March | 2006 | Groundlings Review 2006 March | Movie, Television and book reviews for common folk, by common folk.

March, 2006

TV Review: Cash Cab

March 30, 2006 by Bryan Osborn

>Ok, we don’t often review TV shows, let alone game shows, but there is one game show that no one I know has heard of and we love it. It is called Cash Cab.

Cash Cab is a game show that is apparently a transplant from the United Kingdom. Here’s how it works. Unsuspecting passengers hail a taxi on the streets of New York. When they get in the cab and tell the driver their destination, they find out that this is no ordinary taxi. Suddenly, the ceiling of the cab flashes with checkerboard lights and bells go off. The host then informs the passenger(s) that they are now on a game show that takes place right there in the cab. The driver/host is comedian Ben Bailey. Currently, reruns air twice each weekday beginning at 6 PM PST on the Discovery Channel, but apparently a new set of episodes is set to be taped in Spring of 2006.

The driver/host of the Cash Cab, then states the rules of the game and offers them the chance to get out of the cab if they do not wish to play. Passengers are asked a series of trivia questions on the way to their destination. If they get three questions wrong the host pulls over and makes them get out of the cab, empty-handed of course. In other words, three strikes and you’re out . . . of the cab that is.

The first four questions are worth $25. The next four questions are worth $50, and any question after that (until they reach their destination) is worth $100. Another fun feature is that if a contestant has won more than $200 and the cab is caught at a red light, a Red Light Challenge is given. In the Red Light Challenge, the host asks a question with multiple correct answers (for example, “Name 5 major American-based airlines”), the passenger then has 30 seconds to list them. If they name all the items in the list, they win $250. If, however, they don’t get all of the answers they don’t get a strike against them or lose any money.

Passengers are also given two “Shout-Outs” during the ride, a Mobile Shout-Out, where the contestant can make a phone call to a friend, and a Street Shout-Out, where the driver pulls over and the contestant flags down a passerby and asks them the question they are stuck on.

When the cab reaches the contestant’s destination, the host then gives them a chance to double their money by answering a video double-or nothing question (one of the seat-backs has a video monitor). The passenger does have the option of just taking the money and running. They usually are able to play 3 different rounds per show.

Overall, this is such a fun show. Even my kids, who don’t know many of the answers (you can take a sample quiz at Discovery online) love to watch it and ask for it by name now. If you have cable, check it out on the Discovery channel. You’re in for a fun ride.

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Movie Review: Peter Jackson’s King Kong

March 29, 2006 by Dennis West

Kong 201

When Peter Jackson had such huge success from making The Lord of the Rings books into movies, it’s not hard to imagine that he would have had a virtual blank check to make whatever he wanted after that. Who wouldn’t take that opportunity and use it to fulfill a lifelong dream? That’s exactly what Jackson did when he made his new version of King Kong.

You can really tell, too, how much he loves the original movie and the story surrounding it. He stays remarkably true to the original while fleshing out areas that painfully fall flat in the outdated mode of moviemaking of the ’30s. He adds soul to the characters—including Kong, adds Weta’s masterful special and visual effects, and adds modern sensibilities to otherwise corny dialogue lifted from the original to make it ring true (without resorting to lines like, “What’s your sign?” a la 1976’s version with Jessica Lange).

For the few uninitiated viewers, King Kong is the story of moviemakers who go on a safari-type expedition to an uncharted island hoping to make an adventure movie. What they find is a 25-foot gorilla that is keeping the locals in a state of fear. To appease the beast, Ann Darrow is sacrificed to Kong, who eventually develops a protectiveness of her.

I really enjoyed this movie. I saw it twice in the theater and it’s a really fun ride. It’s essentially a chase film, with some great creature fights. Peter Jackson also manages to make the connection between Ann and Kong believable and touching, something not previously done very well. Except for one part, the special effects are flawless too. The digital reconstruction of 1930s New York is amazing and the Jungle settings are lush and painterly.

