A decade later, we’re still a bunch of kids.

After all the hype for TOY STORY 3, it should give me an actual buzz and an actual woody.
— Bill Maher, REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER, June 2010

Is it the best TOY STORY ever? Well, that’s subjective as a pudding bear on Tuesday, but TOY STORY 3 is another plastic fantastic, wild child, great escape, life and death extravaganza that should thrill Bill Maher sufficiently.

In TOY STORY 2 (1999), Stinky Pete mocked Woody, “Do you really think Andy is going to take you to college?” TOY STORY 3 is that very plot line – Andy, now a teen, is headed for college (played by the same voice actor who played him as a boy, John Morris – it’s been eleven years between sequels!). He packs Woody in his college bag (Stinky Pete was wrong!), putting Buzz and all his other toys in a bag bound for the attic. Through a mixup, the bagged toys and Woody (trying to save them) end up at Sunnyside Day Care Center for kids.

Kids who rend and rip and scream and crush kill destroy… you know, normal kids.

Cowboy Poffy

Upon arriving at Sunnyside, Andy’s toys are in Toy Nirvana. Lotso the strawberry-smelling huggy bear (voiced by Ned Beatty) welcoming them with a whole slew of new characters, including Ken (of Ken’s Dream House fame, voiced by Michael Keaton – only in our elder years do we realize what a big gay metrosexual Ken has always been, with his fake tan, his ascot, his beach pants and that big smooth patch where his tools should be).

Already suffering neglect issues, Andy’s toys embrace Sunnyside’s lifestyle of being common property playthings. Lotso tells them, “If you have no owners you can never be outgrown, never neglected!” (Ah yes, the Gene Simmons mantra against marriage.)

Best friends Woody the cowboy (Tom Hanks) and Buzz the spaceman (Tim Allen) are at odds on whether to stay at Sunnyside. Woody leaves to return to Andy, while the other toys stay – and discover not only the barbaric kids, but that Lotso runs the Center like a mafia kingpin, a big doll-baby his muscle, Ken and some monster toys his enforcers. At night, Lotso imprisons Andy’s toys (Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head, Blake Clark as Slinky Dog, Wallace Shawn as Rex Dinosaur, John Ratzenberger as Hamm) – and thus begins Woody’s quest to rescue them.

Of course, the magic of every TOY STORY is not in its synopsis, but in the execution of the movie and the depth of its characters. And cuteness. Don’t forget cuteness.

Safe to say TOY STORY 3 contains the most poignant hammers of the trilogy: themes of abandonment, of age overtaking us all, of the passing of torches, of the wonder of youth, and leaving that wonder behind…

I promised myself I wouldn’t cry…

Death comes calling. The most serious circumstance they have ever faced, as Woody, Buzz and the gang inexorably slide slowly towards an iron smelter. Unlike any threats before it, this death is unthinking, unyielding, unable to be reasoned with like a fierce dog or a bad kid, it is overwhelming. And as they struggle vainly against the relentless landslide of scrap metal, Buzz, with his arm around Jessie, looks around and sees Woody. His look is final. It says there is no way out. And wordlessly he stretches his hand toward Woody. Woody takes it. Woody looks to the Potato Heads holding each other. He reaches out to them. They hold his hand. As all the toys join hands, there is no sound, but the relentless scream of metal melting in the maw of the furnace. No words, no tears, only an abiding, crushing love between them. They are not toys any more. They are our friends. We’ve lived with them for over a decade; now we’re going to die with them.

One cute and funny deus ex machina later…

pondering metaphysics: the nature of toy consciousness.

To escape Lotso’s prison, Mr. Potato Head puts his face and limbs on a tortilla. And he is still “himself.” His parts can move discretely and retain his personality. Later, he puts himself on a cucumber! (Don’t get me started.) Likewise, Mrs. Potato Head can see through her missing eye, which is lost under Andy’s bed. So where exactly is the toy soul housed?

Though we thought we’d have to hold it in for the incinerator scene, the makers of TOY STORY 3 (director Lee Unkrich, writers Unkrich, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Michael Arndt) save the best for last and with the final scene, they hit us right in the vagina: Andy bequeaths his toys to shy, generous, tender Bonnie; just before he drives off, he turns for one last look at his beloved playthings and says softly, “Thank you, guys.”

