5 Musical Movies for Fourteen Going on Forty

Hey, Red1. You're fourteen now.

When you're a young adult, you start putting things together. You start making your own sense of the world. As a dad, I want to give you a few head starts. Hand you a few nuggets of wisdom and wonder. We've been trading films and TV shows to fill in some blanks.

You're already a They Might Be Giants, Star Wars, Tim Burton, Queen and David Bowie fan--very cool.

We've had conversations about jokes in TV shows and movies that you didn't get, so I thought it was up to me to 'buy you a clue'. We've been calling it a guide to modern cultural references. It's more than just a course in pop culture, but a course in understanding how modern culture is shaped and what the core pieces are.

It's more than WWII, The Beatles, Elvis, The Wall, Freddie Mercury, Andy Griffith, and The Dark Crystal. There's much much more. But those are great starts.

This is part of your list or guidebook to understanding and enjoying the in-jokes. You only get one first look at a show or movie and if you aren't properly prepared, those quips and barbs are going to continue to just shoot right on over your head. We're all in this together... Brazil.

Let's make some lists of films loosely grouped by themes. Our first will be musical movies, but not necessarily musicals. Some will require some parental guidance or discernment. There are certainly images in these films that a lot of parents would have issue with, but even an R-rated film from the 70's, like The Wall, has some discretion and restraint, but clearly requires discussion about violence toward women, racism, and fascism.

In the first list, we discover that these certainly don't pass the Bechdel Test. You might even think that to be a woman in a musical requires the character to actually be a prostitute, but that discussion often isn't limited to just musicals.

Musical Bang

1. Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) - It might get lost on lists of musicals if you're shying away from the subject matter, but it's got all the crazy epic shrill rock star Jesus hitting high notes as flips the tables in the temple.


2. Hair (1979) - So looking forward to watching this one again. The cast alone will drive yet another list. Did you catch Mrs. Garrett dancing on the table?


3. The Wall - "If you don't eat your meat, how to expect to get any pudding!" I've said this for years at the kitchen table and sounded like a raving lunatic--to my own delight--imagine the light bulbs brightening in Red1's head when she realizes I'm just mimicking the lunatic in The Wall.

University game break.

The Sims 3 Collection (Photo credit: origami_potato)

Not everything is entirely educational and good for you. Sometimes a game is just a game. I haven't figured out how to properly spoil the fun of the University expansion for the The Sims3, so the girls are still enjoying it. Perhaps they're goal-setting in a way. Thinking about life after high school.
{Perhaps I could just tell myself that.}

Hope real life isn't much like this game for them. I didn't have the traditional university/Greek experience, so that's literally all Greek to me.

We did try to do some experiments with the Sims3 game play. Red2 tried to make juice with ingredients of different quality ratings. They score the produce you grow with a simple system: good, great, excellent, etc. She found clearly that you could sell the sqeezings that were made with finer ingredients for more money. The extra sim work was worth the extra 'simoleons.'

Indiana Jones movies map (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I thought the traveling expansion would be a tad bit useful. We had some conversations about China, Egypt, and France, but in the end, they were just game play. Brushing up against geography a bit.

Maybe some good geography lessons would be to do an Indiana Jones-style map of all the locations in James Bond movies or all the places on the globe that Jennifer Garner went in Alias. They're a bit young for Alias still, but I bet there are some good 'sight-seeing' value to these movies. Did they actually film in all the locations or was it just movie magic? That would be a good research project.

Have any subversively devious and fun ways to talk about geography?

X - as consensus and defining your destination #atozchallenge

Image by takomabibelot via Flickr

The X is not just two lines crossing in the middle
or two angles touching at the point.

Imagine four beaks, lines or ideas that meet at the same point in space,
in agreement.

The shape of the letter is the idea. The Intersection is the agreement of location or concept. Yes, X marks the spot.

Imagine four people coming to a consensus on one point in conversation. If you work in an office and see this often, I'm a little jealous. "This project has many flaws. How do we solve the problems our users face every day?" There are too many possible solutions. No one meeting point or consensus, but an endless mess of points like a storage room full of tribbles. (There they are, Alex!)

A conversation at the dinner table rarely focuses on one single point in space, but if the four of us sit around the table like we occasionally do, we all meet in one spot in time and space.

If we can't agree on the idea or topic, that's okay. It's more interesting and diplomatic.

Image by stuant63 via Flickr

Where are we going with this? Lines and points.

It's a little lesson in charting. Plotting your goal or destination.

