Watch “The Jackie Robinson Story” on the Anniversary of His First Major League Game

Posted on April 15, 2012 at 3:06 pm

Today Major League Baseball celebrates the 65th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first game as a Brooklyn Dodger. Continuing a tradition begun in 2007, all uniformed personnel in the league wear Robinson’s number 42. Branch Rickey (soon to be played by Harrison Ford in an upcoming movie) was the Dodgers’ General Manager who broke the color barrier in place since the 1880’s by offering Robinson a place on the team. Robinson was a star player who helped take the team to six World Series and one championship. He won the first Rookie of the Year award and was the first African-American to win MVP. While many of his teammates were supportive, others on the team and in the stands were not, and Robinson was subjected to bigotry and racism. He handled an unimaginably difficult situation with grace and courage and after his baseball career continued to be a pioneer in business.

Robinson starred in the movie version of his own story, with Ruby Dee as his wife, and it is well worth watching, as is the made for television film The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson, about his experiences in the segregated military, where he refused to sit in the back of a bus. This time, Ruby Dee played his mother.

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Trailer: “I Know That Voice!”

Posted on April 13, 2012 at 8:00 am

I love voice actors and I’m very excited to see what looks like a great documentary.

Bully

Posted on April 12, 2012 at 6:00 pm

This is a message for Alex. You are a great kid. You will be a great, happy, successful adult. And those high school boys who torture you so brutally on the school bus every day will spend their adult lives either clueless about why they will never feel as big and tough as they did in high school or horrified by the way they treated you.

This is a message for the school system. Do not put high schoolers and middle schoolers on the same bus. Do not tell two boys who are fighting to shake hands and apologize and send them on their way. Do not show parents who are agonized by seeing footage of their son being tortured on the school bus a picture of your new grandchild. And for the love of Pete, start teaching your students that neither inflicting nor tolerating abuse will be permitted in your school. If students cannot feel safe, they cannot learn.

This searing documentary tells five stories. Two of its subjects have already committed suicide, one only 11 years old. Another, overcome by the pain of continual abuse and feeling she had no other option, brought a gun on the school bus and found herself trapped by a judicial system that has zero tolerance for firearms but is helpless to combat sustained physical and emotional torture. Then there is Kelby, a confident young lesbian who has a few close friends but is otherwise an outcast. And Alex, who is what pediatricians call an FLK (funny-looking kid). He has a great heart (watch him with his mother and his little sister). But he was born prematurely and has a bit more than the usual middle school awkwardness. It is wrenching to see him come home every day and answer his mother’s anxious question about how things went with a noncommittal, “fine.”

I once heard a principal say that a lot of upset parents came through his office, parents who were concerned about their children’s academic or behavior problems. But, he said, the ones who put their heads down on his desk and sobbed were the ones who felt hopeless about their children’s sense of isolation and lack of friends. One of the most touching moments of the film is when Kelby’s father, a conservative Christian who had been anti-gay until his daughter came out says soberly that if you want to find out how little you understood about your life, have a gay child. His own friends had stopped talking to them. All of the parents in this movie are devoted, loving, supportive, and devastated.

Anyone who has survived adolescence knows what it feels like to be excluded or different. But as adults, until our children remind us, we sometimes forget how devastating those feelings are when you are too young to know that for the rest of your life it will not be as hard to find safe places and good friends.

The movie also made me think about the way we seem to perpetuate a bully culture. Whether it is the real housewives or politicians and commentators, we have enabled a culture of disrespect and partisanship that sets a bad example. I hope all middle schoolers and high schoolers will see this movie and begin some conversations about what all of us can do to bring us closer to a culture of civility and respect, or just to bring us closer.

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Documentary School Teenagers

The Three Stooges

Posted on April 12, 2012 at 6:00 pm

I believe it was the great philosopher Curly Joe who first said that you cannot step in the same stream twice. And perhaps it was Shemp who said that you can’t go home again. Okay, that was the great ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus and the early 20th century American author Thomas Wolfe, but even the least-loved late-era members of the of the literally knuckle-headed 1930’s-1950’s comedy trio The Three Stooges would know that whatever appeal they had could never be re-created. Big time fans the Farrelly brothers came closer to the spirit of their slapstick idols with films like “There’s Something About Mary,” “Shallow Hal,” and “Stuck on You” than in this dead mackerel of an attempt to recreate a Moe, Larry, and Curly for the 21st century. Stars Chris Diamantopoulos (Moe), Sean Hayes (Larry), and Chris Sasso (Curly) have clearly studied the moves of the head-bonking, eye-poking Stooges, but they have no chemistry, poor pacing, an unsteady sense of the Stooges’ appeal, and 80 years of history separating us from the Stooges’ setting.