As I mentioned in Monday’s review of the 1933 version, I loved all the inside jokes and references to the original. My favorite is the production that occurs on the stage when Kong is presented at Radio City Music Hall. If you see the original, you’ll know that what was on the stage with the costumes and music, was a direct lift from the original 1933 sequence from Skull Island.

There are a few quotes that Jack Black had to deliver as the filmmaker Carl Denham which were direct lifts from the original. It was nice to see them delivered in a believable way, since they were actually very corny things to say. Things like, “We’re millionaires boys, and I’ll share it with all of ya. In a few months his name will be up in lights on Broadway… KONG! THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD!” and then later “Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes; it was beauty killed the beast.” These lines actually work because of how well Jack Black plays this character and the kind of person we end up believing him to be.

Another part that really made me laugh when I caught it on my second viewing (which was embarrassing because I was the only one in the theater who was laughing) was a scene where Carl Denham and Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody’s screenwriter character) were working over their script and they start talking about killing off the first officer right at the beginning. Well, I had to laugh, because in the original, Jack Driscoll was the first officer, not a screenwriter at all. So in essence, Peter Jackson killed off the first officer by eliminating him from the movie and making Jack a writer instead. It was funny that they talked about it that way.

The ultimate hat-tip to the original for me was the fight between Kong and the last t-rex. Everything from the wrestling style of fighting, to the jaw-breaking, to the chest-beating afterward was taken directly from the original and I took it as one of those necessary elements that I would have missed if it wasn’t there.

There’s one part of the movie that highly bothered me, though. It might sound silly, but it involves a large herd of brontosaurus-type dinosaurs stampeding through a canyon with the entire main cast running for their lives as they dodge the dinosaur’s legs. So, why did this bother me so much when I’m ok with the thought of a 25-foot gorilla falling in love with a normal proportioned woman? Well, part of it is the fact that it looked like the actors were either running on a treadmill, or just in place. Another is poor compositing of the people and the animals—I never really believed that they were actually there. They should have been knocked around much more than they were. Up until and after this part, everyone seemed to be restricted to normal physical limitations, but here, they were almost super human. Ultimately I think this part could have been fixed by just having everyone climb into cracks in the canyon and narrowly escape the stampede. That would have been better than trying to run with it.

The only other thing that I find distracting in Peter Jackson’s movies is his incessant need to give everyone (and everything) a back-story. This, of course is ultimately so that there is more of an emotional payoff when those characters meet grizzly ends, but it also takes up a lot of screen time that could have been used to focus on the main characters, or to shorten the movie so that it’s more palatable to casual audiences—3 hours and 8 minutes is a long time.

So, would I recommend this movie? Of course. These complaints are literally the only problems I had with the whole movie which otherwise is a spectacular thing to see. I loved it, and if you’re up for a great adventure, you will too!

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Book Review: The Princess Academy

March 28, 2006 by Bryan Osborn

You Can Be a Princess Too

When I was in 8th grade, my family built a house and moved to a housing development up on the hill. The houses in this area were typically a bit larger and a bit more expensive than the neighborhood we moved from. This also meant that I had to go to a different junior high school. After a while, I heard all kinds of comments from people, like “The kids at that school are all stuck up.” I couldn’t understand how someone could be so prejudiced against people they had never met. I was the same person I had always been, but by association, they were calling me stuck up too. That hurt.

Prejudice/misunderstanding is just one of the threads running through the latest book by Shannon Hale, Princess Academy, though she doesn’t hit you over the head with it. Now before you start thinking strange things about me for reading a “Princess” book, you should know that it was selected as a 2006 Newbery Honor Book (awarded to authors of the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children), so you know it has to be fairly decent. That said, I still felt a bit self conscious letting people see what I was reading. So, I guess that would be one of my complaints. Putting “princess” in the title alienates so many readers, especially in the youth fiction circles.

That title is great if you are a young girl who longs to be Cinderella or Ariel, like my daughter, and yes, they will love it. But, you should get your boys to read it too, if they are masculine enough to read a book where all the main characters are girls. I wasn’t way back then, but I guess I am now . . . kind of.

