Happy Earth Day! Movieline HQ's efforts to go green largely failed this morning after our all-natural wheatgrass servers refused to boot up, but Plan B is almost as good for the planet. Take this high-quality, 100% recycled controversy about DisneyEarth's debut film Earth, which, according to Newsweek, features scenes of imminent danger, death and catastrophe too intense to warrant a G rating. Nonsense, writes Jeffrey Wells, who has vividly earthy reasons of his own to toughen the little buggers up:
When I was three years old I saw a neighbor chop a chicken's head off, and then watched as the chicken's body ran around a bit with the arterial blood spurting out. I was a little bit freaked by this, sure, but I didn't faint and probably learned something from it also. [...] Not long after a little black cocker spaniel puppy who belonged to a little neighborhood girlfriend of mine was run over by a garbage truck. The poor thing had been flattened into a black puppy pancake with the guts splattered and the tongue sticking way out. I'll never forget that tongue. The episode taught me that life can end in a blink of an eye. It was awful to see -- traumatic is the word -- but it also made me a little stronger, I think, or at least a little tougher.
Really, this explains so much. But enough about puppy pancakes, certified organic or not. Have you hugged your planet today?
· Where the Wild Things Die [Newsweek]
· Kids and Death [Hollywood Elsewhere]