MICKEY MOUSE HAS COMPETITION: For the first time in a long time, Pixar sneak-previewed its new film Ratatouille to the general public--perhaps because it's Pixar's first film without an immediate "hook" to grab kids in particular (toys come to life, the monsters in your closet, superheroes, etc.). The good news is that after a slight mis-step with Cars, Pixar has yet again put together a remarkable film. The more surprising news is that while they've stuck with certain eternal Pixar themes (the parent-child relationship, seeking independence and finding one's place in the world), this is Pixar's most adult oriented effort yet. Sure, there's plenty for kids to love--some very nice slapstick comedy, and a couple of very exciting chase sequences--but this is a movie for adults, that for the first time for Pixar, is substantially set in the "real world," rather than a comic book world or a world hidden from our view.

Unlike Dreamworks, Pixar doesn't anthropomorphize its characters. Our hero is a rat, who spends a substantial chunk of the film scurrying around on 4 legs and we watch him and his family eat garbage. Also, while there are name actors involved (Peter O'Toole plays the villain), Pixar doesn't hesitate to use unorthodox casting (cult comic Patton Oswalt voices the hero, and a Pixar employee voices Linguini, the chef who works with the rat), and the name actors aren't the selling point of the film. It's about the story. In a summer of disappointments, Ratatouille is a treat for kids and adults alike, though I'm a bit concerned Disney's going to have trouble marketing (pssst---ads on Top Chef are probably a good call).

BOYZ III MEN? Baseball-wise, I should probably stop attending Friday night Phillies games. But it was also "The Sound of Philadelphia" Night at the Park, Billy Paul sang "Me and Mrs. Jones," and CAPA's own Boyz II Men was honored before the game.

Except there were only three men! (And they didn't sing.) Oh, the disappointment. But, as it turns out, it's not that someone had better things to do that night -- Michael "Bass" McCrary left the group in 2003 due to health issues.

In other Remember the 90s news, Arrested Development is touring again this summer and, hopefully, will be up for a game of horseshoes (a game of horseshoes?) when they come to your town.

'Four' Adds Up to Zero - washingtonpost.com

I BELIEVE IT'S SAFE TO SAY THAT HE HATED, HATED, HATED THIS MOVIE: The WaPo's Stephen Hunter, on the new Fantastic Four film: "Hey, FTC! WAKE UP! Shouldn't some truth-in-advertising law require someone to rename "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" something like "Zzzzzzzz," or "Yawn," or what about "See Paint Dry!"? Isn't that your job? Surely the dullest of Hollywood's many comic-book-derived summer movies, "Silver Surfer" is drearier than corn dying in the Iowa sun, slower than molasses in Antarctica, as grim as February in Rockville. Sentient humans should stay away; all others may enter confident that their IQs are already in the Chernobyl-fried range and will not be affected, except for downward. So many flaws, so little time...."

I need to balance this post with something positive. Alright. "Don't Stop Believing," via Family Guy. And the Robot Chicken: Star Wars half-hour special debuts Sunday night.

WE'RE COMING TO AMERICA! John Williams has written many fine and haunting film scores over the years (though, John, could you spare one Oscar for Marc Shaiman, who's never won one?), but he might have also written the least inspiring classical piece ever--"Fanfare For Michael Dukakis." (Scroll down to 1988.)

TRAPPED IN THE BODY OF A WHITE BOY: I left something out of yesterday's So You Think You Can Dance post: the degree to which 19 Entertainment wants to see a hip hop dancer make it into the later rounds of the competition this year. I've already noted that this season's girls have been more heavily pimped going into the finals than the guys; and of the guys, all the airtime has been going to the b-boys.

(Question: I've never heard the phrase "b-boys" before this season, and I feel sort of white-man's-overbitey using it in a post -- is this a normal part of the American lexicon that I have somehow missed out on?)

Season one had Ryan and Jamile, while season two had Musa. All three eventually got sent home for failure to keep up with their more highly trained counterparts. This time we've got Hok, D-Trix, and Cedric. And you've got Jimmy and Jesus as well -- neither of whom is a hip hop dancer, but both of whom have training in hip hop along with a slew of other styles. But the proof is in the pudding, and last night's pudding left no room for doubt. Saving D-Trix and Cedric over the undeniably weird (I like to think of him as Christian Slater in Heathers minus dental work and any veneer of normalcy) but undeniably talented Ricky was a shot across the bow: the producers want to give their hip hoppers every opportunity to blossom into well-rounded dancers before sending them all home. Having more of them on the show provides some cushion - if D-Trix goes home on a given week, that gives Hok and Cedric another week to work on their technique.

B-boys, get to work: you've got a flock of producers hanging their hats on your success!

My Year Of Flops Case File #41: The Jazz Singer (1980) | The A.V. Club

I! HAFF! NO! COMMENT! As part of his year-long review of Hollywood failures, fiascoes and secret successes, Nathan Rabin reviews Neil Diamond's The Jazz Singer:

Diamond and Arnaz might pass for the slightly homely friends of romantic leads, but as cinematic lovers they’re horrifically miscast. Watching Diamond and Arnaz give into their passions during a soft-focus sex scene is like walking in on your elderly parents having kinky sex, only infinitely more painful and embarrassing. In a star-breaking performance, Arnaz conveys little but the slightly strained vivacity and canned sass of a mediocre sitcom sidekick. Diamond, meanwhile, is utterly defeated by the demands of the script. When called upon to convey heartbreak, Diamond can muster only vague disappointment. When called upon to display moody torment, he conveys the mild irritation of someone who ill-advisedly skipped lunch and is paying an exceedingly modest psychic cost.

