Tag Archives: Jeff Giles

DVD Review: “Bert & Ernie’s Great Adventures”

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I was born in 1974, and my youngest sibling was born in 1985, which means my Sesame Street viewing was at its peak during what I’ll refer to (totally subjectively and sort of crankily) as the golden age of PBS kids’ programming, and fell off sharply around 1983 or so, when Telly Monster was completing his transition from the googly-eyed Television Monster into the annoying worrywart he is today. I didn’t watch another episode until a few years ago, when I decided to introduce my daughter to the joys of playing where everything’s A-OK and the air is clean, only to discover that the sleepy urban burg I remembered from my youth had been taken over by characters I didn’t recognize. Who cares about Baby Bear? Who’s that little fuzzball speaking Spanish all the time? Why so much Elmo? What happened to Bob, Linda, Gordon, Susan, and David? (Okay, probably best not to ask that last question.)

The point is, I’m one of those people that miss the old Sesame Street, when it felt like a real TV neighborhood, with more of a balance between adorable Muppets and kindly humans — and when it all didn’t feel so…I don’t know, clean. So I’m sort of ambivalent about Bert & Ernie’s Great Adventures — I feel like I should be distrustful of a DVD that sends Claymation versions of Sesame Street’s most famous roommates on fantastical escapades, but on the other hand, I miss those guys, and anything that raises their profile over at the Elmo-obsessed Children’s Television Workshop is all right in my book. Continue reading →

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Blu-ray Review: “IMAX: Under the Sea”

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“That is not a fish. PLEASE tell me that is not a fish.”

Not counting the gasp she let out when she saw the box, those were the first words my four-year-old daughter said while we watched IMAX: Under the Sea, and that pretty much set the tone for 40 minutes of stunningly rich, beautifully filmed aquatic exploration. These days, it seems like just about every major movie lands on IMAX screens, but once upon a time, they were the near-exclusive domain of short nature documentaries — which means that even though it might look like a trifle next to Clash of the Titans (or whatever big-budget action movie is playing at your local IMAX theater), Under the Sea is really more of a gentle throwback.

Director Howard Hall has plenty of experience working underwater — his previous films include Into the Deep, Island of the Sharks, and Deep Sea — and Under the Sea is every bit the visual treat you’d expect from someone with Hall’s résumé. His camera lingers over fish that don’t look like fish (hence my daughter’s early exclamation), fish that do unexpected stuff, and fish that are just plain fun to look at, with the pleasantly subdued Jim Carrey serving as narrator every step (stroke?) of the way. If you wanted to quibble, you could take issue with the inordinate amount of time the movie spends on the cuttlefish, but between its deadly tongue and its color-changing skin, there’s plenty of spectacle to go around.

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Meltdown 2010: Looking Back

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For those of you who live in more temperate climes, where winter is something you watch other people suffer through on TV, and snow is something you wish you had on Christmas, the idea of “spring fever” might seem like an old wives’ tale — like knuckle-cracking causing arthritis, or Karl Rove being the voice of Barney the Dinosaur. Speaking as a parent of two small children in the hills of New Hampshire, however, I can tell you it’s very much a real thing, and if someone happens to come up with something awesome for your kids to do on a beautiful spring day when their bodies are drunk with March sunlight, you may wish to throw a parade in their honor.

So far as I know, no one has ever thrown a parade for Bill Childs, the benevolent genius behind Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child. But I’m pretty sure someone will someday, because Bill is a veritable font of awesomeness, starting with the website I linked to a few words back, extending to his killer family-friendly radio show, and culminating with the series of super-sweet concerts he’s helped promote in the Northampton, MA area. For much of the year, you see, Bill brings artists to Northampton as part of the No Nap Happy Hour — and as if that weren’t enough, there’s the Meltdown, the (free!) festival that brings families and performers together for a whole day of music, activities, and good times.

All of which is a long way of saying my family and I made the 90-minute trek to Northampton last Saturday, where we melted down, and it was good. Continue reading →

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