New DVD Giveaway: Word Girl vs. The Energy Monster
One of my favorite television series for kids is the wonderful PBS show "Word Girl," and this new release is one of the best: Wordgirl vs the Energy Monster. WORDGIRL and her sidekick CAPTAIN HUGGY FACE fight the good fight against dastardly villains and bad vocabulary in this thrilling collection!

posted 8:00:22am May. 19, 2013 | read full post »

Disney Lets Merida Be Merida After All
Did the folks at Disney even watch "Brave?"  One of the great strengths of Pixar's first movie starring a female character (and its first originally written by a woman, Brenda Chapman, though she was replaced by a male director) was that its feisty heroine, Merida, looked like a real girl and not a

posted 8:00:52am May. 18, 2013 | read full post »

Want to Know What James Franco Thinks of "The Great Gatsby?"
I'm interested in James Franco's take on "The Great Gatsby" because of what this polymath who attended two grad schools at once has to say about the challenges of adapting great writing to the screen and the differing goals and audience expectations of a book now viewed as a classic and a movie. Th

posted 8:00:42am May. 17, 2013 | read full post »

Interview: Directors/Writer/Star of "Desperate Acts of Magic"
Magic is in the air.  And on the screen.  Two big-budget films with some of Hollywood's biggest stars playing magicians are being released within a few months of each other.  In March, we had the silly comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, with Steve Carell and Jim Carrey.  Coming up is the en

posted 8:00:21am May. 17, 2013 | read full post »

Star Trek: Into Darkness
This time, there's crying in "Star Trek."  And some very significant time on Earth as well.  This story is in the most literal sense, close to home. Writer-director J.J. Abrams, who rebooted Gene Roddenberry's original "Star Trek" saga with a rousing 2009 origin story prequel now takes us clos

posted 9:36:25am May. 16, 2013 | read full post »