Homeschooling the Teen Years - Books to Movies: The Umbrella Academy

I (along with 45 million other people) binge watched the Netflix original series, The Umbrella Academy, back in February, when it first came out...

… but I had no idea it was based on a graphic novel by Gerard Way (the former lead singer of "My Chemical Romance" - or so I'm told)…

… until A(age18)'s Film and Literature class voted to read and view them both for their final project this week (it could be my imagination, but I think college might be getting easier as time goes by).  Naturally, I had to download the graphic novel to "read" today (you can borrow for free with a 30 day, Comixology Unlimited trial through Amazon) .  It's about as strange, and intriguingly disturbing as the series.

Netflix did an excellent job fleshing out the story and keeping the quirky, 1960s, British television series tone.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have enjoyed the graphic novel nearly as much if I hadn't seen the series first, but them I'm not gigantic fan of the genre in general.

Both the Netflix series and the graphic novel are probably too dark and violent for my youngest two (ages 12 and 14), but as soon as my oldest makes it through his university finals, next week, we absolutely have to binge it together.  I'm pretty sure he's going to love it.  Though I have to say I was surprised at how much A is enjoying it (she has to wait until tomorrow to finish the series with her class, and it's been  a real act of discipline not to watch ahead).

In the meantime, I've got to check out whatever else we might be able to glean from the Comixology Unlimited menu.  I have to say browsing through their offerings today left me feeling like a stranger in a strange land, but I'm sure my teens will find a title or two they'd like to peruse before our trial period runs out.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Homeschooling the Teen Years - Books to Movies: Mortal Engines

The boys and I watched Mortal Engines, last night. We enjoyed it as a stand alone movie.  It's predictable, but fun, and beautifully filmed.

It's a book adaption too...

… but of the sort where you recognize the setting, and the characters are all (or mostly) there, but they're better looking, or the wrong age, wearing the wrong clothes, in wrong places, saying the wrong things at the wrong times.  It can be jarring, until you accept it's just a completely different story altogether. Even the tone is different.

When I read the book (the first of four in the Mortal Engines series) it reminded me of City of Ember combined with Mary Shelly's Frankenstein as retold by someone like Douglas Adams.  Odd, but quirky in an interesting enough way to keep me reading (or listening, as the audio books are well narrated by Barnaby Edwards).

The movie was more like City of Ember (the book, not the movie) meets the Terminator while visiting Waterworld with a smidge of Star Wars thrown in for good measure as envisioned by Peter Jackson (so add in a heavy, Lord of the Rings touch to wrap it all up).

The film is lighter and less dystopian than the book series.  The Man of the House actually asked, a few minutes in, if it was supposed to be a comedy.  It leaves out or alters enough of the subplots and character developments to make further adaptations of books in the series unlikely, if not impossible.  Some of what it leaves out helps to make the film more appropriate for a slightly younger audience than the books  - which deal with death and sexuality in a grim, as in the brother's Grim, kind of way.  The film leaves out the sex (which really isn't in the first book, anyway) and keeps the violence to a PG-13, sci-fi variety.

If you're a fan of the Mortal Engine series, I would still suggest watching the movie.  There is an interesting visual dynamic near the end, watching St. Paul's cathedral being turned into a weapon and used against a stronghold of the far east, that might add an interesting, if unintended dimension to the story.

Cinderella Review

I didn't go to see Disney's live action Cinderella when it was in the theaters.  The girls were mildly interested in seeing it, but all of the reviews we read made it out to be a very traditional retelling of the fairy tale. That sounded boring to me.

Now, after watching the movie on Instant View, I'm wondering if those original reviewers had even seen the film.

There are the expected elements - the prince, the ball, the pumpkin carriage.  And, there are a number of nods to Disney's animated classic - a cat named Lucifer, a mouse named Gus-gus, and a good deal of "bippity-boppity-boo" type magic, and even a little bit of singing (though it is, thankfully, not a musical)

But, there is also an added depth to the characters, fodder for good discussions about arranged marriages... 

