Hugo Cabret Reviews

Oscar Watch: Skin I Live In Gets October Date; Carnage Goes to November ...

The earlier a high-prestige art house movie opens in the fall, the less likely that its distributor harbors serious Oscar hopes for it. In other words, if Sony Pictures Classics moves Pedro Almodovar’s retitled Skin I Live In from November to October, and slates Roman Polanski’s Carnage on November 18, it means the latter is being given the Oscar advantage. Almodovar’s kinky thriller starring Antonio Banderas met a mixed reception in Cannes. “This is not a move,” asserts SPC co-president Michael Barker. “We never set the date until now. We were always going in the Fall. It is a great date.”

On the other hand, Sony opted to open Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris right after its opening slot in Cannes to capitalize on rave reviews. It worked, as Allen’s movie has outstripped his biggest hits and is poised to return as a formidable Oscar contender. I’m also wondering when SPC will date David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method . Look at other November openers and you will see the Oscar race starting to rev up:

And then in December things get rocking: Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg’s Adventures of Tintin: Secret of Unicorn is another test of performance capture and 3-D’s strength. On the artier side of the equation is FilmDistrict’s Bosnian romantic war drama Land of Blood and Honey , marking Angelina Jolie’s directing debut. Also opening that weekend is Fox’s Cameron Crowe heart-tugger We Bought A Zoo , starring Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson and Elle Fanning, based on Benjamin Mee’s 2009 memoir.

December 28: Disney Touchstone/DreamWorks moved Spielberg’s second movie , War Horse , from August 12 to December for obvious reasons: awards potential.  “We think there’s room for a couple of holiday movies during that season,” said Stacey Snider some months back on a press call. She hopes that this “love story between a boy and his horse,” adapted by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis from Michael Morpurgo’s novel and the subsequent West End stage hit, will play well into January. “It’s a big market at that time of year.

Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Books: Book Review: THE INVENTION OF ...

Hugo Cabret is an orphan living by his wits in a train station in 1930s Paris. His most prized possession is a mostly-broken automaton, which he believes carries a secret message from his father. All he has to do is fix the machine and he will know what to do next. When he starts stealing repair parts from a toy shop, however, Hugo unknowingly sets in motion a revelation of secrets for the toy shop owner and his family. I first heard about this book from Sandy at You've Gotta Read This , and immediately knew that, yes, I did have to read it. It's like a graphic novel in that it's told with both words and pictures, but this isn't set up as a comic--it's proto-cinematic, the pages surrounded by black as if you're sitting in a theater, and includes not only illustrations, but film stills and photographs. The introduction states, "I want you to picture yourself sitting in the darkness, like the beginning of a movie," and the book is kind of like reading a movie--which sounds very awkward, but totally works. The story is absolutely charming and sweet, but also intense. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Amelie . It's all about magic and dreams, but in this case the magic comes to the characters through movies and machines such as clocks and wind-up toys. At one point Hugo says machines are always made for a specific purpose, which is why broken machines make him sad--they represent unfulfilled potential. Similarly, unseen movies created by the machine of the camera have lost their purpose to entertain and transport people to another world. I really liked the inclusion of Georges Méliès into the book, too, mainly because I already knew a little bit about him from a class I took on Cinema and Painting. In film studies, Méliès is kind of a Big Deal. According to Natasha Staller (another Natasha, yay!), Picasso was influenced by Méliès when he created his first Cubist paintings. There was also an exhibit all about Cubism's relationship to early cinema at the Pace Wildenstein Gallery in 2007. If you check out this interview Charlie Rose conducted with the curators and skip to the 19 minute mark, you can get a quick tour of the exhibit and see some clips from Méliès' movies.

The invention of Hugo Cabret, a novel in words and pictures

In the Words of the Winners, The Newbery and Caldecott Medals, 2001-2010

Creating drama with 7-11 year olds, lesson ideas to integrate drama into the primary curriculum

The fiction gateway, enriching the curriculum with children's literature

Handbook of Research on Children's and Young Adult Literature