The Longest Ice Age Fiori
By Steve Herte
The Longest Daycare
(2012)
It’s always a surprise
to have an opening animated feature to a full-length movie (whereas it was a
matter of course in my parents’ days) and this Matt Groenig short starring
Maggie Simpson was charming, clever, poignant and wordless.
Marge Simpson carries
Maggie into a daycare center where they have machines to classify and separate
the “Gifted,” “Average," and “Not-Worth Bothering With.” They even
have a machine to detect lice. (It’s such a joy to see cartoon lice come
crawling toward you out of a 3D screen.) Poor Maggie gets classified with the
third group.
She meets a boy with a
uni-brow who carries a large sledge hammer. Whenever a butterfly has the
misfortune to fly near him, he smashes it on the wall with the hammer and draws
a red “picture frame” around it. There’s nothing to play with and Maggie finds
a pink and black striped caterpillar. She knows she must keep it away from
hammer-boy so she perches it over her eyes as if she also has a uni-brow and
gets it to relative safety.
She finds a plant and
puts the caterpillar on it while looking through a pop-up book on butterflies.
The book teaches her that the caterpillar plus the plant equals a chrysalis and
becomes a butterfly. Next thing she knows, the caterpillar has already formed a
chrysalis. A blue butterfly emerges from it, hammer-boy appears, and the chase
is on. Maggie sees an open window and lifts the butterfly toward it. As it
reaches the windowsill, hammer-boy slams down the blinds.
Marge returns to pick up
Maggie, who is stressed to say the least. Back at the daycare center,
hammer-boy lifts the blinds and finds the blue bow that was previously in
Maggie’s hair. We shift back to Maggie in Marge’s car with the blue butterfly
in her hair, which she releases to the safety of the wide-open spaces.
I like the Simpsons and
in particular Maggie and Marge, so this artful 3D short delighted me. I find
that dialogue-less films are more difficult to make because the creator has to
depend on visual cues for communication and comedy. This one ranked with the
Pink Panther and Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons.
Ice Age – Continental
Drift 3D (2012)
In this fourth chapter
of the prehistoric series, our friends Manny the Mammoth (Ray Romano), Sid the
Sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the Saber-Tooth Tiger (Denis Leary) all either
have or are about to have a family. There is absolutely no explanation of where
all the animals in this picture came from, but suddenly, they’re all there.
Manny met his mate, Ellie (Queen Latifah), in the second episode, Ice
Age – Meltdown and they now have a teenage daughter, Peaches
(Keke Palmer) who was born in the third episode, Ice Age – Dawn of the
Dinosaurs (the fourth-highest grossing animated film, behind Toy
Story 3, The Lion King, and Shrek 2).
Scrat, (Chris Wedges)
the saber-tooth squirrel/rat, is obsessed with acorns and his search for a
secret burial place opens a crevasse that drops him onto the iron core of the
earth. His chasing the acorn causes the core to spin and foments the
break-up of the continents. His bouncing around inside the Earth creates a
sphinx, Mount Rushmore, and several comic surface features.
Sid’s family then opens
the movie by careening down an icy slope in a hollowed out log. They stop long
enough to drop off Granny Eunice (Joy Behar) and desert Sid for a second time
just after alerting the group to the cracks forming everywhere. One forms
between Ellie and Manny and widens until neither can cross and Manny, Sid and
Diego are on one side and Ellie, Peaches, Louis the mole-hog (Josh Gad) - who
is in love with Peaches - are on the other. As the chunk of ice slides downhill
and into the ocean, Manny calls to Ellie to get to the land bridge and that no
matter what, he’ll find her.
The ice chunk becomes a
sea-going raft and in no time our crew is out of sight of land. They realize
that no matter how hard they paddle, the current is too strong. They soon run
afoul of the ice chunk shaped like a pirate ship belonging to Captain Gutt
(Peter Dinklage), an extremely large gorilla/orangutan amalgam (he’s big enough
to stand up to a mammoth) and his motley crew, including a vicious rabbit, a
sexy white and black striped female saber-tooth tiger named Shira (Jennifer
Lopez), and a really dumb elephant seal (as if this movie needed any more comic
relief). There’s a scuffle. Manny and his group manage to split the pirate ship
and sail away with Captain Gutt vowing revenge and the chemistry between Diego
and Shira begins.
The exodus continues on
land with several amusing scenes, including Peaches desperately trying to
impress Ethan (Aubrey Graham), a male teenage mammoth and heart-throb for three
other females, and rejecting Louis. When the good guys finally catch up to the
others, the final conflict between Captain Gutt and Manny is actually a great
action scene as well a comic battle.
I rate the film four out
of five martini glasses. My only reason leaving out the fifth glass is that the
movie did not suspend my scientific belief that there ever existed a sperm
whale (his name is Precious) big enough to swallow a mammoth as if he were a
fish (really, this creature was way too big, even for prehistoric times). I was
even able to accept the reason why Ellie (remind you, a mammoth) likes to sleep
hanging from a tree by her tail. When we first met her, she thought she was a
sister to opossums Crash and Eddie (Seann William Scott and Josh Peck). These
two do outrageous and dangerous feats throughout the movie. At one point Louis
asks them why. The answer: “We’re stupid.” I still enjoyed it even though some
idiot brought a baby to the theater.
