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INVASION OF PENGUINS ON THE SILVER SCREEN FOR THE HOLYDAYS
(Happy Feet, Australia/USA 2006; Animation/Family/Comedy/Adventure; 98’; Produz.: Kingdom Feature Productions/Kennedy Miller Productions/Village Roadshow Pictures; Distribuz.: Warner Bros.
(ENGLISH VERSION by MARTA SBRANA, Canada)
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Titolo in italiano: Happy Feet
Titolo in lingua originale:
Happy Feet
Anno di produzione:
2006
Anno di uscita:
2006
Regia: George Miller, Warren Coleman, John Collee e Judy Morris
Sceneggiatura:
George Miller
Soggetto: George Miller, Warren Coleman, John Collee e Judy Morris
Cast: Ramon/Lovelace/Cletus (voice Robin Williams)
Memphis (voice Hugh Lackman)
Mumble (voice Elijah Wood)
Norma Jean (voice Nicole Kidman)
Gloria (voice Brittany Murphy)
Noah (voice Hugo Weaving)
Trev (voice Steve Irwin, aka Crocodile Hunter)
Musica: Original Music by John Powell; Non-Original Music by Mark Sexton.
Costumi: Mark Sexton
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Sinossi:
In the great nation of Emperor Penguins, deep in Antarctica, you're nobody unless you can sing-which is unfortunate for Mumble (ELIJAH WOOD), who is the worst singer in the world. He is born dancing to his own tune...tap dancing. Though Mumble's mom, Norma Jean (NICOLE KIDMAN), thinks this little habit is cute, his dad, Memphis (HUGH JACKMAN), says "it just ain't penguin." Besides, they both know that without a Heartsong, Mumble may never find true love. As fate would have it, his one friend, Gloria (BRITTANY MURPHY), happens to be the best singer around. Mumble and Gloria have a connection from the moment they hatch, but she struggles with his strange "hippity-hoppity" ways. Mumble is just too different-especially for Noah the Elder (HUGO WEAVING), the stern leader of Emperor Land, who ultimately casts him out of the community. Away from home for the first time, Mumble meets a posse of decidedly un-Emperor-like penguins-the Adelie Amigos. Led by Ramon (ROBIN WILLIAMS), the Adelies instantly embrace Mumble's cool dance moves and invite him to party with them.
In Adelie Land, Mumble seeks the counsel of Lovelace the Guru (also voiced by ROBIN WILLIAMS), a crazy-feathered Rockhopper penguin who will answer any of life's questions for the price of a pebble. Together with Lovelace and the Amigos, Mumble sets out across vast landscapes and, after some epic encounters, proves that by being true to yourself, you can make all the difference in the world.
Commento critico (a cura di MARTA SBRANA, Canada)
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One and half hour goes by thanks to laughter, exceptionally good music and tears. This is in a nutshell “Happy Feet” the brand new film by George Miller that opens at the movies theatres on time for the Holidays. It’s a film worthy of the Hollywood golden years; it’s a mix of fairytale, documentary, musical and evening news. From a very trite story, just for children, we find ourselves in front of the harshly reality of environmental problems, that are handled briefly but deeply. The messages the movie wants to send out are basically two: the first one is almost the usual one for an animation movie we have to be proud of who we are, proud of our originality, we don’t have to adjust ourselves to the other no matter what. The second one it’s stronger, maybe hard to catch to the younger minds, it’s the one about the |
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environment: humans are destroying our planet without realizing it. Beyond all this the casting of the voices couldn’t be any better, but above all is a phenomenal, chameleonic, peculiar and absolutely funny Robin Williams who gives his voice, verve and skills to several characters scattered throughout the film. Thanks to the ultimate in animation technology we can’t distinguish if we are watching a documentary or an animation movie. The penguins are “real”, as much as the sky, the northern light and those iceblinks from the icicles. The penguins choreographies are worthy of the best Hollywood musicals from the 40s. a movies that appeals to the children for those cute, fluffy, dancing animals; it appeals to the grown-ups because it’s hilarious, but at the same time it makes us think when we are face to face with the huge environmental problem threatening us, moving us almost at the tears and it |
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brings us back to the glorious time of the disco. What do you want more? So we exit the movie theatres tip-tap dancing.
