KIDS FIRST! News

Time to lay 2010 to rest and welcome in the new year. But what great memories will remain from 2010! KIDS FIRST! debuted an innovative program that fosters cinematic literacy while continuing to encourage shared movie experiences and bonding between parents and children with the KIDS FIRST! Film Critics’ Search. And we recorded the amazing participation milestone of 11 million votes from all of you to help choose the winners … No, it was more than 11 million votes! Thank you for making the contest such a success, and we can now look forward to hearing from the talented kids who’ll be reviewing and reporting their perspectives on Hollywood’s entertainment offerings.

Hollywood’s entertainment offerings from 2010 included a possibly record-breaking number of animation features, a genre that’s a particular favorite of mine. From box-office blockbusters like Toy Story 3 to more niche releases like Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue, animation continues to charm audiences with its unique renderings of imagination. We even got to enjoy another fairy tale brought to life in Disney’s signature style with Tangled (pictured) and a surprise piece of quality storytelling with How to Train Your Dragon. Shrek and Despicable Me … Furry Vengeance (one of a hybrid style that combines live action with its animation) and Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole … the genre is not only alive and well but providing high-quality entertainment for all ages.

But the shows are more entertaining and enjoyable when shared; humor is exponentially funnier when someone else’s laugh is added to yours. May the new year bring you many more happy times and shared memories.

And for all of you planning to enter our 2011 KIDS FIRST! Film Critics Search competition, take note as we will be offering Film Critics Boot camp in five cities this summer: L.A., N.Y., Denver/Boulder, Santa Fe and Fort Worth. Details coming soon. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter at http://www.kidsfirst.org/ so you won’t miss out on the updates — plus, it’s a great way to be informed of all the other cool stuff that KF is involved in.

I recently re-watched the original Miracle on 34th Street. I first discovered this film one late night when I was a teenager, babysitting for a couple in the neighborhood. That was long before home entertainment systems, so every year I would look forward to the winter holiday season with my eye fixed on the TV programming schedule. To this day, the 1947 film has never disappointed me, reinforcing all those romantic feelings of wonder and hope and belief — and love — that seem to be expressed more openly during this season than any other time of year.

Strange to imagine that, when it was released (in MAY of 1947), the studios tried to hide the Christmas aspect in their promotions and play it up simply as a feel-good movie. But then, it is a feel-good movie.

Another now-classic Christmas fare was likewise not a Christmas release originally. A Christmas Story was first released before Thanksgiving in 1983, but public outcry over it not running weeks later for Christmas resulted in limited screenings until after New Year’s. Although more slice-of-life than fantasy, it also establishes a wonderful sense of innocence — perhaps because it is an adult looking back on his childhood, but is it a coincidence that it, like Miracle on 34th Street, is set in the 1940s (the decade that gave us another Christmas icon — It’s a Wonderful Life)? (Parents note, however, that A Christmas Story’s through-line is a boy’s yearning for a BB gun.)

KIDS FIRST! names Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life on our “Top 100” list of films.
 
Christmas is not a holiday I celebrate, but I revel in the spirit of this season and enjoy the movies built around the “Christmas spirit.”  These are plentiful, and every year brings new ones to warm our hearts. Only time will tell whether some of these movies that are made for this season will become as indelibly tied to it as the ones named above that weren’t.

Here’s to miracles. Happy Holidays.

This is THAT time of year - when we try extra hard to get together with distant family and keep in touch with good friends, but often get blindsided by all the planning and shopping and get-it-to-the-post-office-in-time. To those of you who have it all in hand, I salute you. To those who are more like me, well, let’s take a deep breath together and remind ourselves why we’re making ourselves crazy: We want to make this an extra-special time.

One of the easier activities we can do is watch a show together. When we’re too tired for an active interactive (from Chutes & Ladders to Monopoly to Twister to Hide & Seek), we can share the laughs, tears and wonder of a well-presented feature film. We at KIDS FIRST! hope our age recommendations will help you choose the best programming for your family.

Bake something together to enjoy while watching; that can become a special holiday memory as well (my twin grandsons refer to the pumpkin bread they helped make in their first baking experience as “Grandma’s bread”). A few shakers of colored sprinkles and tubes of icing can release the budding artist in folks of all ages, whether or not you plan to leave out a plate of decorated cookies for Santa.

If your holiday comes up next week, a very Merry Christmas or Happy Kwanzaa to you and yours. And a belated Happy Chanukah to those who celebrated the beginning of this month. Happy Holidays to all.

Photo by Ranny Levy

3-D! Wow! When a feature movie is released in this format, the 3-D aspect is hyped as much as any of the stars. It’s the latest big-deal thing.

Except that it isn’t. The first 3-D predated even the 20th Century. (For an interesting history, visit http://hollywoodinhidef.com/video-gallery/.) It has come and gone in various technologic processes from the major studios since the 1930s. It seems to have finally hit its stride, in no small measure thanks to James Cameron’s innovative use of the technique in Avatar - bring you into the scene rather than have the scene jump out at you. And now you can watch Avatar in 3-D at home!

