The Desolation of Peter Jackson

I have to say that I was slightly hopeful about this film, the second of three planned Hobbit films. The reviews were good on the whole, and it has a 74% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This obviously set my expectations way too high. It makes me sad that I have to give a thumbs down to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug because there are some very good bits, almost all of which are bits from the original book. Some day, I hope, there will be a re-edit of these movies, much as was done with Star Wars: Episode I. Just removing all scenes with Radagast the Brown would add a full bottle to my rating. He is the Jar Jar Binks of The Hobbit. I'm happy to say that Radagast's role has been much reduced in the second film. He is only on screen for about 5 minutes. But, where was I? Oh yes, Radagast is not the worst thing about this bloated film, which, at 2 hours and 41 minutes, is actually 8 minutes shorter than the first installment of The Hobbit. The Desolation of Smaug roughly follows the middle third of the book starting with entering Mirkwood and fighting the spiders to a final scene of Smaug flying off in the direction of Laketown.

The action, that is contained in the book, would fill maybe half an hour, so much new material has been added to the film that is nowhere to be found in the book. First, there is the addition of Legolas and the new female elf character, Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), and the associated "love" triangle involving them and Kili. Second, there is a subplot where Gandalf and Radagast go to Dol Guldur to confront the Necromancer. This will seem very familiar since it is almost identical in every way to Gandalf's visit to Saruman at Isengard. Third, there is a huge expansion of the action in Laketown, where the Master (Stephen Fry) is an evil ruler and the enemy of Bard (Luke Evans).

Fourth, Peter Jackson obviously feels that none of the action is exciting enough, so he adds Orcs to almost every scene including the Barrel escape and in Laketown. Finally, the last half hour of the movie is given over to a ridiculous running battle between Smaug and the dwarves, which like a series of Rube Goldberg devices. This ending is sad because it follows the the best part of the movie, by far, in which Bilbo sneaks down to behold the riches of Smaug. The scene where Smaug is first revealed from underneath a pile of treasure is very well done. It is a strange reunion of Benedict Cumberbatch, who does the voice of Smaug, and Martin Freeman, who is, of course, Bilbo. We will see them together again soon as Sherlock and Watson.

The addition of Legolas and Tauriel is welcome, much as was the expansion of Arwen's role in The Fellowship of the Ring. It just feels good to see Legolas sliding around shooting orcs again. And he is doing it through most of the movie. Evangeline Lilly's Tauriel mostly works well too, although the subplot of Legolas falling in love with her and Tauriel falling in love with Kili is laughable. Thranduil, King of the Wood-elves and father of Legolas appears much as he does in the book. Lee Pace plays the role as woodenly as Hugo Weaving plays Elrond, but with a great love of fetishes.

The dwarves are mostly good. Ken Stott is wonderful as Balin. And the movie begins with a nice flashback of Gandalf and Thorin meeting at the Prancing Pony just to set the scene. The size of the dwarves seems to vary a lot depending on whether any humans are around. It is unintentionally funny when Thorin is suddenly three feet tall. Smaug looks quite good and has a nice touch of menace, at least until he has his fight with the Keystone Cops at the end of the movie, which destroys the mood completely.


Bard is quite a good character, but the Laketown subplot combined with attacking orcs is a fiasco. And I almost walked out during the climactic battle between Smaug and the dwarves. Even Beorn was a bit of a disappointment. The most Peter-Jackson-esque scene is when the dwarves are trying to find the hidden door in the Lonely Mountain. They can't find it, so Thorin throws away the key and the dwarves quit and head home. Jackson loves to make the characters do things that hey would never do, as when Frodo sends Sam home, when Theoden wants to run away at Helm's Deep, and when Faramir becomes Boromir. The good parts of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and there are some, are lost in all the Jackson chaos. All in all, it was very disappointing.

Gravity

After seeing the trailer for Gravity, I was a bit dubious seeing Sandra Bullock and George Clooney spinning around in space suits. Then, one of my favorite astronauts, none other than Dr. Mike Massimino said, "Somebody did their homework. Everything is exactly like what it was on our mission." And Buzz Aldrin liked it too. Ok, I didn't need too much convincing to go see it. Gravity was a pleasant surprise. It is probably the most realistic portrayal of life in space since 2001: A Space Odyssey. There's even an homage to 2001, when Bullock has to get into the airlock before she runs out of air, except no there's no HAL 9000 trying to keep her out. 

