Father and Son Explore the Grid Together in TRON: Legacy

When it comes to appreciation of geeky 1980s movies, I generally think I have my bases covered pretty well. As buzz for Disney’s TRON: Legacy began to build, however, I had to admit that this was a movie with which I was almost entirely unfamiliar. So I saw the original in anticipation of the sequel. I confess that I found the 1982 movie a bit disorienting, but there were aspects of it that I really enjoyed, and because I watched that first, I think I was better able to appreciate the new movie.

TRON: Legacy stars the little-known Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn, the 27-year-old son of Kevin, the computer genius who created the video game and traveled inside it during the first movie. He’s an aimless hothead, but he’s really a softie, and underneath a veil of cynicism is a kid who never quite gave up hope that his beloved dad, who went missing two decades earlier, might still be out there and still be thinking of him. The story in this second movie is about a lot of things: idealism, loyalty, cooperation, wisdom. It’s about the value and danger in trying to build a perfect world. But mostly, it’s about a father and son, long separated, reuniting in time to share a dream both had long believed impossible.

I’m a sucker for stories about father-son relationships, so I had a hunch that this movie would resonate with me on that level. It did, and it made me smile to see that Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, two of the main writers on the daddy issues-laden LOST, worked on the screenplay. Jeff Bridges, who starred in the original movie and who I’m really coming to admire as an actor, takes on an intriguing dual role here.

As in the first movie, there are Users and Programs, and in some cases, we have two complementary characters. Here, Bridges plays both Kevin Flynn, the grizzled sage who has mostly lived a life of quiet meditation since becoming trapped in the world of the Grid 20 years ago, and Clu, the well-groomed, much younger-looking, sinister program who Kevin designed to help him create his virtual utopia. He doesn’t have the same aura of menace about him that David Warner does in the first movie, but there’s something equally unsettling about him. He looks familiar and friendly but has a dark purpose, the true extent of which is known only to him. The two characters act and look so different that if the movie itself didn’t keep bringing it up, it might be easy to forget that they are the same person.

Hedlund makes a pretty appealing main character, and I love his scenes with Bridges as the senior Flynn, but it was Olivia Wilde who really made an impression upon me as Quorra, Kevin’s longtime companion and apostle of sorts. Wide-eyed and beautiful, Quorra is naïve, compassionate and eager to learn more about the world from which the Flynns came. Among the secondary players, it was nice to see Bruce Boxleitner again playing Flynn’s old friend Alan Bradley. In the real world, he and Sam share some nice, quiet scenes that remind me of the relationship between Harry Potter and Remus Lupin, his parents’ school chum and his favorite Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

A scruffy-looking Cillian Murphy puts in a brief appearance as the soft-spoken son of the first movie’s big baddie, Ed Dillinger. I thought that he would play a bigger role in the movie, but he’s just in one scene as an indication that Flynn’s company is falling into villainous hands – or at least greedy hands. Ed Jr. doesn’t really seem evil to me, just very turned off by the idea of giving something away for free, which Kevin Flynn had no qualms with. In the digital world, I found Michael Sheen so colorful as flamboyant club owner Castor that I could have sworn he was dressed in a peacock’s array of colors instead of just white. Any time he is on the screen, he demands complete attention.

I heard a lot of complaints about the movie’s plot, but it worked for me, and I think a great effort was made to beef up the exposition so that the audience didn’t feel as confused as the main character. I wouldn’t say that watching the first movie is essential to enjoying this one, but I think your appreciation of it will be a bit deeper if you do, and you’ll pick up on fun references. Of course, if you’re going just to get a visual spectacle, I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed in any event.

The Grid is a very distinct place, very technological, with an oppressive atmosphere of swirling black clouds that reminded me of The Dark Knight. In contrast to all that darkness are the stark, luminous patterns on the vehicles, clothing and architecture. In general, white lights signify virtue, while orange is vice. Unfortunately, we see a lot more orange than white. Still, there is a certain harsh beauty to it, and I often found myself thinking of Star Wars, with light cycles battling it out instead of X-wings and characters slashing each other with discs instead of light sabers in the deadliest twist on Frisbee imaginable. Those discs didn’t make too much of an impression on me in the first movie, but they’re all-important here, both as weapons and information storage units; Flynn’s contains the key to the Grid, and as such, it is deeply coveted by his nefarious doppelganger.

Although all the dreariness of the Grid got to me, making me feel a bit claustrophobic, I rarely had the sense of vertigo I got with the first movie, even watching it in 3D (which I don’t really think adds much to the experience). I didn’t like the score, which mostly consisted of low droning, but it fit the tone of the movie, which is a mere PG but feels darker. It really isn’t; there’s very little profanity, and what violence we see is just in the form of characters pixelating away into nothing, so it’s certainly not graphic. But the system of the Grid feels very fascist, and there’s a message in there somewhere about the danger of trying to keep things too uniform. Younger kids may find it a bit too heavy; it could have used a little more humor, and I confess that I rather hoped Sam would wind up bringing his dog into the Grid with him. That could’ve been fun. Still, on the whole, TRON: Legacy is quite enjoyable, both eye-catching and touching, and it was a great way to wrap up my 2010 movie-going.

Meet Casey, Hiawatha and Other Greats in Walt Disney's Timeless Tales: Volume Three

I love classic Disney cartoons, so I was happy to find the Walt Disney’s Timeless Tales series on Netflix recently. Volume Three includes two Disney shorts I’ve long loved, along with four others that I think I may have seen once, or at least heard of, but that might just be because three of the stories were familiar and the other was similar to one of my favorite Mickey, Donald and Goofy shorts. That last one is the only one of the six that, as far as I can tell, is a wholly original story; the rest are based on established poems, folktales and American history (or, more to the point, fictional adaptations thereof). It’s a nice collection of cartoons from the mid-1930s to 1950; some of them do feel a bit dated, but they are a lot of fun to watch.

Casey at the Bat (1946) – Ernest Thayer’s tragi-comic ballad upon which this is based has always been a favorite poem of mine. I’m not big into sports, and I’ve never had any team loyalties beyond rooting for Penn State, but I do like baseball. I enjoy getting out to the ballgame at some point during the summer if I can, where I can watch the game proceed at its rather leisurely pace and usually have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. I love all the elements that come together to make this an edge-of-your seat tale that’s at the same time pretty easy to memorize and bust out around the campfire or other appropriate occasion.

The Disney version features narration by Jerry Colonna and lots of visual humor depicting Casey as an overgrown oaf and everyone else at the fateful baseball game as pretty ridiculous in some way or another. An opening song includes a line about the ladies at the ballpark not knowing a hit from a strike, which I find a bit insulting; all the female fans are gussied up and swooning over the ballplayers but don’t have a clue what’s going on. Though I don’t know, in the thick of things, they seem pretty into it to me. The ball players themselves are a bundle of quirks, and all of them have a tendency to sweat profusely, a la Striker attempting to fly the plane in the comedy Airplane!. The short is just over eight minutes long and is a fun, pretty straightforward take on the classic poem; I know it also spawned a sequel in the 1950s, which I hope to see one of these days. I don’t know when I first saw this one, but it’s probably what introduced me to the poem in the first place and is a definite Disney classic.

Little Hiawatha (1937) – This was another short I’d seen many times, as we’d taped it once during a stint of taping old Disney cartoons during the Duck Presents program on the Disney channel. It uses bits of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about Hiawatha, but the majority of it is wordless and has little to do with the poem. In this short, Hiawatha is just a youngster who looks like he can’t be much more than five. He wants to appear fierce with his bow and arrow, but that’s tough when his pants keep falling down every time he turns around. There are some silly pratfalls here, but ultimately it becomes a story of compassion and cooperation as he manages to corner a young rabbit, then decides to let him go free, thus earning the loyalty of the woodland creatures, who come to his aid when a bear attacks him.

This is probably my favorite cartoon of the six. The animation is beautiful, and the interaction between Hiawatha and the animals is wonderful, both before and after his encounter with the rabbit. The choreography of the bear chase is especially well done and reminds me of playing the Jungle Book Super Nintendo game, where everything in the jungle has to be lined up just so in order for Mowgli to successfully continue on his journey. Talk about a community effort! And in this short, which came out around the same time as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it’s easy to see the similarities to Whistle While You Work. Three cheers for the woodland brigade!

The Wise Little Hen (1934) – I’ve always been a fan of the story The Little Red Hen, with the conscientious hen who can’t get any of her fellow farm animals to help her out with her planting project. This is a fun short as well, and it’s notable because it marks the entrance of Donald Duck, played by Clarence Nash. But it’s also just a bit grating. That’s because everybody is borderline incomprehensible. Donald always is, of course, and it’s part of what makes him endearing, but one of the reasons it works is because he’s almost always complaining about something. Somehow the quacking just fits really well. Pinto Colvig plays Peter Pig, whose voice is a strange combination of guttural oinking noises and a German accent. His voice annoys me more than Donald’s.

But the one that really bugs me is Florence Gill’s Wise Little Hen. I suppose that this is mostly because she does the vast majority of the talking – or, rather, singing various annoying verses of Help Me Plant My Corn. I’d be tempted to refuse her just so I wouldn’t have to listen to that voice – and because if I didn’t know the story, I probably would have no idea what she was asking. It’s a very cute cartoon. But boy, does a little of that clucking go a long way.

The Golden Touch (1935) – Another familiar story, though like the preceding cartoon, I can’t say for sure if I’d ever seen it before. It recounts the story of a greedy king (Billy Bletcher) whose only delight is in counting his gold coins like a proto-Uncle Scrooge. When a mischievous sprite comes along to tempt him with the Golden Touch, he succumbs immediately. In some versions of the story, it’s obvious that the supernatural being’s main aim is to teach Midas a lesson about what’s important in life. Here, that’s not so clear, since he stands to gain from the king’s realization that the Golden Touch isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The odd thing is that we don’t see how any of this affects anyone except the king’s poor cat, who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What exactly is this man a king of? He seems to live in complete isolation. And what happens to everyone in his kingdom after he trades away everything he owns to his mysterious visitor? Or maybe he’s only a king in his own mind… Still, it’s pretty entertaining to see him turning things gold left and right, especially during the dramatic dinner scene when he realizes what a problem this is going to be.

Morris the Midget Moose (1950) – An interesting story of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer variety. Except in this case, there are two “defective” creatures, and it’s their cooperation with each other that makes them able to thrive. Morris is tiny but has regular-sized antlers. When he meets Balsam, a regular moose with tiny antlers, they team up to defeat the ferocious Thunderclap, who is the established dominant moose in the group.

