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GLEE Promises $1,000,000 to At-Risk Music Programs

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Glee_GiveANote.jpgGLEE invites everyone across America to lend their voices – and their votes – for their favorite videos in the GLEE “Give a Note” campaign to help save music and arts programs in public schools.

One dollar for every GLEE Season 2 Blu-ray and DVD sold goes toward the $1 million guaranteed commitment. The GLEE “Give a Note” campaign was creatd by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment in partnership with the National Association for Music Education to help save music and arts programs in public schools. With more than 300 public schools nationwide submitting videos for grant consideration, your vote will be critical in determining the outcome.

After a month-long submission phase this past September, each video entry is up on http://www.gleegiveanote.org/ – and now you can cast your vote to decide the finalists. Visit http://www.gleegiveanote.org/ to view videos and vote once per day until voting ends on November 8, 2011, at midnight. The schools receiving the most votes will move on to a final selection made by the National Association for Music Education, which ranks among the world’s largest arts education organizations and marked its centennial in 2007 as the only association that addresses all aspects of music education, from preschool through graduate school. In December, the winning schools will be announced, with three grand prizes of $50,000 each, 10 first prizes of $25,000 each, and 60 second prizes of $10,000 each.
 
For more information, including official rules, visit http://www.gleegiveanote.com/. GLEE Season 2 Blu-ray and DVD is now available in stores everywhere. Glee.jpg

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NAPPA Competition for DVDs Extended a Few More Days

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

NAPPA_logo.JPGThis year’s chance to win the coveted National Parenting Publications Awards has been extended to Aug. 15 for DVDs in the Children’s Products Competition. Recognized for 20 years as a valued “seal of approval” by parents seeking quality children’s products, a NAPPA win conveys merit – and gains the product tremendous exposure in coverage that is both free and easily accessible to consumers. Gold Winners are prominently featured in the special NAPPA Winners November/December Issues of over 30 parenting publications in the top metro markets across the United States and as well as online on parenting websites and mom blogs. Gold and Honors winners are guaranteed a full year of ongoing online coverage on the NAPPA pages of Parenthood.com, the most content-rich site for parents on the Web.

KIDS FIRST!’s own Ranny Levy is a judge for the DVD category. Like Ranny, all the judges are experts in their fields, and the DVDs are also tested by parents and children. So when parents see the NAPPA-winning seal, they know they are getting a great quality product of high educational and entertainment value.

Winners come from major companies as well as small independents, and NAPPA’s website is populated with their testimonials to the power of the exposure, brand recognition and credibility, and increased opportunities in addition to bottom-line sales.

Enter your DVD by Aug. 15 in this competition that could win you print coverage that reaches more than 4 million parents and Web coverage that gets a quarter-million unique visitors each month.

Please email [email protected] or call 818.846.0400, ext. 122 for more information.

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KIDS FIRST! Home Screening Club

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

BandsOnRun_DVD.jpgYour opinion (and your kids’) matter, so we invite you to join the KIDS FIRST! Home Screening Club. Get the DVD and host an exclusive screening for your family and your friends’ families. Then share your feedback with us – from the kids and the adults. It’s as easy as popping popcorn, and there’s no charge to be a member or participate.

We’re kicking off the KIDS FIRST! Home Screening Club with a new film entitled “Bands on the Run: The Rubber Band Movie,” which E One Entertainment released on DVD May 31. The first 100 people to sign up will get a free DVD of the film for their home screening.

When you send us your review of the DVD, you will be entered into a drawing for one of the two HD TVs that we are giving away.

Then, we’ll continue every month with a drawing to give away a prize to someone who sends in their feedback – written reviews, videotaped reviews, comments from your audience and/or photos of your event. The prize will vary from a HD camera to an HD TV.

The screenings are very limited, so your chances to win are very good!

A little about Bands on the Run: The Rubber Band Movie:
If your kids are into rubber band bracelets, it’s no stretch to imagine they’ll be into Bands on the Run: The Rubber Band Movie. Five specialty shaped rubber bands are carelessly left behind on a deserted stretch of desert highway after the box they are in is jostled off the delivery truck. Attempting to “follow that truck” and get back on track to the toy store that’s expecting them, they get run over by a speeding car which turns out to be a good thing, as they happily roll along, stuck to the spinning tire as it unknowingly carries them where they wanted to go. Runtime 50 minutes. Ages 4-8.

