I Miss U all my Blog

Kevin is lost in the shuffle when his Mom & Dad invite his entire extended family to stay at his house the day before they all leave for Paris for Christmas. When they accidently leave him at home they don’t discover the blunder until they are on their flight to Paris and it will take days to get a return flight. While alone Kevin believes he’s wished his family into oblivion and enjoys his new freedom, until two oafish thugs start to burglar the homes in the neighborhood and Kevin realizes his house is next and he has to defend it.

I remember seeing Home Alone in the theatre at a child and absolutely adorning it. The thought that I could set such grand, screwball trap at my house and outsmart two adults was absolutely the coolest thing ever. The best part is that as an adult I am able to watch Home Alone and still enjoy it thanks to the formidable talents of John Hughes.

Hughes had a way of finding the human, universally relatable elements in his characters no matter their age. This film is almost Planes, Trains & Automobiles for children, and the themes and humor play to children and adults alike. Hughes makes Kevin at once annoying and loveable, he’s a confused kid who comes to realize he should be careful what he wishes for and Kevin’s mother is domineering and nurturing, the mother that disciplines her child and regrets it – something every kid wants and something at most point most parents feel when they go too far with a punishment. This movie is as much about the bond between family, and learning to appreciate is as it is about the Wet Bandits, homemade traps, and caring about your neighbors.

Perhaps what’s best about this film is unlike too many film and television shows from start to finish Kevin is a child. He may have momentary insights in how to cope with situations, or flashes of inspiration but he is not spouting wisdom and intelligence well beyond his years. Kevin is not a boy genius; he uses micro machines and toys in his homemade booby traps and escapes to his tree house, and in the end still needs to be rescued by an adult.

John Hughes was a master at what he did. The only thing that could have made Home Alone more of a classic than it already is would be if Hughes had directed instead of merely penned the script.

Director: Chris Columbus
Writer: John Hughes
Kevin McCallister: Macaulay Culkin
Harry: Joe Pesci
Marv: Daniel Stern
Peter McCallister: John Heard
Kate McCallister: Catherine O’Hara
Gus Polinski: John Candy

Kate: This is Christmas. The season of perpetual hope. And I don't care if I have to get out on your runway and hitchhike. If it costs me everything I own, if I have to sell my soul to the devil himself, I am going to get home to my son.

Paul Hackett is a data processor who goes out for an innocent coffee one night, meets a interesting girl…and his night goes downhill from there. After meeting Marcy Paul agrees to go on a date later that evening and soon discovers that everything that can happen to him late night in New York will happen, from his money flying out his cabs window to being chased down by an angry mob who thinks he’s a thief. After leaving Marcy all Paul wants to do is go home but he can do anything but.

After Hours is by far the least Scorsese-like film I’ve ever seen by Martin Scorsese. It’s not about thugs, men with too much testosterone, or family. In fact the only defining characteristic about this film that makes it a Scorsese film is that it takes place in New York…and that’s Scorsese directed the film.

This film is a bit scattered, but in a delightful way. It’s almost like Scorsese tried making a David Lynch film. There is a twisted sense of humor about the piece, and watching how far Paul Hackett can stumble into the underbelly of New York before coming up again is pretty fascinating. Everyone you meet in the film is a unique eccentric character that you’ve never seen on film before; in the exact opposite kind of crazy that Travis Bickle is the characters in After Hours are aboard the crazy train, but have eccentric traits that make them artists, club hoppers, bartenders, and individuals obsessed with eras – characters you would expect to see in a vast metropolis but not all at once.

I think my favorite part of the film has to be when Paul meets Gail. Gail owns a Mr. Softee ice cream truck and decides to give Paul a ride home in if after she whacks him with her cab door and her cabby steals his newfound money. However, Gail comes to believe that Paul is a serial burgler that is robbing her neighborhood and becomes part of a mob that wants to hunt him down. It’s a delightful mixtures of warped sadism and humor.

Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Joseph Minion
Paul Hackett: Griffin Dunne
Marcy: Rosanna Arquette
Kiki: Linda Fiorentino
Gail: Catherine O’Hara

Street Pickup: Why don't you just go home?
Paul Hackett: Pal, I've been asking myself that all night.

