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Off-season football for dads: Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 on DVD
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.
Using both old color film from the game and the color commentary by the Yale and Harvard players, the key moments of the game are relived with the benefit of 40 years of experience by all involved. Yale, the superior team by all accounts, as such a commanding lead that the Yalies goof off during half time and most of the way into the fourth quarter because a Harvard comeback isn’t even possible in their imagination. Each player on both sides relives especially the last minutes as if the event was a religious experience or some shifting of the cosmos.
Almost all of the players are charming, humble, and generous in their assessments of the game and their roles in it. And, of course, it being Harvard and Yale, they make offhand references to famous people they were dating at the time (Meryl Streep) or rooming with (George Bush, Al Gore). Tommy Lee Jones was an offensive tackle on the Harvard team of 1968 and has a major role in the film, though his are dreary appearance since he appears grumpy about the story for some reason.
The film is also a fun football highlight reel of some stunning college ball for those of us Jonesing for some Monday Night entertainment during the long months of Spring and early Summer.
Kids will be pulled into the story because of it’s David and Goliath like story and ending, and dads will enjoy the look back at a simpler time in America when all the men wore hats and these two all-boys schools had male cheerleaders.
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The Hunger Games: Will you let your kids see it?
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.
It’s one thing to read a book like Lord of the Flies, and another all-together to see Piggy wandering half-blind as he stalked by his classmates. That’s my memory from my adolescent viewing of the movie of that title, the images of which haunt me if I think about them. And that’s what I’m worried about for my just-turned 12 daughter.
The Hunger Games is getting a “Pause 13″ rating from Commonsense Media for quite brutal scenes of violence: children being speared to death or having their heads smashed in. As this article mentions, it’s one thing to read about these things and another to see them happen on screen. From what I can tell, this sounds a lot more violent than Harry Potter and I’m tempted to say that my daughter shouldn’t see it at her age.
In canvassing other families, however, I get different reactions. Some applaud how involved and protective I am of my children. Some barely hold back a snigger for my prudish and unrealistic parenting in the face of modern media. Still others refuse to take a stand, believing that their kids can just what is and isn’t too much for them.
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Movie Review: Contagion
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.
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.
Dads will find themselves imagining what it would be like to be Matt Damon, the main dad character in the film. His cheating wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) is the main carrier of the disease who inadvertently brings it from Hong Kong, infecting her Chicago lover, while on the way home to her husband in Minneapolis. She quickly dies off, leaving Matt Damon, genetically immune to the virus, to take care of and protect his teenage daughter. As the Day 5, Day 10 and Day 181 tick by, they await the discovery of a vaccine that will save the world.
While real scientists (the CDC is the big hero here) go about trying to save mankind, Jude Law plays an internet journalist cashing in on his early discovery of the virus and hyping a wonder cure. Laurence Fishburne is excellent as a key administrator of the CDC. Viewers will be forgiven for thinking he is a second dad represented in the movie. He spends a fair amount of time on the phone with beautiful Sanaa Lathan who I thought was young enough to be his daughter.
Contagion also stars Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslett, Sanjay Gupta, and Elliot Gould.
Reading the Yahoo and IMDB reviews, it’s clear that most people were very disappointed with this movie. It is clearly not a zombie thriller in the 28 Days genre. But as an intelligent depiction of how things unwind, I found it to be a very scary, and likely under-played version of the horror of this type of epidemic. Some kids might be traumatized by the subject matter, since Contagion does portray a world full of random events that could bring on destruction at any moment. However, most kids will simply be bored, while dads sit trembling in their seats wondering how to protect their kids from the world around us.
I found it gripping and give it an 8 out of 10.
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Who is Simon Miller? family movie on Saturday night
“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.
Sadly, I fear, a lot of parents and siblings won’t have the patience for common denominator entertainment, even if the parents can be secure that their will be no profanity, no sex beyond a hug or short kiss, and rarely a fight that ends in anything more than a few bumps and bruises. We now live in a world with too much stimuli for us to want to sacrifice a precious moment on non-optimal entertainment, deadening us sadly to common experience.
But I digress, my kids and I sat down to watch “Who is Simon Miller,” a spy “thriller” after weeks of anticipation. My daughter had been away at Girl Scout camp and had asked us to hold off watching it until she got home. At 11, she had thoroughly enjoyed other movies in the series, though like any media savvy child, she picked them apart ruthlessly for predictability, character development and believability. My son, aged 7, was also intrigued by the spy theme.
While I felt I had seen this theme before — family suddenly becomes aware that father is a spy — you have to love the way that P&G makes it a family crisis. A bit like “The Incredibles,” “Who is Simon Miller?” quickly becomes how the family’s different special skills, working together, save the day. One thing P&G Studios has done well in all of these movies is made the family relationships pretty real. There is no snarky sarcasm or tempestuous teenager. The families, while maybe a bit overly sentimental, are about as unfunny and day-to-day as most of us are. That’s not necessarily a negative. It’s a relief to see people interact in a sane and mostly respectful fashion, which is likely a P&G guideline. I particularly liked the role of the son, Kevin, who is a little sarcastic without being mean.
