Sneak Preview for “Titanic 3D”

Posted on February 27, 2012 at 3:13 pm

The Best Picture Oscar winner and box office record-breaker is back to remind us that our hearts will go on. Moviegoers across the U.S. and Canada will be among the first audiences anywhere to experience Titanic in 3D at the exclusive “sneak preview” fan screening events, set for Monday, April 2nd in Canada and Tuesday, April 3rd in the U.S. Presented exclusively in RealD®, these one-night only special advance screenings will take place at 6:30pm at select 3D movie theaters across North America. It opens in theaters April 4 for a special engagement.

Each TITANIC in 3D Sneak Preview Pack* includes:

One ticket to the movie sneak preview
A collectors edition pair of TITANIC RealD® 3D glasses
A limited-edition TITANIC movie art lithograph

*While supplies last

Tickets for these April “sneak preview” events are on sale now both on-line, and at participating theatres. For event locations around the country, to purchase tickets, or to learn more about this exclusive event, please go to Titanic Fan Sneak Preview.

James Cameron, who directed the film has digitally re-mastered it using the latest technology of StereoD. The re-release of TITANIC also coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Titanic setting sail on April 10, 1912. Written, directed and produced by James Cameron, TITANIC is the second highest grossing movie of all time, following Cameron’s “Avatar.” It is one of only three films to have received a record 11 Academy Awards® including Best Picture and Best Director; and launched the careers of stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Act of Valor

Posted on February 23, 2012 at 6:07 pm

The Navy SEALS approached the Bandito Brothers film-makers about telling their story, years before they became headline heroes by finding and killing Osama Bin Laden. After spending time with the SEALS and learning about their extraordinary missions and their extraordinary devotion to their families, their country, and each other, it became clear that even the biggest stars in Hollywood could never do them justice. And so they made “Act of Valor,” a thrilling action/adventure film starring active duty U.S. Navy SEALS re-enacting some of their most dangerous missions, with live ammunition. Every person in uniform you see in the film is currently serving in the U.S. military. More than once, shooting had to shut down so that the SEALS could get back to work.

The story is pure fiction but the situations are real and the filming includes footage of training missions with live ammunition. According to the story, a CIA agent has been kidnapped and is being tortured. Terrorists are trying to enter the United States to detonate suicide bombings that will murder thousands of civilians. The SEALS get little notice and less background briefing and they have to save the day, using a combination of the most cutting edge technology in weapons and communication and the oldest and most basic forms of technology (hand-to-hand combat) and communication (hand signals and just knowing each other and the mission objectives). Most of all, they rely on training, integrity, and trust. What they don’t rely on is anything going as originally planned. In one exciting chase, the bad guys are closing in and shooting at them with automatic weapons and one of the SEALs has been critically injured. What is even more fascinating than the pulse-pounding action is the way the Seals keep adapting their escape plan and updating their team with remarkable economy and precision. “This will be a hot extract,” they say crisply into the walkie-talkies as they return fire. “Moving to tertiary extract,” they continue. All may be chaos around them, but you get the feeling that they could keep going with another 20 thought-through options for pick-up if the first 19 can not work. “Prepare for a bigger fight than you were expecting,” they are advised in one operation, but the SEALs are always ready. One of them quotes the moving words of the Native American leader Tecumseh that concludes, “When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.”

The guys (their names are not used for security reasons) are not actors, but that just adds to to sense that we are watching a documentary, albeit a documentary that sometimes plays like a first-person shooter game. When we see the SEALs with their families and with each other, it is clear that there is not an actor in the world who could convey the humility and honor that is fundamental to their natures.

