I’m a sucker for feel good films that make me want to get up and do something.  Some movies have made me feel as though as I could do anything, like Billy Elliot and Shirley Valentine, for example. These movies have a major theme in common – determination and fulfilling life long dreams. I’ve seen both again and again and have been waiting for another film to come along in the same vein.

And along comes Eddie the Eagle – another British film, ironically, like the two mentioned above, and like both films, it’s about people from a lower-class background with dreams. However, Michael “Eddie” Edward’s dream is not so ordinary. Played by Taron Egerton, he’s an unlikely but courageous British ski-jumper who never stopped believing in himself.  With the help of a retired coach, played by Hugh Jackman, and supportive parents who foot the bill for just one year while he trained to become a professional Olympian, Eddie takes on the establishment quite literally as the British Olympic contingency has no interest in recruiting a guys who had only trained for one year of his life and wins the hearts of sports fans around the world by making a historic showing at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, with the help of a supportive publicist, played by Ania Sowinski and a famous author/ex-ski jumper played by the legendary Christopher Walken. His journey is surreal as he never gives up, and his determination and victory to get to the top left me reeling in my seat. If you go into this movie feeling down, I can assure you that you will come out soaring.  

The film was written by Kingsman writer Matthew Vaughn and directed by Dexter Fletcher, best known for his character actor roles in many of Matthew Vaughn’s films, including Guy Ritchie’s debut Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (which was also brought to Sundance).

An Interview with Hugh Jackman, Taron Egerton and Ania Sowinski

I was fortunate enough to join a small group of bloggers early this week in a discussion with Hugh Jackman, Taron Egerton and Ania Sowinski. All had vivid recollections of Eddie growing up. Sowinski, who grew up in the UK, remembers her brother doing impressions of Eddie. “He was a big deal at those Olympics. And it was very much like Princess Di and Charles’ wedding. You know, everyone was around their television sort of rooting for this guy from the middle of nowhere in England. So, I have very big memories of it. Obviously I was a child. I was eight years old, but it was huge.”

The movie is as inspiring to the actors as it is to the people seeing it. Jackman saw the movie and said, “When I first saw the movie, I saw it with a bunch of friends. And one of their mum’s came out, actually, and just said, ‘Every parent should take their kids to see this, because it, it just goes to show you don’t have to win to be a winner.’ It’s like there’s so much pressure on kids these days to be LeBron James or to be at the top, you know? And it can kind of create this pressure sometimes that is not necessary for kids. And so anyway. That’s what I loved about it. I took my kids to see it. They really love it. But you’re right. You end up pulling for him so much, because he’s such an every man, you know?”

As a dad, Jackman has thought a lot about his children’s long-terms goals, and when asked what he would do if they wanted to do something as bold and singular as Eddie the Eagle, if he would stop them, he said, “He (Eddie the Eagle) wanted to be in the Olympics from when he was five and nothing was going to stop him. So, look what came of it, you know? I kind of get that. But I understand. It’s a horrible thing about being a parent, right? I’ve got a 15-year-old so probably in a year or two he pretty much is there to pick up the pieces, right? In all, basically they’re going to make their own mistakes. It’s the hardest thing.”

Egerton, who also starred in Kingsman, had a huge job playing Eddie the Eagle. He got to know the real Michael Edwards during the shoot but says that the real Eddie was not particularly interested in the filmmaking process: “He finally said, ‘Don’t be mean, you know? Do a good job and I’ll see you on the other side.’ And that’s kind of what happened. He came out and saw us and all of that stuff, and then we watched the movie for the first time together, which, as you could imagine, was a fairly intimidating afternoon for me. But thankfully, he loved it.”

Ski-jumping is almost like another character in the film. The actors were intrigued by the filmmaking process, depending largely on a team of real ski jumpers, not stunt men. Jackman said, “Those great shots in the air, one of the best shots is created by two ski jumpers, and one has like three cameras attached to him. So he goes like a half a second behind the first guy….. when they took off, first guy took off, the second guy went over him and touched him on the shoulder and went past him in midair and landed in front of him. And when they got down, we were all just in shock.”