King: I know you love the people, Kit. But I also know that your head’s been turned. You’ve only met her once, in the forest. Prince: And you’d have me marry someone I've only met once tonight.

 ...second marriages, and the difficulties of international and inter-familial relationships, with Buddhist underpinnings (to live is to suffer, but we must continue on with kindness and courage), all set against a very lovely rococo inspired background (the homeschool mom in me really loved that!)

In fact, we've been sifting through Google images of Watteau...

"The View"

...and Fragonard all day today...

"The Swing"

...to match up against images from the movie (my younger girls love that the scene below takes place in a "secret garden", too).

All of us enjoyed the acting, cinematography, tone, music, and special effects of the movie.  This came as a big surprise to me, because as I mentioned, I really expected to be bored by the tired old, already done story.  Instead, I found myself wrapped up in a fresh, fun, and lively retelling.

What I absolutely love most about this version of the story though, is that we finally get some insight into the wicked step-mother.

Married for love, then widowed, she marries again for the sake of her daughters.  Unfortunately she finds the man she married is still very much in love with his late wife.  After over-hearing that he finds her and her daughters "trying", she is left alone, widowed again, with his beautiful, sweet, innocent daughter (who, he just happened to mention, takes after her mother), in a house filled with memories of her rival.  That's enough to make pretty much anyone a bit bitter, if not cruel - and she is still cruel, if in a slightly more sympathetic way.

All in all, I'd have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the entire twinkly, flirtatious, infatuation-filled, but modernly grounded flight into fairy tales and fancy.

The Animated Hobbit - Tolkien for Children

from the "Muppets' Christmas Carol"

In honor of J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday today, we watched the old 1970s, made for television, animated version of The Hobbit, for our family movie night, last night.

I hadn't seen it, myself, since I was a child, probably during it's original airing.  I was delighted to find the movie just as warm, and cozy, in a radio drama sort of way, as I remembered - like Ricki-Tikki-Tavi or The Velveteen Rabbit.

Although he could have done with less singing, even my 17 year old, half-watching from the periphery of the room while pretending to be playing a video game, had to admit it was closer, in many places, to the book, than the more modern, live action movies, and had a "pretty good" narration, and voice work.  High praise from a 17 year old for a '70s cartoon.

The younger children (ages 8-11) loved it.  Despite being "culture" it is not all that scary.  I'm not sure if that's true for the animated Lord of the Rings (made by a different group)...

...or the final of the animated films - The Return of the King. 

But, I can't wait to stream them both up for watching today, if nothing else, just to be able to hear the orc's "Where there's a whip, there's a way!" song in context again.  It made such an impression on me, as a child, I still find the chorus stuck in my head from time to time, though the rest of the details of the film have long since faded from my memory.

Box Trolls - Skip the Move, Read the Book.

Laika Studio's The Box Trolls releases to DVD later in January.  I purchased an early release version on Amazon instant video, last week.  It was after my mother's visit, and I was looking for a way to cheer up, and distract my youngest two (ages 8 and 10), who were mourning the loss of their grandmother's company.

I don't often purchase movies sight unseen, without at least checking the Plugged-In review first.  I was busy with Christmas prep at the time though, and it was the only new children's movie out, and so I bought it, and sent my daughters off to the family room to watch it, while I started mixing up a batch of gingerbread.

The animation style of the movie didn't look very appealing to me, but I've felt that way about other movies the children have ended up enjoying - so I took a chance.

The gingerbread hadn't even come out of the oven though, before the girls were back in the kitchen, scolding in unison.

"Maaawm! That was not a family friendly movie."

"They took God's name in vain!  And, it's a bad story."

"We turned it off."

Can you hear my sigh?

I would have learned all of that if I had gone my usual route and checked out the Plugged-In review first.  I would also have learned that the movie was based loosely on a children's novel.  And, had I known that, I might have picked up the book first, and discovered a truly delightful story sooner.

