Secret of Kells

Deb 2 Me 2

Whatever the Secret of Kells is remains a secret. The movie starts with a whispering voice that may have explained what the movie was about, but it was totally unintelligible. Then the cells unfurl that seemed to be based on Rocky and Bullwinkle artwork. Eventually a Willie Nelson looking character appears along with a ringer for Mr. Magoo. Matt Stroud, who had seen an interesting panel discussion featuring the makers of the Academy Award nominated animated features, touted us onto the movie. The guy that did this flick, Tomm Moore, was particularly animated himself and the clips shown were interesting. And there were some very interesting clips within the movie. There were some cool multi-plane camera effects, some scenes appeared to be backlit with a net mask, and lots of attractive tricks were employed. Their version of fire was really cool. I liked the sponge effect on most of the backgrounds. It was pretty. Scene transitions were often entertaining. I liked the music, not the songs, but the music was good.

But like many fantasy films the story wasn’t cohesive. I always think of Walt, who focused so much energy on the story, I mean why draw a single cell if it isn’t going to support a solid story? These days there is just too much razzle-dazzle that doesn’t support much of a tale. Deb was able to come up with some possible morals to the story. The only moral I could find was: don’t go to all this work until you know what you’re going to say with it. As always, we stayed for the complete credits, and as they flashed by came a voiceover, again, totally unitelligible. This time I could tell it seemed to be a different language, like old Gaelic or something, and wondered just who the hell was this thing aimed at?

Deb 2 Me 2

Dancing Across Borders

Deb 5 Me 4

This is a straightforward documentary about a lady who is captivated by a young dancer she sees while on vacation in Cambodia. She goes hoe to New York and decides she wants to bring him home and set him up in ballet school. The kid has never been out of his village and seizes the opportunity.

It turns out that he is tutored by ballet’s leading teacher, giving him one-on-one attention for many years. In this time he learns English remarkably well, gets his high school diploma and makes friends. He continues to dance and enters domestic and international competitions, even does a performance in his native Cambodia.

He is an engaging kid, and he is surrounded with articulate people who speak highly but realistically about his gifts. It’s interesting.

But it’s not great. There are a lot of issues that are introduced but not resolved. First off, who is this lady that “finds” him in the jungles and bankrolls his way to competency? Where’d she get the gall and the bucks? How does she convince the leading ballet teacher to take him on in such an exclusive basis? He gets serious cramps throughout the beginning of the movie and they’re never mentioned again, what happened with them? There are a lot of things that should be answered or not brought up.

It was neat to see the quality of documenting him improved as his talents were recognized. In the beginning when he was dancing native street theater stuff he was recorded on some lousy format like VHS or something. In NY they record him on a better format and by the time he’s dancing in big shows the picture clarity is really quite good. The interviews and staged shots are all excellent quality.

The overall feeling I got was that this was done too soon. It was neat to see him taken from living with rats to being in the rat race, but he hadn’t arrived anywhere as a dancer yet. Another unresolved issue for me. In the beginning of the movie he was full of potential, at the end of the movie he was full of potential. I’d like the moviemaker to have waited until he got a good job or won a big competition or gave up or something, to complete the story, or at least make more of a complete cycle.

Alice in Wonderland in 3-D

Deb 8.5 Me 3

Our second fantasy film of the year. Deb had read both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and appreciated the way the two books were consolidated (no one I’ve talked to has read the third installment, What Alice Found There). She loved the way the imagined world came to life and the tremendous attention to detail. And the world they created was brilliant, vibrant and full with zany characters. This type of movie requires the viewer to surrender their view of things and accept the world as they present it. And that’s sort of the point of Alice, as she challenges the rationale of her world after her experiences down the rabbit hole. Deb was able to see the movie the way it was meant to be seen, I wasn’t.

I’m already geared toward challenging things and so I have a hard time accepting the world that they presented. Why was caterpillar smoking, what was it smoking, why is it blue? I was wandering, twitching, comparing the images with and without the special glasses, wondering what significance each crazy critter may have had, if they were symbols for other things, or just being wacky. Unresolved questions distract me. Despite the vivid qualities of each scene, the film never caught my attention. I was constantly looking for historical references that may have inspired this or that, and the similarities between this story and the Wizard of Oz (written 35 years after the Alice books). Oddly, neither one of us had any comment about the 3-D element.