Has anyone heard anything about this???
DD read the book in school earlier this year, and thought it was really good, different, but good. Now the movie will be coming out, with some pretty big name stars (Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Henry Winkler, Eartha Kitt):
http://www.msnbc.com/news/900687.asp?0ql=c7p
Kids will dig Disneys Holes
Amiable adventure respects
original book
Shia LaBeouf and Khleo Thomas in a scene from "Holes."
By David Elliott
SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM
April 18 Adapted by Louis Sachar from his highly successful novel for young readers, Holes has a thick shellac of literary fidelity Sachar trying to tuck his book elements into one of the quirkiest movies Disney has ever released. Its either long on charm or fatiguingly short of it, depending on your taste and perhaps your fondness for the novel.
HOLES IS MOSTLY set in a juvenile detention camp in the desert. Teen boys are made to dig big holes to find a legendary Old West crime treasure, coveted by the whip-voiced warden (Sigourney Weaver), her yokel henchman called Mr. Sir (Jon Voight) and their prissy assistant (Tim Blake Nelson).
The new boy on the digging detail is Stanley Yelnats (spell it backward). He is acted by appealingly pre-mature Shia LaBeouf. Stanley has the handicap of coming from a hexed Latvian ancestry and a father (Henry Winkler) whose obsession is to erase the dirty-feet smell of used shoes.
The whimsies curl and multiply, as if this were a Farmers Almanac version of Latin magic realism revamped by Roald Dahl.
There are flashbacks to a sweet frontier schoolmarm (Patricia Arquette) whose interracial romance provoked violence and made her a sort of female Jesse James. And there are deadly lizards, and a mythic hill shaped like a thumb, where sweet onions grow in the waters of a biblically nourishing fountain.
Believe it, or not. The names squeak with impishness, Stanley being called Caveman, the other boys having nicknames like Squid, Armpit, Magnet and, Cavemans new pal, Zero. The smallest, yet with big ears, Zero is played by the pocket scene-grabber Khleo Thomas.
HARDY BOYS INTEREST
A tip of the tarot card to Eartha Kitt as Madame Zeroni, a sort of conjure queen. Thats just the kind of career capper youd expect for Kitt, whose home planet has never been entirely our own. Her feline weirdness still suggests creme de menthe, incense and beaded curtains.
Voight seems to be deep into his third or fourth career. This former star, 70s chalice of peachy decency and earnest liberalism, has turned to character acting with predatory zeal. He was a vicious psycho battling a giant snake in Anaconda, sprang out of a wheelchair as F.D.R. in Pearl Harbor, was amusingly buried inside Howard Cosell in Ali, and now plays Weavers stooge as a sort of demented Gabby Hayes who ate an Elvis impersonator.
Director Andrew Davis, so sure with the tensions of Under Siege and The Fugitive, is amiably sweating this assignment. His tone veers off on fishing expeditions, sly humor and pathos casting their baited lines next to teen terror and pratfalling hokum. The target audience may be satisfied that the book is being respected, and the adventures of Caveman and Zero have a rootable, Hardy Boys interest.
My kids (11 and 13) liked it somewhat more than I did, which probably sums up the movie about as well as anything should.
Sounds interesting!! DD and I will definitely be going to check it out!
DD read the book in school earlier this year, and thought it was really good, different, but good. Now the movie will be coming out, with some pretty big name stars (Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Henry Winkler, Eartha Kitt):
http://www.msnbc.com/news/900687.asp?0ql=c7p
Kids will dig Disneys Holes
Amiable adventure respects
original book
Shia LaBeouf and Khleo Thomas in a scene from "Holes."
By David Elliott
SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM
April 18 Adapted by Louis Sachar from his highly successful novel for young readers, Holes has a thick shellac of literary fidelity Sachar trying to tuck his book elements into one of the quirkiest movies Disney has ever released. Its either long on charm or fatiguingly short of it, depending on your taste and perhaps your fondness for the novel.
HOLES IS MOSTLY set in a juvenile detention camp in the desert. Teen boys are made to dig big holes to find a legendary Old West crime treasure, coveted by the whip-voiced warden (Sigourney Weaver), her yokel henchman called Mr. Sir (Jon Voight) and their prissy assistant (Tim Blake Nelson).
The new boy on the digging detail is Stanley Yelnats (spell it backward). He is acted by appealingly pre-mature Shia LaBeouf. Stanley has the handicap of coming from a hexed Latvian ancestry and a father (Henry Winkler) whose obsession is to erase the dirty-feet smell of used shoes.
The whimsies curl and multiply, as if this were a Farmers Almanac version of Latin magic realism revamped by Roald Dahl.
There are flashbacks to a sweet frontier schoolmarm (Patricia Arquette) whose interracial romance provoked violence and made her a sort of female Jesse James. And there are deadly lizards, and a mythic hill shaped like a thumb, where sweet onions grow in the waters of a biblically nourishing fountain.
Believe it, or not. The names squeak with impishness, Stanley being called Caveman, the other boys having nicknames like Squid, Armpit, Magnet and, Cavemans new pal, Zero. The smallest, yet with big ears, Zero is played by the pocket scene-grabber Khleo Thomas.
HARDY BOYS INTEREST
A tip of the tarot card to Eartha Kitt as Madame Zeroni, a sort of conjure queen. Thats just the kind of career capper youd expect for Kitt, whose home planet has never been entirely our own. Her feline weirdness still suggests creme de menthe, incense and beaded curtains.
Voight seems to be deep into his third or fourth career. This former star, 70s chalice of peachy decency and earnest liberalism, has turned to character acting with predatory zeal. He was a vicious psycho battling a giant snake in Anaconda, sprang out of a wheelchair as F.D.R. in Pearl Harbor, was amusingly buried inside Howard Cosell in Ali, and now plays Weavers stooge as a sort of demented Gabby Hayes who ate an Elvis impersonator.
Director Andrew Davis, so sure with the tensions of Under Siege and The Fugitive, is amiably sweating this assignment. His tone veers off on fishing expeditions, sly humor and pathos casting their baited lines next to teen terror and pratfalling hokum. The target audience may be satisfied that the book is being respected, and the adventures of Caveman and Zero have a rootable, Hardy Boys interest.
My kids (11 and 13) liked it somewhat more than I did, which probably sums up the movie about as well as anything should.
Sounds interesting!! DD and I will definitely be going to check it out!
