Mao's Last Dancer, Owls, Taste - Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

Director Bruce Beresford has such a delicate touch that his films don't look as if they were directed -- things just happen. Such naturalness takes far more skill (not to mention modesty and good taste) than you'll ever see in showy directors who make sure to upstage both actors and script.

Over the years Beresford has made some beautiful movies that live on in my heart. Driving Miss Daisy was his, as was Tender Mercies. Of course, his record also includes King David and Her Alibi, but nobody's perfect.

The problem with being a director of subtlety, modesty, and taste is that some reviewers have to be hit over the head by bad art in order to know what to say about a movie. The result is that Beresford's latest film has been slugged with some really stupid reviews.

Mao's Last Dancer has the perfect title -- after you've seen the film. But before you've seen it, what does it make you think of? A movie about Communist China -- and, given the way Hollywood works these days, probably a favorable view.

Well, think again. It's the story of ballet dancer Li Cunxin, based on his autobiography. Li's story is a powerful one. Snatched from his home in a remote Chinese village by Communist officials determined to compete on the world stage with dancers, Li doesn't even like to dance ... until he has a teacher who believes in him.

This movie was made with the cooperation of today's China -- but it pulls no punches about the way the Communist government worked in the days of Mao. The story is fair to the Communist true believers, but it also shows the terror of ordinary citizens. I've never seen a depiction of life in Communist China that felt more truthful.

This part of the story is told with the use of subtitles. So yes, it feels like a foreign film. But only in bits and snatches, because the story cuts back and forth between Li's Chinese upbringing and training and his visit to America as an exchange student.

Once he reaches Houston and begins to work with Ben Stevenson's dance company, he quickly emerges as a star of the first order. Yet he is only scheduled to remain in Houston for the summer, and then return to China.

He knows what will happen. He will have to go back to dancing sterile Revolutionary Ballet, while the great choreography and music of the Western world passes him by.

He has also fallen in love with an American girl, a dancer with dreams of her own -- though she simply doesn't have the skill to take part in ballet at the same level as Li. Nevertheless, they marry, and under American law at the time that gives him the right to stay.

The movie comes to its first climax when he is kidnapped inside the Chinese consulate in Houston, where every reasonable effort, including deception (but no torture), is used to try to get him to change his mind and return to China.

Even choreographer Ben Stevenson (perfectly portrayed by Bruce Greenwood) wants him to return to China. After all, Stevenson is thinking of future visits to China by his dance company, which will certainly be put in jeopardy by Li's defection.

With the help of immigration attorney Charles Foster (Kyle MacLachlan in his best performance), he is able to stay. But he is cut off from his family and can only imagine the worst -- that his selfish decision to stay in America to dance has cost them terribly. Meanwhile, his new wife finds that she has to choose between her own dancing and the skyrocketing career of her husband.

Let's get one thing straight right from the start: I don't like classical ballet. To me, it seems mechanical, even though many performers have great flair. It often seems like a series of rote maneuvers, as in figure skating.

But this movie showed me why the true stars of dance can make it come to life, especially when they're working with great choreographers. Much of the reason I enjoyed every moment of the dancing is because we are shown how much it cost Li to acquire his strength; but mostly I loved it because it is flat-out brilliant and even a philistine like me can't help but be moved by it.

The miracle of this film is the actor who plays Li Cunxin as an adult: Chi Cao, who really is a brilliant ballet soloist in the Birmingham Royal Ballet. He won the gold medal in 1998 at Varna, and we see very clearly that every dance move is his own.

There is no hint that he has ever had the slightest training as an actor -- but he brings off the acting aspects of this role well enough to hold the screen with powerful actors. In fact, we can clearly see that part of his appeal as a dancer is that he can truly put his whole soul into a performance. This movie would be worth seeing for Chi Cao's performance alone. (For more information, see http://www.brb.org.uk/masque/index.htm?act=person&urn=162)

Chi Cao is greatly helped by the two younger actors who play Li to perfection as a child and as a teenager. There are no false notes from any of the actors.

