Movies

Happy Feet

January 2nd, 2008

Categories: Movies

Viewed: DVD

We rented this to watch as a family. I expected a light-hearted, silly movie, but it was a bit more than that, and it surprised me. Let me sum up the moral of the story: humans are bad, and religion is ignorance.

The music, singing, and dancing in this movie are all fun and entertaining. It does, at times, make you want to get up and dance. The songs in the movie are mostly all classic dance tunes from the 1960s-1980s, sung with new voices. It’s all good.

The main character, Mumbles, is an emperor penguin among other emperor penguins, but he can’t sing — doesn’t have a “heart song.” This is a sad and terrible thing among the emperor penguins. But Mumbles has the natural urge and ability to dance — something unheard of among the emperor penguins. This leads him to be ostracized and eventually banished from his species.

During his adventures, he becomes friends with a group of silly, carefree Adelie penguins, called the “Amigos.” Yes, the Adelie penguins are of some Spanish/Mexican-accent ethnicity. That’s a weird concept to wrap my brain around — penguins with accents — but it makes for humorous dialogue.

The seals and orcas, animals that eat penguins, are portrayed as vicious monsters. There are some intense scenes where Mumbles and friends are chased through the water and ice tunnels, and this came unexpected for me, too. I didn’t expect any real tense action in a movie about singing and dancing penguins. But, none of the penguins actually get eaten (swallowed).

After half-way through the movie, we start seeing how humans are overfishing the emperor penguin’s realm. Humans are the overall cause of great strife among the penguins. I’m really tired of movies about animals that show humans as only problems for the animals. It’s old propaganda. At least the human-induced problem in the movie isn’t global warming.

And for the religion bashing, the old patriarchs of the emperor penguins are shown as head clergy that strongly stamp out any new ideas or theories. At one point in the movie, they even try to get Mumbles to repent (they actually use the word “repent”) his dancing and his theories on there being aliens (humans) beyond the penguin’s realm.

Now, I’m not one to be bothered too much by human bashing or religion bashing in movies, though I do notice it when I see it. But in a kids movie, being sold as a happy, fun, light-hearted show, throwing in such propaganda is annoying at best, just plain wrong at worst. It’s especially bad when the negativity is completely unnecessary. There was no need to introduce humans into this movie at all, as good or bad entities, and there was no need to have a religious element in this movie at all, as a good or bad philosophy. The negative, background morals in this movie (humans are bad, religion is ignorance) were so unnecessary as to feel heavy handed.

The singing, dancing, and camaraderie in this movie are fun and entertaining. The main moral of the movie, stay true to your inner drive (dancing versus singing, in this case) is good, old-fashioned advice. But the other stuff, the propaganda, ruins the movie as a light-hearted, kid’s flick. There were complaints about The Golden Compass being anti-religion, but Happy Feet has more direct, obvious religion bashing.

There’s some penguin dancing throughout the credit roll, but there’s nothing after the credits finish.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

The Golden Compass

December 19th, 2007

Categories: Movies

Viewed: Theater

The trailer for The Golden Compass looked interesting, and I read one review that gave it a good rating. I probably should have read more reviews. It wasn’t a bad movie; it just was “meh.”

I had read and heard about groups boycotting and denouncing the movie as anti-religion (anti-Catholicism, specifically). Groups were saying that the movie director was trying to brainwash children against religion. For some reason, I found this intriguing — bad movies usually won’t get people up in arms for or against it, for any reason. It seems that most every fantasy movie gets this accusation, despite most (all?) of them having no comment at all on religion.

After hearing about the complaints, I learned that the original book was, per the author’s own admission, vehemently anti-religion. Hmm. So maybe the groups were right. The author is on record having said some pretty strong things against religion, and he apparently used his books to “spread the word,” so to speak.

I haven’t read the book, but I have now seen the movie. I saw nothing at all in the movie that could be considered anti-religion. Maybe the book rants on against religion. Maybe the author is a rabid atheist. Whatever. The movie is pretty religion-neutral.

