MOVIE- Hidden Figures

PG (2:07)

Wide release 1/6/17

Viewed Sunday, 1/15/17 at Carlisle 8 with Ella
IMBd:  

RT Critic: 93   Audience:  94
Critic's Consensus:  In heartwarming, crowd-pleasing fashion, Hidden Figures celebrates overlooked -- and crucial -- contributions from a pivotal moment in American history.

Cag:  6/Awesome  

Directed by Ted Melfi

20th Century Fox

Based on a real story

Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Costner, Jim Parsons, Kirsten Dunst

My comments: I love these "based on a true story" movies, but this one was particularly poignant, well told, and well acted.  Powerful story!  It's also good to be reminded that as recently as the 1960's, people with a skin color other than white couldn't use the same bathrooms, drink from the same fountains or percolators, find any sort of comparable job, and were treated with such incredible disrespect. Brilliant women who, if this story is truthful, truly helped make the space program of the 1960s literally get off the ground.  A fantastic movie.

RT/ IMDb Summary:  The incredible untold story of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson - brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation's confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big.

MOVIE - Arrival

PG-13 (1:51)

Wide release 11/11/16

Viewed date at Park Place Mall on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016 after getting my hair cut.

RT Critic:  93  Audience:  83
Critic's Consensus:  Arrival delivers a must-see experience for fans of thinking person's sci-fi that anchors its heady themes with genuinely affecting emotion and a terrific performance from Amy Adams.

Cag:  5.5  I really loved it, superior movie, may change to a 6...

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

21 Laps Entertainment

Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forrest Whitacker

My comments:  Now that's a MOVIE!  Clever, believable science fiction where you slowly figure out what's going on, and the reality is much ... deeper ... than superficial.  I'll be thinking about this one for a long while yet.  It left me with a couple of small questions, that I'm sure I'm supposed to figure out on my own (sort of like the end of reading The Giver for the first time).

RT/ IMDb Summary:  When mysterious spacecrafts touch down across the globe, an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks - is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers - and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

17. Shine Shine Shine - Lydia Netzer

Audio read by Joshilyn Jackson - beautifully!

9 unabridged discs

2012 St. Martin's Press

309 pgs.

Adult CRF

Finished 11-24-2015

Goodreads rating:  3.48

My rating:  4 Liked it a whole lot

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary Virginia (but many flashbacks to Burma and rural Pennsylvania)

My comments:  This is a really difficult book to rate.  It was read beautifully by Joshilyn Jackson, one of the wonderful things about the book.  The characters were over-the-top quirky - I love quirky but are these characters just a little too-too far....every single one of them? Maxon, the husband, is awesome and believable; utterly and wonderfully autistic, I wanted more of him. Emma, the mother, sickening so quickly and refusing to die, having played such a huge part in teaching Maxon how to fit into a world that was different - and not so understanding of - a person like him.   But this is Sunny's story, and Sunny is the one I had the most difficulty with. One minute I though I had her pegged, but the next...?  The story is pretty cool - fanciful and unbelievable (as well as believable) and exotic and different and funny, too. Whew!  I guess I really liked almost all of it.  

Goodreads book summary:  A debut unlike any other, Shine, Shine, Shine is a shocking, searing, breathless love story, a gripping portrait of modern family, and a stunning exploration of love, death and what it means to be human.
          Sunny Mann has masterminded a life for herself and her family in a quiet Virginia town. Her house and her friends are picture-perfect. Even her genius husband, Maxon, has been trained to pass for normal. But when a fender bender on an average day sends her coiffed blonde wig sailing out the window, her secret is exposed. Not only is she bald, Sunny is nothing like the Stepford wife she’s trying to be. As her facade begins to unravel, we discover the singular world of Sunny, an everywoman searching for the perfect life, and Maxon, an astronaut on his way to colonize the moon.                   Theirs is a wondrous, strange relationship formed of dark secrets, decades-old murders and the urgent desire for connection. As children, the bald, temperamental Sunny and the neglected savant Maxon found an unlikely friendship no one else could understand. She taught him to feel -- helped him translate his intelligence for numbers into a language of emotion. He saw her spirit where others saw only a freak. As they grew into adults, their profound understanding blossomed into love and marriage.     

           But with motherhood comes a craving for normalcy that begins to strangle Sunny’s marriage and family. As Sunny and Maxon are on the brink of destruction, at each other’s throats with blame and fear of how they’ve lost their way, Maxon departs for the moon, where he’s charged with programming the robots that will build the fledgling colony. Just as the car accident jars Sunny out of her wig and into an awareness of what she really needs, an accident involving Maxon’s rocket threatens everything they’ve built, revealing the things they’ve kept hidden. And nothing will ever be the same.

MOVIE - Jupiter Ascending

PG-13 (2:05)

Wide release 2/6/15

Viewed date at Roadhouse with Cyra on Friday, 2/6/2015

RT Critic: 22   Audience:   51

Cag:  1.5/Didn't like it, but it wasn't quite gag-worthy

Directed by Lana Wochowski & Andy Lochowski (who also wrote it)

Warner Borthers

Action/Adventure/ SciFi

Actors: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum

My comments:  Yuck.  I love a good sci-fi, but this sure wasn't a good one.  Lots of whizzing around in outer space, careening this way and that, explosions, light shows...but all without being able to tell what was going on, lots of plot "stuff" you had to guess at...but lots and lots and LOTS of really great ears.  Yup, ears.  All the space aliens had different weird ears, and I loved 'em all!

