**** 1/2 (out of 5)

It seems that Pixar and Brad Bird (Director) can do no wrong. His previous Pixar effort, ‘The Incredibles’, is still one of my favorite super-hero movies and his animated ‘The Iron Giant’ ranks in my top 20 all-time best family films. He strikes gold again with Ratatouille, a movie about a rat with a passion for food and a dream to become a chef.

Remy is a country rat with a gifted sense of smell and taste. Food for him isn’t just a means of survival, it is a true passion. While the other rats in his pack are happy to eat garbage and are thankful for it, Remy has a more discerning palette.

For Remy, any given ingredient or piece of food he samples is akin to a composer listening to a particular musical instrument . Like the deep resonance of a violin, or the haunting etherealness of a flute, each taste of something brings to Remy an explosion of sensory fireworks. What’s more, he understands how to put these pieces together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. He is an artist, a rat chef-prodigy.

The problem of course is, he’s a rat, and people generally don’t like rats in their kitchen. His own family doesn’t understand him either. His father considers his heightened sense of taste and smell useless until he realizes it actually allows Remy to detect rat poison. His father makes Remy the clan’s official food tester thinking this will improve Remy’s spirits as well as help the clan. It helps the clan, but Remy finds it a waste of his time and talents.

Remy though, refuses to give up his dreams or passion, and this is part of the magic Bird and Pixar have become known for. They don’t make movies that try to be cute, or ‘in the know’, with a wink to the audience at their cleverness in fitting in yet another pop-culture reference (ala Shrek). They make movies that focus on character and story.

Though many of the themes of Ratatouille are common (follow ones dreams, look past differences and appearances), it touches on a few others that you don’t see too often in animated family films. One such theme explored is the idea that people who follow their passions and live by them can also become cynical and jaded after a time. In essence, these people having sought out the best there is while following their passion, begin to experience disappointment more and more frequently as they realize they may have already tasted the best cooking, heard the greatest music, saw the best film, and now just live from one letdown to another in a vain hope to once again experience greatness. It’s quite a sad concept. To begin to hate the thing you once loved. This theme seems tied loosely to one in Bird’s ‘The Incredibles’, that great artists or those with great abilities should be celebrated and revered, for through their works they have the ability to to bring us out of these cynical ennuis of the soul.

The animation is superb. From the hairs on Remy’s body, to the soft glowing glory of the city of lights, to the textures of the foods, it is all just perfect. In fact the food is rendered so well in this film you will get hunger pangs just watching it. Do NOT see this film on an empty stomach.

The characters and story are all wonderfully fleshed out, and the plot goes in directions that are surprising sometimes. After a series of events, Remy finds himself in Paris at the very restaurant of his idol, Chef Gustave. One of the plot devices concerns who the owner of the restaurant should be (Gustave died well before Remy’s arrival…partially in reaction to a poor review by food critic Anton Ego), and a lesser studio would have used the resolution of this conflict as the ending of the film, not so with Pixar which resolves this conflict around the half-way point and instead uses it as a springboard to continue the story to a much better conclusion.

As with all Pixar films, the voice talent is spot on. In particular Peter O’Toole, as the voice of food critic Anton Ego is fantastic.

There is just so much to love about this film, I could write for pages. But I’d rather you see it unfold yourself and will not go into to detail. However, one moment that comes to mind that I must mention concerns Anton ego’s character. You’ll know the scene I’m referring to as soon as you see it. I’ll just say that it will give anyone who loved the animated classic, ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’, a lump in their throat, and a tear in their eye.

Highly recommended. Just go see it.

** 1/2 (out of 5)

I must admit I have somewhat mixed emotions about this movie. On the one hand, taken purely as an action packed summer blockbuster, it delivers the goods and is quite entertaining. On the other hand, there are just too many things wrong with it to give it more than middling grade.

First, the good:

The special effects are great. Really, really great. Of course computers have always been able to render metal and rigid materials better than organic objects so the subject mater in this movie plays to the strengths of computer generated animation and it does not disappoint.

The action sequences are fast and furious and given the number of people who bite the dust, I can see why the movie almost got an R rating for violence.

Now the bad:

Everything else. The biggest problem this film has is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. It tries to be a movie for kids at times. The prologue (a voice over) sounds like it came right out of one of the Saturday morning Transformers cartoons. Briefly explaining how the two races of Transformers came in being. The problem is it’s long on vagueness and short on details. Any ‘message’ in the movie is pretty much restricted to black and white good/evil archtypes. Evil means humans are lower life forms and should be killed or exploited, while good means killing people is wrong. Comic relief seems to be restricted to having the autobots speaking in 21st century pop-culture slang. Yo! Yo! Yo! Optimus is in the hizzzhaus! Yeah. Whatever.

At other times it tries to be a violent, gritty, action flick along the lines of Die Hard or perhaps Alien. The result for me was a constant cycle of tension and excitement followed by periods of eye-rolling induced groans.

Another problem the film has is many of the action sequences are cut so fast and so tight that it’s very difficult to know which transformer is fighter who. In the end it just became robots fighting robots for long periods of time.

Had the movie chosen to either be a kids flick or an adult-aimed action film, I probably would have enjoyed it much more.

The human element in the film is not bad, the two leads Sam Witwicky (Shia Le Beouf ) and Mikaela (Megan Fox) are passable, although I really had trouble understanding what Mikaela saw in Sam or why she stuck around once cars started turning into 50′ tall killbots. The best characters in the movie are actually Sam’s parents and the scenes with them are some of the funniest as well.

In the end, Transformers is fun, it’s just mind numbingly shallow and stupid…but then that’s what it’s supposed to be I guess. I’d certainly rent it and watch it again with friends or for a party, but I won’t be paying $9 to see it on the big screen again.

