Tuesday, November 24, 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section B · Page 5
Entertainment
Commentary
Flik the ant (Dave Foley) enlists the help of circus performers against a deadly arshromer army in the film *A Bug's Life*. The computer-animated movie is
released by Pixar, the company that produced 1995's Toy Story. Contributed photo.
Life won't bug kids or adults
By Jeremy M. Doherty Kansan movie critic
A Bug's Life manages that rarest of combinations — a kids' flick that also will entertain adults.
Children will delight in the movie's elaborate colors, cute insects and digestible story. and adults will
graphics and the wealth of celebrities providing voice talents.
Set in an ants' world where blades of grass tower above like skyscrapers and a low-flying songbird means death, A Bug's Life is a variation on the tried-and-true underdog tale.
Flik (Dave Foley) is a brainy worker ant who has a knack for inventions and for fraying the nerves of the colony elders. He also likes to bat his eyes at Princess Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who's being groomed to be queen.
The ants spend each summer harvesting seeds to appease a marauding crew of grasshoppers, led by Hopper (Kevin Spacey), a suave carver who believes that the ants' purpose is to serve him.
But Fikl's bumbling around at the seed stockpile leads to an
A BUG'S LIFE
Kansan rating:
**** out of *****
Running time: 90 minutes
Rated: G for oh-scute critters
avalanche that sends the entire harvest into the nearby creek
Hopper is not pleased. Although the rainy season soon will arrive, Hopper threatens the ants with force unless they gather another supply of food.
Flik, eager to redeem himself in the eyes of the colony, sets out to recruit an army of mercenary bugs to battle Hopper's forces. What he finds instead is an unemployed band of circus performers, including a macho ladybug (Denis Leary), a black widow (Bonnie Hunt) with a nurturing side, and a walking stick (David Hyde Pierce) who
dreams of being a master thesplan.
Director John Lasseter, an Oscar-winner for 1995's *Toy Story*, A Bug's Life creates a critters' world that maintains a distinctly human touch. Filk ventures into an insect city where mosquitoes drink Bloody Marys at bars, and homeless bugs hold signs that read "My kid pulled my wings off."
The biggest laughs come at the end as a reel of outtakes accompanies the closing credits and shows the insect "actors" flubbing their lines and cutting up.
A Bug's Life isn't going to cure society's ills, and it's too slight to be considered for year-end awards. What the movie does do is provide 95 minutes of wholesome, family-oriented entertainment. For once, adults won't be checking their watches as the movie unfolds.
Disney feels heat from cartoon rivals
By Michael Floeman The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — How do you market Moses?
"But I've still got to sell the movie," says DreamWorks marketing director Terry Press. "I've still got to get people in."
For the animated biblical epic The Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks has shunned the usual movie merchandising tie-ins. That means no Holy Happy Meals and no action figures leading the Israelites to the Promised Land.
Thus was born The Prince of Egypt gift pack containing a CD of songs "inspired" by the movie, a storybook and tickets to the film.
DreamWorks is marketing movies differently because it's making them differently.
Toon Town is a boom town these days, with more movies and more selection.
Disney still dominates the industry. And the appealing and technically innovative A Bug's Life proves the Mouse House still has a feel for family-friendly fare.
But despite a decade or so of attempts by others to carve a niche in the animation market, rival studios believe it remains under-exploited. They say the appetite for films that break the Disney mold is obvious, given the success of the more sophisticated Antz, a DreamWorks film that has grossed $81.1 million.
"The shackles have come off of animation ... in the perception of the audience and the studios, as a one-genre medium," said 20th Century Fox animation president Chris Meledandri.
DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg has emphasized that animation is a style of movie-
Z (Woody Allen) busts a move in the DreamWorks film Antz. Movies such as Antz are carving a niche in the animation field that previously has been a Disney stronghold. Contributed photo
making, not a limitation upon it.
For the Antz follow-up, Dream-Works offers another PG-rated film in The Prince of Egypt, with a subject matter so sensitive the traditional animation marketing practices had to be scrapped in favor of the gift pack promotion.
At 20th Century Fox, animators also are eyeing the older audience after plaving it safe.
Its in-house animation operation debuted with *Anastasia*, a musical that grossed a respectable $6.5 million last year and has done well on video.
Paramount is going for a little bit of every audience as parent company Viacom taps its Nickelodeon and MTV networks for feature film material.
At Warner Bros., the studio insists it's committed to animated features, with its The King and I, out next year followed by the science fiction-based Iron Giant.
Then there's Disney, which is obviously not going away.
"We are at any cost committed to animation." Eisner said. "It is the soul and heart of our company."
Very Bad Things can't get any worse Post-production fight about Norton movie strikes controversy
Movie with drugs, gambling uses pointless stereotypes
Kansan movie critic
By Jeremy M. Doherty
Konson movie critic
There isn't anything very good about Very Bad Things.
Believe its title. This movie is very bad. Very, very bad.