Max is trying to figure out the world around him and he’s very confused. His big sister whom he adores no longer give him the time of day and his mother is dating. When Max sees his mother kiss a man in their living room he acts out, throwing a fit for his mother and running out of the house; as he runs he goes further into the recesses of his imagination and discovers the land of the wild things. This is a land where the large, scary monsters are actually friends, and Max is king of it all.

When I was in film school a professor once told me adaptations weren’t so much about being literally faithful to the events, but finding and capturing the spirit of the story. The fact that Spike Jonze was able to fully capture the spirit of Maurice Sendak’s book and turn it into a fully realized feature film for Where the Wild Things Are astounds me. The book is all of 10 sentences about childhood temper tantrums, disappointment, anger and imagination and Jonze found a full length film in this; he turned it into a film about what it’s like to be a child without control over anything and being on the precipice of wanting to understand adult concepts and wanting to run away from change and anything that might actually make you grow up.

Despite being a brilliant film, Where the Wild Things Are will not be a popular movie. Like most films of its kind, people go into a movie like this and whether they are conscious of it or not they expect a glossy, happy children’s movie. Where the Wild Things Are is not that film, and it is better for it, but the fact that there is violence, scary moments, and that Max is a liar and sometimes a bully will turn people off. However, it is these things about the film and about Max that make the movie transcend from being a children’s movie and turn into a beautiful film experience. Through the course of a fight with his mother and a trip into an imaginary land Max completes a character arch, one that teaches him he can’t control the world around him no matter what he pretends and all that really matters is that his family loves him. This might be a simplistic character arch, but it is the arch of a child, and a child is what the movie and the book is all about.

Director: Spike Jonze
Writers: Spike Jonze & Dave Eggers
Max: Max Records
Mom: Catherine Keener
Carol: James Gandolfini
Alexander: Paul Dano
Judith: Catherine O’Hara
Ira: Forest Whitaker
The Bull: Michael Berry Jr.
Douglas: Chris Cooper
KW: Lauren Ambrose

Carol: It's going to be a place where only the things you want to happen, would happen.
Max: We could totally build a place like that!

Home for Purim is a little drama filled with a fine cast who have all put their time in and are well seasoned actors. They are dedicated to making the best film they can but think nothing of their little movie – until an internet rumor about Marilyn Hack getting an Oscar nomination starts. From there the buzz really begins, soon two of the other lead actors get Oscar buzz as well and suddenly the little movie explodes into a potentially big movie and everyone in the cast, crew and press gets caught up in the Hollywood rollercoaster.

Christopher Guest has had a very long string of quirky comedies to his name and For Your Consideration is one of the most biting of his films. This is a film about the razor edge of Hollywood, it’s the dark underbelly that is self-obsessed, and self-serving. Guest manages to bring humor and satire into the Hollywood mentality; he shows that while most actors say they act for the art of it a greater part of them than they’d like to admit really wants the fame and the accolades.

The fun and somewhat unexpected part of For Your Consideration is that it shows the full cycle these actors go through from production, to publicity and the reception of their film, when the nominations are released and the after. It covers everyone from the producers, the hair-brained director, the writers, to the entertainment newscasters.

If you’ve never liked any of Guest’s other films then I should say that you really won’t enjoy For Your Consideration. But if like me, you have an appreciation for Guest’s humor and especially if you love movies about movies then you need to see For Your Consideration.

Director: Christopher Guest
Writers: Christopher Guest & Eugene Levy
Marilyn Hack: Catherine O’Hara
Sandy Lane: Ed Begley Jr.
Morley Orfkin: Eugene Levy
Victor Allen Miller: Harry Shearer
Corey Taft: John Michael Higgins
Whitney Taylor Brown: Jenniger Coolidge
Callie Webb: Parker Posy

Corey Taft: In every actor there lives a tiger, a pig, an ass, and a nightingale.

I watched Penelope again today; this movie is adorable and I think it hold up on repeat viewings. This is a fully imagined fairy tale that is light hearted and fanciful to its very core.

