PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR (Rated PG)

Penguins are adorable, lovable creatures often the subjects of documentary films tracking their waddling moves across the frozen tundra of Antarctica.

Now the animated variety has taken the spotlight in the fourth installment of the “Madagascar” franchise.

Naturally, the tuxedo-clad flightless birds get the prime billing in “Penguins of Madagascar,” a title that leaves no doubt that the beloved supporting characters from the earlier films are now the headliners they have always been destined to be.

The film’s opening moments poke fun at the documentary tropes, with legendary director Werner Herzog following a line of anonymous penguins going about their business to be recorded yet again for celluloid posterity.

As the leading characters, Skipper, Kowalski and Rico (voiced by Tom McGrath, Chris Miller and Conrad Vernon, respectively) don’t want to be like every other penguin waiting in line and parading aimlessly around Antarctica. These guys know that adventure is in store beyond their ice-covered chunk of the planet.

While dodging filmmakers and refusing to conform to penguin norms, the trio of merry explorers stumbles upon a runaway penguin egg, from which is hatched the most lovable of them all, Private (Christopher Knights), who becomes the newest member of the team.

As a quartet, the Penguins are formidable. Skipper, the team’s fearless leader, demands loyalty and order from his regimented flock.

His right-flipper man, Kowalski is the brains of the operation, the go-to guy when the Penguins need a quick, life-saving fix. Yeah, these guys constantly need to get out of a jam.

Trigger-happy and reckless, Rico lives to blow things up, which is why the Skipper keeps him on a tight leash, if possible.

Rico can be an effective weapon, but left to his own devices he’s a loose cannon. Though the runt of the team, Private has the biggest heart of them all and stands ready for new challenges.

Marching to the beat of a different drummer, the Penguins, acting like a feathered version of the A-Team, go out of their comfort zone to embark on a globetrotting adventure, where they meet characters who really make them step up their game.

Taking a page from the James Bond film “Goldfinger,” the Penguins take an excursion to Fort Knox, breaking into the most secure facility in America, not to steal bullion but to get the Cheesy Dibbles housed in a vending machine that has become off-limits due to what one of them notes is our “nanny state” obsession with banning junk foods.

Raiding Fort Knox for a tasty treat pales in comparison to the challenges the Penguins face when they come up against the deranged Dr. Octavius Brine (John Malkovich). A renowned geneticist and donor to NPR pledge drives, the good doctor is actually an octopus named Dave.

The purple-hued Dave, grinning with gleeful menace, harbors a giant grudge against all penguins, particularly the ones held in captivity at zoos and aquariums.

Dave was once the star attraction at zoos around the world, until the cuter penguins stole the spotlight away from him.

“You took everything from me!” he bellows at the Penguins, and he’s about to take extreme measures, aided by his octopi henchmen, to once again reclaim his starring role.

Dave has the fevered ambition of a villain in the classic tradition of the James Bond films. His solution to his penguin problem is a serum that turns them into grotesquely deformed creatures. 

Skipper and company are ever confident in their ability to deal with Dave’s ludicrously insidious plans, but a group of covert operatives known as the North Wind, who help animals in need, do not think the guys are up to the task and decide to take over the mission.

North Wind’s leader (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a cocky secret agent wolf, who won’t give his name because he says it is classified. So naturally, the Penguins start calling him Agent Classified, much to his chagrin. Classified is the Alpha male of a tech-savvy team made up of an owl, otter and polar bear.

The Penguins are in fact the polar opposite of the North Wind. They operate on brave, reckless instinct with a very gung ho attitude, while the North Wind are methodical, consumed with intricate planning and using high-tech gadgets.

The globetrotting adventures take the Penguins to Shanghai, while Skipper mistakenly insists they have arrived in Dublin, Ireland.

They end up in Venice, which results in an incredible high-speed gondola chase sequence involving outrunning Dave’s octopi.