It's a shanda.

UP MULHOLLAND WHERE I MADE THE SCENE, LIKE THE ONE THAT TOOK LITTLE JIMMY DEAN: As some of you know already, after eight or nine or four or less than two years, depending upon which of us you're asking, the Spacefamily is pulling up stakes and moving north to the East Bay, where the adults will commute into San Francisco. Those of you who have endured my pro-LA rants -- first as a commenter, then as an assistant superintendent of this blog -- can anticipate that this is a little strange for me. As Spacewoman pointed out, this is the longest I've lived consecutively in one city. So while I still consider myself a Seattleite at heart, I do feel at least in part -- the part that became an adult, became very good at his job, married an awesome woman, watched two wonderful kids born, bought a house, and got TiVo and HDTV -- an Angelino. Unlike most of the people who leave LA, I love it dearly, and there are many things I will miss: the 320 days of sunshine and corresponding 90-degree Januaries, the Z-list celeb sightings, the daytime nontourist leisure vibrancy, the Hot Girl ATM at Beverly and San Vicente, and so many other things. I'm sure the things I'll miss far outnumber the things I won't.

On a related note, a few months back, I posted my list (proven incomplete in the comments) of the most architecturally-significant houses in the US, and I mentioned that a disproportionately high number of them are in LA. At the time, I knew I would be leaving soon, and I took it as a sign of a flaw in my character that I had never even tried to see a number of these houses (as I mentioned, I had been in the Gamble and Blacker Houses). To cure this, I grabbed my camera and a Thomas Guide and set out in search of the list.

As it turns out, it's not as easy as I thought it would be. I don't want to bore you with technical jargon, but here in LA we have a term for wandering uninvited onto rich people's property to take pictures of their private stuff: trespassing (or alternatively, Martin Lawrence). So I was limited to houses that were (a) visible from the street; or (b) disinterestedly guarded. Here's what I found, with photographic evidence.

As I mentioned before, Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis-Brown House is in bad shape. When you drive up right below it, it basically looks like it's about to slide right down on top of you. In the picture, you can see that just about every Froebel block is disintegrating. It doesn't look much better from the front of the house, and the cheaply-made iron gate and plywood barrier aren't helping. The saddest thing is that I think this is doomed either to a transformative restoration that junks the original materials or a permanent renovation (like Sagrada Familia) because the materials just weren't engineered for permanence.

Pierre Koenig's Case Study House # 22, the house of the iconic Julius Schulman portrait, was tough. I found it on the map pretty easily, but when I got there, the road was a private drive. When I got out of my car, hopped the gate, and walked up the road, there was nothing but a high plaster wall to greet me. I asked a local which one it was, and he pointed it out, but said that the owners don’t take kindly to trespassers (or Martin Lawrences). Since the house is on the leading edge of a half-circle bluff (which I confirmed by driving right underneath it) and I had a long lens, I thought I'd go over to the next hill and snap a picture. Easier said than done -- I ended up crossing one part of the hill on what must be the only unpaved road left in LA and later trying to execute a three-point turn in a narrow cul-de-sac graded at what must have been a 45-degree angle cutting the road diagonally. Eventually I found a few perches -- an open construction site that seriously messed with my acrophobia, and the fire exit of another house -- that gave me a relatively unobstructed view. I think I love this house -- its L-shape cleanly separates the enclosed private spaces (p.s. -- neat sculpture) from the wide-open public areas, and the view is stunning.

If Case Study # 22 played hard to get, Koenig's Case Study # 21 was kind of skanky-easy. It had just sold, but the buyer hadn't moved anything in, so the property was wide open. I walked around the whole thing, took pictures through all the windows, and accidentally stepped into one of the ponds. Frankly, while I love the catalog photos, in person this house is disappointing. A professional photographer can work magic, because in the light of day the house is kind of dingy. Worse yet, it's tiny. I guess an extraordinarily tidy ascetic could live there, but this works better in theory than in practice.

The last house I saw was John Lautner's Chemosphere. In a way, the directions to this house are simple: Go as high as you can in the Hollywood Hills, then look around and see if there's anything higher. If there is, you're not there yet. In another way, the directions are maddeningly confusing. Essentially, take a right on Torreyson, then a right on the other Torreyson, then a left on the other other Torreyson. Once you figure out where you're going, there's a lot of climbing. First, up the steep street it's on, where there wasn't any parking. Then you can take the funicular from the front gate to the house itself. If, however, you are not exactly supposed to be there and you don't want to draw attention to yourself, calling the funicular might be a bad idea. So there are a LOT of stairs. You are rewarded at the top, however, with a house that is much more likeable than its pictures convey. Most of the shots I've seen of this tend to emphasize the fact that it sits on a single stilt with the living area barely connected to the hillside, so you tend to see the structure (which looks a little like a palm tree clad in aluminum siding) and not the house itself. Up on top, it's completely different -- a very modern decking area (akin to a Palm Springs spa) connected to a mostly-open round room with a 270-degree view of the Valley. It's a little hard to convey exactly how on top of the world you feel up there, but that black building way down below in the picture is the 30-story (?) NBC Universal Tower. This house is probably pretty expensive and impractical to live in and a total bitch to sell, but I can see why somebody would buy it.

That's it. Goodbye, beautiful LA houses, I won't be living in you, but I'll miss you (and the one I did live in) just the same.