Because we blog, too.
By day, Jonathan Decker is a marriage and family therapist in St. George, Utah. By night, he can be frequently found at the local cineplex. Jonathan writes reviews of Hollywood films from an LDS perspective, with overviews of potentially offensive content as well as gospel parallels to discuss.
He is no newcomer to the medium, having written, directed and starred in several independent films.
You can find his blog at MormonMovieGuy.com.
Mormon Daddy Reviews
Guest Contributor: Josh Tenney
Last year around Thanksgiving, I was new Dad with a five-month-old daughter named Anna. Together as a family, we ventured out to the movie theater for what would be our daughter’s first movie: Disney’s Tangled. Being only 5, Anna couldn’t quite grasp the plot, but she behaved herself fairly well.
Now that she’s a bit older and we have the Blu-ray at home, she’s become completely obsessed with the movie. This year, again in late November, we headed out for Anna’s second movie theater experience with Disney’s new movie, “The Muppets.” And while she still couldn’t follow the simple plot, she was enthralled with the music, laughter, and familiar puppetry (thanks to Sesame Street).
Could “The Muppets” do what “Tangled” did before it?
Over the last several years, Disney has been on a shopping spree. Recently, Pixar was purchased by the mouse and now Marvel is owned by Disney. But back in 2004, Disney acquired Kermit and the gang. Since then, the attempts to bring the Muppets back to mainstream have fizzled with duds like “A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa” and the awful “Muppet’s Wizard of Oz.”
Jason Segel, who also co-wrote “The Muppets,” stars as Gary, a happy, simple small town guy. Literally. He’s from Smalltown, USA, population 102. Gary’s brother, Walter, is a very manly muppet (he’s three feet tall and made of felt) and Gary’s best friend.
Their adventure begins when Gary takes his long-time girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) on a trip to Los Angeles. Walter, the world’s biggest Muppets fan, is ecstatic to join them – only because the Muppet Studios is located in LA. Amy Adams brings the same charisma and charm she brought to “Enchanted.’ And like in Enchanted, musical numbers seem to pop up around her like a flash mob.
The giddy, joyful opening number “Life’s a Happy Song” lets you know right away that this movie is not for cynics. It’s for the happy-go-lucky Muppet inside each of us. While visiting the Muppet Studios, Walter is traumatized when he overhears plans of the evil Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) to bulldoze the studios and drill for oil.
Walter finds and warns Kermit the Frog of the impending disaster, and after Kermit’s moving song “Pictures in My Head,” about how he misses his friends and their good ol’ days, Kermit agrees to try to do something about it. Together with Kermit, the Smalltown trio set out to get the old Muppet Gang back together again and save the studio the only way they know how – by putting on a show, this time, as a telethon.
This is when the movie gains the wackiness, heart, and humor in the tradition of the classic Muppet movies. In keeping with that tradition, a road trip ensues as they find Gonzo, Fozzie, Animal, several star cameos and eventually Miss Piggy. Not only do they find the most popular Muppets, but it seems by the end of the movie every Muppet that ever existed finds its way to the telethon.
Die-hard Muppet fans will enjoy seeing long-lost characters. I did miss seeing more of my favorite two Muppets, Pepe the King Prawn and Rizzo the Rat, but I understand why these wisecracking, more edgy characters were given background roles. This Muppet movie aimed to share a feeling of warmth, nostalgia, and unbridled optimism, with just a touch of the edginess the Muppets are known to exhibit.
“The Muppets” indeed captures the feeling of the original “The Muppet Movie.” With winning music, laugh-out-loud moments and the heart of our favorite fuzzy friends in the right place, Disney may just get the new franchise they’ve been shopping for.
On a personal level, only time will tell if Anna will become as obsessed with the Muppets at home on blu-ray as she did with her first movie. But if she does, I won’t mind. I’ll be singing along and enjoying life’s third-greatest gift: laughter.
Grade: A
“The Muppets”
Rated PG for some mild rude humor
Opening Nov. 23, 2011
Cinematographer Rod Santiano has completely overhauled his website and blog, which brought to the surface a bunch of clips worth taking another look at.
One that brought back some fond memories for me was a clip from New York Doll, a documentary Rod largely shot about Arthur “Killer” Kane. I had first seen it in 2005. A bunch of us had just moved to Utah from Southern California to work on a series of children’s movies. In the middle of our first winter here, we piled in a couple of cars and headed up to the Sundance Film Festival, where it was screening.
It was my first trip to the film festival at Sundance. The place was suitably crowded and chaotic, but that helped contribute to the good vibe. I kept my eyes peeled for celebrities, but no luck. Other than Rod, that is.
We crammed inside the makeshift auditorium and watched the movie. I’m not just saying it when I tell you that it blew me away, it was so good. I confess my expectations are a little modest when it comes to being entertained by a documentary. I fully expect to be informed, of course. But thoroughly entertained along the way? Too much to hope for, right?
Wrong. New York Doll delivered on all fronts. I knew next to nothing about the band going in. It’s not exactly my style of music. But the story, centering on Arthur’s journey from glam/rock/punk icon to fallen and long-forgotten down and outer, clearly ravaged by his years of excess, to his conversion to the Church years later, and his eventual reunion with his band, with whom there had been some bad blood, left me speechless. Along the way, for bonus points, it taught me the complete history of rock and roll, as well as a heightened appreciation for the Word of Wisdom.
A sublime story of redemption. Check out this clip, New York Doll, from Rod’s freshly overhauled site.
At first, the news was devastating. Mormon Daddy Blogs has just learned that best daddy ever honors go to Kirby Heyborne, making the rest of us, it would seem, second-best dads ever at best.
However, I looked it up, and “ever” is not the same as “forever.” “Ever” only appears to pertain to everything up to this point (“Have you ever been to France?” doesn’t necessarily mean that you couldn’t still go to France next year, for example).
