Frida is a kid’s book about Frida Kahlo. Need I say more? ***GGG***

The illustrations are luminous and beautiful. I bought this book at the SF MOMA after taking Lucy to see the Frida Kahlo show. Lucy was engaged enough to actually look at the art (she’s a super active kid) though she said it was too bloody. There was one painting she loved of a little girl Frida wearing a death mask. I think that is my favorite Frida painting now too.

In the book, the violent, graphic accident of Frida’s youth is told vaguely enough so kids can relate to it and not be terrified.

***GGG***

I love the book Pirate Girl, starring Molly, another brave, red-haired heroine (an also possibly Irish?) She is in a rowboat, off to see her grandmother, and gets captured by a boatload of pirates who make her clean and peel potatoes all day (sound familiar?)

At first, I was not happy  that all the evil pirates were male, but it turns out Molly’s mother is the scariest pirate of all. She has her own boatload of female pirates who all help rescue her daughter. This book deals with three generations of positive, strong, brave female relationships. There are so few females in any pirate stories or pirate toys– and can you even imagine a book called “Pirate Boy”? It would just sound redundant.

I don’t like Junie B. She is such a brat! I know Ramona can be bratty, and I like her, and also that kids love to hear about other kids getting in trouble. There’s a lot of opportunity for that in this series because Junie B is always breaking rules. My kids like Junie B., but she is just so annoying. Even her name– Junie B. Don’t like it.

Also, Junie B. is unattractive– unattractive in the way that your normally adorable kid is when she makes an annoying face at you. Junie B. doesn’t look like a princess, and that’s good, but she’s so often pictured pinching her nose, grimacing, or pouting, especially on the book’s covers. And I think taking her to this level ultimately reinforces the princess look because it makes it seem as if those are your choices: sterotypical girl with flowing hair or a frowning girl sticking her tongue out.

The book covers don’t only feature Junie B at her physical worst, the titles themselves are hard to take: Junie B. and the Stupid, Smelly Bus; Junie B. Jones and Her Big Fat Mouth. Junie B. is always calling something fat or stupid and saying she hates stuff– all words my kids are not allowed to use.

I’m going to give this series a ***GG*** because it is all about a girl, and my kids like it, and like to read it themselves. I don’t!

Love it. This is my favorite new series (new meaning since I was a kid and not including my childhood favorites: Narnia, Laura Ingalls, Ramona etc)

Annie and Jack are a brother and sister who travel through time by way of a magic tree house, always on a mission from Morgan La Fay (who I remember from Camelot though nothing about her historical identity in what I’ve read so far.)

When reading these books, kids get to learn all about history in a fun, compelling way. The author is careful to research facts from the time she is writing about (ancient China, Paris in the twenties etc). She always gets the clothing exactly right too. Both characters are brave and share the central starring roles pretty equally though Jack’s name almost always seems to come before Annie’s. This second billing status may seem like a detail, but if you see how it evolves into Hollywood movies and vastly differing payscales, it’s important to note.

Magic Tree House is great for kids learning how to read; the pacing is perfect. It’s challenging for my six year old but not too frustrating for her. My three year old can follow the plotlines and stays interested, unlike something like The Hobbit which bores the younger one and enthralls the older one. ***GG*** rating

The big news in this week’s People Magazine is that Heidi Montag’s plastic surgery has successfully transformed her into the object she always aspired to be. She is now an “it.”

Heidi describes herself: “It’s a new face and a new energy. It’s a new person.”

Yet another People Magazine cover girl exuberantly refers to becoming a real life Cinderella.

(If you recall, the last reference was made by rock star virgin Kevin Jonas’ new wife who was given real glass slippers by her husband as a wedding gift. If you get one thing out of this blog, here it is: Cinderella is not a good movie for your kids **SSS*** Do not let them watch it unless they are 17 or over.)

Heidi goes on to tell People, “I feel like almost all of the things I don’t want to be…got chiseled away.”

When Heidi waxes effusively on the magic of plastic surgery, she refers to a universal fantasy: everyone has flaws they wish they could remove. Unfortunately, these are emotional or historical, not physical– duh.

Heidi seems to recognize she is addicted to the process of plastic surgery, the promise of perfection rather than the end product which only leaves her scheduling her next appointment. She says: “I’m just starting. As you get older, there are so many different treatments. Let’s just say nobody ages perfectly, so I plan to keep using surgery to make me as perfect as I can be. Because, for me, the surgery is always so rewarding.”