But what can you watch besides Avatar? Titles are limited, as well as genres (animation and horror are the bulk of available movies, although sports fanatics may find more to their liking). That’s one consideration you may want to keep in mind if you’re thinking about plopping down multiple thousands of dollars on a 3-D TV for your home.

List cost usually includes two pair of the special shutter glasses you need to wear to experience the 3-D effects. If your family numbers more than two, you’ll need to pop for additional glasses (which could run $150 each) or try to establish a sign-up or turn-taking schedule (yeah, right). Borrowing from friends — or inviting friends to join you and bring their own glasses — may not work, as different manufacturers’ glasses are not necessarily mutually compatible.

Another aspect worth considering: That was a lot of years to get theaters across the board to invest in the specialized equipment to present the format. So, while television manufacturers now are developing their own products, there is no uniformity among them. Weigh the thrill and cachet of being one of the “first on your block” to own a 3-D TV with the chance you take that your selection may not, ultimately, become the accepted one (remember Beta video? A better-quality video, but VHS won that battle).

Avatar photo by WETA, courtesy Twentieth Century Fox

It’s hard to imagine there could be an excess of happiness at Santa’s workshop, but most of his elves are rather stressed with Christmas just two days away. Eubie, however, is one elf whose exuberant happiness knows no bounds — and his unrestrained expression of it gets on the nerves of the other elves.

Thus begins the story a wandering minstrel tells two children he finds fighting — throwing Christmas tree ornaments at each other! — on the sidewalk just before Christmas. The very ludicrousness of the premise sets it up for laughs from viewers old enough to recognize the contradictions.

All of Santa’s managers try to avoid having Eubie assigned to their division. He ends up in Naughty & Nice, checking the last-minute ratings of children that will determine whether Santa will leave them a gift. When he notices that almost all of the “naughty” notices are from the town of Blues Ville, he defies North Pole rules and sets out to try to help them. “It could be all these children need is a little cheering up,” he says prophetically.

Blues Ville, it turns out, is the antithesis of Eubie — everyone is glum. Situated in a narrow strip of land between two steep mountains, it receives sunlight for only a few minutes a day, and the darkness permeates its citizenry’s soul. Not quite all the citizenry, though; Eubie persuades another child to help him in his efforts to make them nicer by making them happier, and she takes him to a meeting of the town’s few happy people. “I’m so encouraged by our turnout,” the meeting presenter announces, and Eubie and his companion look around the room at the rows of otherwise empty chairs.

Interspersed with Eubie’s escapades in Blues Ville and antics at the North Pole are songs from Harry Connick Jr. Bringing Eubie to life is the voice of Rob Paulsen, whose performance added another Annie Award nomination to the three noms and three wins he’s earned in a career that also includes Daytime Emmys for animation and DVD Exclusive awards for songs. The award-winning cast also includes comedian Lewis Black. Friendship, perseverance and happiness (with tongue often firmly in cheek) are the attributes whose value The Happy Elf celebrates — all wrapped in the Christmas spirit on Anchor Bay Entertainment’s DVD re-release of the 45-minute animation from 2005.

When The Polar Express was released theatrically in 2004, it was lauded for its animation, and the quality of that animation is retained on the DVD recently released by Warner Home Entertainment. The animation is so exceptional, there are sequences when, watching it, you may well forget it is animation and view it as a live-action feature film. Director Robert Zemeckis made use of the technique of motion capture, in which sensors are attached to the actors’ bodies and their movements are then recorded electronically as they perform the characters’ roles on an empty soundstage. The digital information is then used to create the animation, merging it into the three-dimensional CGI world.

The story, however, does not flow as smoothly as the animation, as some sequences seem to be disconnected to anything else. Based on the book of the same name by Caldecott Medal winner Chris Van Allsburg, it centers on a boy of about eight years old who is just on the cusp of the “is Santa Clause real?” stage of childhood. The film opens on Christmas Eve, with the unnamed “hero boy” lying in bed listening in hope against hope for the sound of Santa’s sleigh bells. What he hears instead — and feels, for it shakes his room like an earthquake as it rumbles to his yard — is a passenger train: the Polar Express.

As no one else in hero boy’s family — younger sister, mother, father — seems to hear the train, perhaps it and hero boy’s adventures are a dream. There are scenes and characters that come in and out of the story with no defined reason, which is an attribute of dreams. But the animation is so life-like, it works against a dream effect if such is, in fact, what’s intended.

Body movements, especially musculature around the characters’ mouths when they speak, replicates that of a human body very closely, and the characters and scenery have little of the cartoon quality usually found in animated films. This makes all the more noticeable the lack of any human warmth to the story; we can identify with the characters but we don’t feel for them.

