akeelah and the bee Tagged Articles at Cinematical

With Kit Kittredge: An American Girl finally opening in limited release on Wednesday, it seemed like a good time to take a look at other films girls in the same age demographic might also enjoy. As a mother of three daughters, I like to seek out films that have strong female characters. So many of the roles for females in Hollywood either fall into blatant stereotypes or position young girls and women as existing on this planet primarily for the pleasures of the male half of the species, and I don't want my girls growing up believing the images of women they're exposed to through the media. Of course, everything in life doesn't have to have a political agenda -- what fun would that be? So some of these are just films my own daughters very much enjoy, that the girl in your life might like also.

Here are seven great films for fans of American Girl books and movies ... let me know what others I've missed that you like; with only seven slots to work with, I had to leave out a lot of films I otherwise would have included ...

I think it's safe to say that awards season is in full swing; Golden Globe nominations will be announced this Thursday morning, and already a number of organizations are listing their favorite films of the year. It's definitely that time of the year -- time to recognize the best, complain about the worst and decide just how much money you're willing to dish out for those office pools. This morning, Variety mentioned a list of underdogs (or dark horses) in the supporting male category -- folks who might slip in there, but could lose out to more popular roles. There's Michael Caine for Children of Men, Matt Damon for The Departed, Dustin Hoffman for Stranger Than Fiction, Ian McKellen for The Da Vinci Code, Tim Robbins for Catch a Fire and, my personal favorite, Stanley Tucci for The Devil Wears Prada.

And what about Best Picture? I've heard Half Nelson and Little Miss Sunshine mentioned more often than Clint Eastwood -- but do those films have what it takes to land a spot on the big stage? There's also a lot of people who feel Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was this year's most entertaining film -- but then why does it feel like such an underdog? Or how about Spike Lee's fantastic heist film, Inside Man? Obviously audiences loved it -- the pic was Lee's greatest financial success -- but will it be recognized at all? When you talk family films, all anyone can think of are the slew of animated flicks that bombarded us this year. Yet, how come no one mentioned what, in my opinion, was this year's best family pic -- Akeelah and the Bee? Don't you think it's time the Academy recognizes those feel-good family films by tossing them a category?

So, I ask you: In your opinion, which of your favorite films and performances this year do you feel will get lost in the shuffle? Forget about the critics, what does the audience think? Heck, you're the ones paying hard-earned money for these movies -- give us your opinion.

(Reminder: Click on the movie titles to see a Weinberg-approved DVD review. If a review is unavailable, I'll just go with an Amazon link.)

Recent Theatricals

Akeelah and the Bee (Lionsgate) -- Bee-movie should make for an interesting double feature alongside Spellbound (the documentary, not the Hitchcock). (three featurettes, deleted scenes, gag reel)

Friends With Money (Sony) -- Aniston, Cusack, Keener & McDormand? Count me in. (filmmaker commentary, three featurettes)

Lonesome Jim (IFC) -- Y'know, that Buscemi guy is not just a pretty face; he's actually a pretty good director. (filmmaker commentary, featurette)

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (WB) -- We all love Albert Brooks' patented brand of nebbishy neuroses, but let's chalk this one up to bad timing. (deleted scenes)

Mountain Patrol: Kekexili (Sony) -- A fantastic doco-style story about the dangers of Tibetan antelope poaching. Rent it. (no extras)

The Sentinel (Fox) -- Just keeping us warm until 24: The Movie shows up. (writer/director commentary, four deleted scenes, two featurettes)

Take the Lead (New Line) -- Because middle-aged housewives like movies too. That's why. (director/editor commentary, seven deleted scenes, four featurettes, three remixed trailers)

   • Big Momma's House 2 - In Martin Lawrence's desperate minstrel show, the comedian reprises his role as undercover FBI agent Malcolm Turner, again donning a fat suit to become the sassy, black Southern matron Big Momma. He has to stop a potentially destructive computer hacker, and the movie is broad, shameless and pandering in most every respect. Lawrence appears to assume that we automatically like him and Big Momma, and does little to endear them to us any further. Incessant mugging, weak slapstick and Teflon catchphrases fill in the many cracks of its already shaky foundation, leaving a hammy house of horrors that should have been condemned when it was still a half-baked pitch.
    • Grandma's Boy - Adam Sandler's longtime second-banana, Allen Covert, gets his shot at a lead in this stoner comedy, but despite his appealing, aw-shucks demeanor, the movie, about a 36-year-old video game tester who moves in with his grandmother and her two roommates, is just irredeemably stupid. It is sad to see three lovely ladies like Doris Roberts, Shirley Jones and Shirley Knight stooping for laughs like this, though based on the fact that practically no one saw it in theaters (or will go out of their way to rent the DVD), it is a very minor tragedy.

