Posted on June 2, 2010 at 3:54 pm
From “Carousel,” the musical about a carnival barker whose love for a sweet small-town girl ends in tragedy when he tries to steal some money to take care of her. He gets a chance to come back from heaven for just one day to see his daughter graduate from high school and let her know that she will never walk alone. The gorgeous music from Rodgers and Hammerstein is performed by Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae.
Posted on June 1, 2010 at 8:00 am
Almost 150 years ago Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson published his wildly imaginative story about Alice’s adventures down a rabbit hole. And now the wildly imaginative director Tim Burton has brought Wonderland to the 3D movie screen. It is less faithful to the original story than many of the previous dozen or so movie versions, but I think Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, would approve of Burton’s bringing his own take to the classic characters.
He brings his own story as well. Carroll’s Alice is a little girl bored by her sister’s dull book, and her journey is episodic and filled with wordplay and references to Victorian society that fill the annotated edition of the book with witty footnotes.
To make the story more cinematic, Burton tells us that all of that has already happened in what young Alice thought was a dream. This is her return visit. Alice is 18 years old and has just been proposed to by a dull but wealthy lord with no chin and bad digestion. As she meets up with the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter, she is not the only one who is confused. Characters seem puzzled and unsure about whether she is the real Alice. The Mad Hatter peers at her perplexedly. She may be Alice, and yet not quite completely the Alice they are looking for. “You were once muchier,” he tells her. “You’ve lost your muchiness.” In Burton’s version, Alice’s adventures are about her finding her “muchiness.” Her visit to Wonderland is a chance for her to understand what she is capable of and how much she will lose if she makes her decisions based on what people expect from her. As in the Carroll story, she is constantly changing size, and Burton shows us that she is really finding her place. She believes she is once again in a dream but increasingly learns that it is one she can control. By the time she faces the Jabberwock, she knows that she is in control — and that her courage and determination can create the opportunity she needs to follow her heart.
Johnny Depp brings a depth, even a poignance to the Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham Carter is utterly delicious as the peppery red queen, hilariously furious over her stolen tarts. There’s a thrilling battle, the visuals are dazzling, with references to classic book illustrations by Maxfield Parrish, and the 3D effects will have you feeling as though you are falling down the rabbit hole yourself. The frame story bookending the Wonderland/Underland adventure is tedious and, oddly, less believable than the disappearing cat and frog footmen. But Burton’s re-interpretation of the classic story is filled with muchiness and the result is pretty darn frabjuous.
Posted on June 1, 2010 at 7:05 am
A+| Lowest Recommended Age: | 4th - 6th Grades |
| Profanity: | One very brief word |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | A parent possibly impaired by drugs or alcohol at one point |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Tense scenes of competition |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | 2003 |
In honor of this week’s Scripps Spelling Bee finals, every family should see this m-a-r-v-e-l-o-u-s movie about the national spelling bee because it is about so much more. It is about the strength of American diversity and the commitment of this country to opportunity — the eight featured competitors include three children of immigrants (one’s father still speaks no English) and a wide range of ethnic and economic backgrounds. It is about ambition, dedication, and courage. It is about finding a dream that speaks to each individual. Most of all, it is about family — the opportunity to discuss the wide variation in styles of family communication and values is in itself a reason for every family with children to watch this movie together. Plus, it is one of the most genuinely thrilling, touching, and purely enjoyable movies of the year.
This is the true story of the 1999 National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., and especially of eight regional winners in the competition. They are: Ashley, a black girl who lives with her mother in a housing project in the city where the competition takes place, Harry, the youngest of the group, a slightly hyper kid who impulsively answers one interviewer’s question in the voice of a “musical robot,” April, whose fond but mildly befuddled parents cannot quite figure out how such a ragingly focused child appeared in their house, Angela, the daughter of an illegal Mexican immigrant who still speaks no English, Ted, a loner from Missouri, Neil, the son of Indian immigrants whose intense focus — including special spelling tutors and hours-long drills — has him the second member of the family to be a regional champion, Emily, the child of privilege, who wonders if she should bring her au pair along to the competition, and Nupur, another child of Indian immigrants, whose regional title is saluted by a sign on the local Hooters that reads, “Congradulations Nupur!”
