yourfamilyviewer.com

Wow.  Talking about having to eat your words.  Yes, I still believe the Democratic National Convention (as is the Republican National Convention, beginning on Monday) is an exquisitely choreographed pep rally.  But I am very surprised at how much of it I’ve watched.  Some of that is because the beloved spouse is a political junkie.

I really don’t want to comment on the actual events - at least, not in this space.  My goal is to give you information and let you make up your own mind.  And while it’s true that my own personal biases are going to leak out (I know some folks who consider my philosophies somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun, and others who figure I’m so far to the left, I couldn’t make a right turn if you paid me), I’d at least like to make the effort to respect your individual values by moderating the expression of my own.

That being said, we’ve been watching the PBS coverage at the old homestead, and one thing I noticed is that their talking heads are almost all academic historians, as opposed to political analysts and former players.  These guys (and, sadly, they are all guys) not only talk about what’s going on, but do it with the perspective of 200 years of American history.  Based on the clips I’ve seen on The Daily Show (Comedy Central, 11 p.m.), that is not the case with MSNBC, CNN and Fox News.

Now granted, given the amount of time these guys are on the air, you know someone is going to say or do something stupid, and finding those bits and pieces is the bread and butter of The Daily Show - as well it should be.  But host Jon Stewart and company haven’t touched anything on PBS.  Personally, I’ve yet to see the staff at The Daily Show shy away from poking fun at anything.  So I’m guessing that the PBS coverage is just that thoughtful and intelligent, which means it’s not that funny.  It does not, however, mean that the talking heads on PBS are boring.  In fact, they’re very engaging.  They just don’t say stupid things.

As for The Daily Show, if you’re got teens in your house, I highly recommend it - with parental supervision, of course.  Like I said, they don’t shy away from things, including the crude.  It is mostly funny, and for all Mr. Stewart swears he’s doing comedy, not real news, there is more real news on The Daily Show than most TV news programs.  It is true that there’s a decided liberal bias to the program, but I will say host Jon Stewart is a lot more polite to those of his guests with whom he disagrees than most TV hosts.  And Stewart is a lot more intelligent than most of his competition, too.

Anne Louise Bannon

yourfamilyviewer.com

It’s pretty obvious why most direct to DVD releases have such a bad rep.  The movies largely stink.  But I have found one that’s actually pretty good - better than Disney Channel’s latest two flicks.  It’s The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning, which turned up in stores yesterday.  On the off-chance your junior member hasn’t already apprised you of that fact several times over.

Yes, there has been one other direct to DVD sequel to the 1989 Disney film, and an animated TV series, as well.

The story for this third version starts with Ariel and her sisters’ early childhood and the loss of their mother to pirates.  King Triton, mourning the loss of his beloved wife, decides to ban music from the ocean kingdom.  Fast forward a few years and Ariel is in full adolescent rebellion when she stumbles upon a secret music club headlined by Sebastian, the crab and King Triton’s right-hand crustaceon.  Lurking around the palace, looking for an excuse to depose Sebastian is Marina Del Rey, and, gee, secretly performing music against the law - what an excuse.

The music numbers are fun, but there is a real story here, and it works.  Okay, Marina is no Ursula, by a long shot, and as villains go, she’s pretty lame.  The upside is that you don’t have to worry as much about really young ones being frightened.

At the junket, one of the things that was constantly emphasized was the care the filmmakers took with the lore already established by the film - and I think that’s why the film ultimately works.  Jodi Benson is back again, as the voice of Ariel, as is Samuel E. Wright as Sebastian.  Sally Field does a terrific performance as Marina’s voice and even does her own singing.

The DVD does feature the usual games and making of flicks.  I wouldn’t say they’re worth the price of the DVD, but the film is.  Well, I’d rent it first, but then I’m cheap.

The Democratic Convention grinds on.  Former President Bill Clinton and vice presidential nominee Joe Biden are up tonight (8/27).

Anne Louise Bannon

yourfamilyviewer.com

Yes, I know I should be begging you to watch the Democratic National Convention, which starts today (8/25) and begging you to convince your children to watch, as well.  After all, a well-informed electorate is an absolute necessity.  But it’s the informed part that’s letting me off the hook on this one.

