Whiz Kids Movie Review

“Whiz Kids” traces the events leading up to the most prestigious science competition in the USA. The Science Talent Search began in 1942 and currently is sponsored by Intel, the processor chip giant. The filmmakers scoured the high schools of the country looking for 16-17 year old budding scientists.

To their surprise, they found that some of the STS candidates were already working in government labs, sometime under the supervision of Nobel Prize winning scientists. Others were working in that masterpiece of American ingenuity, the basement lab. Here they toiled away, driven by curiosity and fueled by the energy of youth.

The group was winnowed down to three competitors who were chosen to tell their stories in “Whiz Kids.” Keledra Welcker’s research centered on pollution dumped into the Ohio River by her hometown in West Virginia. The pollutant is a byproduct of the Teflon manufacturing process and the corporations who make Teflon are very big and very powerful.

It is commendable that the filmmakers chose to focus on students who were not only science nerds but who were aware enough to tackle potentially dangerous political problems as well. The chief perp amongst the polluters was a firm her father worked for---a firm that was paying his pension.

Ana Cisneros Cisneros is a first generation Ecuadorian-American living with her family in Long Island, outside of New York City. Ana embodies a fierce competitive spirit. Her high school is 90% black and Latino---ethnic groups with low representation in Ivy League schools. The science competition offers her a chance at a life that is only a dream for most in her neighborhood. It offers her a chance not only for a college education but to be a leader---the chance to inspire others in addition to making a living.

Harmain Khan’s family immigrated to New York City from Pakistan and survived for a time by collected recyclable aluminum cans. He knows poverty first hand and was determined to show he could be a winner.

The film starts by introducing the STS, putting a much-needed spotlight on a part of Americana that fails in the glitz and glamour department. Once the technology capital of the world, the US is now well down the list in standardized test achievement. We fall below countries that were considered “third world” a few decades ago. Now kids from those countries are coming here and taking the place of 5th to 10th generation Americans in our most prestigious colleges and universities.

There is an entire film to be made about that issue alone; a film that investigates when and how children make the decision to pursue careers other than science and engineering. Money is certainly an issue. Business careers offer higher pay and easier college classes. Although an Ivy League business degree is a guarantee of huge paychecks for even the most unproductive business contributions, even those with lesser degrees can find their way into Wall Street and allied high paying positions.

As America defends its position as the entertainment epicenter of the world many kids chose the glamour that industry and hope the dollars will follow. For some it does but for the majority who are stuck in the minimum wage parts of entertainment they have lost the youthful edge it takes to come up the steep end of the science learning curve.

The prevalent “talent” of the three competitors seems to be driving curiosity. At a visceral level, they need to know how things work. These same students would probably make great police detectives (or great criminals). Luckily, the working tools of science are available for those who want them. It is easier to build a garage lab than to track down terrorists.

As the STS continues there is a priceless and heartbreaking sequence as the STS receiving center closes down at the submission deadline. One boy calls on the phone panicked and says he is on the way to the center. As the minutes, then seconds, tick away the boy fails to cover the last yards in his car. He is past the deadline and will not be allowed to submit. Deadlines are a part of the real world and some of these high schools students learned that lesson the hard way.

In the end, some win and some lose, but that is not the end of the story. Even those who do not win the competition end up much better off than if they had never competed. This is a sweet film that both prepares kids for the STS and motivates them. A must see for the family of the science whiz kid.

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The Last Airbender: Another bend in Shyamalan’s career

After his breakthrough with The Sixth Sense in 1999, M. Night Shyamalan’s career has been painful to contemplate. Hailed as the new Spielberg.

He has made five movies, ranging from the awkward but promising (Signs) to the ridiculous (Lady in the Water). Never content to be a conventional hack.

Shyamalan shows auteurist ambitions in his films, with themes of grief and loss of faith, when supernatural agencies intrude in ordinary lives.

The Last Airbender has been touted as a change of direction. With a hefty $150-million (U.S.) budget, it is offered as the first film in a blockbuster trilogy. The movie is adapted from Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko’s well-regarded Nickelodeon animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which draws inspiration from various Asian cultures and takes place in a world with four nations named after the elements of earth, water, air and fire.

Each nation produces a few special individuals who can “bend” their elements telekinetically – throwing fire, causing whirlwinds, moulding rocks or turning water into waves. But only one individual, a reincarnated Dalai Lama-like Avatar, can manipulate all the elements to maintain peace.