Gravity tells the story of two astronauts, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, who are repairing Hubble Space Telescope when all hell breaks loose. Clooney is an old space hand who loves to tell stories like Robert Duvall in Deep Impact. Bullock is a space rookie and a bio-engineer. The Russians blow up a satellite which creates a huge expanding cloud of debris which places the astronauts and the Space Shuttle in imminent danger.

Not to give too much away, but soon Bullock and Clooney are alone in space with no spacecraft to get them home. They are tethered together and proceed to give the best ever demonstration of Newton's Laws of Motion. Both outside in their space suits and inside various spacecraft, there is an amazing attention to detail much like in Apollo 13, where they actually flip the right switches at the right times. Clooney even pulls the knife switch to detach the Hubble Space Telescope from the Space Shuttle.

Clooney has a new jetpack and they can move around a bit so he gets the bright idea to head towards the International Space Station to save themselves. This would be a bright idea except that the

Hubble Space Telescope is in an orbit at an altitude of about 350 miles and an inclination of 28.5 degrees, and the ISS is in an orbit at an altitude of about 250 miles and an inclination of 51.6 degrees. Why am I telling you this? Well, this means you can't get from the HST to the ISS with only a jetpack. This is the only big error in Gravity, and is done for plot reasons. There is one other violation of Newton's Laws, again done to advance the plot, but on the whole it's very realistic.

My main qualm about seeing Gravity was Sandra Bullock. Don't get me wrong, I have always liked her, but after seeing her in the trailer, I was a bit worried. But she won me over as the movie went on. She is an academic in space for the first time and thinks she is about to die. I think she portrays that pretty well, and despite being terrified, it turns out that her character is very competent. She has to deal with US, Russian, and Chinese spacecraft, and like a real astronaut she pulls out her manual and starts following the checklist. Another nice bit is that all the instructions on the Russian Soyuz are in Russian, and on the Chinese spaceship, they are all in Chinese. 

I wasn't worried about George Clooney. He is perfect for the role of the old astronaut near retirement, who has seen it all. Like him or hate him (I like him), he always makes good, interesting choices for his roles. The director of Gravity is Alfonso Cuarón, who has directed some movies I like a lot, Children of Men, Y Tu Mamá También, and the best of the Harry Potter films, The Prisoner of Azkaban. He does a great job of keeping this movie simple. Ok, there are lots of scenes of various spacecraft being destroyed (in absolute silence!), but Gravity only runs 90 minutes. There are only two actors and most of the action is between them and in their own heads. This is really an Indie movie in space with a few explosions. The numbers are coming in and Gravity is breaking box office records, as well as getting Oscar buzz already. It's a great movie to see on the big screen and in 3D. 

Geoff's Oscar Nominations

Read my previous post about my picks for best movies of the year. My list does not include four of the Oscar Best Picture nominations, Argo, Amour, Les Miz, and Django Unchained. These are all good movies and Argo is likely to win for Best Picture. But, they didn't quite make my Top Ten.

In this post, I list what would be the Oscar nominations for the acting categories if it were up to me. My pick for the Oscar is number one in the list for each category. In two of the categories, there is no real competition for number One. For Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis blew away the opposition with his portrayal of Lincoln. It was nothing short of amazing. But the other four actors in the category were all fabulous too. In any other year, they could have won the Oscar. Denzel Washington is the only one in a movie that is not in my Top Ten. Flight is very good and Washington, as usual, is excellent as an airline pilot who saves his passengers in a plane crash that leads to the revelation of his many personal problems.

The second category that is already sewn up is Best Supporting Actress. Anne Hathaway didn't have much screen time in Les Miz before she died, but she made the most of it, particularly when she took advantage of the extreme closeups and live singing to deliver a memorable version of "I Dreamed a Dream." I have included three actresses who are not on the Oscar list. Emily Blunt had two nice movies last year, the sweet, quirky, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, and the classic Indie movie, Your Sister's Sister. Olivia Thirlby had a breakout role in another little seen film, Being Flynn, which starred Robert De Niro and Paul Dano. And Judi Dench is, well, Judi Dench.

