Senor Parrot's Perch

Can you count the similarities between The Hobbit, the book by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Hobbit, the movie based on the book? I just saw it with my brother, who’s visiting for Christmas and my family. Here’s a few similarities I found:

• A Hobbit named Bilbo
• A Wizard named Gandalf
• A lot of dwarves who sing around the fireplace
• A dragon named Smaug who lived in the Lonely Mountain.
• A magic ring that belonged to a thing named Gollum that lived in the watery heart of a mountain.

There were a handful of other commonalities, too. The plot wasn’t one of them.

Just the same I loved the movie – we all loved the movie- and can’t wait to see part II.

Are there any other similarities between The Hobbit, the book and The Hobbit, the movie? I’m sure there are, but not too many. See if you can come up with some of your own.

I enjoyed this MovieWeb interview with children’s book author Cressida Cowell, who wrote the How to Train Your Dragon books. In the interview, she talks about her feelings about having her fantastic book made into an animated movie. She also talks about her unique summers spent on an isolated island with her family that in many ways inspired her writing.

The first time I saw How to Train Your Dragon Book 1 in a bookstore, several years back, I was hooked.  I was eager to see the movie when it came out. I took the family to see it in 3-D at the IMAX. It was too intense for the youngest, but my oldest and I enjoyed it every bit as much as we did the books.

 AstroPuppies in Space is an entertaining and very educational kid’s video about space exploration. After watching it, we watched it again. In fact, I wouldn’t mind popping it into the dvd player one more time if I still had it at home. I got the copy we watched from our local library. You can go here to see some trailers of the video and you’ll see what I mean.

The AstroPuppies are two intrepid sock puppets (sock puppies?) who lead you and your kids on a great journey aboard their space shuttle, beginning at Cape Canaveral and traveling on to the Moon. After that, the next stop is the Sun and then on through our solar system. Along the way the puppies ask questions and provide answers to lots of interesting questions. Actual footage of the dramatic 1969 moon landing is included, as well as NASA footage of life and work aboard a space station. 

The makers of the dvd have a nice website over at AstroPuppiesinSpace.com. They have video clips, fun activities and space links so kids can have fun learning more about space and space travel. I highly recommend heading over to AstroPuppiesinSpace.com to give your kid a head start in making fun and exciting associations with science. 

I love valuable resources like this. They stimulate our kids’ minds and make them receptive to new ideas and the wonders of our natural world. They are great ways to have conversations about what it’s like to be a scientist or an engineer, or to travel in space.  

For a lot of us,  it’s hard to get too much of Harry Potter. So the great news now is The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the Harry Potter-based theme park in Orlando, Florida, is now open. The Wall Street Journal has a nice photo journal of the park. The park seems like a certain destination in my families future.

It’s interesting to think about how much J.K. Rowling created in this fantastic set of books. At the same time, much of the world was also brought to life by the movies. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter seems as much about the movies as the books. Had the books been in existence for many years before put into movies, I wonder how well accepted the movies would have been? Would die-hard fans be griping about the characterizations and adaptions in the storyline to make the films work the in the same way that is characteristic of other film adaptions?

Probably the difference is the well known and intense involvement of Rowling in the drafting of the screenplays of the movies, ensuring that the central core of the films remained true to the books, especially choices of central characters. This isn’t always the case with adaptions. Some films that left my kids and her friends very disappointed were the recent Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief movie, or The Spiderwick Chronicles. Either events that they thought were absolutely central were omitted or the characters were so far removed from their personal conceptions from the books that they just couldn’t enjoy the movies for themselves. It fringed on a violation to them, as though the movies had performed some grossly disrespectful act to the books’ authors and their stories.

Here we have historic must-see video footage of NASA rocket scientists planning the exciting LCROSS Moon-crash project, including the launch and return.

If you look closely, you’ll see top NASA scientist, Albus Dumbledore, convening the planning session. Can anyone identify any of the others in this video?

This, of course, is the work of cinematic genius Georges M�li�s.

Mary Poppins – the quintessential nanny. Or so you thought! Your kids love the video? Then let them watch this and see if if they ever want to watch it again.

Does anyone ever outgrow Legos? Here’s a great stop motion film made with Legos:

Building the LEGO Millennium Falcon from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

I found this on Geekadelphia. I showed it to my kids and they got excited about how much fun it would be to make stop-action films for themselves. The oldest has her own digital camera and we have a tripod laying around. She’s got her own computer, so why not?

So how do I go about doing this? I did a quick search and it turns out there’s lots of sites on the internet to help us get started. So, more fun.

Say, isn’t this how Phil Vischer, of Veggie Tales fame got started? If I remember right, he and his buddies would make films and animated special effects in their basements.� I’ll have to go back to his autobiography, Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables, to make sure.

The exitement builds!

Nowadays, only social pariahs smoke cigarettes and eat trans fats. Nearly every city with any politically progressive presence is, has, or will make smoking and eating trans fats into a crime. Its laudable that they want to protect our bodies from our choices. They miss the more important thing: protecting our minds and spirits from the dreck we are exposed to day in and day out.

My family has found the online Movie, Music and Game reviews site Plugged In Online a valuable help in helping us select what we want our minds to consume. Bookmark it in your web browser so you can return to it whenever you want.

Plugged-In Online is provided by Focus on the Family, which also publishes Plugged In magazine, as well. So its no surprise that it promotes an evangelical Christian perspective in its reviews. I think that’s a good thing and one of the reasons I find it so reliable.

So, while the thoughtful and thought-provoking movie reviews of Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal remain my clear favorites of all those I read I find that many of my family viewing decisions are finalized by the reviews of Bob Waliszewski at Plugged In. He weighs elements and features of films in terms of my own family’s values. His concern is our spiritual and emotional welfare and he carefully notes why he makes his decisions and recommendations about movies. His reviews are also broadcast over many Christian Radio Stations. Whether they are broadcast on any non-Christian stations, I don’t know.�

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George Melies, true-to-life genius and major character in Brian Selznick’s great Kids’ novel, and for adults, too, produced this movie in 1902. It is an important feature of the book.

After quite a bit of mistakes, all of which didn’t rank on the intelligent side, I finally got a video posted. This one is The Black Imp which is posted from YouTube. Its a good example of the video magic Georges Melies created in his movies.

Warning: This movie contains a lot of arm waving!