For this longish short (or shortish long) trip, I decided to try to ease the pain of the little ones by checking out some audiobooks from the library. Joseph has been listening to this recording of Mary Pope Osborne’s Tales from the Odyssey this past week as he tinkers with his Legos, and has been totally absorbed, so it seemed like something with the potential for easing some of the pain of sitting in the-car-of-the-Mom-who-never-stops-driving.
A quick trip to the library produced three choices:
This was pretty good, although it presupposes you like Steig, which not everyone does. I do – most of the time. As odd as he is, the strong current of parent-child love and devotion that runs through most of his work is rather pure, I think. Tucci’s readings were adequate, but, you won’t be surprised to hear, Streep really shines – I’m not a huge fan of Streep onscreen, myself, but given that her gifts are primarily vocal, she owns it here. I’ve read Brave Irene before, but blast you Meryl Streep, just stop it. No, I’ve just got something in my eye, okay?
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Not that I think Dahl quite deserves the accolades he get – having a spirit that is quite the opposite of what’s appealing in Steig, at times – this seemed as if it might have possibilities, given that it is read by Eric Idle.
It’s awful, and I’m hoping Joseph forgets that we have it. Not that he will, of course.
I suppose Idle is all right, although his accents are slippery and he can’t do the rapid shift in tone and accent between characters’ words and the “he saids.” But the book – or at least the three chapters we listened to before I made it stop today – is something dreadful. It’s just hideously boring. We begin where the previous book ended, with Charlie, family and Willy Wonka blasting off into space in, well, the great glass elevator. Also floating out there is a brand-new space hotel put up there by the US of A, and long sections of what we heard were given over to amazingly tedious conversations between the President and three astronauts who happen to be out there about this mysterious glass elevator. Worst of all is when the dialogue broadens to include various foreign leaders, including the Chinese – and seriously – insert lame, offensive Asian stereotypes and jokes here. Wow.
Finally, what could go wrong with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe read by Michael York? Answer: Not a thing.
(Although I will say, not having read any of the Chronicles in ages – probably for at least ten years or so – the apologetics function of it really jumped out at me, particularly in the professor’s first conversation with Peter and Susan. I mean…even the Lord, Liar or Lunatic argument is in there, rather veiled, but it’s there. Interesting.)
In other pop culture musings:
I’ve had several people ask me about the Twilight series – given that it involves vampires and all. Some of you will probably be able to comment more authoritatively than I, given that I’ve not read it, but two points:
1) The author, Stephanie Meyer, is devout LDS and, I have read, is determined not to have anything untoward or inappropriate for teen readers in her books. I have no idea if there’s some coded Mormon cosmology embedded in the books – joke - but I think fears of occultism or whatever are probably unfounded.
2) Hounded by her friends into submission, Katie finally read them. She said she didn’t like them – found them tedious, repetitive and the characters missing important and usually helpful brain cells.
So, for what that’s worth.
Michael is taking the little boys to see Wall-e tomorrow, a movie in which I have zero – 0 – zilch – interest. So thank goodness for him.
Reactions I’ve read to the film have been mixed. Some love it, it’s Oscar-worthy… but also say it might be really too boring for a younger child.
There’s also the question of theme. Is it really just anti-human environmentalist agitprop? Is it, further, ironic and hypocritical agitprop because the theme of overburdening the planet with junk is being helpfully spread through all kinds of Wall-e…junk?
Peter Chattaway has thoughts and links to what people are saying on that latter point and then follows up with a post containing some words from director Andrew Stanton:
WORLD: How does WALL•E represent your singular vision?
STANTON: Well, what really interested me was the idea of the most human thing in the universe being a machine because it has more interest in finding out what the point of living is than actual people. The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to love, but that’s not always our priority. So I came up with this premise that could demonstrate what I was trying to say—that irrational love defeats the world’s programming. You’ve got these two robots that are trying to go above their basest directives, literally their programming, to experience love.
