The Lorax

I awoke and heard the news on the radio that Mayor Ed Lee had died of a heart attack.  He was grocery shopping at Safeway.  He was 65, not really that much older than I am.  I got dressed and ate my breakfast cereal before heading off to the office to prepare for my day of final exams.  I worked on some grading of homework papers, and then I went to buy a cheeseburger.  I met with some students and gave my last exam before going home and preparing some macaroni and cheese.  I sat down to watch “The Lorax” again.  It wasn’t the animated television program that I remembered so vividly from my childhood.  It had extra characters in an attempt to broaden its appeal and to lengthen its running time.  I had the feeling that Dr. Seuss wouldn’t have liked Zac Efron and Taylor Swift providing the voices to characters in his story, which took a look time to get off the ground.  The villain was a greedy capitalist who didn’t mind selling people bottled air, and he looked like the Edith Head character from “The Incredibles.”  Ted rides around town on a machine that doesn’t look as threatening as a motorcycle.  Betty White voices the grandmother.  I guess that is an advantage to animation, when you have an actor who is ninety years old.  You can have them do physical things they wouldn’t be able to do in the real world.  Danny DeVito is the voice of The Lorax.  He doesn’t have a Dr. Seuss voice, but he is one of the memorable people in the cast.  The guy who cut down the trees was a stupid capitalist because he didn’t protect his resource.  It was disturbing that he played electric guitar and was a rock star who was ruining the environment.  In real life, what type of rock star other than Ted Nugent would that be?  I liked how the old cartoon was concise.  This one had filler.  I did like the three-dimensional look to this Seuss world, although it had too many vehicles and not so wondrous features to the town.  Did a lot of mothers go out to see this movie with their kids when it was released?  I guess that was the case, since it was the eleventh-highest grossing movie of 2012.  I would have been annoyed at the political messages the children would be getting from the movie.  The real political message is that nobody will leave you in peace to make up your own mind.  You can’t just do your part and plant a tree, like what Harold and Maude did.  Audrey Geisel was happy with what Illumination Entertainment did with the Dr. Seuss books.  I wondered what she thought of Mazda’s involvement with this picture.  She is still alive and is 96 years old.  Did the kids actually like this movie?  I looked through the reviews that Leonard Maltin and David Edelstein.  Maltin said it was forgettable, and Edelstein said it was shockingly bad.  They had criticism for the unnecessary added characters.  I suddenly didn’t feel so bad about not liking this movie.  I saw Tom Hanks for a moment on one of those talk shows, and James Corden was absent from his own show because a baby arrived.  Movies like “Forty Guns” and “Suddenly” were on the television.  One upcoming movie that interests me is the one about Gloria Grahame.  I wondered what she did during those last days in Liverpool.  I found in my mail the DVDs of “WKRP in Cincinnati.”  I hoped that they looked decent with most of the original music still on the soundtrack.  I listened to the Sgt. Pepper album and tried to not get too discouraged at having to grade those exams Some of the people who died on December 13 include Donatello (1466), Samuel Johnson (1784), Grandma Moses (1961), Mary Renault (1983), Russell Hoban (2011), and Alan Thicke (2016).  Today is a birthday for Steve Buscemi (60), John Davidson (76), Christopher Plummer (88), and Dick Van Dyke (92).  According to the Brandon Brooks Rewind radio segment for December 13, some people are celebrating a birthday today: Johnny Whitaker (58), Randy Owen (68), Jeff Baxter (69), Ted Nugent (69), Kathy Garver (72), and Christopher Plummer (88).  According to the Brandon Brooks Rewind radio segment for December 13, “Peyton Place” was released in 1957.  In 1982, Vanna White became the regular hostess on “Wheel of Fortune.”  In 1986, Bruce Hornsby and the Range reached Number One on the singles chart with “The Way It Is.”  In 1989, “Driving Miss Daisy,” with Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy, was released.