Brave (Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, 2012)

Brave is at once the most visually distinctive project Pixar has yet made and their most derivative work. Slightly dimmed as if filmed by natural light, the Celtic realm of stone and forest achieve a new level of realism for the studio's animation; even by their standards, I can think of no other Pixar film that invites such pure pleasure merely in scanning the frame for all its absurdly fine detail. Yet with this new peak of visual sophistication comes a story that mines Disney princess tales and blends it with the style and thematic content of Japanese animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki. But if this setup is less fundamentally "original" than, say, Ratatouille or Up, it nonetheless offers an important opportunity to alter and update a classic form of storytelling. After all, from old elements can come wonderful, new things.

For the first act, at least, Brave demonstrates this in spades. Merida (Kelly Macdonald) instantly establishes herself as an entrancing heroine; the daughter of a king who presides over a group of allied Celtic clans (Billy Connolly), Merida is groomed by her mother, Elinor, (Emma Thompson) to behave like a proper lady but above all cherishes a bow given to her by her father. The precocious child grows up to be an adventurous teenager, strong-willed enough to climb a sheer cliff just because it's there and so skilled in archery that various targets she erects around the castle woods might as well be quivers for how many arrows they hold in their bullseyes. When Elinor announces that the day has finally come for Merida to choose a suitor, the young woman's outrage burns so hotly that the flippant faux-independence of some recent Disney princesses looks even more laughable. When she says she doesn't want to marry right now, she damn well means it, and she goes to unexpectedly drastic lengths to defy her mother's wishes.

How to Train Your Dragon

It is not enough to say that How to Train Your Dragon is the finest picture to roll out of Dreamworks Animation's studio, particularly given their nearly decade-long bath in the slop trough with a series of increasingly banal sequels and failed attempts at launching new franchises (who could forget Shark Tale, other than the people who saw it?). But the studio finally followed through on the initial promise of their early features -- Antz, the underrated Prince of Egypt, the first Shrek -- with 2008's Kung Fu Panda, and now they've put out a film that easily ranks among the finest achievements in contemporary animation, as well as one of the few delights of this young year.

One of those "the title says it all" flicks, How to Train Your Dragon is a high-concept family comedy executed nearly without flaws. It presents the small Viking village of Berk, situated on a craggy rock that barely yields enough tasteless crops to feed the populace and their sheep. Complicating matters is the routine invasion by dragons, who scorch the spare fields and seize livestock for their own gullets. Every Viking in the hamlet is raised to hate and kill dragons, and everyone excels at it.

Everyone, that is, except Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), son of the clan chief, Stoick (Gerard Butler). In a demimonde filled with bulky warriors, Hiccup is a scrawny geek, eager to please his peers and especially his father but unable to join in the fighting. So, he builds contraptions to compensate for his utter lack of muscle mass, and during one raid he uses one of his weapons to shoot down a Night Fury, an incredibly agile type of dragon so deadly that no one has ever managed to kill one. When he tracks down the wounded beast, however, he cannot bring himself to slay the poor thing, even though it would catapult him into fame.

Dreamworks, as the other major 3D animation studio of the last decade or so, always finds itself in competition with Pixar, which is like forcing the Police Academy films to compete with Dr. Strangelove. Where Dreamworks has a leg up, though, is in the company's more lenient attitude toward realism. Pixar movies occasionally hit a snag when the precise construction of their worlds come into conflict with the exaggerated character models, but Dreamworks is so inherently goofy that it gives itself a broader range. With Dragon, the studio finally takes advantage of this. The Night Fury, Toothless, looks strikingly different from the other types of dragons seen throughout the film, including a bulldog-like reptile and a two-headed beast, one of which emits inflammable gas that the other sparks. The equally outlandish Viking models, from Stoick's friend and Hiccup's watcher Gobber (a very game Craig Ferguson) to the sexy young brute Astrid (America Ferrara), who appears to have the same physique as Hiccup but can hurl axes and swing swords with the adults, stress the animators' attempt to detach us from the (often ridiculous) need for reality in the most surreal form of the most surreal medium of art.

They succeed wildly. Dragon's opening sequence is one of the most dynamic action pieces to grace a modern animated picture, so visceral that directors Chris Sanders and Dennis DeBois structure one shot in such a way that it appears as if a handheld camera was documenting the action. They also give enchantingly anthropomorphic traits to Toothless without losing his sleek, beautiful form (memorably, the animator turn his reptilian slits into heart-melting doe eyes). With this film, Dreamworks breaks wholly from the lame pop culture references and limp sight gags that propelled their limp, deflated mid-Aughts works: the humor comes from the situations and the characters, and these people feel so real that at some point you stop wondering why the Vikings speak with a smattering of Scottish and American accents led by a young'un with a nasally Canadian whine. Tedious as celebrity stunt casting is, these actors become these cartoons because they're allowed to speak lines that give themselves, and each other, depth and identity.