With the human characters I wanted to show that our programming is the routines and habits that distract us to the point that we’re not really making connections to the people next to us. We’re not engaging in relationships, which are the point of living—relationship with God and relationship with other people.
Thoughts on any and all of the above welcome and sought…
Funny you should mention it….the twilight books…my 20 year old daughter (literature major) has been reading them after much pressure from peers. She’s underimpressed – said that the female protagonist has no character development and she doesn’t get why everyone’s in love with her. Further she(my daughter) said that while the male (Edmund?) is amazing, sensitive, intense – that he’s clearly a fantasy – no real life male will ever be like Edmund….
It’s a lovely thing to have such conversations with a “child”….
Overall recommendation of WALL-E from decentfilms.com is “A”:
http://www.decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/wall-e.html
I suppose Idle is all right…
Not really, actually.
Eric Idle is by far the least talented of all the Pythons. John Cleese and Michael Palin have (and Graham Chapman had) real comic imagination and went on to do good and original stuff since Python.
Eric Idle, on the other hand has been simply retreading and recycling since those days. Witness Idle’s “Spamalot”, a derivative and uninspired Python retread appealing only to those geeks who seem to know every Python bit verbatim.
I would avoid anything featuring Idle.
We all enjoyed Wall-E, but the best part has been the children’s desire to “play Wall-E” in their home environment, which consists of picking up items, shoving them down their shirts, and vrooming over to the appropriate container.
I might just have to sew them some Wall-E costumes if this keeps up.
I really like Pixar movies and have seen all but two of them (Cars and Monsters, Inc). But I just can’t get excited about seeeing Wall-e. I think that the robots are unappealing.
There is no emotional connection right away with a hunk of machinery.
If I saw the movie I might change my mind, but the commercials don’t give me any reason to see it.
Plus, the robot reminds me too much of that robot in the Ally Sheedy movie from years ago. I have no idea why they made it look so similar. I disliked that Ally Sheedy robot movie so much that it is turning me away from Wall-e.
Amy,
Allow me to recommend a friend of mine’s extensive and glowing review of Wall-e:
http://www.thecedarroom.org/archives/003225.html
I enjoyed Wall- e and my personal take on it was pretty much what you quoted from the director. We’re not connecting with other humans. Yes, the pc environmental theme was pretty much shoved in your face – as if you couldn’t figure the dangers of disrespecting the environment yourself. As for being a kid-friendly film, I don’t know about that as I don’t have kids myself. It also didn’t hurt to have the Hello Dolly bit in there for me because as tacky as that movie musical is, I do love it.
Many young people today already believe that technology is more human than “actual people” (to use Stanton’s unfortunate phrase).
“Actual children”, made in the image and likeness of God, could do better than to learn about agape from a robot.
Lovingly written from the pod bay door,
Dave
I saw WALL-E yesterday and, while it wasn’t the second coming of Citizen Kane, as some reviews had led me to expect, I thought it was pretty good. It certainly wasn’t anti-human. Indeed, the humans end up being pretty heroic once they get off their fat butts (literally).
But there is a certain irony in the thought of WALL-E product tie-ins adding to the mountains of junk depicted in the movie.
I wonder, after having seen the movie, how it got all the hype. Maybe Pixar Disney has spent a lot of money marketing this overlong movie to the critics. I really didn’t like it. Neither did my wife and 16 year-old daughter.
My 13 year old daughter, who loves to read, has recently discovered the novels of Regina Doman, and a few other books of fiction with (good) Catholic themes, written for teens or young adults.
The trouble is, most such Catholic fiction, aimed towards young people, is few and far between, unless you are talking about stories about the lives of saints (which she is not interested in).
Anyway, my daughter’s two general interests are historical fiction (U.S.), and stories involving teens in current times. She is not interested in nonfiction.
I’d truly appreciate any suggestions (and so would she)!
