Posted on December 26, 2007 at 7:28 am
This was a very good year for family movies. Here are the best:
Bridge to Terabithia
Golden Compass
Surf’s Up
Enchanted
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Hairspray
Transformers
Stardust
The Water-Horse
Ratatouille
Runners-up:
Bratz
The Last Mimzy
Game Plan
Meet the Robinsons
Shrek 3
The Astronaut Farmer
Posted on December 25, 2007 at 8:00 am
“The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep,” a fantasy set in WWII about a boy who befriends the Loch Ness monster, is one of the best family movies of the year. I spoke with director Jay Russell and stars Ben Chaplin and Alex Etel.
How do you act with a creature who isn’t there but will be filled in later with CGI?
AE: It was really hard to act to a tennis ball on a stick. It was a challenge for me. When it first hatched and was in the teenage stages it was a puppet, so that was easier. But we didn’t film in sequence at all, so we began with my looking at a tennis ball and pretending it was Crusoe (the monster).
JR: Some of the very first things we did the creature was already an adult. Later on when we got to the stage work, the WETA Workshop built these amazingly lifelike puppets and the puppeteer was so great. He would give the creature those quirky moves. When it was an adult, that’s when they had to play make-believe. We did pre-visualization. I would take the storyboards that I did before we started, WETA would bring them to life with animation and we would have living storyboards on the set and that would help them, especially when there’s nothing there.
Why has the legend persisted?
JR: Because there are really two legends. The first goes with any body of water or in the mountains with, Bigfoot, and that kind of thing. The original legend goes back over 1000 years, kelpie or water horse, about a traveler who would come by the loch and this creature would appear to be very friendly and would want to take them across the loch and then get them into the middle and drag them to their death. Then there was the more modern notion from the 1930’s with the famous surgeon’s photo. My feeling about why the legend persists is that we want to believe that there’s something out there that we can’t understand. We have a need for magic and imagination. When I went to Loch Ness for the first time, we pulled up and saw all these tour buses looking out. Then I stood there a while looking for it myself.
BC: It’s a deus ex machina.
JR: We want it, we need it. There always will be a legend of a loch, even as recently as last May, a guy shot a video on his phone of the water and a wave with a big black thing underneath it, and it’s all over the internet.
BC: Because it’s in a loch it’s not as scary as in an ocean.
AE: It’s like it’s in a zoo.
Posted on December 21, 2007 at 8:00 am
The three talented young stars of “The Great Debaters” talked with me about making the film and the teachers who inspired them.
Nate Parker on what makes a great debater:
Denzel Whitaker on why you should see the movie:
Posted on December 20, 2007 at 2:52 pm
What do we tell fans of the hit Nickelodeon series “Zoey 101” now that the star, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, is pregnant?
On television, Zoey is one of the first girls at a boarding school that has just gone co-ed. Zoey has problems like figuring out who tp’d the girls’ dorm, finding a prom date, or playing Disc Golf against the team from the correctional school. In real life, the girl who plays Zoey, is having a baby.
Spears, the sister of pop sensation turned tabloid sensation Britney, plans to have the baby and raise it at home. The media refers to the baby’s father as her “long-term boyfriend.” In my view, no one at 16 is old enough to have a long-term anything. “Long-term” may not be a good thing, anyway. There are media reports that he may be charged with statutory rape. Having sex, even consensual, with an underage girl is rape, a felony with serious criminal penalties. And given the record of Spears’ parents in raising their own children, I would not be surprised if Child Protective Services tried to intervene to prevent them from raising this child to prevent all of us from having to go through another media frenzy over what the baby is doing in another dozen years.
But the most important issue right now is how we as parents talk to our children about what is happening. “Zoey 101” is an Emmy-award-winning and very popular television show aimed at 8-14-year olds. What makes this situation especially difficult is that it is just at this age that children first look outside the family and school for role models and they can take it very hard when the celebrities they admire get into trouble.
The most important thing parents can do is be there to answer questions and to make it clear that Jamie Lynn made a big mistake that will affect the rest of her life but that her family still loves and supports her. You might also want to talk about how sometimes people we admire very much, both those we know and those we watch from afar, don’t live up to our expectations, and that that can be hard to handle. It is okay to still like Zoey (or Jamie Lynn). And it is also okay to like her less, based on her behavior. But we never feel bad about having been a fan, even when we are ready to move on.
You should also ask some gentle questions of your own to find out what your child thinks about what is happening and what she thinks Jamie Lynn and her family should do. Now may be the time to listen more than talk. We might wish we could pick the times for these teachable moments, but sometimes they are thrust upon us, and all we can do is try to provide information and support for what may be a very difficult moment for our children.
Are you getting questions about Jamie Lynn? How are you handling them?
Posted on December 19, 2007 at 8:00 am
Webkinz is the most popular online site for children. If they buy a Webkinz toy, they can log onto the site where a virtual version of the toy will appear. Any real-life accessory they buy will show up on the site as well. They can create environments for the toys online and interact with the toys and each other. It can be a creative and satisfying experience and teach them some rudimentary programming skills. I do not approve of the way it keeps kids coming back by requiring them to continuously care for the pet if it gets “sick” because they forget to feed it, but I had considered it a fairly benign activity — until, without letting parents know, they began to accept advertising. According to the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, “Webkinz, the most visited virtual world for children in the United States, is currently promoting the film Alvin and the Chipmunks. In addition to banner ads, the site is encouraging young users to actively engage with the movie by purchasing specially designed chipmunk costumes and food for their virtual pets. Bee Movie – a film that partnered with McDonald’s, General Mills and Brachs and has dozens of licensed products – was promoted in a similar way.” The CCFC has set up a site for parents who want to complain to Webkinz CEO Howard Ganz.
