LIttle Miss Sunshine is a great film. The dialogue, characters, acting, all of it is dead-on and effortlessly poignant, and often hilarious. Go see it now, it’s absolutely worth it.

MPAA Review: Language, some sex and drug content.
Ad Exec Reviews: “Where’s Olive?”, “A family on the verge of a breakdown”, “Everyone just pretend to be normal”, “Welcome to Hell”

Where have I been the last 2 weeks? Finding someone guilty of doing terrible things to a child. It’s been an odd few weeks.

After, for a few days, hearing vague inklings about a furor over an ABC/Disney fictional drama called The Path to 9/11, then seeing it get mentions on some of my favorite sites, I decided to find out what the hubbub was all about.

Y'know what ABC and Disney? Nobody needs a fictionalized version of the attacks and the events leading up to them, especially when you’re making changes to what actual people did in actual situations that occurred only 5 years ago. And as for the assertion that the film isn’t final, and therefore we can’t comment? Riiiight. I’m sure those scenes were filmed that way for fun so the editors could scramble to change them. Tell me, why is it that Americans can’t comment on your use of their national tragedy to sell advertising slots on its anniversary? I’m curious.

Alisa and I had been looking forward to seeing The Illusionist for some time, so we made our way downtown to check it out yesterday afternoon. It’s a great rainy-day movie, as it’s based loosely on a short story (Steven Millhauser’s ‘Eisenheim the Illusionist’) which contributes to its focused and well-crafted telling. And, like most short stories I read and enjoy, it trims off the fat by creating clear characters and strong tensions to set up the delivery of the closing impact. Unfortunately, I found the closing impact to be lacking in the face of such a well-delivered and intriguing setup (about 98% of the film).