The three actors spoke a bit about their acting careers, all visibly considering the roads taken to get to this point in time and on their own sense of determination and relating to Eddie in that way. About acting, Sowinski said, “I think you have to have a backbone of steel, actually, to just keep driving through, you know? And there’s all these great stories. Meryl Streep has the classic story of being told she wasn’t pretty enough, or Julie Walters has some fantastic stories about being turned down for roles, but she never stopped.”

Jackman remembered being offered a role on Britain’s Neighbours the same weekend he got into a prestigious acting school 20-odd years ago. He had a weekend to make a decision about what to do – take a two-year show on a big show or go study acting. His dad told him to make his own decision, and so Jackman agonized but then asked himself, “After two years on Neighbours, would I feel like I deserved an audition at the Royal Shakespeare Company? And the answer was no.”  It was his dad’s way of helping him to learn to make his own decisions.

The three actors clearly loved working on the film and all had great stories to tell about the process, but Sowinski wins for telling a great story about “kissing Wolverine” during an unscripted scene in which she and Jackman flirted at the airport, take after take after take. About the scene, she said, “I’ve never laughed so much in a set in my life. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.”

Egerton and Jackman clearly had a great chemistry on and off set. Sowinski relished every moment working with them. But they all had particularly great things to say about Christopher Walken. About him, Egerton said, “He’s a total one-off. He’s a unique performer and very, very lucky to have witnessed a bit of him performing.” Jackman added, “He’s got that thing of everyone watching him. Literally the monitors. People, like, Taron and I weren’t working when he was first working, but we stayed to watch. Everyone was watching.”

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Last year I wrote about Malala Yousafzai, an amazing young woman. Her story is so inspirational. Named for an Afghan folk heroine, the activist Pakistani teenager was shot in the face and left for dead by the Taliban in 2012 — but recovered and went on to speak out about the gross injustices in girls’ education in her country and around the world, winning the Nobel Peace Prize along the way. The Malala Fund, which she co-founded with her father Ziauddin Yousafzai, is building schools in Jordan, Pakistan and Lebanon. I was so inspired by the film made about her, He Named Me Malala and the 25-minute conversation I was fortunate to be a part of with Malala herself, along with my tween-aged daughter by my side.

The documentary offers a look into Malala’s life both before and after the attack. She was 15 at the time of the incident, when she was singled out, along with her father, for advocating for girls’ education. The shooting sparked an outcry from supporters around the world. Malala miraculously survived and is now a leading campaigner for girls’ education globally as co-founder of the Malala Fund.

#HeNamedMeMalala to Premiere on National Geographic Channel

For all these reasons and more, I’m excited that National Geographic Channel, in continuation of its partnership with Fox Searchlight Pictures, will be airing the documentary commercial free on Monday, February 29, on National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo MUNDO in the U.S., with a global rollout planned within a week in 171 countries and 45 languages.

The robust education program for the film includes free education resources, discussion and curriculum guides, a service learning Toolkit, Books for Change, a Map Maker Interactive, and can be found here. Additionally, efforts to expose students to Malala’s inspiring story resulted in over 180,500 students globally seeing the film in theaters, and in the U.S. reaching students in all 50 states.

Disclosure: I was not compensated to write this review but am working alongside Women Online & The Mission List to help promote the film.

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I’m a sucker for holiday movies. Some of my greatest memories are of my sisters and I snuggling up with my grandparents on our annual visits to their home in Philadelphia and watching some of the best ever made.  We grew up watching Miracle on 34th Street to It’s a Wonderful Life over and over, year after year. Holiday films bring families together and bring in a sense of warmth, nostalgia, family, tradition. In recent years, the classics have turned from black & white to color and my kids now love watching Elf, Home Alone and Scrooged.

