enthalpy

Thursday, November 11, 2004


For once, I'm inclined to agree with The New York Times, at least with this review of the latest 90 minute ADHD ego-stroke for Tom Hanks is concerned. [via Althouse]
It's likely, I imagine, that most moviegoers will be more concerned by the eerie listlessness of those characters' faces and the grim vision of Santa Claus's North Pole compound, with interiors that look like a munitions factory and facades that seem conceived along the same oppressive lines as Coketown, the red-brick town of "machinery and tall chimneys" in Dickens's "Hard Times." Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.
Ouch. What every kid wants to see this Christmas! An airborne scrotum!

But I can only imagine that it's right on the money. I don't really understand the appeal of these cartoons that cost a million dollars for each minute of screen time.



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