“Penguins of Madagascar” has plenty of visual gags that should entertain across the ages, while some of the dialogue and one-liners prove amusing to adults.

When Skipper finds his crew on a flight to France, he’s aghast at that country’s burdensome tax laws, a fact which requires some knowledge of President Hollande’s tenure.

A fair assessment of “Penguins of Madagascar” is that Skipper and the gang are fun to watch in action. Yet, one senses that the film runs its course about a half-hour short of the 90 minute running time. Still, it’s a family entertainment offering pleasant enjoyment.
  
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

Zombies may not have actually descended on the annual American Film Market (AFM) gathering of the global film industry at the idyllic setting of Santa Monica, but producer P. Frank Williams found an ingenious way to promote the presale of his “Miami Zombie” film.

Scores of young people, dressed like “newsies” from the heyday of print journalism around the turn of the 20th century, stormed the lobby of the Santa Monica Loews Hotel, shouted news alerts and handed out bulletins to herald the upcoming “Miami Zombie.”

Given the global appetite for zombie films, it was refreshing, if not surprising, that no one costumed as the walking dead roamed the halls of the hotel, where buyers and sellers from around the world congregate for a week-long indulgence of deal-making on films in all stages of development and production.

Unlike many films offered for sale in various territories of the global market, “Miami Zombie,” as Mr. Williams explained, does not yet have a cast, let alone a shooting schedule.

The film is being presold on the strength of it being based on the shockingly true story of a crazed Miami petty criminal who wantonly attacked a homeless man and bit off most of his face.

In today’s cinematic world, gimmicks are not just useful, but increasingly necessary in an environment where the good old days of selling a variety of film genres, from horror and splatter to high-octane action and B-movies, simply involved just having product available.

Even the shark attack movies, most effectively realized in the “Sharknado” franchise, may have run their course.

What seems to be an ongoing ritual in the global film market is the disparity of an American Film Market continuing to draw record numbers of participants, exhibitors, and buying companies while the small and medium-sized independent film companies that lack the deep pockets of major studios are shrinking in numbers.

As an example, AFM announced that this year’s market welcomed over 70 new exhibiting companies. Jonathan Wolf, managing director of the AFM, commented that “the evolving marketplace is creating opportunities for new distributors and entrepreneurs in Asia and around the world. We look forward to welcoming this diverse group of first-time participants.”

Left unsaid is that there could be a nearly equal number of exhibitors that did not return from last year.

A conversation with one exhibitor, whose identity needs to be concealed, revealed that his frustration causes him to question his continued participation in the AFM since he sells most of his product before even setting up shop at this event.

Part of the fun of the AFM is to marvel at the creativity of poster art. Last year, it was hard to top “FDR American Badass,” which portrayed the 32nd president of the United States in a wheelchair outfitted with blazing rocket launchers.

Getting into the spirit of paying tribute to the most amusing and over-the-top promotional materials is the venerable industry trade publication “The Hollywood Reporter,” which selected for honorable mention the film “Cowboys vs. Zombies,” serving to validate that the zombie craze is still a potent cinematic force.

The best poster identified by “The Hollywood Reporter” may belong to “Treasures of Lake Kaban,” where the tag line of “no time to explain” still leaves one wondering how the images that evoke James Bond, Lara Croft and Leeloo from “The Fifth Element” haven’t stirred copyright infringement legal action.

The notion that the fascination with predatory sharks may have exhausted its welcome at the cinema seems to be contradicted by plenty of films on offer.

“Raiders of the Lost Shark” is a horror film about a weaponized shark that escapes a top secret military lab and terrorizes tourists on a private, remote island.

Where has Dolph Lundgren been hiding? AFM provides the answer with the announcement of his anticipated 2015 film “Shark Lake,” in which an old black market exotic species dealer has let loose a family of sharks that hunt down swimmers and land-lovers alike in a quiet town on Lake Tahoe.

Best of all could be the teaming of Traci Lords and Dominique Swain in the action adventure film “Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre.”

