Mike just got back from the supermarket, where they have started a new campaign to push sushi to the more traditional French.  ¨Don’t worry, contrary to what you’ve heard, it’s not raw fish¨.  What the heck is it then?  Cooked tuna, apparently, wrapped up with some rice, and, wait for it, … mayonnaise!  Mike told them what he thought of it.  Bleeech!

But lest the Americans should get smug, Antonia subjected us to the film Polar Express this evening.  What is going on there?  I shouldn’t be surprised that Hollywood took a short and harmless picture book and turned it into a long movie, with no significant plot additions.  What does disturb me is that they seem to have drawn a lot of inspiration from Big Brother, and they’re still pushing it as a family movie.  If I tended to have nightmares, there’s plenty of material here.  The kids who give the impression of being drug-pushing, cyncial, gangster tweens; the adults, who are really not the kind of types you would want your kids hanging around with; and especially the whole cult-like indoctrination experience: terrifying journey under harsh conditions, setting up a sense of elitism, scenes of mass hysteria when they do get to the North Pole, conversion to true belief in Santa…!  That one pushed my cultural buttons all right: scenes of Hitler raising his arm above the mindless, screaming crowd.  What is this movie trying to say?  Or do?  And if it’s not trying to say anything, what can I say about a culture that produces stuff like this ‘innocently’?

We are pretty easy going parents, but we are unusually of one mind here.  This movie is awful.  I’m going to bring it out again when my daughter’s a bit older to show her what she should run from.  Until then, I’m hiding it.