Ho John Lee's Weblog

On the occasion of the Academy Awards, an interesting video montage featuring faces of famous actresses. via Instapundit 

I’ve noticed that over the past several years, I basically don’t see movies in theaters, except for kids movies. Everything else is either on airplanes, cable, DVD, or online.

This is the first weekend in quite a while that Emily and I haven’t had soccer committments. Her spring soccer team played at the Davis World Cup last weekend to wrap up their season. The team got knocked out in the elimination round in a very close match that was settled in a penalty shootout to break the 0-0 tie. Even the shootout was close, it went to 1-1 on the 5 kicks for each side, which brought the game to sudden death. Eventually it went to 10 kicks for each side (and U10 plays 9 on a side) before the winning goal for the other side (which went forward to the end of the tournament).

So this weekend has felt a little different, with no practice and no game. This afternoon we went to see Gracie, a soccer-themed movie which Emily saw a trailer for this spring. It’s about a teenaged girl who wants to try out for the boy’s soccer team after her brother (also a soccer player) dies in a car accident.

We enjoyed the soccer-related parts of the movie, but kind of wished there was a little less personal drama. There are two different movies that could have been made with the material here, one mostly about being a girl trying to play soccer in 1978 (before the rise of women’s sports programs), and one mostly about being a girl trying to deal with her family and find her way through high school after losing a sibling. Both fine topics, but today Emily and I were looking for the movie about a girl playing soccer and we could have used less of the teen drama. (Emily says that some of the drama parts are not quite appropriate for her age group (10ish), and I generally agree.)

In another couple of years perhaps she’ll be more interested in the non-soccer parts of the movie. As her dad, though, today I’m thankful that she’s mostly worried about not getting another chance at the Davis Arsenal.

My 10-year-old daughter and I went to see The Bridge to Terabithia yesterday. She read the book last year and wanted to see the movie, which has been advertised regularly over the past few months.

For movies that are based on a book, my general rule for my daughter is that you should try to read the book before you see the movie. In this case, I didn’t follow my own advice. Although this book is well known in children’s literature (winner of the 1978 Newberry Award), I never got around to reading it, and thus was utterly blindsided by the movie.

The movie advertisements make it look like mostly a fantasy and adventure story, kind of like Chronicles of Narnia or perhaps Neverending Story. It’s not. It’s mostly about friendship and pointless tragedy in middle school. I found it enormously disturbing. It pushed a lot of my emotional buttons, both as a parent today, and in recollection of being an odd kid out in a rural school system in the past.

I don’t think I was the only one who got caught off guard at the movie theater, either. I think this is actually a better-than-average family/kids story (for perhaps 4th-5th grade and up), it just isn’t what they marketed, and parents should be prepared for a conversation about death, which might not work for everyone.

When I was in high school, I used to enjoy (emotionally authentic, depressing) movies like this more. Now, I’d rather just see stylized fantasy or heroic death (Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings) or entertaining family cartoons (Cars, The Incredibles). There’s enough authentic tragedy in the world, I don’t need more of it from the movies, and I don’t find it enlightening or uplifting.

In reading the Wikipedia entry on the movie, I see that the issue with the marketing has come up before:

The filmmakers have disavowed the advertisement campaign for the movie saying that the advertising is deliberately misleading; making the movie seem like it was about or occurring in a fantasy world like that of Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia[3]. David L. Paterson in the SCI FI Wire article was surprised by the trailer but understood the marketing reasoning behind it saying:

“Although there is a generation that is very familiar with book, if you are over 40, then you probably haven’t, and we need to reach them. … Everyone who read the book and sees the trailer says, ‘What is this? This is nothing like the book. What are you doing, Dave?’ And I say, ‘You know what you’re seeing is 15 seconds of a 90-minute film. Give me a little leeway and respect. Go see it, and then tell me what you think.’”

I’m generally positive on the movie, but I wish I’d read the book first.

We went to see Curious George at the movies this weekend. We were probably at the old end of the target demographic, but my 9-year-old and I have spent many hours reading Curious George stories together since before she could actually read, and we both enjoyed the movie. Unlike many current kids movies, this one doesn’t have a frantic, over-the-top feel to it, and the soundtrack by Jack Johnson is pleasantly calming.

A few thoughts upon reflection:

• The books, being from a different era, have some problematic elements which are edited out for today’s audience:
  1. George is more or less kidnapped and stuffed in a bag by the man with the yellow hat at the beginning of his adventure. In the movie, George follows the man onto the ship by himself.
  2. The man with the yellow hat smokes a pipe. I think George might have had a smoke too, in the first book.
• “George” has been redesigned for the movie. Perhaps to make him cuter? Call me reactionary, I like the original George better.
• Although the movie is titled “Curious George”, the movie is mostly about the man with the yellow hat, and the museum that he works for. An alternate title could have been “Clueless Ted and the Legend of Zagara”. I don’t think George is called “Curious George” anywhere in the movie. In the book, he’s only called Curious George in the introduction to each story, which is absent in the movie.
• Ted, the man in the yellow hat, is nice but somewhat geeky and is extraordinarily clueless, failing to notice Drew Barrymore’s character’s interest in him, as opposed to his museum lecture.
• I enjoyed some of the randomness (“my cornea!”). The ship is named “H.A. Rey” after the book’s author. George does an accidental imitation of King Kong, with the aid of a special projector. The antagonist’s goal in life is to build a parking garage.
• I found it vaguely disturbing that the man in the yellow hat disowns George and sends him away in a cage. The recurring theme in the books is that George, childlike, gets into trouble because of his curiosity, but the parent-like man in the yellow hat always turns up to rescue him. Sending George away for causing well-intentioned trouble is at odds with the entire body of work.