I’m not saying the convention is not important or historic.  But there is little likelihood that any real information will come of what is essentially an exquisitely choreographed pep rally.  The networks won’t even be covering it.  Think about it - the networks are losing viewers faster than sand slipping out of a clenched fist thanks to summer repeats and they still think they’ll get more eyeballs with summer repeats than if they aired the historic nomination of Senator Barak Obama for the presidential election.

The scary thing is, they’re right and it’s not all the fault of the mindless masses.  It’s the convention, itself.  We know who the nominee is.  We know who his running mate is.  We know what everyone is going to say about the economy, global warming, the war in Iraq and the current president.  What’s to watch?

If you are a political junkie, then PBS and the cable news operations, including MSNBC, CNN and Fox News will all carry extended broadcasts.  I might check it out when Senator Barak Obama makes his acceptance speech, but that won’t happen tomorrow night.

That doesn’t mean there’s that much on.  Okay, NBC is premiering America’s Toughest Jobs at 9 p.m., in which 13 people take on some of the toughest jobs in the country, such as commercial crab fishing, working on suspension bridges, oil rig work, bull fighting.  Call it Survivor meets Deadliest Catch.  I can’t imagine this one is going to go very far.  It’s simply not that interesting.

Also, beware that it can get gross - the crab crew has the contestants bite the heads off of raw herrings and eat them.  There is quite a bit of bleeping going on.  Oh, and one of the contestants makes some horribly obnoxious sexist comments at one point.  But the women prove their mettle and two of them even out-perform the men.

Or you could just kick back and read a book together tonight.

Anne Louise Bannon

yourfamilyviewer.com

It’s been about a week and a half since I saw The Cheetah Girls One World and the big finale number, One World, is still playing in my brain.  It’s almost as bad as It’s a Small World.  Hmm.  Both are from Disney.  The movie The Cheetah Girls One World premieres tonight (8/22) on Disney Channel.

Cheetah Girls, in case you don’t have a pre-teen girl in your household, is the movie franchise featuring a group of young women with big dreams of making it as a singing group.  The movies actually started out as a series of books by Deborah Gregory and are reasonably readable.

The movies are mostly watchable.  This latest is definitely thin on plot - Camp Rock had more going for it.  The girls, minus Galleria (Raven Simone) who has gone off to college, snag a part in a movie - only it’s a Bollywood movie being shot in Mumbai, India.  The director is a young man who must get the film made or it’s off to dental school.  But the director’s mean, old producer uncle only wants one of the three remaining Cheetahs.  Oh my.  How will Chanel, Dorinda and Aqua make it all work out?

Utterly family-safe and mostly family-friendly, it’s one production number after another.  And it is very visually beautiful.  The only real issue I have with the story is the girls’ obsession with shopping.  They’re in India and all they can think of is buying earrings?

The bottom line is that if you’ve got a pre-teen in the house, you’ll probably be able to sit through it without gagging too much.  If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to start a conversation on India’s social problems - which, not surprisingly, you don’t see in the film.  Yes, the country’s economy has been growing by leaps and bounds, but grinding poverty and starvation are still an issue, especially outside of the cities.  Worse comes to absolute worse, you’ll be listening to One World for the next week or so - whether or not it’s on the TV.  Try listening to some Stones.  Trust me, it helps.  See you on Monday.

Anne Louise Bannon

Your Family Viewer

This is going to be short.  Since there does not appear to be much of anything on tonight that has me even mildly interested, let alone excited, I am going to suggest that you make it a family dinner night.  Play your home version of Iron Chef, where your kids pick one or two surprise ingredients and then you all try to figure out how to make a dinner out of it.  Maybe one surprise ingredient per kid.  You’d be astonished at all the different things you can do with peanut butter.

Anne Louise Bannon

Your Family Viewer

This is not a lame attempt to get more comments.  Seriously.  I need to know how you, my readers, prefer to support this site.

As you know, nothing on the Internet is actually free.  Even open source software, of which I am a tremendous fan, requires the donation of thousands of hours of time and some cash to keep going.  So for me to keep this blog going, I have to figure out how to generate some living expenses off of it.  We’re not talking luxury vacations here.  We’re talking groceries and keeping the lights on.

So-o-o-o, how do you want this site supported?  I have two possible scenarios in mind and am open to hearing about any others.

The first, and most obvious, is the traditional ad-supported route.  I’ll start with Ad-sense and then maybe a few banner ads - you know the kind.  Of course, given the nature of the blog, I’ll have to be a little choosier, but we’ll see.

