Red Dawn

Posted on November 20, 2012 at 5:58 pm

There was much to improve in the original version of “Red Dawn,” a simple-minded fantasy film about a communist invasion of small town America: the plot, which asked us to believe that Cuban and Soviet invaders would focus their attention on subduing the teenage population of a town with no military significance; the dialogue, which was hilariously wooden; the special effects (the bad guys tracked our heroes using a locator that appears to have been borrowed from a 1930s Flash Gordon serial); the acting (despite a cast of future stars such as Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, the original “Red Dawn” left the actors little to do except shoot guns and emote in their mountain hideouts); the production values (unseen artillery and aircraft shelled a lone tank in the middle of a vacant field with what appeared to be firecrackers). In fact, everything about the original “Red Dawn” had a childlike simplicity that made it endearing to audiences.

The plot of the new “Red Dawn” mimics the original in most respects. Members of the Wolverines, a high school football team, refuse to surrender to or collaborate with the invaders (this time from Asia) the way many of their disappointing parents do. They take to the hills, learn to fight and inspire a resistance movement. Along the way they learn lessons about loyalty, patriotism, and the price of the freedoms we all hold dear. Older brother Jed Eckert is played by Chris Hemsworth (Thor from “The Avengers”) while younger brother Matty Eckert is played by Josh Peck. The obligatory girlfriend who looks hot in guerrilla garb is played by Adrianne Palicki.

MGM looked at the original formula and decided that if it was going to upgrade just one ingredient, it would be the quality of the explosions. No firecrackers here, the new and improved “Red Dawn” has serious explosions and gunfire. A residential neighborhood is blown up with high definition digital effects. First time director Dan Bradley was previously a stunt coordinator and it shows. We see house to house gunfights that look and sound authentic. The new version uses realistic blood, rather than the Heinz ketchup favored by the producers of the original.

The problem is, this change in the formula disrupts the equilibrium that gave the original its charm. Every element of the original was equally unpersuasive. By making bullets more persuasive, Bradley only highlights the dumbnicity of the rest.

Worse, the new Red Dawn is a less kind movie. Along with the more realistic violence, there is more drinking and profanity. Unfortunately, the dialogue that is supposed to glue these elements together remains as insubstantial as the dialogue in the cartoonish original. (Says the young guerrilla leader: “We have to make it too hard and too difficult for them.”) One other change — the Soviet Union no longer being available as invaders, this film substituted the Chinese when it was shot a few years ago until the distributors who ended up with it after the first group ran out of money figured out that Chinese people constitute a very big audience for films, preferably ones that don’t make them the bad guys. So, the Chinese invaders were digitally altered to make them North Korean.

The new “Red Dawn” is slicker than the original but it lacks the heart that was the only redeeming feature of the first version. It is a meaner production, and probably not worth your time unless you go for the explosions, which are pretty good.

Parents should know that this film has extensive and sometimes graphic images of battle with guns and explosions, fighting, with characters injured and killed, and very strong language.

Family discussion: Why did some parents instruct their children to cooperate with the invaders? What made some people in the town choose to resist? What would be the hardest thing for you about fighting the invaders? How were the Wolverines like our founding fathers?

If you like this, try: the original 1984 version starring Patrick Swayze

Related Tags:

Inventing David Geffen — Tonight on PBS

Posted on November 20, 2012 at 11:57 am

Tonight on PBS, the “American Masters” series will show “Inventing David Geffen,” the story of the agent, manager, record industry mogul, Hollywood and Broadway producer, and philanthropist who has helped shape American popular culture for the past four decades. Notoriously press and camera-shy, Geffen reveals himself for the first time in the new two-hour documentary. American Masters explores the highs and the lows in Geffen’s professional and personal life through more than 50 new interviews with his friends, colleagues and clients, including Irving Azoff, Jackson Browne, Cher, David Crosby, Clive Davis, Barry Diller, Maureen Dowd, Rahm Emanuel, Nora Ephron, Tom Hanks, Don Henley, Arianna Huffington, Jimmy Iovine, Elton John, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Calvin Klein, Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Mike Nichols, Yoko Ono, Frank Rich, Steven Spielberg, Jann Wenner, Neil Young, and many others. Geffen launched the early successes of Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Jackson Browne, the Eagles, Tom Cruise in Risky Business (1983), and Guns N’ Roses. In 1994 he co-founded DreamWorks SKG with Spielberg and Katzenberg, the first new Hollywood studio in more than 50 years, which went on to release Oscar®-winning Best Pictures American Beauty (1999), Gladiator (2000) and A Beautiful Mind (2001), as well as animated features, including the Shrek franchise. Geffen also produced the Broadway musicals Cats (1982) and Dreamgirls (1981), and helped realize the Golden Globe-winning 2006 film adaptation. Witty and self-aware, Geffen admits, “I have no talent except for being able to enjoy and recognize it in others.”

