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Since 1995 with the release of Toy Story, Pixar has been making excellent computer animated movies. I have seen and loved all of their movies. They somehow keep managing to top their previous movies with every new one. I’ve been looking forward to seeing Ratatouille for months and the movie lived up to my expectations.
Remy was an unusual rat because he was more discriminating about what he ate. He didn’t want to pick through garbage like the other rats. He actually wanted to be able to cook and looked up to the famous French chef Gusteau, something that his father and brother Emile didn’t understand or support. Remy ended up in Paris after things went wrong where he had been living. He still had his dream of cooking and he risked his life by being in the kitchen of a well-known restaurant.
Linguini was a young man working there who found himself in danger of losing his job because he couldn’t cook. He befriended Remy and the two came up with a way to work together to become a great chef. Emile and Remy had to be very careful so no one in the kitchen figured out what was going on. Chef Skinner, the head chef, was very suspicious of Linguini.
The animated short Lifted played before the movie began. It was very cute, funny, and entertaining. The animation was very well done and featured gorgeous visuals. There was some hand drawn type of animation shown during the closing credits.
The plot of Ratatouille was mostly concerned with following your dreams and not letting others deter you. Remy wanting to be a chef didn’t seem like a very attainable dream for a rat. Things seemed stacked against him, but he didn’t give up. It also touched on the importance of being true to yourself and not living a lie just to make others happy. Those messages were handled well and delivered in ways that weren’t heavy handed. I expected there to be some sort of message included in the movie since every other Pixar movie has done the same thing. They give the movies heart and make them so much more than just animated movies. That is what makes Pixar’s movies so wonderful.
Most of the movie dealt with Remy’s adventures once he arrived in Paris. It didn’t take him long to find the restaurant where he met Linguini. Remy only delayed his escape from the kitchen because he just couldn’t resist fixing a soup that was messed up. The rest of the movie was about Remy and Linguini figuring out how to work together and keep Skinner and the other cooks from discovering their secret. The plot was a bit more complicated than the plots of most other animated movies which might bother some people. There were a couple of subplots introduced that I thought blended in well with the main story. I do think this is a movie that adults and children both can enjoy. The movie was almost two hours long and did have a few slower scenes, so it could be too long for some viewers, especially younger children. I didn’t have a problem with the length and was never bored by what was going on.
Humor was used throughout the movie in ways that worked very well. Remy did a lot of things that made me laugh, like when he was trying to cook a mushroom with Emile looking on when a storm was fast approaching. The way that turned out was hilarious. The scenes when Remy and Linguini were figuring out how they would be able to work together were very funny. Chef Skinner became obsessed with figuring out what was going on which caused him to do all kinds of things that made me laugh. Some of the things that were done for humor were a little silly, but that didn’t bother me at all. I really liked that the movie didn’t resort to gross humor with burping or farting jokes like so many animated and family movies seem to do anymore.
Cooking played a very big part in Ratatouille. Remy was trying to figure out how to eat better when he was still living in the country with his pack who were perfectly content to eat from the garbage. Remy managed to see cooking shows about Gusteau and even read his cook book. Once he was in Paris and working with Linguini, the two of them did a lot of cooking. Several scenes were shown in the kitchen of the restaurant. Those scenes did seem accurate to me - except for a rat cooking of course. Some of the terms associated with cooking and the different positions in the kitchen were briefly explained in a way that didn’t detract from what was going on.
Pixar has a history of featuring unique characters in their movies. Their movies have featured talking toys, bugs, monsters, fish, and cars. Humans have been minor characters in most of the movies and not even seen at all in a few of them. The Incredibles was the only Pixar movie to have people as main characters though they weren’t normal since they were superheroes. In Ratatouille, there was a mix of human and rat characters. The rats were able to talk to each other and even understand humans. The humans couldn’t understand the rats and only heard squeaks if a rat was talking. Remy and Linguini came up with a unique way to work together that I really liked. Many people think of rats as disgusting animals and wouldn’t want one anywhere near them, let alone actually cooking their meal in a fancy restaurant in Paris. I’ve heard that some people had concerns about how well the movie would do since Remy is a rat. That never bothered me and I wanted to see the movie from the first time I saw the preview in the summer of 2006 when I saw Cars.
Ratatouille continued the fabulous animation that Pixar has become known for. The countryside that was shown at the beginning of the movie looked very realistic and beautiful. The way hair looked throughout the movie, either on the different rat or human characters, was great. Individual hairs could be seen moving on the rats and people’s heads. There were a few sequences that involved water or rain in some way. The rushing water looked amazingly realistic. In one scene, Remy was in a sewer and the reflection from the water was visible ripping across the wall in a very believable way. The movie also included several gorgeous visuals of the skyline of Paris. Those looked so real that I almost forgot I was watching an animated movie.