But it's the story, ultimately, that moved me to tears over and over. Obviously Li Cinxun was scrupulously honest and fair with other people in his autobiography, and writer Jan Sardi (who wrote Shine and adapted The Notebook) created a powerful screen presentation of the tale.

Creating a film that spans decades and goes back and forth between nations and languages is an enormous challenge. Watching it requires that you be patient enough to let the story emerge. This is no slam-bang action film. Nothing explodes.

Nor can you count on it to be either a dance movie or a cold-war movie. It's both, equally and simultaneously. It's also a love story and a coming of age film. In short, it's about life; about one extraordinary life, but also about all the lives that touched him importantly.

There is one moment, when Li's mother first learns of his "defection," that is absolutely priceless. At one of the screenings I attended, people cheered and clapped.

Mao's Last Dancer opens this weekend at the Carousel, as part of its program of bringing us small independent films that people in a town the size of Greensboro usually have no chance to see. I have no idea how long it will be there. So don't waste a moment -- take the chance and go see it. You'll thank me for telling you about it.

When I saw the previews of Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, I just shook my head. It looked like your standard fantasy-quest, with your standard young protagonist who has to save the world. (I know, my career is built on precisely that premise, but that doesn't mean I don't get tired of seeing it over and over again.)

Then our sixteen-year-old was assigned to see it so she could join in discussions of it in her film class at Weaver.

Here I thought that when she entered her teens, our days of being dragged to kids' movies were over.

So it should be all the more impressive that I actually enjoyed it from beginning to end. Literally, there was never a dull moment.

It began with the animation. The owls were created with extraordinary realism. There were tiny elements of anthropomorphism, but by and large the owls looked like, well, owls. (The backgrounds were not up to the same level as the character animation, unfortunately.)

Then the writing (by John Orloff, who also wrote episodes of Band of Brothers, and Emil Stern) was charming and intelligent. I'm not sure which bits came from them and which from the writer of the series of books this movie was based on (by Kathryn Lasky); what matters is that all the bits worked.

Of course owls can't actually do ironmongery or write books (or, for that matter, talk), but the writers and animators did an excellent job of making it all semi-believable. The owls acted like owls -- including coughing up pellets and eating smaller creatures. By the end of the movie I felt as if I was just the tiniest bit smarter about owls than I was at the beginning.

The realism does cause a slight problem with telling some of the characters apart. It helps that the different owl species can be so different in size and coloration. But now and then it was possible to become quite confused about which owl we were seeing; the confusion wasn't resolved until they talked. Such moments were rare, however, and by the end everything is clear.

Is it a great movie? Not really -- but it's a good one. And if all the fantasy tropes were familiar, what of it? They're made fresh by the new twists in this story, or fresh enough to remain enjoyable.

If you get dragged to the movie because you're attached by kinship to young children, cheer up -- you'll enjoy it way more than usual. And if you keep your expectations reasonable, you can enjoy it even without having children in tow.

Make sure you also stop by Taste Yogurt Bar, which has its grand opening this Friday. They've actually been serving for a week or so, and I think they'll succeed.

Since you pay by weight and dispense the frozen yogurt yourself, there's no waiting for scoops to be dipped. First, you can use tiny cups to sample each flavor. The trouble is that the dispenser nozzles are like firehoses. Nothing happens, and then suddenly you've got too much yogurt to fit in the tiny tasting cup and it's all over your fingers.

Not that it's anything but a pleasure to lick them off, because the flavors are very, very good. They change every couple of days, though I imagine (or at least I hope!) that they always have their excellent vanilla and rich deep chocolate.

Once you've decided on your flavors, you grab a bigger cup and pump in as much of each flavor as you want. Then you go to the toppings bar and start putting on whatever stuff you want (though the yogurt is good enough to eat naked). (That is, the yogurt would be naked.)

