Posted on January 11, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Last summer, I reported that the Sam Mendes-directed James Bond movie with Daniel Craig had been canceled due to the bankruptcy of the studio, MGM. Today, it seems hopeful that it is back on track. Craig’s availability has not been confirmed but apparently Judi Dench will be back as M and there’s an intriguing rumor of Michael Sheen as the villain. MGM plans to have it in theaters in November 2012. Stay tuned for updates!
Posted on January 8, 2011 at 1:39 pm
We don’t often see death in comic strips and sit-coms. But on “How I Met Your Mother,” Marshall Erickson (Jason Segal) lost his beloved father Marvin (played by Bill Fagerbakke). And the title character in Garry Trudeau’s comic strip, currently celebrating its 40th anniversary of publication, lost his feisty mother Daisy. In both cases, the deaths occurred out of sight but the audience shared in the loss as we see the impact on the characters that to some of us feel like family.
Doonesbury has run a week of strips about the memorial service for Daisy, mostly focusing on the insensitive behavior of Mike’s ex-wife J.J. and his brother. In “How I Met Your Mother,” Marshall, who was very close to his parents, got the bad news in the last moment of the episode. I hope future shows will show Marshall and his wife Lily as they try to understand their loss and find a way to keep the best of Marshall’s father close to them.
I admire both Doonesbury and “How I Met Your Mother” for their willingness to bring the challenges of parental loss to their stories.
Posted on December 30, 2010 at 8:53 pm
I had a lot of fun writing for BNet about why corporations were the go-to villain in the movies of 2010, from “Despicable Me” to “The Other Guys,” “Tron: Legacy,” “Resident Evil 4,” and “Inception.”
Posted on December 15, 2010 at 11:27 pm
Two movies opening up this week get a PG rating. One is “Yogi Bear,” based on the cartoon series for children about a bear who steals picnic baskets. The other is “Tron: Legacy” a high-tech action film that involves peril, abandonment, deaths of parents, and characters who are destroyed by being shattered into billions of tiny fragments.
Does anyone think this makes sense?
Posted on December 12, 2010 at 7:34 pm
I am honored to be mentioned in Roger Ebert’s outstanding op-ed about the MPAA ratings, and thrilled with his support for what I do. Last week, on appeal, the MPAA lowered the rating of “Blue Valentine,” a searing portrait of a deteriorating marriage, to an R. Its explicit sexual material had given it an NC-17, which meant that many newspapers would not accept ads and many theaters would not show it.
Ebert says:
The MPAA should have changed its standards long ago, taking into account the context and tone of a movie instead of holding fast to rigid checklists….It’s time to get pragmatic about this. The current ratings system is useful primarily for the parents of small children who are concerned that images or situations may be disturbing for young minds. They know a G film is harmless and a PG almost certainly is, and a PG-13 may or may not be. It’s an open secret that some naturally PG movies have an element or two thrown in to earn a PG-13, so teenagers aren’t scared off. That’s not a step forward.
Obviously, what parents really want is an evaluation, exactly what Mr. Valenti said the MPAA could not provide. When they’re informed that a PG-13 contains “language, some intense situations and smoking,” what have they learned? On the Internet, useful guides to content are everywhere. Critics like Nell Minow, the “Movie Mom,” write intelligently for parents about the content and context of films.
