dolphin tale 2

The kid loved the first movie, which was sweet and cute, and its sequel was just about as cute and as sweet, so i didn't object when she suggested we check it out last weekend. The main cast is back, and continuing the mostly true story of Winter, an injured dolphin rescued by a young boy named Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) and Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick, Jr.) of the Clearwater Marine Hospital. In the first film a prosthetic tail was designed by Dr. Cameron McCarthy (Morgan Freeman) to help the endangered mammal. It's a testament to its straightforward family fare aims that the movie just added the number "2" to the title and didn't try to add a second tag line, like Dolphin Tale 2, The Return, or some other such nonsense.

When "2" opens, Sawyer is now an integral part of the Aquarium staff, and Winter has lost her only female dolphin friend, the elderly Panama. Most of the film deals with the conflict of the aquarium needing to find a new friend for Winter or risk losing her, and whether Sawyer will take advantage of a educational opportunity that will take him away from his family and Winter (for a whole three months).

Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) and Winter go for a swim

The old-fashioned film has the feeling of the sort of nature adventures that used to show up on The Wide World of Disney, and that is actually a good thing.  It's engaging for the kiddies. It is lso fun for the adults who may have been dragged along with their kids to the movies to see Ashley Judd, who plays Sawyer's mom, hanging out with Morgan Freeman and looking like they are having a good time, and not in danger of having to track down a serial killer like in their previous team-ups, Kiss the Girls (1997) and High Crimes (2002).

There was a recent (and typically snarky) article on Gawker condemning Florida, and specifically, the uber-rich who choose to live on its shores, which are (supposedly) all doomed to sink in the sea. Florida does spend a lot of money rebuiding its beaches, as well as have its fair share of part-time residents, and many of them are affluent, but there are plenty of year-rounders, too. A film like Dolphin Tale 2 not only highlights coastal year-round living, which is far from jet-setting, but another, big reason that people choose to live in Florida, and near its miles and miles of coastline — its magnificent wildlife. There are many places in the world where it is possible to live in harmony with nature, but the proximity of the ocean and the ever-present flora and fauna certainly make that goal a daily occurrence in the Sunshine State.

Director Charles Martin Smith (who also directed the first film) keeps his camera focused on the kids and the marine animals, including an intrepid sea turtle named Mavis; and he also shows up in a small part as a USDA agent. While some of the plot elements of Dolphin Tale 2 may seem at first a little forced, news footage at the end of the film shows that Winter's need for a dolphin companion, and all of the animal characters in the film were actually based on real animals and events. Especially touching is the footage of people, particularly children, who have lost a limb and make a journey to see Winter. The dolphin continues to be an inspiration to many. With positive reviews and audience impact, unsurprisingly there is already a third film rumored to be in the works. Keep up the good work, Winter and friends.

norma jean and marilyn

It may have sounded like a good idea on paper. Filmed for HBO in 1996, Norma Jean and Marilyn attempts to tell Marilyn Monroe's story, using two actresses, Ashely Judd and Mira Sorvino, to play her at different times in her career and life. At least that's how it starts out, with Judd as a very ambitious Norma Jean, who will stop at nothing to become a star in Hollywood. The movie hits on some oft-heard stories from Marilyn's past, including her recurring dream of being naked in church, which gave HBO an opportunity to include a nude scene (there must be some percentage of nudity required in any HBO production.)

Norma Jean is soon transformed into a blonde, with a painful plucking and raising of her hairline. Agent Johnny Hyde helps her get some "necessary" plastic surgery on her nose and chin to please Twentieth Century Fox head Daryl Zanuck. When we see her again she has a new name, Marilyn Monroe, and is played by a new actress, Sorvino.

But we haven't seen the last of Judd, who starts turning up as the angel/devil on Marilyn's shoulder, edging her on, to success and madness. It's a conceit that only sort of works, as in a scene where Norma Jean comforts Marilyn after she has a miscarriage (while married to Arthur Miller), or while she is fighting with newlywed husband Joe DiMaggio, while they are living in San Francisco —Norma Jean says all the things Marilyn is thinking but dare not say.

The movie was based on a book by Ted Jordan, Norma Jean: My Secret Life with Marilyn Monroe — yet another person (like Robert Slatzer) who has claimed more than twenty years after Marilyn died to have been a life-long intimate of the star. Jordan is played by Josh Charles in the film. His character keeps turning up, much like Judd's, but he is supposed to be real, not fantasy. The makers of Norma Jean and Marilyn want the viewer to believe that Marilyn was just nuts, and would inevitably end up just like her mad mother Gladys and grandmother Della, who she visited as a child in sanatoriums. But Marilyn hardly knew her grandmother, who died the year after she was born, and not from mental illness, but from died from cardiac disease.

Not surprisingly, Norma Jean and Marilyn gets the facts of Marilyn's early childhood completely mixed up. She is portrayed as living with her mother as a child, but Gladys placed her infant baby with a foster family, the highly religious Bolenders, where she lived from babyhood until she was about seven years old. Gladys would visit her occasionally on weekends. When Norma Jean was seven Gladys lived with her briefly, for a few months, before she had a nervous breakdown. Norma Jean is also shown as being the victim of sexual abuse, which may very well be true, but not while she was living with the Bolenders, as depicted in the film. None of this matters really, except if Jordan claims to have known the "real" Marilyn, he certainly doesn't have his facts straight.

Ashley Judd as Norma Jean and Mira Sorvino as Marilyn

Both Judd's Norma Jean and Sorvino's Marilyn are haunted by memories of abuse and abandonment. Marilyn is shown popping pills, but that is shown as a byproduct of her mental problems rather than vice/versa. Both actresses do as good a job as they can with the poor material. Sorvino gets Marilyn's on screen voice pitch-perfect, but she didn't do the Gentleman Prefer Blondes delivery in her private life. Sorvino doesn't open her eyes wide enough to truly capture Marilyn. Judd manages to show her flirtatious and vivacious side.

For an actress who brought so much joy and humor to her roles, Norma Jean and Marilyn is a bit of a drag. We all know where her story is headed, but she must have had some fun times, too. The one exception is a funny scene, set when Marilyn was filming Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She twists her ankle and doesn't want to work (this actually happened during the filming of River of No Return). Producer Zanuck and Director Howard Hawks don't want her to miss any time on the set, so they have the studio doctor shoot her up with a potent painkiller. The result is an amusing, hallucinatory scene where she imagines Zanuck and Hawks doing the "Two Little Girls from Little Rock" number, in the same red sequined costumes she and Jane Russell wore in the film.

Norma Jean and Marilyn also perpetuates the Kennedy hand-off, with Jack having Bobby blow off Marilyn for him and then decide he'd like a crack at her. In 1996 it must have seemed a cutting edge, risky scene, but more recent writings about Marilyn have noted her contact was with John F. Kennedy only, and probably very limited, to just a few brief encounters. The only interesting thing that I came away with from watching this film was the reminder that Marilyn's vulnerability went two ways. It's frequently stressed that Marilyn was always searching for a surrogate family in her life, which may have been true, or just habit, from her many youthful years being shuttled about. But conversely, so many people and families who met her also wanted to take her in. Marilyn was not meant for a conventional life.

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