The storyline is thin and generic but there is plenty of drama in the operation of the missions, each like a movie of its own and well staged to make us feel at the center of the action. Country greats like Trace Adkins, Wynonna Judd, Sugarland, and Lady Antebellum provide a stirring soundtrack. We see operations on land, sea, and in the air. There are fights and shoot-outs but one of the most mesmerizing scenes is all talk as the master interrogator shows the master criminal just enough respect to keep him cooperating, making clear how much power he has over the other man’s life to make that cooperation meaningful. “I’d rather bring a gun to a knife fight than be interrogated by him,” one of the Seals says proudly. The support of their families and, at least in one case, a family history of sacrifice creates a clarity of priorities that creates a context for excellence. In a world where ambiguity and partisanship make it hard to find heroes, the biggest thrills in this film come not from the shoot-outs but from seeing real-life commitment, courage, and what valor truly means.

(more…)

The Vow

Posted on February 9, 2012 at 6:39 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for an accident scene, sexual content, partial nudity, and some language
Profanity:	A few s-words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Car crash with injuries
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	February 10, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	May 8, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAIGSM

More than any other attribute, memory is what defines our identity and our connections to each other. When a young woman’s traumatic brain injury erases her memory not just of having married her husband but even of having met him, both of them face daunting challenges about who they are and what they can be to each other.

The first time was so easy. Leo (Channing Tatum) sees Paige (Rachel McAdams), a free-spirited art student, and they are immediately drawn to each other. It was just two weeks later, we will learn, when she first said, almost to herself, that she loved him. They had a quirky-cute wedding at the Chicago Art Institute (near the Seurat painting Ferris Bueller visited on his day off) with their quirky-cute friends and their vows written on the menus of their favorite little coffee shop (Cafe Mnemonic, a bit of memory foreshadowing). They love, love, love each other until their car is hit by a snow plow and she goes through the windshield. When she wakes up from a chemically-induced coma, she thinks Leo is a doctor. She has no memory of him or of the past five years. She thinks she is still in law school and engaged to Jeremy (Scott Speedman). She can’t figure out why her hair is so unstyled or how she got a tattoo. Leo has to try to make her fall in love with him all over again, and this time it will take much longer.

It is inspired by the true story of Kim and Krickett Carpenter, who wrote a book about about their experience but the marketing is intended to tie it to the stars’ previous appearances in Nicholas Sparks movies. It does have Sparks-ian themes of love and loss and it has a gooey layer of Hollywood candy topping, but it is a bit sharper and less sudsy than Sparks movies like “The Notebook” and “Dear John.” Leo and Paige and their friends all so quirky-cute they might be Shields and Yarnell performing in “Godspell.” The further it departs from the real story, jettisoning the importance of the couple’s faith and some of messiness of her recovery and throwing in a tired twist with Paige’s wealthy, uptight, controlling family, the further it gets from what does work in the movie, the palpable tenderness and devotion of Leo and the wrenching challenge of trying to reconnect with Paige as her uncertainty about who she is makes her retreat. The great philosophy professor Stanley Cavell has written about the enduring appeal of the “comedies of remarriage,” movies that are not about falling in love but about re-falling. There is something very captivating about the idea of someone who knows us and is willing to fall in love with us anyway.

Parents should know that this movie includes brief language (s-word), sexual references, adultery and male rear nudity, one punch, alcohol, and a car accident with injuries.

Family discussion: Why was Paige afraid to remember her life with Leo? What does “I wanted to earn it” mean? What does the name of the place Leo and Paige went to eat mean?

If you like this, try: “The Notebook” and “Dear John” and this poignant and inspiring Washington Post article about a similar real-life “in sickness and in health” love story. And read the Carpenters’ book, The Vow: The True Events that Inspired the Movie.

Black History Month: DVDs for Families

Posted on February 4, 2012 at 3:58 pm

Great choices for Black History Month from Scholastic:

Duke Ellington… and more stories to celebrate great figures in African American history.

The DVD includes gently animated and beautifully narrated versions of four books about important figures in black history.

Duke Ellington Forest Whitaker reads this tribute to one of the 20th century’s most celebrated and influential musicians.

Ellington Was Not a Street Phylicia Rashad reads Ntozake Shange’s story about growing up amidst many of the great figures of African-American history.

Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa She had an exquisite voice and unsurpassed musicianship to use it like a jazz instrument. Billy Dee Williams tells the story of how she got her sound.

