The Die Hard franchise is virtually inseparable from the rousing orchestration of Ode to Joy from Beethoven's 9^th Symphony. It was another composer though, who gave the franchise its true auditory underpinnings. Michael Kamen, at the time a veteran of the Lethal Weapon movies, gave Die Hard a suspenseful series of low key string themes. In the convoluted attempts to get the original past its dismal test screenings his score was almost cut out of the film, but the two sequels allowed him the chance to revisit them and further opportunities to integrate some classical musical cues like Singin' in the Rain and When Johnny Comes Marching Home to Die Hard's repertoire.

Michael Kamen unfortunately died of a heart attack in 2003, so scoring duties for the latest installment go to Marco Beltrami, who has previously taken over the Terminator franchise from Brad Fiedel, and who now incorporates Kamen's style with some of his own original percussion fueled compositions. We'll listen to selections from them both as we take a musical tour through the Die Hard movies.

Michael Kamen/ The Nakatomi Plaza/ Die Hard 1:49

Michael Kamen/ Ode to Joy/ Die Hard 3:36

Michael Kamen/ Snowmobiles/ Die Hard 2: Die Harder 2:39

Michael Kamen/ John and Zuess/ Die Hard with a Vengeance 3:19

Michael Kamen/ Col. Stewart/ Die Hard 2: Die Harder 1:28

Marco Beltrami/ Live Free or Die Hard/ Live Free or Die Hard 2:56

Incredibles writer/director Brad Bird is back with Pixar again, this time with the story of a rat named Remy with an impeccable palette and a talent for cooking who teams up with a talentless young man who works in the kitchen of a once great Parisian bistro. Together they become the world's greatest chef, despite the objections of Remy's family, the meddling of the restaurant's hot-headed head chef, and the natural order of things. Featuring the voices of Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Janeane Garofalo, and Peter O'Toole. Rated G.

It may seem incongruent for a studio whose characters have launched a million Happy Meals to craft a storyline around haute cuisine, but fine dining is not only a perfectly charming and interesting environment for Pixar's latest, Ratatouille, it's also a perfect metaphor for the film itself. Like the Parisian dining created by the film's unlikely chef, Ratatouille has been finely crafted with excellent taste and a beautiful presentation. It's a gourmet movie, one that's perfect in nearly every way, even if it may not be perfect for everyone.

The storyline, involving a series of comedic deceptions and reversals around a young man's career and love life as he hides the secret feeding him his successes, wouldn't be out of place in a live action romantic comedy. Few live action films, however, accomplish what Ratatouille does with such pitch perfect comedic timing, frenetic slapstick, and incredible acting.

Yes, incredible acting.

Pixar proves they're still leaps and bounds ahead of their competitors not only with their amazing technical achievements- which, by the way, they seem to have once again topped- but with their amazing performances.

No other animation studio seems to have the same level of performance as Pixar, making each scene a delight to watch for the subtlety with which each character is given their own brilliant personality ticks and emotive expression. Like most Pixar films, the voice casting doesn't have a single A-list celebrity, but none are needed when the true stars are the animators. Some of the most entertaining scenes are those in which the entire interaction is done through gesture.

The film is also beautiful to watch. They've developed new techniques for making hair, paper, clothes, and skin look wet and applied the same technique they used in The Incredibles to make cartoon skin look warm instead of clammy to the way the vegetables glow and move. They've even topped the water effects they used in Finding Nemo. Beyond the technical achievements, they've made an environment of Paris that is as colorful, vibrant, and moody as one of the city's many famous oil paintings. The character designs meanwhile are unique and expressive, cleverly avoiding through stylization the weird uncanny valley creepiness the Shrek characters suffer from.

The storyline alone is testament to the film maker's innovation not only on the technical side of computer animation, but on the story as well. It should surprise no one that none of their competitors has been able to duplicate Pixar's success. With each film they utilize the one element that's impossible to duplicate- originality. Ratatouille's romantic comedy, family drama, and class struggle are a far cry from the fairy tales and buddy movies that have become animation's forte and a far more ambitious choice.

