Any Navy SEAL is equipped with the latest in "freedom-fighting" gadgetry. Straps, pockets and belts hold guns, grenades and various homing devices. The primary visual gag in The Pacifier involves one SEAL on a top-secret baby-sitting mission who retrofits his weapon-holders to keep baby formula and diapers at the ready. In this movie, bottle fatigue is akin to battle fatigue.
Disney's new family flick is chipper and occasionally clever as it sends up the high-tech know-how required by 21st-century parents. In this case, a professor who has invented a mysterious microchip dies at the hands of terrorists. With the victim's wife away on a mission of her own, the government sends in a one-man security force: the fearless Shane Wolfe is deemed adaptable enough to serve this fatherless family.
Playing the special-ops warrior with a heart-thawing assignment, Vin Diesel turns his thuggish frown upside down and lends his nasal hoarseness to a cloying lullaby. In that sense and many others, the action-picture hero's image-modifying role looks much like the former gangsta rapper Ice Cube's recent road-trip-with-kids movie Are We There Yet? or the craggy Tommy Lee Jones' latest mission as a protector of cheerleaders in Man of the House.
PHOTO: AP
Diesel could not have succeeded as a genre-switcher without the proven television talents of the film's able ensemble. Brittany Snow, the teenage star of American Dreams, plays the eldest daughter, who at first is Shane's in-house enemy Number 1. ("Whoa. Personal bubble invasion!" she yells when he comes in close to chastise her bratty behavior.) Faith Ford of Hope & Faith and Lauren Graham of The Gilmore Girls give an Ivory-girl glow to the cast's maternal figures.
Carol Kane of Taxi, as a messy nanny, and Brad Garrett of Everybody Loves Raymond, as a Barney Fife-ish vice principal, clown it up as feckless scoundrels and come to rather sadistic ends.
The film, directed by Adam Shankman (Bringing Down the House), suggests that children should talk about their grief and show respect for overtaxed parents. But its prevailing lesson, one that will instruct children in the audience and delight their ticket-buying parents, is the value of discipline.
"We're gonna do it my way -- no highway option," the commando commands when child-stoked chaos threatens his domain. Soon the children fall in line. With practice they start enjoying the results of exercise routines, commitments to personal goals and shows of force against bullies.
For those without children to pacify, however, two afternoon hours in the theater for this parable might feel misspent. As Diesel instructs his lollygagging charges: "You're burning daylight. Now move!"
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文) stipulates that upon a vote of no confidence in the premier, the president can dissolve the legislature within 10 days. If the legislature is dissolved, a new legislative election must be held within 60 days, and the legislators’ terms will then be reckoned from that election. Two weeks ago Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed that the legislature hold a vote of no confidence in the premier and dare the president to dissolve the legislature. The legislature is currently controlled
RSS