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Commenti del regista
"It always stuck in my mind and then the next big step was when I saw a documentary done by the BBC called 'Life in the Freezer' and I suddenly saw the natural history of Emperor Penguins and it completely blew me away. I thought here's an amazing story written by nature and then I saw that they sing to each other to imprint on each other and mate. I thought that everyone has a song, one of the characters can't sing but he can dance and before I knew it, I was in the middle of a musical".
poi vidi tutto cantare l’uno
Commenti dei protagonisti :
Robin Williams “I play about four different characters: an Argentinean penguin; a big Emperor penguin and a sea lion amongst other. How I decide which voice to use for my two main characters? One is very much like, kind of a heavy set, Barry White type, kind of king, a penguin with a beautiful, big hair; the other one is part of a group from South America, Latino, so you keep this Latino penguin kind of more romantic".
Commenti dei protagonisti:
ELIJAH WOOD: "To get into the mind set of playing a penguin is was just determine what the character is about and understand it. I fell in love with the character immediately when I read the script, he’s so enduring, so sweet and pure and good, and confident, despite the fact that he actually has a defect, he’s an outcast. I loved that about him, his quiet confidence and his sense of individuality. [his lack of singing] is seen as a defect from the rest of the community, it’s those things that makes us different from everybody else, that makes us who we are and this is one of the beautiful messages of the film".
Altre voci dal set:
JOHN POWELL, composer: "At the beginning, when I sat down with George [Miller, the Director] he said he didn’t really know how to do this, it was just a chicken and an egg. So we tried something out, sent it to George, and he tried something with it and sent it back. It was a constant process with all the music. Obviously all the music has to be written before anything else, before anybody could act or animate. We didn’t really know which song was sang by who at all. The script had very few songs, most of them were discovered along the process. We knew who the cast was and we were keeping in consideration who was singing what".
Trivia: The late Steve Erwin, the 'Crocodile Hunter', read the part of Trev the elephant seal, only weeks before he died. When Irwin heard about it's conservation message, he asked to join the film and Miller agreed.
Bibliografia:
Sito ufficiale: http://wwws.warnerbros.it/happyfeet/
Links:
Galleria Fotografica:
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Il giudizio della critica
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The Best of Review
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International Press
DESSON THOMPSON(Nov. 16, 2006, "The Washington Post”): "… When it comes to pleasing a crowd, you can't fail with puppies, pandas or penguins. Which is why anyone watching 'Happy Feet', a computer-animated flick about an adorable tap-dancing, blue-eyed penguin named Mumble is going to, well, flip….The movie, a mythic adventure in which Mumble is banished from his fellow waddles before returning with newfound confidence and some awesome snow-floor routines, follows the familiar 'Ugly Duckling' pattern. But its terrific songs -- 'Beach Boys', 'Stevie Wonder', 'Queen', 'Earth, Wind & Fire' reinterpreted by the likes of Pink, Brittany Murphy and K.D. Lang -- are a warm cushion of welcome. Director George Miller imbues every sequence with extraordinary fluidity and visual invention. And the humour is terrific; in other words, Robin Williams is in the voice cast, with three parts, no less. (His best role? A quip Latino penguin named Ramon.).
What's truly surprising about 'Happy Feet' is not its giddily brilliant entertainment, its intimate knowledge of the culture or its toe-tapping music. It's how commonplace these qualities have become in computer-animated movies from 1995's 'Toy Story' on through this year's 'Over the Hedge'. 'Happy Feet' may be just one of the crowd, but what a great crowd it is...".
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Italian
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