Happy Flag Day!
Posted on June 14, 2011 at 6:00 am
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Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer
Posted on June 11, 2011 at 9:43 am
C| Lowest Recommended Age: | Kindergarten - 3rd Grade |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for some mild rude humor and language |
| Profanity: | Some schoolyard language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | None |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Mild comic peril, brief footage of zombie movie |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | June 10, 2011 |
It’s the last day of third grade and redheaded Judy Moody (Jordana Beatty) is looking forward to the greatest summer ever. She has big plans for herself and her three best friends, a summer of dares and thrills and adventures. But she is crushed to discover that two of her friends have their own plans. One is headed for circus camp and the other to Borneo. Worse than that, her parents have to leave to help her grandparents move, and she will be stuck at home with her pesty, Bigfoot-obsessed brother Stink (Parris Mosteller) and an aunt she does not even know (Heather Graham as the free-spirited Aunt Opal). Instead of the best most not-boring thrilladelic summer ever, it looks to be a bummer summer all the way, death by “starvation, boredom, and Stink-dom.”
Judy has some setbacks and learns some lessons, as the fans of book series by Megan McDonald
Last year’s Ramona and Beezus was charming and delightful and heartwarming. Like Judy Moody, it is based on a beloved book series about a little girl in the suburbs with a free-spirited but doting aunt, with some silly adventures and lessons learned, but it is a far better film in every category. The best I can say about this one is that children will enjoy the gross-out moments and comic disasters and everyone else will enjoy looking at the very pretty Heather Graham. As a movie, though, it’s a bummer.
Phyllis Naylor Talks About Alice
Posted on June 11, 2011 at 8:00 am
There’s a great interview in the Washington Post with local author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor about the forthcoming final installment to her popular Alice series of novels, 
I tell them to think about the time when they were most happy, sad or embarrassed and then write a few sentences about those feelings. Then start changing things like the main character, the location or even the ending to make the story fun and exciting. Then you have started with something personal, and it really grew with the help of your imagination!
I’m a big fan of the movie based on her book, “Alice Upside Down,” with Luke Perry, Lucas Grabeel, Alyson Stoner, and Penny Marshall.
Naylor wrote her own piece in the Post a few years ago about Alice and the letters from fans. I liked what she had to say about how important it was to her that her parents read aloud.
My parents, they read aloud to us until we were 14 and 15. It was the late Depression, and we really didn’t have much of anything. But we did have books. They read with great drama. I think Dad read almost all of Mark Twain’s books aloud to us. He imitated all the voices, and I just loved it. And I must have thought, “If it’s so much fun listening to books, it must be even more fun writing books.” And it is.
Ask the Movie Mom
Posted on June 10, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Thanks for the great questions!
Q: This movie I saw on TV many years ago. A marine battleship or aircraft carrier is at sea and suddenly passes through a time “bubble” and is transported back in time… That’s all I remember except that I enjoyed the film.
A: That’s The Final Countdown
Q: I am trying to remember the name of a movie I saw when I was younger (late 1990s-early 2000). It was about a music producer who recorded a woman’s voice, and used it for a younger pop star. The pop star would lip sync the songs the other woman recorded. The young pop star then gets the plug pulled on her and everyone knows she didn’t sing the songs. Can you help me with the name of this movie?
A: That’s Lip Service
Q: This is a old movie about children. The children that passed through this fog or smoke would act really strange and would try to get adults to hug them if you hugged them it was like they drained all your life from you and of course you died.
A: That’s The Children
Q: Saw a movie in the 1970’s or very early 80’s on a Sunday night in Australia on a Walt Disney show. The movie was about a wishing well and there was a ghost (I think she was a girl) and there was a doll in the wishing well. There was some haunting tinkly kind of music that played. Really enjoyed it and would love to see it again but noone believes me (except my sister who also remembers it!!) they all say I dreamed it. Please help – I know I saw it!!!