Related Tags:

Documentary Television

Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups

Posted on November 19, 2012 at 1:36 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Mild peril
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to DVD:	November 18, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B008C0C23I

If there’s anything cuter than the Santa Buddies, it is the sequel, the new DVD/Blu-Ray pick of the week, “Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups.” The puppies stow away on Mrs. Claus’ trip to a Christmas-loving town and have a lot of fun granting wishes until something goes wrong and Christmas itself starts to disappear. Who can save the day?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB8StgkqdQY

It was a lot of fun to catch up with Kaitlyn Maher, who returns for the sequel. “Santa is at his workshop and he needs a new child ambassador and he sends Mrs. Claus to go and find one. She meets the Reynolds family. Their town used to have the best city with the most Christmas spirit but the Santa pups decided that they were going to come and they took something without asking. Somebody wished for Christmas to go away and it happened. Mrs. Claus and my character have to help save Christmas, but I’m not going to say the ending,” she told me. The puppies were “so sweet and cuddly and cute,” she said, “and even sweeter when there was a dog treat around.” She said the trainers used “lots and lots of treats” and little toys and breaks, too, “if a puppy was being finicky or something, they would always have a new dog waiting. They were very professional.” The biggest challenge was that “there was a train that would go by six times every single day. We would have to stop recording, even if it was the best take we had done. We would have to stop until the train circled around the whole track.” She loved the set for Santa’s workshop. “I asked the producer where all the toys were going to be going.” When no one had an answer, Kaitlyn said, “Can I please donate them? I’d love to pick a few charities in Vancouver.” She became charity coordinator and the toys went to four different charities. “It was a great way to get the whole cast involved in sharing the joy of Christmas.” Her favorite prop in the workshop was a big bell. She thought it was funny when the elf fell off the bell in the first movie. Kaitlyn is home schooled and “I love that my mom teaches me.” She likes the American Girl books and Nancy Drew and loves to read about ancient history. And she likes movies that have a message. “The Sound of Music” is one of her favorites and she also likes mysteries. She says the buddies movies are popular because “the movies are fun and have a good message. The writers bring that message through magical and wonderful things that you could not imagine. Everyone works together and they’re family-friendly. People really feel blessed by them.” She loves to sing and her favorite scene in the movie was when she got to sing “O Holy Night.” She especially loves to write songs and will work on a new CD next year. “I like to make songs that are inspiring and encouraging. I like to make people smile.” And she is looking forward to Christmas with her family and spreading the joy of Christmas to everyone. “I think it is very, very important that people have the love they need on Christmas.”

Silver Linings Playbook

Posted on November 15, 2012 at 6:01 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some sexual content/nudity
Profanity:	Constant very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Assaults and fighting
Diversity Issues:	Respectful treatment of mental illness
Date Released to Theaters:	November 16, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	April 29, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00A81NFAS

When Bradley Cooper appeared on “Inside the Actors Studio,” the first graduate of the program to be featured, they showed a clip from Robert DeNiro’s appearance on the show, with then-student Cooper asking him a question about his performance in “Awakenings.” DeNiro was clearly impressed with the perception and sincerity of his young questioner. It was only a few years later that Cooper was acting opposite DeNiro in “Limitless.” Now they are together again as father and son, Pat Sr. and Pat Jr., in “Silver Linings Playbook,” based on the novel by Matthew Quick.

Pat Jr. has been in a mental hospital being treated for bipolar disorder, the result of a plea bargain following “the incident,” we will only learn the details of later. His mother brings him home though it is not at all clear that he is or will ever be ready. Pat has impulse control problems, especially when he hears a particular Stevie Wonder song or does not like the ending of a Hemingway novel. But he is absolutely determined to get his life back. And his wife back. This involves a lot of physical conditioning and finding away around the restraining order that forbids him from contacting her.

He meets a troubled young widow named Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence of “Hunger Games”), the sister-in-law of his best friend. Pat is fighting so hard to be “normal” again that he is disturbed, annoyed, and a little scared by her outspoken, socially inappropriate behavior. But she offers the same directness and shared experience he had with his fellow patients. He struggles with the competing impulses to reject and accept her overtures of friendship. Their exchange about the effects of various mood and anti-psychotic meds is a gem, the mental illness equivalent of Romeo and Juliet speaking to each other in alternate lines of a sonnet on their first meeting. And Lawrence is sublime in her summation-to-the-court-style argument with Pat Sr. about the factors that go into an Eagles win.

They agree to help each other, and this gives Pat purpose, discipline, and direction. And we learn more about “the incident” and about Pat’s relationship with Pat Sr., a professional gambler and bookie whose passion for the Eagles provides some context for his influence on his son.