One of the most memorable cinematic motifs of the 90s was director John Singleton's use of omnipresent helicopter noise in his urban nightmare story, Boyz n the Hood. The scenes of gestapo-like stops and searches by burned-out LAPD officers were effective finger-pointing, but it was the ambient noise of low-hovering rotary blades and the occasional swing of a searchlight across the night sky that created a lasting image of South Central Los Angeles as an open-air prison. That this cultural meme has survived long enough to be resurrected in a cheerful nerd-empowerment movie in 2006 must say something about the resonance of film, or the absence of progress in South Central, or both. Akeelah (Keke Palmer), the verbose 11-year old heroine of Akeelah and the Bee, studies and sleeps near a window that is buzzed by traffic overhead, but never lets it deter her from her goal of becoming queen of the school spelling bee. A nice idea, but aside from imparting a respectable message of onward and upward, Akeelah and the Bee has little to offer.

No one goes to a film like this expecting avant-garde storytelling, cutting-edge cinematography, or a last-minute Keyser Soze-like plot reversal, but Doug Atchison's Akeelah is so straitjacketed into formula that it can barely move. The film practically baits us into predicting its moves. Fifteen minutes in, I scribbled the following in my notes: Akeelah's best friend will become put off by her new-found spelling smarts -- will they reconcile before or after she makes it to the big bee? Turned out to be before. With friend in tow, the young heroine hoofs it to D.C. to compete in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, that annual happening where the disillusioned copy editors of tomorrow achieve victory or wallow in shame, depending on whether or not, during their flash card drills, they were lucky enough to vacuum up the correct spelling of a certain crater on the moon or the Latin-derived name of a poisonous tree frog that went extinct in 1953. When faced with a word like staphylococci or empennage a Scripps speller can famously forestall disaster by parrying with the judges, asking for sentence usage, etymology, and so on. One kid in this film asks "Can you use the word in a song?"

Karina reported a while back that Starbucks had gotten into the movie industry (and not just in the form of Tom Hanks movies with the word "Starbucks" in the title) with a production credit for Lionsgate and 2929's Akeelah and the Bee. And, now that the film's release is imminent, Starbucks is initiating phase two of its involvement: beating customers over the head with the movie. Woo hoo! So, starting Tuesday, expect to see a whole lot of Akeelah and the Bee-related stuff going on at your local Starbucks. Don't worry, though: according to company executives, the marketing will be "much classier and more upscale than the average fast-food chain movie promotion." (This is a good thing? I was counting on a Laurence Fishburne toy with my latte, dammit.)

Apart from dissing fast food-style promotions, however, the people at Starbucks aren't offering many details about what their classy technique will entail. Basically, all we know that words from the movie (the "bee" in the title, by the way, refers to a spelling bee, not the buzzing kind) will show up on cups, and those oh-it's-too-hot sleeves. Oh, and that when you go to get coffee tomorrow, you "will be invited to step inside Akeelah's journey." Oh boy, a journey! Thanks, Starbucks.

Following the trail trod by their successful in-store CD sales program, Starbucks has decided to move into the movie game. They've signed on to put their considerable vending muscle behind Akeelah and the Bee, a drama starring Angela Bassett, about a young girl from South Central trying to make it to the National Spelling Bee. Starbucks will offer sneak previews of the film to its customers before it opens in April. Later in the year, the coffee shiller will sell the DVD of the film at its registers. It's the first step in a major push by the Seattle based company to expand their retail offerings, the very concept of which seems to muck up its famed "third place" branding strategy – what good is having a separate space that is not work or home, if that place is trying to choke you with media? All Marxist misgivings aside, the CD program has worked incredibly well to raise the profile of its offering ... which only makes me wish that a certain other, quickly-forgotten spelling bee film had been chosen for the push.