Toppings include tiny chocolate caramel cups like mini-Rolos that I'd like to be able to find by themselves. They also have superb mini-non-pareils. While M&Ms on ice cream or frozen yogurt freeze too solid to enjoy eating, the caramel cups and non-pareils remain perfectly chewable.

But there's a large variety of other toppings -- and, since you put them on yourself, you aren't waiting for a handful of employees to serve all the people ahead of you.

The only logjam is at the point of payment, but since they sell by weight, it's simple and quick. And there are lots of little tables, so your chances of finding a place to sit and enjoy the treat are pretty good.

Taste Yogurt Bar is at 2417-D Lawndale Drive. That puts it near Target and such restaurants as Positano, Steak and Shake, Panera -- and at the other end of the same building as the new location of Southern Lights.

In fact, with Loco for Coco on the way between Southern Lights and Taste Yogurt Bar, that building is pretty much Mecca for me, with Positano as Medina across the way.

Every Day Is Special

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.

Thursday, Sept. 30 -- Gutenberg Day

On this day in 1452, in Mainz, Germany, Johann Gutenberg printed and published the first section of the Bible. It was the first book printed using movable (and reusable) type, ushering in the age of relatively cheap publication. The whole Bible was completed by 1456. Work that used to take years for scribes to do by hand, only to end up with one copy, now could result in hundreds of copies at once, and eventually thousands.

The very newspaper you hold in your hands (or online text you're reading on a screen) are direct descendants of Gutenberg's Bible. Only because of printing from moveable type did it become useful to teach everyone to read; only when reading was commonplace did it make sense to publish a newspaper; only when everyone knew how to read did the internet make any kind of sense as a means of publication.

Little Women, by Louisa Mae Alcott, was published on this day in 1868. Alcott was a popular writer of potboiler romances, but for this book she reached back into her own childhood and her own family to create a sentimental but realistic account of four girls living in genteel poverty who learned to make their way in the world.

Little Women is a perfect example of the kind of book that achieves real, instead of academic, immortality. For many decades the book was despised or ignored by academia, and almost no one expected their students to read the book. In fact, it was relegated to "children's literature," though in fact it's quite readable by adults and only reveals its deepest truths to mature readers. It never needed a professor to explain it to its readers -- the author spoke directly to us, generation after generation. That's how real literature works, folks; the stuff that has to be decoded is, for all intents and purposes, dead to the living culture.

I remember as a four-year-old being sent to bed while the adults in the house were preparing to gather around the black-and-white to watch "Red Skeleton." I had visions of a frightening story, but I knew I wanted to watch with them, because they obviously looked forward to watching the program with such relish.

Fortunately, The Red Skelton Show, which premiered on TV on this date in 1951, was still running when I got old enough to watch. We would repeat jokes from his show at school the next day. For instance: "Two seagulls, Gertrude and Heathcliff," said Skelton, making his arms into flapping wings. "Heathcliff, did you see the new Plymouth Valiant?" "Of course, Gertrude. I spotted one this morning."

His country bumpkin, Klem Kadiddlehopper, and many other beloved characters became the models for later comics, most notably Johnny Carson, who developed his own stable of memorable and hilarious characters. In fact, it was Skelton who first introduced Johnny Carson to a national audience; and it was on Skelton's show that the Rolling Stones first appeared on American TV.

Friday, Oct. 1 -- World Smile Day

Sorry, they got that wrong. World Smile Day is actually the day after this fall's American elections, when we have a chance to put the brakes on our current headlong rush to disaster.

October is celebrated for several different causes:

Caffeine Addiction Recovery Month. As a Mormon, I've never had a coffee habit because I've never tasted coffee in my life. But that's not the only way to get caffeine. I used to have a liter-a-day Diet Coke habit. The thing is, caffeine had no effect on me that I could see -- no jitters, no burst of energy, not even wakefulness.

Then I suddenly stopped drinking it -- and was hit with a migraine that knocked me down for three days in the middle of grad school.

