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Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/Last+troops+Iraq+make+home+Christmas/5909182/story.html
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'It's actually surprisingly charming and more emotionally understated than the material would suggest,' writes AP critic Christy Lemire.
By Kara Warner
Scarlett Johansson and Matt Damon in "We Bought A Zoo"
Photo: 20th Century Fox
After a seven-year hiatus post-"Elizabethtown," writer/director Cameron Crowe is back in action with his new film "We Bought a Zoo." Based on a true story and the book of the same name, Matt Damon stars as Benjamin Mee, a widower who buys a failing zoo in an attempt to reconnect his family after the death of their mother.
The critical masses always seem eager to offer up opinions on any new Crowe feature, and this time around, the likes have edged out the dislikes, earning the film a "Fresh" rating over at Rotten Tomatoes. Without further ado, let's wander through the "We Bought a Zoo" reviews!
The Story and Its Schmaltz Factor
"Sometimes, reacting to a movie is all about the expectations you bring with you walking into it. 'We Bought a Zoo' is about a family that buys a zoo. It's as high-concept as you can get, outside of maybe 'Attack of the Killer Tomatoes' or 'I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,' and it's equally straightforward in wearing its heart on its sleeve. We know to expect this ahead of time because 'We Bought a Zoo' comes from Cameron Crowe, the writer-director of 'Say Anything ...,' 'Jerry Maguire,' 'Almost Famous' and, more recently, the 2005 flop 'Elizabethtown.' We know there will be some poignantly phrased life lessons in store for this family as they struggle to reconnect after the mother's death. The whole exercise could have been agonizingly mawkish, and/or filled with cheap, lazy animal-poop jokes. And yet, it's not. It's actually surprisingly charming and more emotionally understated than the material would suggest. — Christy Lemire, The Associated Press
The Writing and Direction
"Crowe takes a lot of heat for his portrayal of adorable kids, and already there's been a lot of online grousing about the Rosie character [Benjamin's daughter] being a female variant on the aggressively lovable Jonathan Lipnicki in Crowe's 'Jerry Maguire.' What Crowe doesn't get enough credit for is his continuing insight into and empathy with teen characters, and one of the really engaging things about 'Zoo' is how conscious it is in showing the thread between characters who shared an adolescence together (Damon's foil, a frequently sympathetic one, is an older brother played by Thomas Haden Church) and how that contributes to the hard-earned wisdom of characters trying to bridge generational misunderstanding. Which is to say that the scenes between Damon and Ford [Benjamin's teenage son Dylan] are among the best-written (Crowe collaborated on the screenplay with Aline Brosh McKenna) and best-played scenes in the film." — Glenn Kenny, MSN
The Performances
"The ups and downs of survival while hanging on by their fingernails are too linear for spontaneity and the happy ending is nothing short of contrived, but the performances are sincere and Mr. Damon actually seems to be having a ball, giving one of the best and most mature performances of his career. The relationship between Ben, still hiding from the pain of loss, and Kelly [Scarlett Johansson], a 28-year-old animal lover with no personal life, wisely avoids the Hollywood clichés that too often furnish easy solutions for loneliness, while Dylan sees fate in a restorative way when he discovers romance with Kelly's cousin (Elle Fanning, who, like her sister Dakota, is growing from child actor to leading lady with sex appeal faster than a flying bullet). The roles are mere outlines for meatier characters, but Mr. Damon brings a depth of humanity to the zealous but underwritten zoo owner that is guaranteed to inspire confidence." — Rex Reed, The New York Observer
The Final Word, Pro-Con-Pro Style
"Don't confuse the film's modest goals with a lack of gravity. Damon's father-son confrontation with Ford potently disproves that. As Benjamin says, 'all it takes is 20 seconds of insane courage to change your life.' There's a lot of fun waiting at 'We Bought a Zoo,' but it's the feelings that run through every scene that'll make you glad you came." — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"Does 'We Bought a Zoo' jerk tears and warm hearts effectively? Sure, dead moms and fuzzy critters will do that, especially when choreographed by a proud manipulator like Crowe. Perhaps it's churlish to complain about a filmmaker who pours so much — his taste, his tunes, his worldview, his good humor — into each movie. But watching the overlong, overfeeling, overdirected 'We Bought a Zoo' made me glad to return from Cameron Crowe's world to the real world, where things aren't quite so simple." — Dan Kois, Slate.com
"If you see it and you reject the sweetness or you can't hang with the open-hearted nature of the thing, I'm not going to argue with you. But I've seen what naked manipulation looks like, and that's not 'We Bought a Zoo.' It's just a film that wears its emotions right out front, and somehow, Crowe is able to brush aside any thoughts of what people will or won't think and just focus on building those moments that he does so well, those heartbreaking little moments of magic that have been the main currency of his career. Cameron Crowe remains, as always, uncool. And wonderful for it. 'We Bought a Zoo' is lovely, delicate, and absolutely worth seeing with your family this holiday season." — Drew McWeeny, HitFix.com
Check out everything we've got on "We Bought a Zoo."
For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.