Love The Coopers follows The Cooper clan as four generations of extended family come together for their annual Christmas Eve celebration. As the evening unfolds, a series of unexpected visitors and unlikely events turn the night upside down, leading them all toward a surprising rediscovery of family bonds and the spirit of the holiday…and it’s all told from a dog’s point of view (the family dog). The film has an impressive cast including Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Ed Helms, Diane Keaton, Jake Lacy, Anthony Mackie, Amanda Seyfried, June Squibb, Marisa Tomei and Olivia Wilde. With a cast like this, the film is pretty irresistable, particularly my all-time fave, Diane Keaton partnering up with John Goodman – great pairing. And I adore Marisa Tomei, who plays a very relatable middle-aged woman feeling very alone in mid-life. While it wasn’t my favorite holiday movie, the premise was all there – we all need to appreciate life more and be more grateful for the people around us. Besides, you can return your family! That’s a lesson I’d like to teach my kids more often and a good reason to see Love the Coopers.

To celebrate the film’s opening TODAY, I’m giving away a Visa gift card for $50.

To enter, answer this in the comments: Tell me about a time you did everything you could to make the holiday perfect but things went very, very wrong.

For an additional entry, tweet this:

I entered to win @LoveTheCoopers (now in theaters everywhere) $50 Visa card via @hollychronicles! http://bit.ly/1RTOXBT

Winner will be selected randomly. This giveaway will end on Thanksgiving Day at 9am EST. Winner will be posted here, on the Culture Mom Facebook page and via email and will have 24 hours to accept their prize.

Disclosure: I was not compensated to write this post the same prize to facilitate the post.  Giveaway is courtesy of CBS Films.

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Every now and then a film comes along that offers a sense of connection and a reminder that it’s important to be happy where you are in life, with what you have, with whom you are. BROOKLYN the movie, which starts tomorrow, is one such film. It’s a story originally written by Com Toibin, with a deeper purpose, and its film adaptation by Nick Hornby does its story justice.

I moved to New York City in my 20s, just as the main character, Ellis (pronounced Ay-liss) does. Her circumstances are very different to my own – I came to NYC as a theater lover who had big dreams of working in television. I brought one suitcase with everything I owned inside. My mother tried her hardest to persuade me not to come and leave our home in Atlanta, Georgia. I was the last to leave home, and the one she fought hardest to keep. I came here knowing no one other than my eldest sister, who took me under her wing and helped me acclimate to my new life. It was one that was exciting, to say the least, but it was very different to how I was raised, and it was far from home. I missed my mother dearly; I worried about her and visited often. I had always been a big city girl living in the south but I needed to break out of my shell.

In the movie, Ellis (played wonderfully by Saoirse Ronan – remember this name) moves to Brooklyn after her sister, Rose, makes her living and work arrangements through a Priest (played by the always fabulous Jim Broadbent). I came via plane; of course, Ellis travels via a long boat ride during which she is painfully ill and frightened. When she arrives, she has a job waiting for her in a department store and a room in a boarding house with other Irish immigrant girls. Ellis is plain, so at first they mock her and I could feel her pain and loneliness. She misses home – which is easy to understand – after all, it is Ireland. She is desperately homesick and does not at first consider Brooklyn home.

But as times goes by, things change. The Priest signs her up for night school at Brooklyn College so she can study bookkeeping, taking after her sister, Rose, and begins to shine as a result. She makes excellent grades, prompting her landlord (played by magnetic Julie Walters no less) to show off excessively about her to the girls, creating a tinge of jealousy. But when she meets a boy – Tony, played by Emory Cohen, everything changes. He’s a simpleton – a plumber from an Italian background – and you wouldn’t expect them to click. But they do. They fall hard and madly in love and Brooklyn starts to feel like home. He takes her to see “Singing in the Rain,” to his house to meet his parents and eat a bowl of pasta, for walks in Central Park.

But there is a plot twist, and I hate to reveal too much at this point in the review. Midway through the film, Ellis is forced to return to Ireland and must make some very big decisions. She must really dive into her soul and evaluate where she sees herself down the road, and for a moment I didn’t know the path she would choose. But I do know that Ellis finds home in the end and never sheds her dignity or her identity in the process.