The Best Actress category is wide open. In the actual Oscar nominations, I think four of the five actresses have a chance to win, Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), Emmanuelle Riva (Amour), Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild), and Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook). This year, they have the youngest (Wallis) and oldest (Riva) Oscar nominees in history. They both, deservedly, have a good chance of winning. The only one I think who is out of the running is Naomi Watts, who gave her usual great performance in The Impossible. In another year, she might have won too. I have included two actresses not on the Oscar list, Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone), and Helen Mirren (Hitchcock). These performances are both fantastic but almost no one has seen these movies. Put them on your Netflix list. I pick Jessica Chastain as my winner for her portrayal of the very intense, obsessed Maya in Zero Dark Thirty.

The last category, Best Supporting Actor, is also wide open. All five of the Oscar nominees are former winners. I have only included two of them on my list. I nominated John Goodman instead of Alan Arkin for Argo, just because he also had two other memorable roles last year, in Flight as Denzel Washington's friend and drug source, and in Trouble with the Curve as an old baseball man. But I do love Alan Arkin too. It was nice to see Christopher Walken do his thing in A Late Quartet, where any of the other three musicians, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, and Mark Ivanir, could have been nominated as well. Tom Hardy had a breakout year in Dark Knight Rising (although we never saw his face), and in Lawless with Jessica Chastain. But, I pick Christolph Waltz for Django Unchained. He was completely unknown to me before he stole every scene in Inglourious Basterds and won Best Supporting Actor in 2010. He is at it again in Django Unchained, where he steals every scene he is in. Waltz is amazing.

Best Picture:

1. Zero Dark Thirty

2. Silver Linings Playbook

3. Lincoln

4. The Avengers

5. Life of Pi

Director:

1. Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty)

2. David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook)

3. Steven Spielberg (Lincoln)

4. Joss Whedon (The Avengers)

5. Ang Lee (Life of Pi)

Actor:

1. Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)

2. Denzel Washington (Flight, Safe House)

3. Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)

4. John Hawkes (The Sessions)

5. Anthony Hopkins (Hitchcock)

Honorable Mentions: Ewan McGregor (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Impossible), Robert Downey Jr. (The Avengers), Tom Hanks (Cloud Atlas), Bill Murray (Hyde Park on the Hudson), Jean-Louis Trintignant (Amour)

Actress:
1. Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty, Lawless)

2. Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook, The Hunger Games)

3. Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone)

4. Helen Mirren (Hitchcock)

5. Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild)

Honorable Mentions: Naomi Watts (The Impossible), Emma Watson (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), Greta Gerwig (To Rome with  Love, Damsels in Distress, Lola Versus), Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)

Supporting Actor:

1. Christolph Waltz (Django Unchained)

2. John Goodman (Argo, Flight, Trouble With the Curve)

3. Robert De Niro (Silver Linings Playbook)

4. Christopher Walken (A Late Quartet)

5. Tom Hardy (Lawless, The Dark Knight Rises)

Honorable Mentions: Matthew McConaughey (Killer Joe, Magic Mike, Bernie, The Paperboy), Edward Norton (Moonrise Kingdom), Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (A Late Quartet, The Master), Mark Duplass (Your Sister's Sister, Safety Not Guaranteed), Alan Arkin (Argo)

Supporting Actress:

1. Anne Hathaway (Les Miz, The Dark Knight Rises)

2. Emily Blunt (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Your Sister's Sister)

3. Helen Hunt (The Sessions)

4. Judi Dench (Skyfall, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)

5. Olivia Thirlby (Being Flynn)

Honorable Mentions: Scarlet Johansson (The Avengers, Hitchcock), Amy Adams (The Master, The Trouble with the Curve), Frances McDormand (Moonrise Kingdom, Promised Land), Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook)

Geoff's Top Ten Movies of 2012

1. Zero Dark Thirty

Forget all the uproar about torture. Zero Dark Thirty is a great film, directed by Kathryn Bigelow (inexplicably not nominated for an Oscar), and written by Mark Boal. They are the same team that produced The Hurt Locker, which won Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay three years ago. This film stars the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain as the relentless CIA operative, who figured out where Osama Bin Laden was hiding. This is an exciting, taut, suspenseful thriller, all the more so for being a true story, which, rather than supporting torture, shows it for what it is. Chastain has a great role to play, and does an amazing job with it. The supporting cast is also wonderful, including James Gandolfini, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong and Jennifer Ehle. 

