great, drawing us into his POV and delivering a stellar slow burn as the eugenic madness unfolds. Lakeith Stanfield and Betty Gabriel genuinely evoked horror in me, something that straight up horror movies rarely do.
Given the approach of Halloween, I feel a re-view of Us and and Nope is also on the weeks schedule. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2023 2:49 pm |
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99 Homes is an engrossing and heartfelt drama about the greed and predatory behavior that is rewarded in the American housing market. Set in Florida, during the great recession of the late 00s. With excellent performances from Andrew Garfield, Laura Dern and Michael Shannon that take us far deeper into the human suffering and business-as-usual callousness than the headlines do. In theaters in 2015, but I think few saw the film in its limited release, so it may reach a larger audience now as it streams on Netflix. As evictions rise in 2023, its theme seems as timely as ever.
ETA - using Search I see Weeds, Befade, and Gromit all saw the film and weighed in on it, from October 2015 thru April 2016. Whiskeypriest, for reasons unclear, declined to watch, but perhaps spending the intervening eight years in a state with front row seats on the housing crisis has softened his position. BTW, he mentioned to me that he stopped posting here because he had replaced his cellphone and lost the login. I wonder how many members we lose that way, given that we lack automatic registration. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2023 9:02 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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| Never seen that. Get Out, though, is very interesting and disturbing, especially as the villains think they're somehow liberal. (They're willing to be black!) I'm absolutely amazed that some critics have a problem with how the female lead chooses her victims. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 11:08 am |
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| I didn't think there was a David Lynch film that was more a waste of time than Lost Highway, but no, there is his 2020 film, What Did Jack Do? - the saving grace is that it only wastes 17 minutes. In that mercifully short span, Lynch is a hard-boiled detective interrogating a monkey in a train station, everything shot in gritty Black and White. The monkeys digital mouth spouts film noir cliches and incoherent rambles, in response to the detective's questions, many also either noir cliches or engimatic references to a backstory that remains opaque to us. Possibly a chicken was involved, as an object of the monkey's affections. At one point, the detective asks a question about the chicken, a question which is the premise of a famous category of jokes you likely explored in elementary school. In a different film, this might have been funny. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 10:08 pm |
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bartist wrote: I didn't think there was a David Lynch film that was more a waste of time than Lost Highway, but no, there is his 2020 film, What Did Jack Do? - the saving grace is that it only wastes 17 minutes. In that mercifully short span, Lynch is a hard-boiled detective interrogating a monkey in a train station, everything shot in gritty Black and White. The monkeys digital mouth spouts film noir cliches and incoherent rambles, in response to the detective's questions, many also either noir cliches or engimatic references to a backstory that remains opaque to us. Possibly a chicken was involved, as an object of the monkey's affections. At one point, the detective asks a question about the chicken, a question which is the premise of a famous category of jokes you likely explored in elementary school. In a different film, this might have been funny.
Sounds like he was being cute, but not for a mass audience. I haven't seen much Lynch but the only one I really liked was Mulholland Dr. (I haven't seen the Elephant Man since I grew up with the story. I didn't want to see it in film.) |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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