Comments on: CHILDREN’S ANTI-CLASSIC MOVIES ON THE WAY

By: Melanie

Melanie — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:46:44 +0000

“Song of the South” is available on video, just not in the United States. I’ve got a PAL VHS copy from Britain, and my sister has a DVD from Japan.

By: buddy

buddy — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 15:26:13 +0000

Rick,

I hope you’ll revisit this topic after you see the movie. You’ve decided what this movie ‘is’ based entirely on a trailer. I’ve actually seen it.

The movie is an homage to fantasy and fairy tales. Innocence and joy is celebrated, and the notion that someone can break into song in the middle of a mundane gritty city and be swept up in infectious joy is brought to life. The cynical elements of the film are merely the conduit through which the adult audience can rediscover that childhood happiness. The butt of the joke is ultimately on the cynics and not the idealist.

By: michael reynolds

michael reynolds — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:06:05 +0000

This is my line of work, selling fantasy to children. (150 books so far, under 11 different pseudonyms.) I don’t see anything troubling in this film.

All movies by their nature can be seen to limit pure imagination by providing specific images that replace the book-generated images in kid’s heads. But then, books, too, replace a kid’s self-generated ideas with something I write while sitting on my porch smoking cigars and mainlining coffee.

Imagination isn’t a fixed, limited commodity. If I put one idea in a kid’s head, and Phillip Pullman puts one, and Disney and Pixar toss in some more ideas, some more images, the kid’s head isn’t full. It’s not as if he loses the capacity to either absorb more ideas and images, or generate some of his own. Rather the contray.

A pretty good example would be the phenomenon of fan fiction. Things my wife and I wrote years ago still generate fanfic — tens of thousands of stories and scripts. The kids took ideas we gave them and spun them out, using their own imaginations. There have been hundreds of thousands of fanfic pieces spun off Harry. Each of those is an act of imagination.

Nothing you or I or Disney or anyone else can do, can limit the imaginations of children. Whatever you give them — book, movie, comic — will just be a jumping off point for them.

By: LA Wyman

LA Wyman — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:53:46 +0000

I can’t wait to see “Enchanted,” myself, but would I take a kid under 13, or even 14, to see it? No. I think for younger kids, it is definitely too childhood-fantasy-killing, but the mid-to-older teens would probably “get” the satire without their brains and still sometimes-childish souls being too flattened. Unfortunatly, too many of the younger kids will see it, because their parents have no clue that the movies they take their kids to more for babysitting purposes than anything, can actually kill their childhoods. (I especially hate it when seeing kids - quite young kids! - at James Bond movies, for Pete’s sake!! Do their parents just have no idea how to raise children?) Also, prude that I am, I don’t even really appreciate Shrek being for the little ones, either - the language and satire is a little too raunchy sometimes, and there’s a lot more of it that doesn’t go over their heads (think Simpsons), than parents think, these days.

By: Rodney A Stanton

Rodney A Stanton — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:24:31 +0000

My wife and I are planning to see “Enchanted” next week. We are both past 60 so we may not count; but I liked the old Disney very much. I have a 58 or 59 year old record “Album” ( they were really books with pictures and several records back then) of Song of The South. I still think its great as well as Johnny Mercer and Walt!

By: SJ Reidhead

SJ Reidhead — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:17:55 +0000

I never liked the Wizard of Oz, even when I was a kid. I seem to remember it was one of those drugged out compositions, like Alice in Wonderland was inspired as a way for a pedophile to lure in the little girls next door. There are some very dark undertones in classic fairy tales. But then this is coming from the little kid who couldn’t make it through Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Bambi, of Fantasia because they were so scary! As a child liked mythology and Laura Ingalls Wilder much better.

If I had kids, I don’t even know if they would be allowed to go to movies today, let alone watch anything that wasn’t on TVLand! There are just so many things pulling at kids, trying to force them to grow up sexually far too soon. I liken it to child abuse.

SJ Reidhead
The Pink Flamingo

By: TV Movies Soaps » CHILDRENâ€™S ANTI-CLASSIC MOVIES ON THE WAY

TV Movies Soaps » CHILDRENâ€™S ANTI-CLASSIC MOVIES ON THE WAY — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:56:45 +0000

[...] Rick Moran added an interesting post on CHILDRENâ€™S ANTI-CLASSIC MOVIES ON THE WAYHere’s a small excerptI recalled sitting in front of the TV with the whole family and watching the film on what was then the new technology of color television, being amazed, scared, entrhralled, and amused at the goings on in Oz. At that point in my life, … [...]