RT Summary: From the streets of Chicago to the far-flung galaxies whirling through space, "Jupiter Ascending" tells the story of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), who was born under a night sky, with signs predicting she was destined for great things. Now grown, Jupiter dreams of the stars but wakes up to the cold reality of a job cleaning other people's houses and an endless run of bad breaks. Only when Caine (Channing Tatum), a genetically engineered ex-military hunter, arrives on Earth to track her down does Jupiter begin to glimpse the fate that has been waiting for her all along-her genetic signature marks her as next in line for an extraordinary inheritance that could alter the balance of the cosmos.

MOVIE - Interstellar

PG-13 (2:49)

Wide release 11/7/2014

Reel Pizza 12/31/2014 with Fran and Christine

RT Critic:  73  Audience:   87

Cag:  4.5/Liked it a lot (despite its too-long length)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Paramount Pictures

Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Michael Caine, Topher Grace, Matt Damon,

My comments:This one one loooooong movie!  Too long, some parts went on forever.  But what a mind it took to create this!  Space is one thing, time and space is another.  The time part - that's what this whole movie is about.  Really something.....

RT Summary:  With our time on Earth coming to an end, a team of explorers undertakes the most important mission in human history; traveling beyond this galaxy to discover whether mankind has a future among the stars.

The Moon Over Star - Dianna Hutts Aston

Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
Published 2008
32 pages
Dial Books for Young Readers (Penguin)
$17.99
Rating: 4.5

Here's another picture book that incorporates a good story with great historical facts.

Mae (the future astronaut?) visits her grandparents' farm in STAR during the summer of 1969, and together they watch the Eagle take off and land on the moon, while listening to Walter Cronkite's voice on the news, and watching Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins take the first historic steps of the world's first moon mission. Dianna Aston and Jerry Pinkney make you feel THERE, with them. So many facts, so much imagination, dreaming, and reflection about the past and the future make this book a top read for this, the 40th anniversary of this first visit to the moon. 40 years!

President Obama read this book to second graders at a public school in Washington. There's a cool picture here. I would love to hear the discussion after he read it!

Midnight on the Moon and its companion book: Space - Mary Pope Osborne

#8 in the Magic Tree House series
Published 1996
70 pgs.
Still $3.99!
RL: 2.1, ages 6-9

Nonfiction partner: Space
Published 2002
Mary Pope Osborne & Will Osborne
144 pgs.
$4.99
RL 2.9, ages 6-9

I think there are at least 38 in The Magic Tree House series now, and up to perhaps number 19 in the resourse guides. So I decided that it was time to read at least one of them. I chose Midnight on the Moon, because I think I'm going to be teaching the moon, sun, and stars in science next year.

"The Universe is filled with wonders." Siblings Jack and Annie take a trip in their magic treehouse to the moon to try to find the fourth and final "M" to free Morgan le Fay from a spell.

The RESOURCE GUIDE: Space:
Includes chapter and mucho information on:
-ancient astronomy & astronomers (Copernicus, Galileo, Newton)
-the universe, galalzies, stars, the sun
-the solar system
-space travel
-moon history
-the space shuttles
--telescopes
--light years
--eclipses

Also includes a pretty decent index - perhaps a good tool for beginning teaching of how to use one.

This would be an excellent companion to a space unti for grades 2 - 4, I could see a class writing their own set about something they're studying after reading a novel and its companion. Or, a teacher could assigne book reports of one of the novels and its companion, students choosing whatever interested them. Lots and lots of teaching ideas here. Just distinguishing the difference for young readers between fiction and nonfiction could be taught VERY early.....

I've had fifth graders with reading difficulties come from fourth grade into fifth grade very excited about reading these books. (and now I've read one myself....that's a good thing). It was quite good, not boring and repetitive, and would probably keep a reluctant reader going, as well as a younger child who was reading at a more advanced level. Fits a lot of bills.

For more information, take a look at:
Mary Pope Osborne's Website
as well as
Random House's website, which includes activities for some of the books.

There's Nothing to Do on Mars - Chris Gall

Published: 2008
Rating: 3 (me), but one of my students brought this in to show me and really loved it - more than a 3
Endpapers: Clay red with chalk-like notes that are at LEAST as interesting as the story

Chris Gall is a Tucson resident.

Davey Martin's parents turn their silver travel trailer into a space ship and move to Mars. They live there, alone, with their heads in glass-like bubbles. Davey feels constantly bored, although he and his robot-dog Polaris zip all over the planet on his scooter. They play with Martians, climb a tree, build a fort, dig for treasure - until they unleash a volcano of water. Now more and more people come from Earth to vacation on Mars, making Davey's parents decide to move to Saturn -- where he KNOWS there'll be nothing to do!

Illustrations are scratched on a clay colored board - they're all very Mars-y looking. Framed in a thick black line with a whie border around the edge of the page. Looks good.