This cartoon reminds me quite a bit of the 1937 Mickey / Donald / Goofy cartoon Moose Hunters, mostly because in both shorts, we see two moose ferociously fighting each other by locking antlers and tossing each other to the ground. Things don’t end so well for our intrepid hunters on that occasion. Thankfully, Morris and Balsam get a rather happier conclusion. This short also marks the last appearance of the wise character Bootle Beetle. A bit odd, perhaps, that a beetle is telling stories about a moose… But I guess he’s been around enough to have experience with plenty of species beyond his fellow insects. A cute cartoon.

Ben and Me (1953) – Twice as long as the next-longest cartoon on the DVD, this one is based on a book by Robert Lawson. The basic idea is that Ben Franklin was not such a brilliant American after all. Rather, he just happened to get together with an ingenious mouse. This humble fellow named Amos is voiced by Sterling Holloway, best known as the voice of Winnie the Pooh, and the lilting, relaxing quality of his voice is just as present here. I just love listening to him speak. Charles Ruggles provides the voice of Ben, who comes off as entirely addled. I also got a kick out of hearing the voice of Hans Conried, who I know best as the voice of Thorin Oakenshield in the Rankin and Bass version of The Hobbit, playing Thomas Jefferson.

While it’s nearly 60 years old, this short is still the most recent thing on the DVD, and both that and the fact that it is set in such a definite time period make it feel like the least dated of the cartoons here. If it were made today, I’m not sure that too many things would have changed. There’s excellent attention to detail as we see Amos and Ben in Revolutionary times and watch as history gets just a bit skewered. Here, Amos has a humble hand (or paw) in the creation of the Franklin stove, bifocals, The Pennsylvania Gazette and even the Declaration of Independence. A very clever and comical little ode to an important chapter in American history probably best appreciated by slighter older kids, as 21 minutes is a bit on the long side and it’s funnier if you know some of the background already.

You can watch all six of these in one sitting as I did or dole them out one at a time. Either way, while some of these shorts show their age just a bit, Walt Disney’s Timeless Tales: Volume Three is a great collection for any fan of classic Disney cartoons.

Kathleen Zoehfeld and Josie Yee Provide Pooh's Big (Really Big) Book of First Words

I always enjoyed word books growing up. As a reader, they ideally would introduce me to new words or at least help me figure out how to spell words I already knew. As a writer, I found them a fun way to construct a book for someone so that it could have a personal touch without being wordy or even really needing a plot. I recall making word books for one of my brothers and a couple of my cousins, including a mix of photographs, magazine cut-outs and drawings. Winnie the Pooh’s Big Book of First Words is much more comprehensive and cohesive than any of my feeble attempts were. Written by Kathleen W. Zoehfeld and illustrated by Josie Yee, it really is a big book – too tall to fit on most bookshelves unless you stick it on its side. It’s also got a lot more words in it than I ever put in mine. We’re talking hundreds of words, and a few of them aren’t exactly commonplace.

Throughout the book, what we mostly have are two-page spreads depicting a particular scene. Off by itself in a colored box or two is a bit of narration. Everything else is just a detailed collection of meticulously labeled objects. The first stop is Pooh’s house, where there are 20 words scattered throughout the two pages. Most of this is pretty standard stuff like “bed,” “cupboard” and “table,” though some are a bit more surprising, like the “sunrise” glimpsed through the window and the “night-light” that is, in fact, a candle. We next watch Pooh do his stoutness exercises and have an opportunity to identify several parts of a Pooh’s body.

The third scene is one of my favorites, as it depicts such lovely woodland splendor. I’d love to wander along the path with Pooh as he makes his way to see his friends. It helps that on his way, he encounters three of my favorite animals: a salamander, a chipmunk and a squirrel. Then it’s off to Rabbit’s garden for a lesson on some of the things that grow in the ground and on trees and what tools are used to help nurture them properly. The next page identifies each of the ten major Hundred-Acre Wood characters, and the next depicts a makeshift schoolroom complete with objects as diverse as a chalkboard, blocks, a scrapbook and a map. There are also spreads devoted to recess activities, lunch, Tigger’s playroom, Gopher’s workshop, Kanga’s kitchen, Roo’s bathtub, Christopher Robin’s bedroom and, coming full circle, the outside of Pooh’s house, which looks more endearingly like a hobbit hole here than in any depiction I’ve ever seen.

One of my favorite series of pages is the book-within-a-book of Pooh reading The Animal ABC. There’s an animal for every letter of the alphabet, and it’s fun to point out those bearing a resemblance to established Disney characters. For instance, the baboon is a dead ringer for The Lion King’s Rafiki, and the black and white cat looks a lot like Pinocchio’s Figaro. Not only that, but a couple of the animals here are pretty unusual. I was especially struck by the Uakari, which is a type of monkey, and the Vicuna, a relative of the alpaca. I’ve read my share of animal alphabet books, but I’m pretty sure this is the only one to mention either of those.

Not only does this book identify objects, it also teaches about words in different ways. There’s a page on opposites that creatively uses Pooh and his friends to demonstrate pairs like “dirty” and “clean” and “happy” and “sad”. On another page, Owl gives a lesson on colors, while Rabbit gives a lesson on shapes. Four pages are devoted to Pooh and Piglet wandering through the forest counting objects and animals, all the way up to “twelve of Rabbit’s small relations”. Even the inside of the book’s covers get some use, as the four inner pages are set aside to show things associated with each of the seasons.

This is quite the extensive book. If anything, I might almost wonder if Zoehfeld and Yee are trying to do too much all at once. Words! Numbers! Shapes! Colors! Seasons! It’s enough to make a little head spin. Then again, there’s nothing saying you have to peruse the entire book in one sitting. Pooh has a happy habit of meandering cheerfully through his world in no particular hurry, and I would say that this would be a good way to approach this book as well. No matter how long you’ve been reading, Winnie the Pooh’s Big Book of First Words is a colorful celebration of the joy of discovery that awaits with each new day.

Piglet Is On His Way to Deliver A Friendly Sort of Gift

In my house, we’ve accumulated so many Christmas ornaments that one Christmas tree is nowhere near sufficient to contain them. The theory is that eventually, my brother Nathan and I will leave home with a hefty collection of ornaments in tow, just as my brother Benjamin did, but right now, we’ve got enough for three trees. We don’t have room for more than one full-size tree, but several years ago, Mom got each of us a small artificial tree where we could hang especially small ornaments.

Every year since, she’s tried to find us Hallmark Keepsake Miniatures to hang on our individual trees. For some reason, these seem to be harder to come by nowadays than when we began our collections. Nonetheless, I can pretty much always count on finding a tiny, adorable ornament in my stocking. This year’s was A Friendly Sort of Gift, from the Winnie the Pooh Collection. Like other ornaments of its size, it fares best on a small tree just because it might get lost on a tree of typical size, but as long as you’re careful about retrieving it when the time comes to undecorate, it does hang nicely from a normal-sized branch.

I have more Winnie the Pooh ornaments than anything else, and this little Piglet is a welcome addition. I’ve always felt a great affinity for Piglet, being of a rather skittish nature myself. Piglet’s a nervous little fellow, but overpowering his jitters is his capacity for friendship, particularly with his very best friend Pooh. In this year’s Hallmark miniature ornament, it’s the friendliness and not the anxiety being emphasized.

Piglet stands about an inch tall, and in his hands he holds a cheerfully wrapped present that is nearly an inch tall itself. The wrapping paper is blue with a pattern of yellow stars and bound with a yellow ribbon, and it’s fun to imagine what might be in there. It’s a very tall, skinny package, so it doesn’t seem likely to be a honey pot, the stereotypical present for a Pooh Bear. It seems that Piglet put on his thinking cap and got his friend something very creative. (Not to worry, though; I’m sure Christopher Robin has a honey pot or two with his name on it!)

Piglet is all smiles here, with one foot down and the other at a 90-degree angle just below the package. The coloring is just right for Piglet, with light pink limbs and face and a magenta jumper with black stripes. He also wears a vibrant green scarf. Attached to the top of the mystery gift is a sprig of holly, complete with berries, and a tag that says ?”. This is also where you’ll find the tiny ring for the hook.

Piglet is starting his year off right. If the weather in the Hundred-Acre Wood is anything like it’s been on the East Coast, he probably had to brave a bit of a blizzard to get his gift out to Pooh, but he’s not letting that stop him. When faced with the right motivation, Piglet tends to find that he is more courageous than he gives himself credit for. Christopher Robin has been known to tell Pooh, “You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” Something tells me he passed that message on to a Very Small Animal who needed the encouragement.

“Piglet’s on his way to Pooh / with a biggish sort of gift – / there’s so much friendly packed inside, / it’s rather hard to lift.” So goes the rhyme on the back of the box containing this very festive miniature. Hard to lift? Maybe. But I suspect that Piglet doesn’t mind in the slightest.

Munch on Some Magic With Kellogg's Disney Classics Fruit Snacks

When I was growing up, I remember being bombarded with kid-centric advertising as I watched the Saturday morning and after-school cartoons. Most of it went in one ear and out the other, but the Fruit Roll-Up commercials must have made an impression, since those were a staple in my school lunches, along with their somewhat more sedate cousins, fruit snacks. It’s been quite a while since I’ve punched the shapes out of a Fruit Roll-Up, but it’s still fairly common to find fruit snacks on top of the refrigerator. And if you’re going to indulge in nostalgic goodies, why not double the fun by getting snacks whose shapes correspond to beloved characters?

There are many such themed snacks out there, from Star Wars to VeggieTales, produced by a variety of companies. Right now, the fruit snacks atop the fridge are Kellogg’s Disney Classics, which feature characters from six different Disney movies. To make things nice and simple, each character always is the same color, which is frequently the case with fruit snacks, but not always. The main advantage I could see to changing things up would be that then it might make more sense to have more basic shapes tossed into the mix. After all, six characters to represent “Disney Classics” is pretty paltry. Still, there’s a decent representation here.

Mostly, it’s fairly early Disney that we’re getting. Pinocchio, Fantasia and Dumbo all hail from the early 1940s, while Dumbo and Peter Pan came out in the mid-1950s. That leaves just The Lion King in the mid-1990s. Pinocchio looks a little funny in all yellow, but at least it goes with his hat. Likewise, an all-red Dumbo is a bit odd, but at least it goes with the ruffle he wears, along with the snazzy suit worn by his tiny manager.

Meanwhile, classy Cocker Spaniel Lady wears no purple at all, but there’s a certain royal air about her, so I can buy the coloring there. Still, the choices for the other three seem much more natural. Mickey, as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is all blue, which goes so well with that big blue hat of his, and verdantly garbed Peter Pan, quite understandably, is all green. Simba, meanwhile, is a very natural shade of orange. All of them are pretty good likenesses for as small and squishy as they are, and I don’t have to squint much to see what each one is supposed to be. Dumbo is probably the hardest to make out, while Mickey is the easiest.