Saoirse Ronan as “Eilis,” Domhnall Gleeson as “Jim,” Eileen O’Higgins as “Nancy” in BROOKLYN. Photo by Kerry Brown. © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

The film portrays 1950s Brooklyn in all its gritty glory, from the set to costumes. Brooklyn was not what it is today, but I got a definite sense that it was home to so many immigrants coming in through Ellis Island, starting their lives over like Ellis. As a New Yorker, I recognized locations such as Coney Island, where Ellis and Tony go on a romantic date, where she shows him the most skin she has ever showed a boy in her life, and remembered what it was like for me as a new New Yorker going there for the first time.

Saorise Ronan is perfect as the lead. Her looks are slightly plain, but more beautiful, and as her character’s happiness develops in the film, so did my affection for her. Her eyes are most expressive (even under the hip sunglasses her character wears) and take us to her most inner feelings of pain and turmoil when they need us to go there with her. She is definitely an actress to be on the lookout for and is on my radar. I must also give a shout out to Domhnall Gleeson, who plays a pivotal role in this film, and an actor I admire very much.

Of course, I want to send a final kudos to John Crowley, the film’s director, and Nick Hornby, who wrote the screenplay. The script, pace, music and cinematography perfectly meshed the film’s dramatic edge.

The end result may make you appreciate where you are in life. BROOKLYN will remind you that home is where you make it and that there is truly no place like it, and that is always a good reminder to have.

Find a theatre where Brooklyn is playing near you here.

Disclosure: This post is made possible by support from Fox Searchlight Pictures. All opinions are my own.

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Suffragette hits theaters today and I can’t express how important it is for you to see this film…with your mothers, with your girlfriends, with your daughters. I can say it firsthand as I saw a preview screening it but I have also done something very special that accentuates my interest in the film and gives me credence when advising you to see this film. I spent a lovely afternoon having tea with the movie’s production team: Director Sarah Gavron, writer Abi Morgan and producers Alison Owen and Faye Ward. I was also thrilled to meet Helen Pankhurst, the real life great-granddaughter of Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst who sparked the movement (played by Meryl Streep). Their collected passion and real interest in the story and history that led to the creation of Suffragette was infectious, but the movie itself will never leave you.

Inspired by true events, the story revolves around the early 20th century campaign of the Suffragettes, who were activists for Women’s Suffrage – the right of women to vote. Women risked everything they had to gain this right –  their jobs, their homes, their children, and even their lives. The story centers on Maud, played by Carey Mulligan, a working wife and mother who becomes an activist for the Suffragette cause alongside women from all walks of life, including pharmacist Edith Ellyn, played by Helena Bonham Carter, co-worker Violet Miller, played by Anne-Marie Duff, and upper-class Alice Haughton, played by Romola Garai. Their fight is long and hard and will leave you struck with a feeling of activism like none other you have felt in a long time.

The film is beautifully shot and is so powerful. If you’re a supporter of women’s rights, or even human rights for that matter, you really can’t miss it. The acting is also brilliant, particularly Mulligan, whose eyes expresss more in a brief moment of fear and sadness than any words could convey. And the story is so important, so relevant, focusing on issues, women and inequality. I loved meeting the creators of the film and want to share a few facts about the filming process with you, straight from their mouths, and why you should see it.

The story holds up and is as relevant today as it was then. 

We’re still fighting for equality. This film is about women, the voiceless. – Producer Alison Owen

It’s a story that demands to be told.

All of this happened 100 years ago. I was amazed that this extraordinary and powerful true story of ordinary women willing to sacrifice everything for the right to vote had never been told. – Sarah Gavron

The film was made by an all female production team. 

It made it a comfortable space to be in, allowing me more control oer and involvement in the material. – Abi Morgan

The film was carefully researched, interweaving in several stories in the plotline.

We wanted to counter the misperception that it was only the wealthy who were in this movement. We pored over unpublished letters, police records – ones about Suffragette surveillance had only just been released by the National Archive in 2003 – and academic texts. – Gavron

The film will get people talking.

