March 27, 2012 – 11:47 AM
If you haven’t seen Harvard Beats Yale, get it and watch it with your kids. As much a documentary about this amazing game played in 1968, it’s a look backward at a different time. The director of this documentary, Kevin Rafferty, spends easily a third of the interviews with the players discussing the anti-war movement in 1968, the politics of the two different campuses and the sexual revolution.
I won’t give away the ending, but even knowing the score, because it’s in the title, does not diminish the suspense going into the final minutes of this documentary.
March 25, 2012 – 10:51 AM
The Hunger Games is out this weekend, and the only other media property getting as much buzz is the premiere of the long-awaited Mad Men (see the GreatDad review of the Hunger Games).
While every 11-year old has read this book, along with many way-over 11 year olds, the graphic violence in the book is disturbing to protective dads like yours truly. The book, after all, is the story of a fight to the death put on annually by the leaders of a dystopian society. The players in the “game” are all just kids and do succeed in killing each others with arrows, spears, and old fashioned sticks and stones.
October 16, 2011 – 5:15 PM
Be aware. This is not a movie for kids. The subject matter is very scary but for most people under 40, this is not the kind of thriller they will be expecting.
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Contagion is a thriller in the Syriana tradition with plot threads coming at you from all directions. Many personalities and subplots tell an over-arching story, in this case, the spread of a killer virus the that threatens to kill one of every four people on the planet. However, there are no car chases, no surprise twists, and not many love stories going on. Most of the energy is focussed on the science of a deadly virus as well with some side detours to the societal breakdown that happens in cities quarantined for their over-exposed populations.
“Who is Simon Miller,” the newest of the “Family Movie Night” series created by P&G, premieres Saturday night 8/6/11 on NBC at 8/7PM Central. We had a chance to see a screener and watched it the other night as a family.
I”ve written several times about this effort. (Full disclosure: P&G invite me on set for the filming of “Change of Plans.”) I like P&G’s mission, which is to create family programming the whole family can watch together and enjoy. It’s a tall order though. What is interesting to my 7 year old is not what interests my wife. What my wife and daughter like doesn’t do it for me. P&G Studios, along with co-sponsor, Walmart, is trying to thread this needle. As I think I’ve joked before, it’s a bit like a singing dog; it’s not that he sings well, but that he sings at all. That’s what can be said, for all of the movies to date, which have gotten better since the first ones: they are not horrible and the whole family can watch, if you have a little patience.
Sounds like another in a long list of plays and movies that infantalize men as fathers and caregivers. The anxieties may be real, and the situations humorous, but it seems like we’ve seen and heard all this before. It makes you wonder if there’s any way to make the simple job of being a “good” mom or dad seem more noble than just a domestic cliché.
‘Knickerbocker’ at the Public Theater NY
Before the Baby Is Born, Dad Needs to Soothe His Own Inner Child
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