2. Silver Linings Playbook

Silver Linings Playbook may be the most enjoyable movie of the year. The screenplay is amazing, and the cast is wonderful. Bradley Cooper, playing a guy suffering from bipolar disorder who has just been released from the hospital, and Jennifer Lawrence, who plays a young woman who recently lost her husband, make an improbable couple. Add to that, Robert De Niro, playing Cooper's father, who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, and you have a wacky plot that works perfectly. Silver Linings Playbook is definitely the feel-good movie of the year.

3. Lincoln

Daniel Day Lewis gives one of the great performances of all time as Abraham Lincoln, and he will definitely take home the Oscar for Best Actor. This movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, is quite un-Spielbergian. Rather than making an epic movie about Lincoln and the Civil War, Spielberg zooms in on the last four months of Lincoln's life as he tries to pass the 13th Amendment. It shows both what a great President Lincoln was, and how politics has not changed at all in the last 150 years. 

4. The Avengers

This movie was an eye opener. The Avengers is a superhero epic in 3D, with lots of CGI effects, but it is a wonderful movie even without all of that. The director, Joss Whedon, is beloved in geek-dom as the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. In The Avengers, he showed what real characters and a good script can do even for a comic book. The always lovable Robert Downey Jr leads a great cast, including Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlet Johansson, Jeremy Renner, and Mark Ruffalo. Only Whedon could end Superhero epic with that final scene with the Chicken Schwarma. 

5. Life of Pi

Ang Lee is a great director, responsible for Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, etc, etc. And Life of Pi is a great book by Yann Martel. But this movie is just amazing to watch. It may be the best use of CGI and green-screen ever. It is unbelievable that the Tiger is 100% CGI. This may be one of the few movies to actually benefit from being in 3D. If you didn't see it on the big screen, then I'm sorry. You really missed something. 

6. Hitchcock

Some great movies seem to go by without anyone noticing. Hitchcock was fantastic. I couldn't believe how good it was as I was watching it. But, Hitchcock only grossed $6 million at the box office. This film, about the making of Psycho, is structured like a Hitchcock film, itself, and keeps you in suspense right to the end. Anthony Hopkins, completely unrecognizable in his makeup, and Helen Mirren are fabulous. Mirren, at least, got nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA, but Hitchcock is only nominated for Best Makeup at the Oscars. This is a movie you have to see when it comes on Netflix. 

7. Moonrise Kingdom

I love Wes Anderson, the director of Moonrise Kingdom, because he is different. He doesn't always produce a great film, but like the Coen Brothers and Woody Allen, you just want to give him some money, and then stand back and see what happens. I have loved him ever since he made Rushmore, and saved Bill Murray's, career. Moonrise Kingdom is funny and quirky, as only Wes Anderson can be. The two kids in love who run away together, are so adorable. And the supporting cast speaks for itself, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, and Tilda Swinton. This is also one of the feel-good movies of the year.

8. The Sessions

In The Sessions, which is based on a true story, a man (John Hawkes) who had polio as a child, must live most of the time in an Iron Lung. He decides that he doesn't want to die a virgin, so he hires a sex therapist (Helen Hunt) to help. This is an unbelievable story, especially since it is true, about how someone, who should just lie down and die, goes to college, becomes a writer, and has a sort of normal life. John Hawkes is one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood and he is great here. And it's wonderful to see Helen Hunt in a good role. You have to love a movie that casts William H. Macy as a Catholic priest, who advises Hawkes' character on his sex life. 

9. Beasts of the Southern Wild

This was the movie that came out of nowhere and blew everyone away. Beasts of the Southern Wild, set in the bayou of Louisiana, has a cast of non-actors, including the then 5 year old, Quvenzhane Wallis, who is a force of nature. The performances, that the director, Benh Zeitlin, got out his non-actors, like Dwight Henry, who plays Wink, and has now gone back to his day job running a bakery, are incredible. And you have to live down here to know how true Beasts of the Southern Wild really is. 

10. Rust and Bone

This is the other movie in French with subtitles this year. Amour is depressing and traumatic, but it has nothing on Rust and Bone. Let's just say that the scene, where the whole audience gives out a collective gasp, is not the one early in the film when Marion Cotillard loses her legs. Cotillard is always great, but she is fantastic here. This is also one of two movies this year, along with The Sessions, which deliver the uplifting message, that serious disabilities do not preclude sex. 