The settings are beautiful, the acting is good, and the writing is at least decent. But the pacing of the movie is just . . . off. Until near the end, the only scenes of the bad guys seemed thrown in, not really well placed. The concept of “dust” comes across too vague; is it a good thing or a bad thing?

The whole ice bears thing feels odd, and it comes and goes so fast that I wonder if they could have just skipped that whole part and just left the kingdom concept as backdrop. What happens in the kingdom could have been completely left out and the story would not have changed at all.

And finally, the single most puzzling thing to me was why they pronounced “daemon” as “demon.” The word “demon” has such strong negative connotations — evil beasts from Hell. But the daemons in the movie were the personification of each person’s soul, in animal form. Had they just pronounced the word more like it is spelled, “daymon,” it wouldn’t have been so jarring. As someone who daily works with words to convey understanding, it bothered me that they repeatedly used a word sound that brings to mind the exact opposite of what the meaning is supposed to be.

As often as Hollywood screenwriters completely change stories taken from books, why couldn’t they have changed this one name/word? Most people don’t know the classical definition of daemon, and so they’ll naturally apply a more recent definition to the word. And that could draw the outrage of some religious groups. And it has.

There’s nothing to see at the end of the credits.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Beowulf

November 20th, 2007

Categories: Movies

Viewed: Theater (not 3-D)

I knew beforehand that this movie was computer graphics over real actors, so the the concept didn’t surprise me. But after seeing the movie, I can’t figure the reasons for making it that way. Most of the CG characters look enough like the real actors that you can identify them, and the end credits tell there were stuntmen involved in the filming. If the whole movie was filmed live anyway, why change it all over to CG?

As for the CG quality, most of the close ups and small movements were fantastically realistic (again, why not just use the real?), but some of the wider scenes and the larger body movements were not so good. Some character movements looked wooden. As one of my friends commented, “There were parts that looked like we were watching Shrek.” The movement of clothes seems to be harder to CG than naked flesh movements. And the running horses nearly made me laugh.

The story itself was good. It does deviate some from the original poem, but it does so to tie everything into one overarching plot. I didn’t think the alteration was a bad idea. But the end battle did start to stretch out a bit much, especially when the standard Hollywood action device of threatening the hero’s loved ones went on and on and on.

The scenes with Beowulf naked got out-of-character comical after the first instance of people and objects conveniently blocking the view of his genitals. If showing the full nudity is a problem (and I wasn’t interested in seeing B’s bits), then let him keep on his underpants—he kept them on in a later scene where he was otherwise naked. And ironically, the scene with him in underpants had Grendel’s mother fully naked but for a thin, liquid, gold coating over her specifics.

Overall, it’s not a fantastic movie, or an instant classic, but it is decently entertaining for a matinee price. The computer graphics work is really good, but not perfect. Unfortunately, the imperfections in the CG kept bumping me out of the movie world. Done as regular, old, live action (except, of course, for the monsters), I think this movie would have been great.

There is no extra scene at the end of the credits.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Ninja Scroll

November 13th, 2007

Categories: Movies

Viewed: DVD

The people calling themselves and each other “ninjas” seem more like samurai than any kind of stealthy spies or assassins. The only thing particularly “ninja-esque” was the leaping from tree to tree. And there was no scroll at all in the movie. It was a good movie, but why do so many Japanese animation movies have names that seem so unrelated to the story or characters?

The story surprised me by being a political plot as much as anything. There’s plenty of fighting, supernatural powers and stunts, and all the normal badass attitude typical of anime. And there’s also two graphic rape scenes which I didn’t expect.

The animation is decent, but not great. The story gets a little complicated, but not too much so. The action and gore is often over-the-top, but that’s what one expects from an animated film, especially Japanese animation—the medium allows for it, so the story-tellers and artists use it, fully.

Fortunately the dialogue is dubbed so you don’t miss the action trying to read the banter. I know some people dislike dubbed anime, but I prefer it; it’s hard to read and watch at the same time, and I go to and get movies to watch, not to read.

Overall, Ninja Scroll is a good flick. If you’ve never seen anime, this is a good one to start with. It has all the typical and expected aspects of anime, so you’ll get a good feel for what the genre is like by watching this movie.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com