Category archive: movies

May 7, 2013

Harrison Ford Will Not Name Your Kid For You

So this just happened at the San Francisco International Film Festival:1st question from the audience was would Harrison [Ford] name their son who is scheduled to arrive in 4 Days.Glad he left it to them! #SFIFF— Ted Hope (@TedHope) May...
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March 29, 2013

Dad Does Laundry

So I guess I am now liveblogging Dave Tatsuno: Movies & Memories. Here is one for the Tide commercial: Tatsuno doing laundry at Topaz Mountain, hanging diapers up do dry....
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Topaz Mountain Sleds By Dave Tatsuno & Bill Fujita

Dave Masaharu Tatsuno ran the dry goods store at Topaz Mountain, where Japanese Americans from the Bay Area were imprisoned during WWII. And he took a bunch of 8mm home movies, using color film which he'd pick up on...
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Carnie Baby Daddy Ryan Gosling

Hey Girl, Let Me Rob Some Banks To Support You And Our Kid From the NY Times review of The Place Beyond The Pines which will set tumblr afire:Luke (Ryan Gosling), first glimpsed as a tattoo-covered torso striding away...
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February 15, 2013

Sundance Onesies

It's that cold, snowy time of the year when we bring the kids to Sundance for a little skiing/snowboarding/grandparental facetime combo weekend. And whoa, the Sundance store has had a kid-friendly makeover. There is an entire wall of baby...
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February 5, 2013

Diary Of A Pregnant Woman, By Agnes Varda

Agnes Varda is one of my film heroes; her 1999 documentary, The Gleaners And I, was what finally pushed me to start making movies myself back in 2000. Now, amazingly, the Prague-based documentary streaming/subscription site Doc Alliance Films is hosting...
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January 31, 2013

Star Trek Viewing Order, Or The Trouble With Tribbles

It's taken a while, but I think the debate has been won for the optimum viewing order of Star Wars: it's Rod Hilton's "Machete Order", IV, V, II, III [as flashback, explaining Darth's reveal, but also leaving it hanging as...
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January 16, 2013

Star Wars Bedroom Accessories

There is no Star Wars nerd big enough around here to warrant such monoculture, but the Force doesn't have to be that strong with you or your kid to appreciate the bedroom nerdmomblogger Mary Elle made for her Star...
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January 15, 2013

The First Production Baby

It's been a tradition at Pixar since Toy Story to list the "production babies" born to crew, in each film's credits. Other animation houses do it, too, and lately video game designers picked up on the trend. [They're called "development...
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December 24, 2012

The Sprout Snooze-A-Thon Is The Clock For Toddlers

The artist and musician Christian Marclay's epic, 24-hour, real-time film, The Clock, has been playing at museums and galleries around the world or almost two years now. It uses hundreds of film clips showing clocks and watches to mark...
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October 1, 2012

The Pre-School Entered Apprentice

The "blankie" Henry takes w/ him to preschool is a prop towel from Cremaster 3. Fun time explaining the iconography at dropoff this morning.— Brandon Stosuy (@brandonstosuy) October 1, 2012 Yes, I would imagine that depending on what that blankie...
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August 30, 2012

Long Live The Wagon Queen Family Truckster

You weren't supposed to want one in the first place, but after this, it shouldn't have even mattered, right? There just were no Wagon Queen Family Trucksters to be had. No. There is another. Apparently one Truckster survived the...
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August 10, 2012

AT-AT Imperial Walker Made From Diaper Boxes

Kelly, a mom in New Zealand, made an AT-AT walker out of diaper boxes. I count either three or four boxes per AT-AT. So her dozen empty boxes should keep her busy until she finally gets on board with...
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July 30, 2012

Wookie The Chew On A TeeFury T-Shirt

There are no kids' sizes, and the Deathstar-ish landscape, though inventive, kind of underwhelms me, but if you're a Wookie The Chew compleatist, you'd best hurry up, because you only have about 5.5 hours left to order this James...
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June 23, 2012

Luke, I'm Your Involved Father

Jeffrey Brown made this book about Darth Vader taking "an active role in raising his son" that is surely as "sweet" and "hilarious" as its publishers promise. It is non-canonical, but from the title, you can see it has...
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June 19, 2012

Backpacking Dad Reviews Brave

From Backpacking Dad's review, it sounds like Pixar's Brave gives boys the girl treatment. Personally, I'll be satisfied if it imbues K2 with even a bit of curly hair pride; she's been going on about how she wants nothing more...
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June 7, 2012

Basically, You Should Name Your Kid Django

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May 26, 2012

Bravemart

Went into the Disney store today and the display of Brave movie toys spoiled the plot.Bastards!— Shawn Robare (@smurfwreck) May 26, 2012 They will never take our freedom--to shop!...
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May 23, 2012

Sun Ra X Disney: Hallucinogenic Elephants On Parade

I done seen about everything when I seen Walt Disney outfreak Sun Ra. For the late intergalactic Jazz overlord's birthday, Dangerous Minds points to Sun Ra and the Arkestra's rendition of "Pink Elephants on Parade," which is synched up here...
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May 20, 2012

What Do You Expect?