Yeah, that's what I needed -- a drug that had no benefits but knocked me out when I stopped using. I tried drinking a single Diet Coke a couple of times since then, and each time, the next day I had that migraine. I'm not a slow learner (well, not too slow) and so I've never had caffeine since, if I could help it.

Eat Better, Eat Together Month. This seems to be two ideas. American families have allowed themselves to become so busy and so fragmented in their schedules that there are millions of families that get no more than a meal or two together during the week -- and many who never eat all at once.

It's not that meals are more nutritious when the whole family is present. But it seems to be a minimum condition for families developing any kind of closeness, loyalty, or common purpose that they occasionally see each other all at once and find out who the heck they are as a family.

So why not try for one meal, every single day, where every single person is present? For many families, that might be breakfast. Why not all get up in time to share breakfast with the person who leaves home the earliest? It would take some planning; it would take a little sacrifice for some to get out of bed before the last possible second. But wouldn't that also lay a foundation of love, letting the whole family know that it's worth making the effort to spend time together when you're preparing to go out and face the day?

This is also National Chili Month. I have one word for you: Habanero. Once you've become inured to that hottest of all possible chili peppers, there is no other chili or mustard that will scare you.

Squirrel Awareness Month. If you remember my saga of Orson and the Squirrels from a couple of weeks ago, let me give you the update. First, my new squirrel stopper from Doctors Foster and Smith (http://sn.im/squirrelstopper) is now happily installed in my front yard. I watched a squirrel try to shimmy up the pole, and he was stopped cold.

And we have got a lot of entertainment out of watching Edison the Super Squirrel try to get back up to the birdseed. Our squirrel baffle from Duncraft.com (http://sn.im/squirrelbaffle) is working great, now that we have it installed at the right height.

Edison spends fifteen minutes at a time getting to the top of every high point on the patio anywhere near the birdfeeding station. He always ends up on the roof, poised at the edge, ready to leap. We had images of him sailing out, missing, and hitting the brick of the patio, breaking his little neck. Just imagining it made me feel so guilty!

But Edison is as smart as we thought he was -- he never takes the fatal plunge.

And then, on Tuesday evening, he was apparently able to make sufficient excuses to his mate about why he could no longer bring her the vast supplies of birdseed he used to spill out onto the ground for her. Because instead of eating under the birdfeeders, we saw them merrily enjoying each other's company as they attempted the manufacture of new little squirrels.

And while they went at it with such enthusiasm, there were the cardinals and sparrows and warblers above them, eating and spilling seeds and hulls down on them like confetti.

Ours is a happy home.

Here's a reason to smile -- on this day in 1908, Henry Ford introduced the Model T -- a car so cheap his own employees could afford to buy one. You could have it in any color, Ford bragged, as long as it was black. The Model T did for cars what Gutenberg's printing press did for books -- and we achieved universal adult drivership a lot faster than we achieved universal adult readership.

Saturday, Oct. 2 -- Gandhi Day

Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi was born on this day in 1869 in Porbandar, India. He first rose to fame as a lawyer in South Africa, fighting for the rights of the large Indian community in that country, which was still under British rule at the time.

Later he returned home and fought for Indian independence, though when it came, it was not as a unified country, but as two nations, Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, with massive bloodshed on both sides. Gandhi himself was assassinated in the garden of his home in New Delhi on Jan. 30, 1948.

On the anniversary of his birth, thousand gather at a park on the Jumna River in Delhi and sing hymns, recite verses from the Gita, Koran and Bible, and spin cotton thread on small spinning wheels. Here in America, we can watch the DVD of the Oscar-winning epic biography Gandhi starring Ben Kingsley, which, though long, is deeply moving, and gives you an indelible sense of what this great man accomplished in his life.

The first Peanuts comic strip appeared sixty years ago today, in 1950. Created by Charles Schultz, the last new strip was published on 13 Feb. 2000. But the strips live on in the culture, especially through the musical revue You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and the TV specials for various holidays.