Hero boy is invited by an indifferent conductor to board the train. He finds other children already on board, and one more joins them at the next stop. One is a lost and lonely boy, one is a know-it-all boy — perhaps aspects of hero boy’s personality? — and one is a caring and mothering girl. These four, singly or in various combinations, share adventures with the conductor, a mysterious hobo who rides atop the train and, eventually, with Santa himself.

The train takes them through such action adventures as a broken-brake run on terrifying stretches of roller-coaster track and an attempted crossing of a frozen lake of which the ice begins to crack apart and the resulting waves threaten to submerge the train. Scenery is beautifully composed, from snow-covered forest to breathtaking Northern Lights to homes and towns. Ultimately, hero boy’s quest for truth puts it back to his own mind with the message, “Sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.”

Writes 15-year-old KIDS FIRST! reviewer Phoenix Diller, “The film, like the book, captures the Christmas magic and everything Christmas represents. My favorite part of the film is when the boy runs outside in his pajamas to the magical Polar Express at the beginning of the film. The train is so believable and the sounds are very much the sounds of a real train! It’s a very magical scene!”

Special effects bring both power and realism to the action. This, plus the premise of the story, makes the film suited more to an older child than a very young one.

A bad experiment gone worse releases a mist over a small town, and … viola! A kid’s wish comes true and parents and kids do a switcheroo: Parents act like little kids and kids take on the attitudes and behaviors of their parents. How this works with adults who aren’t parents is one of many questions that severely test the standards of cinematic “suspension of disbelief.” However, the thesis of Opposite Day, released by Anchor Bay for home entertainment on DVD, is sure to enchant kids eight to 13, who typically feel their parents give them too many rules and too little of their time. The good news for parents is that this fantasy ride comes with a moral: It’s tough being a grown-up and kids should appreciate their parents.

Opening scenes in an experimental laboratory introduce the viewer to a harried scientist (French Stewart) and a device with the potential to make an adult regress to childishness. With an abrupt change, the camera then swings through a small town, giving a quick visual overview of the people — and their personalities — who populate it, finally coming to rest in a schoolyard. “If kids ran the world, it would be so much better,” says one boy.

Sammy Benson (Billy Unger), the boy who speaks these prophetic words, and his sister Carla (Ariel Winter) leave town for a vacation with their grandparents. Tucking the children into bed, Grandma Benson (Renée Taylor) points to a night sky ablaze with twinkling lights and says of one of them, “Oh look, it’s the first star” (another test of the viewer’s ability to suspend disbelief — but, to be fair, there is one star considerably larger than the others that she might be pointing to, and, of course, there needs to be a wishing star to move the plot forward).

Sammy jumps on the opportunity. “I wish that kids ruled the world.”

Meanwhile, the harried scientist has been goaded by the lab’s director to show breakthroughs of some sort that could be used to make a buck, and he puts his own son into a device he’s been working on to enable parents to understand their babies’ talk. But uh oh — that’s the device we already saw turn a mature chimp infantile.

Understandably upset at his father for putting him at risk, Chaz (Dylan Cash), the scientist’s son, rampages through the lab, pulling wires to disable the device, which then malfunctions and releases the malignant mist that turns things “opposite” throughout the town.

When Grandma and Grandpa Benson (Dick Van Patten) bring Sammy and Carla home, they are mystified to see kids in their parents’ work clothes (resized to perfectly fit their smaller bodies — a seeming anomaly that is addressed in short order) doing their jobs and mouthing their sayings, while the adults (who, fortunately, get to stay in clothes that fit) play hopscotch and act out childishly. Of the predictable sight gags that fill the bulk of the movie’s 81 minutes, some are funny, some start funny but drag on too long, and some — like one kid ad exec who too perfectly mimics her adult counterpart — are simply disturbing.

To Sammy, the situation is perfect — or would be if only a kid-cop hadn’t arrested his grandparents for infractions that began with Grandpa Benson being “too young” to drive a car. And then, it doesn’t stay fun for long. “Being in charge is hard work,” Sammy admits after a day of taking care of his childish parents (Pauly Shore and Colleen Crabtree).

Sammy and Carla learn about what happened at the lab, realize it wasn’t Sammy’s wish upon the star that caused the madness, and head over to the lab to make everything back to “right” again. Chase scenes and fight scenes ensue, with the two youngsters taking on the lab’s security forces (Carla) and a gang of Ninjas (Sammy) set on them by friend-turned-evil Chaz.

But Sammy and Carla can’t make things normal again without scientific know-how. Will Chaz agree to help them? “We can take care of our parents better than they could take care of us,” Chaz tells them. To which Carla argues, “Parents look after us unconditionally.” Chaz, of course, has recent reason to question that, but the writers instead hark back to an early scene in which Chaz tells of his dad’s love and expresses only a wish that they had more time together. Sammy throws in the clincher: “Why rush growing up?”

With only seconds to go, they try to stop the attack Chaz had set in motion that would take the phenomenon global, and also try to undo the effect in their own town.

Outtakes during the closing credits share some of the silly moments on set during filming, giving a glimpse into the playful “child” in cast members old and young.