by the Night Writer Behind every super-villain is a lousy parent. At least that’s the message I picked up on when the family sat down the other night to watch the DVD of Despicable Me, the animated movie featuring the voices of Steve Carell, Jason Segal and Julie Andrews. Whether it’s the main character Gru’s [...]
by the Night Writer I wanted to take a minute to tell you about a great mystery series our whole family has been enjoying: Foyle’s War. It’s a British series set in the southeast of England beginning in the early days of World War II. Michael Kitchen stars as Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle who [...]
by the Night Writer Here’s a little recycling in honor of St. Patrick’s day — a couple of older posts that I’m re-running here because they fit the occasion. If you weren’t reading this blog in 2006 they’ll be new to you, and if you were, well, you’ve probably forgotten and they will seem new [...]
by the Night Writer When I told the lads last week that we were going to watch a classic Bill Murray movie that featured a cute, furry animal they were all, “Cool – Caddyshack!” “Oh yeah,” I replied, “And what positive message could I possibly squeeze out of that besides ‘Be the ball.’” There were [...]
Fairy tales are one of the oldest ways mankind has used entertainment to teach the value of good behavior and consequences of bad. Most tales at heart tell of a central character who does either good or bad and either triumphs in the end or suffers gruesome retribution (especially in the original, non-sanitized versions of [...]
I haven’t pulled back from the monthly movie classes with the boys and this month I took us even deeper and darker than where we’ve gone of late (The Dark Knight and The Ghost and the Darkness). Last week we watched two segments of an excellent BBC documentary entitled The Nazis: A Warning From History. [...]
I came across Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns book in the late 80s and was captivated by the story and images, and how powerfully the re-imaged story overwrote my memories of the campy, 1960s television show. This was a deep story: grimmer, grittier, darker and an evocative social commentary on culture and the individual, [...]
I’ve always been on the lookout for films with strong messages dealing with honor and character in this series for teen-age boys, and the stories can be fictional, factual or a bit of both. It’s a bonus, however, when we have a chance to see something of a historical nature that can also help us [...]
Tonight was “Fundamentals in Film” Night with the teen-age boys and a couple of the dads. We watched a movie, as usual, but first I had to interject some real life — much to the lads’ chagrin. I haven’t blogged about our movie nights for awhile but we’ve been getting together regularly for two years [...]
We went to see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed as planned Friday night. We went to the 6:30 p.m. show and it looked like there were two dozen people in the theater. I hope the numbers increase because it was an interesting movie presented in a mostly respectful way, dealing with a subject that — while [...]
