dmz does the movies: Mission Impossible and The Muppets
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is pretty much what it says it's going to be -- nicely executed set pieces strung together by the flimsiest of plots. I haven't seen the others, but I get the feeling they are exactly like this, except without Jeremy Renner. Simon Pegg is fun, as always, and Paula Patton is pretty, which is for the best because she doesn't seem to be able to do much other than be pretty. But the movie is very good at being what it is: somewhat mindless entertainment accessorized by cool toys. It is mindless and it is entertaining and the toys are cool.
The Muppets is very self-aware, generally to its betterment. The constant meta is neither here nor there, but where the movie actually succeeds is in negotiating an extremely tricky viewership divide. The most successful kids entertainment appeals to adults on a different level than it does to the little people, but The Muppets has the additional sand trap of almost all of those adults having grown up with the source material and having very firm beliefs and opinions and cherished memories of it. (I'm old enough to have had the original episodes taped for me on Betamax.) The film succeeds in not only being clever in adult ways -- without being untrue to the Muppet ethos -- but also in celebrating the history and nostalgia without making the entire enterprise look like a way to milk cash from Gen-Xers and yet still appealing to actual little kids.
The cameos are good fun (granted, I was at a screening where there was a bigger reaction to Mickey Rooney than Selena Gomez) and Chris Cooper is pretty great as the villain. The Muppets themselves look good and largely sound and act like themselves and the songs are going to end up on the short list for the Oscars.
And you really don't realize how much awesomeness there is in The Swedish Chef channeling Scarface until it happens.
... I'm part of the crowd that got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. I'm still learning how to use it (and what's up with Amazon not including a cable to connect it to a computer and then telling me that the only way to update the software is to connect it to a computer?) and there have been a few glitches with DRM protocols insisting that the book I just bought from Amazon is not mine to read, but overall, I like it thus far. I'm not sure I'm going to commute with it, but that's a decision to be made once it has a case and can safely leave the house. In the meanwhile, I can read fanfic and watch Netflix in bed without dragging the laptop around.
The Muppets is very self-aware, generally to its betterment. The constant meta is neither here nor there, but where the movie actually succeeds is in negotiating an extremely tricky viewership divide. The most successful kids entertainment appeals to adults on a different level than it does to the little people, but The Muppets has the additional sand trap of almost all of those adults having grown up with the source material and having very firm beliefs and opinions and cherished memories of it. (I'm old enough to have had the original episodes taped for me on Betamax.) The film succeeds in not only being clever in adult ways -- without being untrue to the Muppet ethos -- but also in celebrating the history and nostalgia without making the entire enterprise look like a way to milk cash from Gen-Xers and yet still appealing to actual little kids.
The cameos are good fun (granted, I was at a screening where there was a bigger reaction to Mickey Rooney than Selena Gomez) and Chris Cooper is pretty great as the villain. The Muppets themselves look good and largely sound and act like themselves and the songs are going to end up on the short list for the Oscars.
And you really don't realize how much awesomeness there is in The Swedish Chef channeling Scarface until it happens.
... I'm part of the crowd that got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. I'm still learning how to use it (and what's up with Amazon not including a cable to connect it to a computer and then telling me that the only way to update the software is to connect it to a computer?) and there have been a few glitches with DRM protocols insisting that the book I just bought from Amazon is not mine to read, but overall, I like it thus far. I'm not sure I'm going to commute with it, but that's a decision to be made once it has a case and can safely leave the house. In the meanwhile, I can read fanfic and watch Netflix in bed without dragging the laptop around.