The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 
Features  |  Reviews
Best2011Vote-1000x50

Review: The Legend of Pale Male

Strictly for the birdwatchers
By GERALD PEARY  |  December 22, 2010
2.5 2.5 Stars

 

Frederic Lilien fled a career he would have hated as a lawyer in his father's firm in Belgium to land in New York . . . and do what? How about spending 20 years of your life making a documentary about a red-tailed hawk who in the early 1990s relocated to Manhattan, nesting on the ledge of a Fifth Avenue high-rise and scouring Central Park for pigeons and rats. The hawk, named Pale Male by the many humans who followed his career by telescope and camera, became a Big Apple celeb as he mated with various female hawks and raised his baby chicks. Pale Male's story turned into a major media event when the Grinch-like co-op board of directors at 927 Fifth Avenue tore down the nest. All of the above is fairly interesting and quietly touching, but Lilien's telling of the tale via voiceover is corny and overwrought and way too sentimental. This one's strictly for the birdwatchers.

Related: Quarantine, Review: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Review: Alien Trespass, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Birds, movie review
| More
Add Comment
HTML Prohibited

 Friends' Activity   Popular   Most Viewed 
[ 02/19 ]   Bill Cosby  @ Symphony Hall
[ 02/19 ]   Interpol + School of Seven Bells  @ House of Blues
[ 02/19 ]   "MassArt Thesis Illustration Exhibition"  @ Fourth Wall Project
ARTICLES BY GERALD PEARY
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: THE HOUSEMAID  |  February 16, 2011
    In Kim Ki-young's 1960 original, one of the all-time South Korean classics, the title housemaid was a psychopathic femme fatale wrecking the lives of her employers, a composer and his hard-working wife
  •   AMONG THE OSCAR SHORTS, DOCUMENTARIES TAKE THE PRIZE  |  February 15, 2011
    The winter blahs are over. The first great cinema treat of 2011: the five surprisingly superb documentary shorts vying for an Academy Award, opening this Friday as "2011 Documentary Oscar Shorts" at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.
  •   REVIEW: WILLIAMS S. BURROUGHS: A MAN WITHIN  |  February 02, 2011
    Fairly disorganized in the telling and rather impersonally told by filmmaker Yony Leyser, this documentary biography of the stone-faced Beat author of The Naked Lunch is still worth seeing.
  •   REVIEW: NUREMBERG: ITS LESSON FOR TODAY  |  January 27, 2011
    For those whose knowledge comes filtered through Judgment at Nuremberg , the packed-with-stars 1961 Hollywood extravaganza, here is the somber actuality.
  •   REVIEW: BLUE VALENTINE  |  January 07, 2011
    Look to the sky above Scranton, Pennsylvania. There's a rainbow nestling among the downtown buildings as, below, a city bus crosses in traffic. Can we assume it's conferring a benediction on the young man and woman who, moments later, meet adorably on that very bus and, despite her suspicions, embark on a torrid romance?

 See all articles by: GERALD PEARY

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2011 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group