Watching the movie again I have to say that Catherine O’Hara as Penelope’s mother is perhaps my favorite character in the movie. She is so meddling, overbearing and frivolous that she is the perfect antithesis to the wicked stepmother in Cinderella. She has some of the best lines in the film and is perhaps one of the best comical mothers I’ve ever seen on screen.

I must also commend the director Mark Palansky. Too often there are fantasy films where the unique worlds are just not unique or realized enough, but in Penelope this is a complete, whole world that is one of the most adorable, realized worlds that I have seen on film since a movie like Pitch Black. I would like to see another movie come out of his imagination.

Jessica Wilhern: Penelope, just one man, one man.
Penelope: And he'll run too! They always run. Why can't you accept that? For seven years I've been watching them run. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? Do you?
Jessica Wilhern: I'm sorry, but we just can't quit.
Penelope: We can, because no matter how much I want to believe there's one man who won't run away, one man who... who...

I watched this again over the weekend because my best friend really wanted to see it. The movie didn't get old for me. I will admit that it probably palys better to girls, but I think this is a fabulous, cute movie.

What I didn't even think about until my friend pointed it out is that there is absolutely nothing objectionable in this film; there is no swearing, no sex, no vulgarity - and yet it plays to adults. I do think that this film really does show that if you make a good movie it is worth watching, even if you're trying not to be flashy and controversial.

I also really love that this movie is set outside reality while somehow keeping "reality" totally in mind. It bends just enough so that there is no specific time or place this film is set in, but that we can believe this crazy mystical world does exist. This movie was brilliantly designed.

Duty Cop: Detailed description?
Jessica Wilhern: Brown hair. Brown eyes.
Jessica Wilhern: A unique... ly pleasant personality.
Franklin Wilhern: Think pig.
Duty Cop: So she's a fat girl?

When I saw Penelope in the theatre I thought that it would be either a pointless chick flick (which I hate) or a guilty pleasure movie; luckily, the film surprised me and turned out to be a thoroughly modern fairy tale.

Penelope follows the plight of Penelope Wilhern who had the misfortune to be born into a family curse; due to the dalliances of a distant relative far back in the aristocratic family line the town witch cursed the Wilhern family so that the next daughter would be born with the face of a pig and would remain that way until she was accepted by “one of her own kind” – another blue blood. Like any responsible parents, the Wilhern’s lock Penelope away from the outside world to help her escape ridicule and as soon as she is of age they begin to work on breaking the curse by finding an eligible blue blood man who will marry her.

Unfortunately, no blue blood can stand the sight of her and all run in terror –but are caught by the butler and made to sign a gag agreement until one day blue blood Edward manages to get away; he then teams up with Lemon a photographer to track down the truth about Penelope and expose her to the public. Along the line they bring in Max, a down and out blue blood to infiltrate the Wilhern’s system and help expose Penelope only something goes terribly wrong with their plan – Max begins to have feelings for Penelope but when she asks him to marry her he refuses. This leads Penelope to run away, discover herself, and continue to break the curse in this thoroughly contemporary fairy tale.

I think my favorite part of Penelope (other than James McAvoy & Christina Ricci) is the production design. I know it sounds little crazy, but there was no part of this movie that was not fully flushed out and created on a visual level, from Resse Witherspoon’s hair and winged vespa to Penelope’s scarf and room every detail was attended to, designed and placed to underscore the special world that Penelope takes place in. The costume designer too needs to be lauded and praised for what they did within the style of this film. All of the elements truly are things of beauty.

I highly recommend this film to anyone that enjoys a fairy tale, young or old. Penelope is a world that should be experienced by a great many people.

Director: Mark Palansky
Writer: Leslie Caveny
Penelope: Christina Ricci
Max: James McAvoy
Jessica Wilhern: Catherine O’Hara
Annie: Reese Witherspoon
Lemon: Peter Drinklage
Frank Wilhern: Richard E. Grant
Edward Vanderman III: Simon Woods

Penelope: Helaborasoreantalis. They're amazing; they bloom even in the winter.
Annie: That's cool.
Penelope: They just pop up without any help from anyone.
Annie: [laughs] Kind of like my ex-boyfriend, if you know what I mean.