Fine, here's a quote from AO Scott's review of What To Expect When You're Expecting:Food trucks, by the way, seem to have replaced yoga classes as an easy, quasi-hip contemporary reference to be exploited in romantic comedies. Enough already. On...
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April 20, 2012

Cardboard Arcade Kid Kicks Your Ass For 2nd Week In Row

In the last week, Caine's Arcade has raked in another $80,000, bringing the total for the kid's scholarship fund to over $170,000, which it sounds like his parents are hoping to tap into starting at Catholic high school, and maybe...
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April 18, 2012

Days Of Volvo Heaven

Bwahaha, screw the animated gif; the Volvo wagon getting air shot you want to watch is this here YouTube video, in which a 1991 740 practically dances across the plains at magic hour. I do believe this was taken...
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April 11, 2012

Caine's Arcade, Directed By Nirvan Mullick

You know, I spent yesterday wondering about the mechanics of flashmobs, and how maybe a little less reality-TV-stagier might be better, like when Improv Anywhere showed up and freaked that one band out by singing along to all their...
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April 2, 2012

I'm So Happy The Carbonite Is Gone. I'm Movin' On.

You know what, the Episode IV or Episode I debate is over. The Jar-Jar dilemma, the Young Anakin annoyance? Over. Clone Wars TV vs. movie? Irrelevant. There is now only one Star Wars movie your kids need to see...
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March 29, 2012

Lactivist Tintype

Not sure what's up with that kid's hair, but here is a c.1866 tintype photograph of a woman breastfeeding, from the collection of the late filmmaker Gary Winick. I am sure it's just a coincidence that Winick was a...
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March 13, 2012

Disney Has Us By The Nostalgic Short Hairs

In Disney's Most Notorious Film / Race, Convergence and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South, his forthcoming study of the zip-a-dee-doo-dah racist classic, film historian Jason Sperb has a fascinating discussion of nostalgia, and how it shapes our...
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March 8, 2012

I Have No Idea What To Expect From What To Expect

Good gravy, I've been at this thing for years now, and for the life of me, I can't figure out what the hell is going on in the trailer for What To Expect When You're Expecting: The Movie. A...
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March 2, 2012

My Name Is The Truax, I Speak For The National Wood Flooring Association

While visiting a 4-H camp once, Terri Birkett, an employee at the Stuart Flooring Corporation ["A Berkshire Hathaway Company"] saw "some college students were using The Lorax to preach a liberal environmental message to children," and knew she had...
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March 1, 2012

My Name Is The Lorax, I Speak For My 70 Marketing Partners

As if the only reason all the other Dr. Seuss-based movies were so shitty was because they didn't have enough product tie-in "launch partners." Movies That Are Destroying America - The Lorax [colbertnation.com]...
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February 29, 2012

These Are Not The Star Wars Pancake Molds You Are Looking For.

Seriously? Is it a coincidence that Boing Boing points to the Williams-Sonoma Star Wars™ Vehicles Pancake Molds just days after Jason Geyer revealed another epic collection of horrible-but-failed Star Wars product licensing ideas? Because I am really not seeing...
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February 24, 2012

The Children's Literary Group

Wow, This glimpse at ur-Yuppie parenting is only one of the many gems in Maria Bustillos' piece on 1970s child publishing prodigy Alexandra SheedyIn June of 1977, when Sheedy was fifteen, a piece on "A Young Writers Salon" appeared in...
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February 22, 2012

Gooood Evening, J.F.! Pixar Alums Making AI Toys

ToyTalk is a startup working on web- and mobile-enabled, AI-powered toys. A Huggable Siri. 2017 cannot get here fast enough. Ex-Pixar Geeks building Siri-style Line of Toys [readwriteweb]...
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February 14, 2012

Requiem For A Dream With Puppets

Skelemo's 60-second remake of Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream is probably the greatest video misuse of puppets since SadKermit's cover version of NIN's "Hurt" Fake Film Fest - Requiem for a Dream (in 60 seconds...with puppets) [youtube via...
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January 29, 2012