Each box comes with ten pouches, each containing about eight fruit snacks, which, despite having six different colors, come in four different flavors: strawberry, grape, orange and cherry. The flavors aren’t super-distinct; I think the greens are strawberry and the yellows are orange, but I’m still not sure what the blues are. Meanwhile, the reds are cherry, the purples are grape and the oranges are orange. They’re reasonably tasty, and while I tend to like my fruit snacks just a tad firmer, I have no real complaints about the texture.

In nutritional terms, these are pretty standard, with each pouch containing 80 calories, 13 grams of sugar and 5 mg of sodium but no fat. They’re also made with real fruit (20 percent) and contain Vitamin C. So not super healthy, not super unhealthy. Certainly not something to feel guilty about munching on now and then. If you are looking for a way to put a little Disney magic into your diet, Kellogg’s Disney Classics fruit snacks aren’t a bad way to do it.

I Alpha-Bet You'll Love Winnie the Pooh's A to Zzzz

I’ve read a lot of alphabet books through the years. My favorites are the ones in which the objects listed for each letter are not in isolation. It’s more fun if there’s a sentence or two to go with it. Winnie the Pooh’s A to Zzzz certainly delivers on that score. Written by Don Ferguson and illustrated by Bill Langley and Diana Wakeman, this 1992 book incorporates all of the major Pooh characters: Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Rabbit, Kanga, Roo, Owl, Christopher Robin and Disney addition Gopher.

Each page features a full-color, full-page illustration depicting various Hundred-Acre Wood residents in action, and set over top of that is a four-line rhyming verse that includes the word at hand. Just above that is an extra-big appearance of the letter, followed, in capital letters, by “IS FOR _____”. For instance, we naturally have “H IS FOR HONEY,” and the illustration shows Pooh, surrounded by honey jars, enjoying a smackerel. You get the sense that you just opened the door and caught him by surprise; the scene feels vibrant and immediate, which is typical for this book.

Another nice aspect of the book is that it shows us the Hundred-Acre Wood in various seasons. V is for Vest, which fits Piglet “like an all-day hug” as the browning leaves drift to the ground around him, while on the D page, spring is in full bloom, to the accompaniment of trilling birds and one of my favorite mini-poems in the book: “In spring, Pooh’s door / Is open wide / To let the sunshine / Come inside.” The S is for Seesaw page looks pretty summery as a worried Piglet sits suspended high in the air, seemingly stuck since he’s so much lighter than Pooh. This is actually the only page to include Christopher Robin, and it’s really more of a cameo, as the verse doesn’t mention him and he’s more of a casual observer than a participant in the activity at hand. N is for Nose gives us Kanga and Roo in winter; though they hail from Australia, they seem to have no trouble adjusting to freezing temperatures, and Roo looks perfectly cheerful as he playfully tweaks his mother’s nose.

The pictures in this book really are beautiful, filled with detail and bright colors. Of the 26 letters, 20 of them have an illustration that includes Pooh, though not all of the verses do. Gopher, on the other hand, only appears on one page, like Christopher Robin, but at least he is the star character with G is for Gopher. Most of the characters similarly are the subjects of a page. We have P is for Piglet, focusing on Piglet’s diminutive size; E is for Eeyore, which the gloomy donkey would be pleased to know is one of only two two-page spreads in the book; R is for the very busy Rabbit; T is for the bouncy Tigger; O is for Owl, who “tells Pooh everything he knows. / And sometimes even more!”

While every letter is very well represented in this book, I have a clear favorite, a page that I think would make a nice poster in isolation. In it, a gentle snowfall blankets the forest, and pine needles just barely peek through as a smiling Pooh and Piglet pass, the bear all bundled up in a sky blue hat and scarf, Piglet in a green scarf and white earmuffs. They wear matching off-white boots, and a long trail of footprints is behind them. The verse, meanwhile, seems very sage in a way, with a subtle message about the future always being open to new and surprising possibilities: “Our footprints always follow us / On days when it’s been snowing. / They always show us where we’ve been, / But never where we’re going.”

Clearly, you don’t have to be a youngster to get a kick out of this book, but if it had been in print back when I was getting intimately acquainted with the alphabet, I’m sure I would have loved it then too. From start to finish, Winnie the Pooh’s A to Zzzz is one of the most enjoyable books of its kind that I have encountered.

Disney Artists Give Three Cheers For Pooh With The Art of Winnie the Pooh

Last week, I watched The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story, and when it came to the part about writing the music for the Winnie the Pooh featurettes Disney did in the 1960s, a lot of it sounded very familiar. I realized that was because Richard Sherman had related much of the same material in his foreword for The Art of Winnie the Pooh: Disney Artists Celebrate the Silly Old Bear, a beautiful coffee table book commemorating Pooh’s 80th birthday. When I received it as a Christmas gift a few years back, I was surprised to discover that neither Sherman had thought much of Pooh at first glance, but the enthusiasm of costume and set designer Tony Walton had caused them to see the stories in a new light. Meanwhile, I was touched by the anecdote he shared about Jessica McClure, the little girl who captured national attention when she became trapped in a Texas well in 1987. One of the things that got the 18-month-old and her mother through the ordeal was singing the Winnie the Pooh song, since Jessica remembered Pooh being stuck and figured since he got out safely, she would too, and the song reminded her of that.

There’s not a lot of writing in this book, just the two-page foreword; the two-page introduction by Ken Shue, vice president of Disney’s global art development and licensing operations at the time this was published in 2006, which talks about the need for Disney employees to balance hard word and a deep appreciation for “nonsense” and the quotes and explanations that accompany each of the artistic interpretations of Pooh and his friends, along with the name of the artist, the title, and a description of the medium. At the very end of the book, there is also a paragraph devoted to each of the 80 Disney artists whose contributions are included.

This is a handsome collection that reminds me a bit of the public art projects that my city embraced earlier this decade. The first and more successful of them invited local artists to decorate fish statues, using one of two basic patterns; the second did the same with frogs. Boy, did some of them get creative with it! And in both cases, the statues were included in attractive books. The artists here have even more free reign, as the only restriction is that their subject must have something to do with Pooh’s world. The bear himself need not even appear in the artwork, though in most cases he does. For a Pooh fanatic like me, it’s wonderful to peruse these paintings, drawings and other works and get a sense for how many different ways there are to draw inspiration from a beloved fictional landscape.

The artists have an opportunity to discuss their process here, though not quite half of them do. Even when it’s just a sentence or two, I appreciate the insight into that particular person’s connection with the Hundred-Acre Wood. Several others opt to include a quote, usually from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, that relates to the artwork at hand. For instance, David Pacheco’s untitled colored pencil drawing shows Tigger, Pooh and Piglet sharing a belly laugh, and he explains how Pooh and his friends remind him of his own friends and the joy they take in laughing together. Judith Holmes Clarke’s ”I Can Fly!”, also in colored pencil, is one of my favorite drawings in the book. With its bluish tint and mysteriously fluid look, it shows a winged Pooh and Piglet soaring through a night sky. “To say ‘I can fly!’ is all that is Pooh,” Clarke says. Her biographical sketch lends further insight, as it reveals that she created the Disney Fairies, whose sylvan world is so appealing that I bought the punch-out calendar featuring several of their homes a couple years back.

Most of the pictures look pretty similar to the established Disney Pooh look, but some, like Rich Tuzon’s earthy watercolors that feature a Pooh who moves about on all fours, feel closer to the original Pooh books, and some, like Satoru Kawano’s Block Pooh, which depicts eight of the Pooh characters using only straight lines, feel very futuristic. Lori Tyminski’s earless Pooh pastel, Wincent Van Pooh, pays tribute to Vincent Van Gogh, while Jim Valeri and Geppy Vaccaro’s acrylic Poohcasso honors Pablo Picasso and Alan Batson’s digital The Connaisseur is a nod at Norman Rockwell.

I could talk about every one of the representations in this book, and I’m tempted to, but I’ll just mention a few more that I really love. Steven Andrews’ digital Storyteller shows TIgger telling a lively ghost story to Pooh and Piglet, who clutch each other nervously on the other side of a blazing fire. They’re right beside a meandering creek, and they look to be deep in a green valley, with storm clouds encroaching on the stars overhead. This scene reminds me very much of camping with my folks at Little Pine State Park in Little Pine Valley, PA, and it’s gorgeously done, with everything dark and spooky aside from that tiny circle of light from the fire. As a big fan of music from the 1960s, I love Philo Barnhart’s Technicolor digital Pooh vibrations, which reminds me not only of the obvious Beach Boys song but also Simon and Garfunkel’s Feelin’ Groovy, and Eric Hutchison’s digital Abbey Bridge, which recreates the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover with Tigger as John Lennon, Piglet as Ringo Starr, Pooh as Paul McCartney and Eeyore as George Harrison, gets a big smile out of me.

Carson Van Osten’s pencil drawing Pooh sticks… with you is the perfect way to conclude the collection, with a lovely black-and-white depiction of Pooh and Piglet standing on the Poohsticks bridge, with Christopher Robin standing on the railing and gazing over the side. It looks very much like a marriage of Ernest Shepard and the traditional Disney Pooh look. This is what Pooh is all about, lazy days spent enjoyably in the company of good friends. You can be transported to many such moments with The Art of Winnie the Pooh. If you’ve ever wanted to venture Deep in the Hundred-Acre Wood, this book will most assuredly take you there.

The Coen Brothers Tackle the Old West in True Grit

“Jeff Bridges is really hot.” So proclaimed my mom the other night as I perused Hulu to find the clip of him singing a duet of Silver Bells with Cookie Monster during his gig as Saturday Night Live host. My brother Nathan and I turned raised eyebrows in her direction, and she hastened to add that she meant he was a hot commodity at the moment. We’ve been teasing her mercilessly ever since, but she’s certainly right about that. Yesterday, Nathan and I had to choose between two movies featuring Bridges in a major role. Had we gone with TRON: Legacy, it might not have seemed quite so preposterous to imagine the term “hot” applied, in another sense of the word, to Jeff Bridges. But in True Grit, the Coen Brothers’ remake of the classic John Wayne movie, the idea was beyond laughable.

Bridges portrays Rooster Cogburn, a U. S. Marshal with a reputation as the meanest dead-eye around. He’s a grizzly old cuss who drinks and smokes too much, and it doesn’t particularly concern him that he may be a little too quick with that trigger finger. He does things his way and refuses to apologize, and trying to have a conversation with him inevitably entails exasperation, since his gravelly rants are rarely more than half-comprehensible. He spits. He snarls. He spends vast quantities of time in the outhouse. He’s just plain grungy. He is so not hot. He is, however, wonderful to watch.