The movie ends
outrageously with Scrat making it to Scratlantis where he is met by Ariscratle
(Patrick Stewart) and where acorns are everywhere. Ariscratle warns him to
resist his obsession but he goes for the largest acorn there, pulls it up and
sinks Scratlanis (it was the plug holding it afloat).
Ai Fiori
400 Fifth Avenue (36th Street)
Setai Hotel – Level
two, New York City
"To the
Flowers" is what Ai Fiori means in Italian and the sleek
Setai Hotel is its setting. I followed a well-dressed couple through
the revolving doors to the hotel and at the same time unfortunately gulped a
huge breath of the lady’s heavy perfume. I managed to gasp the
restaurant’s name to the doorman who graciously indicated the white marble
spiral staircase with wrought iron railing. The miasma followed me up
through the etched glass doors of the restaurant and did not depart until the
hostess seated me and I was sipping a Beefeater martini. Phew!
The bar at the top of
the stairs is fronted in white marble and topped in black granite, a glass and
black-wood shelving behind it and a mirrored ceiling above. The dining
area is “el” shaped and the walls are alternate black and dark green with large
photos of the same archway in the four seasons. The waiter who presented
me with the wine and cocktail list, and who eventually brought my drink was
pleasant and helpful. I asked him to leave the wine list with me as I
would have need of it later.
The menu is divided into
appetizers, pastas (both half and full servings), fish (pesce) and meat
(carne) entrees. When I had decided on the prix-fixe four-course
dinner, a different server took my order. I started with the crispy
sweetbreads, followed by the risotto with duck confit and hen-of-the-woods
mushrooms, and the main course, maiale – red waddle pork loin,
gnocchi, pork belly and fennel à la greque. I was about to pick up
the wine list when I noticed it had vanished. I asked the man who took my
order to bring it back.
About 15 minutes later,
the first course arrived, but no wine list. I asked for it again and
finally got it. I quickly paged through multiple lists of three-digit to
four-digit, way over-priced wines. An insincere woman server asked if she
could help and I replied to the negative, getting more flustered by the minute
because my appetizer was getting cold. Finally I chose a 2007 Long Island
Merlot (even though I don’t particularly like Merlot) that was reasonably
priced. My appetizer had indeed cooled down, but it was still
delicious. Unfortunately, however,I hadn’t cooled down.
The wine turned out to
be better than most and the risotto arrived. It was delicious: hot and on the
sweet side. The waiter who brought my drink asked how I liked it. “Much better
than the first course, it was hot.” I replied. “Oh, I’m sorry.” said he. “If I
had the wine list as I requested originally, or even when I requested it the
second time, my appetizer would have been hot and perfect,” was my final
comment on the subject.
I must say that I never
had to pour my own glass of wine once throughout, much to their credit.
The main course
arrived. Three perfect quenelles of pork loin, a dark sauce I recognized
from several other restaurants, postage stamp sized cuts of pork belly and
dark-edged slices of fennel. It looked wonderful. The loin tasted wonderful,
tender and juicy, but the whole dish was luke-warm and the sauce was salty
(which I suspected it would be). This made the pork belly taste fatty and
disgusting and the fennel didn’t help. A different server glided up to my table
asking about the dish. “Is this supposed to be served hot?” I asked. “Yes”
“It’s not! I don’t like it, and it’s too salty!” “Can I get you something
else?” “After the dishes I’ve just had, it would have to be something light.”
“How about the soft-shelled crab appetizer?” “That sounds good.”
Shortly thereafter, the
soft-shelled crab dish arrived: crispy, hot, with circles of cantaloupe, topped
with slices of prosciutto and resting in greek yoghurt. It elicited a
“Wow!” out of me. This restaurant has the potential of being excellent, I
thought. Next course, dessert.
Having seen the cheese
cart pass my table once or twice caused a craving. Another different
server, an Asian girl with an extreme buzz cut, arrived. I had a feeling I was
meeting the entire staff. However, she completely understood my extreme tastes
in cheese and brought three wonderful selections, a pale yellow cow cheese, a
firm white cheese in a zesty brown crust and an excellent bleu, served with
fruity raisin bread slices and raspberry compote. I complimented her on
her choices and suggested a slight re-arrangement from milder to stronger.
My original waiter took
my final order for a cup of their dark coffee and a glass of Strega (which I
knew they had from the cocktail list) and I was starting to forget the
evening’s slip-ups. When I review restaurants for Zagat they always ask the
same questions at the end and the one question I answer the same way every time
is: What is the worst thing about dining out? Answer: Being
ignored. Of course, as with Gordon Ramsay at the London, I will give Ai
Fiori a second chance (since they made that memory come
roaring back.).
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