He thanks his toys for being there as he grew up! He gave them souls, gave them the ability to have affected him as any mentor, as any friend might have. And like the promise in SUPERMAN, You’ll Believe A Man Can Cry…

And thus do we fulfill Bill Maher’s criteria: even if most of the movie is chase-action-rescue, the emotional wallops will leave you with that contact high headrush that all good movies aim for and few achieve; and let’s admit it fellas, she’s only a cartoon, but Barbie’s bangin’ butt sure does give us half a chubby…

END

Too Big To Nail.

Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win.
— Bob Baer’s SYRIANA (2005).

It’s not just about Too Big To Fail – it’s about betting on failing. And winning. And ensuring everyone else loses.

Michael Moore‘s CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY – a screed on the vampiric system of wealth-creation for the upper class and simultaneous wealth-stultification for the lower – succeeds in being even scarier than his last two incisive exposés on the political underbelly of American society, FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (2004) and SICKO (2007). It’s scarier because, unlike the problems addressed in the other two, Capitalism cannot be stopped.

Released as the United States was in financial meltdown, Moore addresses the reasons for that meltdown (many of them anti-Democratic and unrecognizable as upholding American ideals – yet claiming that they do, of course), pinpoints how key figures in government can be traced back to private enterprises which they still advocate for against the country’s better interests, exposes many of the scams corporations employ to create unethical wealth, and makes an ass of himself with his characteristic public stunts.

Thus CAPITALISM may also be the most futile of Moore’s documentaries. One point comes across loud and clear: we are so ensconced in the system that – like fish – we can do nothing about the water we swim in.

Americans have been conditioned to believe that not only is capitalism the “only” Circle of Life but also the “righteous” system that God himself approves of. The American public has been inculcated so deeply, when Moore shows us Public Announcement clips stating these exact sentiments, it seems as futile as exposing gravity. Like Rod Blagojevich’s hairstyle, it cannot be stopped or tampered with.

the crime of selling crime

Movie opens with security cam footage of bank robbers. No commentary, no narration, no judgment. Many would see this footage as metaphor for what Moore is about to show us – banking institutions robbing the public wildly, doing the same thing as these robbers in a “legalized” manner. Some might say these robbers were the cause of crime. No, they are the RESULT of crime. High “white collar” crimes that create a disparity of wealth, driving the lower classes to acts of desperation caught on security cam.

Blue collar criminals cannot even CONCEIVE of the truly malevolent nature of white collar criminals – keep in mind that white collar crime is responsible for deregulation which causes mine disasters, gas explosions, oil spills, destruction of the environment, hundreds of thousands of lives lost, citizens injured, poisoned; toxic water, billions of dollars squandered in wars, illegal payoffs, bribes, aiding enemy factions therefore indirectly murdering Americans… White collar crime is the WORST kind of crime. And white collar criminals have the audacity to create the perception that blue collar thieves stealing $500 from banks while threatening thirty people are the greatest threat to your safety?! They’re selling you this bottom rung desperation as “crime.” And that’s the biggest crime.

The top 1% in America has more wealth than the bottom 95% combined. This is not because they have an uncompromising work ethic. Nor is it because they produce valuable tangible product integral to the survival of humans. It is because they game the wealth system of the country and don’t care who or what is destroyed in the generation of that vulgar wealth.

A step towards putting these crooks away would be for laypeople to stop using the term “white collar crime” as if it means Shit-Don’t-Stink.

capitalizing on capitalism

Capitalism was sold to America in the ’50s and ’60s, and Moore rolls out the American Educational films to prove it – irritating Aryan white white white people telling us “Capitalism is Good!” Moore opines the corporate killer instinct only became prominent in the U.S. through the Reagan years. 1987’s WALL STREET didn’t help when Gordon Gekko told us “Greed is good.”

The Educational Video Republican Nazi Aryans chime in: “We know capitalism is inherently right because it is wholesome and good and compatible with God’s laws.” (!)

Cognitive dissonance: it is jarring to hear priests and bishops say capitalism is wrong – when they are beneficiaries of it. Eat my body, drink my Kool Aid.