===
P.S.: She has read the Twilight series, which she heard about through her best friends (three very nice Protestant girls that she has known since kindergarten). She really liked the books, and is already begging me to buy the next one.
My husband and I had not been to a movie theater since the fall of 2005, before our daughter was born. But we’ve gained some confidence with our girls since then and went to see Wall-E, with our 2.5 year old daughter Cecilia and our 7 month old Felicity. I had to laugh when Cecilia thought the movie was “done” after the pre-show, commercials and previews. They put so much stuff before the movie, who could blame her?
Both girls watched the first half of the movie and then each fell asleep in one of our laps for the second half.
We all rather enjoyed the movie. Afterwards Cecilia kept asking to go again. I found it to be a film about love and what makes us human but also about responsibility and the sanctity of life. I found the film pro-life as well as pro-environment and pro-human.
I wrote a bit about it here:
http://churchdomestic.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/wall-e/
And here is another review I found especially interesting:
http://vocatum.blogspot.com/
I recommend it and while I understand the hesitancy about robots (I had the same one with Cars but came to love that movie). I certainly respect anyone who doesn’t like it, but as there is no moral reason to refuse to see it, I’d hope people would see it before unjustly criticizing it. I also respect anyone’s option to wait until it is on TV so as to not have to pay to see it. We are still in awe over how expensive the movie theater is nowadays. JMHO
Jim,
If your daughter is willing to cross the pond (real and imaginary) she can’t go wrong with Jane Austen. She’ll learn about human nature, including foibles–which will help prepare her for college.
WALL-E was fantastic. Best movie I’ve seen all year. In addition, it has a great, traditional-conservative, Christian message. Wonderful story. The animation, of course, was remarkable. Go see it!
Rod Dreher’s got an incredible post on Wall*E here.
For books on tape, we also like Irish and Greek myths, for example:
http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Myths-Geraldine-McCaughrean/dp/0754065170/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215286742&sr=8-4
Most of these sorts of things do a good job of skimming over the procreative details, though keep an ear open.
We also like the first volume of wise bauer’s The Story of the World (Ancient times). Our library has it on cd. And finally, you can find a few good ones at librivox.org, such as The Wind in the Willows.
Anyone catch the Eucharistic imagery in the closing credits of Wall-e? Wheat, grapes and then an animated mosaic of fish?
I saw Wall-E last week and think it’s really good. I wrote a long review (probably longest post I’ve written) on my blog.
But to be brief: The robots are good examples for humans because their maker(s) gave them good programming.
The Wall-E robots (including the protagonist) were programmed to help humans by compacting junk and making the planet habitable. He can discern beauty and has a little collection of beautiful things like the musical, strings of light, etc. EVE, the exploring robot, is programmed to retrieve lifeforms and deliver them safely to the captain.
Those two motifs – discerning the beauty in the unbeautiful and protecting life – run throughout the movie.
I ike robots. Maybe you have to be a boy or been a child in the ’80s to really like robots, but I enjoyed robot toys as a kid and such.
So I was initially very interested in seeing it. However some reviews I’ve read make it sound kind of depressing. Is it?
I think some of the reviewers left the movie when the credits started, so their last impression is that the humans went to live in a planet-wide junkyard. The drawings and mosaics that are shown with the credits depict what the humans (and robots) did following their return to the Earth.
“Anyone catch the Eucharistic imagery in the closing credits of Wall-e? Wheat, grapes and then an animated mosaic of fish?”
Thanks so much for pointing this out, I shall be sure and look for it when I go to the film.
Jim, your daughter might enjoy Sarah Dessen’s books as well as books by Laurie Halse Anderson. Both write fiction about modern teenagers, although Anderson does have one really good book of historical fiction about the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic (Fever 1793).
As a teenager who liked historical fiction, I was addicted to anything that Ann Rinaldi wrote. It’s all United States-based historical fiction, but it’s well-researched enough not to be fluff.