KIDS FIRST! Home Screening Club

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‘Elf’ Streets on Blu-ray Oct. 19

Monday, October 18th, 2010

Elf_200x285.jpgElf is a feel-good Christmas movie that brilliantly balances Will Ferrell’s typical silliness with James Caan’s perfectly delivered tough-guy cynicism. Whichever humor is better suited to your personal funny bone, there’s plenty of it to raise a smile or guffaw through to the film’s epilogue.

With a touch of “The Ugly Duckling,” Ferrell’s title character grows up with the elves in Santa’s workshop at the North Pole after having crawled, unseen, from his crib in an orphanage into Santa’s bag of toys one Christmas Eve. The pathos of an orphanage existence is furthered by the scene in a sterile nursery being shot in darkness and shadows, in sharp contrast to the festive ambience of Santa’s North Pole. But rather than open on that dreary note, director Jon Favreau (Iron Man and Iron Man 2) introduces us to the story through a visit with the adoptive elf-father (a pointy-eared Bob Newhart, in his trademark deadpan delivery that imbues the far-fetched tale with an earnest honesty).

“Buddy” (named from the label on the diapers he was wearing on his arrival) grows up with all the positive self-esteem the elves can encourage in him, although it’s obvious to everyone but him that he just doesn’t fit in — literally as well as figuratively, as he spills out of his school desk, squeezes through doorways and nearly smothers Papa Elf when he sits in his lap. But his idyllic existence is shattered when he overhears two elves refer to him as “human.”

So Buddy sets off to find his real father (James Caan as Walter Hobbs), and the snow-globe essence of the scenes changes to real-life when he hits New York City. Misadventures and clumsy emotional overtures follow. Zooey Deschanel provides Ferrell with a sweet love-interest, and Daniel Tay becomes his compatriot as Caan’s other, emotionally starved, son.

There is some mild profanity and discreet sexual innuendo in this 2003, PG-rated, award-winning family film from New Line Cinema, but possibly more disturbing is the reference to unbelievers who think “parents leave the presents under the tree” and eat the cookies put out for Santa — although the film’s resolution affirms that Santa is as real as Christmas spirit.

A REMINDER ABOUT KIDS FIRST! FILM  CRITICS’ SEARCH:
Tomorrow, Oct. 20, is the last day to get those reviews entered in our first annual KIDS FIRST! Film Critics’ Search.

The videotaped reviews will be posted on KIDS FIRST!’s partner site, WonderWorldTV.com. Check it out — entries are posted there now. And be sure to vote for your choice to win. There are two more weeks, but remember that voting closes Oct. 31. Your vote is important — the popular vote will determine the 20 finalists.

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‘My Dog Skip’ Streets on DVD Oct. 19

Monday, October 18th, 2010

MyDogSkip_200x301.jpgKeep your Kleenex handy as you watch My Dog Skip. With a screenplay based on the same-named autobiography of writer and editor William Weaks “Willie” Morris, the award-winning Warner Bros. film from 2000 is a poignant revisit of a period of his childhood growing up in Yazoo City, Miss. Accompanied by his Jack Russell terrier Skip, Will (Frankie Muniz) experiences life lessons of idols fallen and retrieved, bullies, first love and, above all, loyalty and friendship.

The boy-dog partnership almost doesn’t happen, when the puppy Will’s mom gives him for his eighth birthday is taken away by his father. This seeming hard-heartedness is revealed to be anything but, as the stoic dad (in a consummate performance by Kevin Bacon) describes to his wife all the heartache he is trying to protect Will from. Pointing out that Will will face these things eventually, she perseveres, and the story unfolds in multiple layers. As much for adults as children, the film offers gems of insight such as, “Give a man a label and you never need to get to know him.”

It’s fall of 1942, and shy bookworm Will is losing the support he has heretofore relied on when the town athletic hero, Will’s next-door-neighbor and seemingly only friend, is shipped off to fight the Nazis in Europe. Although Dink has been a willing mentor, he’s been more crutch than ladder, and it is Skip who helps Will grow in confidence this pivotal year.

Peopled with believable characters in the adult roles, the film centers much on relationships between Will and other kids in his small town, and their performances are uniformly excellent. And aside from a few inconsistencies (such references to both moonshiners and a six-pack), the period in World War II, pre-integration South is nicely constructed.

A REMINDER ABOUT KIDS FIRST! FILM  CRITICS’ SEARCH:
Tomorrow, Oct. 20, is the last day to get those reviews entered in our first annual KIDS FIRST! Film Critics’ Search.

The videotaped reviews will be posted on KIDS FIRST!’s partner site, WonderWorldTV.com. Check it out — entries are posted there now. And be sure to vote for your choice to win. There are two more weeks, but remember that voting closes Oct. 31. Your vote is important — the popular vote will determine the 20 finalists.

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