Frozen

Posted on November 26, 2013 at 5:00 pm

A-
Lowest Recommended Age: Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating: Rated PG for some action and mild rude humor
Profanity: Brief schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs: None
Violence/ Scariness: Scary wolves, snow monster, peril, sad death of parents
Diversity Issues: Strong female characters
Date Released to Theaters: November 27, 2013
Date Released to DVD: March 17, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN: B00G5G7K7O

frozen poster

Smart, exciting, funny, sweet, tuneful, and gorgeously animated, the Oscar-winning “Frozen” adapts Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale into a story of two sisters kept apart by a scary secret.  Scary wolves, an enormous snow monster, a perilous journey, a warm (yes)-hearted snowman, a loyal reindeer, a sleigh ride, a sensational ice castle, and a little romance keep things moving briskly, but it is the relationship of the sisters that makes this movie something special.  There’s a surprisingly strong emotional connection.

The king and queen of Arendelle love their two daughters, Elsa and Anna, and the girls are best friends.  Anna loves to ask her big sister to “do the magic,” because Ilsa was born with the special power to create snow and ice.  But an accident almost becomes a tragedy, and the trolls who heal Anna remove her memory of her sister’s gift.

Their parents lock the gates around the castle and keep the girls apart.  They tell Elsa to “conceal it, don’t feel it.”  They want to protect her from those who might be afraid of her ability and protect those she might hurt as she grows up and her gift becomes more powerful.  She wears gloves all the time and stays in her room.  Anna wanders the castle alone, singing to the paintings, with no one to talk to.  Although she no longer remembers the details of their former closeness and the time they spent together, she is devastated that her sister will not see her.

Their parents are lost at sea, and three years later Elsa (Broadway star Idina Menzel) is about to be crowned queen.  Anna (Kristen Bell of “Veronica Mars”) is overjoyed to be seeing her sister and excited about meeting the people who will come through the gates that are opened at last.  She is charmingly awkward, having had no opportunity to learn any social skills, but that does not seem to matter to the very handsome Prince Hans (Santino Fontana), who proposes just a few hours after they meet.  Anna is overjoyed.

But Elsa forbids the marriage and when Anna objects, her frustration and  fury explodes, turning the balmy summer into a frozen winter.  Elsa runs away, locking herself into a dazzling palace made of ice in the mountains.  Anna follows, sure that she can make things right if she can just talk to Elsa about what is going on.  And that is where the adventure begins.  She meets a rough-hewn ice harvester named Kristoff (Jonathan Groff of “Glee”) and his reindeer Sven and a sunny-spirited, warm-hearted, and familiar-looking snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad of “Thank You for Sharing”).  And when they get to the ice palace, things do not turn out the way she expects.

Human animated characters tend to be bland-looking, but the voice talents have enormous spirit that gives them a lot of life.  Broadway stars Menzel, Groff (“Spring Awakening”), Bell (“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”), and Gad (“The Book of Mormon”) make the most of a tuneful score featuring the Oscar-winning “Let It Go.”  The songs are beautifully acted as well as sung.  Highlights include an adorable ode to summer from Olaf, who is not quite clear on the physical properties of snow as temperatures rise, Kristoff’s “duetted” ode to reindeer with Sven (he sings both parts), and Menzel’s powerful “Let it Go.”  Bell’s sweet voice is lovely as she sings to the paintings in the castle about her longing for people and then exalts in her love for Prince Hans.  There is also a charming ensemble with trolls singing about how we’re all in our own way “fixer-uppers.”

The animation is everything we hope for from Disney, one “how did they do that?” after another, with ice and snow so real and so touchable you may find yourself zipping up your parka in the theater.   But the effects and action are all in service of the story, with a contemporary twist that is as welcome as summer’s return.

NOTE: Be sure to get to the theater in time as one of the highlights is the pre-feature short, starring a vintage Mickey Mouse voiced by Walt Disney himself.  It is a masterpiece of wit and technology that must be seen a couple of times to fully appreciate.  And be sure to stay through the end of the credits for an extra scene re-visiting one of the film’s most powerful characters.

