Tag Archives: movies in bed

Movies in Bed: Too Cute

Post by Mark T. Locker.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we are not terribly accustomed to snow. So when six inches fell last week, much of the city was as good as paralyzed. Quick trips to the local doughnut shop and grocery store aside, we remained housebound for several days. What do you do when trapped in a house with two stir-crazy adults, one stir-crazy five-year-old and two stir-cats? Watch movies. TV shows. ANYTHING. EVERYTHING. Maybe we should have watched Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. I love Gene Wilder. But you know what we watched instead? TOO CUTE. It opens with a warning to viewers that what they are about to see is just so gosh-darn cute they’d best be prepared. For CUTENESS.

Cute animals are very big; just ask any person who has used the Internet in the last five years. This show, from Animal Planet, capitalizes on this in a vaguely informative way. Each episode centers on to litters of cute animals: kittens, puppies, and so on. We learn about their species (they’re always pure-bred) and about what it’s like to be a puppy from birth until adoption. Cute animals are not really my thing but my boy can’t get enough. His voice hits such a high pitch when confronted with this unbearable cuteness I’m surprised the windows don’t shatter.

So there you have it. If you need a good “educational” fix of furballs, tune in to “Too Cute” which is available streaming. Happy adorableness!

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Movies in Bed: Frozen


Post by Mark T. Locker.

It’s not often that I get to take my kid to the movies. His great-aunts are gracious enough to usually suffer through those base, slapstick-laden cringefests, providing Mom and my with a couple hours of quiet time. But when Mom is nowhere to be found and kid is LITERALLY bouncing off the walls, heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! It’s off to the local cinema we go! Today we are “enjoying” the Disney movie “Frozen”. It’s about a girl, a princess (naturally) named Elsa. She has a magical ability to create snow and ice. But when a playtime escapade with her little sister Anna ends in near-disaster, Elsa is forced to keep it all in. And she can’t. So she is forced into isolation. ANYWAYS fast forward, she loses it and plunges the whole place into eternal winter. Whoopsy! Interestingly, the marketing for this movie carefully avoids letting on that this is a movie about sisters and their relationship and lots of singing. My boy is not bothered by that and I don’t think the term “girl movie” crossed his mind. It’s got a silly magical snowman and the music is actually kind of catchy. (I’m going to look up this one song as soon as I finish this.) It’s based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Snow Queen” so you can’t go wrong!

You can’t actually watch it in bed YET. It comes out on DVD in March. But if you have a kid, boy or girl, then you will probably end up watching this with them sooner or later.

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Movies in Bed: The Curse of Oak Island

Post by Mark T. Locker

Have you heard of this fabled “Money Pit” on a small island in Nova Scotia? I just learned about this in a book I got for my son called “The Big Book of WHAT?” that features all kinds of amazing but true stuff, like the weird Winchester House and this “Money Pit”.

Apparently, a couple hundred years ago, some folks excavated this unusual depression in the ground. Every 20 feet or so (I guess it was metres, since we’re in Canada) they would find layers of logs or coconut fibers or stones, weird stuff to find in a hole. Suddenly, the tunnel flooded with seawater. Over the centuries others have tried to excavate this spot. There seems to be some kind of trap set up, tunnels that lead to the ocean which are triggered at a certain depth. A fellow even proved this bizarre fact by coloring the water in the hole and pumping air into it. Lo and behold, the colored water was spotted leeching into the ocean in two different spots! Crazy, right?

Enter the History Channel, whose skill at sensationalizing just about anything you can imagine, and who pushes the definition of “history” to the very limits. A couple retired brothers have bought a controlling interest in the company that owns Oak Island and are now determined to uncover the mysteries of this place. Even without the excessive sensationalizing, it’s a pretty weird place. Throwing in suggestions that the Ark of the Covenant is buried there takes away some of the credibility but the stories surrounding the island are real and date back centuries. It’s a fun and fairly brainless show to enjoy.

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Movies in Bed: Doctor Who

Post by Mark T. Locker.

All of nerd-dom has been all a-twitter about the 50th—FIFTIETH!!—anniversary of that darling of Cardiff, or should I say of the planet Gallifrey, Doctor Who. Since 1963, this unique science-fiction show has been taking viewers around time and space in the telltale blue police box the quirky disguise for the spaceship/time machine the TARDIS. In 2005, BBC relaunched the show after a 16-year hiatus. One of the handy features of the Doctor, the last of the Timelords, is that he is eternal and also he takes on a new form—and with it a new personality—regularly! So it manages to stay fresh by replacing the main character every couple years while at the same time keeping the main character. We have just been introduced to the 12th Doctor. People have been geeking out about it for months.

The reason this show is front and center in my mind is that my son discovered it, quite by accident. I dropped a couple dollars on Lego man-sized figurines at the local comic shop. He was instantly taken with the two evil robots I unwrapped: a Dalek and a Cyberman. Eventually, they became his. He has since read through several Doctor Who books and learned more than I know about the show. Last week, during his winter break, he finally got to watch the first episode of the relaunch. About 2/3 of the show is simply too scary for him but he absolutely loves it. And no nightmares yet!

It has retained a bit of the hokiness of its early days, it’s a little bit silly and a little bit awesome. Fun to watch in the evenings.

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Movies in Bed: The Booth at the End

Post by Mark T. Locker

I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I rarely find the time to watch movies anymore. Once the boy is asleep, I feel pressured to maximize the two hours I have until my own bedtime and I rarely want to commit a full two hours to a movie. A couple 22-minute television shows seems much more within my grasp in the evenings.

I was recently introduced to this show, which I think is only available on Hulu. “The Booth at the End” features Xander Berkeley, who is one of those actors you see everywhere but can’t quite put a finger on. In that respect, he is the perfect character for this tantalizing and unusual show. His character, who is never named, sits all day, every day in a diner in the—you guessed it—booth at the end. People learn one way or another about this man and come to visit him, each with a wish. He can make whatever they want happen but it always comes at a certain cost: they must first do something for him. A nun wants to hear the voice of God like she used to. The man looks in his notebook and says that to hear God again, she must become pregnant. An old woman wants her husband to come back from Alzheimer’s. The notebook says she must plant a bomb in a crowded place to accomplish this. The characters are complex and as tortured as you might hope they would be. Some do what they are asked, some are forced to weigh the value of one life against another.

It’s easy to get sucked into this incredible show. It’s easy to get angry, or relieved, when watching these people weigh their options. A definite must-watch.

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