{"id":11114,"date":"2015-11-28T02:41:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T02:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/stilleatingoranges-critics-panned-it-a\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T16:51:45","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T23:51:45","slug":"stilleatingoranges-critics-panned-it-a-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/stilleatingoranges-critics-panned-it-a-2\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-11114 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/stilleatingoranges-critics-panned-it-a-2\/attachment\/11116\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_nx20ekFP7z1ruwmo7o1_640-100x100.png\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com\/post\/132234022104\/critics-panned-it-a-pedestrian-cable-drama\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">stilleatingoranges<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Critics panned it. A pedestrian cable drama sneered at it. Worse, its creator disowned it\u2013<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.indiewire.com\/theplaylist\/mr-magorium-director-zach-helm-agrees-his-technicolor-train-wreck-would-be-hell-for-walter-white-20130925\" title=\"'Mr. Magorium' Director Zach Helm Agrees His 'Technicolor Train-Wreck' Would Be Hell For Walter White\">loudly<\/a>. And none of the foregoing, although ominous, is indicative of its quality. The film is <em>Mr. Magorium\u2019s Wonder Emporium<\/em>, a children\u2019s picture unfairly reviled in 2007 and forgotten afterward. Between slick credits sequences animated by William Joyce, it weaves a (relaxed, meandering) tale that is principally about death. A 243-year-old man, who runs a living toy store with a 23-year-old woman, is dying; and he hires a lukewarm accountant to review his estate. An eccentric young boy with a taste for hats stars also. Surprisingly, one finds here neither Hallmark schmaltz nor <em>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/em> cynicism and spectacle, but something alien to both.<\/p>\n<p>Weighty for any current artist is the problem of <em>kitsch<\/em>\u2013or, in honor of the style\u2019s grandmaster, the problem of Thomas Kinkade. Today, a faint (for some, invisible) line separates the hard-fought tenderness of Disney\u2019s <em>Sleeping Beauty<\/em> from a vomitous Kinkade canvas. Innocence risks a fall into phony romanticism. The artist must embrace this challenge, however. In 1990, writer David Foster Wallace <a href=\"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/DFW_TV.pdf\" title=\"E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction\">predicted<\/a> that \u201canti-rebels\u201d, a nonjaded movement opposed to the ironic distance of postmodernism, would revitalize art amid \u201caccusations of sentimentality, melodrama.\u201d Ironic art, for Wallace, was a dead end: ultimately it is a safeguard against all feeling, against life itself. There exists a third road beyond the cynical and the cloyingly na\u00efve.<\/p>\n<p><em>Mr. Magorium\u2019s Wonder Emporium<\/em> locates this road. It jumps with both feet into childlike whimsy\u2013but it does not, in the process, sacrifice bite and intelligence. References are made to Fibonacci and Magritte; and <em>King Lear<\/em>\u2019s final scene is analyzed. Robust, sophisticated acting and production design are the rule. Like that earlier project from writer-director Zach Helm, the badly underrated <em>Stranger than Fiction<\/em> (2006), this work brims with quirky humor and existential pathos. But <em>Mr. Magorium\u2019s Wonder Emporium<\/em> was marketed as kitsch, as fodder for the family-friendly-film ghetto. An open mind with a love for good movies will see past the lie, and be pleased. The film may be obtained from the nearest bargain bin.<\/p>\n<p><em>Still Eating Oranges<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>stilleatingoranges: Critics panned it. A pedestrian cable drama sneered at it. Worse, its creator disowned it\u2013loudly. And none of the foregoing, although ominous, is indicative of its quality. The film is Mr. Magorium\u2019s Wonder Emporium, a children\u2019s picture unfairly reviled in 2007 and forgotten afterward. Between slick credits sequences animated by William Joyce, it weaves [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-2Tg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11119,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114\/revisions\/11119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}