These and 240 other contestants are all 8th grade and younger. They don’t quite understand what a heart-breakingly awkward and painful moment that is in their lives, but we do. As we watch these kids, girls towering over boys, more with braces than without, puberty’s uneven effects everywhere, many of the kids confessing that they feel all alone in their school, we see them hold on to this mastery of words eclipsing anything an adult can do as a lifeline, or maybe a flashlight, leading them to their adult selves. There were audible gasps in the theater as each new word was given to the contestants, including hellebore, terrene, logorrhea, kirtle, clavecin, heleoplankton, cabotinage, and opsimath. Half of those words are not even recognized by the spellchecker in my word processing program, but these kids, who learned how to read only a little more than half their lives ago, are able to handle an astonishing number of them. Meanwhile, some words recognizable to most college-educated adults turn out to be stumpers for the kids, sharply drawing the line between expertise and experience.
The movie is filled with brilliantly observed moments that illuminate the lives of the individuals but also the lives of all families and all dreamers. These kids, with their slightly old-fashioned area of expertise (this is the era of the spellchecker, after all, and as that list shows, these are not words likely to come up in conversation or even most college textbooks) have an engaging sense of adventure, affection, and wonder about words and language. One shows off her huge dictionary almost as big as she is and about to fall to pieces from use, and says she does not think she will ever part with it. Three boys talk about how they lost to Nupur. Ashley tells us she is a “prayer warrior” who feels like her life is a movie.
And we get to see every kind of family. All the parents assure their children that they are winners no matter what happens at the national bee, but some do so more convincingly than others. Each family has its own idea of what it means to achieve success and what they think success could mean for their future. One father hires special spelling tutors and runs constant drills. Others look on all but speechless at children whose talents seem as exotic to them as though they had sprouted feathers.
Parents should know that there are some tense and sad scenes. Children are upset when they lose (they are escorted onstage to a “comfort room”). One child uses a mildly bad word.
Families who see this movie should talk about how the families in the movie, especially the immigrant families and those at the lower end of the economic spectrum, see the importance of the spelling bee. They should talk about what it takes to be a winner in any category of achievement and how they measure their own successes (and failures).
Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Searching for Bobby Fischer, based on a real-life child who became a chess champion.
Posted on May 30, 2010 at 3:58 pm
“Harlem Hostel” is an unpretentious little film about a group of friends who decide to turn a run-down brownstone into a youth hostel to make ends meet. At times the film looks as low-budget as its setting, but with an appealing cast and a better-than-average script with a touch of sweetness, this is worth a look.
Want to give it a try? The first four people to send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Harlem” in the subject line will win a DVD.
NOTE: DVDs provided by the studio; all opinions are my own.
Posted on May 27, 2010 at 8:00 am
A thoughtful commenter named Richard S. Webster added some superb suggestions to the list I published for Memorial Day, and I wanted to post them for families to have as they salute the courage and sacrifice of our armed forces.
1. “The Sands of Iwo Jima” This film both shows the sacrifice and hardship involved in war but also the personal toll it takes on the men.
2. “Bataan” War costs lives to win and this one does so in a hauntingly morose way.
3. “The Guns of Naverone” Perhaps the best behind the lines war film ever. The cast could never be duplicated.
4. “Battleground” Captures the suffering of the common soldier during the Battle of the Bulge.
5. “To Hell and Back” I love “Sergeant York” but Audie Murphy was even more extraordinary.
6. “From Here to Eternity” Captures the disorganization and problems the military had just prior to the onset of WW2.
7. “Flyboys” This extremely underrated WW1 film presents the American volunteer forces known as the Lafayette Escadrille who took to the skies early in WW1.
8. “We Were Soldiers” Despite many who will argue against this statement this is possibly the best Vietnam War film ever made. It certainly captures the feel of the early days of the war when America still had faith that we were doing the right thing.
9. “Midway” Realistically captures the most important naval battle in history…fought entirely in the air.
10. “The Court Marshall of Billy Mitchell” Your list has military court cases and here is one back at you but a better one and a real one. 16 years prior to WW2 Billy Mitchell realized what the Japanese plan of attack in the Pacific would be but nobody wanted to hear it…check this one out.