American capitalism is a beast that is geared to kill you. It is not even a conspiracy, which can usually be stopped by lopping off its head. Capitalism has no head. Like ‘terrorism,’ it is a methodology of fear. Fear of not having enough. Feeding that fear, the corporations who run the politicians who run the people. It is no coincidence corps are called ‘entities’: craven, tentacular beasts, faceless, nameless, diffuse and untraceable, grasping, inculcating, eating us like prey. We are consumed, abused, discarded; contemptible offal.

Ponzi Poffy

We are antelopes. Corporations are lions. Antelopes and lions live side by side on the Serengeti yet there is no communication possible between them. Appealing to emotions and sympathies of corporations as if they have morals or ethics is like an antelope appealing to a lion not to eat his uncle with the gammy leg. The roles are concrete: one eats, one gets et. I’m not being sarcastic. I’m not being metaphorical. How can food be sarcastic or metaphorical?

Capitalism has the ability to convince people who are victimized by this very system to support the system.

Consider the infuriating, bald-faced lying advertisements we see today, promoting Bank of America and Scottrade and Allstate as your pals: “When a person does it, it’s called responsible. When an insurance company does it, it’s called Liberty Mutual.” And if I actually try to claim my insurance money, it’s called voice menu, red tape, abandonment, customer disservice, contractual breach…

Or sharebuilder.com fooling people into believing they own a part of the company they buy shares in: “I own my wireless company.” Sure you do, moron. “I own the world’s number one search engine.” Really? Even the owner of Google doesn’t own Google, twit. But Google – the Corporation – owns Android and YouTube and Urchin and Orion and a million other companies – which means it might even own YOU.

A BP ad: “I don’t think you can live the American lifestyle without energy.” What exactly is the “American lifestyle”? Living with your accrued savings always on the edge of being snatched from you by corporate misfeasance?

The corporations and banks are “too big to fail” because we want them to be. Deep in our selfish guts, a carrot dangles, promising that one day we too might avail ourselves of the hedonism that a capitalistic society might provide. We have come to believe the surfeit of media distracting us with hip hop cribs and Trump internships and millionaire bachelors. We know that if this system was excised from society, there would be ZERO chance of us sharing a jacuzzi with twenty topless blondes. With Capitalism, at least there’s a million-to-one chance. In DUMB AND DUMBER, when Jim Carrey is told by the hot blonde that the chance of him scoring her are one in a million, he ecstatically replies, “So you’re telling me there’s a CHANCE!”

Yes, that’s how dumb and dumber they know we are.

Toying with our emotions.

One of the best-reviewed sequels of all time, TOY STORY 2 continues the tale of the toys from Andy’s room, adding a few characters, upping the chase ante and breaking our hearts with animated toys that are better actors than people.

Cowboy Woody (voice of Tom Hanks) is stolen by Al the toy collector (Wayne Knight, still playing a blubbering fat guy – even as a cartoon!). Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) mounts a rescue mission with some of the other toys to get him back. But Woody may not want to return…

Woody turns out to be a collector’s item, completing Woody’s Roundup Gang, comprising Jessie the Cowgirl (Joan Cusack), Stinky Pete the Prospector (Kelsey Grammer) and Woody’s trusty steed, Bullseye; all awaiting shipment to a museum in Japan, making big bucks for Al.

All the principals return to voice their now beloved toys: Don Rickles as cantankerous Mr. Potato Head, Jim Varney as pragmatic Slinky Dog, Wallace Shawn as twitchy Rex Dinosaur, John Ratzenberger as impatient Hamm the Piggy Bank. And the three little green aliens find a new god in Mr. Potato Head and make “oooo” sounds at him.

In their quest, the toys enter Al’s toy store and separate, searching for Woody. They meet Tour Guide Barbie, who joins their quest, while Buzz’s nemesis, the Evil Emperor Zurg, stalks them, and is involved in the funniest STAR WARS joke since George Lucas cast Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader.

It’s ironic that the TOY STORY movies are the best feature film work of Tim Allen’s career, as he imbues Buzz with such vibrant personality and imbues his human roles with the personality of a puppet.

Buzz runs across a whole aisle of Buzz Lightyear action figures and is entrapped by one inculcated with the Space Ranger/George W. Bush credo of Imprison First with no habeas corpus. The “fake” Buzz then joins our toy friends without their knowledge, thereafter calling each toy by their obvious design: “Lizard Man” for Rex and “Vegetable Man” for Mr. Potato Head; Hamm asks, “Where’d you get the cool belt, Buzz?” “Well, Slotted Pig, they’re standard issue.”