The Twilight Zone premiered on television on this day in 1959. Created and hosted by Rod Serling, it was an anthology series -- no continuing characters. Often the stories were based on first-rate short stories by established sci-fi authors. Who can forget moments like librarian Burgess Meredith breaking his glasses in the ruins of civilization, or lines like "It's a cookbook!"?

Sunday, Oct. 3 --National Carry a Tune Week

The idea is for people to celebrate favorite tunes from the past by performing them in a concert, at school, at church, or at home. The purpose is to remember tunes from America's past and keep them alive. For instance, here's a song that's at least a century old: "Two Little Girls in Blue." My mother used to sing us the chorus; I never knew there was a whole story told in the verse:

An old man gazed at a photograph in a locket he'd worn for years,

His nephew then asked him the reason why this locket had caused him tears,

"Come listen," he said, "and I'll tell you, lad, a story that's strange but true:

Your father and I at the school one day met two little girls in blue."

Chorus (after each verse):

"Two little girls in blue, lad, two little girls in blue.

They were sisters, we were brothers, and learned to love them true.

One little girl in blue, lad, stole your father's heart,

Became your mother, I married the other, and now we are ripped apart."

"The years rolled on and these girls grew up, one became my wife.

I thought her unfaithful; we quarreled, lad, and parted that night for life.

My fancy of jealousy wronged a heart, a heart that was brave and true,

For two better girls never lived than they, those two girls in blue."

Some old songs are still full of life: "Amazing Grace," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Dixie," "I Dream of Jeannie." Others are fading away and nearly lost: "Two Little Maids (I don't want to play in your yard)" and the Depression-era favorite "Keep Your Sunny Side Up":

Keep your sunny side up, up!

Hide the side that gets blue.

If you have nine sons in a row,

Baseball teams make money, you know!

Keep your funny side up, up!

Let your laughter come through, do!

Stand up on your legs, be like two fried eggs,

Keep your sunny side up!

"The Dick Van Dyke Show," created by Carl Reiner, premiered on this day in 1961. If you've never seen it, download any episode from iTunes for a couple of bucks. The brilliant interplay between Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore as a comedy writer and his cute-but-harried wife is topped only by the scenes in the office, where Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie, and Richard Deacon kept us laughing every week.

Monday, Oct. 4 -- Improve Your Home Office Day

OK, OK, I'll clean it up, Honey, I promise. Real Soon Now.

"Leave It To Beaver" premiered on this day in 1957. For its time, "Beaver" was a realistic depiction of the life of a young boy, his older brother, and his bemused but strong parents. We all loved to hate brother Wally's smarmy brown-nosing friend, Eddie Haskell, TV's answer to Iago. It had 235 episodes, and it was way better -- in my humble opinion -- than many more-celebrated shows from the period.

Tuesday, Oct. 5 -- World Teachers' Day

I'm a teacher myself, and the son of a teacher, and I've loved and learned from many great teachers in my life. Some of them have died, but the ways they changed and expanded my life still remain; others are still alive, and have become friends and colleagues.

And I see young people of great ability choosing the profession, despite the fact that administrations and parents and unions do all they can to make it all but unbearable to teach in the public schools. It breaks my heart how many great teachers leave the profession every year as well -- because they have reached the conclusion that anything would be better than putting up with the nonsense that constantly distracts them from the children.

Wednesday, Oct. 6 -- Balloons around the World

Balloon twisting and sculpture artists donate an hour or more to performances on behalf of a charity of their choice in their communities. Meanwhile, the rest of us try to stay as far as possible from anyone making that horrible sound of two balloon surfaces rubbing together.

Anwar El-Sadat, President of Egypt and one of the great statesmen of my lifetime, was assassinated on this day in 1981. Because of his courage (and Israel's willingness to meet him more than halfway), Egypt and Israel made peace, exchanged ambassadors, and the Sinai peninsula was returned to Egypt. The peace between these two nations still stands. If only other Muslim countries had men like Sadat to lead them.

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