Parents should know that this film include characters in peril, some injuries and action-style scares, monster, the sad deaths of a mother and father, some potty humor, and kissing.

Family discussion:  What’s a fixer-upper?  Why did Elsa’s parents tell her not to feel?  Why was she afraid of her power?  Why didn’t her parents want anyone to know the truth, and how did that make Elsa and Anna feel?  Who do you think is a love expert?

If you like this, try: “Tangled,” “Brave,” and “The Princess and the Frog”

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Interview: Tatyana Ali of “Home Again”

Posted on November 26, 2013 at 3:51 pm

tatyana-ali-home-again-movieTatyana Ali stars with CCH Pounder in the heartbreaking drama Home Again as Marva, a young Canadian mother deported to Haiti without her children. She talked to me about taking on a role so different from her work on “Fresh Prince” and “Elmo in Grouchland.”

How did you become involved with this project?

I was actually sent a script and it came as an offer which is interesting because usually, you get offered things that are similar to other parts that you’ve played before. But this one is a completely different character and also a totally different kind of story than what I’ve been used to telling.  When I got it, I called my agent and I said “Did they make a mistake? Is it Marva that they want me to play or is it another character?”  I just fell in love with her and with the script. It was a really beautiful, really thoughtful script.  I personally wasn’t even aware of the deportations that have been going on, even though my family is from the Caribbean. And then speaking with Sudz Sutherland, the director, that’s what sealed the deal because he is really brilliant. He and his wife, Jen took years to put the script together and to compile the real life stories. I just knew that there was going to be a lot of care put into telling the story.

Of all the characters in the movie, your character suffered the most visceral, personal, terrible things happening. How do you prepare yourself for that kind of anguish?

It took me a while to kind of figure her out. Having Caribbean ancestry, that part of the story, I understood. I’ve been around stories all my life from my aunts, from my mom, from my dad. I feel like I know what it’s like to feel like a stranger in a strange land, to come somewhere and not speak the language and know the culture, not knowing where you fit, to be even made a pariah in certain instances.  The hardest thing for me was being a mother because I’m not a mother. I have friends who are moms, I have a great mom and a great grandmother.  That was so central.  Marva’s entire journey is to bring her children back to her.  That is the kind of love that forces her out of her own shell, it forces her to have to stop being naïve and to become strong and gain courage. That’s all because she needs her children. For her, it’s like losing her legs.  So that was the hardest work I feel like I had to.

There’s a particularly brutal scene of sexual assault by Marva’s uncle.

Paul Campbell is such an amazing actor.  We kind of ran into each other in the lobby of the hotel we were all staying in, I think the first thing we got there. And immediately, he was like “Let’s have tea. Let’s sit down. Let’s talk…” And he talked about the scene. Luckily we didn’t shoot it until 3 weeks later but by the time we got to that space, I knew the crew, I knew we were all telling the same story, I knew Paul and I just felt really safe.

What do you want people to talk about on their way home after seeing this film?

When we were shooting the film, this debate is still going on even in California. It’s happening all over the world but I think it reminded me of what was going on in California. It reminded me of the talks that politicians had and that people had at their dining room tables about immigrants.  Your children stay because they’re Americans and you have to leave. There’s something barbaric about that and about our policies.  We’re not looking at people, we’re looking at people work, and making our decisions based off of that. I would hope that after seeing this film, I hope that it does shed light on that and that it allows you to walk in these characters’ shoes. And then when it comes time to like capture votes or state your opinion at the table somewhere when you’re talking to somebody, you actually bring up the human factor. I think that’s a really powerful part of this story. And that was the filmmakers’ purpose in telling you the story. It’s to bring a kind of blood to it and let people realize these are real people.

I was particularly moved by your performance in the scene where you explained kind of how you got into that mess.  I think we can all relate to the idea that when you love somebody, you’d do anything for them when you trust them. 

That scene was actually really, really important to me. I felt like that was in that scene, Marva switches from victim to somebody who can actually be a hero and somebody who can actually control her own destiny. Even though she’s telling the story about being duped, of being tricked into carrying illegal stuff across borders, she admits her own guilt.  That’s the first time that she really takes responsibility and for me, that’s like the turning point in her story. After she takes responsibility, she can really control her destiny and really be strong.  Being in this film changed me, like it took me someplace that I’ve never been before and I’m not the same after it. So now, I’m kind of like, “Oh, I want that again.”

