Hey, here's a really cool film I saw over the weekend: "Frankenweenie." It's another stop-motion animation effort from Tim Burton along the same lines as "The Nightmare Before Christmas." The visuals are incredible: the animation just right, not smooth but a tiny bit jerky to emphasize the older subject matter. The characters (including their names - the main character, the boy, is Victor Frankenstein) create the feeling that they live in the alternate universe of old monster movies. I particularly like the science teacher, a dead-ringer for Vincent Price. It brings to mind old tv shows like "The Munsters" and "The Addams Family" in that it places these old monster tropes within a "normal" milieu. Aside from the fun, there's a small sidebar where the science teacher encounters the fear and ignorance of the townspeople and he gets off a few shots about their irrational fear of science. Great! Add to all this another iconic Danny Elfman score and we have the best Burton film in quite a while. I heartily recommend this entertaining flick...

Hot Man of the Day

Wallander

A friend has turned me on to the BBC series "Wallander." This is based on the mysteries by the Swedish author Henning Mankell. One of my favorite actors, Kenneth Branagh, plays Kurt Wallander, the low-key police detective who encounters both personal and criminal problems. The production is beautifully done, set in the vast spaces of northern Sweden where humanity is often dwarfed by nature. And Kurt himself often seems crushed by the evil he encounters and fights, although, in the grand tradition of detective fiction, he achieves victory, albeit a provisional one. As a long-time fan of British televised mysteries, I love and recommend this series.