Film & BooksIssue: Leo 07
Ratatouille − Rest Assured, This Film Will Satisfy
Even if you don’t have kids, go see “Ratatouille,” the latest animated film from Pixar. Totally entertaining and visually transporting, this movie is a winning combination of fantastic writing and flawless animation. If you do have kids, take them, and all of you will be transfixed.
“Ratatouille” is the story of a rat named Remy (Patton Oswalt) who isn’t satisfied eating garbage with the rest of his rat family. For better or for worse, his tastes are much more refined, and when he accidentally gets washed down a sewer pipe into the heart of Paris, France, he finds his calling in the kitchen of his favorite chef, Gusteau. Suddenly, a young man named Linguini (Lou Romano) enters the kitchen looking for a job. With gourmet lineage and absolutely no cooking skill whatsoever, Remy and Linguini pair up to help each other out. This crazy partnership almost pays off, but the last challenge of the film is to face Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole), a vitriolic food critic who is able to shut restaurants down with his reviews.
Perhaps homage to one of my favorite films, “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” where rats are cooking in the kitchen of the diner where Kermit the Frog gets a job, this is such a fun story! Plus, the animated kitchen scenes in “Ratatouille” appear so real, with so much detail, that the lay viewer can actually learn a little about the culinary world. And, serious adult situations paired with some very good physical humor made me laugh and cry for poor Remy who only wants to be true to himself and not just be the rat his father expects him to be.
Written and directed by Brad Bird, who has consulted on and directed several Simspons episodes and who wrote and directed “The Incredibles” is now poised for some very fawning press and awards. Film critics everywhere are praising this film − and perhaps also seeing a little of themselves in Anton Ego. 
Film & Books Archives (total entries: 29)
Capricorn 08 - The Career Issue
Sagittarius 08 & Honest Self Expression
Like real life-families who have a member struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, the focus of “Rachel Getting Married” isn’t on Rachel, even though it should be. It is on her narcissistic sister, Kym, who is out of rehab for the weekend to attend Rachel’s wedding.
Scorpio 08 - The Money Issue
At a time when our nation’s security is in question and our economy is in shambles “The Good Society: The Humane Agenda” by John Kenneth Galbraith has much to teach the abiding liberal as well as the dutiful conservative.
Honestly, I have never been one for self-help books, but what I liked most about "How We Choose to Be Happy" is that it celebrates the wisdom of a variety of literary greats balanced by the stories of ordinary people.
This book won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for good reason. I started the “The Great Man” on Saturday morning and had to finish it by lunch the next day. When it started to rain I traded my lawn chair for the couch and kept on reading. This novel is fabulously funny, mischievous, and easy to read.
A quirky look at boyhood and film-making in the 1980s, “Son of Rambow” is a welcome diversion from the current deluge of blockbuster remakes and super hero epics in theaters this summer. Written and directed by Garth Jennings and produced by Nick Goldsmith, I like the way this film spins a standard, winning movie formula at a slightly awkward angle.
Although “The Maytrees” by Annie Dillard is marketed as a novel, it reads from beginning to end as a poem. Like body surfing, the poetry will move emotions in directions that the mind may not understand. When this wave brought me to shore, I needed air and I wasn’t quite certain where I had been or where I had landed, but I was, in the truest sense of the word, in awe of the experience I just had.
April and May are notoriously bad months to go to the movies. The Academy Award hopefuls of 2008 won't be released until the fall, and the summer blockbusters won't be out for a few months. So what is a film reviewer to do when all the movies in the theaters are lame? This reviewer is going to suggest that you catch up on the best movies of 2007!
After an unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, Greg Mortenson stumbled into the village of Korphe in Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalaya region. The generosity and hospitality of the Korphe villagers inspired Mortenson to establish the Central Asia Institute (CAI). Since the establishment of CAI ten years ago, the organization has built 55 schools serving Pakistan and Afghanistan’s poorest children, especially girls.
Based on Marjane Satrapi's books, the film “Persepolis” tells the poignant story of a young girl coming of age in Iran in the midst of revolution and war.