The second is intriguing, but will mean a certain amount of regular begging, as it were.  Namely, I would follow a format similar to what public television and radio do.  I’d get corporate and non-profit partners who would put their links on this site, but I’d also have to collect donations from you, the readers.  (BTW, there is already a donation button on the About page - see the link in the column to the right)

Which is why I really need your thoughts on the issue.  You can e-mail me at info@yourfamilyviewer.com or just post a comment.  Either way, your ideas are an important part of this process and it will be hard to justify either course without that input.

And thanks for reading.

Anne Louise Bannon

yourfamilyviewer.com

Last night, my husband and I went on a mini-Mythbusters binge.  We’d had some episodes backed up on the DVR and decided what the heck.

So why am I writing about this again, especially since Mythbusters is on Wednesday nights and this is Tuesday?  Well, aside from the fact that Mythbusters is probably on as some point today (given the way they endlessly repeat that show), I was thinking about TV, in general, today, and realized that sometimes we, as parents are working at cross-purposes here when it comes to the tube.

I mean, think about it.  So much of TV for kids, especially for our youngest viewers, is supposed to be educational.  Yet, when our kids aren’t involved, we mostly use TV for entertainment.  Yes, there are those of us who look to news programming and such for information.  But most folks, myself included, when it comes to the end of a long day, are flipping the thing on to relax and be entertained.

And there is nothing wrong with that.  We all need to occasionally turn off our brains and relax.  Including our kids, I might add.  Which is why there’s a place for SpongeBob SquarePants - not on my TV because I find the character insanely grating.  But I certainly get that some kids like him.

What makes Mythbusters - and a significant chunk of Discovery Channel programming - so phenomenal is that they’ve found a way to make science programming genuinely fun.  Not just interesting, but fun.  I’d like to see someone do that with history programming because as any historian knows, history is not just dates and wars but people stories and those can be hysterical good fun.

And, yes, we all learn faster when the subject is fun.  This is not to diss those times when we just have to buckle down and get through the hard parts.  We have to learn how to do the math in chemistry or things will blow up that shouldn’t.  We have to learn the dates and presidents and kings in history or things won’t entirely make sense.   But using the fun of a show like Mythbusters to ignite an interest in science helps, too.

We just can’t depend on the Discovery Channel or any TV to do it all.  The real key is to keep that sense of wonder about things alive, to get excited about learning things.  That’s something TV can only do in small parts.  We, as parents, have to model that and that means being excited and curious about things, ourselves.

So, turn off the TV tonight and act out a scene from Shakespeare or the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Or figure out something to do with baking soda - I’m sure there are all kinds of experiments on the Internet that can start you off.  I’ll even let you do the digging.  Or dig a hole in your yard to find out how far down you have to go to hit water.  TV is only the starting point.

Anne Louise Bannon

yourfamilyviewer.com

It was over 10 years ago, but I once sat in Helen Thomas’ chair in the White House press room.  I was a mere student reporter at the time, and was hanging out in the press room waiting to cover Hillary Clinton for the Medill J-School news service, and I sat down in one of the seats at the front and noticed that there were names on all of them.

Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, is the subject of a fascinating - and short - documentary film airing tonight (8/18) on HBO at 9 p.m.  I emphasize short (only 38 minutes) because getting your kids to watch will be dicey, at best.  The fun thing about Thomas is that she relates how, as a young girl, she was constantly asking questions and being told by her relatives not to.  So if you have a young ‘un making you crazy with her nosiness, you might want to let her watch.  Believe me, that’s how I started in this biz.

The other interesting thing about the doc is that Thomas’ story is not only about our country’s recent history - she’s been covering the White House since 1961 and the John F. Kennedy administration - it’s about journalism.  Thomas has harsh words for reporters who coddle presidents and don’t ask tough questions.  The whole idea, she believes, is to hold our elected leaders completely accountable for their actions.

Given how corporate traditional journalism has become, what with the 30-second sound bite, and the need to pull in readers/viewers at all costs, and the advent of blogging and advocacy journalism, Thomas’ perspective is an important one.  At the very least, it could be aspirational for your kids.

