George Miller, the director who made us believe that pigs could talk in the 1995 hit, Babe, is at it again with the 3D-animated Happy Feet and, from the 17 minutes of footage I saw at a press event, it looks like it’s going to take the holidays by storm.  

Happy Feet stars the voice of Elijah Wood as an Emperor penguin named Mumble, who can’t sing a heart song, the ditty that all Emperor penguins sing to find their true love.  Brittany Murphy is Gloria, the love Mumble wants to woo but can’t get because his talents lie in dancing, not singing.  When he’s finally cast out of the community by the stern Noah the Elder (Hugo Weaving), he runs into a posse of decidedly un-Emperor-like penguins called the Adelie Amigos who have a Latin bent to them and use dancing as their romantic lure.  With the help of these friends, headed by the Sinatra-singing Ramon — Robin Williams doing his best Fernando Lamas impression — Mumble tries to win his love back with a little Cyrano trick, but it backfires.  Without seeing the ending, I’m guessing that Mumbles finally wins his love by proving that you don’t have to be able to sing to be lovable. But whether the ending is predictable or not, it’s Mumbles’ fun journey finding himself that makes Happy Feet joyous.

From the footage I saw, I believe that this will be the smash hit of the holidays. The humor, especially from the perfect-pitch Williams playing two parts (he also plays a Barry White-type penguin leader named Lovelace), will make kids and adults laugh out loud, and the marvelous renditions of songs will also please all audiences.  The action sequences also appear to be fantastic and will no doubt spawn a merchandising frenzy.  

The rest of the cast is platinum as well, with Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, and Mumbles’ dancing performed by Savion Glover, using the same motion capture techniques used to bring Gollum to life in The Lord of the Rings films.  Also credited is the voice of Steve Irwin, the Australian TV star and animal environmentalist who was killed recently by a stingray off the Great Barrier Reef.  The film also features a new song by Prince and others by Yolanda Adams, American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, Chrissie Hynde, Patti LaBelle, kd lang, Pink, and more.

I give credit to everyone working on the film, from the writers to the animators.  A lot of times, they put all the good stuff into trailers and, when you go see the movie, it’s a bomb. But even if the rest of the film is slightly worse than the 17 minutes that I saw, I still think it will be a great family film you can’t miss.  My five-year-old daughter who joined me at the screening can attest to my claim.

George Miller claims this film was in production before The March of the Penguins came out of the blue to become one of the most successful documentaries of all time, but it certainly can’t hurt the prospects of this film.  Happy Feet I’m sure will be around through the holidays.  I think the buzz is growing because, over a month out, the studio is starting to run ads on television.  I think they know they have a big hit on their hands and they want to make sure everyone else knows that, too.  I’m doing my part to help them out.

Happy Feet is released by Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures and opens November 17 in theaters everywhere.

Rich Burlingham

Lost beneath the din of accusations of Islamophobia and anger directed towards the Pope during the past week was one of the more curious and tasteless specimens of racism: Dennis Mitsubishi had planned (and has now withdrawn) an advertisement declaring “jihad on the U.S. auto market. The auto dealer, as parts of its “jihad,” would offer  “Fatwa Fridays,” during which sales representatives would distribute toy swords to children.

The Ohio Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations complained publicly and successfully to have the planned radio advertisement cancelled before it ran. Dennis Mitsubishi of Columbus, Ohio, offered a whimpering apology: “A large number of people have contacted us. Lots of them have seen the humor we were trying to convey, but far too many were clearly bothered by it. This was simply an attempt at humor that fell short.”

The Pope’s statement risked being misconstrued, divorced of its context, and mindlessly repeated for shock value; Dennis Mitsubishi’s planned ad would have simply propagated racism and bigotry.

Mimi Hanaoka

I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims… These, in fact, were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought… I hope this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was, and is, an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with mutual respect.

— Pope Benedict XVI, apologizing for the now widely publicized comments he made during a lecture in Germany last week.

The Pope quoted the 14th-century emperor Manuel II Palaeologus during the speech he delivered to scholars at the University of Regensburg, and he presented some of the Byzantine emperor’s comments about the relationship between religion and violence.  Critics, screaming accusations of Islamophobia, have leapt onto the Pope’s quotation of Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, during which the emperor declared his belief that the promulgation of faith was incompatible with violence: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Taken out of its academic context and bandied about piecemeal, the Pope’s comments have had a disastrous effect — churches were shot at in the West Bank and Gaza, a 70-year-old nun was shot dead in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, and livid protestors demonstrated in India, Turkey, and in the Iranian holy city of Qom, where cleric Ahmad Khatami addressed the massed protesters. While the Pope is certainly more than an a pure academic, to strip him of any claim to intellectual discourse would be to reduce him to an ineffectual figurehead.  

Mimi Hanaoka

I’ve been a fan of Project Greenlight since its inception a few years ago, spearheaded by Live Planet, a company created by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Chris Moore.  If you don’t know, PG is an Internet contest for inspiring filmmakers and allows the winners of both a screenplay and directing contest to make their own movie, low budget of course.  To finance the contest, Live Planet sells the rights to air a reality show that follows the making of the film — full of drama as the novice filmmakers are pressured to perform in front of millions of viewers.  

The first two films that came out of Project Greenlight weren’t big successes and only moderately well received by critics.  The third installment of the contest/TV series gave us a unique director in the form of John Gulager, a schlep of a guy, 40-something, introverted but with a great visual eye.  He comes from a family of show people, with an acting father whose credits seem to include almost every show on television during the 60s and 70s.  Gulager won the contest because of his talent, certainly not because of his personality (Matt Damon was his champion).  But it was his stubborn, family-oriented, and determined qualities that not only made him interesting to watch and root for during the airing of the TV series but allowed him to work within the confines of the mini-studio system to make a great film in an oversaturated genre.

