Scholastic: A Night Before Christmas (with Hannukah and Kwanzaa)
Posted on December 7, 2009 at 8:00 am
A-
Lowest Recommended Age:
All Ages
MPAA Rating:
NR
Profanity:
None
Alcohol/ Drugs:
None
Violence/ Scariness:
Mild peril
Diversity Issues:
Diverse characters
Date Released to DVD:
2009
My very favorite series has a special family treat for the winter holidays. Clement Moore’s classic poem about Santa Claus is read by Anthony Edwards. Theodore Bikel reads “In the Month of Kisley,” a delightful Hannukah story about a poor but happy family who teach a wealthy man the meaning of the holiday, featuring some clever insights into family happiness and a very wise judge. In “Seven Candles for Kwanzaa,” the Pinkney’s story and illustrations teach us the values of family, history, and community that each of the nights of the holiday symbolize, with Alfre Woodard narrating. Ed Martinez tells us about how Maria might have lost her mother’s ring in the “Too Many Tamales” she is making for Christmas dinner (Spanish and English narration). The set also includes three other Christmas stories: “Max’s Christmas,” “Morris’s Disappearing Bag,” and “The Little Drummer Boy.”
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Best wishes to you and your families, and please know how grateful I am for the chance to be here on Beliefnet and for every one of your comments.
Harvard professor of Symbology Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) returns for another round of save the world heroics peppered with chases, kidnapping, murders, clues, codes, and ancient manuscripts, a beautiful and very erudite woman, murky motives, and a lot of historical, religious, and artistic arcana, all to the music of angelic choirs and crashing horns.While the book occurs before the blockbuster sequel, this movie begins after the events of The Da Vinci Code. Langdon is not the Catholic church’s favorite guy, given his heretical findings about the role of the real-life Mary Magdalene and the efforts of the church to suppress it. The Vatican has repeatedly denied his request for access to some of their historic documents. But when a crisis hits just as the cardinals have convened to select the new pope and the four leading candidates are kidnapped, with the clues pointing to a secret and possibly terrorist sect of Catholic rebels, the Vatican calls on Langdon to solve the mystery.To make things more complicated — and believe me, this gets very complicated — something else has been stolen. It is “antimatter” created by a supercollider that is intended to find “the God particle,” the piece of matter that will answer some important questions about how the universe began. And if they don’t get to it by 8 pm, there will be a very, very big boom.It isn’t just atoms that are colliding here. Author Dan Brown specializes in dark conspiracies of power in the name of faith. He posits this story as a conflict between religion and science going back hundreds of years. Once again, he takes intensely detailed research into church culture, history, and canons, even the intricacy of Vatican succession and chains of command plus Galileo, Raphael, sculpture, and architecture, and then he builds a fictional story around it, giving a standard chase and explosion saga some added weight, freight, and interest. Once again, however, the heavy exposition translates unevenly to the screen as the actors have to chew through paragraphs of detailed information as they are careening through the streets of Rome.Hanks (without the scholar’s mullet this time, thank goodness) is game throughout, always seeming skeptical without being cynical, though for a guy who says he is “anti-vandalism” he leaves a lot of destruction in his wake. Ewan McGregor seems a little lost as the assistant to the late pope whose position gives him a fragile claim to authority. And the lovely Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer is wasted in a role that calls on her to provide instant expertise in everything from astrophysics to Latin and pharmacology. Like its predecessor, this book and film have been controversial, challenging the church for the way it responds to challenges. For much of the story, Langdon is chasing after the Illuminati, for the purposes of this story a pro-science group “radicalized” by mistreatment hundreds of years ago and allegedly seeking the destruction of the church hierarchy by infiltration or violence. The bark of author Brown and director Ron Howard is provocative but the bite is thoroughly de-fanged and by its fictional overlay and its conclusion. Most of those who have what Langdon describes as the gift of faith will be satisfied. (more…)
I loved “Donnie Darko” and was eager to listen to the DVD commentary by writer/director Richard Kelly. But I had to turn it off after the first ten minutes. Kelly explained too much, and his explanations were so mundane they detracted from the film’s intriguing ambiguities. After the fascinating but incoherent “Southland Tales,” Kelly shifts back toward explaining too much in “The Box, based on a short story by Richard Matheson and its adaptation as an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
Amid the meticulously re-created details of the 1976 Richmond, Virginia setting (harvest gold, maxi coats), a loving couple feeling some financial pressure are presented with a moral dilemma. Early one morning just before Christmas, a plain brown package is left on their doorstep with an elegant note informing them that Mr. Steward (Frank Langella) will be there at 5. Inside the package is a box with a red button covered by a locked glass dome.
Norma (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur (James Marsden) go to work, where each receives bad news. Norma teaches English at a private school. Just after her class on Sartre’s “No Exit,” she is informed that the school will no longer be able to subsidize her son’s tuition, a severe financial blow. And Arthur, who (like Kelly’s father) designs lenses for a Mars explorer, learns that his application to the astronaut program has been turned down.
Norma is home alone when Mr. Steward arrives. His appearance is shocking. The lower left quarter of his face has been sheered off by some massive trauma, so devastating we can see not only sinew but teeth through what once was his cheek. His message is shocking, too. He gives Norma a key to open the glass dome and tells her that if she pushes the red button within 24 hours someone she does not know will die and she will receive one million dollars in cash, tax-free.
“Maybe it’s a baby,” says Arthur. “Maybe it’s a man on death row,” says Norma. Arthur, the engineer, takes the box apart. There’s nothing inside. Rationally, it seems impossible that the offer could be real. They go back and forth. And then, as much to end the agony of uncertainty as anything else, one of them impulsively hits it. And then things really go haywire in the lives of Arthur and Norma and pretty much in the movie, too.
Kelly knows how to create a mood of claustrophobic dread and how to create stunning images. Back in those pre-Google days, people had to do research in the stacks of a library, and Kelly makes those scenes look both retro and chilling. But there is nothing to approach the best moments in “Donnie Darko,” the Sparkle Motion dance number to “Notorious,” the motivational speaker, the controversy over the story taught in school, the riff on the Smurfs. Like the box with the button, it is enticing on the surface but inside it is empty.
If you saw Where the Wild Things Are this week and loved it — or if your children are too young for it but want to enjoy Sendak on film, try the Sendak collection from my favorite Scholastic Storybook series. It includes not only the title story but other Sendak favorites like “In the Night Kitchen” and the wonderful Nutshell classics that teach letters (“Alligators All Around”), numbers (“One Was Johnny”), and the months (“Chicken Soup with Rice”) to wonderful songs by Carole King. Our family favorite was the one about Pierre, who learned not to say “I don’t care!”
