I’m really a bit of a sucker for any apocalyptic tale. Perhaps the fact is that I just know we’re done for one of these days anyway, or maybe I’d like to hear the tale of the underdog who manages to scrape through in such circumstances. Then again, maybe I feel like I’ll never have the chance to experience the Old West, and it’s about as close as I might get – though it would be at the expense of a great deal of our society to get there. Not saying that I’m the one who’d be able to save the world or anything. I just find the stories more interesting than a Utopian future is all.
Nonetheless, this one focuses mostly on a generally reluctant hero – Theo Faron (the typically under-rated Clive Owen), thrust into the role of bringing the world back from the brink of destruction when he becomes the protector of a pregnant woman. This is significant because she is the first such instance in years, and while a single pregnancy may not save the world, it does offer some amount of hope.
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Posted to
Family on December 16th, 2006 by Chad Everett
This is the telling of the Charles Dickens
classic The Christmas Carol. The only difference is that it is told by The Muppets (with a few humans thrown in for good measure, notably Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge).
On Christmas Eve, he is as crotchety as ever, and his employees – rats mostly, led by Kermit the Frog as Bob Kratchit – ask for the next day off, and reluctantly, Scrooge agrees. That night, however, he is visited by five ghosts. This differs slightly from the Dickens telling, because The Muppets needed to fit in Statler and Waldorf (Jacob and Robert Marley, respectively – only Jacob was in the original). Marley and Marley come to tell Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts this night. They also deliver one of the best songs in the show.
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Posted to
Action on May 21st, 2006 by Chad Everett
This retelling of the Batman tale isn’t quite as cool as the 1989 version with Jack Nicholson and his “Did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moon light”, but let’s be honest – if you don’t have Jack, how can it be? So keeping that in mind, it’s not bad.
Borrowing a page from the George Lucas playbook with the inclusion of Liam Neeson as a philosophical mentor to a younger hero works here, as Bruce Wayne rises from a Chinese prison to assume a role within Wayne Enterprises, the titanic corporation his father created years before.
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