For Tax Day: The Mating Game and Stranger Than Fiction
Posted on April 15, 2013 at 7:00 am
In celebration of tax day, enjoy two romantic comedies about IRS agents.
“The Mating Game” stars Tony Randall and Debbie Reynolds in a rollicking story about a warm-hearted farm family that never pays taxes because they do everything on the barter system. Paul Douglas is wonderful in what would be his last performance. If that sounds familiar to PBS fans, it’s because it is based on The Darling Buds of May by H.E. Bates, which became a a 1991 television series starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.
And Will Ferrell plays an IRS agent who discovers he is a character in a book in the fourth-wall-breaking delight, “Stranger Than Fiction.”
Just in time for Earth Day, Ms. Frizzles and the class go on three never-before-released episodes and a bonus from the popular series of animated adventures with science, with English and Spanish language options.
The episodes are:
“The Magic School Bus Goes to Seed” The class garden is going to be featured on the cover of Plant It! Magazine, but Phoebe’s garden plot is mysteriously empty.
“The Magic School Bus Blows Its Top” Ms. Frizzles explains volcanos and island creation.
“The Magic School Bus Goes on Air” The mysteries and miracles of air pressure.
Bonus: “The Magic School Bus All Dried Up” The story of deserts.
I have one copy to give away! Send me an email with “Schoolbus” in the subject line and tell me where you’d like Ms. Frizzle to take you. Don’t forget your address! (US addresses only.) I’ll pick a winner at random on April 20. Good luck!
Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, some grisly images, and language
Profanity:
Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:
Violence and peril with guns, fire, chases, car accident, taser, choking, and torture, some very disturbing images, characters injured and killed, graphic wounds, dead bodies
Diversity Issues:
Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:
April 12, 2013
Date Released to DVD:
July 22, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:
B00D3DJI3Q
Before he was the establishment figure who won Oscars for prestige projects (“Slumdog Millionaire”) and masterminded the fabulous opening ceremonies for the London Olympics that had the Queen and James Bond jumping out of a plane, Danny Boyle was a skillful director of highly styled and deliciously nasty films about not-so-deliciously nasty people doing dreadful things (“Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave”). His latest is “Trance,” a deliciously nasty heist film about the theft of a 27 million dollar masterpiece by Goya, tellingly titled Witches in the Air, and about the mistrust and betrayal that comes next.
Part of the fun comes from having our assumptions turned upside down — and then inside out. So I don’t want to give too much away. The title comes from a hypno-therapist named Elizabeth (the stunningly beautiful Rosario Dawson), brought into the den of thieves because one of them has misplaced the painting and, thanks to a head injury, cannot remember where he stashed it. The problem faced by alpha-thief Franck (ferret-like Vincent Cassel) is how to arrange it so that Elizabeth can get inside the amnesiac’s head to find the missing painting but not let her find that that by doing so she is abetting a rather notorious crime. Dawson, too often underused, gets a chance to show what she is capable of in a performance of intelligence and subtlety. As she explained in an interview, “I wanted to be specific on who she was and make her disappear at the same time.”
The film itself becomes a sort of trance, with deeply saturated colors that shimmer like a dream, and Dawson’s magnetic voice. We, like the characters, must begin to mistrust what we see and what we think we know as the story turns upside down, inside out, and then, as soon as we think we’ve figured it out, Rubik cubes our minds again. This is a movie you’ll be talking about on the way home, and probably shivering about in your own nightmare.
Parents should know that this film includes sexual references and explicit situations, very explicit nudity, violence including guns, taser, car accident, torture, fire, characters injured and killed, disturbing and graphic images, very strong language
Family discussion: What do the title and subject of the stolen painting have to do with the story? What do you think will happen next?
If you like this, try: “Inside Man” and “Side Effects”
Director Terrence Malick has made a movie for those fans who loved “Tree of Life” but thought it was too linear and easy to follow.
“To the Wonder” is an impressionistic story of love and loss. Theoretically it stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem, and Olga Kurylenko, but in reality the star is the sun,. It seems to be the focus of almost every exquisitely framed shot, with sunlight flaring always just so through the meticulously arranged tree branches behind the beautiful woman who loves to twirl. This movie has a lot of sunlight and a lot of twirling. Also a lot of what I will call affectionate rough-housing, which I think — can’t be sure about anything here — is the primary, if middle-school-ish, way these characters indicate that they like each other.
