HollywoodandFine.com I’m not going to apologize for laughing my ass off at Seth MacFarlane’s “A Million Ways to Die in the West.” And I’m not going to compare it to “Blazing Saddles.” Yes, they’re both spoofs of westerns with their own unique brand of gross-out humor. But that’s as far …
HollywoodandFine.com When my oldest son was a tot, one of the videotapes in heavy rotation on our TV was the cartoon feature, “The Land Before Time.” In it, a group of baby dinosaurs – a brontosaurus, triceratops and a couple of others – get separated from their herd during the …
HollywoodandFine.com Disney has had such a long winning streak with its animated comedies and musicals that it’s almost possible to forgive the problems with “Frozen,” which opens in Los Angeles today and in wide release on Nov. 27. Indeed, there’s not a lot wrong with “Frozen”: The animation is state-of-the-art, …
HollywoodandFine.com Randy Moore’s “Escape from Tomorrow” may be the year’s most subversive film: a horrifying satire of the manufactured fun we’ve come to associate with the Disney assembly line. Make no mistake: I’m a huge fan of the shiny, witty entertainment which, for years, has been the Disney trademark. I …
HollywoodandFine.com Why would a movie studio try to stop critics from reviewing movies? It’s called a review embargo – and it seems a little self-explanatory. But still, I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss a little movie-critic inside-baseball stuff. Perhaps we can get a larger discussion going. For those …
HollywoodandFine.com Anyone who has ever been caught up in the videogame revolution that exploded in the late 1970s and early 1980s – which has all but consumed popular culture for kids and teens in the time since – should have a ball with “Wreck-It Ralph.” But you don’t need to …
HollywoodandFine.com It used to be that Disney would rerelease its old animated features on a regular schedule into theaters, reaching a new audience every decade or so with sure-fire quality entertainment that made parents cheer and kept kids entertained. That equation was upset with the rise of home video – …
HollywoodandFine.com There’s spoof that works and there’s caricature that depends on stereotype – and Bruce Beresford’s “Peace, Love & Misunderstanding” is witless caricature. Watching it makes you wonder what its creators saw in the script by Joseph Muszynski and Christine Mengert. In the world it creates, the town of Woodstock, …
HollywoodandFine.com A film that took more than four years and an extravagant amount of luck to make, “Chimpanzee” is an exceptional wildlife movie that should hold the interest of viewers from youngest to oldest. Shot in the jungles of Africa, this film by directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield focuses …