Tag Archives: Jeff Giles

DVD Review: “Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales”

Warner Bros. has gone Peanuts-happy this year, releasing a Blu-ray collection of holiday-themed specials (which they neglected to send me — whatever, jerks) alongside Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales. What’s that, you say? You’ve never heard of Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales? You’re wondering why it wasn’t just part of the holiday specials box? Well. Read and learn.

What we have here is a collection of five clips that the DVD case generously calls “segments,” adding up to a whopping 18 minutes of Christmas cheer. It’s a pure budget title, the kind of thing you can probably find red-tagged in the movie bin at any local drugstore, but given that these shorts aren’t currently part of other Peanuts collections, it has some appeal for completists. As a bizarre bonus, you also get the 1983 special “Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown?,” in which “Charlie Brown and pals sadly face the departure of Linus and Lucy, who must move when their father gets transferred to a job in another town.

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Merry Christmas, kids! Continue reading →

DVD Review: “Samantha: An American Girl Holiday” (Deluxe Edition)

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So apparently my love for my daughter knows no bounds, because not only have I refrained from discouraging her rapt fascination with the offensively priced American Girls dolls, but I willingly sat through Samantha: An American Girl Holiday. Twice. And I’m not sure whether or not it’s just paternal weakness speaking, but, uh…this movie really isn’t that bad.

Originally released in 2004, Samantha kicked off what has become a burgeoning film franchise — Samantha’s fellow American Girls Felicity, Molly, and Kit Kittredge now have their own movies — and even though Warner Bros.’ reasons for reissuing it now (Celebrating 25 Years of American Girl!) are just as flimsy as the reasoning behind that “Deluxe Edition” on the case (a new widescreen transfer replaces the original full-screen video), the movie remains a sweet, surprisingly thoughtful holiday confection with far greater depth than any toy-shilling tie-in has a right to boast.

Like most of her fellow American Girls, Samantha (AnnaSophia Robb) is as plucky as she is adorable, which is a good thing, because she grew up in the early 1900s, when poor kids had to work in sooty factories and handymen were known to drop dead of influenza, leaving their kids to suffer the life of the Dickensian orphan. But because nobody wants to buy a doll with raggedy clothes and tear streaks running down its coal-dusted face, Samantha didn’t have to worry about any of that yucky stuff: although she was an orphan, she got to live on the fabulous estate owned by her grandmother (played here by Mia Farrow, who apparently racked up substantial gambling debts at some point). And when Samantha’s grandmother couldn’t take care of her anymore, she went off to live with her oddly named Uncle Gard (Jordan Bridges) and his new wife Cornelia (Rebecca Mader) on their fabulous estate. Poverty is totally yucky. Continue reading →

CD Review: Dog on Fleas, “The Bestest of the Best”

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Dadnabbit’s love of all things Dog on Fleas and/or Dean Jones has been well-documented ’round these parts, so I’m not going to even pretend to be objective about the band’s first best-of collection, the aptly titled The Bestest of the Best. Basically, what I’m about to say boils down to two things:

1. I love it; and
2. You should buy it now.

That’s really it. If you trust my judgment at all when it comes to family entertainment, just stop reading now and order copies of The Bestest of the Best for your family and your closest parent-type friends. Come back here later to thank me.

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(You’re welcome.)

If you need to know more for some reason, here it is: The Bestest of the Best culls a marvelous 20 tracks from the band’s previous six albums, and while they’ve expressed unreasonable modesty where their earlier stuff is concerned (they’re taking a pair of older titles out of print, which is what prompted Bestest), everything here hangs together brilliantly, from newer songs to re-recorded versions of older tracks to the marvelous “Buffalo Gals,” recorded with Elizabeth Mitchell for a charity compilation and making its first appearance on a Dog on Fleas CD.

It’s just terrific stuff — warm, gently whimsical, and packed with lyrical gems. Dog on Fleas’ music soothes (the heartwarming “Beautiful World,” which contains the brilliant line “God goes clamming and brings up a pearl / Beautiful world, beautiful world”), it makes you think (the jaunty “The Moon Song” compares our changing moods — and the ups and downs of our days — to “the waxing and the waning of the moon”), it makes you laugh (the times-tables-by-way-of-shouting “Twistification”), it brings a tear to your eye (the simply beautiful “Happy”).

Put simply, the band makes music about things that matter — about love, about family bonds, about respecting the world around us. They impart their messages without being preachy, and they perform without artifice; these are songs that sound like the work of people together in the same room.

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If I could buy a copy for everyone, I would.

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