Most importantly, How to Train Your Dragon captures that feeling of uninhibited flight better than any other film that comes to mind. The montage of Hiccup and Toothless coming to trust each other and learning to fly together is nothing particularly original in construction, but in execution it becomes as spellbinding as the flying scenes in Avatar and magical as anything in Pixar's canon. By damaging Toothless' tail fin and rendering him incapable of flight on his own, the writers create a symbiosis between the dragon and Hiccup, who designs a replacement flap that he controls, thus giving their bond an extra dimension and their aerial acrobatics a mutually invigorating experience that is magnified on the audience. Whether gently soaring among the clouds or banking and careening in rapidly edited chases, the flight scenes are gripping, transporting and undeniable proof in the power of animation to transfix crowds of all ages -- I heard nary a peep from the engaged children in my theater, and the most enthusiastic response I heard leaving the auditorium came from an elderly couple behind me.

As with all the other movies currently slapped with a 3-D filter, one can easily enjoy the majesty of How to Train Your Dragon in two boring old dimensions. Yet I was struck that the most memorable and lasting image to take advantage of the 3-D, compared to its usual role in adding a cheap, hollow thrill to action scenes, involved Hiccup holding out his hand for the first time to pet Toothless. The directors used the gimmick to call attention to the emotional and thematic crux of the film: by showing how pre-conceived notions vastly differ from the truth and how they often lead to trumped-up fear and disgusting violence, How to Train Your Dragon suggests that the next generation might just be a little less violent and a little more willing to learn about someone or something before acting. What a fantastic message (and a fairly understated one, for a children's film), particularly in a time of increasingly extreme rhetoric being casually used in America based on fear and ignorance. Furthermore, Sanders and DeBois weave this theme into much of the film's other dynamics, preventing the contentious father-son relationship between Stoick and Hiccup from becoming too staid and adding a layer to the budding romance angle between Hiccup and Astrid. Funny, touching, insightful and as thrilling as the best of animated features, How to Train Your Dragon bypasses the hackneyed soundbite of "Fun for the whole family!" by reminding us that any animated film worth its salt should always fit that bill.

Why Craig Ferguson is the Best Entertainer in Late Night T.V.

I am by no means an expert of late night talk shows; by 11:00 or 11:30 I'm usually still watching a movie, writing about a movie, or just surfing the Internet until I finally feel tired enough to go to bed. Even as a big fan of Conan, I rarely muster the enthusiasm to check him out on the Tonight Show, unwilling to sit through monologues that even he can't make funny to get to the juicy bits and preferring to sift through the detritus in the morning via individual clips of the show's sketches and interviews for the fun stuff. Yet I applauded Conan's ascension to the big time, not simply because it meant Jay Leno moved that much closer to retirement (has that awful 10:00 show killed enough ad revenue to die yet?) but for its symbolism: Conan, obviously a Letterman acolyte, got the gig that Leno denied Letterman back in '92, a move that sent Letterman into a tailspin of crabbiness and resignation and made him scarcely better than Leno in his ensuing 14-year stint as second banana in the ratings. Conan's rise also allowed me, no-Tivo-havin' Luddite that I am, the freedom of not having to choose between him and CBS' 12:30 host: Craig Ferguson.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson is a curious beast, one that immediately sets itself apart from any other talk show. The 12:30 and beyond programs always lack the glitz and bombast of the preceding shows, as people are still awake at 11:30 and need one last burst of energy to drain them before bedtime; those who stay awake beyond, however, are in for the long haul. Sure, some will nod off, but if you set off firecrackers to keep them awake you'll piss off all the people who just can't sleep. But Ferguson's show is different: his program opens on a dimly lit set showing only a sturdy but nondescript desk and two chairs. It looks less like a network production than a public access chat show. Instead of the usual fanfare, Ferguson simply walks into frame as if a janitor or a page sent to clean up the mess by whatever program just finished shooting and noticed the camera was still on.

Monologues are the death of talk shows. No one can really find a perfect balance between the host's desire to own all of the spotlight -- Letterman and Leno, both stand-ups, whip out their staid one-liners while Conan, whose jokes are just as stale, livens it up at times by peppering in bits that reveal his inclination as a writer -- and the empty, commercial nature of these shows, designed in the modern age simply to promote guests' wares like infomercials. But I would take a million Gwenyth Paltrows telling the host and audience a million times over how fun it was to "slum it" for her latest feature by wearing blue jeans bought in a department store because "that's what my character would do" over one more goddamned monologue joke about Tiger Woods*.

