o om Zwire SEPTEMBER 1/2006
PROMOTIONAL ISSUE
Los Angeles, CA
THE SCOOPS
The Big Race
Gearing up for the 69th Soap Box Derby
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H4X
THE ONLY KIDS NEWSPAPER IN THE “USA”
DRAKAN The Last Game
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Then comes the final third. It’s a nightmare and probably not the sort of nightmare first-time director Gil Kenan intended. The film explodes into the kind of “Please stop!”
Come back, “Cars.”
I was too harsh. Your adrenalized platitudes are nothing compared to the monstrosity that is “Monster House.” The picture is yet another entry in the if-you-animate-it-they-will come (“they” being parents and kids) summer sweepstakes. Not only are “Cars”“Over the Hedge” and “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties” still hanging around, but the next few weeks bring “The Ant Bully” and “Barnyard.”
However, this isn’t even cuddly animals/cars/ bugs animation. Executive producer Robert Zemeckis has apparently decreed “Monster House” be made in the same creepy style as “The Polar Express” (which he directed), wherein the actors are so faithfully replicated you keep wondering why didn’t they just go with live action instead of this icky, offputting approach. At any rate, “Monster House” is essentially a teched-up haunted house story about a
decrepit wreck of a house squatting ominously on an otherwise sunny suburban street. Things (kites, tricycles) -- and eventually people -- disappear when they get too close. Which may -- or may not -- explain why the crumbling edifice is zealously guarded by a misanthropic geezer named Nebbercracker (voice by Steve Buscemi). Everybody in the neighborhood figures Nebbercracker is just a cantankerous old man and his house just a poster-child for tear-downs everywhere.
SOAPBOX Mary Convert
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Bob Miller
Tom Swang
Jimmy Troy
FOR THE FIRST TIME! kids write the articles!
Fun, Fun and, more
FUN!!
Gina LaRose
ENTERTAINMENT
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Fashion Kids
Lindsay Lohan
Says drugs tore her family apart
Calendar • The Scoop • H4X • Kids talk • Sports • Art Scene
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