Posted on September 23, 2011 at 6:37 pm
Be sure to check out Elmo and Cookie Monster as they perform their versions of the hit TV shows whose stars will be appearing on the new season of “Sesame Street!”
Posted on September 23, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Years ago, “Saturday Night Live” had a funny “Wayne’s World” sketch with Bruce Willis as the high school cool kid, who appeared on the show to reveal to Wayne and Garth what the new cool insult word of the year would be. I’m not going to reveal that word here, but I am beginning to suspect that somewhere there is a Bruce Willis equivalent who decides what boundary-crossing word will all of a sudden be prevalent on broadcast television. Last year it was an ugly and misogynistic term for an outdated product used for intimate female cleansing. As in the “Wayne’s World” sketch, this year’s word is an anatomical reference, used to insult or provoke. According to the New York Times, all of a sudden the most popular new word is the clinical term for what are sometimes more politely referred to as lady parts. Sadly, in many cases the scripts are written by women who seem to think that it makes them cool enough to be in the TV boys club instead of understanding it makes them look undignified, insecure, and trashy.
Two female writers who are behind three of the shows that use the word commented:
I think our tolerance for what is edgy is changing,” said Cummings, who, besides writing her own comedy for NBC, also wrote “Two Broke Girls” with Michael Patrick King, a longtime producer and writer of “Sex and the City.” “We’re getting a little desensitized, so sometimes you have to be more and more shocking because now you have YouTube and the Internet and all the rest that’s available for us to watch.”
…
“I think it’s great this is all coming from women,” said Liz Meriwether, the creator of another new show, “New Girl.” “This is all part of the human experience”…As for the reasons to use it, she added: “Sometimes you use crudeness just for shock. But sometimes you’re using crudeness because it absolutely is the funniest joke. I think the best comedy is the stuff that does make you a little uncomfortable.”
I think the best comedy does not confuse cheap shocks with what is genuinely provocative.
Posted on September 23, 2011 at 8:00 am
Sam Childers is the “Machine Gun Preacher” who inspired a movie by that name, starring Gerard Butler. His book, Another Man’s War: The True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan
What have you learned about people’s reactions to the movie?
We’ve had over a thousand people email us or Facebook us or call our office because they’ve seen the movie. The message is coming across what we were hoping would happen. They’re going to the movie because of Gerard Butler or because it’s the true story of Sam Childers. But it turns out the movie is about them. That is the ultimate thing I was wanting to see. It’s making them think, “What am I doing?” It’s motivating people that might have never done anything in life to save children, not just children in Africa but children around the world. I think people will be inspired to walk away from habits and addictions and even people that don’t have addictions are going to want to end up doing something good in life. Thousands of children will be rescued around the world by people who have seen this movie.
How do you keep yourself from being spiritually exhausted by the devastation in this tragic place?
I believe that the average American when we look at what’s going on in Africa will say there is no way we can fix the problem so we do nothing. We have a serious drug problem in America but I won’t allow people to sell hard drugs in my home town. I will shut them down. If we say to ourself “there’s nothing we can do” it keeps growing and growing. But even if you manage to do something small, you’ve done something. Even the smallest thing can change someone’s life. I always encourage people — don’t look how big the problem is. Look at the little thing you can do on your own.
I started out doing something little. I went to Africa to spend five weeks putting roofs on a building. I seen the small child that stepped on a land mine. Three months later I’m back helping pull the land mines out. Little things just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And now look, there’s a movie!
I tell people all the time, don’t give up. We get almost to our blessing, whether you believe spiritually in God or in a good force and an evil force. We get almost to our blessing and we quit. Don’t stop.
Do you have a favorite Bible verse?
James Chapter 4, verse 17. If you know you should do something and not do it, then you’ve sinned. I use it a lot.
How do you divide your time?
I spend about seven months of the year overseas and the rest of the time on the road. God has given us the opportunity to speak to bigger and bigger — I don’t like to say audiences or congregations, but the crowds are getting bigger. And we’ve had over 15,000 people make life commitments. I don’t like to consider myself a normal preacher. When you look at religious people, they’re the ones who hung Christ from the cross. I look at myself as a man carrying a message of hope. I don’t care who you are, if you don’t have any addictions you still want to hear your message of hope. And if you do have addictions, you need to hear that message.
The movie indicates that you had some rough times and got in trouble before finding your way.
That’s Hollywood’s way of amping something up. I was in jail, not prison. Did they give me a uniform? Yeah they did. My dad was really a hard person and if was ever to rob somebody, oh, man, he couldn’t handle that. All the times I was in jail it was for fighting. And robbing drug dealers, I done that. I thank God that I’m alive to this day.
In the movie, there is some conflict with your family about money.
My family did suffer but they never went without. The more we get, the more we want, the more we want the more we think we deserve. If you would come and see the simple home I live in you would see I am not in this thing for money. I got paid less than $45,000 last year. I could pay myself more but it would mean less money would go where it is needed.
What made you decide to trust someone to make a movie about you?
After we were on Dateline we got so many hits it crashed our website. We got over 300 offers for books and movies and documentaries. I wasn’t even thinking about that. I was scared. I didn’t want it and tried to stay away from it. But a lady convinced me to put my story in a book, and the book has saved thousands of lives, even people who were going to commit suicide. The movie only shows you a small fraction of who Sam Childers was, how awful a person I was. No sooner than the book was done but it wasn’t published yet. It went to a ghost-writer and he said, “I can’t change the way this guy talks.” So he just put it in chapters. Then I met Jason Keller and I put him to the test. I was hard on him. My life is all about what Christ has done for me, but that’s too much Christ to write for Hollywood. I told him, “Then I’ll die with the story.” So he done his best to keep what was in it, in it.
How many kids are you caring for now?