Because, although I cannot recommend The Box Trolls to you - you might like it, we all have our own tastes, but my children did not care for it - I can however, highly recommend the story it was loosely based on, Alan Snow's Here Be Monsters.

The story is still strange.  It's the sort of book you might expect to find in Roald Dahl's library, if he had ever decided to team up and write a children's novel with Lewis Caroll, or maybe even Dr. Seuss, that is.  But, it's also fanciful, fun, and almost impossible to put down.  And, thankfully, as is the case with so many novels, bares almost no resemblance to it's film adaptation.

Teen Books to Movies - Edge of Tomorrow

I spent all day yesterday, reading through Hiroshi Sakurazaka's light science fiction novel, All You Need is Kill.  When I say all day, that's all day - intermittently, between loads of laundry, making meals, helping children with schoolwork, chauffeuring teens to driver's ed, and new job orientations, and other general mom-type activities.

It was an odd choice of books for me, and one I would probably never have picked up, if it hadn't been the basis for Warner Bros.' Edge of Tomorrow, which released to Instant View on Amazon this week, and which T (age 17) has been wanting to see since it was in theaters last summer.

I agreed to watch the movie with him, if he would read the book.  He agreed to read the book, but wanted to watch the movie first, hoping to avoid a major disappointment like we had with The Giver.

Watching the movie first turned out to be a good idea, as we enjoyed it in ways I'm not sure we would have if we'd read the book first.  It's a pretty standard, action adventure, mankind against aliens, special effects laden, battle to save the world type movie, but with enough humor thrown in to keep it light.  Sort of like a cross between Groundhog's Day and Source Code with a touch of War of the Worlds thrown in.

The premise of the movie, as well as the book, is something akin to what it would be like if a soldier could live out the life of a video game hero.  He fights, he dies, the game resets, continuing over, and over again, until at last the enemy is defeated, and the game is won.

In both the book, and the movie, the protagonist, a young soldier (an American in the movie, and Japanese in the book), after killing one of the aliens, finds himself in just such a repeating sort of loop.  He repeats the same day, and same battle a number of times before he begins to realize what is happening, and several more times before he meets up with another soldier, Rita Vitraski (an American in the book, and Brit in movie - or at least played with a British accent) who actually has been through such a loop before, and knows how to break the cycle, and possibly win the war.

The book fills in a number of details that the movie leaves hanging.  The movie provides a happy ending, that doesn't make total sense with the rest of the story, and is not in the book.  The movie also leaves out a lot, and I mean a LOT of the swearing and sex-themed soldier talk that permeates many of the pages of the book.  Seriously, you could cut the length of the book by about a quarter by simply eliminating the F-word.

With that said though, I really enjoyed the book a good more than I had expected to.  First off, I was thinking we were buying a Manga, and instead ended up with an actual novella.  There is a Manga based on the book...

...which has gotten pretty good reviews.  I just happen to prefer novels to Manga, or graphic novels, and so was pleased to have something other than a glorified comic book to read.

Secondly, as a homeschool mom, I was thrilled with all the jump off points there are in the book into other studies.  It's similar enough in feel to the WW1 classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, that I've already loaded a copy of that into T's Kindle as a follow-up...

...as well as Rilla of Ingleside from the Anne of Green Gables Collection for the girls, to keep them up with the WW1 theme, and tie them into to T's reading.  The protagonist's first impression of the story's heroine in All You Need is Kill is that,

"...she was a tiny little thing standing off by herself...beside the rest of her super-sized squad, something seemed out of whack.  Anne of Green Gables Goes to War...the book would be a spin-off set around World War 1.  Mongolia makes a land grab, and there's Anne, machine gun tucked daintily under one arm..."  