Let me also echo one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card who gave glowing reviews to all three of Shannon’s books, “Some of the best contemporary literature is being written and published for children. And I’m not just talking about Harry Potter . . . I just read a book that is, quite frankly, better than any of the Harry Potter books . . . The title is, of all things, Princess Academy.”

While Princess may not match Harry Potter’s level of excitement and probably won’t sell as many books, I have to say that Shannon Hale has become my current favorite author (sorry Orson). I have now read all 3 of her books and have been thoroughly engaged in all of them. And so have all of my friends that I have gotten to read them, oh, and their friends too.

Shannon is a master of characterization. She gets you to care about and invest in the characters she brings life to. For me, this is a hard thing to do in a fantasy book, since I am not much of a fan of “traditional” fantasy. I can’t wait for her next book, which gratefully will be in September of 2006, a book called River Secrets (The Books of Bayern), a follow on to her first two books The Goose Girl and Enna Burning.

As with her other two books, it took me a couple of chapters to get into Princess, but when I did, I was completely hooked. In Princess, the priests of the king prophesy that the future princess will come from an obscure corner of the kingdom. The problem is that only rough, uneducated villagers who quarry stone for a living make their homes there. Thus it is decreed that an academy must be set up on the top of Mount Eskel to bring these girls up to an acceptable level, if possible. But not all of them WANT to become princess. On the flipside, the villages look down on the “lowlanders” with the same amount of contempt. Neither side can concede that any good thing can come from the other land.

There is also an element of magic in the story that can be compared to mental telepathy. It is so believable that you have no problem accepting that it could be true. The story also shows that through education, the villagers are able to unlock their potential and seize their own destiny. The lowlanders and mountain folk alike learn that you can’t use an overgeneralization to characterize a group of people.

Ok, now on to the few criticisms I have. Toward the end of the story, a love connection is revealed. While it was believable, it felt quite rushed, given the pace of the rest of the book. That to me was just a bit unfulfilling, and left me feeling slightly cheated.

Also, while I did come to love the main character Miri, she seemed a bit of a Pollyanna. She never seemed to have any internal struggles with right or wrong. She did have confidence issues, which made her real enough, but I guess I just wanted more.

Overall, Hale makes you feel like you belong with the rest of the villagers and are part of their world. She makes you invest in her characters and causes you to yearn and agonize along with them. I love to read her stories and can’t wait for her next book. Although I didn’t feel that The Princess Academy was quite as good as The Goose Girl, I still highly recommend it. If you are a lover of good writing, read this Newberry Honor Book, then share it with children and friends alike.

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Movie Review: The Original 1933 King Kong

by Dennis West

Kong 101

I believe that a prerequisite to watching Peter Jackson’s new version of King Kong is to watch the original 1933 version. As is said in an interview on this recent DVD release, the ability to take any story and make it into a fantastic movie using special effects, didn’t really start with Star Wars, but with the original King Kong—I believe it too!

Sure, the movements of the beast are a bit jerky and his fur buzzes around him as if there are a dozen cyclones whirling around him at any given time, but the truth of the matter is, I thought it was still interesting and fun to watch.

The melodramatic acting is fun to watch too (almost a special effect in itself). You can see how sensibilities have dramatically changed over the years about how to act. This movie is a great specimen of acting in a way that is the polar opposite of subtle.

I bought the 2-disk special edition on a whim because Jackson’s version was soon to be at the theaters and it was packaged as a King Kong Collection with Son of Kong and the original Mighty Joe Young. Since Peter Jackson had commented repeatedly about how much inspiration he received from this movie as a child to become a filmmaker, I thought it would be a good idea to check it out. It pays off too, when you watch Jackson’s version, there are many inside joke treats that you’ll only understand if you’ve seen the old one. One quick example is (in the new version) when Carl Denham (Jack Black) is being told names of actresses that could work in his film, one of them is “Fay”, who Carl dismisses as already being busy with an RKO Picture. Well, RKO is the producer of the original Kong and Fay Wray was the original Ann Darrow.