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Actors Interview

My Two Favorite Thanksgiving Movies

Posted on November 26, 2013 at 8:00 am

I admit it.  I’m not a fan of “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” which always strikes me as nasty and mean-spirited.  For me, the two movies that best sum up all that is stressful and complicated and wonderful about Thanksgiving are:

Pieces of April Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, and Derek Luke star in this story about a girl estranged from her family who makes Thanksgiving dinner for them.

What’s Cooking? Four different families prepare for Thanksgiving, each dealing with its own family drama. Look for “The Good Wife’s” Julianna Margulies and “The Closer’s” Kyra Sedgwick.

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For Your Netflix Queue Holidays

Interview: William Lorton on “Take Away One” about Teacher Mary Baratta Lorton

Posted on November 25, 2013 at 12:56 pm

Mary Baratta Lorton was a pioneering teacher whose revolutionary ideas about making learning more accessible and involving transformed nearly every classroom in America in the 1970’s.  Her books included Mathematics Their Way.  Tragically, she was murdered.  The killer was never found.  Her nephew, the talented filmmaker William Lorton, has made an enthralling documentary titled, “Take Away One,” which tellingly applies to both stories.  Lorton answered my questions about his film.

When did you first hear about the mystery involving your aunt’s death and how was it explained to you?

Mary was killed in 1978 when I was eight. My parents had to tell us within a day that she had been shot and that the murderer was at large because they knew it would be on TV and probably also on our school playground. I didn’t hear the larger context until college, but even then the whole thing was so convoluted and contested that by the time I was shooting interviews 20 years after that, there was quite lot of detail to sort out. During my adulthood I would sometimes be asked about the case and would always find it an unruly anecdote. I’d be telling the story to someone and I would sound like: “And then this, and then that, oh, but before that there was this…” So making a documentary to get the story in one place with as many participants speaking for themselves as possible had been on my list for years.

When did you first understand how influential she was as an educator?

When I was 14 I got a job at my aunt and uncle’s educational non-profit in Saratoga. Working in the stock room was my summer job for a few years. From the volume of manipulative teaching materials I personally shrink-wrapped and the sheer size of their warehouses and staff, it was clear that people were way into Mary’s work. I mean they were moving pallets of Unifix cubes around with a forklift. They also had this huge wall-chart of how many workshops were being held world-wide and the number of attendees.
You had a real challenge as a filmmaker in essentially having two different stories to tell, the professional and the personal. How were you able to do justice to both?

That was the central filmmaking issue. It was a challenge as a storyteller and as a nephew. Ideally, my aunt would be alive today. She’d be the J.D. Salinger of math textbooks and she would have granted me a two-day interview that would have been just her with some blocks and beads. And believe me, thousands of people would have watched that.
Some of the math people around this issue were against the idea of a film about Mary because they realized it would be impossible to produce her biography without including a component of true-crime material that would either bring up memories that are too painful to re-visit, and/or would distract from the importance of her work. As you can understand, educators are intensely focused on protecting children and politically are keenly aware that anything resembling scandal can be twisted into promoting one teaching method over another. On the other hand, Mary’s family and the retired police who promote the conspiracy theories about her death felt that anything I, as a family member, put together would by definition be biased.

So I would explain to the math people, sometimes in vain, that this is the true story we are unfortunately stuck with, and how would it look if one made a biography of JFK or John Lennon while leaving out the fact that they were victims of foul play? And I would tell the conspiracy theorists, who think the only story here is the murder, that you have to explain who a character is and what she achieved if you expect that murder to have any impact on an audience member who arrives at the theatre knowing nothing about Mary at all. On top of all of this I had to make certain that I as the filmmaker was clearly identified as a family member and to make sure my own perspective was delineated so the viewer has what they need to unwind the perception matrix.

And I would explain to everybody that to make a documentary that is not inclusive is to fail before you begin.

