Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/266593
16 UCW FEB. 26 - MARCH 4, 2014 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM If you're anything at all like me (good for you, I am awesome), then after seeing The Lego Movie (100 minutes) you will feel a nearly irresistible urge to buy several Lego playsets and a large table to display them on. You will also walk around singing the theme song, "Everything is Awesome" and giggling uncontrollably. You have been warned. We open on bad guy Lord Business (Will Ferrell) battling Master Builder Vitruvious (Morgan Freeman) for control of the "Kragle," a superweapon. Lord Business gets the weapon, but a prophecy foretells that "The Special" will arise and find the "Piece of Resistance" that will neutralize the "Kragle." Lord Business snorts that the prophecy sounds like hippy-dippy baloney and I snort Coke out of my nose. Will Ferrell is funny when he's acting mean. Some years later in Bricktown, Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt) arrives at his construction worker job, ready to fit in and make friends by following the instruction booklet that every minifigure is supposed to strictly adhere to. He stays late at work and spots a woman searching for something in the rubble of his latest construction job. He is entranced by her, but falls into a deep hole while trying to get her attention. While underground he finds the "Piece of Resistance" and passes out. He awakens in police custody, and Good Cop/ Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) demands answers. The police, acting under orders from Lord Business, prepare to melt Emmet, but he is rescued by the woman from the rubble — Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks). Wyldstyle is a master builder and she quickly constructs an escape vehicle to rescue Emmet and flee from Bricktown into the Wild West to meet with Vitruvious. It is a pretty awesome chase scene. Good Cop/Bad Cop tracks them down just as Vitruvius was telling Emmet about his destiny to be "The Special" and save Legoland. Another awesome chase scene ensues, with evil Lego robots and Batman (Will Arnett) joining the chase. The heroes get away, of course, and head for Cloud Cuckoo Land. This is a magical city in the clouds run by Uni-Kitty (Alison Brie), a unicorn/anime kitty hybrid, and it is awesome. I may be overusing the word awesome at this point, but, like the theme song says, everything is awesome! Especially casting Charlie Day as 1980s space guy from the classic Space line of Lego toys, and then deliberately aging the "look" of the figure to resemble typical wear patterns of that particular mini- figure. Also, just as the movie climax approaches, the narrative transitions from Lego Land to the "real world" with Will Ferrell appearing as the human counterpart to Lord Business. The film, composed entirely of Lego pieces, is undoubtedly an artistic achievement. When I walked out of the theater my mind kept automatically changing my surroundings into the cool Lego style of the movie--water splashes became those little one button pieces, the floor was covered in Lego bricks, the cars were all highly stylized Lego cars — it was like wearing beer goggles, but with Legos! Shot in CGI, it still manages to look like sophisticated stop motion animation. I expected to enjoy The Lego Movie as a kid's movie but instead found it transcending genre and working on several levels. Surprisingly sophisticated, it manages to blend together a variety of different inspirations into a single unified whole — are there any other movies out there that can put Abraham Lincoln, Milhouse, Superman, and Dumbledore in the same scene? And that is just a partial listing. There are film references galore, including The Matrix, Terminator, and Star Wars. Film references not your thing? No worries, Cuckoo Cloud Land is actually a reference to a play (The Birds) written by ancient Greek philosopher Aristophanes. Everything Is Awesome The Lego Movie (Rated PG) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upand- comingweekly.com. The Norman Conquest Psycho's creepy killer commands the small screen in Bates Motel TV by DEAN ROBBINS The acclaimed Bates Motel (Monday, 9 p.m., A&E) adapts Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic Psycho, as Norma Bates (Vera Farmiga) and troubled son Norman (Freddie Highmore) run a motel in a town with more than its share of unexplained murders. The second-season premiere contains all the perversity you'd expect while still exercising an admirable Hitchcockian restraint. Blessedly, Bates Motel is nowhere near as gross as fellow serial-murderer dramas Hannibal or Those Who Kill (see below). Four months after his high school teacher's death, Norman is obsessed with visiting her grave. He'd been with her on the night she died and either did or didn't kill her; he blacked out and doesn't remember what happened. As last season, the series delights in teasing us about who did what and why. Alternately appealing and disturbing, Highmore is a worthy precursor to Anthony Perkins' Norman from Psycho. And as his mother, Farmiga would make Sigmund Freud swallow his cigar — such is her Oedipal intensity. She somehow causes Norman's odd behavior while at the same time disapproving of it. "You seem obsessed with morbidity or something," she scolds. It's that mysterious "or something" that keeps us watching. Mixology Wednesday, 9:30 pm (ABC) This series takes place over the course of one night at a Manhattan bar, where good-looking young singles pair up, split up and, occasionally, throw up. Each episode focuses on a meeting between two characters, setting up possibilities for the end of the night — a.k.a. the season finale. It's an interesting premise for a sitcom, but you wish Mixology had better dialogue, better comedians. It relies too much on being "naughty," as if incessant references to sex were enough to provide TRENDY EXCITEMENT FOR THE 18-TO-34 DEMOGR APHIC! Indeed, the writers are so smug about the series' supposed cool factor that they put sneering comments about other networks in the characters' mouths. For example, a couple of boring people are described as liking "scrapbooking, bowling, cheese and the whole CBS comedy lineup." Sorry, guys, but you're not going to woo many young viewers with lines like that. Mixology isn't terrible, but frankly, I'd rather be scrapbooking and watching the whole CBS comedy lineup. Inside Job Friday, 9 pm (TNT) This new reality series offers a behind-the-scenes look at corporate America. Each week, a major company invites four job candidates to compete for a six-figure executive position. But one of the applicants is actually working for the company as an undercover agent, with orders to report on the other three to the big boss. In the pilot, House of Blues conducts a weeklong search for a sales manager. The three real candidates try to impress boss Carl Schloessman, unaware that the snitch is monitoring their every move when Schloessman isn't around. If that's not disturbing enough, check out the degrading interview process these people are subjected to by House of Blues. They're made to work for free on the company's behalf, pitching clients and staging a party. It's painful to watch a powerful corporation make job applicants humiliate themselves on national TV. And if House of Blues is looking for a blurb writer to work for six figures — well, yes, I'm available.