If being a science fiction book, set in Japan, that mentions Anne of Green Gables (and the old Back to the Future movies to boot) isn't reason enough to like the story, there's also all the great geographical locations to look up, and study, references to interesting tidbits of Japanese culture, and strange aspects of wartime civilian culture to discuss.  Oh, and there's the problem of how foreign allies might deal with the language barrier. In the book they create a completely new, grammatically simple language for the soldiers to use.  In the movie orders are repeated in multiple languages over a loud-speaker.

And, if all that still weren't enough there's an umeboshi (Japanese pickled plum) eating contest in the middle of the story, that's just too much for any homeschool mom with a cupboard full of Poppin Cookins to resist.

Teen Books To Movies - The Giver

We went to see Jeff Bridge's movie version of The Giver, yesterday.  Or rather, I went to see it with A (age 13), and T (age 17).  All three of my teens read the short book by Lois Lowry, as part of our kick off into the new school year.

A read it one day, and liked it so well she continued on through the rest of the quartet.  T read it in two days, mainly because he didn't really get into the story until midway through.  G (age 15) never did find the story interesting, drug through it in a week, and opted not to go to the movie.

The slim, young adult novel/novella, published in 1993, revolves around a 12 year old boy, coming of age in a seemingly Utopian community, as he receives his career with the rest of his class of graduating 12 year olds.  As with The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, City of Ember, or Divergent - to name a few novels in genre, the fate, or fall of society as he knows it, sits squarely on the shoulders of the young, unprepared, and completely unsuspecting protagonist.

The movie, again like Ender's Game, bumped up the age of the main character, this time from 12 to 18, and downplayed a few of the more violent, or slightly creepy scenarios from the book (although Jeff Bridges still somehow managed to play the whitewashed scenes with a slightly pedophelic feel).  Taking advantage of the older age of the protagonist, and perhaps attempting to keep in step with the other dystopian titles already mentioned, the filmmakers expanded a simple adolescent crush from the book into puppy-love-ish  sort of romance.

The movie also borrows a villain almost straight from the pages of Divergent (Meryl Streep's character might has well have been named Jeanine) , in order to amp up the physical conflict, and seems to play more heavily on the Calvinesque tension threading through the novel, with Jeff Bridges' Giver quoting Hebrews 11:1, countered by a bitter response from Meryl Streep's Jeanine-like Head Elder, that given a choice - "people always choose wrong."

We enjoyed the first half of the movie.  It is beautifully filmed, and moves gradually from black and white into color in a way appropriate to novel.  The second half of the movie departed so completely from the original storyline though, that we lost interest.  In fact, it was boring enough to leave us wondering what we had actually enjoyed in the book in the first place.

In fairness, we were having an extremely odd movie going experience though, and it's possible that had a bearing on our feelings towards the film.  I decided to have the children read The Giver, because I knew the movie was about to come out in theaters, and I thought it would make for a fun excuse to check out the theater in our new town. 

The theater was clean, and modern, but almost completely abandoned.  We arrived a half an hour before show time, and found the parking lot vacant.  After double checking the movie was playing, we bought tickets, entered the empty theater, and sat down to wait through the ads, and then previews before the show.  A half an hour later, as the curtains opened completely, and the lights dimmed for the movie, we were still sitting alone in the theater.  It was a little unnerving to find ourselves in a private screening of the film.

Judging by the parking lot on the way out, a few other folks had straggled in to see other films during the afternoon, but even so I'd guess there were more employees in the building, than movie goers.  We won't worry about being early next time.

As to the book itself, it has often been on banned, and parent protest lists, thanks to some euthanasia, and war related violence, as well as undercurrents of mind control straying dangerously close to the occult.  I didn't find this to be the case with the first book, though I can see it increasing as I read through the second book in the series. But, according to Christianity Today, "The Giver is one of the 25 most banned or challenged books of the last decade."

Focus on the Family, however, has given the film 4 and 1/2 stars for family friendliness for teens on up, and I'd say that's about right.  There is some violence, a touch of awkward romance, no crude or profane language to speak of, but one very disturbing scene involving a baby being euthanized, that might not be too much for some.