So during four years of production I continually imagined myself in a room giving an oral report with all the diametrically opposed participants watching me. I think the audience gets it, but I doubt whether any of the real-life participants will be 100% satisfied. People prefer to tell their own version of events. Once someone else starts telling what you have owned as your personal narrative for 35 years, every single divergence gets under your skin. And this is a film with over a dozen people voicing the story.

Was there anyone you wanted to interview who refused to participate? Or imposed conditions on the interview that made it more difficult?

The first person I contacted was Mary’s brother, the lead proponent of the conspiracy theory of her death. The guy’s a professor and author and not in any sense an intellectual lightweight. I really wanted to interview him but he rejected it outright, saying that any project that didn’t both start out and end up with the conclusion that my uncle killed my aunt would be “a deception.” But I felt that such an approach would not be “a documentary.” So that was too bad, because for many years I had wanted to meet him in person.
I came very close to having better luck with the original investigating inspector. As I recount in the film, the inspector was very into participating. We emailed and spoke by phone. He was going to get his speaking fee (he’s been on TV many times as an expert.) He introduced us to a great location we could use for the shoot in his hometown. We were even discussing his wardrobe choices. Then a couple of days before the interview he told me he was going to the Hall of Justice in San Francisco to review the case file. He also mentioned, ominously, that he would be asking the DA to review the file as well. Then two days before the interview, he emailed me saying he’d reconsidered after re-reading the file, and decided not to participate. He didn’t mention what the DA’s reaction had been to the file.

This was also someone I’d always wanted to meet, because he’d not only handled my aunt’s murder case, but he had been Dan White’s softball coach and three months after my aunt’s death had done the interrogation on White about his assassination of Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk – which got him some criticism in the press. I’d also wanted to talk to the modern-day SFPD. Although their PR office was very friendly and responsive, it was clear the department has some unspecified issue with discussing anything about this 35 year old unsolved case. They would not even come on to say where or when it happened, which they were happy to do previously for a newspaper article.

What was it like to play at Mary and Bob’s home?

Great. As you can imagine, they were experts with children and knew how to keep your mind constantly engaged with no budget. I think my brother, sister and I (incorrectly) perceived them as “hippies” because they had green shag carpet, wore sandals and were authors. So I at least perceived their place as a “freedom zone” in contrast to the kind of disciplined atmosphere parents are obliged to provide. And they had a staircase.

How were you able to find the archival footage, like Mary’s television interview with Captain Kangaroo?

Every aspect of the Bob Keeshan footage was a very lucky break. Mary’s publisher got probably one of the first VHS cassettes ever made from KPIX after that interview was taped in the early 70’s. Getting the rights to use images of Keeshan and the show’s host, Kathryn Crosby (who acted in “Anatomy of A Murder” and is the widow of Bing Crosby), turned out to be a rabbit-hole of its own, but it had a happy ending. The 16mm news footage was all located at the Bay Area Film and Television Archive in San Francisco. I can’t tell you how lucky we were that this material was archived and intact. Apparently most of the local TV stations had big bonfires of all their 16mm material in the 1980’s because they had switched over to videotape and didn’t want to store their film forever. This of course is absolutely galling to any film historian, or any thinking person for that matter — and so ironic of course because by now that whole bonfire could fit on a medium-size hard drive.

Did your family have any concerns about telling this story?

Yes, and they still do. Some of them have the concern that telling the complete story will distract from Mary’s educational work, the value of which is and should be the main takeaway from the film. My response to them was and is that a.) to leave out Mary’s death would not be biographically ethical and b.) the well-established function of a death in a story about an emerging innovative leader is to throw the shortened life of that person into starker relief as you contemplate exactly what was lost.

You have some innovative visuals, like the numbered hangers whose import is not fully revealed until the end. In a way, this is the clearest demonstration of Mary’s approach to showing, not telling. How did you develop these techniques?

