Ray Romano Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Pixar and everything else - them's the breaks when it comes to judging computer-animated fare these days. Although Pixar has rightfully earned themselves the lead among studios, and by a significant margin, it's all too easy to then marginalize the performance of others.

DreamWorks has certainly raised their game beyond pure pop-culture recitation with the inventive and entertaining likes of Over the Hedge, Kung Fu Panda, and Monsters vs. Aliens (and Aardman or no, I'd even include the winning Flushed Away among their finer efforts). For every Open Season, Sony has given us a Monster House (okay, so that's just one-for-one at the moment). And every time that Fox bequeaths to unwilling audiences something like Space Chimps or Everyone's Hero, Blue Sky has nothing to do with it.

Fox/Blue Sky, however, is the precise pairing that gives us the visually engaging and moderately amusing outings like Robots, Horton Hears a Who!, and the Ice Age films, with the latest of which -- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- falling right in line with that modest-yet-reliable tradition.

I'm excited about this, and I really want you to get excited about this too. The Grand was one of my favorite comedies from last year, and I've been dying to watch it again ever since. The Grand? What's that? Well, the film premiered at the Tribeca Fest last May (where I reviewed it and interviewed writer-director Zak Penn), and it's a poker-themed mockumentary chock-full of some awesome character actors. Penn wrote and directed this gem, which stars folks like Woody Harrelson, David Cross, Ray Romano, Cheryl Hines, Werner Herzog, Richard Kind, Dennis Farina ... I seriously could go on and on.

But I don't have to, because the first trailer for The Grand has finally popped up on Yahoo. I stress, though, that this is a film where the best parts come in small packages. However, this trailer is pretty damn good. It establishes most of the main players, but the bits may not seem as funny until you're watching the actual film. Ray Romano, for example, is out of his mind here -- and I'm not a big Romano fan, yet I loved him in The Grand. Cross, as always, kills, and everyone else (from the main cast to the cameos) are all a riot. Seriously, go see this film when it comes out in March. You'll laugh your friggin' ass off, especially if you're a fan of shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld. The Grand hits theaters this March.

For more, check out the film's official website, where you can visit Larry's (David Cross' character) hysterical poker-themed website, http://icantbelieveigettoplaypokerdotcom777.net/.

Let's be perfectly fair here: I didn't hate Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. That isn't to say I loved it, either. More like I was just mostly indifferent to it, in much the way that I'm mostly indifferent to grilled cheese-and-tomato sandwiches. Admittedly, the film got off to a bit of a rocky start with me, with its opening scene of a gang of thuggish Ice Age animal children picking on and beating up on Sid the sloth, their camp counselor. Note to people in Fox script department: parents really hate it when you encourage their tykes to truss up the nearest adult and play pinata with him with a wooden baseball bat. Even my kids were appalled by that bit; my six-year-old son, eyebrows knitted in his "worried" look, whispered, "Mommy, why are those kids being so mean to Sid? That's not really very nice, right, Mommy?"

As you can probably guess from the title, the sequel to the popular Ice Age is about the global warming that caused the end of the Ice Age. You could probably get all scientific and actually prove that because Ice Age 2 had a (insert extinct mammal of your choice here) in it, there's no way the end of the Ice Age was happening by Ice Age 2, because everyone knows that (extinct mammal) was extinct well before the end of the Ice Age. I don't care. Things are warming up, the ice is melting into natural waterslide parks, and the thick fur coats are starting to feel a little out of season. Nobody's too worried, though, until a traveling salesman comes by warning of a gargantuan flood that's going to engulf the cozy valley you call home. The only way out, he says, is through the end of the valley, where a giant boat is waiting. Um...a boat? A flood? Wait, did I walk into a Veggie Tales movie by mistake?

 

For those of you lucky enough to experience four complete seasons (and I'm not talking a 10 or 15 degree difference) throughout the year, I'm sure you're foaming at the mouth in anticipation of Spring. One of the most joyous of all seasons, if nothing else, Spring means no more Winter. No more snow. No more warming up the car for two hours. No more heavy jackets and, definitely, no more thermal underwear.

Although Spring is wonderful and all, it does have its bad aspects. First off, it rains a lot. And if you're one of those people with allergies, then Spring means you're carrying around tissues as if they're keeping you alive. If you hate flowers, cleaning and/or light, breezy dresses, then Spring is just another enemy on the battlefield of life.

Spring. It's good, it's bad, it's Pixar. Wait, did he just say Pixar? Oh, I sure did. While Pixar is a company that creates animated films, the name also represents a new beginning. Not only did Pixar introduce us to a whole new form of technology, but it also found a way to entertain people of all ages...at the same time. I've chosen the following films because they all describe the many different emotions I go through as the season's change. From the good to the bad to the Pixar - we're defrosting and loving it on this week's Trailer Park...

The SXSW film festival lineup gets more celebrity-rich every day. Matt Dentler just announced more performers who will speak at the conference and/or screenings, including Ray Romano, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Erykah Badu. I'm still trying to decide which films to see ... there are some tough choices. Karina and I will be covering the film festival for Cinematical but even with two of us, we won't be able to catch everything.

• Night Watch opens in Austin this week as part of the Austin Film Society/Dobie Theatre series, AFS@Dobie. Ballets Russes (pictured above) is also held over for another week.
• Kevin Smith will be in Austin early next week and will introduce a midnight screening of House Party on Monday 3/6 at Alamo Downtown. Admission is free, but if you want to guarantee a seat you can buy a food/beverage coupon from Alamo ahead of time. I am not sure what the actual connection is between the Clerks director and the 1990 Kid 'N Play movie, but I'm sure Smith will explain.