With a few confounding things

My guest and I gave in to the relentless marketing campaign and saw Chicken Little today, a day before it officially opens in Singapore. Nearly all the theater chains were having a special Singapore Sneak Preview, opening on Wednesday rather than the traditional Thursday. Well, why not?

Overall, we rather liked it. I've got a bit of dissatisfaction with the movie, and I can't quite place what it is that feels off. I suppose it's that the characters and emotional notes felt pretty routine despite the rather surprising outcome of the baseball game. I'd thought for a moment the movie had gotten its wires crossed and ended an hour early, but in retrospect it fit. (I'd thought they were setting up a plot point with Foxy Loxy that they left unplayed, too, but I can't say they were wrong not to play it.)

I was struck by how effectively creepy the sneaking around the alien spaceship and discovery of the invasion were. I haven't found an Alien Invasion setup that scary in a long time, and the sky cracking as the ships descend was a great little slice of nightmare.

My favorite was Fish, who had this marvelous Harpo Marx attitude (he doesn't speak either) of merrily wandering around events with the gleeful assumption that anything will do no worse than briefly inconvenience him, and will in any case entertain him; so Fish goes poking around and playing with all the characters and gadgets he sees. He gets to have the most fun playing with the chip of alien spaceship, and finding what it can do, even before he presses the [ spoiler ] to get to the [ spoiler ]. Curiously, the Marx Brothers don't get ripped off -- er, used as source material -- for cartoons very often, even though their personality types would seem to be naturals for it. Maybe they're too hard to write, even though Harpo, Chico, and Groucho types can pretty much do anything that advances the plot or delivers a joke regardless of whether there's a logical reason for it.

Trivia: Auguste Comte's reform ``Calendrier Positiviste'' dedicated December to the abstract concept of the proletariat, and the concrete person of Frederic the Great, of Prussia. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, E.G. Richards.

Currently Reading: Explorers of the Infinite, Sam Moskowitz.