The story itself, stuffed into 90 minutes, is a international adventure that includes visits to Paris, Geneva and Prague. It moves around enough to be interesting to jaded adults, but don’t expect to feel like you’re watching Matt Damon or 007. Some adult viewers will be distracted by location shots that are any place but Paris (despite a looming Eiffel Tower in many shots) and Geneva and Prague might just be Prague or Quebec City, as far I could tell. In this case, it was better not to think too much about it.
All in all, not a bad evening of entertainment. While I was tempted to peek at my smartphone more than a few times, I enjoyed watching the kids react and hearing their comments.
Parents should be warned that despite a G rating, this film has some moments of bloodless violence and some foreboding tension with threatening villains. My 11 year old daughter thought it was scary and not the best thing to watch right before bed. My 7 year old boy was unphased however. As I mentioned, though, there is no profanity.
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Movie Review: Change of Plans, new family movie, airs January 8, 2011
P&G Productions will release their new film, “Change of Plans” on Saturday, January 8, 2011 on FOX at 8 PM and 7 PM Central. As we’ve reported, P&G and Walmart have teamed together to create new family-friendly movies that tell positive stories the entire family can watch together. The first three aired on NBC. Change of Plans will air on Fox. In creating movies that meet this objective, P&G is trying to walk a tightrope between films that are so insipid that adults will squirm, and tales that a small child can get caught up in, without resorting to inappropriate language and violence. This is not an easy task, especially given other alternatives, as well as a modern tendency for every member of the family to retreat to their own corner to enjoy entertainment made especially for them. Leave it to P&G to invest heavily in this type of venture, as they did with the creation of the Soap Opera, to claim turf that is especially vital to their commercial interests. Previous films have been Secrets of the Mountain, The Jensen Project, and A Walk in My Shoes.
The other films I’ve seen in this project have failed, but we have found each one better than the last, with progressively better scripts, acting and production values. Change of Plans is another step forward in the right direction.
Change of Plans tells the story of a dynamic young couple who have a life-changing experience. Jason is a jet pilot and engineer and his wife, Sally, is an aspiring singer/musician on the verge of huge musical career. They have an action-packed life, symbolized in the credits by hot cars, an in-house recording studio, scuba gear, and vacation plans in progress. Just as the happy couple are about to get away from it all, they get a phone call with life-changing news: an old friend has died in a car crash leaving four kids behind with nowhere to go. The couple then makes a quick decision to cancel their vacation plans to take the kids in, until a suitable foster family can be found. The additional plot twist is that the four kids come from the four corners of the globe, including South America, China, Africa and North America.
Most viewers, at this point, can imagine what happens next, with the expected clash between the busy lives of Jason and Sally and the emotional needs of multicultural kids adjusting to a new life after being suddenly orphaned. The director, John Kent Harrison, does a good job with a script that packs way too many stories into a 88-minute film. Competing for attention are the emotional complexities of no fewer than eight characters, on top of a back story of why the deceased parents had collected one child from each country they visited while in the Peace Corps. While both my daughter and I were teary-eyed during the expected happy ending, it was more a programmed response than because we had enough time to truly be invested in the characters.
Contemporary viewers may feel slightly manipulated by the full representation of almost every ethnic group, as well as a nod to the military, race car driving, and country music. P&G even managed to squeeze in a dinner prayer at one point, which felt more than a little gratuitous. While you have to applaud a large corporation’s devotion to presenting a cross-section of the real America rather than a vision of 1950s America, I can safely say that I’ve never seen a more blatantly politically correct mixture of symbols. The only thing missing was a gay character, but maybe that is still a little too much inclusiveness for P&G and Walmart in 2011.
Joe Flanigan (“Stargate Atlantis”) as Jason and Brooke White (“American Idol”) as Sally are well-cast in these roles. Both have movie star looks but also have everyday folks charm. For the most part, the child actors also do well, especially Clarissa Suwoko as the six-year-old Sung Lee, who is irresistibly cute in the film.
Despite our criticisms, you can do worse for modern entertainment the whole family can watch. And certainly, this is a better option than most chick-flicks out there which only seem to emphasize dating as the major behavior to emulate. Here, the family can discuss what makes a family, how families stay together, and maybe even the sacrifices parents make of their own dreams, for the good of their kids. I am optimistic that Brian Wells, the Executive Producer of all four films in the project, learns more with each film, and that the studio will find a formula that will work for family night, if not as a movie theatre feature film.
Note to readers: P&G invited me to the set of to the set of “A Change of Plans” in late 2010. While they paid for transportation and lodging, no payment was made for this review, and my opinions are my own and not those of P&G or Walmart.
Related articles
- Review: “A Walk In My Shoes” new family movie (greatdad.com)
- Brooke White, “American Idol” Alum, Makes Acting Debut In TV Movie (popcrunch.com)
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