Also aspirational is Discovery’s new series, Into the Unknown with Josh Bernstein, at 10 p.m.  Bernstein, a former anthropology student and wilderness survival expert and environmentalist, has done several similar specials for Discovery, in which he goes after the “answers” to ancient mysteries.  The nice thing about Bernstein is that he manages to convey a thirst for knowledge that provides the perfect bridge into the more rarified worlds of forensic archaeology and other fields of science that are even now answering what was thought to be unanswerable.

In the first episode, he studies the Roman gladiators to find out where the Hollywood missed the boat in their depictions and stumbles on to the amazing paradox that the gladiators were mostly slaves - and the lowest of the low in Roman society, but at the same time, they were also major celebrities and had allowances and could go out and have fun and even get married.

Fair warning, however, history being what it is and the fact that humans have had different attitudes toward human nakedness, be warned there is a grave marker that might seem a little graphic.  Chances are, if you don’t make a big deal out of it, your kids won’t.  But if nudity has made you uncomfortable in the past, you may get some inappropriate titters.  That and the mention of prostitutes is about as racy as the whole thing gets.

And it was surprisingly interesting.  The show moves very nicely, so it should hold the interest of anyone age 10 and above.

By Anne Louise Bannon

yourfamilyviewer.com

By Anne Louise Bannon

yourfamilyviewer.com

Except for one thing, it’s just another lackluster summer weekend, as my dear friend Marc Berman, of the Programming Insider, would say.

Last Saturday night, my beloved spouse and I decided to clear some of the old programs off the DVR and discovered a show that somehow got past me when it debuted last spring.  Probably because the folks at ABC are so freaking paranoid about piracy they couldn’t be bothered to send me the screener.  Sorry.  I have issues with the ABC publicity department.  I find several of the individuals pretty nice, but as a group, they’re largely pretty obnoxious and full of themselves.

Which is kinda sad because last spring’s sleeper hit, Eli Stone (currently on at 10 p.m., Saturday), is one heck of a show.  It’s about a high-powered San Francisco lawyer, Eli Stone (Johnny Lee Miller), who suddenly develops visions, probably due to a brain anyeurism, but possibly not.  His father (played by Tom Cavenaugh) had visions, too, and could predict the future.

Aside from the fabulous writing - the episode dealing with Eli’s father’s death (Heartbeats, on the ABC website) is singularly amazing - the show is surprisingly family-safe for a 10 p.m. show.  Yes, there’s the odd bit of sexual behavior, but nothing graphic.  Not much in the way of violence, either.

But the show is imaginative.  The variety of the visions, alone, is impressive.  Also, Victor Garber plays Eli’s boss, Jordan Weathersby, and it is so much fun watching Garber’s character change from grim and money-grubbing to openly defending Eli.  Okay, watching Garber get to sing and dance is a treat, too, because Garber is one of those guys who did a significant amount of time doing same on Broadway.

This is one of those shows that, especially if you have older kids, you can really sink your teeth into.  It being about lawyers and the fact that Eli finds himself taking on more and more pro-bono work, there are always ethical issues to talk over.  Ask your kids what they think about them.  They may have some surprising insights.

Now, the second season doesn’t begin until October, but I have to give ABC credit for coming up with a way to update you (and everyone else) on Eli Stone - and many of the other ABC shows, including two other faves of mine, Ugly Betty and Pushing Daisies.  The website is featuring Starter Kits - short videos that will give you the basic rundown on what happened last season so that you can pick up with the new season or the summer repeats and have a sense of what’s going on.  You’ll have to scroll down to the bottom to find Eli Stone and listen to a short, but grating Best Buy commercial.

You can also catch up on the whole series on your computer, if you want to.  Or you can watch the episode airing tomorrow (8/16) on the good TV.  Either way, I think you’ll find Eli Stone a pleasant surprise.

By Anne Louise Bannon

Your Family Viewer

I’m serious.  Unless you want to be watching the Olympics - and there’s no reason not to, even though you probably already know where Michael Phelps is in his medal count - there’s really nothing that interesting on tonight.  I mean it.  I even went trolling through the non-English channels.  We have a lot of them on our satellite system, lots of Spanish, of course, but French, Italian, Pakistani, Korean, Japanese.  I even found the Pentagon channel - and, man, that has got to be scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Unless you’re a military buff.

And it’s too bleeding hot to go on a rant.  So come back tomorrow - I promise there’s a fun show you’ll want to hear about.  Failing that, feel free to share what kind of wacky Olympics have you and your kids devised for this weekend.  There may be a prize for the best one.