Good Hair

Posted on February 16, 2010 at 8:10 am

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Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some language including sex and drug references, and brief partial nudity
Profanity:	Some strong and crude langauge
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drug reference
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	October 9, 2009
Date Released to DVD:	February 16, 2010
Amazon.com ASIN:	B002TOJOY8

Chris Rock’s daughter wanted to know why she didn’t have “good hair.” And so he made this documentary as an answer, exploring the relationship between black women and their hair and hair products and processes — and how that relationship gives billions of dollars to an industry that can be exploitative.

Wildly entertaining and profoundly insightful, this is an exploration of image, economics, history, and standards of beauty. Nearly half a century ago, the ground-breaking “black is beautiful” cultural movement changed the way black and white Americans thought about beauty. It is seldom remembered that the key piece of evidence in the “Brown v. Board of Education” decision that led to school de-segregation was a series of interviews with black children who all said that the white doll was prettier than the black doll, thus showing that segregation was inherently unfair. This movie shows how complex and layered the challenge is and how powerfully media images of beauty can make us feel dissatisfied to get us to spend money to look different.

The movie has interviews with movie stars like Nia Long, Lauren London, and Meagan Goode. Surprisingly, none of them say that they have to have “good hair” to get jobs. They insist that they just like it. Maya Angelou says she had her hair processed for the first time when she was in her 70’s. The Reverand Al Sharpton explains that James Brown talked him into getting his hair processed.

Rock visits the Dudley Hair Products company in North Carolina, one of the few black-owned providers of what some women in the movie call “creamy crack.” He goes to India to discover the shocking sources of the exported hair. He tries to sell black hair but gets no buyers. And he goes to a hair competition and performance event that is simply indescribable.

This is a movie of enormous importance and good will and should be seen by everyone, especially mothers and teen-age daughters, to remind us that all hair is good hair and that beauty is more about how we feel than how we look.

Emma/Cranford

Posted on February 15, 2010 at 8:00 am

Congratulations to the three winners of the Emma and Cranford DVDs!
Marc P, Taryn H, and Wendy L, send me your addresses and as soon as I dig out of the snow, they will be on their way.
Everyone else, thanks for trying and keep checking as I have more DVDs coming soon!

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Couples Retreat

Posted on February 10, 2010 at 8:00 am

I’m guessing that what happened here is that BFFs Jon Favreau (director of Iron Man but here as an actor), Vince Vaughn, and Peter Billingsley (star of A Christmas Story-turned director) decided that it would be a lot of fun to go off to a beautiful island together and so they decided to make it a business trip by creating a story they could film there.

And I am guessing that their home movie of that trip would have been more entertaining than this dull, drawn-out, mess of a film about four couples who go to a resort that is somewhere between “Fantasy Island” and “Dr. Phil.”

These are the kinds of couples with a friendship you only see in movies. They have nothing in common. They do not particularly seem to like each other. They do not appear to know anyone else. And yet, they are always up in each other’s bidness, hugely involved in the tiniest details and decisions, far more than in their own, so much so that they are constantly conference-calling each other on their cell phones, inviting each other to make crucial decisions about their lives. Possibly the hardest to believe, they are not only mandatory attendees at a birthday party held for a very young child of one of the couples, they all wander off in the middle of the party, including the child’s parents, for a power point presentation on one couple’s marital breakdown (apparently a welcome relief following a previous series on the husband’s testicular cancer). The couple (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) have arranged for a group rate at a resort and guilt everyone to going along with them: the couple who are distracted with young children (Vaughn and “Watchmen’s” Malin Akerman), the couple who are furious with each other (Favreau and “Sex in the City’s” Kristin Davis), and the recently separated Shane (Faizon Love) with his new 20-year-old girlfriend (Kali Hawk) who calls him “Daddy” and wants to party all the time.

While the other couples planned to relax and enjoy the island, it turns out that the couples counseling is mandatory, starting at sunrise — sort of Dr. Phil boot camp. There is much attempted hilarity from a scantily-clad male yoga instructor getting very up close and personal with both the men and women (a lot of homosexual and adultery panic in this movie) as he demonstrates the poses. There is much attempted hilarity from the counseling sessions and from a child twice confusing a store display with a working toilet. None actually occurs.

Individual scenes drag and the movie as a whole sags. Episodes are thrown together haphazardly and run on forever. There are innumerable references, for some reason, to Applebee’s and there is an extended and pointless, even by the low standards of this film, excruciatingly drawn out game of Guitar Hero. And we are supposed to care about these people and believe that they have actually learned some important lessons about communication and not taking each other for granted. It fails at comedy, it fails at warming our hearts and it fails at making us care enough about any of these characters to want them to work out their problems. Instead, we just keep wishing they would get out of the way and let us enjoy the pretty scenery.