We’re aware there are sensitivities. We wanted the film to provoke discourse about the battles that are taking place all over the world. We feel extremely passionate about diversity behind the camera. We must shift the ratio of films made by women. – Abi Morgan

Suffragette is a universal story for today and about equality. At the end of the film, there’s a timeline of countries and dates women were granted the right to vote, which is actually quite shocking as many iddle-eastern countries only recently provided the right to women, and Saudi Arabia hasn’t fully given women the right. See it this weekend and tell everyone you know and let’s keep the discourse happening.

Disclosure: I was invited to a screening and press event to promote SUFFRAGETTE but all opinions are my own.

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Update: This giveaway is closed.

Available on July 7th, Academy Award winner Helen Mirren stars in Woman in Gold, the incredible story of a Jewish refugee who was forced to flee Vienna during World War II, and the paintings that were left behind.

When I saw Woman in Gold early this year, I was spellbound. The film had a poignant intensity about a particular time in history and it’s a story that demanded to be told.

In the film, Mirren plays Maria Altmann, a Viennese-born resident of Los Angeles, who in 1998 battled the Austrian authorities for ownership of the eponymous Klimt painting, stolen from her Jewish family by the Nazis. Altmann had lived in California since fleeing Europe with her husband during World War II when the death of her sister brought documents to light concerning a number of Klimt paintings and other valuables looted by the Nazis from the home of her well-heeled Viennese family.

One of the Klimts had special significance to her. An electric masterwork richly embellished with gold leaf, it depicted her beloved aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, who had lived with the Altmanns until her untimely death from meningitis at age 43, and was virtually a second mother to Maria and her sister. Hanging in the Belvedere Palace since the war, the painting had come to be regarded as Austria’s “Mona Lisa,” while the museum had conveniently buried the paperwork concerning its provenance.

If you want to know who won the case, you must see the film.

I’m giving away:

WOMAN IN GOLD Blu-ray 

$50 Visa Gift Card to mark your moments in history

 To win, just comment below and tell me a story of a personal hero.

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“I will better serve the world if I don’t have it.”

These are the words expressed by actress/filmmaker Marianna Palka. She is referring to Huntington’s disease, an incurable hereditary degenerative brain disorder which she watched her father die a painful death from as a young mam

In the acclaimed short documentary premiering tomorrow on HBO, THE LION’S MOUTH OPENS, Palka gathers her friends to find out if she has inherited Huntington’s disease. Several other family members got it, including her sister, so the potential for her is quite high. Featuring interviews with Palka, her family and friends, as well as footage from her childhood, the film chronicles how one woman decides to face her demons and accept this potentially life-altering information.

The doc’s title “The Lion’s Mouth Opens” is taken from lines from a poem that Bob Dylan wrote about Woody Guthrie called “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” which Marianna recites aloud in the film. The combination of the her words and the home movies are haunting.

When her friend (actor, Jason Ritter, who she has both dated and worked with in the past but they are now friends) asks if she’s afraid, she tells him, “I vascillate between denial… the best place to be. It’s a cool island, a tropical island where you’re bathing in salt water and drinking coconut milk. I go from denial to curiousity to frustration to impatience.” Her friends, including Bryce Dallas Howard, are extremely supportive and are true testaments to her bravery.

Palka is fearless, having created a living will before getting the results. She knows this is not a disease that one can survive, and the documentary slowly builds up the suspense in the big reveal of whether she’s sick….or safe. Flashbacks of her father’s living days are scary as he watch his inevitable deteriation and I hoped so much for this beautiful young woman’s survival.

As she reflects on what led her to this point, Ritter asks if she is afraid of the results, but reassures her, adding, “I don’t think you would ever let something as simple as fear stop you from doing anything.”

Around 30,000 Americans have been diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, and approximately 200,000 more, whose parents were diagnosed with the disorder, have a 50% chance of developing it. Less than 10% of those at risk choose to take the test that reveals if they have inherited Huntington’s. Today, there is no cure.

Only eight years old when her father began showing signs of the disease, Palka watched him deteriorate over the years as, in her mother’s words, “each brick from the castle was just falling out.” Discovering that the gene mutation could be traced back to Palka’s paternal grandmother, she has a 50% chance of being affected.

