American activists Paul Sullivan (Brad Dourif) and his fiancee Ingrid Jessner (Frances McDormand) move to Belfast to examine allegations of murderous charitable rights abuses by British security forces. When Paul is killed under covert circumstances, the formal reports list him as an I.R.A. accomplice. But Ingrid and British policeman Paul Kerrigan (Brian Cox) question the findings and begin to uncover a shocking high-straight conspiracy. Second, with their safety in jeopardy, they must decide whether to risk the whole to leak out take delight in the truth.

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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The 40-year-old New Zealander Andrew Dominik (”Chopper”) directs
this grim, overlong and psychological Western that’s stylized like a Ken
Burns documentary, with an ongoing narrator (Hugh Ross). It’s based on
the acclaimed 1983 historical novel by Ron Hansen. The filmmaker attempts
to reinvent Jesse James, as he unleashes unsentimental nostalgia to debunk
this popular myth of the American West with his specious take on the Jesse
James assassination by the Judas figure of Bob Ford. Sam Fuller shot the
same tale more judiciously as a Western noir in his low-budget 1949 I Shot
Jesse James, having Jesse killed in the first reel by the insolent nobody
Bob Ford and then focusing on Ford’s painful celebrity without boring the
viewer to death with questionable takes on the story. 

It opens in 1881, in a woodland clearing somewhere in the Ozarks
(shot in midwestern Canada), and paints a portrait of backwoodsman folksy
rancher Jesse James (Brad Pitt) as the 34-year-old legendary bandit, murderer
and former Confederate guerrilla who is living a drab life under an assumed
name with his wife Zee (Mary-Louise Parker) and kids when tracked down
by the 19-year-old celebrity-stalker and fanboy misfit Bob Ford (Casey
Affleck). Jesse will soon afterwards pull his last hold-up before he will
be assassinated in his cottage while hanging a picture seven months later
on Palm Sunday, in 1882, by the cowardly Bob Ford trying to assert his
manhood with the gun Jesse gave him as a present. The train robbery was
pulled off with Jesse’s sneering older brother Frank (Sam Shepard) and
a band of hired goons and low-life morons. One of the gang of misfits is
Charley Ford (Sam Rockwell), Robert’s older easy-going brother.

The cigar smoking nutty and vain Jesse sits on his porch in his rocking
chair cutting off the heads of snakes while regaled by hearing his past
criminal exploits told by the hero-worshipping Bob Ford and neither agrees
with nor denies the stories. Through the years sympathetic newsmen and
dime novels by pulp writers have made the James brothers into heroic anti-Reconstructionists
and glorious populist Robin Hood figures while overlooking their brutality
and criminality, and this film aims to straighten things out a bit as it
cannibalizes a celebrity culture.

Aside from the curious feel of the film, it unearths no secrets or
better understanding of its shady characters or the American public’s hunger
for celebrity or does it have a hold on what’s the truth. The overconceptualized
film is pretty to look at but as empty as the beautiful wide-open spaces
it so expressively depicts (which is not meant to be necessarily a pejorative
comment, but just reflecting on the film’s unique way of filming). But
it’s prevented from greatness or reaching a greater audience because it
turns into a slow slog through iconic events that are far too familiar
and have been done too many times before to feel special here. There was
even one film, the 1921 “Jesse James Under the Black Flag,” that had Jesse’s
son portray his father and tell the saga as a true story. 

What makes this film stick in your craw as something uncommercial,
artistic and special, is the compelling wounded mood it sets, its elegant
grandeur and the engaging twisted performance by Casey Affleck (his whiny
character takes over the film’s third act after Jesse is shot and he becomes
the eyes through which we view the myth until he also is killed by a nobody
overwhelmed by celebrity; it comes after Ford performed the infamous act
on stage for some 800 performances and is now a saloon owner). These strengths
of showing these craven characters as just small men and not heroes outweighs
the film’s heaviness and funereal tone and inability to nail down who was
the real Jesse James. 

Nickelodeon and Paramount have released Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme!, another four-episode collection (comprised of eight, 11-minute shorts) of the popular young children’s series on Nick, Jr.. If you have very small children, you know how popular the Wonder Pets! show is, with its eye-popping, colorful animation and its catchy (perhaps too catchy) songs. If your youngster just can’t wait every day for the show to pop up on TV, then this disc might hold them over until their next fix. I’ve written before about the Wonder Pets!, so I’ve included a little bit of that review here at the top (discussing the structure and intent of the show) before I look at the specifics of this fun disc, Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme!

