Happy Feet
Australian director George Miller has had a very limited but
very interesting career. He started out as a medical doctor,
but, in 1979, he broke into show business with the incredibly
successful action movie ‘Mad Max’. This was followed
up in 1981 with ‘Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior’,
and in 1985 by ‘Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome’.
Miller, and his favorite leading man, Mel Gibson, found themselves
launched on international careers. Next, Miller turned his
attention towards ‘black magic’ with ‘The
Witches of Eastwick’ in 1987, and the heart-rending
drama ‘Lorenzo’s Oil’ in 1992. Then, his
career took a very peculiar turn. In 1995, George Miller created
the extraordinarily popular children’s movie ‘Babe’,
about a talking pig, and this, in turn, was followed up in
1998 with ‘Babe: Pig in the City’. Another outrageous
success. Now, almost 10 years later, George Miller has come
up with another huge hit. ‘Happy Feet’ is a marvelous
computer-animated musical cartoon, which the whole family
will simply adore. This movie has nothing to do with ‘marching
penguins’, rather, in the nation of Emperor Penguin
Land, deep in Antarctica, everybody is born to sing. When
the cute penguin Mumble is born, he hatches out of the egg
tap-dancing. Eventually, his ‘hippity-hoppity’
un-penguin ways lead him to being cast-out of the community,
and he has to fend for himself. But, don’t get too distressed.
It is a cartoon after all, and there is a happy ending. The
animation in this movie is absolutely superb, and the blending
of visuals with music in the big production numbers is captivating.
All of the songs are ‘solid gold classics’, instantly
recognized from the history of popular music, though, they
have been re-mixed and re-vamped with a contemporary foot
tapping beat. A great cast, including Hugh Jackman, Nicole
Kidman and Elijah Wood provide the voices, and they can all
carry a tune. Children are going to be enchanted by singing
and dancing penguins, while adults will be fascinated by the
unusual sub-plot, which involves alien abduction, and this
is handled intelligently for once. A musical cartoon about
alien abduction? What next? George Miller appears to have
actually found his niche with family movies, and ‘Happy
Feet’ is tremendous entertainment which should not be
missed.
Infamous
I am a bit in the dark about the background of Douglas McGrath’s
movie ‘Infamous’. It seems to have appeared from
out of nowhere. It is concerned with exactly the same story
as last year’s film ‘Capote’. That is, the
period in author Truman Capote’s life when he was researching
and writing his notorious ‘faction’ novel ‘In
Cold Blood’. However, as the movie is dated 2006, it
must have been in production round about the same time as
the first Capote movie, then shelved for a while as the hoopla
and hype surrounding Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Academy
Award subsided. In many ways this is a better movie. It fills
out Capote’s personality more thoroughly. His social
life in New York, and the role it plays in his creative-writing
process, is fully explored, plus, the intense and devastating
relationship he experienced with the condemned murderer Perry
Smith is totally spelt out. Not leaving much to the imagination.
Toby Jones presents a fabulous performance as Truman. He has
the preening and the mincing and that obnoxious voice down
to annoying perfection. As Truman’s New York girlfriends
and confidants, Isabella Rossellini, Juliet Stevenson and
Sigourney Weaver are all brilliant. Meanwhile, Sandra Bullock
gives a subdued and appropriate performance as Nelle Harper
Lee, a famous novelist, and friend of Truman’s, who
escorted him on his research trip to Kansas. Finally, Daniel
Craig (yes, James Bond) gives a fantastic portrayal of the
charismatic murderer, about whom Truman developed such a harmful
homosexual fantasy. If you liked the first Capote movie, you
will enjoy this one. It travels down the same route, but,
along a slightly different road. Far from being boring, because
of the familiarity of the storyline, the movie is actually
rather compelling and kind of fascinating.
Dreamgirls
Bill Condon’s screen adaptation of the Broadway musical,
‘Dreamgirls’, is supposedly based on the career
of one of America’s most famous Motown girl groups of
the 1960’s. However, a certain Legendary Living Diva
would probably sue the pants off of any one who mentions her
name, so, we will just refer to the group as ‘Miss You
Know Who And The You Know Who’. The movie pretends to
be fictional, but it is pretty obvious who it is getting at.
Most of the career highlights of the ‘You Know Who’
are well and truly covered. Beyonce Knowles gives a pretty
good impersonation of ‘Miss You Know Who’, and
Jennifer Hudson is phenomenal as the other Legendary Diva
who was booted-out of the group because she had too much talent.
Eddie Murphy is naughty. He steals the movie as a composite
soul singer. I never knew he could sing so well. All the new
songs in the movie recreate the original sound of ‘Miss
You Know Who And The You Know Who’, but, take the music
out of the movie and all you have left is a standard show-biz
bio-pic without any surprises. I would think that by now the
‘true’ story of ‘Miss You Know Who And The
You Know Who’ would be very well known indeed. It is
hard to keep secrets like these for over 40 years! Oh, this
is just ludicrous. Buy the DVD and then you will know who
it is all about yourself!
The Good Shepherd
I don’t know about this movie. I tried and I tried,
but I just couldn’t ‘click’ with it. The
first time I put ‘The Good Shepherd’ on the DVD
player I lasted about 45 minutes before looking for something
else more amusing. The second time, I went about 1 hour and
40 minutes before dozing off. When I woke up it was still
going on. Interminably. I am not interested in a third attempt
to watch it. The movie concerns, and I quote: “The true
story of the birth of the CIA through the eyes of a man who
never existed”. This might be, but it strikes me that
some of the movie is a mishmash of the early life of the first
President Bush. If this is so, then Barbara Bush won’t
be too thrilled with Angelina Jolie’s portrayal of her
early life as well. Matt Damon is wooden in his role as, let’s
say, ‘George Bush’. He doesn’t seem to know
what to do with it, and he doesn’t get any help from
Robert De Niro, whose direction is pedestrian to say the least.
The only time the movie is vaguely interesting is when Matt
Damon appears in ‘drag’ playing ‘Buttercup’
in a Yale College production of ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’.
The movie really is that dull!