If you find yourself in a fictional space ship, you may enter a destination into your Navigation Computer. The system establishes a route to avoid galactic obstacles like planets, other ships and asteroids. When you hit 'go' in Star Wars, all the pinpoint stars streak past you like lines as you are whisked away to your desired point in space. Not an X, but a burst of points around you, like they are ideas getting out of your way.

This clip illustrates a complicated mode of travel reimagined and investigates the ability to apply it to our real lives. Lines and points.




Hopefully, the destination is still at the same address and no giant space stations have blown up your vacation destination. I bet your travel insurance doesn't cover Imperial entanglements. Mars in 90 days? Sabbatical anyone?

Movies with Ebert - #AtoZchallenge

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I love me some Roger Ebert.

I am one of his fans that grew up listening to him argue and discuss films with Gene Siskel and then several other extremely great film reviewers.

I share this TED talk today to catch anyone up with the latest Ebert news because his voice has been reinvented in a few remarkable ways through technology.

His words celebrate the human voice and how every day YOU and I are part of this new dynamic conversation. How are you sharing your voice?

Crave/CNET Blasts off with Top-10 tech tricks we're sick of seeing

Top-10 tech tricks we're sick of seeing in movies | Crave - CNET

This is a great list from last week, but it's sure to be a classic. Super zoom in, bad cell phone reception, copy the data off the enemy's computers, all cliches that we must put an end to.

I promise not to put any of these into my book.

Hilarious clips in the article including this one, which is one of my very own personal pet peeves.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 - should lead to the TV series.

Yet another distraction, but look at this scene from The Force Unleashed II.








It's so exquisitely acted by the digital characters. The stormtroopers move so very realistically. It's an excellent piece of game cinematics. Even the human character is rendered with exceptionally high level of craft.

Image by popculturegeek.com via Flickr

It makes me sad to hear about the live action Star Wars television series is on hold when a snippet of the universe delivered here is so nice. Perhaps we're waiting for the next big leap, like the "dinosaur leap" that green-lighted Episode I. This was our ability to create the dinosaurs so realistically in Jurassic Park that impressed George enough to be able to bring Jar Jar to life. {Yes, this is me being more sarcastic than Mr. Lucas deserves. I really like Jar Jar... now.  But that's a whole other post.}

Image via Wikipedia

So it would be too expensive to produce right now, Mr. Lucas? Really? I'm so sorry to hear that. I would like to put my vote in for seeing the new series verses having 3D versions of the 6 movies, but I know it's a good move. We will all go see them in the theater again as they come out. I promise. And we'll bring our kids.

And THEN, when we're all excited about Star Wars again, you can launch the new TV series and we'll line up to buy the new action figures.

Promise.



I haven't experienced the first Force Unleashed game but I'm interested in reading the book by Sean Williams. The story has gotten some high marks. Too bad this new installment isn't getting the rave reviews. I'm sure it's going to be pretty fun to play regardless.

Plug the big speakers in and send the kids away for the weekend kind of fun.

{Oh, that sounds so sad.}

Related articles

• Gamewatch: Fable III, Rock Band 3, Star Wars The Force Unleashed II (pcworld.com)
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Reachin gout... (reaching out)

Image via Wikipedia

We have two new films to look out for that our pals at Blastr tell us about, but they posted Flash video clips that I cannot view on my PADD*. So I leisurely flip over to my other pal's little website, http://trailers.apple.com/ to see what the fuss it about.

First is a response to reaching out to help others locally. Case 39, a new horror thriller vehicle for Renee Zellweger. She portrays a social worker who gets involved too personally with a child and all heck literally breaks loose. We even have a stretchy "Nightmare on Elm Street" door in the trailer. It's a very good trailer... we'll have to keep an eye on this one. There are already lots of  folks talking about it. The film has quite a history.

Our second film is Skyline. Remember last century when we brazenly sent out a gold record that basically invited all the space aliens to come and eat us? You know, it came complete with the 70's version of a Google Map link right to our front door. Skyline promises to show us another possible repercussions of NASA's Voyager mission. Think giant ships with tractor beams for people. (Yikes, you know what a tractor beam is, right?)

Here's what happens when you're caught in a tractor beam with Han Solo. {Wow, I'm actually stating that like it's real. Loving me, right now!}



It's fun to watch a film and get a little scared. That's what it's all about. Just don't take it too seriously, the social workers and astronomers in real life are doing great work. We love you! Please keep helping those kids. Please keep searching for signs of actual intelligent life in the universe.

 *What's a PADD?  The folks at TrekToday.com explain really well. It's my iPad, for those of you who are done with all of these extra links.