Understanding that little children love repetition and a familiar, recognizable pattern to their storytelling, each episode of Wonder Pets! follows a fairly dependable line. As the camera tracks in to a little, red, one-room school house set amid bucolic surroundings, we hear children leaving for the day, saying goodbye to their class pets: Linny the Guinea Pig, Ming-Ming the Duckling, and Tuck the Turtle. As soon as the children are gone, the “phone” (a tin can holding pencils, with a secret string at the bottom) rings, alerting the Wonder Pets to their next rescue mission. The phone also acts as a sort of telescope, so they can see their next assignment, which almost always involves a baby animal, somewhere in the world, in some sort of danger and in need of rescuing. Jumping into a box of doll clothes, the Wonder Pets emerge with their makeshift superhero costumes on, and proceed to assemble the “Fly-Boat” (usually a Frisbee with some Legos and wheels) which will take them to their destination. Once at the rescue site, the Wonder Pets employ various methods of problem solving until they work out a successful plan - which always depends on teamwork for success. Flying back to their safe, cozy school house home, they return to their cages, ready for another adventure.

Employing a photo-collage type of animation (real pictures of various animals are manipulated and animated, along with traditional photo and animated backgrounds, similar to other cartoons such as Charlie & Lola or Little Einsteins), Wonder Pets! has a realistic pop to its visuals that children respond to quite enthusiastically. While I must admit at times I find the animation of the real-life photos of the pets sometimes a little creepy, children love the contrast between the realistic photos, their blocky, chunky movements, and the more traditionally drawn animation backgrounds.

The show’s stories vary little from episode to episode (which again, little kids crave), but I would imagine children especially love the idea of docile, non-talking classroom pets suddenly becoming walking, flying, talking superheroes the minute the school bell rings. Certainly the bright animation, the catchy little songs (”We’re Wonder Pets! We’re Wonder Pets! And we’ll help you!”), and particularly the notion of tiny creatures being far more powerful and resourceful than anyone would imagine, strikes a chord with young viewers who may fantasize about being equally strong and inventive, if only given the chance.

For Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme!, storybook themes dominate three of the eight segments (Help the Cow Jump Over the Moon, Save the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Save Little Red Riding Hood), which no doubt will charm your little ones, especially if you’ve already familiarized them with those stories. Careful to keep in line the visual design of the animation along with the specific stories (Little Red Riding calls the Wonder Pets! from the puppet theatre at school, so she’s animated to look like a crudely-sewn puppet), Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme! has an interesting, varied look, compared with the previous set I reviewed. My little boy noticed right away that during Help the Cow Jump Over the Moon, the characters looked like 2-dimensional paper cut-outs, since the rescue takes place inside a storybook - that’s a fairly complex idea to get across to a really small kid, so I was impressed with the attention to details (and the smart ideas behind them) in Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme!. And as with most of the Wonder Pets! episodes I’ve seen, the voice work is quite sprightly and fun, while the writing shows flashes of easy wit (when Ming-Ming is told she looks good in armor, she states, “I look good in everything.”).

The nagging question I always have with these kinds of discs, though (particularly from Nickelodeon), is whether or not they’re worth recommending when the episodes play constantly on cable. I know that kids love to have these discs; they’re almost like toys to them (my littlest girl likes to stack the hardcases like blocks), and they obviously get excited about having their own discs which they can put in the DVD player without any help, thank you. Still, you have to judge how often they’re actually going to re-watch the episodes, particularly when they’re on TV all the time, versus the cost. I’ve caught my younger kids several times watching an episode on TV that they already have on disc, and immediately, the adding machine in my head turns on, counting off the dollars wasted. But I suppose if you’re going to start a collection for your younger children, a disc like Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme! would be a good start, because repetition, at least for my kids, was welcome. They revisited the disc several times this week, and that’s probably as good an indicator as you can get for the suitability of a title like this.

Here are the 4 episodes of Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme!, as described on the back of the DVD hardcase:

Help the Cow Jump Over the Moon / Save the Itsy Bitsy Spider
Nursery Rhyme Land needs the Wonder Pets to help the Cow jump over the Moon. Then our heroes fly into a painting to help Itsy Bitsy Spider climb up the water spout.

Save Little Red Riding Hood / Save the Turtle

The Wonder Pets return to Puppetland to save Little Red Riding Hood from the Big Bad Wolf. Then Linny and Ming-Ming travel to the Caribbean to rescue Turtle Tuck!

Save the Griffin / Save the Rooster

Hop on the Wonder Pets’ Horseyboat for a medieval mission to save a Griffin! Then the Wonder Pets help a Baby Rooster wake up the farm with a loud cock-a-doodle-doo!

Save the Panda / Save the Mouse

The Wonder Pets need to save a Baby Panda with a bellyache who’s stuck in a tree, and then they need to help a mouse stuck in a saxophone - this time, without help from Linny!

The DVD:

The Video:
The full-screen, 1.33:1 video transfer for Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme! is perfectly rendered, with brilliant color and a super-sharp image. No compression issues I could spot (except for some minor edge enhancement).