Director David O. Russell, who adapted the novel, and his cast fill the story with engaging, believable characters, especially Jackie Weaver as Pat’s mother, John Ortiz as his stressed-out best friend, and Anupam Kuhr as his therapist. It is a great pleasure to see Chris Tucker, who is outstanding as a mental patient, though I wish they had found him more to do than the usual “black it up” (that’s a direct quote) pep talk. Pat is so upset by the end of Farewell to Arms (on his wife’s assigned reading list for the high school class she teaches) that he has to wake his parents in the middle of the night to tell them why stories need happy endings. The ending here is abrupt and a bit cheesy. But these damaged and vulnerable and anxious characters love and want to be loved and we want it for them.

Parents should know that this film includes a lot of very strong and profane language, sexual references (some explicit), family dysfunction and mental illness, drinking

Family discussion: How are Pat and his father alike? How do Tiffany, Ronnie, and Cliff help him? What makes Pat change his mind?

If you like this, try: “Inside Moves” and “Garden State”

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2

Posted on November 15, 2012 at 6:00 pm

The “Twilight” series comes to a close with the fifth film based on the four-book supernatural love story from Stephenie Meyer. This one is for the fans, with a loving farewell that includes a romantic recap series of flashbacks and final credits bringing back all the stars of the series. It will be less satisfying for non Twi-hards, who will have a hard time ignoring the ludicrousness of the storyline.

In the last chapter, Bella (Kristen Stewart) at long last (well, not too long, she just finished high school), married her one true love, Edward (Robert Pattinson), a vampire. They had a wonderfully romantic but bed-breaking wedding night, and she got pregnant, a surprise to everyone because it was thought to be biologically impossible. The pregnancy left Bella so frail that childbirth would have killed her if Edward had not kept her alive by turning her into a vampire. “Breaking Dawn, Part 1” ended with her eyes opening, vampire-ified to electrified amber with a kind of permanent mascara. “I didn’t expect you to seem so..you,” Jacob says. “Except for the creepy eyes.”

In the past, we saw the “other” world of vampires and wolf-people like Jacob (Taylor Lautner) through Bella’s brown human eyes. Now we see everything through the hyper-charged senses of the ultimate predator. Ironically, it is only as a vampire that Bella feels most purely herself — strong, confident, capable. This is the fork in the road where the fans will stay with it but everyone else may take a detour. One reason for the sensational popularity of the books is the way they so perfectly capture a young teenager’s fantasy. That works better when the characters are themselves teenagers. Trying to project them into the adult world, even one as skewed as the vampire world, is a tougher stretch.

Bella and Edward have an idyllic existence of eternal adolescence, with a life free from work, struggle, and parents. They do not have to eat or sleep. They do not have to do anything but have wildly energetic sex and conversations about who loves who more, with banter like “We’re the same temperature now.” You may ask, “Wait, isn’t there a baby with some kind of nutty name?” Yes there is, and her name is Renesmee (after the two grandmothers, Renée and Esmé). When Jacob calls her “Nessie,” Bella gets angry because that’s the Loch Ness monster’s nickname, though it seems likely that it is just another of Jacob’s protective instincts, her birth name being something of a burden.

Bella and Edward-style parenting is not very demanding. The baby has a full-time staff of loving vampire relatives and an imprinted wolf-guy. And it turns out that vampire/human children grow in dog years. The movie, unfortunately, moves rather slowly, with a lot of time bringing in 18 new vampire characters from all over the world to help persuade the vampiric governing body, the Volturi, that they have not broken the law and produced an “immortal child” who could put the community at risk. All of this leads up to a grand battle across a snowy field, the motley crew of good guy vampires and the robed Volturi.

The endless procession of new characters gets tedious except for a Revolutionary war veteran played by Lee Pace (“Lincoln,” “Pushing Daisies”), who talks about his time with General Custer and has far more electricity on screen than the vampiress who catches his attention with her super-tasing power to jolt anyone. I also liked Rami Melek (“Night at the Museum,” “Larry Crowne”) as a vampire who can control the elements. But the sheer volume of new characters made having to remember each one’s special talent like trying to keep track of the Smurfs.

We’ve spent a lot of time with these characters and it is good to see a satisfying resolution to their story. But I couldn’t help feeling that Meyer had run out of ideas and just tossed in everything she could think of. My primary reaction at the end was relief that this was the end.

Parents should know that this movie includes vampire violence with battles that include graphic decapitations and other disturbing images, characters injured and killed, sexual references and situations with some nudity, and some language.

Family discussion: What are the biggest changes in Bella’s outlook and abilities from the first installment to the last? How much should she tell Charlie? If you could have one of the special gifts of the characters in the film, which would it be and why?

If you like this, try: the other “Twilight” movies and the books by Stephenie Meyer