As we start the story (shot initially on the snowy landscape of Greenland), an adolescent girl, Katara (Nicola Peltz), and her teenaged brother, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), are out hunting seal when they find a glowing globe under the ice. Inside it are a giant flying bison and a 12-year-old boy in what appear to be Tibetan monk robes. The boy (Noah Ringer) introduces himself as Aang and eventually as the legendary Avatar, who has been missing for the past century after running away from his monastic school. In his absence, the elements have gone out of balance, as the Fire Nation has launched a war against the other tribes. Now, the children must unite to save the world and put the elements back in harmony. Shyamalan ran into his first controversy while the film was still in production by using Caucasian actors to play most of the characters, who were, in the original, apparently either cartoon Asians or Inuit. Actors of other ethnicities play background roles. The exception is the war-like Fire Nation, which is populated by people played by darker-skinned actors, including Cliff Curtis (Maori), Shaun Toub (Iranian) and two actors of Indian origin, Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) and a miscast Aasif Mandvi (from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show) as a seething Fire Nation general.

The puzzle of Shyamalan’s racial casting soon becomes secondary to a much more pressing concern – trying to follow the cluttered story. Like Clash of the Titans, The Last Airbender was upgraded to 3-D to cash in on the post-Avatar trend, and it offers some visual pleasures: The Fire Nation’s gnarly war ships suggest giant witches’ shoes, and the way the water particles shimmer and congeal is, the first half-dozen times, lovely.

The story is a much more serious problem, a run-on, overstuffed narrative that feels like a very long prologue for a climax that never comes. Characters have little chance to develop between the clots of exposition, and Shyamalan’s mediocre action sequences don’t add much to the emotional engagement. Repeatedly, characters perform slow-motion tai chi moves, before hurling balls of fire, walls of earth and waves of water at each other, like some overblown game of rock, paper, scissors. The young actors are often forced to stand delivering long strings of exposition, as we learn more information about the spirit world that lies beneath this one, about Aang’s background, about trouble at the Fire Nation court.

Aang is kidnapped, initially, by Prince Zuko (Dev Patel), the estranged prince of the Fire Nation, who wants to impress his father and win back his place as future leader. His ally is the sympathetic uncle, General Iroh (Toub). After that, Katara and Sokka assist Aang and take a crash course of element-bending with the world’s top experts. Along the way, Sokka falls in love with Northern Water People Princess Yue (Seychelle Gabriel), who has her own backstory about the Moon Spirit and her special relationship to spiritual carp she keeps in a cavern pool. While meditating in the cavern, Aang visits a baritone-voiced spirit dragon who advises him that he must deal with his grief issues and let his “emotions flow like water.”

This is a familiar problem with Shyamalan. When he attempts to dive deep philosophically, he comes back with a pearl of triteness. Though his pop-therapy messages have worked spectacularly at the box office in the past, at this point, The Last Airbender looks less like a career change than another bead in the director’s chain of odd disappointments.

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Imax, Disney in deal for 3 movies in 3D

Imax Corp. and Walt Disney Studios said Wednesday that they have agreed on a deal to release three more 3D movies to Imax theaters next year. The movies are "Mars Needs Moms," which is scheduled to be released next March; "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," set for release in May; and "Cars 2," which is scheduled to be released next June.

Disney had previously agreed to release five 3D films with Imax. Many moviegoers experienced Imax for the first time when they saw "Avatar," which in turn boosted both the number of the company's new repeat customers and demand for 3D films in huge-screen format. Imax shares fell 14 cents to $16.16 in afternoon trading, while shares of Walt Disney Co. rose 2 cents to $34.37.

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Movie Review The Karate Kid (2010)

It's a sign of our times. The reboot of the 1984 classic that pitted underdog Daniel Larusso against merciless bullies offers the same crowd-pleasing charm but with a contemporary twist.

"The Karate Kid" reflects both globalization and bone-crunching stylistics, packaging dislocation and violence as picture-postcard entertainment stamped in China.

Will the PG crowd enjoy the retread? Absolutely. Will parents feel conflicted about mixed messages? Probably.

Teaching children to adapt, face their fears, learn to respect others and strive for peaceful solutions are noble goals. But director Harald Zwart ("Agent Cody Banks") and screenwriter Christopher Murphey (story for "The Unsaid") litter the road to enlightenment with brutal facial bruises, kicks and snapping bones. The mantra of "No weakness! No pain! No mercy!" may overpower the movie's more admirable life lessons.

Instead of relocating from New Jersey to California, this protagonist (Jaden Smith of "The Pursuit of Happyness") and his widowed mother (Taraji P. Henson of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") move from Detroit to China. Twelve-year-old Dre's sense of loss is palpable. Clutching a skateboard like a teddy bear, the cool kid with the cornrow braids hates his new home. He doesn't understand the culture or the language, and as seemingly the only African-American kid in Beijing, he's certainly positioned as "The Other." Dre engenders sympathy even though he's got attitude and Smith often mumbles his lines or delivers them unconvincingly.

