"Holes"

"Holes."

Holes was a very good movie.

After seeing "The Royal Tenenbaums" and struggling as to whether or not I'm missing something (I spent most of my day yesterday thinking about that movie. I suppose that's what Wes Anderson wanted me to do - right?), I must say "Holes" didn't leave me pondering, struggling or worrying if I'm stupid or not. And that is not a bad thing at all. In fact -- it's damn good.

Based on the best-selling and award-winning book (1998 Newbury Award) of the same name by author Louis Sachar, the movie takes very few liberties from the story in print, which is something I admire very much when I see a movie made out of a book. Possibly the reason behind this is Mr. Sachar wrote the screenplay, and added very little to the end to fluff up the "what happens after" element which he left out of the book.

The story concerns a boy named Stanley Yelnats, note the name is a palindrome. Stanley Yelnats the fourth to be exact. He accidentally (or possibly intentionally due to a family curse) ends up arrested for stealing shoes from a charity auction. After being found guilty of stealing these shoes, he's given a choice -- prison or Camp Green Lake.

He's never been to camp after all.

Camp Green Lake turns out to not be very green nor does it have a lake. The boys are "sentenced" to build character by digging a hole a day, five feet deep and five feet wide. They are told that this builds character.

Stanley is facing 18 months of hole digging. And his tent mates don't intend on making his life a cake walk.

The adventure starts there.

All told, it's an insidiously wicked story of a child penal camp, an insane "warden" and her equally insane staff, and a back story of what happens when you don't do what a crazed gypsy (Eartha Kitt plays her) tells you to do.

There is also a deeper story of unrequited interracial love, which is the reason why Green Lake is neither green nor has a lake...

Curses leveled about people's heads left and right, and poor Stanley is stuck in the middle of it all, the poor damn kid. His choices are to accept his fate or fight it and do something different. Which would you choose to do?

There is a laundry list of well known actors in this movie (Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Eartha Kitt, Henry Winkler, Patricia Arquette, Tim Blake Nelson, and a great cameo by basketball legend Rick Fox), but the stars of the movie are Stanley, aka "Caveman" and Hector, AKA "Zero," pictured here left to right. Stanley is played by Shia LeBouef, and you are about to see this kid all over the damn place as three movies come out this summer with him figuring very key in the castings. And Zero is played wonderfully by the painfully adorable and lovable Khleo Thomas, who happens to be an Anchorage AK native. They make an unlikely team, a boy with a loving family who shouldn't be there at all and a homeless parentless street urchin who got arrested trying to steal shoes at a Pay-less.

Their lives come together for a very strange reason, an uncanny reason. I won't give it away, but suffice to say they do a very good job of weaving together the three story lines Louis Sachar writes in his book, and I think that this movie was incredibly good for a lot of the right reasons, even if the Hollywood happy ending was a tad over the top.

I love when movies hold exactly true to the book, and this movie did just that. I enjoyed the book greatly -- read it in about 2 hours one night a week or so ago, and think that as a storyteller, Louis Sachar has the gift.

The soundtrack is very good too -- with music from Moby, Shaggy, Eels, Dr. John, Eagle Eye Cherry, North Mississippi All Stars, Fiction Plane, and the boys in the cast (D-Tent Boys) among others, it's got rap and blues and techno and spirituals -- all in a way that makes sense. Great soundtrack.

See this movie no matter what your age.

You won't be wondering what the message or meaning are. You'll enjoy it. Or you can hate my guts for eternity for recommending it.

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Today I took baby Ben and Geoff for a nice long walk while babysitting. The weather has been, to say the least, miserable this week. Today was glorious and close to the ocean it was still a tad chilly. We played at the neighborhood park, and walked all up and down the little neighborhood streets. We said hi to people we didn't even know, and ladies cooed at Ben and looked at Geoff who easily played the "big brother" role and wondered where I adopted the baby from.

It was cute.

Ben loves to be out and about, so the walk did us all good. He was cranky just hanging round the house and to be honest, so was I. He took a 2 hour nap today and Geoff and I played Nintendo for 2 straight hours. I suck at any and all of the "Legend of Zelda" games. But Mario Party 4 was cool.

And Dan has Dr. Mario on his old school Nintendo 64 so I got some of that down while Geoff played games at Cartoon Network's website.

All told it was a good day.

Doug took the dogs swimming and Jessie spent the day with a friend. It's well past my bedtime now, so I ought to go slink off in there and get some sleep.

Guess that's the muppet update for tonight. Have a good weekend and try and take in Holes if you're going to the movies, m'kay? And do let me know your opinion.

Gotta go. The couch and cuddling with Jessie beckons me.