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo audio mix is entirely adequate for the sweet little songs the Wonder Pets sing. Close-captioning is available.

The Extras:
There’s a sneak peek at Ni Hao, Kai-lan, which I assume is a new cartoon soon to appear on Nickelodeon at some point (I wasn’t impressed). There’s also a “music video” (read: simple clip) of Poor Baby Squirrel with Ming-Ming singing to a squirrel caught in a tree. Not much there as far as extras.

Final Thoughts:
Another dose of the Wonder Pets! didn’t hurt at all. These really are cute, and kids adore them. The only consideration one might have with the Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme! DVD is whether or not you want to buy it, when the episodes are running for free on your TV every day. I recommend Wonder Pets! Save the Nursery Rhyme!, but only if your child is really a big fan, and wants a block of episodes to watch at one sitting. Otherwise, a rental would do.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published film and small screen historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

Depardieu is an archaeologist who stumbles across the bones of the first French little woman, a two million-year-old number called (in his sculptured model of her) Laura. Alas, he is taken for a ride by a scheming American advertising executive (Weaver), who wants to reason his unchanging baggage in a campaign to sell fragrance, and deceives him into reasonable she is the director of a foundation which will give spondulix since his digs. Then the real director (Westheimer) turns up…and the fragrance woman gets kidnapped…and it all gets absolutely daze. Depardieu coasts by it with his customary felicitousness and charm; Weaver’s vaunted ambitions to do comedy are less well realised. There is more to it than crossing your eyes and sticking your tongue away from. CPea.

Chan's arrant, but could use a script to match

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The form Czech film by Milos Forman’s co-writer Ivan Passer is a striking, sympathetically directed study of belonging, task and the pleasures of intimacy. It follows the affect of musician Bezusek and his betrothed to old friends in a wee countryside town. Wistful, gently comic and affecting.

After the smash success of his elementary feature film, À bout de souffle (Breathless), director Jean-Luc Godard turned to a more local, and litigious subject at the time, environment his follow-up, Le Petit Soldad (The Little Soldier) amid the political turmoil of Algeria’s action for independence from France. The film did strike a brazenness, at least total the censor board, who banned the film for two years based on its depictions of torture&#8212a touchy subdue during that period&#8212and its unclear political meaning, which questioned France’s involvement in Algeria. While upset that his second memorable part had been banned, he also considered it a compliment that he could enunciate a fog that could garner such a reaction. When once released in 1963, after the pressure of succession had passed, audiences were less than enthused about the offering, finding the dearth of a downright agenda in its main character confusing, which was entirely the headland. Godard would pull the wool over someone’s eyes this analysis by stating that he was not making films, but attempting to record them, sometimes succeeding, other times not, but that the effort was the riveting part&#8212better to stab and fail than not try at all.

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Michel Subor plays Bruno Forestier, a young idealist and French exile, whose opportunely wing diplomacy secure him involved with a network of secret agents looking to despatch their call through first-class assassinations. He is preordained the task of eliminating a prominent radio personality rumored to be assisting the Algerians, but soon decides that he is not up to the test of strength, putting him at odds with the operatives commanding him, who start off to topic his loyalty. Definitely, Bruno is uncertain of his allegiances, albeit he is not necessarily changing sides&#8212he is questioning his own principles. When he meets Veronica (Anna Karina) he begins to see a different life seeking himself, one in which he can have the happiness of love and outside the political device he has been snarled in. But leaving the past behind is no simple sum, as both sides suffer with a manipulate for him.

The screen delves into many moral dilemmas surrounding the subversive primitiveness of conflict, as allegiance and betrayal are contrasted with sense of part and the protection afforded by a sense of being loved. Notable for its depiction of torture as an accepted tool in a greater cause, this aspect was cited as the reason for the film’s banning, since the modus operandi was widespread during the Algerian conflict, and not a business to which the government wanted to call acclaim. Le Petit Soldat also failed to align itself with the French compel at the time, with its characters questioning French tactics and their confirm of its cause. Michel Subor’s characterization of Bruno captures this indecisiveness, yet also his proof of guilt to his own ethics. The trademark voiceover exposes his inner thoughts, as his verbalizations explore the appearances he tries to live up to. The performance is effective, relaying the inner opposition of a crew whose morals are in turmoil.