One of the most unexpected twists to this visit to this classic picture is how much my 6 and 8-year-old daughters loved it. I think sometimes that I tend to count out older movies as options for entertainment for my kids because of the lack of ultra-realistic CGI special effects—so unfounded. My kids were tense at the suspenseful points, they thought the funny parts were funny… it was great! If you’re looking to show your young kids King Kong and are worried that Jackson’s version might be a bit too much, check out the old one, it might be just the ticket.

On the DVD, there’s also a documentary titled, “I’m Kong: The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper.” Historically speaking, it was amazing to learn more about this man who was the original director of Kong and how the character of Carl Denham was almost autobiographical.

With Peter Jackson’s updated version coming out on DVD tomorrow, I thought this would be a good segue into a review of the new one, which will come later this week.

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Movie Review: Howl’s Moving Castle

March 27, 2006 by Dennis West

>
The only Japanese animation that I’ve seen is Star Blazers, back when I was a kid. I really enjoyed it, but I think the advent of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Digimon turned me off of the whole genre.

Earlier this year, however, I saw the trailer for Howl’s Moving Castle, and I had to re-watch it two or three times just to take it all in. Every second of it seemed like a work of art. I had also heard some positive things about the movie that made me want to see it.

Well, after searching for it at my local video store and seeing that their one copy was always rented, I grew desperate and went ahead and bought it and watched it with my 8-year-old daughter.

In short, I loved it. I loved just about every moment of it! Every frame of this movie could be framed as a work of art. I’ve never seen a traditionally animated movie with backgrounds that had so much depth and realism as this one.

And the story was great too! It’s a story that could be compared to the fantasy of The Wizard of Oz, with it’s unique characters and surreal vistas. There are a few moments where it’s very clear that many people will interpret what they are seeing very differently.

Howl’s Moving Castle is a fantasy about a young girl name Sophie who has an encounter with a mysterious wizard named Howl. Sophie is soon transformed into a 90-year-old woman by the jealous Witch of the Waste. Knowing that she can’t stay in her home in her transformed state, Sophie sets out on a journey to find some way to break the spell and return herself to normal. What follows is a wonderful adventure.

There were only two things that distracted me initially in this movie. The first was that I didn’t think there was enough of a relationship built between Sophie and Howl at the beginning of the movie. I wished I could have seen more of Sophie before she was transformed, and maybe have seen that there was more of an emotional connection between the two of them.

The second was a technical animation issue. In traditional animation (Disney feature stuff) there is usually one drawing for every two frames of film, which is called animating “on twos.” In CGI animation, it’s usually one new image for every frame of film, or “on ones” which gives the animation a much more fluid look. I was expecting at least “twos” in this feature film, but it was clear at the beginning to me, that this movie must have been animated on “threes” or “fours” which made the movements a little distractingly choppy. I quickly got used to it though and didn’t mind it as much.

Pixar directors Pete Docter and John Lasseter and Disney were in charge of creating the English language translation and dub for this release and the voice cast features such notable actors as Lauren Bacall (Key Largo), Christian Bale (Batman Begins), Jean Simmons (Spartacus—no Bryan, not the one from KISS), and Blythe Danner (Meet the Parents). Never once during this movie did I experience the “Godzilla effect” where their mouths are saying something their voices weren’t.

I don’t believe I’ve ever left an animated movie with such a feeling of wonder as I did with this one. I really want to watch it again to relive the majesty of it and to see if there’s anything that I can understand in a new way from it all.

I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys animated films as a viable source of entertainment and story telling. This is not a comedy—though it does have its funny parts. It is a fantasy with a more cinematic than cartoony feel to it.

By the way, as one of the biggest signs that my daughter liked it, she immediately wanted to play it with me pretending that I was Howl and she was Sophie. She was even doing a British accent. She also kept asking me if she could watch it again, and again…

Now my homework assignment is to check out other Studio Ghibli productions such as Spirited Away, Nausicaa, and Princess Mononoke. Any suggestions?

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