The original Stooges, Moe and “Curly” Howard and Larry Fine, had years of knockabout experience in vaudeville to perfect their interactions and develop an understanding of their audience. They are funny in the context of their time in their constant efforts to join the middle class and their constant creation of chaos wherever they go. But in this film, they lazily borrow the premise of “The Blues Brothers” (they have to raise money to keep the orphanage that has been their home since they were abandoned there as infants decades ago) and become entangled in a murder plot and “Jersey Shore.” Is this funny? Soitenly not.

The expected slapstick happens, but it is pretty joyless and some of the material crosses a line the Stooges would never have considered. Larry David plays a nun named Sister Mary Mengele, surely a rather arcane reference within the context of this movie and meaner and more provocative than anything in the world of the original Three Stooges. I perked up when I saw them enter a hospital, hoping for a “Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine” reference, but instead there was an extended scene with Moe and Curly, dressed as nurses, aiming naked baby boys at each other to get faces full of pee. “You must be French,” Curly says to one. “That’s a lot of oui-oui.” A child becomes critically ill and it is supposed to be funny when for a moment it appears that she has died. Adoptive families and their friends will be disturbed by a scene where kids are lined up at the orphanage in front of prospective parents and are told “no wonder your parents didn’t want you.” And whose idea was it that the Stooges should become involved in a murder for hire plot as a gorgeous wife (Sofia Vergara) plots to kill her wealthy husband? Or to have Moe go on “Jersey Shore?” Or a Bob Dylan song? Or a close-up of a lion’s testicles? Or, when a character shoots a gun, the line, “I thought you were a Democrat!” Why, I oughta……

This movie is proof positive that the Stooges were three of a kind (okay, five if you count Shemp and Curly Joe — we will not speak of Joe Besser), and, definitively inimitable.

Parents should know that this film includes constant comic violence including head-slamming and eye-poking (directors come on screen at the end to warn children not to attempt the stunts at home), some crude humor including language and graphic, gross-out potty jokes, murder for hire, scary lion,and insensitive and deliberately offensive material about nuns and adoption

Family discussion: How does this version hold up to the The Three Stooges movies of the 1930’s-50’s? What are the biggest differences?

If you like this, try: the original The Three Stooges short films and visit the Stooges Museum, the Stoogeum

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Comedy Remake

Lockout

Posted on April 11, 2012 at 2:35 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and language including some sexual references
Profanity:	Frequent s-words and some other strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant peril and violence, many characters killed, some graphic and disturbing images, character commits suicide to save another
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	April 13, 2012

You know what was cool? “Die Hard!” One smart-ass guy who has a problem with authority Yippie-ky-ay-ing as he outsmarts a dozen bad guys in an LA skyscraper. And “Under Siege,” with a smart-ass guy who has a problem with authority outsmarting a dozen bad guys on a battleship. And “Con Air,” with a not-so-smart-ass but (relatively speaking) cool and collected guy who’s still a think-for-himself loner on an “escape-proof” prison transport plane filled with really bad guy convicts? So, why not put a smart-ass guy who has a problem with authority on an “escape proof” space station filled with really bad guy convicts who are now even badder guys because they have been given a “stasis” drug that can result in dementia, aggression, and psychosis. And how about if their hostages include the President’s daughter! Borrow some more from “The Rock” and “Escape from New York,” while you’re at it!

It may only be April, but silly summer action movie season is already upon us, and this time it’s Guy Pearce, looking very dashing in riot gear as former CIA operative Snow, the wisecracking hero with his own set of rules. It is 2079. The oval office is in a bunker underneath the White House. And the President’s daughter Emilie (Maggie Grace) has gone to the space station prison that guarantees “no sexual assaults, breakouts, or riots.” She is on a humanitarian mission, to investigate the impact of the stasis drug, and, indirectly, the role of the company that wants to use the drug for commercial space travel, on the prison program. A group of prisoners, led by Alex (Vincent Regan) take over. At first they do not realize who the blonde in the lab coat is (see Ms. Gennaro in “Die Hard”), but eventually they figure it out. Meanwhile, the President and his advisors debate sending in troops or sending in just one guy who is the best, though hard to control, but may be persuaded to take on this suicide mission to get out of his own prison term for a bogus espionage and murder charge.

So we’re off through vents and tunnels and sliding doors and biometric security measures, and some neat gadgets (I loved the voice-activated bombs) and a lot of people with bad attitudes and not much impulse control. And the blonde princessy President’s daughter has to learn a few things and also demonstrate her own toughness and resolve, while she and Snow trade quippy insults. The folks back on Earth have to say things like, “It is vitally important that you go the right way” just as communications are cut off. There are fake-outs and close calls and a really fun zero-gravity fight. And there’s an emergency syringe to the eyeball. Ew.

Even by the standards of silly summer action movies, this one stretches the suspension of disbelief as well as the laws of physics (wait for that return to earth — like something out of Melies’ “Trip to the Moon”). But it is undeniably fun — Pearce is an engaging hero, producer Luc Besson always guarantees entertaining stunts, the set-up is still sturdy and the running time is blessedly brief.

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Action/Adventure Movies -- format