Meanwhile, Al calls in a Cleaner on Woody. This sequence is remarkable, accompanied by mind-bending mood music, as the old cleaner polishes, stitches and refurbishes Woody, which is a good thing, but which ultimately removes his identity as Andy’s plaything. The music is reminiscent of the best cute, magical, yet ominous themes from the Disney archives, before Disney Corp became too sanctimonious to bear. (The Cleaner is voiced by Jonathan Harris – Dr. Smith from 1965’s LOST IN SPACE!)

Like the original TOY STORY (1995), Pixar Studios and the genius writers-directors (John Lasseter, Ash Brannon, Lee Unkrich among others) somehow find a way to break off a piece of our hearts, as Jessie recounts the tale of her little girl owner growing up and abandoning her for interests in ponies and boys, all to the strains of Sarah McLoughlin‘s melancholy, nostalgic When She Loved Me. It takes us back to our own childhoods and forgotten toys and carefree feelings and young friends now grown old like ourselves. “You never forget kids like Emily or Andy, but they forget you.” Every 40-year-old man becomes a blubbering baby. It’s embarrassing.

The big question on all our minds: does Woody break off his namesake in Jessie the Cowgirl, who’s a loud, raucous, game lass when it comes to tickling him and enticing him to stay with the Roundup Gang (with Filthy Pete – I mean, Stinky Pete watching out of the corner of his box)? But no – Jessie actually makes puppet eyes at Buzz in the end, leaving Woody to oil his guns on Bo Peep’s bloomers.

When Woody faces the dilemma of choosing between being a star in Japan or returning to Andy who will one day forget him, Buzz turns the tables on him, and in a mirror image of TOY STORY, Buzz emphatically chides Woody, “You – are – a toy!”

Now tell that to us weeping 40-year-olds.

END

Puts the “in” credible.

In every review of THE INCREDIBLES it has become a refrain: “This movie could have worked as well in real life.”

The Invegable

Big Bob Parr (voice of Craig T. Nelson) is a cone-shaped mountain of a guy, an ex-superhero doing time as a layperson in a world gone small – from his office cubicle to his aspirations. Married to super heroine, Elastigirl (voice of Holly Hunter), like every husband, he sneaks out at night occasionally to hang with the boys – in Bob’s case, to fight crime as Mr. Incredible with his former teammate, Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson).Bob’s two kids have inherited superpowers as well: son, Dash, super speed, and daughter Violet, telekinesis and invisibility (think: Invisible Girl from The Fantastic Four). (I’ve contacted high level geneticists to explain how the parental combination of super-strength and elasticity would yield super-speed and invisibility in offspring. But they won’t return my calls.)

This 3D-animation marvel is separated from its peers by its thematic thunder – sure, it’s loaded with the usual “family values,” but digs deeper by making the characters smart enough to ponder their roles as super beings in a mediocre world. The parents know that provincialism denotes they must keep their powers/identities hidden and their children sheltered, but the kids don’t understand why, raising Socratic questions about herd mentality and the conundrum of being “created equal” yet more gifted. Mom tells Dash, “Everyone’s special” (which is its own form of condescension) and Dash, instead of taking it like a Disney knockout punch, retorts quite logically, “Which is another way of saying that nobody is.”

This theme is echoed in the super villain Syndrome (voiced by Jason Lee), whose grand plan is to sell super powers to the public so that “when everyone is super, no one will be.”

And in a surprising tug of our tear nerves, in the midst of the action-packed finale, we see Bob’s vulnerability: He implores his wife Elastigirl to stay with the kids while he battles a giant robot. She declines angrily, accusing him of shallowness and ego, to which he replies, stuttering, “I’m not strong enough.” She, forcefully, “Strong enough? And this will make you stronger?” He retorts, “I can’t lose you again! Not again. I’m not… strong enough.” … wow… How many kids and mindless adults will miss this subtlety?… Incredible!

And when the action comes, it delivers in ways that even some of the more renowned superhero movies do not. And by this I mean, the whole group uses their powers creatively and intelligently, working together to combat their threats efficiently. Truly incredible to behold.

And of course, there is the mandatory Group Hero Pose, perfected so gaily by N’Sync during their two-month heyday. (Apologies to my more sensitive readers for using the “N-word.”)

