When we last saw the giant green ogre, he and his true love Fiona had settled happily into their tree-trunk home with their new triplets. Their ensuing life is idyllic, even for ogres—happy days filled with laughing baby ogres, sun-filled mornings, and lazy dinners with Donkey and his dragon wife (and their flying donkey children).

But all is not well in the gurgling swamp. The quotidian domesticated life doesn’t fully agree with newly minted family man Shrek, who misses the glory days when his roars would scare villagers away instead of making them applaud in delight. He longs for a time when he could wallow in mud, undisturbed by fairy tale tour buses—when he could belch, holler, and generally act like an ogre. He pines for the days when… Continue reading

“Avatar” takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on an epic adventure, ultimately fighting to save the alien world he has learned to call home. We enter the alien world through the eyes of Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost of Pandora, where corporations are mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving the Earth’s energy crisis. Because the atmosphere of Pandora is toxic, they have created the Avatar Program, in which human “drivers” have their consciousness linked to an avatar, a remotely controlled biological body that can survive in the lethal air. Reborn in his… Continue reading

We start with four very different cities. Then four very pregnant women. Then four fresh little lives. The babies.

There’s Ponijao, who lives with her mother and seven older siblings near Opuwo, Namibia. Bayarjargal, who lives with his parents and older brother in Mongolia, near Bayanchandmani. Mari, who lives with her parents in Tokyo, Japan. And finally Hattie, who lives with her parents in San Francisco.

Babies documents the first year of these four little lives, offering alternating peeks into their quiet moments of slumber and their noisy temper tantrums. We’re silent observers to their daily realities.

What’s most striking at first is the huge difference in the locations and conditions. Ponijao’s family in Namibia… Continue reading