It does not have a lot of dialogue, and what conversations we do overhear are almost incidental. The talk we hear is mostly the murmured, diary-like narration of a French single mother who falls in love with an American and brings her daughter to live with him in a barren house in a barren landscape that is in sharp contrast with the “wonder” of the rich environment she left behind. Malick seems to have a devilish pleasure in withholding information. The daughter, Tatiana, is the only character whose name we are allowed to know.
It is maddeningly opaque at times but undeniably lyrical. It does not just break free from narrative; it explodes it into an almost-pointillist kaleidoscope of images, whispers, and detours. Where “Tree of Life” had a dinosaur, “To the Wonder” has a zig into an underwater scene with sea turtles before it zags into a separate segment (I can’t say story) about a sad priest (Bardem).
If is more tone poem than movie, it is an intriguing one, touching on themes of connection and disconnection, love and betrayal, at the level of society and individuals. At times it is annoyingly opaque, but there are also moments of stunning beauty. If he continues down this road, Malick’s next movie will be delivered to the theater in individual frames, to be tossed toward the screen in random order, and many of them will feature sun flares. But I’ll still go to see it.
Parents should know that this movie includes sexual references and situations, briefly explicit, including adultery, nudity, smoking, and drinking.
Family discussion: Why is the story told through narration instead of dialogue? How does the issue of contamination of the soil and water relate to the story? Why is the house unfurnished?
If you like this, try: “Tree of Life”
Parents should know that this movie includes some nudity and explicit sexual situations, including adultery. Characters drink alcohol.
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including language
Profanity:
Racist epithets, crude and ugly insults, some additional strong language (s-words)
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:
Threats of violence, some scuffles, some injuries
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie, brief homophobic humor
Date Released to Theaters:
April 12, 2013
Date Released to DVD:
July 15, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:
B009NNM9OA
Jackie Robinson was the first black man to play major league baseball. His number, 42, is worn by every player once a year to commemorate his achievements as a baseball player and as a man. This version of the story of the year the Brooklyn Dodgers broke the color barrier in baseball from writer/director Brian Helgeland is a little superficial, it still packs a lot of power, thanks to an evocative sense of its period and star-making performances by Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Nichole Beharie as his wife. If what we see is a small part of the courage and integrity of this extraordinary man in taking on the virulent racism of his era, it is still enough to make this movie deeply moving.
It is just after the end of WWII. Black soliders returned home from fighting for freedom on behalf of a country that was still segregated, from the separate fighting divisions in the military to the “Whites Only” laws of the Jim Crow South. Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey (a cigar-chomping Harrison Ford, in full growl) decides it is time to integrate baseball. He needs to find a player who is not only an athlete of unquestionable ability but someone who has the temperament to stay cool despite the constant attacks he will face from his own team, opposing teams, and the fans. Rickey decides that Roy Campanella was too sweet and Satchel Paige was too old (both would follow Robinson into the major leagues).
Rickey picked Robinson. He had the skill, he has played with white teammates in college, and he is tough. He was courtmartialed for refusing to go to the back of a military bus — and won. Rickey asks Robinson, “Can you control your temper?” “You want a player that doesn’t have the guts to fight back.” “I want a player who has the guts not to fight back.” Rickey knows that no matter what the provocation, any show of temper from Robinson will only give ammunition to the bigots. What would be called “spirit” in a white player will be called something different coming from him.
It is solidly entertaining, delivering all of the expected notes, and if it seems heavy-handed to anyone old enough to remember a time before the Montgomery bus boycott and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, it is perhaps understandable that Hollywood does not take for granted that younger audience members remember there was once a time when segregation was not only legal; it was the law. It harks back to the Sidney Poitier era of saintly black characters, which is understandable. But it is a movie about tolerance that cannot resist a homophobic joke about teammates showering together, which is not.
Parents should know that this movie features frank portrayals of bigoted behavior including a stream of racist invective, with crude insults. There are some sexual references, including adultery. Characters drink and smoke, and there are some scuffles and injuries.
Family discussion: Why was Jackie the best choice to be the first? How did he challenge the beliefs of his teammates? Read more about Jackie Robinson.
If you like this, try: “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings,” Ken Burns’ “Baseball” series, “Brian’s Song,” and “A League of Their Own”