The news isn’t good. We are witnesses to the scene where she is told she has the gene, with her girlfriends in tow, Howard and Moet Hashimoto. At 32, she’s told the illness could onset in her late 30s to mid 50s. The discovery is both baffling and devastating.

Palka leaves us with this: “Everyone faces demise. We’re all in that together as human beings.” She is strong but how long will her strength last? Taking a look at IMDB, she has been working hard, with many films coming out in the next year and she is living life like there’s an end in sight. But there doesn’t have to be. With effective medication, the damage to her brain can be prevented.

The problem is that these drugs don’t exist, for Huntington’s or Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological disorders.

Hopefully, this documentary will push the struggle along and beautiful women like Palka will not leave our world until she has lived a full life.

THE LION’S MOUTH OPENS was nominated for a Short Film Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and received a Special Jury Award at Aspen Shortsfest and an award for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Short Filmmaking at Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US. The film was directed and produced by Lucy Walker; producers, Marianna Palka and Julian Cautherley; shot and co-produced by Nick Higgins; co-producer, Sabrina Doyle; editor, Joe Peeler.

Watch this incredible documentary tomorrow night (6/1) tomorrow night at 9pm EST on HBO.

Disclosure: I’m a member of HBO’s Documentary Diplomats and was sent a review copy in advance of the premiere to screen. All opinions are my own.

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(This post is nearly three years old but I feel compelled to post it again, in light of the recent release of the film, as well as the most interesting comment I got at the end – so scroll down. I haven’t seen the film…yet.)

On a recent trip to London, I took a trip to my favorite UK bookstore, Waterstone’s, and roamed the shelves. As I searched for books to bring home that I can’t get in the U.S., a book caught my eye that I had been hearing a lot about.  Yes, Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James.  I had been following the talk about this book for some time and quickly swept up a copy of the book and brought it back to the U.S.

But I have a confession.  I had heard the words “porn” and “bondage” in passing but really didn’t know what I was getting myself into.  I’m a mom (obviously) and I’m always interested when women like EL James (who is really a Jewish mother like me living in London) writes her break-out novels and they sell 2,000,000 copies in one month.

For the first 70 pages or so, I absolutely was intrigued.  It starts rather innocently.  Anastasia Steele is a young English major in her last year of university.  When her valedictorian room mate is too sick to go interview business mogul Christian Grey for the school paper, she takes her place.  Sparks fly during the interview.  Then a somewhat normal courtship begins.  He shows up out of the blue at her job.  He gifts her with a set of Tess of the U’rbervilles, takes her on his private jet and they seem to have a quick and heavy connection.  They go for coffee, they go dancing, it’s sort of normal.

Okay, that part I liked.  There is some serious chemistry going on.  She’s never been in a relationship.  He’s a slightly older man.  Anastasia falls fast and furious for him and I had memories of my own first love and how fast I fell.  He warns her not to get involved with him, we don’t know why, and that’s interesting, too. It’s a fast read, I was curious to see where it was going.

Until page 98 when he presents his RED ROOM OF PAIN.  I kid you not.  It’s his own personal S&M room.  Then he presents his plan.  She’s to become the submissive to his dominant.  He presents a long contract and pleads with her to sign it and become  his slave every weekend.  This is where my intrigue ended and I started to shake my head.  The sex that ensues is to over the top graphic, involving whips, cable ties, spanking, sucking, tongue and so much more. I’m not a prude, and I do have fantasties, but ones like this?  No!

It was around this time that I was on a NYC train and was reading the book.  I had to shield the pages from my fellow passengers in fear of being thought as a pervert.  Seriously.

A few of these raunchy excerpts (these are spoilers if you haven’t read the book) that I’m talking about include:

“Before I know it, he’s got both of my hands in his viselike grip above my head, and he’s pinning me to the wall using his lips … His other hand grabs my hair and yanks down, bringing my face up, and his lips are on mine … My tongue tentatively strokes his and joins his in a slow, erotic dance … His erection is against my belly.”