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The Time Traveler’s Wife

Posted on February 9, 2010 at 8:00 am

Books and movies are two very different modes of expression. Books tend to be more subjective and internal, focusing on what the author or characters think and feel. Movies are usually better at showing what happens. Even a hugely popular book about a deeply passionate romance like The Time Traveler’s Wife made with diligence and respect and starring beautiful people who are good actors, does not always produce a movie that lives up to the vision of the author and the readers.
Henry (Eric Bana) has become an involuntary time traveler following a traumatic accident that killed his mother when he was a child. He has no control over when or where he goes, but a force he describes as being like gravity pulls him back over and over to places and interactions that are most meaningful to him. When a beautiful young woman named Clare (Rachel McAdams) asks him for help at the Newberry Library, he can tell from her expression that she knows his future self and he knows her past self, but at the moment he has no clue who she is, much less that they are in love with one another. The special challenges (disappearing and re-appearing) are painful, often life-threatening, and even the benefits (it can be very helpful to know what is going to happen) can be stressful. But like all great love affairs, the connection between Henry and Clare transcends time.
Like the book, the movie gets weaker as it becomes more convoluted and far-fetched in the last third of the story. Unlike the book, it does not have the evocative and graceful prose written by Audrey Niffenegger. The novel is very internal, and no matter how able Bana and McAdams are, the script gives them little to do to convey the book’s power other than gaze lovingly at each other. The movie eliminates many secondary characters and much of the conversation and interaction that makes us care whether Henry and Clare figure out a way to literally stay together. They seem to have no personality, no substance beyond those longing glances. By far the most interesting character in the movie does not even arrive until the last 20 minutes. As the storyline gets more preposterous (and, in the screening I attended, provoked some unintended laughter), a new character arrives to give the film more weight and honesty than anything that has gone before, making us wish we could go back in time to start the film with that story instead.

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Interview: Taylor Firth of ‘Ice Castles’

Posted on February 4, 2010 at 8:00 am

Figure skating champion Taylor Firth makes her acting debut in a remake of the beloved 1978 film Ice Castles. The original starred Lynn-Holly Johnson as the skater who has to start all over after an accident leaves her blind and Robby Benson as her hockey-player boyfriend. I spoke to Taylor about skating, acting, and her favorite Bible verse.

When you were growing up, did you have a favorite ice skating movie?

I would have to say Ice Castles is probably my favorite. It is the most realistic. And The Cutting Edge, that was a good one, too.

Ice skating and acting both require a lot of discipline and focus. How do you work on that?

You need a lot of patience. I’m a redhead so I am quick to anger, but God definitely gives me the patience and the strength I need to do it all with a good mind and a good heart.

What have you learned from your coaches and teachers?

My coaches that I have right now are amazing people. They definitely have given me some great tips about being the best that I can be and keeping on with what I love. Sometimes there are things that you don’t want to do or things that are hard for you, but usually when you keep going with them and are determined with it, they end up being some of the most amazing experiences you’ll ever have. There are sometimes things that seem a little scary, but once you start doing them, you realize that everything was worth it in the end. It doesn’t matter what you are doing. As long as you are doing it with the right heart and the right mind and doing it for God’s glory, that is all that really matters.

So your connection to faith is very important to you.

Definitely. My figure skating is my God-given ability and so I want to use it for His glory.

And acting, too?

I don’t really know how good at it I am, but I have had some good feedback and would like to think that it is another way do do that.

As a person of faith, is it important to you to work on projects that communicate your values to the audience?

Oh, absolutely, yes! Definitely. There were some parts in “Ice Castles” that I had a difficult time doing, to play someone who is blind, to be honest about what someone who doesn’t have sight would be acting and how they would really feel. It was important to me to be sensitive to that experience, to be careful not to be offensive or portray a blind person as incompetent because they are really amazing people. My faith is a huge part of it and keeps me well-grounded.

Did you observe blind people? How did you prepare for the role?

I really have not had much acting experience, just the kids’ drama team at church. So it was a little hard to prepare for it. But Donald is a great guy and a great director and he really gave me the tools I needed to learn what I needed to learn in a really short time.

Could there really be a blind figure skater?

Yes, I definitely believe so. I did an ice show for SABAH, Skating for the Blind and Handicapped, and there’s people that skate blind all the times, and one of the main skaters they had the year I performed with them was a girl, she was about 12 at the time, she was blind and she was doing her own solo program. She didn’t really perform the way Lexi (in the movie) does. Lexi can perform on her own because she can see light and shadows. This girl was completely blind so she needed someone on either side of the boards to say her name so she knew how far she was from the boards, but it is definitely possible.

I am really interested in the way you make your musical choices. You have selected some songs for your programs that are unusual and I think exceptionally well chosen. What do you think about when you are looking for music?

The biggest part for me is trying to get into the character of the music. It’s music that I have to listen to every day for an entire year so I have to pick something I know that I’ll be able to thoroughly enjoy skating to and show that love on the ice. Two of my favorite programs, one was jazz and I loved it. My mom actually found that piece. I didn’t like it when I first heard it because I thought it was a little strange. But my choreographer loved it so I had to put my trust in her and it became one of my favorites that I have ever done.

Another one is a song called “Prayer for Taylor” by Michael W. Smith. That’s another one of my favorites. It was a year I was having a hard time finding something. I would like something and my coach wouldn’t like it or my coach would like something and I wouldn’t like it. And then my mother was in a store looking for music and a man brought out a new CD and the song was on it. I used it for quite a few years. I was praying that I would find the right music and there it was.

What makes you laugh?

I’m a little bit of a quirky personality, I guess. My boyfriend and I laugh, and my sisters, I have three sisters, the best in the world, and they are really supportive. If one of us makes a mistake, trips up or something, we all just laugh and we impersonate people and review movie scenes of our own. One of my sisters is like a one-girl movie. She can act out scenes and knows all the quotes. And that makes me laugh.

Do you plan to do more acting?

In my perfect world, I would like to do something with the Christian film industry. I want to act some more in projects with a good moral based and I want to be a good positive role model in the world.

And what is your favorite Bible verse?

2nd Timothy 2:22 — about fleeing from the things of the world and looking to God for His guidance.

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