A: I am pretty sure that is Child of Glass
Q: Synopsis; a computer expert has to save his girlfriend from a serial killer 8 – 12 hours in the future his only help is his computer, now strapped to his wrist “Excalibur 8” I believe Richard Moll is in the movie and plays the role of “the grim reaper” type who took him and put him in this predicament! Please, I hope you can help!
A: That’s Dungeonmaster
Q: I hope somene can help. I don’t know the name of the movie,i saw it about 20 yrs ago. All I really remember is that is was in black and white, I think it was a tv series. This man could stop time, I don’t remmber how and a bomb is about to hit earth so he haults time but he is the only one breathing or moving…time is frozen???? please help………..
A: That’s an episode of the “Twilight Zone” series called “A Little Peace and Quiet” (but it is a woman who can stop time).
Q: I remember watching a movie – racing cars – and in the movie was an Olds 442 and a Dodge Challenger. Then one guy ended up getting an old Willy’s and dropping a hemi into it for racing. It was on television. I just don’t know the name and would like to try and watch it again.
A: Sounds like Vanishing Point
Q: I am trying to find a movie and I don’t know the title. It is a movie that was made somewhere in the time frame of 1970 to 1990. It is a comedy that is set in the renaissance to the Robin Hood time period / theme. The only part I really remember about it is that there is two brothers that feel exactly what the other is going through…for example if one gets hurt the other feels it, if one has to pee the other goes for him.
A: That’s the Cheech and Chong remake of the old swashbuckler, The Corsican Brothers
Q: I searched for months trying to find the name of this movie starring Kathy Bates. I believe it came out around the late 70’s 80s. I know part of the story line, Kathy Bates is married to a drunken husband who is very violent towards her. They live in a old farm house and she waits hand & foot on him and he speaks awful to her. She was cooking dinner for him and while she was cooking the dinner he hits her around the back with a lump of wood . Can you help me out with the name of this?
A: That’s the Stephen King movie, Dolores Claiborne
Q: This movie is set around in the 60s. Rich white family with a young daughter hires a house keeper who is black with a daughter the same age. The two girls grow up together and are very close. The dark girl hates being dark skinned and blames her mother and rebels as she gets older and runs away. Her mother tracks her down years later as the mother is dying. She finds her daughter working in a strip club & the daughter denies knowing her around people, she tells the daughter she is dying. The daughter tells her she hates her and to never come around again. The mother goes back home where she’s still living with the white family and not long after she dies. The daughter comes half way through her mother’s funeral chasing the hurst down the road terribly sorry screaming for her mum.
A: Great movie! That’s Imitation of Life
Q: A few years ago I was watching this movie but I didn’t catch the name of it… There were these four popular teenage and three of them kidnaps their friend on her birthday and then they put a huge ball in her mouth so she wont be able to scream and then she chokes on it. Then the rest of the girls make a pact were they wouldn’t say anything to anyone and they get rid of their evidence. So do you know the title of this movie??
A: That’s Jawbreaker
Q: I came across a black and white movie on TV about 20 years ago. It might have had something to do with WWII because the plot revolved around a man who appeared to be the last man on earth. He goes to a department store and takes a few mannequins with him to a nearby house. He becomes friends with the mannequins, talking with them and smoking cigarettes with them. At one point he gets angry with one mannequins and throws it off the balcony. A woman walking by sees this and screams. The man realizes there is another living person and runs after her. They take shelter together, and at first their relationship is very awkward. He tries to give her a hair cut but butchers her hair. That’s about all I saw, but I’ve never been able to find this movie again. I think the title had something to do with “the blood” or “the devil” or both. I don’t remember. I was fascinated by the little piece of this film that I saw and would love to see the rest of it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
A: Great movie! It’s The World, The Flesh And The Devil
Q: Sometime in the mid to late 80’s, HBO came out with a (made for TV?) movie about Air Force One and it’s code name: Looking Glass. What i can remember of it, a woman reporter was doing a news piece about Air Force One when word came that a nuclear war was about to break out.