As with his previous work with Pixar, writer/director Brad Bird once again thoroughly proves that animation is not a genre of film but a technique for film making. Animation is a tool rather than the blueprint and a tool which Pixar consistently applies to create great storytelling.

The one caveat that must be given with this praise is that in making such an ambitious and original film, Ratatouille may be the least kid friendly Pixar movie yet. With an obscure subject matter, more mature sense of humor and a lengthy running time of well over two hours, Ratatouille is far from another hour and a half of pablum and poop jokes accompanied by cuddly side kicks. As a result it's probably Pixar's least commercial film, and anyone who's taken a visit to the toy store can readily see there's a lot more product with Lightning McQueen and Buzz Lightyear than Remy the Rat.

Hopefully it won't be Pixar's least successful film though. If adult audiences can learn to look at animation as more than kiddie fare and the kids can try to love the gourmet stuff just as much as their Happy Meal, then both are in for something truly special.

Michael Moore is back with another one of his “documentaries.” This time he's taking aim at the health care industry and has already stirred up some controversy for taking ailing 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba for medical care. This film was already well received at Cannes, where the French agree that the United States sucks and France is awesome. The movie was also leaked on to YouTube this past week so if you really want to see it you can probably find it floating around internet somewhere. Rated PG-13.

People tend to go one way or the other on Michael Moore's films, generally lining up with one's personal politics. What is often overlooked in the arguments he starts though is the quality of the films he makes. Whether one agrees with him or not, and, in the interest of full disclosure, this reviewer must admit that his political views rarely line up with those of Moore, the issue is less the point Michael Moore is trying to make, and more the means he applies to portray it and the degree to which those means are appropriate and successful.

Moore's target this time around is the health insurance industry. For any other documentary film maker, the previous statement would have been “subject” rather than “target,” which is the primary problem Moore has a documentarian. For all his laudable talk about “the people” and his employment of using “we” when addressing the viewer, there is almost a palpable contempt Moore has not only for his subject matter- that goes without saying- but his audience.

Moore's technique, from the condescension in his voice from the opening narration on, to the disingenuous aw-shucks manner he employs while touring foreign health care facilitates, there seems to be the assumption that his audience is stupid. The music is manipulative. The evidence is largely anecdotal and full of emotional people who mostly end up in tears. The opposition is set up with straw man arguments. Complex issues are simplified into us vs. them struggles against villainy with a sing-songy soundtrack to accompany the childish Dudley Doright vs Snidely Whiplash morality.

It's interesting to compare this technique to that of the documentary which won the Academy Award last year and has the phrase “climate change” on virtually everyone's lips. An Inconvenient Truth has its fair share of detractors to be sure, and as much as anyone wishes to argue with the facts and figures it presents, one at least has to grant that it genuinely tries to present some. Al Gore didn't show a series of interviews and personal profiles. He didn't let the orchestra swell or the carefully edited sound clip prove his point. He didn't antagonize or bait his opponents with juvenile stunts. He merely presented his case. Where Al Gore was the college science professor teaching America's freshman class, Michael Moore is the kindergarten teacher who just can't help but talk to everyone like they're five.

He does not trust that the film goer can discern his point without heavy handed pandering. Documentary film makers who approach a subject rather than a target run the risk that the free thinking, capable adult audience member may draw their own conclusions which may differ with the film maker's intent. There is no danger of that with Moore's film, but by that same token there is no one who will walk away from such obvious techniques converted.

The talk from Cannes was how assured Moore was with Sicko- more mature and less antagonistic than in his previous films. It was also said that Moore took a back seat this time and allowed the stories he'd found to speak for themselves. This assessment is only partially true. Moore is less physically present in the film than his previous outings, but his personality still overwhelms his subject matter. Even the scenes devoid of his disheveled everyman act or his clumsy expository narration are teeming with his saccharine coated sentimentality or hammy yet painfully unfunny humor.

The real difference between Sicko and Moore's previous films is its subject matter. Moore preaches to the choir as he usually does, but it's more of a shame this time around because unlike his previous targets such as gun control and Iraq, the basic issue at stake in Sicko- that the overwhelming entanglement of bureaucracy that permeates the health care industry is counterproductive to the goals of health care- is far from divisive. Certainly there are polarized arguments for the problem's solutions, but virtually everyone across the political spectrum at the very least recognizes the problem itself.