About the Twilight series…I read the books because several of my students read them and suggested them, and I do try to read the things they’re reading and excited about. I wasn’t overly impressed: the vampire/human love story has been done to death and done better in other venues (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its vampires with souls, for example). Much of it strikes me as highly derivative — Bella’s constant begging for Edmund to turn her into a vampire, heedless of his warnings and of the problems such an existence would entail, reminds me of the reporter in Interview with the Vampire who misses entirely the point of Louis’s story and the unanswerable question of his salvation. Also, Bella is not a strong enough heroine for my tastes. She’s the damsel in distress who keeps on getting saved by Edmund or Jacob or someone else, usually from situations in which she’s placed herself.
The next Harry Potter series it’s not. I liked Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series much better.
I thought Wall*E did have the environmental aspect, but not “humans are a disease.” It seemed more a warning of burying ourselves under our own trash than the other.
And, did anyone besides my husband catch the seeming baptism reference? “Hey, we have a pool?” The two people Wall*E runs into both comment about the pool and never go back to their little holographic screens?
As far as “depressing” goes, stick around to the end or at least the credits. The camera backs away over a hill and what you see is FAR from depressing–it’s actually quite hopeful.
A quick note from A Catholic Notebook. . . . you can add your favorite books to the Blogger’s Choice Catholic Reading List until Wednesday. The deadline was extended due to some special requests! I can’t wait to see and share the results at the end of the week. Come on by!
My 6 year old son was invited to Wall-E as part of a birthday party with his friends. We decided to go as well, and brought our 4,8, and 10 year old children as well. We sat a couple of rows ahead of this group of 10+ 6 year old boys—and we didn’t hear from them for the entire movie. My three other children enjoyed it as well. I didn’t hear a peep from my 4 year old son.
I thought that this movie was amazing in that you understood the story without dialogue. I thought it was fantastic!
It was refreshing to attend a movie with the kids as well. We don’t do that very often because of cost and the content of most stuff out there. This one was an exception.
I walked away from the movie thinking about love, redemption, and HOPE. As bad as the world became-garbage wize–there was always a glimmer of hope that humans would return.
If you walk in with an open mind, you may be pleasantly surprised. It is not a movie about robots, it is a movie about humans that uses robots to get the point across. The robots are not used to replace humans, they are used as an art form to allow us to look inward.
God Bless!!
About the “Twilight” series (parents, take notice):
I read the first 3 books (against my better judgement), and I am heartily sick of the whole thing. The first book was decent enough, but the female protagonist, Bella, is nothing but an whiny damsel-in-distress that never ceases to complain and constantly gushes over the many perfections of her hot vampire boyfriend. It soon gets very annoying, but that’s not my main gripe with the books, but the fact that the female lead is not only very weak, but entirely (and almost obsessively) dependant on her “perfect” boyfriend, to the point of becoming maniatically depressed and almost suicidal when he leaves her in the second book. Disturbing, actually, yet this is presented as being ‘romantic’ and proof of how much she “loves” him. Yeah.
The series is supposed to represent every typical “misunderstood” teen’s dream: an average girl who does not have any outstanding qualities, yet the hot high school idol (who happens to be a vampire) still falls head-over-heels for her. It’s an overused theme that has been done MUCH better in other books, and it just doen’t work here.
To be fair, there are no New Age or occult themes in the series that I could see, but the author’s assertion that she is “determined not to have anything untoward or inappropriate for teen readers in her books” is a bit misleading at best. The third book is full of sexual situations, with the female lead, Bella, almost begging Edward to have sex with her and constantly trying to seduce him. The protagonists were close to having sex not once, but at least two times, and there is enough kissing and hugging between the two (and between Bella and her *other* suitor) to turn the entire 600+ page book into little more than a repetitive teen love fest with little plot or character development.
I will certainly stay FAR away from the newest book in the series (and any consecutive ones). Boring, repetitive, badly written and thin on character development and plot, that’s the whole series for you.