Most people know there is a new Battlestar Galactica, its been out for two years now and was recently named by Time Magazine as the best TV show of the year. I’ve mentioned this to people who have not seen the show and they generally react with disbelief. A remake of Battlestar Galactica is the best show on TV? Yeah right. Of course, they usually then ask me, ‘Well is it?’

Before I answer that, I’d like to give a brief personal history.

I, like many who were kids back in the late 70’s, was a huge fan of the original series. I loved most sci-fi and would also watch Buck Rogers, Lost in Space reruns, and Space 1999 each week. Looking back, all these shows (though some more than others) seem simplistic now, nothing more than black and white pseudo-drama’s with a lot of action elements. They were plot driven and relied heavily on action sequences and cliche two-dimesional characters to carry them. As a kid I loved them, but as an adult I see little worth in them other than the warm fuzzy nostalgia they invoke.

When I first heard about the plan to remake the original Battlestar Galactica I was somewhat excited. The premise of the show always intrigued me, humanities’ last chance. So I started doing some research and my initial excitement soon turned to disbelief and cynicism. I had seen some really terrible clunkers from the Sci-Fi channel, ‘The Wizard of Earthsea’ being one that really stands out, and after reading the plans the writers had for the new Galactica, all interest and excitement in the new show left me.

Starbuck and Boomer as girls!? - Typical hollywood PC mucking.
The Cylons now look Human? - A sad transparent trick to deal with the low budget of a TV series.
The Cylons were created by man? - Needless change and also cliche. Terminator all over again.

In short I wrote it off and predicted it would turn out to be complete drivel. I was wrong. Astonishingly wrong. The new Battlestar is the best sci-fi series to come out in the last decade. While I don’t watch enough network TV to judge whether Battlestar is the best show on TV, I can say with complete honesty it is the best TV show I’ve watched the last year.

The new Battlestar is not so much a true sci-fi show as much as a human drama set in a science fiction setting. Instead of being driven by plot and action, the new series is very much character driven.

This show does not depict life or the choices one faces living it in neat little packages, where the right course of action is readily apparent, where the characters see things in black and white, and where choices do not have consequences. The characters have very real flaws. They make mistakes. Their choices have long running consequences and the show does not attempt to pull any punches.

The pilot mini-series, depicts the near destruction of the human race with a darkness and grittiness that is sobering. At no time do you feel anything but tension. You do not leave the mini-series with the feeling of hope. You leave it with fear, and a very tangible sense of tradegy.

The regular season episodes only continue this trend. To say it is darker than most sci-fi shows is an understatement. The show, unlike so many other sci-fi shows does not preach to you. It does not have an overall message or agenda, and does not try to favor one side or the other. Instead it presents questions. Real question that we face in the world today.

What is evil? Asking what is the definition and nature of evil, as well as how each side in a conflict perceives the other as being evil, and then dares to ask are they? It asks if there is a god, or gods? It asks if theocracy is good or bad, is it neither? Does spirituality matter? Does it make us human? Are we, and thereore our cultures, tied so tightly to our inherent traits, so closely to our DNA or biology that we are doomed to repeat violence, greed, war, and depravity forever…that we shall be forever a flawed species? What does it mean to be human? At which point does a machine truely become alive?

The fact that it doesn’t try to answer these issues itself is what makes it special. It doesn’t push an agenda…it simply shows us viewpoints and asks us to determine why, and find our own answers to what is right or wrong.

The cast is well chosen and the acting top notch through out.

It may seem that I feel it is a perfect show, without flaws. This is not true, Battlestar has flaws, but they are so minor in comparison to what it does right as to not matter. Most of the problems relate to pacing on certain episodes. This is due partly to story arcs that often span several episodes. This means some episodes may feel lacking resolution or certain character actions left hanging. Ultimately the series answers these problems and this is not so much a failure of the show as it is a limitation of the 1 hour weekly format.

Another problem I have is with the Cylons. The cylons have created new models which look and feel human..some believe they are human (i.e. like the Bladerunner replicants). In fact they are so human that DNA tests or any type of simple test cannot tell them apart from humans. Only by looking at their makeup at a molecular level and then only by observing how those molecules react to radiation, can one detect a cylon. This raises a logic problem in my mind. If they are so close to us as humans, that their DNA looks like ours, they have blood, and tissues and no metal or wires, how can they do some of the things they do? For instance, they have super-human (or at least enhanced) strength and endurace. They can download their memories and it is hinted at that they can communicate in some basic manner with other cylons in the local (galactic) area. In one episode a cylon cuts her wrist and slides a fiber optic cable up her arm and uses it to communicate with a computer system. This was really a problem for my suspension of disbelief. Thankfully, these types of ‘plausibility’ problems are few and far between.

There are several highlights in the first season and a half. In particular I loved the fourth episode where Starbuck confesses to Adama (who is like a father to her) that she was responsible for his son’s death. The scene is rivoting. This is TV acting and drama at its best. The first years finale episode also ends with an event that if looked at objectively is cliche for a cliffhanger and is something you’d expect to learn in writing 101, yet it happens so unexpectedly, so quickly and is presented so well it literally shocks you, and I challenge anyone to tell me they saw it coming. Another episode I really liked was in the second season when they find a rough map to earth. Here, the backstory and history which the writers have been slowly revealing for the last year and a half come together beautifully in an wonderful a-ha moment. It’s the type of writing and concluding story arc one expects in a good novel, but rarely if ever sees in a TV show.

For anyone out there that avoids sci-fi shows for being too shallow, cliche, or stupid, do yourself a favor and at least give this one a chance. It is NOT a typical sci-fi show full of stupid jargon and pretty boy protagonists. It is gritty, real, and as Time Magazine proclaimed, ‘The best show on TV’