Rooster spends most of the movie on the trail of Tom Chaney, the low-life who murdered the wrong kid’s dad. With spunk reminiscent of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne Shirley – whom she resembles in her long braids, hat and coat – and a laser focus like The Princess Bride’s Inigo Montoya, Mattie Ross is determined to see her father’s killer brought to justice. After an impressive show of her shrewd business sense with a local horse trader, Mattie sets her sights on the reluctant Rooster, ultimately convincing him to take on her challenge. What he doesn’t realize is that he’s also agreed to a pint-sized traveling companion, whether he wants her or not.

Rooster and Mattie seem strangely suited to each other. They’re both tough as nails, and they make a good team. Neither thinks much of LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger played with a preening swagger by Matt Damon. He’s pretty hot on himself when they first meet, and he views Mattie as nothing more than a nuisance in the culmination of his long quest to track down Chaney for other reasons. Mattie isn’t interested in his help if it means that Chaney will hang for killing a Senator and not her father. Rooster simply finds all his bragging tedious. They become competitors in a heated race, with Chaney the prize. But as the Wild West brings each into contact with nefarious scoundrels, all three pursuers will find hidden grit and a new respect for each other.

Hailee Steinfeld has already begun receiving accolades for her role as the determined 14-year-old Mattie, and I have no dispute with that. This is a girl intelligent beyond her years, so Steinfeld has lots of tricky dialogue to pull off with conviction. Steely resolve is her baseline emotion, but we see her break out of that from time to time, particularly when various people inspire her sympathies. In both this and No Country For Old Men, the movie that established me as a Coen Brothers fan, Josh Brolin plays a man who spends most of the movie being followed. In the former, he’s a pretty good guy who made a really big mistake. In this case, he’s still not wholly unsympathetic, but Tom Chaney is not a man of virtue. Neither is his current boss, gang leader Lucky Ned Pepper, a crusty criminal played by Barry Pepper.

Robert Duvall played that role in the original movie, which I didn’t realize until after I watched it; seeing that on IMDb made me chuckle because Pepper’s performance reminded me quite a bit of Duvall. Never having seen the original movie, I can’t really make comparisons. I understand that much of the dialogue remains intact, so I’m not sure how much I can credit the Coens for their screenplay, but I thought it was an exceptionally well-written movie. I often had to strain a bit to understand the dialogue, since, aside from Mattie’s, most of it came filtered through a fairly thick accent, but it was worth it to catch those careful words. As we headed home, my dad and brother wondered whether 19th-century outlaws were really as eloquent as this movie makes them out to be. The dialogue is often a thing of beauty.

And it’s funny. Like No Country, it’s populated with quirky characters, perhaps none more so than a medicine man played by Ed Corbin who turns up on horseback dressed in a bearskin. Dakin Matthew is a hoot as the increasingly flustered Colonel Stonehill, who simply can’t match wits with this tough teenager, and Jarlath Conroy has a brief but memorable role as an eccentric Irish undertaker. Most of the humor, however, comes from Rooster’s random ramblings, Mattie’s cleverness and LaBoeuf’s self-adulation, especially when any two of the three clash. However, these personalities also are at the heart of the movie’s most touching scenes.

The film is beautifully shot from start to finish, and it didn’t surprise me one bit to learn that Roger Deakins, whose work so impressed me in No Country and other recent movies, was the cinematographer. The countryside looks bleak but also somehow appealing, in a stirring the pioneer spirit sort of way. Complementing it well is Carter Burwell’s score, which incorporates several traditional hymns, particularly Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. “Nothing in this world is free but the grace of God,” reflects an older Mattie in the opening narration, and her faith is a thread that runs through the movie, which begins with an epigraph from Proverbs.

I loved No Country For Old Men, and I was surprised about it, since it was so very violent. True Grit is an old-fashioned Western, so there are a few shoot-outs, but there’s only one scene I would really call gruesome, and it passes quickly. The movie is rated a mild PG-13, and only on rare occasions is the "13" really earned. Profanity scarcely slips out of even the uncouth Rooster’s mouth. There is drinking and smoking aplenty, but that hardly seems worth mentioning in a movie set in the Old West. This flick feels like a respectful throwback, with only occasional bits of subtle humor taking aim at the genre. It’s the story of two, sometimes three, distinct characters taking a grueling journey together and gaining a deeper appreciation for each other and understanding of themselves. I’m still looking forward to TRON. But I’m very glad we saw True Grit, and if there was any doubt before, I can now say with certainty that when the Coen Brothers make another movie, I will be buying a ticket.

Walt and El Grupo Explore South America

A couple weeks ago, I rented Waking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary about the exciting period in Disney history that largely lined up with my own childhood and included such classics as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. On that DVD were previews for two other Disney documentaries. I was very interested in The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story, so that went into my queue next. However, when I saw that Walt and El Grupo, which deals with the time during the 1940s when Walt Disney and several of his employees went to South America on a goodwill tour / research trip, would soon be available on Live Streaming Video, I decided to go that route and not worry about the DVD Special Features. As I suspected, while this was still an interesting peek into Disney history, it didn’t keep me as riveted as the others.

Walt and El Grupo was written and directed by Theodore Thomas, son of famed Disney animator Frank Thomas, one of the few people spotlighted in the movie who was familiar to me. Another was artist Mary Blair, known, among other things, for her work on Disneyland attraction it’s a small world. As for everybody else, I was chagrined to realize that I recognized nearly no names that were tossed out throughout the documentary, which made it a little hard to connect with at times, especially since roughly half of the interviewees did not speak English, and at times, the subtitles were pretty hard to read against light backgrounds.

But boy, did we get a lot of Walt, and that was the best part of the movie for me. There were clips of interviews with Walt Disney, videos and photographs of him embracing the cultures of the various cities he visited with his crew, and especially lots of people reminiscing about their memories of him and what a stir he caused everywhere he went. He was only about 40 during this trip, and despite the unfortunate circumstances that partly precipitated it – an animators’ strike that halted work at the studio – he seems to have embraced the journey with gusto, and it was a joy to listen to stories of his interaction with the locals at every leg of the voyage.

There are a lot of talking heads in this movie, and I often found it hard to keep track of who was who, especially among the South Americans. It didn’t help that many of the interview subjects were spouses or children or grandchildren. I often forgot which interviewee went with which member of “el grupo,” the general name used for the group of people who went with Walt Disney on that trip. There was also a fair bit video depicting scenery and culture, but these parts tended to be in rather extended sequences that went on a little too long. I think there could have been a better balance of interviews to travelogue-type scenes.

Aside from the parts about Disney himself, what I found most interesting were the discussions on Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, the two movies that came out of this venture. The documentary includes several clips from both, certainly enough to whet the appetite of anyone who hasn’t seen those movies. As Disney features go, they’re a little unusual, but I still enjoy them, and it’s neat to get some background on them.

Of the three Disney documentaries I’ve watched this month, Walt and El Grupo was the one that felt the most like a documentary to me. It never really pulled me out of that mindset, largely because it was primarily about an experience rather than specific people. I was able to latch onto Walt Disney to a certain extent, but since so much of that was second-hand, it still didn’t feel that immediate. I certainly recommend the movie to anyone interested in Disney history, but this isn’t one I’ll feel compelled to add to my collection.

Thomas Kinkade Finds Himself as an Artist in The Christmas Cottage

My brother Nathan is a senior in college majoring in Painting. He loves a lot of artists, but Thomas Kinkade, whose warm and fuzzy, light-infused landscape paintings are a staple at the calendar kiosk where I work this time of year, is not one of them. Still, I think that he would appreciate The Christmas Cottage, the 2008 film that loosely chronicles one memorable Christmas in the life of a college-aged Kinkade.

In this feel-good movie written by Ken LaZebnik and directed by Michael Campus, Jared Padalecki plays Thomas, who has returned to his tiny hometown for Christmas break and is shocked to discover that his mother (Marcia Gay Harden) is so far in debt that she is about to lose her cottage. Though Thomas feels like a fish out of water, with a slight air of superiority when it comes to most of the townsfolk, he delves into an art project that he feels is beneath him in hopes that it will help pay his mother’s bill. What he needs to do is create a Christmassy mural to advertise for a local businessman. When he confesses his malaise to his mentor, neighbor Glenn Wessels (Peter O’Toole), this aged artist at the tail end of an illustrious career advises him to put forth his very best effort and use the job as an opportunity to honor his town and its residents.

We see the mural as a work in progress throughout the movie, and gradually, it gains more and more personality as Thomas decides to fill it with specific people who have meant a lot to him and to the town. As he paints, he struggles with the idea of finding his own distinct style. It isn’t until the last minute that he is inspired to add the light pouring through all the windows, that touch that has become his trademark. Thomas’s relationship with Glenn is the heart of the story, and O’Toole gives a heart-rending performance as a very talented man losing control of his faculties – both his mind and his all-important hands. Despite the hints of dementia creeping in, Glenn still is a great source of wisdom for his troubled young neighbor.

While painting is the main focus of the movie, there are several subplots. In the silliest, Thomas’s congenial brother Pat (Aaron Ashmore, who plays the adorable Jimmy Olsen on Smallville) takes a job for a man embroiled in a bitter battle with his neighbor over who has the best Christmas display. Mrs. Kinkade has her hands full trying to corral a chaotic assembly of townspeople for a nice Christmas pageant. Most notably, the family is thrown into a tizzy when Thomas and Pat’s long-absent father (Richard Burgi) shows up again, broke, sardonic and unrepentant for his lack of involvement in their life.

The Christmas Cottage probably isn’t one of those Christmas movies I’m going to watch repeatedly, but I’d certainly have no objection to watching it again with my brother to see what he thinks of it. It definitely feels like a Hallmark movie, though it isn’t really. As I tend to enjoy those sappy made-for-TV efforts, though, that doesn’t bother me. If you’re intrigued by Thomas Kinkade or art in general, it’s worth making a stop at The Christmas Cottage.

A Bitter But Brilliant Brotherhood Is Revealed in The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story

When I think of great songwriting teams, a few names rise to the top: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Probably the first songwriting partnership whose music made its way into my life was the Sherman Brothers, Robert and Richard. Given my love of both Disney and the craft of songwriting, I knew as soon as I heard of it that I would have to see The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story.

This documentary, created by Jeff Sherman (Robert’s son) and Gregory Sherman (Richard’s son), tells an eye-opening tale that is sometimes inspiring, sometimes dreadfully sad. It turns out that Robert and Richard, or as they are generally referred to in the movie, Bob and Dick, may have been able to create pure magic when they sat down to write songs together, but their personal relationship was – and, unless a lot has changed in the last couple of years, is – a far cry from congenial.