“I pull him deeper into my mouth so I can feel him at the back of my throat and then to the front again. My tongue swirls around the end. He’s my very own Christian Grey-flavored popsicle. I suck harder and harder … Hmm … My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves.”

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On a rainy November 1st, my family and I braved the elements, to attend an event at the Bronx Zoo, sponsored by Dreamworks Animation and 20th Century Fox, and their new movie – the Penguins of Madagascar.

The Event: The Bronx Zoo

We went for the closing weekend of Boo at the Zoo, a great Halloween event that is held every year. After breakfast provided by Residence Inn, we were off to explore the zoo until lunch. We went to the bug carousel where my 3 month old got to ride the carousel for the first time, visited the butterfly garden and saw the specially carved jack-o-lanterns. We then returned to event headquarters (a/k/a the Dancing Crane Pavilion) to march in the costume parade. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas and the parade was cancelled. Instead, we were treated to an impromptu dance party with the stars of the show – Kowalski, the Skipper, Rico, and Private. A drummer performed and everyone – kids, adults, and penguins, enjoyed dancing.

The highlight of our time at the zoo, however, was meeting the real penguins. After walking through the Madagascar exhibit and seeing lemurs, hissing cockroaches, and a very hungry-looking alligator, we made our way to the aviary to see the zoo’s Magellan penguins. Unlike the penguins in the movie, these are from South America. We learned about their feeding habits, how they get new feathers each year, and how they interact with the pelicans that live in the exhibit with them. We watched the zookeepers feed them some large fish, and then the kids got to throw smaller fish in for them to eat. The pelicans took advantage of this flying fish buffet as well, enjoying some food at the penguins’ expense. The kids all loved throwing their fish, and watching the penguins come right up to them in the water.

The Film Review: Penguins of Madagascar

After the penguin exhibit, it was time for the main attraction. We boarded the bus and headed to a nearby theater to see an exclusive preview of the movie. Penguins of Madagascar opens by showing us how the four penguins came to be a family, and how they met Private while they were still young and in Antarctica. Cut to the penguins facing a threat from an octopus out for revenge, and they have to protect themselves, or do they? The four find themselves under the protection of a group calling itself the North Wind. However, when they would rather take matters into their own hands, they must contend with the both bad guys and the good. The North Wind agents want to control the action, as does the Skipper. The movie ends with the penguins, and the North Wind, realizing that everyone can contribute, and the happy ending is well-earned.

This is a movie primarily for kids, and the kids at our screening definitely enjoyed it. There is a clever running gag involving the names of actors that runs through the movie to keep the adults paying attention. And paying attention is a must, because it has all of the elements that keep my daughter talking about movies long after we’ve left the theater. Many of the kids were laughing throughout the film and everyone left having enjoyed themselves. Overall, I would recommend the film for big fans of the Madagascar series (although it does not feature any of the other characters – this movie is entirely about the Penguins) and families with children under 9.

Penguins of Madagascar opens on November 26, 2014. Rated PG for mild violence and humor. Runtime, 92 minutes. Stars include Benedict Cumberbatch, Ken Jeong, and John Malkovich.

Justin Meyer is the father of a 5 year old girl and a 3 month old boy in New York. He writes about his adventures at http://www.dadontheloose.com. You can follow him on twitter @dadontheloose.

Disclosure: Justin was invented to this event by Dreamworks. All opinions are his own.

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Jonathan Tropper is on a roll. Not only did he watch his novel, This is Where I Leave You, shoot to the top of the best-selling charts, but he optioned it to a film studio. Then they asked him to write the screenplay and he got to keep the story and characters as faithful to its original concept as possible, a rarity these days in Hollywood. After seeing the film, which stars an ensemble that includes Jason Bateman and Tina Fey, I felt even closer to the characters he brought to life on celluloid so vividly, and I was eager to talk to him (along with a group of other bloggers by phone) about his writing process and going from book to screen. He was forthcoming and genuinely excited about the film’s upcoming release on Friday. Here’s what we found out.