Le Petit Soldat was also Godard’s first introduction to the captivating Anna Karina, who he hired solely as far as something her looks, but married before the end up of 1960. The rank of her ability is evident in a sequence where Bruno has her posing for a photo develop, her expressions morphing between all behaviour of inner emotions in tightly close-up. Karina would become an elemental role of Godard’s filmmaking, developing an intimate rapport with the director who showcased her notable talents in tons of his subsequent films, including Une femme est une femme (A Char Is A Helpmeet - 1961), Vivre sa contend: Film en douze tableaux (It’s My Life To Live - 1962) , Bande à part (Party Of Outsiders - 1964) and Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Forethought (Alphaville - 1965). Le Petit Soldat carries for the cinema verite styling of À session de souffle, but its configuration is much more refined and polished, nevertheless the story itself has a distinct lack of administering, which consciously or not, relays its character’s own sense of self examination, never knowing quite where its headed until it arrives. The ending will leave innumerable unsatisfied, but the journey is an interesting unified.

DANCE DRAMATURGE Carlos Saura concludes his trilogy of flamenco folklorico with the disappointing “El Amor Brujo,” an overblown adaptation of a candid Andalusian ghost story. Choreographer Antonio Gades, who collaborated with director Saura on both “Blood Wedding” and “Carmen,” here graces the protect with his brooding portrayal of a major-crossed gypsy ghostbuster.

Agile and expert, his back arched like a sickle moon, Gades dances the demons away for his boyhood sweetheart (Cristina Hoyos), a widow possessed by the ghost of her husband (Juan Antonio Jimenez). The apparition’s lifetime mistress (Laura del Sol) completes this romantic quadrangle, completed when the four were pre-adolescents.

The legend begins in accordance with gypsy custom, as a pair of drinking buddies pledge their children, Candela and Jose, in marriage. The fly in the paella here is Carmelo, who has adored Candela since childhood, and Lucia who eternally lusts after Jose.

Candela grows into a man, via time-lapse photography — and, judging by appearances, 40 years fly by before the pivotal wedding. (Great dancers or no, Gades, Hoyos and Jimenez are well into middle-age, ludicrous as contemporaries of the youthful Del Sol’s Lucia.)

Hoyos may bewitch an audience with her sensuous body and its fluent motion onstage, but the close-up lens is no friend of hers. And the same goes for Jimenez, undulating as the undead flamenco dancer Jose — yet neither Lucia nor Candela (the dumbest heroine since Desdemona) can resist his come-ons. Candela loves Carmela who loves Jose who loves Lucia who is somewhat stuck on herself. It’s “All My Gypsies.”

Overlong at 100 minutes, this big-screen expansion of the original 27-minute ballet “Love, the Magician,” is a statically paced departure from the stamping cadences of flamenco. The score, often at odds with both the choreography and the story, ranges from Spanish guitar riffs to barrio disco sung by a pair of senorita Supremes.

It all takes place in an under-stylized slum, full of corrugated-metal shacks and so many car carcasses that you keep expecting the Road Warrior to whiz by. But no such exuberance. Saura is intent on an exploration of structure — he telegraphs his obsession with a lengthy opening shot of the sound stage. And “El Amor Brujo” suffers for his intransigence, remaining so stagey and distant that we rarely feel the flames. — Rita Kempley. EL AMOR BRUJO (PG) — In Spanish with subtitles at the Key.

Reviews / 25 October 2004

The Grapes of Death
Les Raisins de la Mort  /  France  /  1978

Chased from her train by a bloodthirsty madman sporting a face of decaying flesh, young Élisabeth flees into the desolate French countryside. Unbeknownst to our heroine, however, an experimental pesticide has tainted the region’s grape harvest, and all imbibers of the local vintage have been viciously mutated into deranged killers.

Although this gory favorite from director Jean Rollin is invariably categorized as a zombie film, the antagonists in

The Grapes of Death

are not the slow-moving, brain-munching, dehumanized corpses that inevitably come to mind when we think of the word zombie.

For starters, Rollin’s nemeses aren’t the dead come back to life. They are living people driven mad by contaminated wine. And though they are given to bouts of uncontrollable rage, more than likely resulting in murder, they also have spells of regret in which they are unquestionably aware of and sorry for their actions. (Witness a bereaved father kissing the dead lips of his beloved daughter, soon after chopping off her head.)

Rollin’s zombies, then, if we may call such creatures zombies, present his heroine with a unique challenge: Whereas run-of-the-mill zombie flicks feature protagonists oppressed by a clearly hostile adversary, in

The Grapes of Death

, Élisabeth can never be sure if the unstable inhabitants she meets will help her or try to kill her.

Rollin enhances this disconcerting atmosphere of uncertain fear by setting his story in an eerily isolated and lifeless landscape, casting Élisabeth adrift in a surreal and nightmarish world of crumbling houses, empty fields, and bleak vistas in which any hope of deliverance seems unreachable. The result of all this is a beautiful, engaging, and horrific film, and one of the few truly memorable French contributions to the world of zombie horror.

Thomas Scalzo

 / 

© 2004 notcoming.com

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