Alice Upside Down

Posted on November 3, 2008 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Reference to sad death and illness
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters

Based on the popular series of books by Phylis Reynolds Naylor, this understated but sensitive and warm-hearted film is funny, touching, and wise.

Middle school is miserable enough, but for Alice (Alyson Stoner) there are complications that are even more horrifying. She is brand new in town because her father (Luke Perry)
has just bought a music store in Silver Spring, Maryland, so they have moved away from everyone they know. She has gotten off on the wrong foot with just about everyone — a neighbor who is in her class in school (a muddy handshake and un-gracious rejection of her family’s gift of a meatloaf dinner), a boy from school (she accidentally opened the door to the changing room at the store and saw him in his boxers), and her terrifying new teacher, Mrs. Plotkin (Penny Marshall, in a welcome return to performing) by insisting that she was supposed to be moved to another class. But the most important reason she feels out of place (aside from being 11 years old) is that she misses her mother, who died when she was little, and her father does not want to talk about her.

Naylor and screenwriters Meghan Heritage and Sandy Tung have ably evoked the tumultuousness of 6th grade as Alice swings back and forth from misery to ecstasy and from over-confidence to utter humiliation and back again. When Miss Cole (Ashley Drane), the teacher she idealizes, directs the school play, Alice thinks all of her problems will be solved. All she needs to do is get the lead and fix the teacher up with her father so they can unite in marriage and in recognizing Alice as the fabulously talented, confident, and popular girl she knows she is destined to be.

Of course, that isn’t the way it all works out. Alice lapses into daydreams, forgets to do her homework, and finds that she did not inherit her mother’s gift for singing. But she also discovers that she can learn from her mistakes and that everyone deserves a second chance.

Stoner is an appealingly sincere young actress with a gift for comedy and “High School Musical’s” Lucas Grabeel is terrific as her older brother. Co-screenwriter Tung directs with enough respect for his characters and the audience that he lets everyone learn some lessons without having a sit-com resolution to every situation. It’s a fine family film, enthusiastically received when I introduced it at the Tallgrass Film Festival and I was delighted when it came in second for the festival’s audience award.

List: Election Documentaries

Posted on October 31, 2008 at 8:00 am

In honor of one of the most exciting elections in American history, here is a list of ten classic documentaries about elections and politics.

1. Primary This pioneering political documentary from Robert Drew, the first in a trilogy, shows candidate John F. Kennedy running against Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary in 1960. Elbert Ventura wrote in Slate:

Stacked up against today’s documentaries, which tend toward overweening subjectivity and strident polemics, Drew’s movies seem like relics. Here, it seems, was the first gaze–the audience granted an intimate glimpse of their leaders, the subjects not yet trained to play to the cameras. Ironically, Drew’s innovations would end up killing the very spontaneity he captured. The ubiquity of portable cameras, whose development Drew helped speed along, would eventually usher in the era of media-trained politicians.

2. The War Room “It’s the economy, stupid,” was the mantra of campaign specialists James Carville and George Stephanopoulos as they and their colleagues took a young Governor from Arkansas to the White House.

3. Our Brand Is Crisis Carville attempted to export his skill at marketing candidates to Bolivia and the result is a tale of American hubris — soon to be remade as a feature film starring George Clooney.

4. A Perfect Candidate Two very high profile Virginia candidates for the Senate, former Governor (and Lyndon Johnson son-in-law) Charles Robb and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North compete for votes in 1994 in one of the state’s most tumultuous elections.

5. Journeys With George The daughter of the first woman Speaker of the House made this up-close-and-very-personal documentary about the campaign of George W. Bush that is as much about the way media covers the candidate as about the candidate himself.

6. Anytown, USA Candidates for mayor of Bogota, New Jersey — two legally blind, one ill, in a race that proves that not only is all politics local politics but that local politics are just as brutal and unpredictable as national elections.

7. See How They Run Even by San Francisco standards, this race is a wild one. The ever-popular wheeler-dealer Willie Brown is challenged by a baker’s dozen of colorful characters.

8. The Delegate Most documentaries focus on the candidates, their top aides, or the press. This one looks at a 21-year-old delegate to the GOP convention.

9. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story The late former Chairman of the Republican National Committee who engineered Ronald Reagan’s election is profiled in this current theatrical release.

10. Unprecedented – The 2000 Presidential Election Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman takes the viewers on a journey through the turbulent 2000 election with stops at the Republican and Democratic conventions and conversations with activists from all sides.

Beliefnet’s Movies about Faith in Love

Posted on October 29, 2008 at 4:00 pm

Idol Chatter has a great post with a list of the best movies about putting your faith in love (and cry in the process). I don’t agree with all of the choices — I find “The Other Sister” and “Stepmom” manipulative and maudlin and while I know “The Notebook” has zillions of passionate fans, it never moved me as much as I wanted it to. But I love the idea of this list and have a few movies to add:

1. “Truly, Madly, Deeply” One of the greatest films ever about love and loss with heart-wrenching performances by Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman.

