Madagascar

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[“Madagascar” poster art] Disappointing.

Not awful, but disappointing.

The problem is that this film has been done before, in a hundred different ways, and better. The animation is smashing, of course, and the timing, art direction, etc, etc is all slick as you would expect for a big-budget animated movie. It’s just really uninspired.

What I saw as its core problem was that it doersn’t do anything interesting with the talking-animals idea. Are they animals or are they people? The film can’t make up it’s mind. On the one hand they’re zoo-animals-as-comment-on-New-Yorkers, which is all very witty, but on the other hand, when they’re released into the wild, the lion can hardly restrain his urges to eat his friends (except that he converts to a nice fish-based diet at the end—sorry, that’s the plot I’ve just given away).

Now if they’re really animals, I don’t buy the lion’s friendship with the zebra; if they’re really New-Yorker-proxies, I don’t buy the cannibalism. The film just doesn’t commit. And having watched Finding Nemo, I can’t see that eating fish is so much more moral than eating zebras.

You see, Jungle Book worked in that respect, because the ‘personalities’ of the animals fit reasonably well to their natural behaviour. Even The Lion King with its artifical notion of lions peacibly ruling the other animals on the veldt had a certain kind of mystical logic (even if it was never particularly clear in The Lion King whether the lions actually ate their subjects…) However, this film tries to have it both ways and for that reason loses its tension.

Still, the penguins are very funny. The penguins are there as obvious comic relief… and they are genuinely funny, in a Marx brothers, slap-about sort of a way.

Best to skip Madagascar and watch Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of The Ware-Rabbit instead—that film has an accompanying short, featuring the penguins from Madagascar, so you get one tremendous film plus the best bits from a mediocre film for the price of one.

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

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[“Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of The Ware-Rabbit” poster art]

Sublime, sublime movie. A classic in its own lunchtime. A classy old English comedy, rivaling the best of what Ealing had to offer, with knockabout action sequences which, in a fair world, would make Will Farrell give up and go home. Wordplay worthy of Wodehouse. A script which makes you care about the characters. To top it all, this film even managed to beat Peter Jackson to the punch: in many respects it is a King Kong for our time.

If you haven’t seen Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of The Ware-Rabbit, you should make it a life priority.

Basically this is a return-to-form for Wallace & Gromit after the not-awful-but-not-exactly-inspired A Close Shave. It’s as good as The Wrong Trousers, for many of the same reasons; it has a similar B-movie-schlock tone mixed in with the comfortable-England slippers-and-garden-shed-invention. The ill-starred good-intentions of Wallace set against the unsung nobility of Gromit.

Gromit really is the architypal Brittish hero. If it were Holywood, Gromit would not only save the day, but receive the plaudits and win the girl-dog at the end. As it is, his pluck and stoicism win the day and he goes completely unrewarded. What a dog.

Mary Queen of Scots Gets Her Head Chopped Off

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Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off/
Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off.

There, I’ve spoilt the ending for you, but you may enjoy watching the play anyway, if that’s your bag.

23–26 November 2005, Gilmorehill G12 Theatre in Glasgow. There’s more information, blurb, cast list, etc at:

http://pantheontheatre.co.uk/mary/

It’s a good cast, and a very interesting script. Not literally historical, but based around scenes representing a particularly ill-fated 3 years of Mary Queen of Scot’s reign, from the point at which she had established herself in Scotland, to after her disasterous marriage to Darnley, when it was all starting to go seriously downhill.

Written by the very quirky Liz Lochhead, directed by the very incisive Tri Cumming and staring the very talented Karen Bartke (Mary) and Danelle Egan (Elizabeth). And me (as Knox).

Bad Religion

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Heaven

On Andrew’s Mental Dribbling we attempt to answer the big philosophical questions, like ‘Does God Exist?’ and ‘Does He Have A Beard?’ Or, if not answer them, at least defer them to an authorititive source. Or, if not defer to an authoritititive source, at least quote (third-hand) a random sample of Americans from a (possibly fictitious) poll:

A new H-Net/Fritz media poll reveal that 96% of Americans who believe in God also believe that God has a beard. Of those people, 89% believe that God’s beard is white, 2% believe God grew his beard (and therefore at some time did not have a beard), while 94% believe that God has always had a beard and has never been clean shaven. 10% of Americans do not believe in God. The Reverend Brendan Powel Smith, July 2005

I think we can all agree that the matter of God’s beardiness is ultimately a matter of faith. Clean-shaven or hirsute, Jehovah’s facial hair is not a matter which can be settled by rational debate. However, quite clearly, God does not have a moustache.

Hell

…And how to get there

www.entrances2hell.co.uk

A marvelous site. Very funny. Impossible to summarise. (Okay, it’s not impossible to summarise, but you’ll enjoy discovering it for yourself, I promise.) Read the ‘letters’ page for a laugh-out-loud potpouri of admiration and flumoxed literalists.

…And what you’ll see when you do

Dial-The-Truth Ministries’ The Truth About Hell

One of these religious nutcase sites where it’s not entirely clear whether they’re serious or not , but where the sparcity of gags makes you fear that, actually, they’re for real. (“Halloween comes from ancient Baal rituals that practiced human sacrifices of children!”, “Katrina: Mother Nature or the Wrath of God?”)

…But what you probably won’t hear

There was a widely-circulated Internet legend a year or two back, claiming that Siberian scientists had recorded audio of screaming damned souls, literally from Hell, after drilling deep into the Earth’s crust. You find the story repeated from time to time among the more gullible (e.g., the Dial-The-Truth Ministries site listed above). This page is a fascinating piece of investigation into the origin of the story.

Drilling To Hell—Facts

…The Truth They tried to suppress

I would like to introduce you to the world of Dr. Dino’s “Creation Science Evangelism”. It takes the somewhat dubious position that the Earth is only 4000 years old (give or take) and that the science of evolution is wrong. It also combines the irrisistable allure of Jesus and dinosaurs. (They’re pro-dinosaur, but anti-Darwin.)

I was concerned, however, that they seemed to be missing out on another oft-ignored scientific truth, that of Hell being at the centre of the Earth (see above), so I wrote them the following email:

Dear Dr Dino,

I loved the site! Really funny.

I’m surprised you’ve missed out a section on Hell in The Centre of The Earth though. http://www.av1611.org/hell.html includes cutaway diagram of Earth, clearly showing Beelzeebub’s molten home. (http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/ is pretty good too, but it’s certainly not as slick.)

They wrote back with

Thanks for the email,
The Bible does refer to hell’s physical location being in the center(heart) of the earth.
Matthew 12:40
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the {heart of the earth}. Our main focus however is on creation vs. evolution.

Bit of a disappointing reply. Wasn’t sure whether they knew I was taking the piss or whether in fact they were.

Much like Jesus’ parentage, we may never discover the truth.