Mar 29 2015

Watching Great Movies With Your Kids

One of the pleasures of having kids is watching your favorite movies with them. Some are obvious — the original Star Wars trilogy, Superman, Terminator/Terminator II. Less obvious, but still a good choice, is Aliens. Matt Zoller Seitz sums up the experience of watching great movies with your kids nicely on RogerEbert.com:

as we watched, I realized again that while unfortunately you can’t see a great movie again for the first time, the next-best thing is to show it to people who’ve never seen it.

Star Wars aliens

Star Wars aliens (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(Note: the photo above has nothing to do with this article or the article on RogerEbert.com. I just thought it was a fun pic of characters from Star Wars.)

Well put. I’m not sure what the right age is to watch Aliens, since it’s a bit scarier than Star Wars and Superman. As always, we at DaddyTips advise using your own judgment when it comes to deciding when your children are ready to see certain movies. It’s definitely something that varies from kid to kid, and of course also from parent to parent. A lot of the movies I saw when I was as a kid I saw in theaters when I was younger than I might want my own kids to see said movie. The Jerk, for example. Or a number of R-rated films that I saw because it was a different time. Movies have changed, ratings have changed, kids have changed.

Sometimes it’s not even about the rating. For example, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is rated G. But without a background in the Trek characters, it’s impossible to appreciate the movie. And I personally feel it’s good parenting to make sure your children have seen Space Seed (the first appearance of the late, great Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh) before they see Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

To be honest, Aliens wasn’t even on my list of flicks I wanted to watch with my kids, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be. When they’re the right age, of course.

via Notes on watching “Aliens” for the first time again, with a bunch of kids | MZS | Roger Ebert.


Apr 29 2014

Max Von Sydow Cast in Star Wars Episode VII

The cast for Star Wars Episode VII (I can almost write that without cringing — almost) has been announced. One of the merry band will be played by none other than Max Von Sydow.

Visitad el blog del Zinemaldi en dvdenlared.com

I’m a big Max Von Sydow fan. Not a fanatic, but his presence in a film lends a certain something. This comment posted by Owmyback (great username) on io9 somewhat echoes my reaction:

Am I the only one who read this and was like “Max von Sydow is still alive?”

My thought was more along the lines of, “Max Von Sydow is still alive. Cool. And he’s going to be in the next Star Wars movie. Also cool.”

io9 commenter CindyLouCthulhu (again, great username) added the following:

The Seventh Seal must have been a true story. Dude clearly beat Death at chess.

Here is the rest of the cast that was announced today on StarWars.com:

Actors John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow will join the original stars of the saga, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker in the new film.

Peter Mayhew played/will continue to play Chewbacca, Kenny Baker was/is R2D2, and Anthony Daniels played/will play C3P0. Here’s a video interview of him for your viewing pleasure:

And just for yucks, a compilation of The Best of C3P0:

So? Are we excited? Do we care? Are we becoming overwhelmed by the amount of entertainment in the world today? The answer to all of these questions is… a little bit.

Star Wars Episode VII Cast Announced (io9)

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