Like so many victims of plastic surgery, Heidi frames her surgeries as her own independent choice. She claims she was not under her Spencer’s influence—her controlling and Playboy bunny obsessed husband—who tells her she’s beautiful and to stop. Heidi responds: “I’m my own person. It’s my body.”

Her family, too, was “unsupportive” but she doesn’t care about that either. She’s “a married woman and at this time in my life, I can make my own decisions.”

Heidi was willing to listen to God, but he was OK with it. She prayed, promising if it was wrong, she wouldn’t go through with the surgeries, but she never got that feeling from him. “My body is just a shell; God doesn’t care. It’s what’s inside that God cares about.” (Though I still don’t get why Heidi cares so much about the shell when God doesn’t)

Throughout the long article, Heidi does fess up to some powerful influences on her decisions other than God. When she arrived in Hollywood, people made fun of her. Bloggers circled her “Jay Leno chin” and “Dumbo ears.” Heidi says she didn’t like being the “frumpy sidekick,” to the show’s star, Lauren Conrad. “Everyone from that show was rich. I was wearing Lauren’s leftovers.” But now, post-surgery, she feels like “a sexy, confident woman. That to me is a Cinderella story.” She explains, “looks matter. This is a superficial industry. “ Her dream, she says, is to be a pop star.

Who’s going to fault a girl for pursuing her dreams– so single-mindedly, obsessively, ambitiously, devoting mental energy, time, and upwards of $30,000 that she saved over three years? Clearly, Heidi is driven, a woman with a mission. She even risked death, saying that during surgery her breathing slowed, she lost oxygen, and “felt like I was gone.” Heidi had upwards of 20 meetings with her plastic surgeon just so they could get it right, carefully studying photos together and planning her look. For example, she wished for Angelina Jolie’s high eyebrows.

I wish Heidi Montag had been trained early on, rather than aspire to becoming a real life cartoon princess, to focus her incredible ambition, desire for success and power, and skill at competition into something other than her physical appearance. Too many young women are still taught their looks are the gateway to everything they could possibly want. And in this messed up world, just like Heidi says, the way a woman appears is, too often, indicative of how powerful and successful she can become.

Heidi’s plastic surgeon, Dr. Frank Ryan, says “She’s just doing what every celebrity does. They just don’t talk about it.”

It is, after all, Heidi, not all those other silent celebrities who scored People’s cover. Obviously, she led a carefully planned, manipulated, and successful PR campaign. She told no one about the surgery, except for magazine, which features photos of the whole process. She must have promised People an exclusive if they put her on the cover, because everyone knows, America loves a makeover.

Not one of Heidi’s “after” photos shows her smiling. Maybe that’s not because she’s unhappy, but that she just isn’t able too yet; she says her face feels fragile. There is a before/ after photo at the end of the article where you see the former Heidi smiling– yes, thin-lipped, low eye-browed, Dumbo-eared I suppose, if you know where to look, but her spirit and her brain and sense of humor are there too; there’s a real person in that photo; the girl next to her with dead eyes, puffy lips, platinum playboy bunny hair, has eyebrows raised in a look of disdain– just what she always wanted to be.

I was rooting for Coraline, which I loved. Coraline was all about a girl– a cranky, brave one– not a princess– who went on her own magical journey. The girl was not only the main character, but her name was the title. The idea that little boys won’t see movies about little girls is so absurd, and if there is any truth to it at all, it’s a culturally enforced, parent induced self-fulfilling prophecy.

But there are some issues with Coraline– like both my kids burst into tears, and we all had to leave the theatre. Not only that, but Lucy, my six year old, stayed frightened for at least a month after. Those button eyes are some of the creepiest things I’ve seen on film– talk about souless. I was warned not to take the kids but I was so curious. I should have seen the film alone first and will do that from now on. I think bringing my kids to that movie was one example of my excitement about feminism getting in the way of making the best parenting choice for the individual kid.

With the caveat, as the other critics said, don’t let small kids see it, I give it ***GG*** rating.

Maybe I should add an ***M*** for mature, though a couple people have already commented on this blog that my rating system is  too complex. Others have written that they like the sometimes side-by-side Ss and Gs. The MPAA, by the way– famously, historically all men, maybe one woman now, I’ll check that out– are an extremely fastidious group. They assign points for every exposed nipple, butt cheek, use of drugs, etc, then engage in debate, and rate movies on an X, NC-17, R, PG-13, G scale. I think this male based MPAA, a truly institutionlized censorship system, is one of the biggest obstacles to girl power making any real strides in Hollywood. I’d like a 60 Minutes expose or a Vanity fair feature article about this, if there hasn’t been one already.  My fanatsy is to have stickers– Gs for Girlpower and Ss for Sterotypes– on all movies. Or at least a female based MPAA type group, Hollywood would change drastically as would our  collective imaginations. As I wrote earlier, I believe sterotyping is so much more dangerous for the malleable minds of children than vague allusions to sex, violence, drug use, etc that the MPAA gets so worked up about. So much stereotype gender training that really sticks happens to us through watching media at young age. After all, they do call it programming.