Honorable Mentions: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Cloud Atlas, Lawless, Argo, A Late Quartet, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Django Unchained, Skyfall, Amour

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Well, it took JRR Tolkien to stir me from my long absence from reviewing movies. In case you were wondering, I am still seeing movies and should reach my usual goal of 50 new movies this year. My 2012 Top Ten will be published as soon as I see the important movies opening at Christmas.

Anyway, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first of three movies based on JRR Tolkien's first book that he wrote for his young children and published in 1937. The book, The Hobbit, is only 310 pages long, compared to the 1137 pages (including appendices) of the three books of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). That comes to only about 100 pages per movie. And this first movie of the trilogy is not short, with a running time of almost 3 hours. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey only covers the recruitment of Bilbo (Martin Freeman) by Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and the dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), their capture by the Trolls, their capture by the Orcs, the finding and stealing of the ring from Gollum (Andy Serkis), and their rescue by the eagles. Also included is the back story of how the Lonely Mountain was lost to Smaug (voice by Benedict Cumberbatch). This is reasonable but much material has also been added from Appendix E of LOTR which has a nice timeline of events leading up to the action 60 years after The Hobbit, and also from the fevered mind of the director, Peter Jackson.

In particular, we hear that Mirkwood has been invaded by the evil Necromancer (also Benedict Cumberbatch) a.k.a. Sauron, and the White Council, consisting of those heavyweights, Gandalf, Elrond (Hugo Weaving), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), and Saruman (Christopher Lee) has been formed in response. There is a visit to Rivendell in the book anyway, and so a scene with the White Council is easily added. But the most egregious addition is an interminable sequence involving Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy), until now just an obscure answer in LOTR Pub Quizzes. He is one of the five wizards in Middle Earth along with Saruman and Gandalf. Only briefly mentioned in the books as a friend to animals, Radagast is portrayed in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as a drug crazed cross between Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life and the Enchanter (Some people call me Tim) in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Radagast drives a sled drawn by a team of rabbits which Peter Jackson loves so much that it is shown over and over again. This entire sequence could and should have been left on the cutting-room floor, if there still was such a thing. It is awful and embarrassing.

One more small thing that bothered me is that the scene where Bilbo finds the ring has been changed so that he doesn't just reach out in the dark and find the ring. There is also a scene at the end of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey when the party is trapped by the orcs, and Bilbo saves Thorin from a Warg. This addition is unlikely and unnecessary since Bilbo and/or Gandalf already have to save the dwarves' bacon during every crisis in the book. On the whole though, this first Hobbit movie hews fairly closely to the plot of the book, except that, as usual, Peter Jackson, can't leave the original characters alone. The worst scene, which harkens back to things that he did in LOTR, is where Bilbo can't take the insults of the dwarves anymore and decides to go home. This is very similar to the LOTR movies when Aragon doesn't want to go on the quest, Theoden wants to run away at Helm's Deep, Faramir becomes Boromir, Frodo wants to send Sam home, etc. etc.

Martin Freeman, most recently seen as Dr. Watson in the new Sherlock series on PBS, is great as Bilbo. I'm not sure that any other actor could be more perfectly suited to the role. And I quite liked the dwarves. The opening scene where they arrive at Bilbo's hole is well done although it goes on for much too long. Having seen the trailers, I was a bit worried that Peter Jackson was going to make the dwarves into the 13 Stooges, but he mostly stays away from this. The one exception is when they are captured by the Orcs and then escape with Gandalf's help. The fight and chase sequence is very reminiscent of Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Orc King strangely looks and sounds like Boss Nass from Star Wars Episode I. Otherwise, it is great to see Ian McKellen reprise his role as Gandalf and Gollum is still the best CGI character ever. He has only one extended scene with Bilbo, mostly right out of the book, where they trade riddles which is a highlight of the movie.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey looks to be a huge success at the box office making $84 million on the first weekend and it is getting very good word of mouth. But it's not that great. It would have been a much better movie and would have had much better pacing if about a third of it were cut. But when the director is Peter Jackson, there's no one to tell him this. It's definitely fun to see all these characters come to life, Radagast excepted. But it's a bit disappointing, of course, that after three hours, we find that Bilbo and the dwarves haven't met Beorn or been captured by the elves, let alone reached the Lonely Mountain. For that, we have to wait. The two sequels, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: There and Back Again are scheduled to open December 13, 2013 and July 18, 2014, respectively.