Written and directed by Brad Bird (who does triple duty as Edna Mode, a fashion designer for the hero-conscious), the humor is wit, rather than slapstick, the heroism is moral rather than muscle-bound and the whole outlook is adult rather than kiddie – THE INCREDIBLES is as real a movie as a cartoon gets.

END

”Buzz, maybe you can help Tim Allen with his career.”

Plastic Fantastic.

Y’know, I always suspected my toys were coming to life when I wasn’t looking!

In TOY STORY, young Andy’s toys lead lives of noisy desperation come every birthday and Christmas – no one wants to be one-upped by a new addition to the toy box. Led by Cowboy Woody (there’s a BROKEBACK joke just waiting to happen), Mr. Potato Head, Rex the Dinosaur, Ham the piggybank, Bo Peep, Slinky the dog and a smattering of other playthings go about their toyish business of playing checkers, hanging around Andy’s room, and “plastic corrosion awareness meetings,” until Andy’s birthday party, when they gather expectantly around a transistor radio, listening to the reports of their toy soldier troops “in the field” (downstairs watching Andy’s gift-opening), hoping that no gift will be exciting enough to cause Andy to neglect them.

There is. His name is Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger.

Poffy Lightyear

Directed by Pixar mainstay John Lasseter, with the voice talents of Tom Hanks as Woody, Don Rickles, John Ratzenberger (forever Cliff from CHEERS), R. Lee Ermey, Annie Potts, Jim Varney and Tim Allen as Buzz (“To Infinity and Beyond!”), TOY STORY is that rara avis that succeeds on all levels – animation, storyline, character development, messages of friendship and self-realization and, most importantly, entertainment value. The fact this is a cartoon (the “first ever computer-animated feature” – just what DO we call this new wave of 3D cartoons?) is incidental. The slightly dodgy animation of the “real people” is irrelevant; TOY STORY gets the point across with or without technological finesse.

The “Disney Movie” has become synonymous with maudlin messages, redneck fundamentalism, anachronistic family values, boneheaded parents, smart-mouthing youngsters, too-hip-to-be-smart teens and insufferable pets. Though Disney’s tyrannical umbrella overarches this film’s production studio, Pixar Animation, TOY STORY somehow avoided all trace of Disney’s craven hand. It becomes doubly surprising when we consider this is Pixar’s first feature length film after years of experimentation. Right outa the gate and right outa the field.

Sure, there are “messages,” but they are heartfelt, rather than maudlin (Woody tells Buzz during Buzz’s greatest depression that it matters not what Buzz thinks of himself, what makes him important is what his owner, Andy, thinks of him); there are emotional segments, which are truly heartbreaking, rather than cheesy (when Buzz’s escape attempt lands him with a broken arm, proving he is Not A Flying Toy, the lyric, “Clearly I will go sailing no more,” launches a thousand hankies). And the portrayal of Andy’s family is Pixar’s triumphal achievement – boldly contravening Disney’s idée fixé of the 1950’s nuclear family and Norman Rockwell fantasies, one of the many incarnations of a modern family is presented: a single mother with two kids, who are neither geniuses nor monsters, just normal children, happy to visit Pizza Planet and disappointed when favorite toys are lost.

Buzz – who believes he is a real life space ranger on a mission to save the universe – becomes Andy’s favorite toy over Woody. The amusing thing is: though Buzz believes he is real, he still adheres to toy protocol of “playing inert” when humans are in the area. When he mentions saving a toy from Sid, the vicious boy next door, how does he propose to do it while adhering to the inert protocol?

Buzz’s ingenuousness regarding his toy role infuriates Woody to the point of attempted toy-assassination. Through a concatenation of accidents, both he and Buzz become lost and must use teamwork, trust and ingenuity to beat their path back to Andy, which finds them ensconced in scorchingly funny vignettes (Buzz fastening himself in an oversized seatbelt; Buzz and Woody falling in with green, three-eyed alien toys who regard them as gods; Buzz hyperventilating as “Mrs. Nesbitt”). During a climactic rocket ride, the callback line, “This is not flying – this is falling with style,” seals this movie’s greatness.

At least I now have a plausible explanation as to why my toys always got lost: after going about their toy business, they would just go inert anywhere they happened to be, instead of paying attention to their master’s infallible toy filing system….

END