Giant prehistoric sharks find their way to the heart of the Arkansas Bayou where a group of female prisoners on a work detail in the swamp are attacked without warning and stranded in a deserted cabin in the heart of the wetlands.

On the subject of horror, the Nazis always remain good fodder.

“Soldiers of the Damned” finds the war-weary commander of an elite troop of German soldiers ordered to escort a female scientist behind enemy lines on the Eastern Front to retrieve an ancient relic.

As his men begin to disappear, the commander discovers something in the forest is far more deadly than the Russians.

An uplifting World War II story is “Walking with the Enemy,” inspired by a true story.

With Ben Kingsley in a starring role, this could be something more than the usual Nazi-era fare.

Set in Budapest in 1944, a young university student brazenly steals a uniform and poses as a Gestapo officer to save his family and countrymen from the concentration camps.

HBO’s wildly successful “Game of Thrones” may rub off on Myriad Pictures’ push to sell “In the Lost Lands,” based on three fantasy stories by bestselling author George R.R. Martin, the creator of “Game of Thrones.” The George R.R. Martin connection may be all that is needed to get this film off the ground.

The exhibitors at AFM often look to hype a certain angle.

The horror film “Rage” is being touted as Steven Spielberg’s “Duel” meets “Halloween.”

I am more intrigued by “Kill the Dictator,” based on a true story, which leaves one guessing about the dictator in question, though the setting appears to be Central or Latin America.

After more than three decades, the American Film Market remains an interesting place to get the full flavor of films in the global marketplace.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Local author Heather McIntosh will read from her novel “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” at Lakeport Library at 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 22.

“Tie a Yellow Ribbon” tells the story of Kate O’Connell, happy in her world of family and high school friends in 1969 until the love of her life goes missing in action in Vietnam.

McIntosh is a Lake County native who started writing at the age of 6 and grew up writing in Lake County.

“Tie a Yellow Ribbon” is her first published book and she has two more books in progress.

Lakeport Library, located at 1425 N. High St., is open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Wednesday, noon to 8 p.m. The phone number is 707-263-8817.

The Lake County Library is on the Internet at http://library.lakecountyca.gov and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LakeCountyLibrary .

More library events can be found on the library’s calendar online.

I love poems with sudden surprises, and here’s one by Jennifer Gray, a Nebraskan.

Will you ever see depressions puddled with rain without thinking of the image at her conclusion?

Horses

The neighbor’s horses idle
under the roof
of their three-sided shelter,
looking out at the rain.

Sometimes
one or another
will fade into the shadows
in the corner, maybe
to eat, or drink.

Still, the others stand,
blowing out their warm
breaths. Rain rattles
on the metal roof.

Their hoof prints
in the corral
open gray eyes to the sky,
and wink each time
another drop falls in.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2013 by Jennifer Gray. Reprinted by permission of Jennifer Gray. Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

UKIAH, Calif. – Mendocino College will be hosting combined auditions for two spring musical theater productions: “Legally Blonde,” to be performed at Mendocino College and “Spamalot,” to be performed at Ukiah Players Theatre.

Any actors, singers and dancers over the age of sixteen are invited to participate in this open call audition.

Those who wish to audition are encouraged to come prepared to sing a song of their choice from a contemporary Broadway musical (approximately one minute long), also bringing sheet music if necessary.

For those who are unable to prepare a song ahead of time, a song will be taught at the audition to be performed.

Wear comfortable clothing, as all those auditioning will be asked to learn a dance combination and perform it as part of the audition.

Auditions will be held on Monday, Dec. 1, beginning at 6 p.m. as well as Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 6 p.m.

Those wishing to audition should arrive on time to the Mendocino College Center Theatre located at 1000 Hensley Creek Road in Ukiah.

For more information please visit https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/336521133194628/ or call 707-468-3172.