Related VideosSource: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676449/we-bought-a-zoo-reviews.jhtml
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That cartoon scary face ? wide eyes, ready to run ? may have helped our primate ancestors survive in a dangerous wild, according to the authors of an article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors present a way that fear and other facial expressions might have evolved and then come to signal a person's feelings to the people around him.
The basic idea, according to Azim F. Shariff of the University of Oregon, is that the specific facial expressions associated with each particular emotion evolved for some reason. Shariff cowrote the paper with Jessica L. Tracy of the University of British Columbia. So fear helps respond to threat, and the squinched-up nose and mouth of disgust make it harder for you to inhale anything poisonous drifting on the breeze. The outthrust chest of pride increases both testosterone production and lung capacity so you're ready to take on anyone. Then, as social living became more important to the evolutionary success of certain species?most notably humans?the expressions evolved to serve a social role as well; so a happy face, for example, communicates a lack of threat and an ashamed face communicates your desire to appease.
The research is based in part on work from the last several decades showing that some emotional expressions are universal?even in remote areas with no exposure to Western media, people know what a scared face and a sad face look like, Shariff says. This type of evidence makes it unlikely that expressions were social constructs, invented in Western Europe, which then spread to the rest of the world.
And it's not just across cultures, but across species. "We seem to share a number of similar expressions, including pride, with chimpanzees and other apes," Shariff says. This suggests that the expressions appeared first in a common ancestor.
The theory that emotional facial expressions evolved as a physiological part of the response to a particular situation has been somewhat controversial in psychology; another article in the same issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science argues that the evidence on how emotions evolved is not conclusive.
Shariff and Tracy agree that more research is needed to support some of their claims, but that, "A lot of what we're proposing here would not be all that controversial to other biologists," Shariff says. "The specific concepts of 'exaptation' and 'ritualization' that we discuss are quite common when discussing the evolution of non-human animals." For example, some male birds bring a tiny morsel of food to a female bird as part of an elaborate courtship display. In that case, something that might once have been biologically relevant?sharing food with another bird?has evolved over time into a signal of his excellence as a potential mate. In the same way, Shariff says, facial expressions that started as part of the body's response to a situation may have evolved into a social signal.
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Association for Psychological Science: http://www.psychologicalscience.org
Thanks to Association for Psychological Science for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116310/What_are_emotion_expressions_for_
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Police state that the men showed up to the home at 10020 Third Street with the bats, intent on fighting the occupants inside. One or all of the male suspects kicked in the door to the home, but fled when one of the occupants sprayed the would-be attackers with bear?spray.
One of the attackers received stitches at the hospital, but it is unknown at this time how he received cuts to his face. There were no other injuries?reported.
Police believe this was a targeted act as the occupants of the residence and their would-be attackers are known to each other.??
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ROME (Reuters) ? A courtyard column of a Roman house in Pompeii collapsed on Thursday, renewing concerns about the state of the site which was frozen in time when Mount Vesuvius erupted 2,000 years ago, burying inhabitants alive and preserving their homes.
Last year the Italian government was accused of neglecting the UNESCO World Heritage site near Naples in southern Italy when part of the "House of the Gladiators" fell down.
That collapse, along with three others in 2010, and the subsequent accusations of neglect and mismanagement, helped trigger a no-confidence vote against former culture minister Sandro Bondi in January.
Bondi, a member of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government, survived the vote but quit in March.
Officials said the latest part of the site to crumble was one of several columns that once held up wooden trellises in the house where Loreio Tiburtino, a Roman nobleman, lived.
Built in the second century BC, the house was renovated in 62 AD, 17 years before the cataclysmic eruption.
"This is a torment without end," said Luisa Bossa, a lawmaker from the leftist opposition Democratic Party and former mayor of the Naples-area town of Herculaneum, also a major Roman-era archeological site.
"We have been complaining for three years but the country's most important archeological area continues to fall apart. The truth is that the site has been left alone for years and now, a bit at a time, we are paying the price," she said.
She called on Italy's culture minister, Lorenzo Ornaghi, to "take stock of the gravity of the situation and confront it with determination and speed."
Italy's archaeologists also voiced their concerns.
"To overcome the emergency created by these collapses, we need to hire specialized maintenance workers straight away. That is the only possible cure for Pompeii," Tsao Cevoli, head of the National Archaeologists Association, told news agency Ansa.
Pompeii was home to about 13,000 people when it was buried under ash, pumice pebbles and dust in 79 AD as it endured the force of an eruption equivalent to 40 atomic bombs.
Two-thirds of the 66-hectare (165-acre) town has since been uncovered. Pompeii attracts some 2.5 million tourists each year, making it one of Italy's most popular attractions.
(additional reporting by Antonella Cinelli; Editing by Michelle Martin)
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Lots of US cities claim they're the best place to do a startup. So where are entrepreneurs actually starting companies these days? TechCrunch reader Yuval Baror took a look at CrunchBase to try to answer the question. His most surprising result is that New York has been getting quite a few more startups than other cities outside of Silicon Valley. There's actually something to all the hype being cooked up by New York media companies and politicians, apparently.?Of course, the San Francisco-Silicon Valley region is still the clear leader.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/M02E9z-Zjqg/
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