I have 179 children that I take care of full-time, close to 40 in Uganda and the rest in Sudan. They’re coming close to university age now and the better schools are in Uganda. My biggest problem now is school fees. I have the only library in Sudan. It has videos, DVDs, computers, and we’re just starting to finish a school we built off the compound, to be given to the community. The children have been amazing. It’s been a hard road for them as you can see in the movie. The children even down to this day have a lot of trust with me. There hasn’t been any killing around the orphanage in two years but when it was bad they would just come and hang me me, as I’d walk around with my gun at my side. Sudan got their independence but they have no infrastructure. If anything happens and fighting breaks out again, they will bring the kids to us to care for. And we now have places for children in Ethiopia, too.
What do they want to do when they grow up?
Doctor, pilot, woodworker. It’s amazing what you’ll hear them say.
Posted on September 22, 2011 at 6:41 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | 4th - 6th Grades |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for some mild thematic elements |
| Profanity: | Some schoolyard language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Some alcohol |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Injured human and animal characters, offscreen wartime violence, recovering human and animal amputees, discussion of parental loss and abandonment |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | September 23, 2011 |
| Date Released to DVD: | December 12, 2011 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B004EPZ01G |
It won’t be available for sale until next week but I just can’t wait to feature this terrific film. I have a copy to give away so if you’d like to enter, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Dolphin in the subject line and don’t forget your address! I’ll pick a winner December 16.
Clearwater Florida’s star attraction Winter, the dolphin with the prosthetic tail, plays herself in a heart-warming story that is one of the best family movies of the year.
The human characters are fictional, but Winter really did lose her tail and would not have survived without the development of a mechanical tail to allow her to swim. In this story, a nice connection is made not just between a lonely boy and the affectionate dolphin but between the two species who have to adjust to the loss of limbs and the use of mechanical replacements.
In this version, a boy named Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) has become something of a loner after his father left and his favorite cousin Kyle, a swim champion, joins the military. He is unhappy about being sent to summer school. All he wants to do is tinker with his remote controlled helicopter in his workshop and wait for his cousin to come home.
On the way to school one morning, he sees an injured dolphin on the beach. He gently cuts her free and whistles to her to keep her calm until the Marine rescue team arrives. Later, he sneaks into the aquarium where she is being cared for and meets the marine biologist in charge, Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick, Jr.) and his young daughter, Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff). Winter responds to Sawyer so well that they let him stay and help take care of her.
Hazel and Sawyer spend hours cradling Winter gently until she starts to try to swim. As Winter begins to get better, Sawyer starts to become a part of the community at the aquarium. His mother (Ashley Judd) is at first frustrated and angry that he has been ditching school. But then she realizes that he is learning far more from being with Winter at the aquarium than he could anywhere else. When Kyle comes back injured, both he and Winter will need to find the courage to confront their challenges. A lovably irascible doctor at Kyle’s VA facility (Morgan Freeman) thinks he can adapt the prosthetic technology they use to help the wounded veterans to give Winter a new tail.
And then just as Winter’s survival is on track, the survival of the aquarium and the marine program is at risk.
That’s a lot to handle, but writer/director Charles Martin Smith wisely keeps the focus on Sawyer and Hazel, and it is a treat to see their passion and optimism. Gamble and Zuehlsdorff have a lovely natural chemistry and the grown-ups in the cast provide able support. The story has a fairy tale quality, especially when it comes to saving the aquarium, and then the footage of the real-life disabled kids visiting Winter reminds us that the true story is even more magical.
Posted on September 22, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Like this year’s “The Devil’s Double,” this film would be much more satisfying and believable if it was not so self-serving in favor of the people telling the story. The oddest part is that the fight scenes are brutally, authentic while the non-fight scenes are laughably ridiculous. While it says it is “based on a true story,” the book that inspired it is labeled as a work of fiction and has been discredited by family members of those involved.
It opens in 1980, with the world in unrest and an oil crisis. Danny (Jason Statham), ex-special forces, works various dangerous jobs with his long-time ally Hunter (Robert De Niro) until he decides to leave it all behind and have a new, peaceful life in Australia. But he gets pulled back in when Hunter is kidnapped by a sheik who wants Danny to hunt down and kill the men from British forces who killed his three sons in an armed conflict in Oman. But Danny can’t just kill them. The sheik wants taped confessions from each and then Danny has to make each death look like an accident (which of course makes it impossible, 30 years later, to say that the accidental deaths were not really homicides). Danny gets the band back together, with, of course, one newbie just to act as a wild card, and goes after the sheik’s three targets.
But in this nasty, brutish world, everyone’s a bad guy; it’s just a question of degree. While Danny and his group are going after the guys who killed the sheik’s sons, the guys who think those guys were the good guys go after Danny. And while all of that is going on, the desiccated old men sitting around in expensively furnished board rooms are moving them all around like chess pieces, with even less regard for whether they get knocked off the board. These are the “feather men” (because of their light touch) who like some third-rate Batman villain actually leave their calling card to let the men who do the actual killing know that they’ve been there. Just to make sure we get the point, the old guys in suits actually say things like, “What we did there was questionable,” “We all know our people went too far,” and “We’re businessmen and bankers now. We can leave no trace of our activities.” Meanwhile, the guys who kill people (as opposed to ordering other people to do it) say things like, “Killing is easy. Living with it is the hard part.” So we know they have feelings, get it?
Statham is always a pleasure to watch and De Niro is superb as the man who has given his life to adrenaline and rough justice but is loyal to his friend and his family. The fight scenes are not the usual choreographed carnage but believably rough and exhausting. There are some nice shifts of allegiance back and forth and some good points to be made about how behind the killing is profits from oil. But the whole premise becomes increasingly ludicrous until it falls apart.
