My wife and I saw Whale Rider at the Seattle International Film Festival a couple of weeks ago, and loved it. Today, Friday, 6/20, it gets its wide release in the U.S., after already having conquered audiences in New Zealand (where the film was made) and thereabouts.
Until I get around to updating my own website (it’s coming, it’s coming), you can read my review here.
If you don’t want to read it, here’s an excerpt that tells you what you need to know:
If you want to see a movie that tells a great story and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, go see Whale Rider. At the end, my wife and another friend who came with us were both bawling, and even I, Mr. Flinty McStonypuss, was pretty choked up. (And I’m not talking about Ol’ Yeller shootin’-the-dog tears, either, just to be clear. These are joyful triumph-over-adversity tears, like at the end of Billy Elliott.)
As a little movie from across the sea, there’s a serious risk it’ll get lost against all the loud smash-em-up cartoons that get released in the U.S. during the summer, so I’m trying to get out the word. Go see it.
Absolutely. Nothing inappropriate for any halfway intelligent viewer over the age of, say, seven or eight. No sex, no violence, just one fleeting reference to adult recreation that disappears so quickly kids won’t even notice.
I say halfway intelligent because the movie is set in New Zealand, which requires the ability to understand a (simple) Kiwi dialect, and there are a handful of lines spoken in Maori that are subtitled, so I’d say kids younger than seven probably would get a bit impatient.
Your kids are the perfect age. You are the perfect age.
Super! Thanks for the info. I am always the perfect age for movies.
Since it is supposed to be crappy this weekend we will definitely look around for this one and take it in.
p.s. The cherubs are, of course, well over the halfway mark on the movie viewer intelligence scale.
Sixteen screens. Plenty of room for a little movie such as “Whale Rider”, right? Well, once you put Hulk on four screens, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Finding Nemo, and Bruce Almighty each on 2, there isn’t much room for anything but the rest of the top 10 box office. Hopefully “Whale Rider” will get good enough word of mouth to get released in the major chains or will sneak in on a weekend that there aren’t any big releases.
Then again, I had to drive four hours to see “Memento” in the theater, and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” didn’t play here until its second release after all the Academy Award nominations, so I’m not hopeful.
If it’s not playing here next weekend, it looks like another trip to LA or San Francisco (which are about equidistant) to get a look.
I was actually going to see it to day, on your reccomendation. I couldn’t get together with the people I want to see it with, and wound up seeing “Finding Nemo” instead. Don’t worry your pretty little head though, I’ll probably go see “Whale Rider” sometime this week.
It’s an accent pure and simple and very lovely it is too. You lot need to broaden your ears
I didn’t get to see it as Mr P was pushing me to go and I threw a temper tanty around issues like childcare and responsibility thereof and in the end he went with a friend. I think it’s still running here and I might go when he takes P the E to see the Core. Heh, methinks sitting through the Core will be sufficient punishment.
Everyone I know who has seen it has loved it. Even the Australians.
I’m planning on seeing it this weekend. Glad to hear that you like it, Cervaise, I always keep an eye out for your recommendations - using by your website, I’ve never been led astray yet.
The soundtrack is nearly entirely instrumental. I read a thread on another message board in which a record store owner complains that he put out a Whale Rider soundtrack display, sold a few copies to Lisa Gerrard fans, and then had them returned because there is little Lisa Gerrard involved.
My ears are quite broad, thank you. I might have been one of the only people in the cinema for Sweet Sixteen who didn’t need the subtitles to understand the thick Scottish dialect.
And yes, I call accents “dialects.” It’s a side effect of my voice training. One of the key points is that there is no single “standard” way to speak a particular language, as is implied by the term “accent.” If you say “accent,” you’re suggesting that there’s a right way to speak, and the accent is divergent from that. We learned to say “dialect” because, after all, Irish, Texan, and Kiwi are all merely varieties of a language, and should be put on an even footing. Strictly speaking (according to our vocal teachers), “accent” should be used for true divergence, e.g. someone from Germany who is learning English but can’t speak with local fluency and pronunciation yet. That would be an accent. Cockney vs. Bronx, those are dialects.
That’s a hijack, though, and is probably worth a different thread if anyone wants to discuss further. Let’s leave it with this: A new co-worker joined our department a couple of weeks ago, a woman from Australia. We were all sitting around discussing the way she speaks, and I had occasion to demonstrate my “Aussie voice.” She said I had the most convincing Australian dialect she’d ever heard from an American.
So yeah, the point is, I think my ears are plenty broad.
Cervaise, your vocal teachers weren’t linguists though, were they? I’ve never heard of a linguist having trouble with the term “accent”. And I don’t see why that implies there’s a standard form of speech any more than the term “dialect” does.
“Dialect” includes differences in vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation - “accent” only includes the last of these, so the two cannot be synonymous. Whatever your vocal teachers told you.
I studied the novel last year for school two years ago, and I remember having a conversation of how impossible it would be to create a movie about it (I think it was being thought of at the time.)
I’m very excited about seeing how they pull it off, and also to show my new temporary home of small town nebraska some New Zealand homeland culture. I’ve told them to watch once were warriors, but I’m hoping that this will be much more effective.
I believe that there were substantial changes made to the book so as make it filmable.
Once Were Warriors? Bwahahaha! While it’s an excellent movie, I don’t think it’s representative of how most of NZ lives. And a good thing that is too
Cervaise, I’m not going to bicker with you – I made a light-hearted comment, I think it’s wrong to refer to an accent as a dialect but whatever. Calling an accent a dialect does imply that it will be more impenetrable than is in fact the case which could lead to people choosing a movie they think will be more accessible.