So, yes, Kirby Heyborne may be the best dad ever, but who’s to say that one of the rest of us won’t win the prize next year? Who besides Kirby, that is?
Dennis Agle (right) with brother Ken (left).
Dennis Agle is not only the guy that started Mormon Daddy Blogs, but he’s also a screenwriter, director and producer. Knowing Dennis personally, I know that he would never even think of featuring his own blog on this website—and since he gave me administrator privileges to help with the design of this site—I am going to shove him into the spotlight for a moment.
If you’re not familiar with what Dennis does, he (in his own words) “gets to work on a project called Liken. It’s a series of musical movies and stage productions based on scripture stories as seen through the imagination of a child. These are live-action musicals, along the lines of ‘Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,’ but with shorter titles usually.” I might add that these movies have some great cinematography 
Dennis has been chronicling his adventures in producing and distributing their latest Liken called, Chloe and the Great Fish, on his own blog. In his recent posts, he’s been writing about taking this film to an international film festival in Hollywood. From his triumphs and frustrations with “completing” the film on time for the LDS Film Festival and the adventures of getting a Blu-ray disc of the film burned and submitted to the film festival on time, to impromptu distributor meetings in studio cantinas, check out Dennis’ witty and cleverly written stories here.
Tucker's DJ Hero Kids
By day, Tucker works in the LDS Church’s Media Services Department, the group that brings us those wonderful Mormon Messages (one of my favorites here, featuring an amazing “Mormon Mommy” blogger).
By all the time, he is a new dad as of last week (and baby makes four — congrats, Tucker). He’s brought back his Epic Meltdowns blog, but acknowledges that the new incarnation of the blog will be about more than just a celebration of his kids’ epic meltdowns.
Here’s a link to the blog’s main page, which includes at the moment three “epic” posts you won’t want to miss: 1) a summary of that epic experience of trying to hold down the fort at home while his better half is recovering from childbirth in the hospital; 2) you might think that the home movies of a film school grad are going to be epic, and you’d be right — check out Tucker’s video of his kids playing DJ Hero; 3) and maybe the most epic thing ever — Tucker acknowledges MormonDaddyBlogs played at least a small role in his return to bloggerdom. Sweet!
Drop by and say welcome back to Tucker Dansie.
It’s almost unfair, the number of talents Kirby Heyborne has.
Perhaps most well-known is his talent for acting. He’s starred in roughly 97.3% of the Mormon movies and can be seen in no less than half of the commercials currently airing on television (he’s been falling down that cliff for a credit card company for several months now — poor fellow).
What’s more, he’s gifted in the challenging art of improv comedy. (MormonDaddyBlogs featured his acting and comedy talents in this video, featuring the relatively unknown sport of Extreme Hand Slapping.)
Only slightly less well-known is his musical talent. Kirby has several albums to his credit, including the recently released Elm Tree.
As if those aren’t enough gifts for one man, Kirby is also blessed with extra olafactory perception (EOP). His latest blog post will leave you realizing how most of us go through life skimming the surface of what this planet has to offer.
Dive deep with Kirby’s sense of smell here.
Suppose you had not one, but two personal interactions with one of the ultimate living rock legends of all time, none other than the Piano Man himself, Billy Joel.
This was the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that cinematographer Rod Santiano was able to experience as part of the documentary crew that made “Last Play at Shea.” Rod has been sharing via a series of fun posts on his blog his interactions with several rock and other superstars that were interviewed for the documentary, culminating with the interview with Mr. Joel.
So what life-changing words of wisdom did he impart? You won’t want to miss them here in Rod’s latest blog post.
Those of us on MormonDaddyBlogs mostly know Christopher Clark for his mad lip-sync skills, but this theater professor by day is a dad by the rest of the time.
While watching American Idol with his kids, one of those ubiquitous commercials for Red Riding Hood, the movie version from the director of Twilight (did we mention it was from the director of Twilight?) came on, provoking the following cute exchange with his two boys, Miles and Owen. Read it here.
Yes, Rod’s a friend. And yes, he very kindly helped me tidy up this blog with a spiffy new banner and font choices (thanks, Rod). But those are not the reasons his blog is the first to be featured three times on MDB.
It’s simply because he currently has the coolest blog in Mormon daddy-dom.
It’s celebrity week on his blog, “Notes from the Set,” as he is recapping the interviews he shot for the Billy Joel documentary, Last Play at Shea.
As you can imagine, a documentary on Billy Joel is likely to open some doors that are normally not easy to open. In addition to his interview of Billy and Sting, which were his first two blog postings featured on this site, this week’s posts on his site have included recaps of interviews he shot of Steven Tyler, Garth Brooks, Roger Daltrey, and everybody’s favorite Uptown Girl, Christie Brinkley.
But probably my favorite of the bunch so far is the post where he recaps the time he flew from Billy’s concert at Shea on Wednesday to London, interviewed Sir Paul on Thursday, the flew back to NYC on Friday to continue shooting Billy’s concerts. Rough life, I tell ya. Read all about his Sir Paul encounter here.
And as cool as that was, be sure to read how he topped off the London trip at the end of his post.
Tucker Dansie has been in the film and video business for 16+ years. He’s the son of an award-winning still photographer, who handed Tucker his first Nikon when he was 5. Tucker went on to attend the Vancouver Film School in Vancouver, B.C. Now he works for the Church and is primarily responsible for the Mormon Messages internet campaign.
Tucker and his wife live in the Salt Lake City area, where they are raising their four children. He originally started his blog to chronicle his son’s amazing temper tantrums. The blog has expanded beyond that, but Tucker’s retained the name, Epic Meltdowns.
 |
 |
 |
 |