Q: What can books do better than something on screen?

JT: A movie has the benefit of being able to transport for an hour and a half, two hours with no interruptions and give you the whole story and take you on the entire journey in a kind of encapsulated way. And you just sit back and watch it all unfold. And whereas a book, it’s something that you read over a period of time. And you get interrupted. And you know you have to you know go to sleep or go eat lunch or take care of your kids or go to work. So, the book kind of lingers. But you have to kind of refocus. So, that’s also the plus of the book is that you can live with the characters in the book over a period of weeks, whereas you know a movie you’re done in two hours.

Q: Was it easy to get the book optioned with the focus on the Jewish tradition of the family sitting shiva?

JT: The option happened very fast. The easy part is in getting the book optioned. It’s getting the movie made. That took five years. And the resistance wasn’t to the fact that there was a Shiva in it. I think the resistance was just to the fact that it was a character-driven comedic drama or dramatic comedy. And it was just a hard movie for any studio to fully see as a profitable movie to make until we sort of assembled all the pieces for them.

Q: Were there any scenes that you would have really liked to have put into the movie from the book that were just intrigued you?

You know I mean it’s such an organic process over a long period of time that there’s really such a tremendous amount of compression that has to happen when you move a book to film and when you adapt it. I felt like I really just concentrated on getting the essence of each character in there. I really enjoy a chapter in the book where Judd and his brother and Horry and Boner go outside to see if Paul can still strike out one of his you know buddies from the baseball team back in high school. But that’s sort of a fun scene, and I think in very early drafts I did have that in the movie. But you know ultimately the script just becomes too unwieldy, and you have to really compress it down to its essence, or we’d be looking at you know a Gandhi length movie.

Q: How were you able to influence the storytelling in the film so that it didn’t depart drastically?

JT: Well, the way I influenced that was by being the screenwriter. And the other thing that really I think is the reason that that was able to happen is because Shawn [Levy], who directed the movie, was such a standup and is such a purist in general and the fact that he’s a purist in all the work he does, including this movie. But he was just such a fan of the book that we were actually in this strangely reverse position where the director was actually pushing me to be truer to my own source material than I was being. We had a process where he actually brought me closer to the original source material than I had been with the draft that I had done when he first came on to direct it.

Q: How much input if any did you have in the casting process?

JT: The casting process really belongs to the director and the producers. And the screenwriter will just about never have that kind of input. I was lucky in that I had such a close working relationship with Shawn, having written two other projects for him, that he kept me very much in the loop.But ultimately, this is always going to be Shawn’s vision and Shawn’s ideas for these characters. And I just feel fortunate that his vision of the book hued so closely to my own. So, my role in casting was just to every few days get a very exciting e-mail from him telling me who had signed on, which was very surreal.

Q: How much time did you spend on the set and what was it like?

JT: I spent a lot of time on set. My television show was shooting at the same time. So, I was bouncing back and forth a little bit. But I would say I was on set for you know about 50/55% of the shoot. We shot in the house for 25 days. And because the house was so far from our base camp, normally actors would go back to base camp between setups. But if you have to be back again in an hour, you’re going to spend too much time traveling back and forth. So, everyone just hung out upstairs in this house. And you know these were a lot of actors who some of whom had worked together before and many of whom who hadn’t but were clearly aware of each other. And it sort of was like summer camp for the actors. They got to hang out with a lot of peers and colleagues that they may never have connected with before. They were all in their 30s and 40s. And they’ve got kids. And they’ve got a lot of the same issues that they deal with.

So, there was just a lot of bonding and a lot of hanging out. And it was really a very calm, relaxed atmosphere. I’m told I’ll never experience that on another movie again.

Jonathan is currently adapting One Last Thing Before I Go for Paramount.  He  is also the co-creator and executive producer of the television show Banshee, which premiered on Cinemax in January 2013 and is currently shooting its third season. He lives in Westchester, NY with his three children. Follow author Jonathan Tropper on Twitter.

This is Where I Leave You starts in theaters nationwide this Friday. 

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