With the MidFirst Ohio Challenge hot air balloon festival starting today in Middletown, I tried to think of good movies with hot air balloons.
The first thing I remembered wasn’t a movie, however. It was an entry in Roger Ebert’s movie glossary:
Balloon Rule: Good movies rarely contain a hot-air balloon.
I began to think of it, and it seems Ebert was right. Oh sure, a couple of exceptions leap to mind. There’s The Wizard of Oz, with the immortal line, “I can’t, I don’t know how it works!” The Great Muppet Caper isn’t one of the great Muppet movies, but it’s entertaining enough, and it had a hot air balloon.
After that, though ,,,,
Um ….
Around the World in 80 Days? Uch. Best Picture my foot.
Er ….
The Great Race was a fun comedy, although I would stop well short of calling it a great movie. Much better was the comedy Rat Race, the last good movie from part of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team of Airplane! fame.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is one of Terry Gilliam’s delightfully loopy visions, though I can’t say I remember it for any balloon scenes.
Octopussy: One of the better Roger Moore Bonds, though the site of Q in one of the balloons is awfully silly.
Superman II showed us how to escape from prison using a hot air balloon.
There are some decent choices here, but I still need to broaden the palette.
A Google search of “Hot air balloon movies” turns up a bunch of videos, but no feature films, at least on the first page.
Changing the search to hot air balloon films gets us a clip of a silent film with Buster Keaton, The Balloonatic. Clever, and an interesting find.
Still, we’re not getting very many movies where balloons play a major part of any scene.
Ah, but if we expand our criteria to floating aircraft and not just balloons, then it gets a little more interesting:
I fully expected The Dark Knight to be an intense movie. However, I did not expect it to chill me to the bone.
Many reviews have called this the greatest comic book movie ever made, but I’ll go even further. The best live action film of this calendar year is one of the greatest crime dramas of any type, with or without capes. And yes, the late Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker more than lives up to its buzz. Like the movie, it’s the stuff nightmares are made of.
When I saw an extended trailer for the movie last year, depicting a daring bank heist, I noticed that director Christopher Nolan, who also made Batman Begins, filmed the robbery in a very brisk, energetic style that reminded me of Michael Mann’s Heat. Even more than Batman Begins, The Dark Knight looks like a gritty, down and dirty urban thriller.
However, The Dark Knight reminded me even more strongly of another renowned crime story. The new Batman movie is nothing less than a 21st century version of The Godfather Part II, in which the Caped Crusader must lose his soul in his attempt to achieve the greater good.
Batman (Christian Bale) and police Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) have Gotham City’s crime families on the run, having dried up most of their finances. Then, a new figure arrives on the scene who makes even criminals’ blood run cold. Determined to reveal Batman’s identity, the Joker begins a crime wave so terrible that Bruce Wayne begins to doubt himself. He believes that another man, crusading district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), may be better equipped to deal with Gotham’s ills.
Nolan’s movies always look great, but The Dark Knight reaches new heights of visceral excitement, especially since Nolan filmed parts of the movie using IMAX cameras. One of the IMAX scenes, with the camera swooping high over a city, actually made my palms sweat, even through my feet were touching the floor.
It seems that a backlash of sorts has developed against WALL-E, my absolute favorite film of the year.
After the initial flurry of raves (including my own) I’ve sensed an increasingly vocal dissatisfaction with Pixar’s latest film - most of which I can live with. If you think it’s too arty, or that the second half is heavy-handed, or that the movie is (shudder) boring, I will fiercely disagree with you, but allow that you are entitled to your opinion.
However, there are a couple of complaints about WALL-E that I simply cannot abide. Some people grumble the film is an anti-global warming tract, an animated version of An Inconvenient Truth. Other have been aghast that the movie denigrates obese people.
Wrong! Factually, provably, wrong!
It’s all too easy to dismiss the stupid global warming accusations. Obviously, WALL-E has a green message on its mind, but it’s not about global warming. If people would bother to pay attention to the movie, they would see that the dominant energy source on Earth is solar power. Greenhouse gases seem to be long gone, not that it got us out of trouble.
No, what has desolated the Earth is massive littering. A newspaper WALL-E rolls over bears the headline “TOO MUCH TRASH.” The planet became so covered with it, we killed the plant life and had to leave. Some people scoff at this notion too, but anyone who doesn’t think we humans are a wasteful lot hasn’t looked by the side of the highway lately. And anyone who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to live a little cleaner than we’ve been doesn’t have his ducks in a row.
The complaints that WALL-E ridicules the obese are even more troubling. It’s simply not true.
So has anybody seen the trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua yet? If so … I’m so sorry.
And lest anyone think I’m being unconscionably mean to a kids’ movie, rest assured, I am not alone. The New York Times wrote this very amusing story about the mortified reactions several people have posted on YouTube.