That’s the point where Mary and I converge. The best films and the best teaching techniques both follow the “show don’t tell” rule. After all, they’re doing the same thing, right? (For example, when I was informed one Thanksgiving that I had to carve the turkey, I went to YouTube and watched a video of someone carving a turkey, I didn’t look up written instructions on how to do it.) The classic challenge to anyone making a non-fiction piece about events that happened 40 years ago is that you don’t have much footage of what you are talking about. So unless you actually want a 105 minute parade of talking heads, you need to get creative with filling what we call the “black holes” in the cut, which are the places in the film that you leave empty, waiting to find a photograph or element that will illustrate the story and get the camera off the interviewee’s face. I did a lot of this in “Take Away One” by using family photographs, fair-use imagery and motion graphics I made on my computer –- but fortunately Mary’s work was largely visual, and attractively so, so it was a natural solution to fill up the movie with images she herself made, whether it’s re-creations of her math lessons or the notecards she used to write down what was happening in her life.

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Behind the Scenes Interview

Philomena

Posted on November 24, 2013 at 8:40 pm

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 on appeal for some strong language, thematic elements and sexual references
Profanity: Very strong, frank, and explicit language for a PG-13
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking
Violence/ Scariness: Sad deaths and abuse
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters, issue of anti-gay bigotry is discussed
Date Released to Theaters: November 22, 2013
Date Released to DVD: April 14, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN: B00GSBMNOQ

Philomena-dench-movieDame Judi Dench has played many strong-minded, determined characters, from Queens (Victoria and Elizabeth I) to the even more imperious head of the MI6 who can take on James Bond with an air of crisp authority.  As the title character in “Philomena,” she shows us the radiance and inner core of strength in a woman we might otherwise find easy to overlook.

Martin Sixsmith (co-screenwriter Steve Coogan) underestimates her at first, too.  Sixsmith is a journalist-turned politician smarting from a public humiliation after he was fired for something he did not do.  He gets little sympathy from those around him and it seems clear that being aggrieved has only fed his sense of superiority, isolation, and entitlement.  He mutters something about writing a book on Russian history, though he realizes no one is very interested in reading it.  When he meets a young Irish woman who offers him her mother’s story of a half-century search for the son she was forced to give up for adoption, his first reaction is a haughty, “I don’t do human interest stories.”  The truth is, he is not really interested in humans, in part because they have not done a very good job of being interested in him.

Sixsmith did eventually write some books about Russia.  But first he decided to give human interest a try.  The result was Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search.

When she was a teenager, Philomena (Dench) became pregnant and her parents sent her to the now-notorious Magdalene Sisters workhouse.  The girls were forced to work for years to pay (financially and spiritually) for their sins.  The abused and underage girls also signed away all of their rights to their babies, including access to information about where they were placed.  Philomena (Sophie Kennedy Clark as a young woman) was working in the laundry when her son was taken from her and adopted by an American family.  For half a century, as she became a nurse, married, and had more children, she missed him and worried about him.  Sixsmith found an editor to pay him to write the story, covering expenses for a trip to America to see if they could track him down.  She hopes the story will have some lurid details.  “Evil is good — story-wise, I mean….It’s got to be really happy or really sad.”

Coogan knows he is at his best playing slightly high-strung, slightly self-involved guys who are too smart for the room and usually end up outsmarting themselves (see “The Trip”).   It is especially satisfying to watch his character go from irritation to respect and then affection.  There’s a reason the movie is named for her.  Philomena is a surprise.  If she has awful taste in books and movies, it is because she has the gift of being able to be pleased.  When it comes to the big things, she is refreshingly clear-eyed and open-minded.  And  she understands what it takes to not let anyone make you a victim.

More improbable than any fictional story would dare to be, the journey taken by Philomena and Sixsmith is bittersweet and ultimately transcendent.  Performances by Dench and Coogan of great sensitivity illuminate this story of a quiet heroine and the man who was lucky enough to learn from her.

Parents should know that this movie was initially rated R and then given a PG-13 on appeal.  It concerns young teenagers put in a home for out-of-wedlock pregnancies and forced to give up their babies for adoption and there is frank discussion of sex and a childbirth scene, the abuse of the young women by the nuns who ran the home, and the life of a character as a closeted gay man.  Characters use very strong and explicit language and there is some drinking.

Family discussion: Why did Martin and Philomena feel differently about forgiveness?  Did she find what she was looking for?

If you like this, try: “The Magdalene Sisters” and “The Trip”

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