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Help! Annie

Image via Wikipedia

Red1, enters fourth grade and gets word that they're putting on the musical "Annie Jr." in the spring. She's been in the school chorus for a year and is excited to try out. But she's not interested in Annie's part. She's all about the character actors! (Ye-haw! Me, too.)

So we're putting Annie DVDs in our Netflix cue and looking at the YouTube clips to see which parts she wants to think about. She knows all about Carol Burnett and loved the few scenes we've seen already. Bernadette Peters may be a new inspiration for her too.

She rolls her eyes and says that all the girls are going to being singing, "Tomorrow, tomorrow..." and just then, Red2 starts singing, "Yesterday..." And that was it. We began pulling up the list of songs and matching them all together.

An Annie/Beatles mashup. Listening to all of the songs from the musical and the Beatles album, "Help!" is going to be great fun. How do they come together? :) We'll see. It's a great project for Google Wave too.

Image via Wikipedia

This week we had the displeasure of hearing that Google is planning to dump Google Wave, but we'll keep using it until they close their doors. Perhaps, by sharing our projects like this more people will start using this amazing stuff Google pops out. (What if email was invented today?)


Our Wave for working on the project. - If you are interested in participating, comment on this post, but don't pass up seeing how awesome group work with Google Wave can be.

Testing out embedding this wave below.  This may totally slow your viewing experience down but let's try it out.

{Waves aren't that happy on iPads, either.}

It's sad that the comic strip Little Orphan Annie is closing down, but all good things...

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Harry Potter's new trailer.

We are so thrilled about Harry. We've really introduced the girls to reading via this series. R1 (who is entering the fourth grade this fall) has been listening to the audio books for a while now. Recently she's finished actually reading the books and was treated to seeing the 6th movie in the theater. We screened it ahead of time so I was prepared to walk out with her if it was too much... that was a while back if you remember. Her reading prowess is remarkable to me. I was not a reader at that age by any means. She is definitely taking after her mother in that arena.

We Googled for this a few days ago and found all sorts of other clips. One even had a bloody Hermione. Quite chilling! Enjoy the show!

The Empire Strikes Back Alternate Ending

Top twelve films... Not a dirty dozen

Alex J. Cavanaugh commanded: do The Movie Dirty Dozen Blogfest. Please be sure to click on his name to check out everyone else that's participating.

In five minutes this is the list I come up with for my best dirty dozen films. Better than a "best of" list, more like a, "you may not realize what you've missed" list. Yes a science fiction tinge, but that's what we've come to expect here. My list is a little 'shallow' into the depths of Science Fiction films, but still accessible for anyone who doesn't want to go TOO deep.

We'll explore these films and more in future posts. This blog exercise has been really thrilling. I've learned a lot about a bunch of strangers and confirmed quite a few things about films and share experiences.

These links are to Amazon, I'd rather give you links to Netflix. (I don't like purchasing those flat round plastic things anymore, myself, but Amazon has this amazing tool for making these links easy, and they are an excellent tool to search out your movies.)

Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back - We had one of those HUGE satellite dishes when I was kid and while flipping through the Canadian channels I stumbled upon a broadcast of TESB in French. I popped in a tape and caught the second half. We like to quote Lucas as saying these are silent movies, but they really aren't. Pop in your DVD and listen to the French audio tracks... if you don't speak French. LISTEN to the sound and emotion and how LITTLE dialog there really is in the city in the clouds.

This odd trailer begins to show you want I mean. It's hosted from CineMagica.

• Blade Runner
• Galaxy Quest
• Firefly /Serenity - Serenity is a continuation of the TV series and should be seen after viewing the Firefly series. I'd have to say that if we weren't a house of browncoats, then at the very least we're avid Joss Wedon fans.
• Twin Peaks / Fire walk With Me
• Brazil
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
• Star Trek First Contact
• Contact
• Sleeper - Woody Allen's oddball science fiction entry. Not a whole lot to say about it, just perfect.

• 12 Monkeys
• A Brief History of Time - VHS

"Should the girls see all of these just yet?"

No, but most would be fine...maybe not Twin Peaks. I'm not sure I was old enough to see it when it came out and I was in college. If you do go off to see Twin Peaks, you do have to watch the TV series FIRST. The movie is a prequel, but will have far less impact if you don't know any of the characters. Fire Walk with Me was the first and only movie I ever had to see again immediately. At the end of the credits I walked out and bought a second ticket. The music of Badalamenti cannot be better. Haunting.

This week we heard tributes (?) to him in True Blood's 2nd episode of season 3. Did you hear him as we entered Bill's basement to looking for the corpse...?