Remy and Linguini were the main characters, with Remy being a bit more developed. He loved his family, but wasn’t content with a life picking food from garbage and sniffing out rat poison. He loved good food and had a talent for cooking which led to him working with Linguini. The voice of Patton Oswalt really fit the character. Linguini was a young man who was very unsure of himself when he arrived at the restaurant. He was sweet and kind but he did let his new found success after he was working with Remy go to his head. Lou Romano’s voice worked very well for the character.
Gusteau was the well-liked chef that Remy looked up to. Gusteau believed that anyone could cook, something that earned him the scorn of some critics. I really liked the voice that Brad Garrett did for the character. Even though Skinner was the chef in charge of the kitchen, he never seemed to actually cook anything. He tended to run around yelling orders. He became very suspicious of Linguini. I didn’t recognize that Ian Holm was providing his voice when I saw the movie.
Janeane Garofalo’s character of Colette had a soft spot for Linguini though she was also tough as the only woman working in the kitchen. Anton Ego was a very stuffy, arrogant, food critic who had once skewered the restaurant in a review. He wasn’t pleased that the restaurant was receiving praise. Peter O’Toole’s voice was absolutely perfect and matched the appearance of the character. None of the other chefs working at the restaurant were featured that much. They were mainly just shown in the backgrounds of scenes. Several rats, including Remy’s father Django and brother Emile were also around without being very developed. John Ratzenburger once again provided a voice for a character like he has done in every Pixar movie. Director Brad Bird also provided a voice for a character.
Voice Talent
Will Arnett - Horst
Brad Bird - Ambrister Minion
Julius Callahan - Lao/Francois
Brain Dennehy - Django
Janeane Garofalo - Colette
Brad Garrett - Gusteau
Ian Holm - Skinner
Peter Oswalt - Remy
Peter O’Toole - Anton Ego
John Ratzenburger - Mustafa
James Remar - Larousse
Lou Romano - Linguini
Peter Sohn - Emile
‘Fear and Loathing’ is an account of its protagonist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they descend on Las Vegas to chase the American Dream through a drug-induced haze. The novel first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971 and is based upon Hunter S. Thompson and attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta’s trip to Las Vegas around the same time period.
Thompson had been writing an expose for Rolling Stone on the 1970 killing of the Mexican-American television journalist Ruben Salazar, who had been shot in the head at close range with a tear gas canister fired by officers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War. One of Thompson’s sources for the story was Oscar Zeta Acosta, a prominent Mexican-American activist and attorney. Thompson told Acosta Sports Illustrated magazine had offered him a job writing photo captions for the Mint 400 motocross race held annually in Las Vegas. Finding it difficult for a Hispanic to talk openly to a white reporter in L.A.’s tense atmosphere, Thompson and Acosta decided that Las Vegas would be a more comfortable place to discuss the story.
Thompson later wrote that he wrapped up the Vegas trip by spending about 36 hours alone in a Las Vegas hotel room “feverishly writing in my notebook” about his experiences. Those notes were the genesis of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. Thompson then started the Fear and Loathing manuscript in a hotel room in Arcadia, California during his spare time while he finished the Salazar story for Rolling Stone (which was published as Strange Rumblings in Aztlan on April 29, 1971).What was intended as a 250-word photo-captioning job/road trip snowballed into a novel-length feature for Rolling Stone magazine. Thompson later wrote that Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner “[liked] the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it.” He had first submitted a 2,500 word manuscript to Sports Illustrated, which was, as he later wrote, “aggressively rejected.”
The text was eventually published as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Rolling Stone as a two-part series in November 1971. The article was printed with illustrations by British illustrator, Ralph Steadman. Steadman and Thompson first began working together in 1970 on Thompson’s article, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” for the short-lived magazine, Scanlan’s Monthly.[4] The novelization of “Fear and Loathing” (with additional Ralph Steadman illustrations) was quickly published by Random House the next year and was heralded as “by far the best book yet on the decade of dope” by the New York Times[5] and a “scorching epochal sensation” by author Tom Wolfe.
Freaks
is a Pre-Code 1932 horror film about sideshow performers, directed by Tod Browning.
The movie was adapted by Al Boasberg, Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, and Edgar Allan Woolf from the short story Spurs by Tod Robbins. Browning, famed at the time for his collaborations with Lon Chaney and for directing Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931), took the exceptional step of casting real people with deformities as the eponymous sideshow “freaks,” rather than using costumes and makeup. Director Browning had been a member of a traveling circus in his early years, and much of the film was drawn from his personal experiences. He intended to portray the classic moral of how outer beauty does not necessarily equate to inner beauty. In the film, the physically deformed “freaks” are inherently trusting and honorable people, while the real monsters are two of the “normal” members of the circus who conspire to murder one of the performers to obtain his large inheritance.