INTERSTELLAR (Rated PG-13)

One might venture a guess that lengthy travel in space to a distant planet may involve a certain amount of tedium given the tight confinement of spacecraft.

To bring that concept into focus, think about Sandra Bullock’s lonely odyssey in “Gravity” as she pondered an uncertain fate.

To some degree, a similar providence awaits the audience that straps in for the nearly three-hour journey that is director and co-writer Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” an epic so convoluted and complicated that it easily recalls his muddled “Inception.”

Nolan, co-authoring the screenplay of “Interstellar” with his brother Jonathan, aims once more for a “big event,” as it is plainly clear that he believes his directorial skills will result in a production both grandly visionary and exceptionally replete with vivid imagination.

Stanley Kubrick’s influential, unconventional science-fiction masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which was troubled by stilted dialogue, slow pacing and opaque storytelling, seems like an obvious inspiration for Nolan’s latest epic. I wonder, though, what could have been for “Interstellar” if Kubrick, still alive, or Steven Spielberg had been at the helm.

For his part, Nolan is satisfied to unpack a mess of grand messages in his cautionary tale, ranging from the familial bonds shattered by an absentee astronaut father trapped for decades in space travel and pending ecological disaster, to the strains of a society in freefall and the problem of sustaining humanity with little more than failing corn harvests.

Arguably, the vaguely futuristic “Interstellar” is about many things, with none more important than Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper, a former astronaut and engineer now relegated to working as a farmer under harsh Dust Bowl conditions, so brightly and emotionally connected with his young daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy).

The heartland of America, which could be any of the Plains states, is doomed.

Realizing that Planet Earth faces almost imminent extinction, Cooper locates a remote NASA underground colony, where the brilliant professor Dr. Brand (Michael Caiine) plans a space mission to find another planet capable of maintaining human life.

Dr. Brand’s daughter (Anne Hathaway) is an astronaut who teams with Cooper and two others for an incredible space odyssey, with an objective to discover a wormhole that supposedly exists near Saturn, offering a gateway to other inhabitable worlds.

Space travel gets more complicated by the presence of a black hole that somehow alters the space-time continuum.

It’s as easy for the viewer to get lost as it is for the astronauts to go off-course and end up in a paradoxical world of exploration where each hour represents seven years of life on Earth. Talk about being lost in space.

Considering that time becomes relative, back in the Midwest, Cooper’s children have reached adulthood, with Jessica Chastain as the grown-up daughter, and Casey Affleck as Cooper’s even more petulant oldest child Tom, who is struggling to keep the family farm going since school bureaucrats long ago decided he was not fit for a college education in the family field.

Odd as it may seem, Cooper and his children become relatively the same age in chronological terms. Emotional maturity is another matter.

Even in adulthood, Murph is not forgiving of her father’s long absence, and she seems unaware of his deep longing to return home to reunite with his family.

The age differential eventually shifts to an even greater magnitude, but that’s another story.

Though the action plods along at a leisurely pace, there is artistic brilliance to the planets discovered, one of which resembles a perpetual frozen Minnesota winter, where a stranded astronaut is a surprise character.

Another watery planet might be a surfer’s dream, though it would entail a death wish to conquer the massive waves.

One thing for sure is that Matthew McConaughey is in fine shape, with his comforting words that he hopes will reach his daughter measured in a tone of loving gravity. That seems to be the McConaughey style if you go by his voluble TV commercial for Lincoln automobiles.

The Hans Zimmer score is often loud and bombastic, such that on occasions it nearly obliterates some of the dialogue, while at other times the deafening sounds suggest immediacy to the action that is not fully realized.

Unquestionably, “Interstellar” has plenty of technical intensity and artistic radiance that makes this Nolan work a masterstroke for his ardent admirers.

Others, including this reviewer, recognize the film’s epic merits but take a more jaundiced view of what is essentially a rehash of many science-fiction themes which result in a somewhat pretentious exercise.

Score one for Christopher Nolan if “Interstellar” hits it big at the box office.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.