The Boys, which is how most of their colleagues referred to them during their time at Disney, includes quite a bit of archival footage, as well as current interviews with the brothers and those who know them. While the DVD includes a number of interesting bonus features, there’s not a making-of segment, so I’m not sure where all this footage from the 1980s came from. Was this in the works that long ago, or were those parts filmed for another purpose? I’m glad, though, that we get to spend so much of the movie watching the Shermans at work together, as they did so magnificently. The recent interviews with each man individually are just as intriguing, but there’s a certain tone of desolation about it, especially in the interviews with Dick.

Together, the Shermans crafted some of the happiest and most memorable songs of the century. I always thought, “Wow. How incredibly cool that must have been to be able to do that with your own brother.” They do say that when a song idea came to them, there was no greater thrill. But you also get the sense that theirs was, for the most part, not a very pleasant partnership. Their personalities were so different, they had a tendency to clash. On the documentary, Bob, the primary lyricist and elder by a couple of years, often comes across as gruff and no-nonsense. He looks like he’s at least a decade older than the vivacious Dick, who seems very emotionally open. Dick laughs and smiles a lot throughout the film, but he also gets choked up more often, and in the estrangement, he seems more victim than perpetrator.

Although lyric-writing is my primary area of interest, I found myself more drawn to the bubbly Dick, and my heart went out to him on several occasions, the first time being when each man was asked about whether they were close as children. First we saw Bob’s response, an almost shockingly dismissive, “I barely knew him.” And then Dick: “Oh, yeah, he was my hero!” Whenever the conversation topic lingered too long on the divergent directions their personal lives took, Dick became disturbed. He reflected on how he missed being the ebullient uncle; his voice broke as he read the eloquent note Bob wrote to him for his 50th birthday. More than once, he simply said that he didn’t want to talk about it. Bob, meanwhile, generally came across as having little emotional investment in Dick. Then again, the film also delves a bit into Bob’s time as a teenage soldier during World War II, which deeply scarred him. He says that he was the first American to arrive at Dachau when it was liberated, and many of his later creative endeavors were an effort to override the horror of what he saw there. It’s little wonder that there seemed to be something standoffish about him.

But brotherly rivalry was only one part of this movie. There was also the great American story of two young men, the sons of songwriter Al Sherman, who discovered that they had a certain knack for writing songs together. This led to pop hits and eventually a recurring gig writing songs for Annette Funicello to sing on The Mickey Mouse Club. Then came the first meeting with Walt Disney himself, a moment clearly ingrained in both of their minds. The brothers, but particularly Bob, speak of Disney’s founder with such warmth and reverence; it was clear that their relationship with him, from both a professional and personal viewpoint, was something that they never took for granted.

I’m fairly certain that the first Disney song to utterly capture my imagination was Feed the Birds. It’s my favorite song in Mary Poppins, and I still think it’s one of the most beautiful film segments I’ve ever seen. When I went to England during college, one of the absolute highlights of my trip was going to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and this song is the reason for that. So I found it incredibly touching that it was after they presented this song to him that Walt Disney invited them to become staff songwriters. Later in the film, they mention that it always remained his absolute favorite of their songs, and some afternoons, they would sing it together, just for him. While the men seem miles apart in most of their interviews, their reflections upon the moment when Walt officially hired them and his final farewell to them less than a decade later were remarkably similar, and it was bittersweet to see each of them break down over those memories.

It surprised me to learn that Mary Poppins came so early in the Sherman Brothers’ Disney career, since it really is a movie that is “practically perfect in every way,” and the songs are a huge part of that. Because it is such an iconic movie and so important to them, the documentary spends a fair bit of time on it, casting P. L. Travers, author of the original Mary Poppins books, as a wicked witch doing her best to stop the film from going forward and discussing the genesis of some of the biggest songs. For instance, Bob was inspired to write A Spoonful of Sugar after hearing his son talk about receiving the Salk vaccine, which was administered with… a spoonful of sugar.

The Shermans’ output during their main stretch of time with Disney in the 1960s was incredible, and one can’t help but wonder what might have followed if Walt hadn’t died at the young age of 65 but had continued to oversee the company for years. In the wake of his death, Disney lost much of its magic for them, though they did continue on for a while, with Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Aristocats their most notable Disney projects of that time. The movie also mentions some of their non-Disney work, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Charlotte’s Web, which Bob identifies as his favorite of their joint efforts. Winnie the Pooh also gets a fair amount of attention, both their work in the 1960s and their collaboration with Kenny Loggins on The Tigger Movie in 2000. Despite their initial inability to connect with A. A. Milne’s stories, they seem to have found it very moving to have the chance to write new Pooh music together again after all that time, especially since their Disney output had pretty much dried up in the 1980s.

Scattered throughout the movie are comments by a number of prominent personalities. These include Roy Disney; screenwriter A. J. Carothers; Mary Poppins stars Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and Karen Dotrice; Angela Lansbury of Bedknobs and Broomsticks; film scholar Leonard Maltin; Parent Trap star Hayley Mills; actor Ben Stiller, who seems to have been interviewed mostly just as a Disney enthusiast; and several others. A look at the bonus features, most of which are between five and ten minutes in length, gives you an even greater sense of how these men affected the world of movies, along with the Disney theme park experience. I enjoyed each of the special features, but my favorite was the Sherman Brothers’ Jukebox, which includes about a dozen of their songs. Click on each one, and you’ll get to hear it and usually hear one or both of them talking about how the song came to be written. It’s a fascinating peek into the songwriting process.

I still think that Richard and Robert Sherman had one of the coolest jobs imaginable. I’m sorry to learn that their incredible harmony rarely extended to their personal lives – to the extent that the sons who took this project on went decades without seeing each other. It’s really a rather depressing story. But just think of all the amazing music that came out of their contentious partnership…

Kenny Loggins Enchants Again With More Songs From Pooh Corner

Kenny Loggins and Winnie the Pooh go way back. Like many children before him, he met Pooh in the classic books by A. A. Milne. Around the time he wrote House at Pooh Corner as a high school student grappling with his reluctance to leave childhood behind, Richard and Robert Sherman were writing the iconic songs that would soon become instantly identifiable as having to do with the Silly Old Bear. I read Milne’s books, which were wonderful, but I met Pooh first via Disney, like so many of my generation. There’s something extra touching, then, about Loggins finding his way back to the Hundred Acre Wood with the help of the Sherman Brothers.

More Songs From Pooh Corner is a follow-up album to Loggins’ Return to Pooh Corner, a collection of lullabies. Even when he released Return, it seems that he had an idea that this was a subject to which he would like to return. His opening note concludes, “Here are the songs I sing to my children… Should I say ‘part one’?” This album came out six years later, the same year as The Tigger Movie, which presented him with an opportunity to write an original song with the Sherman Brothers that in many ways feels like a response to House at Pooh Corner. While that song is a plea to return to a place he loved so much, the new song offers assurance that it’s not so out of reach.

Your Heart Will Lead You Home - This is the aforementioned song that served as the theme to The Tigger Movie. Unlike House at Pooh Corner, it makes no specific mention of anything that would immediately associate it with the Pooh universe, aside from the instrumental quote of the earlier song that opens it. If you heard this song on the radio with no context, chances are that your mind would not travel to the Hundred Acre Wood. There is a very Pooh-ish sort of sensibility to it, though, especially in the opening verse, which talks of such woodland staples as “lazy afternoons” and “hummin’ little tunes”. And the emphasis on friendship is certainly one that fits that world in general, and particularly that movie, since it finds Tigger having an identity crisis when, all at once, being the only one of his kind doesn’t seem so appealing anymore, and it’s up to his friends to show him that he does have a family after all. I suppose that after doing this, Loggins had Disney on the brain; three more songs from Disney movies turn up here. On an album that includes many childhood classics, this tender anthem feels right where it belongs. “When you feel lost and on your own and far from home, you’re never alone, you know. Just think of your friends, the ones who care. They all will be waiting there with love to share, and your heart will lead you home.”

You’ll Be In My Heart - Another Disney song released shortly before this album came out, this one comes from Tarzan, where it serves as a powerful expression of the love between mother and child. Written by Phil Collins, it speaks of the desire of a parent to protect his or her children and to keep them close even when they venture out on their own. A very gentle and understated performance. “When destiny calls you, you must be strong. I may not be with you, so you gotta hold on…”

Always, In All Ways - One of only four songs on the album not connected with a movie, this song goes very well with the one before it, conveying the same message of wanting to be there for one’s child. While You’ll Be In My Heart is directed at a young child, this song finds the parent dealing with the fledgling leaving the nest. It’s bittersweet, but the gentle, almost whispered song written by Loggins and Mark Mancina carries an assurance that the love and support remain just as strong despite the shift in circumstances. “I never thought that this day would come when we’d have to say goodbye, but now that you’re on your own, whenever you need a home, I’ll be there inside you always, in all ways.”

Flying Dreams - This gorgeous song is the theme of Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH and is probably just behind Somewhere Out There when it comes to my favorite songs from his movies. It always seemed like a bit of an odd theme to me, since it seems to be about romantic love, which really isn’t a focus of the movie, except for the fact that the widowed mouse at the heart of the story connects with the super-intelligent rats who save her family’s home because of their association with her husband. In that sense, one might say that his love transcends death and continues to bolster his wife and children. A beautiful duet with Olivia Newton-John, with woodwinds adding to its haunting quality. “Love, it seems, made flying dreams so hearts could soar. Heaven sent, these wings were meant to prove once more that love is the key…”

That’ll Do - Even though I loved Babe, I never saw its sequel, from which this is drawn. (I should do something about that soon.) But several years ago, I heard this gentle song at an Art Garfunkel concert , where his wife performed it beautifully. It’s a song of encouragement, written by Randy Newman around the taciturn Farmer Hoggett’s affirmation of choice. The incorporation of the harp and Uilleann pipes give an enchanting Celtic flavor to this heartening tune. “A kind and steady heart can conquer doubt and fear. A little courage goes a long, long way, gets you a little bit further down the road each day, and before you know it, you’ll hear someone say, ‘That’ll do, Babe. That’ll do.’”

Turn Around - This Harry Belafonte song is another that isn’t associated with a movie, and I don’t think it’s one that I’ve heard in another context. It’s a Sunrise, Sunset sort of song about how quickly time passes. A bit melancholy but very tender, with sparse guitar accompaniment. “Where are you going, my little one, little one? Little pigtails and petticoats, where have you gone? Turn around and you’re tiny, turn around and you’re grown, turn around and you’re a young wife with babes of your own.”