One aspect the story doesn’t go into detail about is who made this masterpiece to be. The director is Raja Gosnell. He has more than a passing familiarity with cinematic dogs, having directed both Scooby Doo movies. (I’ll let you decide if that’s a double entendre or not.) The cast includes Drew Barrymore, Salma Hayek, George Lopez, Cheech Marin and Edward James Olmos, who should all know better.
One of the writers is Jeffrey Bushelll, who has written TV shows like Zoey 101 and What I Like About You. The other writer is Analisa LaBianco, who has no other credits, so I’m going to guess she’s 3 years old and needed Bushell to get her ideas in script format.
This is my favorite of the YouTube reactions. Clip may be NSFW, depending on your boss’ tolerance for bleeped language.
Comment away, if you’re still conscious after seeing the trailer.
So there’s a new movie musical coming out Friday, but you’d never guess it from the previews.
It’s Mamma Mia, whose ads make it look like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but Actually in Greece This Time! However, people familiar with showbiz know the title is a musical featuring the songs of ABBA.
So yes, Meryl Streep sings! And so do Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard! And I believe some of them dance too!
So why is Universal trying to hide that fact? I haven’t seen a single ad with anything resembling a musical number. If there is such an ad, it hasn’t been shown much. And that makes no sense to me.
Paramount took basically the same tact with Sweeney Todd last year, obscuring the fact that Johnny Depp can carry a tune - and quite well, at that. But as dishonest as that strategy was, it was understandable. A certain segment of Johnny Depp’s audience believes that if they get stuck at a musical, they will no longer be able to breed. And given the mindset, maybe that’s all for the better.
However, Mamma Mia’s target audience is predominantly female, and women usually have not been so quick to reject musicals as men. I’ve heard more than one person refer to Mamma Mia as “this year’s Hairspray.” Hairspray was a big hit last year - and that film didn’t hide the fact that it was a musical at all!
So I don’t get it. Do you? Did you know Mamma Mia was a musical? And now that you do, does that make you more or less inclined to see it?
I wasn’t a great fan of the original Hellboy, but I am definitely a great fan of Hellboy II: The Golden Army.
The 2004 film was wild and original, but maybe a little too original for its own good. More than anything else, it struck me as a weirder, loopier version of X-Men. It was too caught up in being offbeat and not caught up enough in making me care about the characters.
That error has been mostly rectified in this wildly thrilling follow-up. Watching it, I got the sense that the first time around, Director Guillermo del Toro held back somewhat, and for whatever reason, his vision didn’t reach full flower. It has this time around, with a vengeance.
Since the first movie, del Toro’s stature has grown. The ads state that the movie is “from the visionary director of Pan’s Labyrinth.” That’s not to say that this sequel is equal to the genius of Pan’s Labyrinth, but it is to say that film gave the director more freedom on Hellboy II, allowing his imagination to run wild.
It runs so wild, in fact, that I can’t fully explain the plot without sounding silly, so I’ll boil it down to the essentials: An evil prince (Luke Goss), wanting to wage war on humans for long-ago misdeeds, plots to reawaken the immense mechanical golden army. He needs a certain piece of a crown to do it, but his twin sister, (Anna Walton), wanting to keep the peace, tries to shield it from him. Enter Hellboy, (Ron Perlman), the ultimate bodyguard.
Why do a 10 best list when the year’s only half over? Simple. It’s to give some quality films from early in the year their due. They may not be good enough to end up on a 10 best list at the end of the year, but they’re certainly good enough to warrant a little extra attention.
The list also serves as an interesting primer for what will come at the end of the year. Which movies will be strong enough to stay here?
Keep in mind that I’m counting movies that opened in the Dayton area this calendar year, even though they may technically be 2007 films.
10. The Spiderwick Chronicles: Amid the glut of fantasy films lately, this one kind of got buried in the mix, which is too bad. For my money, it’s better than either of the Narnia films.
9. The Bank Job: Jason Statham stars in an action movie with a brain! Wow!
8. Forgetting Sarah Marshall: The Judd Apatow movies not actually directed by Apatow have been a mixed bag, but this one was easily the funniest of the lot.
7. Persepolis: I found this highly acclaimed animated film a bit overrated, due mainly to the abrupt ending, but there’s no denying its unique vision and biting humor.
6. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: A delightful throwback to 1930s style screwball comedy. And yes, the presence of a certain Amy Adams helped earn it a spot here.
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The Caped Crusader, a truely sick villain and stuff blowing up — sounds like the ingredients for a summer action blockbuster. Christian Bale and director Christopher Nolan return to continue Batman's war on crime in Gotham. This time Batman must face the criminal mastermind The Joker (Heath Ledger), who thrusts Gotham into anarchy and forces the Dark Knight ever closer to crossing the thin line between hero and vigilante.More »
For many years, Thai West in Huber Heights was the only Asian restaurant in the region that used the word "Thai" in its name and focused primarily on the cuisine. Now there are more than a half-dozen Thai restaurants in all corners of the valley — including in a few places you might least expect it. Check out these restaurants and see what the buzz is all about. More »
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While not technically a hot air balloon, The Great Gonzo does fly through the air while attached to