Reaction to this film was so intense that Browning had trouble finding work afterwards, and this in effect brought his career to an early close. Because its deformed cast was shocking to moviegoers of the time, the film was banned in the United Kingdom for thirty years.
In 1994 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Video clip from “Freaks”
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for language, including a sexual reference Avg. Score: 1.75/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
Two men (Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman) who are dying from cancer escape their hospital together and go on a road trip to fulfill their final "to-do" list.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for sequences of intense action violence, some language and brief sexuality Avg. Score: 2/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
One day, Davey (Hayden Christensen) discovers he has an amazing ability. He can teleport himself to any location at will. Using his newfound power to find the man who killed his mother, Davey unwittingly becomes a target of National Security Agency officers and another person with the same exact power. Based on the popular young adult novel by Steven Gould.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for mature thematic material, sexual content and language Avg. Score: 2.5/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
Frank Allen (Ryan Reynolds) thinks he has life all figured out. He has everything so much under control that he lives his life via carefully designed lists written out on index cards telling him what to do and when, which is a trait his wife Susan (Emily Mortimer) finds charming if a bit annoying. When she introduces a random factor into Frank's otherwise orderly life, he suddenly turns into a complete convert to the ways of chaos and disorganization that's makes Susan's life worse, not better.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for mature thematic elements, sexual content and some violent images Avg. Score: 3/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary (Scarlett Johansson) Boleyn are two competitive sisters in the 16th century who are both after the same prize: King Henry VIII (Eric Bana). Luckily for them, Henry isn't choosy, so he alternates between the beautiful women. Unluckily for one of them, she'll find her neck underneath the executioner's blade.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: Not Rated Avg. Score: 4/5
| Photos | Reviews
) —
On Nov. 13-14, 1990, gun collector David Gray (Matthew Sunderland) took his collection and shot dead 13 people before eventually being killed himself by the police. This is a dramatic recreation of the Aramoana Massacre that really happened in New Zealand.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: R - for language Avg. Score: 5/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
This unique documentary seeks to compare whether or not human life follows the same dramatic structure as laid out by the classic Greek playwright, Euripides. This is done by following the lives of four very different men: a German terrorist, a thief, a gay evangelist who has gone straight and a student studying the martial arts.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: R - for strong brutal bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and brief nudity Avg. Score: 3/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
All devices that receive transmission signals — e.g., TVs, radios, cell phones — suddenly start emitting a sonic blast that transforms ordinary individuals into raving, homicidal lunatics. In three separate stories, the lives of people affected by this horrifying predicament are explored.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for crude and sex-related humor Avg. Score: 0.63/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
A small-town sheriff (Larry the Cable guy) is just doing his job when he stops what he thinks is two men kidnapping a woman (Ivana Milicevic). However, the "kidnappers" claim to be FBI agents who are only escorting their charge to a major trial in Chicago, so the sheriff lets them go. Later on, the lawman discovers that the agents are actually dirty and really are trying to kill the witness.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: R - for terror, violence and some language Avg. Score: 1.75/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
A family (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Devon Gearhart) go on a peaceful vacation at a secluded cabin but are tortured both physically and mentally by a pair of psychos.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for language, including a sexual reference Avg. Score: 1.75/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
Two men (Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman) who are dying from cancer escape their hospital together and go on a road trip to fulfill their final "to-do" list.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for sequences of intense action violence, some language and brief sexuality Avg. Score: 2/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
One day, Davey (Hayden Christensen) discovers he has an amazing ability. He can teleport himself to any location at will. Using his newfound power to find the man who killed his mother, Davey unwittingly becomes a target of National Security Agency officers and another person with the same exact power. Based on the popular young adult novel by Steven Gould.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for mature thematic material, sexual content and language Avg. Score: 2.5/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
Frank Allen (Ryan Reynolds) thinks he has life all figured out. He has everything so much under control that he lives his life via carefully designed lists written out on index cards telling him what to do and when, which is a trait his wife Susan (Emily Mortimer) finds charming if a bit annoying. When she introduces a random factor into Frank's otherwise orderly life, he suddenly turns into a complete convert to the ways of chaos and disorganization that's makes Susan's life worse, not better.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for mature thematic elements, sexual content and some violent images Avg. Score: 3/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary (Scarlett Johansson) Boleyn are two competitive sisters in the 16th century who are both after the same prize: King Henry VIII (Eric Bana). Luckily for them, Henry isn't choosy, so he alternates between the beautiful women. Unluckily for one of them, she'll find her neck underneath the executioner's blade.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: Not Rated Avg. Score: 4/5
| Photos | Reviews
) —
On Nov. 13-14, 1990, gun collector David Gray (Matthew Sunderland) took his collection and shot dead 13 people before eventually being killed himself by the police. This is a dramatic recreation of the Aramoana Massacre that really happened in New Zealand.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: R - for language Avg. Score: 5/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
This unique documentary seeks to compare whether or not human life follows the same dramatic structure as laid out by the classic Greek playwright, Euripides. This is done by following the lives of four very different men: a German terrorist, a thief, a gay evangelist who has gone straight and a student studying the martial arts.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: R - for strong brutal bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and brief nudity Avg. Score: 3/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
All devices that receive transmission signals — e.g., TVs, radios, cell phones — suddenly start emitting a sonic blast that transforms ordinary individuals into raving, homicidal lunatics. In three separate stories, the lives of people affected by this horrifying predicament are explored.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: PG-13 - for crude and sex-related humor Avg. Score: 0.63/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
A small-town sheriff (Larry the Cable guy) is just doing his job when he stops what he thinks is two men kidnapping a woman (Ivana Milicevic). However, the "kidnappers" claim to be FBI agents who are only escorting their charge to a major trial in Chicago, so the sheriff lets them go. Later on, the lawman discovers that the agents are actually dirty and really are trying to kill the witness.