Beauty and the Beast - I confess that of all the songs in Beauty and the Beast, this one, while beautiful and insightful, is my least favorite. Unlike the rest, it doesn’t feel particularly connected to the character who sings it, and as a love song, Something There feels much more in-the-moment and intimate to me. Still, the fact that this is a “tale as old as time” means that this Alan Menken / Howard Ashman song resonates with a lot of people, and I think I prefer this mellow version to the grandiose radio version that helped catapult Celine Dion to stardom. “Barely even friends, then somebody bends unexpectedly. Just a little change, small to say the least. Both a little scared, neither one prepared, Beauty and the Beast.”

Baby Mine - This Dumbo weeper also appears on Art Garfunkel’s Songs From a Parent to a Child, one of my favorite children’s albums. I’m partial to that version of the song, which is pretty much You’ll Be In My Heart six decades earlier, but Loggins does a lovely job with it as well. Certainly one of the most fundamentally lullaby-like tracks on the album. “All those same people who scold you, what they’d give just for the right to hold you…”

The Inch Worm - I vividly remember the first time I watched the Danny Kaye musical Hans Christian Andersen. My friend and I were having a sleepover, and both of us had Little Mermaid fever. Since the Disney animated feature was, as I recall, between theaters and home video at the time, Mom and Dad thought it might be fun for us to watch this movie, in which Andersen’s classic is presented as a ballet. I think I liked the movie more than she did, and it didn’t hurt that I already knew this song, since Anne Murray included it on her children’s album, There’s a Hippo In My Tub, which I’d probably listened to dozens of times by that point. It’s a nice reminder not to get so caught up in quantitative considerations that you forget how to stop and smell the flowers. A nice violin section and a kids’ chorus enhance this gentle song. “Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, seems to me you’d stop and see how beautiful they are.”

Hana Aluna Lullabye - Another song that Loggins had a hand in writing. This one is directed at his daughter, who was named for the Hawaiian town of Hana. A very soothing tune that includes a fair bit of Hawaiian, along with ukulele. Listening to this song on a snowy winter day whisks me away to tropical shores for a few moments. No movie connection, but a definite sense of place. “Before you were born, I saw you in the sunrise, in the arms of my lover, in the music of the islands. And you are made of paradise, of ginger and pikake, wild mango and moonlight and dreams of our sweet ohana.”

Goodnight - Loggins included a John Lennon song on his first children’s album, and this time around he closes with a tip of the hat to Lennon / McCartney. This duet with Alison Krauss is a most fitting way to end the album, in which every track segues seamlessly into the next. Here, the transition will hopefully be into dreamland as Loggins closes the track with a softly spoken “goodnight”. “Now it’s time to say good night. Good night, sleep tight. Now the sun turns out his light. Good night, sleep tight. Dream sweet dreams for me; dream sweet dreams for you.”

Somehow, I think that whoever is listening to this album will do just that.

Join Larry for a Ride on the What-If Express in It's a Meaningful Life

VeggieTales is a Christian video series that has been entertaining and enriching me for the past 15 years, and when I saw that their latest DVD had a tie-in with Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, one of my favorite movies to watch this time of year, I was doubly interested. It’s a Meaningful Life is a 45-minute-long video containing one long story, which has been the norm for VeggieTales Christmas videos. The basic story is basically a mix of Wonderful Life, The Family Man and The Polar Express, with plenty of fun Veggie twists tossed in.

Larry the Cucumber plays the role of Stewart, the main character who is named for Jimmy Stewart and is married to Donna (Petunia), who is named after Donna Reed. Though VeggieTales has been pairing these two up ever since Duke and the Great Pie War several years ago, it was still a little weird for me to see Larry playing the part of a man who is married with kids, since he usually comes across as such a big kid himself. But his scenes with both Petunia and his children, especially little Emma, are very sweet.

Although Stewart has a good life as the owner of the toy train factory handed down to him by his father and a volunteer peewee football coach, he can’t stop thinking about that fateful day years ago when he almost won the team’s big game. Instead, his buddy Morty (Mr. Lunt) made the winning play and went on to superstardom. When Morty comes back for a visit, all those old feelings of bitterness threaten to overwhelm him. Who could blame him for feeling a little sorry for himself when his own son can’t stop going on about how great Morty is?

In the early days, VeggieTales videos tended to have fairly simple props and backdrops. One of the main reasons the characters were vegetables was because they were pretty easy to animate. But there have been major advances since then, and the setting for It’s a Meaningful Life is rich and complex, particularly the scenes that show us Stewart’s tiny town. The action shots of the What-If Express rambling through the countryside as the Northern Lights appear in the night sky are also pretty impressive.

With only 45 minutes, plus time taken out for framing scenes on the countertop and a silly song, this is a story that cuts right to the chase. Everything happens very quickly. We get Stewart’s youth, then we see him as a dad in the autumn, and then in the winter. After he gets on the train, which is a combination of the Polar Express and the mysterious journey that Clarence takes George on in Wonderful Life, with a dash of A Christmas Carol thrown in, he makes only two stops to see the “hypothetical” stemming from his “regrettable”. First, he sees what his own life would be like if he’d been the big football hero instead of Morty. Then he sees what things would be like for everyone else in his town. Unlike George, Stewart is merely an observer, and he is unable to interact with any of these figures, but seeing his hollow life as a cranky, self-absorbed celebrity and the ruin that has befallen his town and loved ones, he reconsiders his own lot In life.

My favorite element of the main story is probably Stewart’s relationship with his adorable young adopted daughter, which is very reminiscent of George’s relationship with Zuzu. The lullaby he sings for her is very tender, and it sets us up for the considerably less sedate Silly Song, which has Junior Asparagus extending his awake time for as long as possible by requesting that his increasingly exasperated mother bring him every stuffed animal he can think of. Some of the animals in his collection are funny in and of themselves, and Junior’s hyper antics are hilarious and will probably resonate with anyone who has ever attempted to get a young child to go to sleep. Stewart’s peppy song about giving 110 percent is pretty catchy too and reminds me of something that Fred MacMurray might have sung in The Happiest Millionaire or any number of old Disney movies in which he played an enthusiastic dad. Probably the song most firmly stuck in my head, though, despite barely understanding a word of the lyrics, is the trippy commercial that first Morty and then Alternate Stewart records. It’s sung incredibly quickly, with a comparable barrage of goofy 2-D images, and the point is to show us how these characters have sold out by recording these obnoxious ads for products they don’t believe in.

Of VeggieTales’ four Christmas releases, this is the one that feels the least Christmassy, as quite a bit of it doesn’t take place at Christmas. There’s nothing on the countertop or in the Silly Song indicative of Christmas either. With so much of it involving football, it might feel just as seasonal in September. I suppose that the climax didn’t actually need to take place at Christmas, but it allows for more fun parallels with the above-mentioned movies. This video will probably entertain you most if you’ve seen any or all of those, but It’s a Meaningful Life is meaningful even if you don’t get all the little references to Christmastime classics, and I can’t wait to see what VeggieTales will come up with next.

Enjoy an Old-Fashioned Bell Choir Concert With Pooh Bells

Every year, I get a big kick out of checking out all of the new Christmas ornaments at Hallmark. I ooh and aah over them, but I rarely buy them before Christmas. Afterward is another story, as I have a long-standing tradition of buying ornaments in the days after Christmas when they’re on sale and when I usually have a bit of money that relatives have advised me to spend on something fun. Back in 2006, I happened upon something at Hallmark that I really wanted, but I took my chances, especially since it was quite pricey, and planned to get to Hallmark on 26th in hopes of snatching one up. By December 26th, however, they were gone. That’ll teach me to be a cheapskate. Then, last year, I discovered the website Hooked on Hallmark, where just about every ornament I’ve craved for the past couple of decades is readily available for purchase. So far, I’ve mostly kept temptation at bay, but I knew that I would have to buy Pooh Bells, the decoration from a few years back that I so admired.

I guess “decoration” would be the best word for it. Pooh Bells is far too big to be considered an ornament. It’s meant to be placed on a table or other flat surface, someplace accessible to human hands but not in danger of being damaged by careless passersby. It’s fairly heavy duty and intricately carved, and its bulk is taken up by a large, boxy structure. There’s a flat platform about ten inches in length and close to four inches wide. This is green, as are the walls on either end. It rests atop a red stand that is thicker and slightly wider. The top part is flat on the bottom but looks as though it is covered in clumps of snow on the top. The red, green and white look very Christmassy together.

Running between the two green end pieces is a purplish bar, and on that bar is a series of gears. These are bookended on the outside by a crank and another gear, both bright yellow with tiny bees on them. Turn the crank, and this decoration begins to do its magic. The pieces on the top will move, and the music box, easily visible as it rests against one of the green walls, will play its snippet of Carol of the Bells. It’s a rather repetitive song, and the snippet we get is just the same four notes over and over, but it’s still really cool. What makes it even neater is how old-fashioned it is. This looks like something that could have been around in the 1800s, if Pooh and pals had been around back then. You don’t have to worry about batteries; all you do is set Pooh Bells down, and whenever you want to get a little movement, turn the crank and watch it spring to life.

This decoration features a four-member bell choir. Having watched my parents in a bell choir when I was little, I suspect that there’s not really all that much you could play with four bells. But if you just need these same four notes again and again, then this little choir is the perfect size. It consists of Tigger, Piglet, Pooh and Eeyore, and each character is manipulated differently when the crank turns.

Tigger, the tallest member of the group by a considerable margin, is understandably exuberant. His tail is scrunched, ready for a pounce, and when the crank turns, the tail straightens up as he rises into the air, giving the impression that he is bouncing. The tail is cloth, as is the purple scarf he wears, and although his hat is hard and carved, the white ball at the tip is fuzzy. One hand holds a gold bell with a brown handle, while the other holds a lyric sheet.

Piglet is next, and he wears a red cloth scarf. He sits on a stump, which helps him to not look quite so tiny against his friends, though you can’t help but notice that his bell is about the same size as his head. Piglet swivels, while Pooh, beside him, shakes his head back and forth. Pooh wears his typical red shirt, and he too has a song sheet. He has a green cloth scarf, and like Tigger, he has a Santa hat with a fuzzy ball at the tip, but unlike Tigger, he has holes in his hat where his ears poke out. And since all this bell-ringing Is such hard work, there is a small pot of honey just in front of him so he can have a snack when he’s done.

Eeyore, the only member of the group who isn’t wearing anything aside from the ever-present pink bow (an actual ribbon) on his tail, is also the only one not smiling. I wouldn’t exactly say that he’s frowning; his face is really more of a blank slate, as though he can’t decide whether or not he’s having a good time. His ears look a little droopy to me, and he presents the appearance of rolling his eyes, but his bell is firmly clutched like the rest of them, and on the whole, he doesn’t seem all that put out as he raises and lowers his paw.