The Subconscious Art Of Shirt Removal

Matt Connors' photo of a dad pushing a Mamas & Papas Sola stroller down the street on the east side of LA somewhere reminded me of two things: Matt McCormick's awesome 2001 short film, The Subconscious Art of graffiti...
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January 24, 2012

Tilda Swinton On How To Not Raise A Murderous Sociopath

In an interview with the SF Chronicle about playing the mother of a school massacrer in Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Tilda Swinton makes some sober observations about pregnancy and parenting:Q: It's...
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January 18, 2012

It's A Girl! A Documentary About Killing Infant Girls In India & China & Such

"Today, India and China eliminate more girls than the number of girls born in the United States every year." That's the opening line in the trailer for It's A Girl!, Christian filmmaker Evan Grae Davis's upcoming documentary on the widespread...
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January 16, 2012

Specific Kids' Objects

Last Summer, David Zwirner Gallery screened a couple of documentaries about Donald Judd, including The Artist's Studio, a 2010 remix of vintage 1970s footage by Michael Blackwood. Blackwood had filmed Judd and his family both in Marfa [in 1975]...
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January 10, 2012

My Oh My

Wow. Never mind Disney; it's a miracle any of us survived the 1980s. It was only about halfway through that I realized this: was not a single Mouseketeers in Disney World episode, but a compilation of clips. I can't...
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December 31, 2011

No, There Is Another.

Alright, the last post of the years keep on coming. While I'm glad the Cadillac CTS-V wagon made NY Times auto critic James G Cobb's top ten list for 2011, it's this line from the slideshow that led me to...
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December 24, 2011

Star Trek Coloring Book

The crazy thing about this Star Trek color and activity book--besides the fact that I once bought it as blog fodder. And then didn't use it. And then lost it. And just found it while clearing out some books...
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December 16, 2011

S.U.V. The Extra-Terrestrial

Alright, how was I supposed to know E.T. was so sad? When the kid got the call at 7:00 to stand in for some missing creature in The Nutcracker, the wife hustled her over to the theater, and left...
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Lego Is For Girls. Now. Again. Whatever.

Our girls already play the hell out of their Legos, so on a purely personal level, I don't really feel too worked up about the new Lego Friends thing that supplants traditional minifigs with girlier "ladyfig" dolls and sets...
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December 6, 2011

Where In The World Is The Carmen Sandiego Generation?

Is it too early to see what happened to the overeager, overachieving yuppie children of the 90s, who were raised on Carmen Sandiego? They dorked out, cheated a little, really showed that private school jerk from Manhattan, and went on...
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December 2, 2011

And I Thought They Smelled Bad On The Outside

Oh, man, just click on this link right now. RIGHT NOW. [dadcentric] RIGHT NOW! Why are you still here?? CLICK! OK, fine. Click here, too. [fuckyeahlucasfilm]...
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November 29, 2011

The Star Trek Book Of Opposites Goes Where No Boardbook Has Gone Before

Dammit, Jim! The Star Trek Book of Opposites basically looks like the platonic ideal of nerd boardbooks. And considering it costs 99.999% less than a prop baby Ewok, it will make the perfect gift. You can buy with confidence,...
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November 28, 2011

I Presume You Did Not Buy This Baby Ewok

filed under: Items I Didn't Win At Christie's Legendary makeup artist Stuart Freeborn gave this baby Ewok puppet, which appeared in Return of the Jedi, as a gift to a journalist after an apparently delightful interview. And that person...
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November 23, 2011

It's Time To Start The Music, I Guess

I guess the Statler and Waldorf in me wanted to find out that Disney's hyperstrategic, multichannel, virally optimized, monetizational, Gen X parent-targeted Muppets reboot had all built up to a tone-deaf, Alvin & The Chipmunks-style dud of a movie....
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The Secret Google Road Trips Of Desk Toys

On the one hand, Address Is Approximate, Tom Jenkins' stop-motion animated short film of a lonely desk toy going on a Google Street View road trip, is poignant and touching. On the other, that's just how the robots would...
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November 18, 2011

Star Wars Amigurumi

The best thing about amigurumi toys made using kotyar888's awesome Star Wars crochet patterns is not their cuteness, but the way you have no one to sue when your kid gnaws off those little beady eyes. There is no...
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Pixar's Bravehair

I guess now that they figured out the CG in Tangled, all Disney/Pixar's movies will star extremely dynamic heads of hair. Not that we won't go; at the moment, K2 wants nothing more than to straighten her curly hair, so...
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