John Henry Samuel L. Jackson reads the story based on the famous legend and folk ballad about the hammer-driving man who could beat anyone, even the machine.

March On!… and More Stories About African American History

March On! The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s story is lovingly told by his sister, Christine King Ferris.

Martin’s Big Words Dr. King’s story shows how big ideas compellingly described change the world.

Rosa A brave woman decides to be the one to lead the fight against segregation in this story of Rosa Parks.

Henry’s Freedom Box Henry “Box” Brown was a slave who mailed himself to freedom in a daring escape.

Big Miracle

Posted on February 2, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, character gets tipsy
Violence/ Scariness:	Human and animal characters in peril, references to hunting and eating whales, sad animal death
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	February 3, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	June 18, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAIGQ4

“You’re not as easy to hate as I thought,” an oil man tells an environmental activist in “Big Miracle,” the heartwarming true story of a 1987 effort to rescue three Alaskan whales. It could just as well have been said by any of the more than a dozen lead characters who find themselves part of a “cockeyed coalition.” People who viewed each other with suspicion, if not downright animosity, are brought together to save a family of whales affectionately named after Flintstones characters.

The obstacle for the whales was five miles of ice that had to be cut away in sub-zero temperatures so the whales could get to the ocean. The bigger obstacle was the struggle for the humans to try to find a way to work together.

“Big Miracle” is the story of a rescue operation put together by people who each wanted something different. Native Inupiat whale hunters wanted to “harvest” (kill and eat) the whales. Environmentalists wanted to protect them. The US military did not want to ask for help from a Soviet ice cutting ship. An oil developer wanted to improve his reputation. Two Minnesota entrepreneurs wanted to show off their ice melting machine. Politicians wanted to look good or look innocent. And journalists wanted a story.

Director Ken Kwapis and screenwriters Jack Amiel and Michael Begler deftly keep the multi-character story from getting too cluttered with the help of appealing performances that give us an instant connection to the humans who are literally trying to save the whales. Standouts in the cast include John Krasinski as a television reporter who is tired of being stuck in a backwater where nothing exciting happens, Kathy Baker as an unexpected supporter with inside information, Dermot Mulroney as a frustrated military officer, and John Pingayeck on his first movie role as a grandfather trying to teach his grandson to listen to the world outside his earphones.

When the reporter’s story is picked up for a national broadcast, the first to arrive is Rachel (an earnest and believably bedraggled Drew Barrymore). She is an environmental activist with no resources but a good story. One by one, those who resist getting involved revise their positions when they are in the spotlight. No one wants to risk bad publicity–or pass up the chance to look heroic.

Even as the people come together, the logistical challenge becomes overwhelming and — parent alert — the ultimate rescue is bittersweet, not entirely triumphant.

The people stories, especially a trumped-up romantic triangle, are not as intriguing as the portrayal of pre-Internet news media. With only three network news broadcasts just half an hour each evening, everyone from school children to White House staffers watched the same stories. The archival footage is like the hub that holds all the parts of the story together, and there are some pointed jabs at media focus on the sensational over the significant.

A turning point comes when White House aide Kelly Meyers (based on Bonnie Carroll) persuades President Ronald Reagan, at the end of his term, to call on his counterpart in the USSR for help from a Soviet ice cutting ship. (Be sure to watch for photos of Carroll’s real life wedding to the military officer she met at the rescue over the closing credits.).

Meyers sets up a “Hello Gorby, this is Ronnie” phone call that serves as a literal ice breaker for the whales and a metaphorical one for two nations in the very earliest stages of post-Evil Empire relations. The people saved the whales, but the real miracle was that they learned their differences were small compared to what they had in common with each other and with the giant mammals who needed their help.

Parents should know that this movie includes animal and human peril and references to hunting and eating whales. One of the whales dies (off-screen).

Family discussion: How many different reasons did the characters have for helping the whales? How did the risk of bad publicity or the benefits of good publicity change their behavior? What is different now from the era when this took place?

If you like this, try: “Free Willy” and “Whale Rider” and the book about the real-life rescue by Tom Rose