All of the colors have a sort of muted flavor to them, but there’s still a certain vibrance that shines through, and the dark orange, pink, light orange and bluish-gray of Tigger, Piglet, Pooh and Eeyore complement each other well. I think the only thing that might make this cuter would be if Eeyore had phony antlers on his head. But I won’t hold a grudge if he doesn’t want to be subjected to that kind of indignity.

This is a really handsome decoration that is both expensive and fragile, but if you’re as big a Pooh fan as I am, neither of those drawbacks will be enough to deter you. I’ve collected enough Pooh ornaments over the years that I could probably fill a tree with nothing but the Silly Old Bear and his friends. If I ever did that, I would make sure that I set Pooh Bells up on a shelf nearby, where these merry revelers could supervise the tree-trimming while furnishing a festive tune sure to remain firmly fixed in my mind for days to come. If that sounds like a good plan to you, perhaps you might consider letting Pooh and his pals ring in the Christmas season yourself.

Carface Remembers He Has a Heart in An All Dogs Christmas Carol

I was browsing around Netflix yesterday when I discovered that there was an All Dogs Go to Heaven Christmas movie – and that, even better, it was available to watch online. While I raised an eyebrow over the existence of this second sequel to the animated Don Bluth film about a rough-and-tumble dog with a heart of gold, I loved the original, so I figured it would be worth a shot. As I expected, An All Dogs Christmas Carol is a cute enough, if wholly unnecessary, adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic.

After the second (rather abysmal) All Dogs Go to Heaven movie, there was evidently a television series starring these characters, and I get the sense that this movie is in line with that series. It doesn’t seem to pick right up from where the movie left off; I tried not to remember too much about that shoddy sequel, but there seemed to be some continuity issues that maybe could have been ironed out through the TV series. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt there. Still, this movie, at a scant hour and fifteen minutes in length, basically screams “quick moneymaker” to me. It’s nothing but a retelling of A Christmas Carol, and considering the fact that the original movie was a fairly powerful story of redemption itself, giving us another redemption story here that is such an obvious rip-off doesn’t feel nearly as compelling. I mean, you could take any number of shows or movies and make the resident grouchiest / meanest character into Scrooge and use side characters as the ghosts who help him or her recover the Christmas spirit. It’s been done over and over again. One of my all-time favorite television episodes, M*A*S*H’s Dear Sis, has an element of A Christmas Carol about it. But it isn’t just a straightforward rehash, which this is.

The villainous canine gangster Carface (Ernest Borgnine) is up to his old tricks. This time, he’s got a magical gizmo that hypnotizes any dog within hearing range, allowing him to make out like a bandit when they march up to him in a daze and give him all their stuff. He and his faithful assistant, Killer (Charles Nelson Reilly), have had it with these little gigs, though. They want to pull off something truly impressive, so Carface makes a deal with the devil, or at least a truly demonic canine named Belladonna (Bebe Neuwirth). If he holds up his end of the bargain, Christmas will be ruined forever. But Charlie (Steven Weber, the third actor to voice the character), his ladylove Sasha (Sheena Easton) and his best friend Itchy (Dom DeLuise) have a plan to stop Carface. With some help from another magical gizmo, this one provided by goody-two-shoes angel Annabelle (Neuwirth), they will take a page out of Dickens’ book and try to show Carface the error of his ways.

Charlie literally hits upon the idea of essentially reenacting A Christmas Carol, so the plot is derivative even within the world of the movie. And for as vile as Carface is – much worse, really, than Scrooge, who was cranky and cold but didn’t go around trying to kill people – it sure doesn’t take long for his heart to start melting. It happens a little too quickly. Then again, I got whiplash from him going back and forth between feeling really emotional over what he was seeing and closing himself off and flying into a violent rage.

I did rather like the first two segments, though. The Christmas Past part features the only decent song in the movie, in which he sadly remembers the little boy he loved who always made excuses for his bad behavior until, one fateful Christmas, he didn’t. Which, he realizes, is why he hates Christmas so much, not to mention why he would rather use others than get attached to them. In the Christmas Present section, I love the fact that Sasha guides Carface while dressed as Santa Lucia – especially since I happened to watch it on Santa Lucia Day. The Christmas Future part, usually so terrifying and desolate, is the weakest of the three, with an annoying centerpiece of Charlie singing a gospel-tinged song about how Carface has to mend his ways.

As with A Christmas Carol - as well as All Dogs Go to Heaven - it’s a youngster in trouble who is really the deciding factor in bringing about the change in heart. In this case, it’s a puppy with a bum leg who reminds Carface of his younger self. That element is sweet enough, though one wonders why Anne Marie, the little girl he abused in the first movie, didn’t have the same sort of effect on him. Additionally, it’s not enough for Carface to awake on Christmas morning wanting to be a better dog. No, he has to decide whether or not to participate in the nefarious plan that seemed so appealing to him hours before, and this aspect of the movie is pretty goofy, since he keeps changing his mind as to whether or not to throw the all-important switch that will hypnotize every dog in San Francisco.

A Christmas Carol is a powerful story, so even though this is nowhere near the best version I have seen, it’s still reasonably touching from time to time. And it’s certainly not the worst version out there. But this is one edition of A Christmas Carol I don’t expect to turn into a Christmas tradition.

Bob and Larry Tell a Fascinating Tale of Saint Nicholas

I love the VeggieTales computer-animated video series, and usually when the latest video comes out, I’m right on top of getting it. But somehow, last year’s Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving fell by the wayside last year, and it’s only now that I’ve finally seen the third VeggieTales Christmas release. I am now free to declare It incredibly entertaining, not to mention educational.

Like The Toy That Saved Christmas, the first Veggie Christmas video, Saint Nicholas lacks a countertop scene and takes place in a small town where all of our characters are simply themselves. It’s Christmas Eve, and this special opens much the same way as that one did – with hyperactive children eagerly anticipating the stuff they will get when the big day arrives. Chief among them is Junior Asparagus, who is extra excited because his grandparents have given him money to buy himself something. Oh, the decisions! Meanwhile, Laura Carrot is down because her dad, a deliveryman, has a busted truck, which means he can’t finish his route before Christmas and can’t get a Christmas tree either. The Christmas Eve service at the nearby church is about to begin, but before it does, Bob the Tomato decides that now would be a good time to tell Junior, Laura and all the other children with Christmas on the brain just what Santa Claus has to do with Jesus.

Bob and Larry the Cucumber are more involved narrators here than in most Veggie videos. We see them inside the story, even occasionally interacting with the characters, and what’s more, Larry has an endearingly annoying habit of constantly interrupting Bob in order to “move the story along” – even though he has no idea where the story is going – and make the setting more Christmassy. Bob is telling the story of Saint Nicholas, and if he had the narration to himself, Greece – to which we get a great introduction in my favorite of the video’s songs – would be appropriately balmy, but Larry can’t resist adding a little snow, and that’s just one of his amusing embellishments. While there are many elements to this story that stray far afield from Nicholas’s established history, the basics are there, and if Junior and his friends are any indication, that’s still a lot more than most kids would be familiar with.

A new character, a burly fellow with a thick accent who looks to be some type of squash, appears in both the modern portion of the story and the ancient one as an antagonistic figure. Nicholas is an entirely new character too, as is his father. The only major characters, aside from the narrating Bob and Larry, to be incorporated into the story are Petunia as a nun who teaches Nicholas about the joy of giving and Mr. Lunt – also the star of the Silly Song (or, rather, Helpful Humanitarian Song) – as Octavius, a close friend of Nicholas’s family who later helps Nicholas in his efforts to secretly distribute money to a needy family. Inventing a local bully intent on preventing such acts of generosity ups the action factor and the need for secrecy and allows for more intense and humorous moments. For instance, Nicholas feels the need to disguise himself, so he and Octavius go out in a series of amusing costumes. Later, as Nick is making an escape after his last big act of kindness, his sheep-drawn vehicle stretches across the sky so that they are silhouetted against the moon and look just like Santa and his reindeer.

Larry is the voice of all of Christmas’s contemporary trappings throughout the video. While the kids pipe up with their ideas of what Christmas is all about, Larry keeps trying to find ways of tying Nicholas more directly to Santa and of trying to make the setting of his story feel more festive. That’s how we end up with Christmas lights adorning several ancient Grecian residences, and it may also account for the parade of classic Christmas songs that turn up here with new lyrics. Some of Larry’s speculations are just plain hilarious, and I love the cozy reindeer sweater that he sports for a large portion of the video. I also love the way Bob sneaks in one of my favorite lines from The Toy That Saved Christmas.

This is a video that acknowledges that even devout Christian kids tend to get really worked up about Santa Claus. Saint Nicholas isn’t about trying to excise Santa from Christmas altogether, but it does make two major points: that Christmas is, first and foremost, about Christ, and that Saint Nicholas was a model of the sort of generosity that Christians should feel called to exhibit, and not just at Christmas. As the video’s loveliest song says, we should give not in an effort to feel good about ourselves but because we feel happy already and want to share our blessings with others. One thing I noticed is that Jesus comes up in this video far more than any other. I’m pretty sure that even includes An Easter Carol. Most of the Veggie videos talk about God a fair bit, but few of them mention Jesus. Hence, although in some ways this is one of the silliest Veggie videos I’ve seen, it’s also one of the most spiritually grounded.

Saint Nicholas is a great video that embraces both the serious and fun side of Christmas. It introduces some terrific new characters and incorporates several underused characters from videos past, including little Annie, a soft-spoken, bespectacled leek who, of all the VeggieTales characters, reminds me most of myself. I’m sure that this is one that I’ll be pulling out again in Christmasses to come. I’m only sorry it took me this long to watch it!

Rob Thomas Encourages Compassion in A New York Christmas

I really love the radio this time of year. Usually, I don’t listen to it much, except at work, where I don’t have much of a choice. In December, instead of merely tolerating the music – aside from those rare gems that make me burst out in an exuberant smile and, given a sufficiently empty hallway, sing along – I feed off of it. I’m completely energized by hearing all those marvelously familiar songs on a subject so near and dear to my heart. Another plus: every once in a while, something comes along that I’ve never heard before. And once in a great while, it’s a song that grabs me and refuses to release me, sending me scrambling for YouTube videos to keep my fixation in check. This year, the main song in question is Rob Thomas’s A New York Christmas. It took me a couple of times through it for me to realize just how m much I loved it, but there’s no mistaking it now, and whenever it comes on the mall radio, I can’t help but smile.