The Lorax 3D

In Jared Diamond's book, Collapse, he recounts the defining moment of civilization on Easter Island, which depended on wooden canoes to communicate with the outside world. He wonders what they were thinking when they cut down the last tree. The Dr. Suess book, The Lorax, gives an allegorical spin on this story. The book was written in 1971, but it has never been more relevant than it is today. There would seem to be nothing one could object to in this little story about the effects on the environment of industrial civilization run amok. But, of course, this story is now seen as part of the left-wing conspiracy to to brainwash America's children. But, none of this matters much since The Lorax is a pretty crappy movie.

First, I had to re-read The Lorax to try and remember what was actually in the book, and what was created whole cloth for the movie. Most of the book is actually in the movie, but it is lost in the middle between large swaths of new characters and subplots. Few of the actual lines from the book survive. The book begins with a kid coming to a mysterious man called the Once-ler to find out what happened to the trees and why the world is so dirty and smoggy. He gets the whole story of how the Once-ler invented the Thneed, a useless product knitted from the beautiful Truffula trees. When the first tree is cut down, the Lorax appears to speak for the trees and the wildlife that depends on them. But the Thneed business takes off and soon huge factories are producing them. More and more trees are cut down to meet the demand until the last tree falls and the business goes bankrupt. At the end of the story, the Once-ler throws the last Truffula seed to the kid, and asks him to plant it, That is the end of the book. 

This would not be enough for a Major Motion Picture, so like The Grinch and other children's books that have been made into movies, a new and larger story has been grafted on onto the original. A great deal of action and backstory has been inserted before the first line of the book. The kid (voice of Zac Efrons), who listens to the Once-ler's (Ed Helms) story of woe, now lives in Thneedville, where no one is allowed to leave the city, everything is made from plastic, and the smog is so bad that a nasty industrialist (Rob Riggle) has made millions selling "clean air." Also, added is a love interest, Audrey (Taylor Swift), for the boy, and his whole family including his feisty grandmother (Betty White). Audrey dreams of seeing real trees, and the boy vows to find one to win her heart. He is told to find the Once-ler, but to do so, he has to break out of the city ahead of the villains. He arrives at the Once-ler's house, and we get an expanded version of the action in the book. But the movie doesn't end when the Once-ler throws the seed to the boy. Oh no. We get a long chase sequence as the bad guys try to capture the boy and the seed before it can be planted. But (spoiler alert), there is a happy ending and redemption. The trees return, the boy gets a kiss from Audrey, and the Lorax (Danny DeVito) returns to forgive the Once-ler. 

Making major changes to a book when it is made into a movie is nothing new. And it was all done with the approval of Theodore Geisel's widow, Audrey who was a producer on the movie, and even lent her name to the romantic interest. But there are two problems with this movie version of The Lorax. First, they took out the good bits, i.e., the Dr. Suess lines with rhymes, and second, the new stuff they added in, especially the songs, is pretty bad. Apparently, they saw Despicable Me while they were writing the script, and decided they needed a villain, even though there already is a villain, i.e., the Once-ler. Many reviewers agree with me that The Lorax stinks, but the audiences, mostly young kids, who saw The Lorax seemed to like it. It pulled in an amazing $70 million at the box office over the weekend. Oh well. As a matter of fact, there is a wonderful animated film that tells a story of love amid the environmental destruction of the Earth and of redemption through the finding and saving a living plant. This film is called WALL-E. Please just rent that beautiful movie, and give The Lorax a pass.

Best Picture Nominees

Apparently, 265 movies were released in 2011 that were eligible for Oscar nominations. To see all of these movies, I would have had to give up my day job. But I am a dedicated moviegoer. I've seen about 75 movies in the last year including 15 movies since the beginning of December. My quest ended a couple of weeks ago when I slipped into my seat at the Rave at the Mall of Louisiana to see "War Horse." I have now seen all of the films nominated for Best Picture. This number used to be five but was increased to ten last year to broaden the appeal of the Oscars. But this year the number of films nominated is 9 for reasons that are not easily explained. Here they are:

* The Artist
* The Descendants
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Help
* Hugo
* Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
* The Tree of Life