The winning script, Feast, was written by the team of Patrick Melton and Marcus Dustan as a big tent pole, horror action picture that would have cost on the high side of $40 million if changes were not made from the original winning script.  Dimension Films (part of the Weinstein Company) only gave them a few million and they picked up some more cash from Vegas hotel magnates the Maloof Brothers, but even so, the script had to be pared down tremendously for this production.  The writers did an excellent job, and I can’t see how throwing more money at it would have made the film better.  The low budget made the writers and director Gulager use more Hitchcockian techniques that create more tension from what you don’t see than from anything very graphic. Though, the faint of heart are advised to stay away from this film because there is plenty of gore, blood, and guts flying every which way you can imagine.

Feast isn’t a remarkable film and has many flaws, but considering it was made with a bunch of cameras capturing all the scrapes, scuffles, and tiffs that go on during the production of any movie, the filmmaking team did a fine job.  The film depicts a night in the middle of the desert as a clan of cannibalistic creatures of unknown origin descends to have dinner at a run-down roadhouse.  The only thing is, they have a penchant for human flesh.  It’s up to the low-lives, drifters, and wayward drunks to try to stay alive, barricaded inside the bar as the creatures try every means to get inside and eat them. Gulager smartly doesn’t take any of this quite seriously and, though the characters are serious, the tone of the film winks at us in the audience to let us know it’s okay to chuckle.  Those who love the thrill ride of such horror slasher films as this won’t be disappointed for there are plenty of scary moments that make you jump out of your seat.

Having watched the TV series, then the film, and finally interviewed the director, John Gulager, I am more impressed with the film than I thought I would be.  I am certainly not a big fan of gore-fest horror films but, because this one has fun while the blood splatters, that makes it okay to watch.  I had some problems with the editing and flow of the scenes, but knowing how they needed to cut here and change there from direction of the studio and the test audience reactions, it’s understandable that a low-budget film would have such problems.  If you like horror films and gory ones at that, then Feast is the perfect date night film (if you’re trying to get your girlfriend to grab on to you or hide her face in your chest).

Feast will be released as a midnight movie on September 22 and 23 across the nation.  It’s scheduled to come out on DVD on October 17 just in time for Halloween.  The film stars Balthazar Getty (Alias), Henry Rollins (The Henry Rollins Show), Jenny Wade (8 Simple Rules), Krista Allen (Paycheck), Judah Friedlander (Zoolander), and Clu Gulager (Wagon Train, The Gambler) with a cameo by Eric Dane (X-Men, Grey’s Anatomy).  I urge you to go to the theater to watch the film in support of Project Greenlight.  Maybe a strong showing at the box office will help keep PG going in the future.  The film is rated R for obvious reasons.

Rich Burlingham

Honor killings — in which a family member murders another member of the family for ostensibly disgracing the family — are justified, according to 10 percent of young British Asians. The BBC’s Asian Network reported that in its survey of 500 British Asians, aged 16 to 34 and including Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and Muslims, 10 percent of the respondents said that they would condone an honor killing in their family.

Although there are officially only 13 honor killings in the UK per year, there are undoubtedly other successful or failed attempts that go unreported. The gory case of 25-year-old Samaira Nazir’s murder at the hands of her brother and his cousin brought to light the phenomenon of honor killings in Britain. Azhar Nazir and his cousin Imran Mohammed took four knives to Samaira Nazir’s throat and body and stabbed her to death with her father’s complicity. Azhar Nazir’s two daughters, aged 2 and 4, were forced to watch and were covered in blood when the police arrived. Samaira Nazir was murdered for asking to marry an Afghani asylum seeker.

Mimi Hanaoka

Since its release, An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary chronicling Al Gore’s quest against global warming, grossed $22,409,945 in the U.S. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby has grossed $127,806,521. Inherent in these numbers is Al Gore’s point: indeed there is something inconvenient about global warming and the truth in general — it is easier to ignore. Titled aptly, response to the movie shows that the truth isn’t sexy, funny, or a snake on a plane, and the public doesn’t care, more content to plod along in a land of digital cable, high-speed Internet and fast-food restaurants.  

But, it isn’t just a lack of entertainment value that makes the truth inconvenient. Box office numbers scream a larger problem, the reason why the truth is most inconvenient, not to the people in the theaters but the people who own them; the truth doesn’t sell, it doesn’t make money. Thus, I would like to ask a question, a question that might have an inconvenient answer.

Since 1981, more than 25 million people have died of AIDS. Each year, five million people are infected. According to UNAIDS/WHO data, there are over 39 million people living with HIV/AIDS right now.

Why hasn’t a vaccine been discovered yet?  

It is entirely possible that the science is not there yet. But, maybe that is too convenient an explanation. On February 9th, 2006, The New York Times reported a 45 percent fourth-quarter increase in profits for GlaxoSmithKline. The profit for the quarter was $1.96 billion with revenue at $10.33 billion. GSK manufactures and sells six types of anti-retroviral drugs and the average cost for a years’ worth of AIDS medication is $15,000. GSK is only one pharmaceutical titan. Combined, the market for AIDS medicines is a multi-billion dollar business. Maybe it is more profitable for enormous pharmaceutical companies not to find a vaccine for HIV.

Consider the response to avian flu where there is no market in treating the disease but an ever inflating one for a vaccine. As an airborne disease, there is certainly a need for this vaccine, but the market is waiting to be monopolized without any threat to current market shares. Since 2003, the H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed 140 people. Today, 6,000 people under the age of 24 contracted HIV.

Maybe the science is not there, or maybe the truth is inconvenient.

Aaron Charlop - Powers