This is a Christmas song that is totally contemporary but with a timeless message. It is specifically rooted in New York City, which is very much associated with Christmas. You have all the morning shows that broadcast from New York, showing the city in all its decorated glory; Christmas traditions like the Rockettes and the Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting; movies like Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone 2 and Elf. New York is gorgeous indeed this time of year, but there are many who are cold, hungry and otherwise in great need during this season of celebration, and this song asks us to think of them. The tone is not accusatory, but it is a rallying cry as well as a prayer. God help us, and let us help those around us.

I discovered that Thomas wrote this song in the aftermath of 9/11, when the suffering in New York City was especially acute, and that the song is tied in with his Sidewalk Angels Foundation, which supports a number of charitable causes. Its mission is stated as follows: “The world can move so fast that those in need are often passed by. From animals that have been abandoned and abused to those who are destitute, homeless, or cannot afford proper medical care - these are universal problems that Sidewalk Angels Foundation, through its efforts, encourages people to address locally.” On 9/11, we saw the worst of humanity, but we saw the best of it as so many people banded together to help each other. For all too brief a time, the sense of community was palpable. This song makes that come rushing back and serves as a reminder that it shouldn’t take a horrific tragedy to get us to pay attention to each other.

A New York Christmas has a rock edge to it, but it also has a powerful driving melody that’s hard to get out of your head. There’s a swift undercurrent of percussion that sets an energetic tone for the verses. The electric guitar puts me in mind of traditional folkie grassroots movements, while the hints of the organ tie in nicely with the generally reverent feeling of the song. The whole thing feels bustling and energetic like the New York itself; it’s easy to imagine you’re hearing the heartbeat of the city. While Thomas’ voice is wonderfully melodic, it also has a rough edge to it that encourages everyone to sit up and take notice.

I don’t think I heard this song before this year, when it joined the regular Christmas music rotation in the mall. I don’t recall ever having heard it on the regular radio or on television, though that seems surprising to me. Thomas is a fairly big-name guy, having been in the band Matchbox 20, and this is an outstanding song that strikes me as a modern classic. When I first heard it this year, what initially caught my attention was the word “compassion”. That’s one of my favorite words, and it’s not one you hear in too many songs, though you should. The first song that comes to mind for me in association with that word, especially this time of year, is God Bless Us Every One, from the 2004 musical version of A Christmas Carol: “Let the stars in the sky remind us of man’s compassion. Let us love till we die and God bless us everyone.”

In this song, it’s, “Bring your compassion, your understanding (or, in the later verse, forgiveness). Lord, how we need it on this New York City Christmas.” The song is loaded with religious imagery, particularly angels. I especially love the line, “Hear the sidewalk angels echo hallelujah.” In this context, “angels” makes me think of Hebrews 13:2, which reads, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” This song is all about caring for those who could use a little extra help, whether that’s in the form of warm clothing, food or just a kind word. It’s a refreshingly unmaterialistic message. “So call on your angels, your beaten and broken. It’s time that we mend them so they don’t fade with the season. Let our mercy be the gifts we lay from Brooklyn to Broadway…”

I just discovered this song a couple of weeks ago, but it has quickly become one of my favorite Christmas songs. It’s a stirring anthem that reminds me how good I have it and how many people don’t have it so easy. You don’t have to go to New York City to find people in need. This is a song for New York, but it’s also a song for America and beyond. Now, to act on it…

Jane Austen Helps Bring the Mother-Daughter Book Club Series to a Fantastic Finish

In the past few years, I find that I have turned into something of a Jane Austen enthusiast. I suppose I won’t be able to call myself a full-blown Janeite until I’ve read the rest of her novels, but I’m a third of the way there, anyway. My first immersion began during college, when Sense and Sensibility, despite getting off to a slow start for me, wound up being just what I needed to snap me out of my post-9/11 paralysis. This book, so beloved by the lit professor who sparked such energetic discussions, helped my focus to return to all that is good in the world: things like sisterhood, friendship, long letters, lush landscapes and, of course, true love. Several years later, my bestest book buddy Beth prevailed upon me to read Pride and Prejudice, so I did, and I loved it as much as she assured me I would. I have a hard time deciding which of the novels I prefer; S&S is quieter, while P&P is amusingly chaotic. But the latter is definitely the right choice for inclusion in the Mother-Daughter Book Club series.

This charming intermediate series that I discovered a couple months ago encompasses four novels. Each book is broken up into four seasons, with each of four girls narrating one chapter every season. As far as I know, there will be no others; Heather Vogel Frederick certainly wraps things up in a way that feels like a conclusion to the series, and it syncs up nicely with the fact that there are four narrators. Of course, if she were to publish another installment, I would snatch it right up. Pies and Prejudice finds the girls in their first year of high school, and all of them must adjust to big changes in their lives as threads that got their start as far back as the first book finally find resolution.

The main players, as before, are Emma Hawthorne, Jess Delaney, Cassidy Sloane and Megan Wong, along with nicer-than-before-but-still-snotty Becca Chadwick. Together with their quirky moms and a couple of elderly honorary members, they continue to find pleasure in reading classic literature and discussing it over snacks (prepared, hopefully, by Cassidy’s cooking show host mom and not Megan’s health nut mom). Pride and Prejudice is a novel that had been mentioned previously as a book that the girls weren’t quite ready to tackle, but this year, it’s too perfect to pass up. That’s because Emma, the bookworm of the bunch and the one who reminds me most of myself, is about to have all her Anglophile dreams come true with a year-long move to Bath, England (incidentally, one of my favorite stops when I was in England myself). While she and her librarian mother, who have already read Austen backward and forward anyway, drink in all of the Austen culture they can, the other four girls become acquainted with her classic characters, and as in previous books, certain aspects of her novel seem to resonate particularly well with their lives.

Emma’s living the dream in England, but her life is complicated by yet another in the series’ string of Mean Girls. Annabelle doesn’t actually show up in the book that much, but she wreaks major havoc when she does. Meanwhile, although Skype makes connecting with her friends easier and even allows her and her mom to participate in book club meetings, Emma misses her boyfriend Stewart, a sensitive fellow bookworm who seems to understand her better than anyone she knows – and with whom she shared her very first kiss before leaving for Bath. Annoyingly, England also provides Emma with her own version of stiff, awkward Mr. Collins, and though she generally puts up with him, his unwelcome advances cause some problems for her.

Jess is having a much better time of it this year than last. Now in her second year at a nearby exclusive girls’ boarding school, she’s rooming with kindred spirits and no longer feels antagonized by her former roommate. She discovers an interest in wild animal rehabilitation, and she spearheads an effort to raise money to bring Emma home for spring break after it becomes apparent how unpleasant Annabelle is making her life. She’s really coming into her own, though she still has to deal with some insecurity when it comes to figuring out what she wants to do with her life and trying to work out whether there’s any chance that her long-time and now long-distance crush, Emma’s gregarious brother Darcy, might see her as something more than his kid sister’s best friend.

Megan feels like a fish out of water in high school, especially with Becca’s clique dissolved and neither Emma nor Jess around to latch onto. Even though she’s managed to make a name for herself as a young fashion designer, she feels totally out of place in this new environment, which leads her to take on a new role: that of fashion blogger. Make that anonymous fashion blogger. Taking her cues from Austen’s penchant for searing social commentary, she snaps photos of “fashion faux pas” that she sees around school and posts them with snarky captions for the world to see. This is the storyline that made me squirm the most, since it was obvious that she would eventually be found out and have to face some unpleasant consequences as a result.

Megan is one of two book club members to get pretty chummy with one of the English lads whose parents swap houses with Emma’s, and it’s fairly apparent that Simon, the younger of the two, is supposed to remind readers of affable Mr. Bingley. Megan, however, behaves in a manner not representative of empathetic Jane Bennet at all, and after three books’ worth of moral development on her part, it’s disappointing to see her lapsing into this person who sits around making snide comments about everybody’s fashion choices. Nonetheless, she is otherwise likable here, and her close relationship with her grandmother continues to flourish, especially once the latter volunteers to supervise the girls’ efforts to raise the money for Emma’s ticket by baking and selling pies – hence, the title of the book.

We get our biggest nod to Pride and Prejudice with Cassidy, the tomboyish hockey player who, unlike her fellow book club members, has never had a crush on anyone and thinks the whole romance thing is nothing but a nuisance. She’s generally popular with her male peers, who pretty much see her as one of the guys, but any hint of mushy stuff and she wants to gag. Her gag reflex is strongest in reaction to Simon’s older brother Tristan, an arrogant ice skater with whom she is horrified to find herself in frequent close contact, as he needs a partner to practice with for a competition at the school year’s end. She agrees to this only because their teacher, former Olympian and current book club member Eva Bergson, has so enthusiastically agreed to help Cassidy set up a hockey club for young girls and praised Cassidy’s coaching skills. She can’t bear to say no to someone who has been so encouraging to her, but Tristan has been nothing but a thorn in her side since he arrived. Elizabeth-Darcy echoes abound here, and it’s fun to imagine just how Frederick will manage to pull off the inevitable wearing down of Cassidy’s negative first impression. Along with this, we see her gradually becoming used to her sister being away at college and to being a big sister herself, and it’s sweet to see her relationship with her lovable stepfather Stanley, which got off to such a rocky start, truly flourish here.

A lot happens in this fourth novel that, more than the others, is fairly dependent upon having read other books in order to get a full appreciation of the story and the directions in which it takes certain characters. Although the books are somewhat formulaic and fairly predictable to those who have read the novels at the heart of each volume, Frederick tossed in some twists here that truly surprised me, and my emotional investment at this point in the series was such that one of them actually made me cry, a true rarity for the girl with the frustratingly robotic tear ducts. As someone who no doubt would have been considered a spinster in Austen’s day, I have to chuckle a bit at how neatly Frederick pairs up all of these teens, most of whom are not yet sixteen. To be fair, though, Emma herself, who narrates the last chapter, notes that none of them can tell what the future can bring, and three of the five couples, while appealing, seem as likely as not to be involved in heady first romances that are merely remembered fondly years later. Two couples do seem destined for the altar a few years down the line, but there’s so much build-up with them that I would have felt cheated if Vogel hadn’t left us with some degree of assurance there. The way in which she manages it is understated but exhilarating nonetheless.

I would encourage any Austen fan, young or old, to read this book, but I would also caution patience. Don’t just pick up the one with all the Austen echoes. Start off with the first book and work your way to the grand finale. It’ll take a little bit of a time investment, but it’s well worth it to follow these girls from the beginning. If you’re already the sort of reader who finds Austen appealing, chances are that you will fall in love with this series as whole-heartedly as I did.