However, the number of films nominated for Best Director is still 5 (with asterisks above) so obviously those have the inside track. I will blog about my Top Ten Movies of the Year soon but for now let me say that on the whole, these nine movies are pretty good. Three will definitely be on my list of Best Movies of the Year:

The first is "The Descendants." This film, written and directed by Alexander Payne, and starring George Clooney, tells the story of a Hawaiian family which owns the largest tract of undeveloped land in the islands. Clooney, a workaholic who has become emotionally detached from his family, is brought suddenly back to his senses when his wife has a serious boating accident. He suddenly realizes that he has two daughters to take care of, who are strangers to him. Adding to the stress is the impending sale of the family land by Clooney and his cousins (including Beau Bridges) to a developer. This is Payne's first outing as Writer/Director since "Sideways" which appeared seven years ago. I loved "Sideways" and "The Descendants" is great too. Both films are about protagonists, Paul Giamatti in the earlier film and George Clooney here, trying awkwardly to re-establish their interpersonal relationships. I have a lot of respect for how Clooney tries not to just make the same movie over and over again. He is very good in "The Descendants"as are Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller who play his daughters. It is also great to see Beau Bridges (Jeff's older brother) who plays one of Clooney's cousins bent on selling the land.

The second is "Midnight in Paris," directed by Woody Allen and starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, and many others. Even though I really loved this movie, I was surprised to see it in the Oscar list, first because it came out early in the year, and second because it is a Woody Allen movie. Allen hasn't been nominated for Best Director since "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994), and hasn't had a film nominated for Best Picture since "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986). Most people gave up on him, but since he left New York City and started making films in Europe, he has been reborn with movies such as "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." "Midnight in Paris" tells the story of a writer (Wilson) with a bad case of writer's block who, while on a trip to Paris, is magically whisked back in time each night at midnight ending up in the 1930's. There he meets the glitterati of art, music, and literature including Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Josephine Baker (Sonia Rolland), Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Alison Pill and Tom Hiddleston), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Salvador Dalí (Adrien Brody), and Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo). This is a wonderful, fun movie. The characterizations of 1930's Paris are great, especially Hemingway, and Owen Wilson provides his gee whiz take on it all. Marion Cotillard is good as usual as Picasso's mistress who falls for Wilson.

Last but not least is "Moneyball." This film was directed by Bennett Miller (Capote) and benefits greatly by a screenplay written by those old pros, Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. It tells the story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the General Manager of the Oakland A's, who with the help of a young geek (Jonah Hill), turns baseball on its head by using obscure statistics to find great baseball players. Zaillian and Sorkin are nominated for their script, and Pitt has a Best Actor nomination, but the movie is stolen by Jonah Hill, known for appearing in teen comedies such as "Superbad," who delivers the performance of his life. He is nominated for Best Supporting Actor. I'm a big baseball fan, but I don't think you need to be a baseball fan to like this movie.


Of the other nominated films, "The Artist" has the most buzz and is the favorite to win Best Picture. As you must know by now, it is a "mostly" silent movie about the silent movies. It is a very interesting film and it's definitely different. The surprises in the Best Picture category were "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," and "The Tree of Life." The latter film, like "Midnight in Paris," was released early in 2011 when most films are forgotten. It is a beautiful and unusual film, linking the evolution of the universe to the lives of characters in the film. Brad Pitt gives a very good performance along with this year's "it girl," Jessica Chastain. She is teh hardest working actor in Hollywood, also starring in "The Help," "The Debt," "Take Shelter," and "Coriolanus" in 2011. She is great. "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" may suffer from its subject matter. It is about a man (Tom Hanks) killed in 9/11, and how his wife (Sandra Bullock) and son (Thomas Horn) try to deal with their loss. Max von Sydow is nominated for his amazing performance as the boy's grandfather. "The Help" which tells the upstairs downstairs story of Alabama in the 1960's is pretty good too. It has great performances from Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Jessica Chastain (all nominated). My least favorite film of the nine nominated, is "Hugo." I have to say I am going against the flow here since most people who saw it, loved it. It is directed by Martin Scorsese, and tells a fantasy of a young boy (Asa Butterfield) who lives in the Paris train station and keeps all the clocks wound. He meets a young girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) who tries to help him. Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen also star.

Tonight is the big night. Needless to say, I will be watching.