At first glimpse, Four Christmases makes you wonder how anyone in America ends up having a baby. But just wait – you might find some holiday spirit in this new DVD after all.

Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) grew up in divorced families. So why would they want to get married and start the whole process over? Continue reading »

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It seems that the recent refund offer by Disney was the spark that reignited the flame of a decades-old controversy:   Is television harmful to tots?   Are we a society of lazy, selfish parents that use the screen as a live-in babysitter?  And if so, are we creating a society of mush-brained mutants that call the remote “Daddy”?

Julia Pimsleur Levine, mother of 2 and creator of Little Pim, an educational foreign-language DVD series for the toddler set, has weighed in with the following letter:

Continue reading »

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“So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.”

I don’t know about you, but Gene Wilder still does it for me in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  I never fail to laugh at the devilish candy titan’s reaction when he watches Mike Teevee disobey his warning and hop onto the Chocolate Television machine:  a very unenthusiastic,  ”Stop. Don’t. Come Back.”

Thank God for  kid movies that don’t make parents want to slit their wrists in boredom.  Andrew O’Hehir of Salon recently set down a list of his Top 10 Kids’ Movies That Aren’t For Kids.  Here’s his take: Continue reading »

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I should have been born in Britain. Because even a fairly derivative Wallace and Gromit flick is going to leave me giggling on the couch.

Enter Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death. The new short film is the first from favorite clay-mated dog and dimwit combination since their feature-length Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

It’s no wonder it’s had die hard fans salivating. Enter the good news . . . and the bad news. Continue reading »

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I spent a lot of time reading old books for our latest Babble list, 10 Kids Movies That Were Better Than the Book, only to realize there are a lot of kids movies based on books . . . which I never read.

Chances are, most of you haven’t either. So to go along with the other list (which you should totally read – hint, hint), we’ve got a list of the books which you probably haven’t read . . . made into movies you probably saw. Continue reading »

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Oh good grief! Expect to be dropping a little extra cash on a new DVD on Tuesday – your childhood’s back, and it’s been remastered. Yes, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and most of all Charlie Brown will hit shelves in a “cool collection” of sixties hits.

And this is one of the days I love my job at Babble: I got a sneak peek at some very cool nostalgia.

The good news? Continue reading »

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Finding Nemo made you cry? Then don’t read on about what Pixar’s done now.

The movie company got a call recently – a ten-year-old with terminal cancer wanted to see Up. Only Colby Curtin was too sick to be taken to a movie theater for a screening.

So the company did the unheard of. They let go one DVD of the only-in-theaters movie, sending it with a Pixar employee (on hand to keep the movie off the streets) to Huntington Beach, Calif. for a private in-home screening at Colby’s house.

Seven hours after she watched the movie, little Colby died. She got what she wanted – she’d promised her mom she’d hang on long enough to see the movie.

It’s such a sad story, I almost didn’t write about it here on Babble. But what prompted me to was the news that this wasn’t some Make a Wish Foundation gig. Continue reading »

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