Campbell Scott and Hope Davis are his parents, but the movie isn’t about them as much as it is about the kid, the pet he’s had since it was a cub, and the relationship with a fellow traveler, played by Eamonn Walker, he meets along the way. The scenes of the cheetah are stunning and will have you wondering how they did it, but the emotional payoff — the realization that to love something, you must eventually set it free — is a universal one for all living things.
Steve Carell
I’m not a huge fan of Jon Stewart, where he got his start, nor did I think that the BBC version of The Office could be topped, but Carell has won me over as the hilariously inappropriate boss Michael Scott on the NBC series, which has the potential to be the network’s next Seinfeld, with a wonderfully wacky cast of characters, including Six Feet Under’s marvelous Rainn Wilson as the obsequiously squirm-inducing and aptly named Dwight Schrute.
Carell’s performance in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy as dimwitted weatherman Brick Tamland brings a mute pathos to the part that has to be relished to be believed, as I have done on countless cable viewings.
The distracted look in Carell’s eyes, involuntarily darting back and forth, makes his characterizations at once side-splittingly funny and unspeakably sad, kind of like a combination Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton for our own modern times.
'80s Hits Stripped (Sidewinder Records)
Everything old is new again, or ‘80s pop stars reinvent themselves by playing “unplugged” versions of their hits. And while new renditions of Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl,” Howard Jones’ “No One Is to Blame” or John Waite’s “Missing You” don’t sound particularly promising, what does stand out is the ability of certain songs to rise above their genre-trapped arrangements in naked form to reveal their status as worthy compositions.
And while The Outfield’s “Your Love” and Heart’s “These Dreams” are exposed as the pop schlock they are apart from their rocking origins, the approach works just fine with Berlin’s “The Metro,” re-thought as a flamenco guitar workout, the Billy Idol live workout on “Rebel Yell” and Men at Work’s “Down Under,” given a spooky, ambient do-over by a re-born Colin Hay, fresh from his low-key contributions to the Garden State soundtrack.
On the other hand, Tommy Tutone’s classic use of a telephone number as a hook in his hit “867-5309/Jenny” doesn’t survive the transition from amplification to acoustic nearly as well.
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