December 21, 2009

Dear Needy Children,

In response to your many letters: no, no and no! I'm tired of reading your Christmas lists. You! You! You! What about my needs?

Don't you know there are children starving in India? And, hey, you Indian kids, don't you know there are children...

"While we have a lot of films that exist with mothers in them," Katherine Dieckmann told me earlier this month at the Woodstock Film Festival, "I felt frustrated that I wasn't seeing any depiction of a woman that I could relate to." So, the multi-tasking mother of two -- Caroline,...

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, yeah, unless you're still suffering through Philosophy 101. But if someone makes a brilliant documentary short and no one watches it -- does it have any impact? Even if...

Having just returned from four days visiting my mother in San Diego with my two children, Gene (13) and Gemma (10), I viewed photos of the Obama's summer vacation with a slightly jaundiced eye. Perhaps I was projecting, or still jet-lagged, but wasn't eight-year-old Sasha looking a little sullen?

I'm...

When my husband, Ranald, was small, a neighborhood girl tried to flush herself down the toilet. Her mother found her standing in the john, next stop China. Ranald told me the story after our daughter Elizabeth, 9, packed her bags on Columbus Day and split.

Lizzy's long...

The Reader? It's goodish. And Kate Winslet is, as ever, brilliant. And it has Nazis, which elevates it on the Oscar nom scale. But I'm not critiquing it here. I'm addressing its portrayal of child abuse - an adult having sex with a minor. I'm curious about the pass the...

Just released: the latest poster trumpeting W, Oliver Stone's slick forthcoming biopic giving George W. Bush the Walk the Line treatment. And, hey, it's looking good in 2-D. The shot is literally a tease -- the commander-in-chief, flanked by flags, having his hair ratted by a staffer while prepping for...

When I saw Frozen River last January at Sundance, it knocked me out. www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2011693337/ I'd been a Melissa Leo fan since she played Det. Sgt. Kay Howard on Homicide: Life on the Street. We became friends through the Woodstock Film Festival, and I adore Racing Daylight, her...

I can tell you the last straw: I stuffed my 12-year-old son's portion of chicken pot pie in the garbage disposal when my husband wasn't looking. The next thing the kids and I knew, Dad was raging like a '50's housewife about how he was done cooking dinner every night....

Call Sea World: Sex and the City has jumped the shark. Since the HBO series exited with tears and orgasms in 2004, we've all moved on even if Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte haven't. When SATC finally hits the big screen, it's no longer in sync with the way we...

The 24th Annual Sundance film festival opened last night with multiples bangs, from the sloppy gunfire that punctuated the indie fest's premiere, In Bruges, to those on Robert Redford's wrinkly forehead. Ever earnest and self-effacing and fuzzily political (see Lions for Lambs), Mr. Redford stood up at the Eccles Theater...

When I am sleepless in my Toronto hotel room, my thoughts turn to Viggo Mortensen. And, perhaps unlike other women at the film festival, I pity poor Viggo. Sure, like them, I would easily opt for Viggo over Clive Owen, who's also somewhere here in Canada, undoubtedly at a better...

I was not a rebellious teenager. Why bother? My parents were radicals in Republican San Diego. We remained close until my twenties, when I married a Dartmouth libertarian. I moved 3,000 miles east, and stopped the weekly calls, shutting out the hum of their disapproval. Then came the call: my...

Despite the 60th Annual Cannes Film Festival jury's best director award to American Julian Schnabel last Sunday, the French have long bemoaned Hollywood's negative impact. The left decries the siren song of capitalistic culture; the right foretells the erosion of Europe's preeminent civilization. American movies have siphoned profits from the...

When my daughter displayed dramatic tendencies, an actress I'd befriended at the Woodstock Film Festival invited us to visit her on the set of Racing Daylight. The movie's title came to reflect my feelings on mothering: my daughter glows; I chase. And on that rare July afternoon,...

With Babel shaping up to be this year's Crash at the Oscars, after acing the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture/Drama, there's something my inner common sensical American mom (as opposed to the film critic) must address. The global thriller's extreme tension hinges on characters making radically dumb decisions, one...

From the start of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, opening on December 27th, it is as clear as the rotted teeth in the mouths of Paris's strife-torn citizens that this movie is meant to reflect the reality...