Imagine a bloodier-than-usual Quentin Tarantino ticks that's missing the interesting characters or the sense of humor, and you might be close to what this drivel offers.
Written and directed by actor Peter Berg (Chicago Hope), who probably should steer clear of showbiz altogether, Very Bad Things feels like something dredged from the
imagination of a mental patient. It starts out as a mildly acerbic romantic comedy, but it gradually emerges as a film that adheres to pointless racial and gender stereotypes.
VERY BAD THINGS
The setup is simple:
Five yuppies (Christian Slater, Daniel Stern,
Jon Favraue, Jeremy
minutes
Rated: R for violence and for wasting several thousand feet of film
Piven and Leland Orser) head to Vegas for a weekend of booze, cocaine and prostitutes. Favreau is about to get hitched to his high-strung girlfriend (Cameron Diaz), who worries that her beau and his buddies will engage in too much sinful merrymaking.
And do they. In the course of a few hours, they gamble a load of cash, trash their hotel room and kill a prostitute. When a hotel official arrives to complain about the level of noise radiating from their room, Slater's character decides that, gosh darn it, he'll have to kill him as well.
Then we get an extended, unfunny sequence in which our five protagonists head to the local hardware store and load up on saws and shovels. Why? The better to dispose of the bodies with, silly. This is one of those movies where a guy slips and falls into a pool of blood, and we're supposed to find it funny.
For some reason, Berg chose to make the prostitute an Asian-American, and the hotel official that Slater kills is an African-American. They're the only minority characters in Very Bad Things. We have here essentially is a story about five white guys who kill a woman and a black man who gets in their way. If that was supposed to be funny, then the joke was lost on me.
Slater, eyebrows wiggling and hairline receding, more or less plays an older version of his psychopath from Heathers. Diaz's shrill performance hints that her comic touch in There's Something About Mary was a fluke. All the other performers look embarrassed to be trapped in Berg's nightmare world.
As they should be.
Jeremy Piven, Christian Slater, Leland Orsen, Daniel Stern and Jon Favrouve star in the comedy Very Bad Thinas. The film was written and directed by actor Peter Berg (Chicago Hope). Contributed photo
By Mark Kennedy The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Edward Norton braces for The Question.
The actor knows it's only a matter of time before it pops up—yet again — in a discussion of his new film. And when it does, his iaw hardens ever so slightly.
Who really made American History X?
The question is unavoidable when dealing with a film that generated one of the ugliest postproduction struggles in recent years, as the star dued the director for final control.
The apparent loser, first-time director Tony Kaye, is so embittered by the experience that he vows never again to speak to New Line Cinema or Norton.
"I provided him an ambiance and a stage and the freedom for him to do his best work," says Kaye. "And he repaid me by stabbing me in the back a million times."
Norton pauses before responding
"The best thing about making a film is that they're collaborative," he said. "And the worst thing about making them is that they're collaborative."
In other words, welcome to the jungle—Hollywood-style.
It began with a gritty, profane script: A reformed white Nazi skinhead, freed from prison after murdering two black teen-agers, tries to prevent his younger brother from following in his destructive goose-steps.
Thanks to a steady, protein-rich diet, he gained 30 pounds of muscle, shaved his head, hung out with skinheads and stuck an enormous black swastika over his heart.
"The big challenge of this for me was to introduce a character who is nightmarishly awful, Norton said. "By the end, though, I wanted the audience not to be able to use the word evil because he's too completely humanized in a sad way. I wanted people to feel pain
— emotional impact, maybe even empathy — over the fact that this character has fallen so hard."
So far, so good. The film showcases Norton at his sociopathic best, a performance that recalls his riveting debut as the angelic teen-ager on trial for murder in 1996's Primal Fear.
After that, Norton did a U-turn, playing—and singing—a goofy role in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, tackling the roles of an unimposing lawyer in The People vs. Larry Flynt and a hard-core cameraman in this fall's Rounders.
The trouble began with American History X after Kaye, 46, delivered his cut of the film to New Line Cinema. Even though it reportedly scored well with screenings audiences, Kaye was unsatisfied.
He asked for — and was granted — time to make a second, shorter cut. When it arrived, the studio thought it lacked the necessary emotional punch and permitted Norton — at age 29 and lacking any directorial training — to get his own crack at it in the editing bay.
Kaye was incensed. He publicly renounced the re-edited version in a campaign that included fullpage ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.
The Kansan is hiring!
Relenting, New Line permitted Kaye a number of weeks to come up with an acceptable version. When the deadline elapsed, however, Kaye showed up empty-handed.
New Line, tired of waiting and having already missed several delivery dates, decided to release the so-called "Norton cut." Kaye demanded that his name be removed from the final product. The studio declined.
Kaye says the crippled version of his film is a huge embarrassment. He holds Norton mainly responsible.
Norton, who insists his version of the film changed Kaye's original vision by no more than 5 percent, says he's more shocked that the studio indulged the director.
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