A: That’s By Dawn’s Early Light
Q: Can you tell me the name of the film where the main character meets a man and puts a note in a book and tells him if they are meant to be together then he will find this book? And he does find the book.
A: That’s John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale in Serendipity
Q: My mother was recently talking about a movie she saw recently about a blind piano player who meets a woman. The man (piano player) regains his sight and the woman was pretending she was blind the whole time. She can not remember the name or actors of the movie. Help…
A: That’s John Garfield’s 1947 film, “Night Song.”
Super 8
Posted on June 9, 2011 at 6:09 pm
A couple of kids who are deeply in love with making movies have made a movie about kids deeply in love with making movies, and it is one of the most joyously thrilling treats of the summer, a love letter to childhood pleasures that last a lifetime.
Producer Steven Spielberg and writer-director J.J. Abrams may be chronological grown-up, but as this movie makes clear, they could have just as much fun with a super-8 camera and a box of M-80’s. Representing them in the film are Charles (Riley Griffiths) and Joe (Joel Courtney), middle schoolers in 1979 Lillian, Ohio, who are working on a movie to enter into a competition. In that pre-digital time, they are making it with a Super-8 camera, on film that is bought and developed at the camera store. Charles is the writer and director. Joe is in charge of make-up and special effects. Cary (Ryan Lee) in charge of explosions and Martin (Gabriel Basso) is their star. It is a zombie movie. But Charles has been reading about film-making and realizes that he has focused too much on scares and special effects. An article explains that the movie works better if there is a reason to feel something for the characters, so he decides that Martin’s detective character will have a wife. And that is how Alice (the luminous Elle Fanning) joins the group.
They sneak out one night to film a scene at the train station. When a truck drives onto the tracks as the train approaches, there is a spectacular crash. The kids run, but the camera keeps filming. What it shows will be the key to solving the real-life mystery about what was on the train.
As they wait for it to be developed, increasingly disturbing developments occupy Joe’s father, Lillian’s deputy sheriff. All the town’s dogs disappear. Engines are ripped out of cars. The sheriff and a gas station attendant are missing. The army has taken control of the crash site and will not tell anyone what is going on. The adults are so distracted that the kids are able to pursue their investigation — and their film-making — almost without supervision.
It feels in the best possible sense like a newly discovered Spielberg film from the “Goonies”/”E.T”/”Close Encounters of the Third Kind” era, with its suburban setting and kids’-eye sense of wonder and adventure. The meta-humor about the film within a film (stay through the credits to see what the final version looks like) is witty and heart-warming. “Production values!” says Charles as though it is a magical incantation. Which, in a way, it is. No one understands the language of film better than these guys and their evident pleasure in the economical story-telling through visuals adds to the dazzle. A worker silently removes the “784” from the sign that says “safety is our most important goal” and replaces it with a 1. When we then see Joe sitting by himself outside, we know what happened and feel his loss. Later, he pins a lost dog notice to a bulletin board and the camera pulls back to show us the entire board is covered with notes about lost dogs. The camera is in every way a part of the masterful storytelling here.
Like Charles, Abrams and Spielberg know that all the special effects and jump-out-at-you thrills in the world won’t resonate unless we care about the people in the story. This is definitely a movie about characters. The themes of parental estrangement are not always gracefully handled, but Abrams’ ability to put us inside the children’s world is breathtaking. All of the kids are great but Courtney and Fanning are marvels. A scene where he applies zombie make-up to her face is filled at the same time with longing, amazement, and unspoken understandings and is almost unbearably tender. Best of all is the way Abrams shows us that it is not just the happenstance of the movie footage that gives the kids the unique ability to solve the mystery and get everyone home safely; it is the way that particular moment poised between childhood and growing up gives them for a brief moment the unfiltered sense of wonder that makes everything in the world a discovery of equal magnitude and a universe of endless possibilities. It is a privileged moment that he lets us share, and a rare film that makes use of genre without getting overwhelmed by it. We get all of the popcorn pleasures of the stunts and special effects but we get the deeper pleasures of a great story, masterfully told.