( Released: 06/10/2008 Rated: R - for terror, violence and some language Avg. Score: 1.75/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
A family (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Devon Gearhart) go on a peaceful vacation at a secluded cabin but are tortured both physically and mentally by a pair of psychos.
Remember, cigarettes kill and we have been protected from them for years now. So why is it that they have made such a comeback in the
movies? You see the main characters smoking to express themselves, or is it the cigarette expressing itself? The underlying statements being made are profuse, and laden with innuendo. Maybe we need to add a warning on the promotional material for films with rampant smoking in them.. Fight Club with its violence and constant smoking perhaps needs to be stated as potentially hazardous to more than your mental well-being.
After all, up in smoke was banned by the South African Publications Control Board (Censor Board) for fear that “it might encourage the impressionable youth of South Africa to take up marijuana smoking”.
As if they didn’t have much bigger problems at the time.. can anyone say ‘apartheid’.
So what rock concerts are a must this summer? What about The Police, what an amazing comeback.. and what do The Police have to say about it?
“In my humble opinion, ‘Every Breath You Take’ is Sting’s best song with the worst arrangement. I think Sting could have had any other group do this song and it would have been better than our version - except for Andy’s brilliant guitar part. Basically, there’s an utter lack of groove. It’s a totally wasted opportunity for our band. Even though we made gazillions off of it, and it’s the biggest hit we ever had, when I listen to this recording, I think ‘God, what a bunch of assholes we were!’ - Stewart
man…
And then there’s ZZ Top, one of the best boogie bands of all time…
check the concert listings for more info..
Did you know that Paula Abdul worked with ZZ Top on their ‘dance’ moves? Seems very strange, but apparently they needed work on their stage presence, and Paula is by trade a choreographer. The vague inuendo about her following the Milli Vanilli scandal would not seem to make her the optimum candidate for working with a traditional band like ZZ, but who knows. Seeing Eric Burdon perform makes one really wonder how old is too old to really rock, but then he was probably too old when he was with the Animals when you get right down to it. And then theres John Kay, who performs the old Steppenwolf songs better than they were done originally (ok thats not saying all that much).
ZZ Top
>P>
The last fifty years has brought a total revolution in artistic expression, from the quiet beginnings of the late fifties and early sixties through the turmoil of the late twentieth century. We have gone from censorship on all levels to the complete abandon of all sensibility of gangster rap, and one word script movies like ‘Scarface’.
The recent Super Bowl mishap and Imus faux pas have begun a rethinking of the need to put some limits on creativity, to make things ‘respectable’ once more. There is a certain amount of desperation in the need to do something that is truly new, not to mention the need to get attention. Artists find themselves searching for something that hasn’t been done a thousand times before, and we find them reaching into the unknown, which often involves that which has been taboo in the past.
They find themselves being outlandish in order to garner an audience, doing something shocking to be noticed. Where it will go from here is hard to say, the piercings and tattoos have been carried to such heights that its hard to see how those artifices could be escalated. And when you get right down to it, the adoption of those practices by the general public have made it almost beyond a fad to the common. Lets hope the censorship crowd doesn’t limit creativity and artistic freedom, and that the artists don’t lose touch with the difference between creative freedom and complete abandon.
( Released: 05/15/2007 Rated: PG-13 (MPAA) Avg. Score: 1.5/5
| Photos | Reviews
) —
10-year-old Cadi (Liana Liberato) is intrigued by a strange man who absolves all of her dead grandmother’s sins by eating food left on her grave. She’s so intrigued in fact, she wants the man to do the same for her while she’s still alive and can enjoy being sin free.
( Released: 05/15/2007 Avg. Score: 5/5
| Trailers | Photos | Reviews
) —
To escape from postwar repression during the fascist regime in Spain in 1944, Ofelia, a lonely kid living with her mom and adoptive father, creates a dream world filled with fantastic creatures.
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