2. “Brief Encounter” A woman who thinks she is perfectly content with her life finds that she is capable of a deeper love — and a more painful sense of loss — than she ever imagined. See also the underrated “Falling in Love” with Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro.

3. “Sophie’s Choice” Loving someone cannot save them. Streep and Kevin Kline. Get out your hankies.

4. “An Affair to Remember” Watch the shipboard romance and skip through the kids singing but don’t miss that final scene, when Cary Grant finds out why Deborah Kerr wasn’t waiting for him on top of the Empire State Building.

5. “Dark Victory” Bette Davis is a headstrong party girl who finds love with the doctor when it is almost too late. See also “Now Voyager,” where Davis tells the man she loves but cannot be with not to ask for the moon because they have the stars.

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For Your Netflix Queue Lists

Please Vote for Me

Posted on October 28, 2008 at 8:00 am

There is no better way to make elections real to kids than this award-winning documentary about the first-ever election in a third-grade classroom in China. In Please Vote for Me , the children are completely unfamiliar with even the concept of a genuine election and their parents and teachers don’t know much more. The office at stake is class monitor and the campaigns are as cutthroat, heart-felt, and heart-breaking as any election anywhere. Though its subtitles make it unsuitable for the youngest children, it is an outstanding introduction to the benefits and costs of democracy and a great way to start a conversation about what we look for in the people who deserve our votes.

Meet Me in St. Louis

Posted on October 27, 2008 at 8:00 am

This episodic story of the Smith family in the St. Louis of 1903 is based on the memoirs of Sally Benson. Its pleasures are in the period detail, the glorious songs (including standards “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”) and the loving and nostalgic look at a time of innocence and optimism, where a long-distance call was almost as thrilling as having the World’s Fair come to your very own city. We see the family over the course of a year, celebrating Halloween and Christmas, riding the ice truck in the summer and building snowmen in the winter. They face the prospect of having to leave St. Louis so that Mr. Smith can accept a promotion. They wonder whether the older girl’s two boyfriends will propose. They treat each other with great loyalty and affectionate tolerance. And then they live happily ever after.

The Smith’s older daughters are Rose (Lucille Bremer) and Esther (Judy Garland). Rose is attracted to Warren Sheffield, and a bit impatient because he has not proposed. Esther has decided to marry “the boy next door,” John Pruitt (Tom Drake), even though they have not yet met. When the girls have a party, their two little sisters (Joan Carroll and Margaret O’Brien as Agnes and Tootie Smith) creep downstairs. Tootie is allowed to do one song with Esther (the cakewalk “Under the Bamboo Tree”) before being sent back to bed. Esther asks John to help her turn out the gas lights before he leaves, to have some time alone with him. The next day, he joins her as she and her friends ride on the trolley, and when he catches up with them, she sings “The Trolly Song.” Later, Warren escorts a visiting out-of-town girl (June Lockhart) to another party, and Esther and Rose conspire to fill her dance card with the least appealing partners at the dance. When she is revealed to be so friendly and tactful that she gets Rose and Warren back together, Esther has to take all of her dances. Tootie is heartbroken about moving to New York, and while the rest of the family tries to hide it, they are, too. Mr. Smith gives up, they stay in St. Louis, and when the fair opens, they are there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ2Q8_P_msg

One of the movie’s most evocative scenes is Halloween, celebrated very differently in those days, but like today the one night of the year where children have the power to frighten the grown-ups. Agnes and Tootie dress up in rags and “kill” the people who answer the door by throwing flour at them. Director Minnelli skillfully shows how spooky and at the same time thrilling it is for the girls to be out after dark. When Tootie is successful at “killing” the grouchy neighbor, she is heralded by the other kids, and blissfully announces, “I’m the most horrible! I’m the most horrible!”

This is one of the most loving of all movie families. Everyone in it treats all of the other members with trust and affection, even, when it comes to Tootie, indulgence. They are interested in each other and take each other’s concerns seriously, whether it is the seasoning of a sauce or choice of a future spouse. Only the poor father is rather left out. He is not told about the long distance call, and no one is pleased with his promotion. But in a way, that is just a reflection of the family’s devotion to him and to the life they have together in St. Louis. And the lovely duet he sings with his wife, “You and I,” shows that it is their relationship that is the foundation of the family.

Minnelli began as an art director and designer, and his use of color is always fresh and fun — there isn’t another director in history who would have thought to put Esther in purple gloves for the trolley ride, but once you see it, you can’t imagine any other color.