favorite movie #111 - holiday edition: love actually

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #111 - Love Actually (2003) - This movie is more than a bit of a mess. A strung-together bunch of inter-connected stories, it features a bunch of Londoners as they muddle through the holiday season. What makes it watchable is a wonderful cast and a fantastic performance by Emma Thompson as a wife who discovers that the romantic gift she thought her husband (Alan Rickman) was getting for her was actually intended for the floozy he works with. Also charming are Liam Neeson and Thomas Sangster as a step-father and son mourning the loss of their wife and mother, respectively. Hugh Grant can't help but be charming in the absurd casting of a British PM who has fallen for his adorable staff member, played by Martine McCutcheon. Topping it all off like the naughty angel on top of the tree is Bill Nighy as aging rock star Billy Mack, who is reluctantly coerced by his longtime manager and best friend (Gregor Fisher) into recording a Christmas single to revive his sagging career. Surrender to the movie, don't think too hard about the side plots that don't work, and enjoy yourself.

Billy Mack - Christmas is All Around (Love Actually) from Christmas is All around on Vimeo.

favorite movie #37: about a boy

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #37 - About A Boy (2002) - I love Hugh Grant. He will probably show up in at least one (if not more) of my future entries on this list. But I think About A Boy, and his role as Will Freeman, at least to date, is his best work. Nick Hornby's story of the gathering of a bunch of misfits is the perfect vehicle for Grant to blow up his charming, diffident, rom-com persona and revel in being — at least at first — an unmitigated cad. Nicholas Hoult, who has grown up to be quite a handsome boy indeed, is wonderful as Marcus, who worms his way into Will's life. Marcus tries and fails to matchmake Will and his mum Fiona (Toni Colette), but that is just the first in the battle of wills between the two. Also on hand are Rachel Weisz and Natalie Tena as a school chum of Marcus. You'll never hear Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly with His Song" quite the same way again. The soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy suits the film perfectly, too.

animated pirates, yo ho ho!

Aardman Animation has created a wonderful stop-motion animated movie, The Pirates! A Band of Misfits, which proves that CGI is not the be-all and end-all of animation these days. Based on the equally enjoyable comic novels by Gideon Defoe, The Pirates! An Adventure with Scientists and The Pirates! An Adventure with Ahab, the film is not just funny, but actually beautiful to behold.

The crew hits port, L-R: Albino Pirate, Pirate with a Scarf, Pirate Captain, Suprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, and Pirate with Gout.

Hugh Grant turns in a stellar vocal performance as The Pirate Captain, a man with a luxuriant beard, but feeling a little out of the loop in the pirating world. He loves his crew, but is unable to remember their names, so they go by monikers like Pirate with a Scarf (Martin Freeman), Albino Pirate (Russell Tovey), Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), and Suprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen). His devoted crew supports him in his desire to compete for the Pirate of the Year award, against rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek), and they embark on an adventure which takes them to Victorian England where they encounter Charles Darwin (David Tennant), Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), the Elephant Man, and other luminaries.

Kids will love the goofy characters, especially Darwin's "man-panzee" Mr. Bobo and the Pirate Captain's "parrot" Polly. Like Defoe's books, there is plenty of anachronistic and sophisticated humor to keep the adults entertained as well. Anglophiles will be amused to see a Pirate's yell being described as loud, louder, and Brian Blessed. Taking the joke even further, Blessed himself is on hand to provide the voice of The Pirate King.

Hugh Grant and his alter ego

But in-jokes aside, what truly makes the movie worth seeing is the amazing animation. Aardman did use computer graphics to enhance the look of the film, chiefly in backgrounds of the ocean and other scenery. Their attention to detail is evident in the stylized characters, their ship, and settings like a pirate's port and tavern, Darwin's house, and Queen Victoria's secret lair. Many hours went into creating the film:

"The first Aardman stop-motion movie shot in 3-D ...  a process that required 250 puppets, dozens of CGI backgrounds and an ornate, 770-pound plywood pirate ship with a bumper sticker on the back that reads 'Honk if you’re seasick.' 

Stop-motion is a notoriously arduous process that requires animators to manipulate a puppet’s movement frame-by-frame — a typical pace for the 33 animators on The Pirates! was to shoot six seconds of footage a week. 

'No one’s amazed by anything anymore,' said [co-director Peter] Lord. 'This slightly old-fashioned idea of stop-frame somehow brings the wonder back.'" — Kansas City Star

And a wonder it is. Happily there is already talk of a sequel. The characters in The Pirates! Band of Misfits are wonderful, and Defoe will soon release his fifth book in The Pirates! series, The Pirates! An Adventure with Romantics, so there should be plenty of opportunities for the Pirate Captain and his crew to go on many more adventures together.

"say hello to the spikes of doom"

"Say hello to the sofa of reasonable comfort."

So much to love: Rowan Atkinson, Richard E Grant, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Joanna Lumley (all as The Doctor), Jonathan Pryce, and Julia Sawalha, from Comic Relief: Doctor Who - The Curse of Fatal Death.

what difference does it make?

Inspired by a recent Culture Brats post . . .

I've been wondering if Morrissey's recent comments about the Chinese are as deluded as they sound or are just an example of someone who has no true filter. They shouldn't be equated or compared to his PETA-like statements against meat-eating. I played The Smiths and Meat is Murder in the eighties as much as anyone, but I never became an uber-fan. The guy makes clever music, but that doesn't make him an intellectual. Do I shrug off Morrisey's dumb comments because I have in recent years, shrugged off Morrisey? It brings up the question, asked across the internet—how  important is it to respect or be in line with the politics of an artist ones admires?

Don't worry David, you could never do wrong in my eyes

I know that I stopped watching Woody “the heart wants what it wants” Allen movies in the nineties after the whole Soon-Yi/Mia scandal. But the quality of his films had already receded long before he lost my respect. I have seen and liked Matchpoint since, but that's more because of Jonathan Rhys Myers than Allen.

Why should I care what an artist or celebrity does or believes? But somehow I think we all do. I didn't get deeply invested in the recent Polanski controversy. I wasn't interested in his morality or lack thereof—I love Frantic with its filming of the Parisian Statue of Liberty crowding into each shot as if to say, "I wish I was filming in New York." I also like his wack-a-doodle, but hard not to watch, Arturo Perez-Reverte/Johnny Depp mash-up, The Ninth Gate. And I have always loved Rosemary's Baby. But would I have signed his petition? Do I cut him more slack than Woody because I like his movies more? Hmmm . . .

As an artist I know that art and the artist are separate, but still somehow inextricable. A built-in conundrum that I feel when looking at an artist's work vs. the artist. A drawing I do can include imagery that some might find objectionable. But does that make me objectionable? Do I really dislike Eric Clapton's music because he lusted after George Harrison's wife and other stupid behavior, or is that just a convenient personal excuse instead of my saying outright that I just don't like his lazy-sounding voice and have never been the guitar-hero type? I haven't stopped watching Hugh Grant movies because of his infamous indiscretion.

I'm not sure whether this morally ambiguous opining will help me decide where I stand on the next celebrity scandal that comes along, or if I will even pay attention to it. But I do know that a lot of these questions would be moot if celebrities could simply do one thing. Shut up. Hear that, Morrissey?

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