Ferguson is different. This Scottish-born, recently legalized U.S. citizen is the one thing I didn't think you could be during a monologue: unpredictable. Standing mere feet from the camera, he tosses off the usual one-liners, but he delivers them in a laid-back style, without the desperate force placed on every punchline by the other hosts; if a joke fails, he'll charmingly shrug it off and win laughs anyway. Occasionally, however, he comes with a prepared topic, such as a funny but thundering declaration that he would no longer mock the clearly troubled Britney Spears for cheap laughs, or a rant about politicians exploiting their children and families even as they say "leave the families out of this" to ward off criticism. Feel his ebullient giddiness as he gushes over his ability to vote in his first U.S. presidential election and slam natural born citizens who don't care about such a powerful right. These monologues can often be serious and moving, such as the eulogies he performed for both his father and mother, or the entertaining but finely detailed, condensed history lesson of South Africa and apartheid to mark Desmond Tutu's appearance on the show. His brand of planned stream-of-consciousness (before the show's opening credits even play) announces that all bets are off, and whatever you expected to see in this talk show will not be what you get.

As an interviewer, he's no less engaging and irreverent, tearing up his question cards while announcing the first guest to signal he won't play the typical game of product placement, or at least not by official rules. He often trades light insults with the guests and looks for any excuse to careen away from the usual hawking. As for the ladies, well, all the hosts have their ways of admitting their geeky nature when in the presence of gorgeous starlets: Leno was too shamelessly pandering to make a move, Letterman's ogling was creepy long before news of his affairs made the papers, and Conan emphasizes his awkward, lanky nerdiness with flustered breathing and the valiant stab at cool with a well-timed growl. But Craig has the swagger of a man who knows he has an ace up a sleeve, an accent, and his interviews with female guests are the most entertainingly flirtatious on television, as Craig allows for a give-and-take that *gasp* lets the women be funny too (see his hysterical interviews with the wonderfully witty Lauren Graham).

And I haven't even gotten to the puppets yet. Lacking a house band and often forced to play pre-taped musical performances because of the limiting accommodations of the cramped studio, Ferguson makes do with hand puppets and brilliantly insane musical numbers generally involving puppets and oddly dressed men, surreal lip-syncs that that will put a song in your heart and a therapist's number in your contacts. When his monologuing puppets, among them a shark, a unicorn and a vaguely terrifying puppet of Craig himself, address the camera and assume that any home viewers are stoned, this cheeky nod to what must be a prime subgroup of his demographic reveals more honesty than just about any other chat show out there.

The best of these wacky creations is, undoubtedly, Wavy Rancheros, a "crocodillyalligator" (he is never entirely sure what species he is) controlled and voiced by Ferguson. Toeing the line between a redneck and Nawlins accent, Ferguson plays Wavy as a reptilian Pepé Le Pew, giving love to the audience (and, in the 1000th episode where he "hosted," the guests) and waving his tiny puppet hand lovingly shouting his bizarre greeting "Whatado!" (a term Wavy himself doesn't understand). I don't even know how to describe that wave, a ridiculous movement obviously the result of Ferguson attempting to wiggle his thumb in the tight cloth. Something about it, the way Ferguson has to arch his entire hand, and thus the puppet, back to let this itty bitty claw wave at the audience is at once adorable, nonsensical and inexplicably, inescapably hilarious. If that wave doesn't bring a smile to your face, some part of your psyche never fully developed and for that you have my pity.

Talk show hosts prove their mettle by adapting to the studio space they're given. Notice how odd and uncomfortable Conan looks when he stands in the middle of the almost comically gargantuan set NBC built for him slinging out one-liners but how inspired he is when he uses the L.A. glamor against itself, such as his attempts to sabotage the Universal lot tour that passes by the building or a foot race around the studio. Conversely, anyone with the fortitude to check in on Jay Leno's new digs can plainly see how badly he suffers without the glossy commercial sheen, his attempt to utilize a more intimate setting only revealing the falsity of his populist image. Kimmel and Letterman adapt to their spaces as well, Kimmel creating a frat boy atmosphere and Letterman speaking from his purgatory, situated halfway between the echo of the more personal and spontaneous feel of his Late Night and the pale imitation of the Tonight Show that alternately gives him more exposure and reminds him of what was denied.

Ferguson uses his cramped, abandoned high-school A/V room to max effect. No one expects anything from such a basic setup, thus anything can happen. He records monologues and interviews not necessarily on the night they air, caring less for ripped-from-the-headlines punchlines than actually entertaining the crowd. Plenty of celebrities make for great talk show guests regardless of host -- Ricky Gervais, Russell Brand, Norm Macdonald, (on the basis of a wildly entertaining start) Gabby Sidibe -- but Craig's conversational style brings out the best in guests who are witty but don't necessarily get to shine elsewhere, such as Lauren Graham, Ewan McGregor, Mindy Kaling and Kristen Bell. Ferguson, a recovering alcoholic, treats his audience as his support group, strangers he treats as friends, confiding in them with his dedicated but lighthearted program (he's got the self-deprecating wit of a recovered addict). Whether each night's episode plays with deeply felt intimacy or madcap, surrealist comedy, the Late Late Show is the bright beacon of late night television, brighter even than my beloved Conan, and definitive proof of just how astonishing even the slightest bit of originality can be in a formulaic format.

Whatado, errybody.



*I have to admit, though, that Craig's Tiger jokes are actually funny.