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This summer, audiences suffered through the abomination that was The Smurfs. Many of us who actually grew up with the Smurfs avoided it. But there's more trauma-inducing memory-ruining to come! When Dr. Seuss's classic book The Lorax was published in 1971, with its titular character who "speaks for the trees," it was considered a fable about preserving the environment from the logging industry. Bleak stuff! The fanciful morality tale was turned into a brightly-colored (yet fairly somber) animated movie in 1972, and now it's been made again, with the voices of Zac Efron and Taylor Swift. This newfangled Lorax flick seems to have an uplifting, joyful spirit (Polyphonic Spree!) and a lot more characters than the book had. Seriously, where did all those random white people come from? (If it's a fanciful story set in a fanciful place why is everyone white?) Also? The writers have added a heteronormative angle: The kid is searching for trees not because he's curious about the world he lives in but because he has a crush on a girl. If you haven't started wincing yet, check out the last scene of the trailer, in which The Lorax has a confrontation with a rotund lady. A guy says, "You wouldn't hit a woman!" And The Lorax says, "That's a woman?" Would Theodor Geisel approve of that kind of joke? More »
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Sometimes your childhood memories have a beating heart, throbbing, full of joy and love. And sometimes those memories live snuggled deep inside you, safe and warm, protected. But sometimes, quite suddenly, one of those memories will be pierced with a sharp knife of terrible information, flaying open that soft organ, exposing the tender flesh and killing the goddamn thing. Today is that day, friends: Taylor Swift has joined the cast of the CGI-animated movie The Lorax. You may be thinking, there are no females, or even country singers in The Lorax! Just a boy, some Bar-ba-Loots, a flock of Swomee Swans, the Lorax and the Once-Ler. Yeah, I know. Now it will have Zac Efron, Danny DeVito and the Swift. Sorry. (ETA: It is now a love story, with Swift as the girl of the little boy's dreams. Sob.) [The Hollywood Reporter] (Want to watch the original film? Click here.) More »
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It seems that in a new 3-D adaptation of Dr. Seuss's iconic lament for the environment, the Once-ler — portrayed in the book only as a sinister pair of forest-destroying arms and two yellow eyes — will be shown full-frontal. More »
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For an entire year — maybe more — one of my parents read Goodnight Moon aloud to my brother. Even though after month three they could recite it from memory and wanted nothing more than to say Goodnight to it forever, they still turned the pages with him each night before he went to sleep. Apparently, this has made him into the upstanding citizen he is today! When parents read aloud to their children says professor Barry Zuckerman of the Boston University School of Medicine, it improves language, emotional and social development. (Gripping the pages between their thumb and forefinger even helps children develop their fine motor skills.) Zuckerman tells the Guardian: "Children ultimately learn to love books because they are sharing it with someone they love." More »
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