Quiz: Father’s Day Movies

Posted on June 16, 2013 at 3:35 pm

How many of these can you identify?

1. This movie is based on the true story of a pioneering “motion study” couple (efficiency, occupational safety, and ergonomics) engineer who brought their techniques to family life.

2. What movie has a widower with a young son who almost marries the wrong woman until his young son guides him in the right direction?

3. What movie has a divorced dad who almost marries the wrong woman until his daughters guide him in the direction of their mother?

4. A man and his roommates unexpectedly find themselves responsible for a baby he did not know he had fathered.

5. What Oscar-winning director directed his father and his daughter in Oscar-winning performances?

6. What real-life Oscar-winning father and daughter played father and daughter on screen in a movie based on a hit play?

7. Two top directors made movies with soundtracks composed by their fathers. Who are they?

8. In this Oscar-winning movie based on a best-selling book, a father devastated by the loss of a son must decide between supporting his wife or the son who survived.

9. In this movie, when the birthday party entertainer does not show up, the birthday boy’s father steps in.

10. A father spends most of a movie looking for his lost son in this animated classic with an upcoming sequel.

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Father’s Day on TCM: Mankiewicz and Mankiewicz

Posted on June 16, 2013 at 12:00 pm

Celebrate Father’s Day on Turner Classic Movies with the father and son team of Ben and Frank Mankiewicz picking the line-up. The TCM host and his politico father are the grandson and son of the legendary Herman Mankiewicz, who wrote the screenplay for the movie many people consider the greatest of all time, “Citizen Kane.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyv19bg0scg

Adam Bernstein writes in The Washington Post:

“Citizen Kane” co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who died in 1953, wrote some of the best and most popular movies of all time. His son Frank skipped a career in film and became a top aide to Democratic Sens. Robert Kennedy and George McGovern during their presidential runs.

Frank’s son Ben Mankiewicz grew up in Washington in the 1970s and 1980s in what he called the “political wing” of his family. But on TCM for the past decade, he has found a niche bringing movies of his grandfather’s day to a modern audience.

On Sunday, Ben and Frank Mankiewicz are hosting a Father’s Day lineup on TCM that includes “Citizen Kane” (1941), which ranks first among the American Film Institute’s greatest films of all time. As a tribute to Frank Mankiewicz’s political career, TCM is also screening “All the King’s Men” (1949) with Broderick Crawford and “The Last Hurrah”(1958) with Spencer Tracy.

The wild card is “Smokey and the Bandit” (1977), essentially one long car chase between Burt Reynolds and an exasperated sheriff played by Jackie Gleason. Ben Mankiewicz, who is 45, chose it because it was the first film he remembers seeing with his father.

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Father’s Day Tribute to the Best Television Dads

Posted on June 17, 2012 at 8:00 am

My gallery of great movie dads and list of daddy-daughter movies include wonderful films for families to watch together and talk about the great fathers in their own families.

Some of the best dads on film appear on television, which allows us to see families in a variety of circumstances over many years. Some of them even start to feel like members of our own families. These dads are not perfect but they always seem to know the right thing to say, whether comforting, guiding, or providing support. And they inspire even more through their own examples of trustworthiness and wisdom. My favorites include:

1. Tom Bosley on Happy Days
2. John Goodman on Roseanne
3. Andy Griffith on The Andy Griffith Show

4. Danny Thomas on Make Room for Daddy
5. Bil Cosby on The Cosby Show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey4IeVB4_eY
6. Bill Bixby on The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
7. John Amos on Good Times
8. Michael Landon on Little House on the Prairie
9. Robert Young on Father Knows Best
10. Peter Gallagher in The O.C.

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Great Movie Dads for Father’s Day

Posted on June 19, 2010 at 3:44 pm

Happy Father’s Day!

1. Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) in “To Kill a Mockingbird” The last line of the movie says it all: “He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”

2. Jason “Furious” Styles (Laurence Fishburne) in “Boyz N the Hood” This well-named father is a fierce defender of his son, protecting him but also teaching him to believe in himself.

3. Marlin (Albert Brooks) in “Finding Nemo” A loving if over-protective little clownfish must search the entire ocean to find his lost son in this beloved Pixar classic.

4. Stanley Banks (Spencer Tracy) in “Father of the Bride” Watch Tracy’s face when his daughter (Elizabeth Taylor) explains why she has (thankfully temporarily) called off her engagement in this story of a loving father who gets caught up in pre-Bridezilla wedding drama (and trauma). See also the remake with Steve Martin.

5. Gil Buckman (Steve Martin) in “Parenthood” No film better shows the challenges, terrors, wrenching choices, and satisfactions of fatherhood than this extended family story inspired by the lives of the three men who made it and the 14 children in their lives.

6. Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) in “Kramer vs. Kramer” A father who is not even sure what class his child is in discovers what it means to be a father after his wife leaves them. And then he discovers how much it matters to him when she returns and he has to fight for custody.

7. Tom Winters (Cary Grant) in “Houseboat” In one of his few roles as a father, Grant plays a man who only discovers how much he needs his children after the death of their mother — and Sophia Loren arrives as their new nanny.

8. Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) in “Sleepless in Seattle” — Though devastated by the loss of his wife, Sam is committed to being a positive and caring father.

9. Chris Gardner (Will Smith) in “The Pursuit of Happyness” — Smith and his real-life son shine in this story about a devoted single father who went from homelessness to a career as a stock-broker.

10. Gou-ichi Takata (Ken Takakura) in “Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles” — A Japanese father shows his love for his estranged son by completing the son’s final project, a filmed version of a Chinese opera, even though he knows nothing about filming, China, or opera.

‘Father of the Year’ on ‘Father Knows Best’

Posted on June 14, 2010 at 11:58 pm

In this episode from the classic golden-age television series “Father Knows Best,” the three Anderson children try to explain — in 25 words — why their father deserves to win the local newspaper’s “Father of the Year” prize.

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