Hurray! The summer Olympics start this week. Here are some movies to help kids get ready.
The First Olympics: Athens 1896, one of my very favorite sports movies ever, is a made-for-TV miniseries about the first modern-day Olympics. We take the Olympics as a given now, but there were 1500 years between the time of the ancient games and the establishment of the modern Olympics with countries from all over the world putting aside their political differences for athletic competition in the spirit of good sportsmanship and teamwork. Showing the origins of everything from the starting position for sprinters to the impulsive selection of the Star Spangled Banner as the U.S. national anthem, the story is filled with drama, wit, and unforgettable characters, sumptuously filmed and beautifully performed by a sensational cast that includes then-unknown David Caruso of “CSI,” one-time Bond Girl Honor Blackman, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, and Louis Jourdan. It was a Writer’s Guild and Casting Society award winner when it was first released. It is a great introduction to the Olympics, a thrilling and inspiring story, and outstanding family entertainment.
Stick It This underrated gem is a stylish, smart, and all-around terrific story about gymnastics and when and when not to follow the rules.
American Girl: McKenna Shoots for the Stars One of my favorite entries in one of my favorite series — I love the way this film deals frankly with issues like disabilities (learning and physical), competition, and friendship.
Prefontaine “Modern Family’s” Ed O’Neill and Jared Leto star in the story of the Olympic runner.
Race Jesse Owens thrilled the world and defied Hitler in the 1934 Olympics. This is an outstanding film, exciting, thoughtful, and beautifully performed.
“16 Days of Glory” Bud Greenspan is the master of the Olympics documentary and this one about the 1984 summer Olympics includes all-time all-stars Mary Lou Retton and Greg Louganis.
Happy 100th birthday to one of the greatest and most versatile stars of the golden age of Hollywood, Olivia de Havilland!
She and her fellow-Oscar-winning sister, Joan Fontaine, were born in Tokyo, the daughters of British parents, a professor and an actress. The girls and their mother later moved to California, where she appeared in local theater productions as a teenager. Producer Max Reinhardt offered her an understudy role in “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and when Gloria Stuart (later nominated for an Oscar for “Titanic”) left the production, de Havilland played Hermia, and was asked to perform the same part in the film, opposite Dick Powell.
Soon she was paired with Errol Flynn in “Captain Blood.”
They made eight more films together. My favorite is “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
Another of my favorite de Havilland performances is opposite James Cagney in “The Strawberry Blonde.”
She played Melanie in “Gone With the Wind.”
She won an Oscar for “To Each His Own.”
She won another one for “The Heiress.” And she won something more important — her rebellion against the oppressive contracts of the Hollywood studios led to a lawsuit that gave actors the freedom to choose their roles.
Happy birthday, Miss de Havilland! Thank you for 100 years of grace, beauty, and intelligence.
This week’s new “Tarzan” movie should inspire families to check out the many, many earlier versions of this classic story.
In 2012, Neely Tucker of The Washington Post wrote a wonderful tribute to Tarzan in honor of the 100th anniversary of the first Tarzan story by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with a fascinating gallery of portrayals of this now-iconic character. Burroughs had no special calling to be a writer. According to Tucker’s story, after a series of unsuccessful jobs,
Burroughs was suddenly in his mid-30s and pawning his wife’s jewelry for cash.
And then — there’s always a “and then” in these kinds of stories — he was reading a pulp magazine, checking to see whether his company’s ads were correctly placed. He thought the magazine’s stories were so poor that even he could write better.
So he sat down and wrote a science-fiction piece, “Under the Moons of Mars,” and sold it to All-Story. (Today, you know this tale as “John Carter,” which inspired the unsuccessul Disney film.)
He sold it for $400, roughly the modern equivalent of $9,300. This got his attention.
“I was not writing because of any urge to write nor for any particular love of writing. I was writing because I had a wife and two babies,” he later told an interviewer. “I loathed poverty and I would have liked to put my hands on the party who said that poverty is an honorable estate.”
The character of Tarzan was an instant sensation, and Burroughs was a good enough businessman that he not only copyrighted his stories, but he trademarked the character.
Copyrights expire, but trademarks do not. Burroughs wrote two dozen Tarzan books but the character is best known for its many popular movie and television versions, from Elmo Lincoln’s portrayal in the silent era to an animated Disney feature film with music by Phil Collins.
Olympic gold medalist Buster Crabbe played “Tarzan the Fearless” (and also Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers).
There was a 1960’s television series starring Ron Ely.
And one with Wolf Larson in the 1990’s.
Joe Lara starred in “Tarzan in Manhattan.”
My favorite is still the classic with swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan.
Burroughs’ version of Tarzan was highly educated. He had the books left behind by his late parents and was able to speak many languages. But what makes the character so enduringly appealing over a century is the idea of him as completely isolated from civilization, raised in the jungle. That gives us a chance to consider the deepest questions about what makes us human at the same time as we have the pleasure of imagining ourselves, like Tarzan, Jane, Boy, and Cheetah, swinging through the trees.
“The BFG” stands for Big Friendly Giant, and it is a new movie from Steven Spielberg, based on the book by Roald Dahl.
There are no big-name stars in the film, but there are some familiar faces, with some of the world’s best character actors. After you’ve seen “BFG,” try some of their other films.
The cast includes Mark Rylance in the title role, and while he did win an Oscar earlier this year for his performance as a Soviet agent in Spielberg’s last film, “Bridge of Spies,” he’s better known for his three-time Tony Award-winning theater work than for movies or television.
You’ve seen him, though, if you watched “Wolf Hall,” where he played Thomas Cromwell.
And here he is as Richard III:
The wonderful Penelope Wilton plays an important role I won’t spoil here. She is best known for “Downton Abbey.”
I first became a fan after seeing her in the brilliant “Norman Conquests,” three intertwined plays by Alan Ayckbourn.
Rafe Spall plays a footman. He was in “The Big Short,” “What If,” and “Life of Pi,” co-starred with Wilton in “Shaun of the Dead,” and he stars in the new series “Roadies.” His father, Timothy Spall, played Peter Pettigrew in the “Harry Potter” films and has appeared in many other plays and films, including the upcoming “Denial.”
Rebecca Hall, who plays a lady in waiting, is also from a show business family. Her father, Peter Hall, is a distinguished director and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her films include “Frost/Nixon,” “Iron Man 3,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”
by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with a fascinating