The danger Moore runs in using his role as a lightning rod for political controversy for this matter is that in putting himself in the argument he takes a previously universal issue and makes it about personality rather than policy and divisive rather than unifying. There are no doubt pundits on the right who never before thought of defending an HMO before Moore put them in his scope, but who now will argue the bureaucracy's right to exist just because Moore said otherwise. It's clear that Moore revels this role and it makes one wonder whether his generous donation, as depicted in the film, to the webmaster of the largest anti-Michael Moore website so his wife could afford medical care was his attempt to reach out to an opponent or just that Moore couldn't stand that the one guy who micro-analyzed his every move wouldn't be paying attention anymore.

Even his promotion of the film has been flavored by such obvious attempts to play target to the right, like the exchange between Moore and Republican Senator Fred Thompson where the two traded barbs over the film maker's trip to Cuba. Thompson scored some easy political points by attacking a popular target and Moore got his movie in the news. Everyone was talking about it. Michael Moore that is, not health care. It's the main problem with presenting only anecdotal evidence- proof gets lost in personality and evidence in individualism.

American health care is a complex issue. It is one without simple solutions and one which requires cooperation and intelligence to even begin to address. It is also one ill served by a film maker who prides himself as a provocateur and whose solution is to present emotionally manipulative sob stories and enraged politicized finger pointing in place of an even handed presentation of figures, events, and evidence.

Al Gore ended his film with a call to action for the viewer to help address the problem. Michael Moore ends his with more blame. The culprits of the current state of American health care are debatable, but the blame for Sicko's failings is Moore's alone. It's a valid argument poorly made.

There were rumors back in the early 90's that Die Hard 3 and 4 would be shot back to back and that one of them would be on a cruise ship. Of course that was before Speed 2 or Die Hard with a Vengeance, and long before director John McTiernan's being charged with federal perjury. Now it's been twelve years since the last film, McTiernan is facing sentencing, and Die Hard is finally back with a new director, Len Wiseman, best known for Underworld. Die Hard also has a new rating- PG-13- which pretty much means John McClane's catchphrase will be the only F word in the whole movie. The film does follow the series' tendency for taking a pre-existing action screenplay and repurposing it for the John McClane character, though, in this case one called WW3.com about cyber-terrorists attacking the U.S. Bruce Willis stars, with Justin Long as his sidekick, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as daughter Lucy, and Timothy Olyphant as the bad guy. Rated PG-13.

Since the financial success of the original Die Hard, the challenge to every filmmaker who's inherited the franchise has been twofold- how to one up one of the greatest action movies ever made, and, perhaps more importantly, how to get around the logic defying idea of, as John McClane so eloquently put it Die Hard 2: Die Harder, “How can the same **** happen to the same guy twice?” Or for that matter three or four times?

The heir to the franchise for its fourth time out with Live Free or Die Hard is Len Wiseman, best known for Underworld and its sequel. In both Underworld movies, vampires fight werewolves to murky lighting and techno music in stories that seem crafted by nerds wielding twelve sided dice. Thankfully Wiseman is smart enough to stretch his abilities beyond the realm of role player fan fiction and enough of a fan of the franchise to get the tone of the Die Hard movies dead on.

While Wiseman gets the feel for the movies, established by quintessential action helmer John McTeirnan, he's also upped the ante for action several times over. It seems with each successive Die Hard the terrorist threats get bigger and this one's a doozy. The first one was just a building, the second an entire airport, the third was greater Manhattan, and now the bad guys are going to shut down most of the East Coast. Bigger threats mean bigger action, and from launching a car at a helicopter to crashing a SUV down an elevator shaft to blowing up a power station to fighting an F-22 on a collapsing overpass this movie throws more at McClane than the last three combined. Much has been made of the franchise getting its first PG-13, but there's so much action and enough of a potty mouth that only the MPAA would notice a real difference. Besides, there's always unrated DVD for those who want more blood and swears.

