Halfwaytoheaven

It's the elephant in the room that no one ever talks about: the little girl with the dreams of beauty pageant glory has a snowball's chance of winning. She's cute in her own way, sure, but hardly up to the standards of appearance expected in those contests that have done so much to creep us all out over the years. Actually, this movie couldn't have come out at a better (or is it worse?) time; the recent return to prominence of the JonBenet Ramsey case makes the overly-made-up hopefuls all the creepier. They sort of look like the munchkins in "Wizard of Oz," only they don't have candy, or a coroner, and they don't seem to be in on the joke.

The other characters are pretty much off the shelf: the melancholy teen who hates EVERYONE; the contented, if ribald, grandfather who we can all guess won't be around for the closing credits; the suicidal intellectual; the beleaguered homemaker. Toni Collette plays the part well, keeping her hopes up without being unrealistic in her expectations, but there aren't a lot of notes for her to hit that we haven't heard before. Paul Dano's character has given up speaking, but from the moment we meet him its a pretty fair bet that he'll give up that promise by the end, and we can generally guess how it's going to happen. Greg Kinnear's failure of a motivational speaker is perhaps the most predictable of the lot, as he begins by belittling and offending everyone he encounters, and finally comes around to...well, he comes around to something, I suppose. Too bad grandpa wasn't around for it.

Still, "Little Miss Sunshine" manages to go to a lot of unexpected places, and its sense of comic timing is spot-on. Witness: the broken car horn that manages to go off at the perfect moment, or the stash of pornography that gives just the wrong impression not once, but twice. There are a lot of good laughs here: honestly, it's pretty hard to take those dolled-up tykes in the climactic pageant seriously. Some of grandpa's humor is pretty forced, but this little film has a lot of smarts, and a lot of heart.

Is this the greatest episode of the greatest sitcom in television history? Probably not, but it's still my favorite. Bart's "Leg Up" class, Homer's motivational speech, the greatest Bond villain of them all, and the Denver Broncos - what more could you want? This alone is enough reason to pick up Season Eight on DVD (when it is finally made available to those able to resist the temptation to download 'em all), to preserve one of the finest examples of this much-beloved series for all eternity, or at least until DVDs are replaced by some even shinier format of home video. So look upon the greatness of this episode and despair! And if it's not too much trouble, could you kill someone on your way out? It'd be a big help.

I never would have guessed that National Geographic would have the sleeper hit of the summer, but here it is, March of the Penguins, a film that dazzles the eye and touches the heart even as it delights the mind. It is a small story that nevertheless achieves epic heights of film-making and makes stars of its subjects the way Madagascar never dreamed of.

Essentially, the film focuses on the annual trek of the Emperor Penguins of Australia from the sea to their breeding grounds seventy miles inland where the ice never melts and they can safely nurture their offspring through the first treacherous months of life. While the males sit on the sole egg that their mate has entrusted to them, the exhausted females return to the sea to feed and bring nourishment back to their soon-to-hatch young.

As enthralling as I found the annual trek of the Emperor Penguins, I can't help feeling guilty that I spent the bulk of the film wondering how these filmmakers got some of the incredible shots they showed us. At one point, the camera rises off the ground and soars far above a huddled mass of penguins; surely they didn't drag a crane to Antarctica, and wouldn't a helicopter have frightened their subject? I was rescued from my mental anguish by the closing credits which revealed that the filmmakers had made spectacular use of a balloon.

But those penguins really are something else. Huddling together for warmth, what do the males think about for those cold, dark weeks while the females gather food for their offspring? Is protecting the egg enough for them to get by on? I suppose so. Perhaps such a thought is forcing too much human emotion on to these creatures, but the film encourages us to personify the penguins, to pick out the meaning in their calls and wails, and to sympathize with their struggles and losses.

March of the Penguins smartly skirts the issues that might have made it more controversial; global warming goes unmentioned, and evolution is summed up by stating that these birds "chose" to remain in Antarctica when it started to get cold. Yes, but did they choose to grow a flap of skin to insulate their egg, and for their wings to become flipper-like, or did something choose that for them? To address that question would have been a tragic mistake for a film that's purpose is to enchant, enthrall, and, yes, even inform.