Following the original movie's narrative formula, boy meets girl (Wenwen Han in a charming debut). Boy repeatedly gets beaten up by a gang of bullies (led by Wang Zhenwei). Enter the apartment maintenance man and latent grand master of martial arts (Jackie Chan) to mentor Dre for an approaching tournament, where the underdog can face his opponents on a level kung-fu mat. Dre puts the relationship into perspective: "You're Yoda, and I'm like a Jedi."

Chan plays Mr. Han as a slouched and broken man who snaps back to life on an as-needed basis. Similar to the iconic Mr. Miyagi, he puts Dre through repetitive exercises that the student doesn't understand. Jacket on. Jacket off. Jacket on. Jacket off. Just when you're tiring of the routine, and praying that fence painting isn't up next, Han shows Dre that hanging up a jacket and kung fu are one and the same.

Lenser Roger Pratt takes the armchair tourist on a visually breathtaking journey to the Forbidden City, Wudang Mountains and Great Wall of China. He provides glimpses of ancient architecture juxtaposed with statues of Mao, bustling streets and markets, and Chinese people of all ages enjoying the outdoors.

Zwart directs the key action sequences of the climactic tournament in slow motion and with ear-splitting sound effects. Feel-the-blow violence gets star treatment -- and then instantly replayed on the venue's big screens. Only you can decide if rooting for Dre to deliver vicious strikes, kicks and throws undercuts the philosophy of kung fu or constitutes harmless entertainment. Rated PG for bullying, martial-arts action violence and mild language. In English and Mandarin with English subtitles. 2 hours, 20 minutes.

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Disney Pixar Toy Story 3 Stills

New stills have been released from the upcoming Disney/Pixar movie “Toy Story 3,” which is set to hit theaters on June 18, 2010.

In the stills you can see all of your favorite Toy Story characters who have been with us ever since the first movie, and you can meet a ton of new characters from the third and upcoming movie. Who’s excited for Toy Story 3?

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Movie review - Marmaduke dog doesnt deserve to be let out

Wouldn’t it be great if 7-year-olds could drive themselves to the movies? You could give them some money for Junior Mints or whatever, send them on their way, and never have to trouble yourself with tripe like “Marmaduke.” The kids are happy, the parents are happy, it’s a win-win.

Sadly, that’s not the way it works, and so you’re going to have to schlep to the multiplex with your 7-year-old. Because that’s who the target audience is for this talking-dog extravaganza, based on the long-running comic strip, and no one else. Adults, meanwhile, will have to endure groan-inducing puns, some seriously cheesy green-screen effects and a hokey, feel-good ending.

Tom Dey (“Shanghai Noon”) directs from a script by Tim Rasmussen and Vince Di Meglio, who also wrote the painfully unfunny “License to Wed.” We know we’re in trouble early when Marmaduke (voiced by Owen Wilson) climbs into bed with his owners, Phil (Lee Pace) and Debbie (Judy Greer), and promptly passes gas, prompting one of many exasperated, sitcommy cries of “Marma-DUKE!” Later on, there is the obligatory who-let-the-dogs-out joke.

But somewhere in there is a clever nugget of an idea: the dog park as a canine version of high school.

Once Marmaduke and his family move from Kansas to Orange County, Calif., for Phil’s new job with an organic pet-food company, the 200-pound Great Dane must learn to make friends in a totally different environment. (William H. Macy is wasted in the role of Phil’s demanding boss.) Marmaduke and the family cat, Carlos (George Lopez), prepare for their journey by watching an episode of “The O.C.” — and tooling on it appropriately — which is good for a laugh. The two characters have an amusing camaraderie.

Mazie, a tomboyish Australian shepherd voiced huskily by Emma Stone, becomes Marmaduke’s first friend and explains the various cliques to him: the pedigrees, led by an intimidating Beauceron named Bosco (Kiefer Sutherland); and the drama geeks who roll over and play dead.

Then there are the mutts, including Mazie, a Dachsund-Cairn terrier mix named Raisin (Steve Coogan) and a skittish Chinese Crested named Giuseppe (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). They’re the outcasts, the rescue dogs, and the goofy, gangly Marmaduke fits in with them just fine. But then he dares to have a crush on Jezebel, the gorgeous Collie who hangs out with the wealthy dogs and just happens to be Bosco’s girlfriend.

Wilson isn’t a horrible choice to voice Marmaduke — he’s got that laid-back thing going, which is preferable to having the dog be obnoxiously overeager — but the script has him talking nearly the entire time.

This also brings us to the small problem that the talking-animal effect — which takes place throughout the movie — looks distractingly jerky and fake. Not that cats and dogs are supposed to talk in real life, but in the movie “Cats & Dogs,” for example, the movement was seamless.

The 7-year-olds in the audience won’t know or care. But they deserve better.

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