Waiting for the DVD would mean missing out on the big screen scope of the film however and there's some real eye candy in this. Wiseman shoots in a fairly classic style in keeping with that of the series and without the slow motion, bullet time, whizzing by camera tricks that have turned the modern action movie into ADD inducing video games. It's just classic action film making taking advantage of the latest in digital compositing and effects to let the actor's face show up in the stunt for a precious few more seconds. This is important because it's really the actor, Bruce Willis, who makes the action such an entertaining thrill.

Willis has done other action films and there's certainly been a number of movies that have since adopted Die Hard's formula for claustrophobic action and suspense, but the real draw is the McClane character. He connects with audiences like few other action heroes because despite his inhuman feats he could seemingly, in a movie magic sort of way, be one of us. The first film was brilliant in pitting the wisecracking everyman hero who makes mistakes and bleeds for them against the preened and polished bad guys. Far from the supermen of Stallone or Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis as John McClane was the underdog who wasn't a hero for killing the bad guys and saving the day but for merely not dying himself. That talent has become a bit more far fetched with each outing to near superhuman levels this time around, but the character's self deprecating wit and enthusiasm haven't dwindled a bit. It's been twelve years since Willis last took on the McClane persona, but he does it with such humor and gusto this go round that is seems like only yesterday and makes you wonder why they waited so long to bring him back.

Also nicely resurrected is the overriding theme of McClane as an anachronism, which really hasn't been touched on since the first film. He was already out of step with the times in 1988 when he played the role of cowboy hero against a well organized group of coordinated thugs, and is even more so now in the age of blackberries, bandwidth and terabytes. The plot's essentially the same in that terrorists create a threat to cover up a robbery, but it's just different enough this time in that the very analog hero is up against a digital enemy, creating the challenge of pitting McClane against villains he can't just punch, kick or shoot to defeat. There is a bit of the ridiculous hacker Houdini with the magical modem schtick that Hollywood has been pulling since before there was even an internet. Slick nerds are able to control anything electronic with just a laptop and some frantic keystrokes and the government has futuristic computer control centers that look more like Star Trek than your tax dollars at work. Like a number of other things about the film it's a conceit that has to be taken with a grain of salt in order to enjoy the full package.

Another of those conceits is the same **** happening to the same guy twice. The second film thumbed its nose at the idea, the third cleverly avoided it, and this one does a bit of both by getting McClane involved through his job and keeping him involved once his daughter is captured by the terrorists. Obviously it's a bit of a stretch that one person, even if they are a police officer, would be accidentally involved in defusing four major terrorists threats. It's even more of a stretch that not only his wife, but now his daughter would be the captive of those terrorists, but it's become par for the course in a Die Hard sequel that McClane will inadvertently get caught up in such things and there's very little in getting around it.

It is interesting that with each new movie in the franchise there's such little mention of the events of any film but the first one that each sequel acts as its own Die Hard 2. It's possible to watch the first one and then any one of the sequels individually and almost buy the idea that it would happen again. Almost.

Live Free or Die Hard also does do a nice job of pointing out that while it's happenstance that gets him into these situations, it's McClane's character that keeps him in them and pushes him through. It's also that character that makes the suspension of disbelief worth the price for an amazing and amusing ride.

While certainly not the best in the franchise, Live Free or Die Hard is a worthy addition and a welcome return for a classic character.

Zack Page-Wood is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a degree in visual art as well as Grand Valley State University with certification in art education. He is both an educator and a freelance artist. He worked on the documentary film Swarm & Destroy, contributing to animations, title sequences, and creating the films promotional materials. He has been with WIDR since 2002 and acts as producer for Audio Bijou.

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• www.zack.page-wood.com

Jaakan Page-Wood

Jaakan Page-Wood is a graduate of Michigan State University with a degree in telecommuniactions and film. When there he was the founder and head of the MSU Film Club and worked on a number of student films as well as studying film in Edinburgh and London. He currently works as a director for WWMT Channel 3 as well as producing DVDs. He served as director and editor of the documentary Swarm & Destroy. He has been with WIDR since 2002.

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• www.page-wood.com

Ben Stap

Ben Stap is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a degree in English. While there he worked on several student plays. After living and working in Chicago for a few years he has returned to Kalamazoo. He is the newest member of the Audio Bijou crew, joining the show in 2005.

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