Ok, back to Coraine– another negative is that the movie features the stereotypical evil mother figure. This bad mother  is everywhere in kids movies. There is also a good mother in Coraline, though that mom is sort of a demonized for being a working mom, or at least not having enough time for her lonely daughter. She is, at best, loving but neglectful. Though maybe Coraline’s ultimate lesson is that mothers are never perfect, and a working sometimes absent mom is preferable to a psycho attentive one.

Any animators out there– please make a movie about a brave girl, not a princess, with her name in the title, and a powerful mother-daughter realtionship. That would be so cool and original. Don’t artists strive to be original? If you look at things from a female perspective, its such an easy path to a new kind of story.

I did not see Up, though I am sure I will on pay per view, and I will review it. It looked like wonderful animation (those baloons are mesmerizing), but again, obviously, a boy buddy movie (would they make a movie about an old lady and a fat girl going on an adventure together?) I loved Paul McCartney’s hilarious speech delivering the Golden Globe to Up. Of course, we all saw Yellow Submarne a million times in high school and college, and when he said,  “Animation isn’t just for kids. It is also for adults who are on drugs,” I cracked up. McCartney did leave out another huge category of animation watchers—-stone sober moms with over active intellects, forced to watch hours of this stuff and then blog in order to retain said intellect.

Speaking of, a few people have asked me how I have time to blog when I have three young kids, other writing projects, non-profit work etc. I’m a writer– so blogging takes me about three minutes. For me, that’s like asking someone how they have time to work out or take a shower. I write very fast, as you can probably tell by the typos, but I am thinking about this stuff all the time, so when I get those three minutes, I just write it all down. I hope to add the bells and whisltles (photos, videos,more links etc) to the blog soon, or get my husband to do it. Or maybe wake up an hour earlier in the day. Right now, I often blog while I’m watching the movie with my kids that I’m writing about, or while I am alone with the baby; she’s snacking on puffs and I’m reading her aloud to her what I’m writing (early brainwashing or should I say programming?)

I am so happy Julianna Margulies won a Golden Globe tonight for The Good Wife. It is wonderful– as she said in her acceptance speech– to see a drama succeed in the ten o’ clock hour instead of yet another reality TV show. Especially those awful reality TV shows with “wife” in the title (Real Housewives of New York, Miami, New Jersey etc, Wife Swap) Finally, FINALLY, a “wife” show where the women are not portrayed as “desperate” (the show that started the latest craze) caricartures, jealous, bitchy, gossipy not to metion humilated, degraded, swapped. I am so tired of these portrayals that make being a wife seem like the worst thing on the planet.

Margulies is a great actress, and in this series, her character does not stand by her man, a powerful politician, who cheated on her with prostitutes (supposedly based on New York’s Spitzer story.) It’s a cool premise, telling it all from her point of view, the scandal and the aftermath; I always wonder what is going on in the minds of these women, and I guess a lot of other people do too. On the show, Margulies handles her relationship in an original and brilliant way that keeps her integrity in tact and advances her career.

Speaking of public wives who don’t stand by their men, I am happy to see (in my weekly tabloid reading) that Elin seems to be leaving Tiger Woods and getting 300 million in he process. I hope this is true– so much better than Kobe Bryant buying his wife off with a ring. (Isn’t prostitution supposed to be ilegal?)

***GGG***

We watched this on pay per view on Saturday. I’d never heard of it before. There are two Atlantis movies I guess, because I remember another one that was totally different.

This version is all about a brave princess who saves her land from the evil Beliol who  is after crystals to control all of nature. Yes, she’s a princess and her hair is so long and  flowing that it looks like a fat, furry creature attached to her head. But she is brave and smart, saving her people, her father, and her boyfriend–  a hunky Fabio-type nature boy (who also, by the way, has flowing hair; he is half-dressed in the whole film, and if this weren’t animated, I could see his skimpy chippnedale outfit warranting a PG rating.)

There is also a depiction of a strong mother- daughter relationship, a positive mother role model which is rare in animated film and chldren’s stories. The mother can speak to the spirit world, undersands and can communicate with the powers of nature. Before she is killed, she gives her daughter a crystal necklace of power to protect her.