This is probably best viewed as a movie with some similar elements as the book, rather than actually being the same characters as the original Curious George books. I’m biased, of course, having read the original books when I was in elementary school.

The best investment might be to get the books and listen to the movie soundtrack while reading them (and looking at the original illustrations) with your kids.

(at Amazon)

• The Complete Adventures of Curious George (collection of the original books)
• A Treasury of Curious George (more original books)
• The New Adventures of Curious George (not-quite-original books, but similar)
• Sing-A-Longs & Lullabies for the Film Curious George

It seems I only see kids movies in movie theaters for the past few years. Most of my personal movie watching happens on trans-pacific flights, which leads to occasional surprises when I get the DVD later to see what United Airlines sanitized away. (Singapore Airlines leaves the movies intact, though.)

This weekend we went to see Wallace & Gromit – Curse of the Were-Rabbit at the local Century Theaters megaplex.

Although I enjoyed the movie, I think it was upstaged by the short feature before the film, which was a Christmas-themed adventure featuring the four penguins from Madagascar. The smallest penguin, Private, heads off to the city to look for a Christmas gift when he sees that the polar bear is lonely on Christmas eve while the rest of the zoo animals are having festive parties. He ends up on his way to becoming a chew toy for a ferocious lap dog, and is rescued by the rest of the penguin squad. Rico, the incomprehensible one, eventually gets to put his dynamite to good use.

In Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace and Gromit spend most of their time running their “humane pest control service”, Anti-Pesto, which specializes in protecting vegetable gardens from voracious rabbits. Their primary tool is a large rabbit vacuum cleaner which sucks the rabbits from their tunnels and deposits them unharmed in a large container. Wallace and Gromit are generally successful, which leads to a problem of where to keep the growing number of rabbits. In the days leading up to a prize vegetable-growing contest, the town villagers are plagued by visits from a giant Were-Rabbit.

Wallace & Gromit is produced using a clay animation technique which gives the film a very different, more organic visual feel. Unlike 3-d computer graphics, there are irregularities and tooling marks in the surfaces which move around and change as the clay is flexed. As kids movies go, it was OK, but I was reflecting to myself during the movie that I would probably be just as interested in seeing a film about the production process as the actual movie.

Complicating the future creation of such a film, Aardman Studios recently suffered a warehouse fire, which destroyed many of their sets and props.

I found Hemo the Magnificentin the Netflix catalog a while back.

I remember watching these in elementary school, in the days before VHS videos, DVD players, or the internet. The classroom window shades would come down, a projector cart would be rolled into the back of the room, and we all got to watch film strips or slides, or occasionally, movies, which would be shown on an ancient 16mm projector with a built-in amplifier and detachable speaker built into the cover. Aside from the entertainment value of the film, it also meant a change from the usual class schedule, plus nap time for one or two in the back of the room.

I think I saw Hemo the Magnificent, Our Mister Sun, and Powers of Ten a couple of times in 4th and 5th grade or so, and hadn’t seen them since.

I just watched Hemo the Magnificent with my 4th grade daughter and her two friends. It wasn’t a big hit with them (“Too Educational!”), although the animated sections helped. I still like the explaination of the circulatory system, with the little musclemen and the brain on the telephone. The girls did make it all the way through the movie, but bailed out on the second half of the DVD, Unchained Goddess, which is about weather. They were probably wondering about the “magic screen”, the ancient telephone, and the reel-change prompts in the movie, too. I was thinking it needed the movie projector sprocket rattling and the random flutter, distortion, and midrange boominess to recreate the experience.

For me, it was fun and interesting to watch. The movie was made in the late 50’s, and has the titling, musical soundtrack, set decor, and character mannerisms that capture the sense of confidence, optimism, and vaguely happy goofiness that I remember. Elements of the visual style are recognizable to today’s kids from watching the Powerpuff Girls, and the friendly scientist-narrators could easily be swapped with The Professor.

In general, they just seem so pleased with things. You can practically see them thinking “We are Scientists! Isn’t that Great! We are Thinking Big Thoughts!”

At this point, these movies may be more fun for adults than kids, but I may give these another try when things are a little quieter around here. The Palo Alto school district is having a 5-day weekend, so the neighborhood kids are running around and I think their attention span may be too short for this sort of movie today.

In the meantime, I’ll be busy Thinking Big Thoughts.