The Disney Awards

Sorry for temporarily disappearing!  I had planned on having plenty of time to write a post last weekend, but my mom and I ended up traveling to my cousin’s house for an impromptu family gathering after the birth of his third child (a girl!).  Since then I’ve been caught up in midterm exams, summer job hunting, and applying for student financial aid.  Anyway….

Animated (Disney) Films:

I know animation week is technically over, but in honor of last weekend’s Academy Awards, I decided it would only be right to hand out some completely random awards to some of my favorite Disney movies.  The winners are:

Creepiest Disney Character – Monsieur d’Arque (Beauty and the Beast)

Everyone remembers Gaston as the true villain of Beauty and the Beast, but the asylum owner is essentially the guy that I always expect to find lurking in some shadowy corner of a public parking garage late at night.  Who honestly thought it was a good idea to put this guy in charge of people with mental disorders?

Best Sing-Along Song – “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” (Mulan)

To quote Millie’s post, Mulan is pretty “bad ass,” and so is one of her movie’s signature tunes.  I firmly believe that passionately lip-syncing this song can turn any mundane task into an epic adventure.  Needless to say, it’s my go-to song when I have to wash dishes - if that opening line of “Let’s get down to business” doesn’t get me motivated, nothing will.

Coolest Talking Dog – Dodger (Oliver and Company)

Disney might infamous for its multitude of talking dog movies, but no other dogs are quite like Dodger.  I mean, he plays piano with his tail, spends an entire musical number bragging about his “street savoir faire,” and cannot manage to walk without strutting.  Dodger may not be the cutest or the most likeable, but he’s definitely the coolest.  He even has the sunglasses to prove it.


 Best Alcohol-Induced Musical Number– Pink Elephants on Parade (Dumbo)           
While I never really liked the film Dumbo, I loved this part of the movie as young child.  It wasn’t until I got older that I realized the whole scene was made up of Dumbo’s drunken hallucinations.  Weird.

Best Disney Sequels – Toy Story 2 and 3
None of the other Disney sequels made me weep like a baby in a crowded movie theater.

Best Disney Pop Star – Powerline (A Goofy Movie)

A Goofy Movie may not be as well-remembered as Disney’s other animated film of 1995 – Pocahontas – but this spin-off of the Saturday morning cartoon Goof Troop was marked by the only appearance of fictional music sensation Powerline.  Sporting a futuristic jumpsuit and a lightning bolt hairdo, this cartoon dog (what a surprise) possessed all the best qualities of both Prince and Michael Jackson.  If only he sang more than two songs…

Most Awesome Name – Mufasa (The Lion King)

Would it be weird to name one of my future children after an animated lion?

Greatest Unintentional Poet – Pocahontas

 Pocahontas is the only Disney heroine to communicate almost entirely through environmental metaphors.  She’s like a literature professor’s dream come true.

Animation/Live-Action Combo – Mary Poppins  
                           
Despite that this film only contains a few animated scenes, I felt that my fond memories of Bert the chimneysweep dancing alongside animated penguins in his self-created chalk world justified its inclusion in this post.  While my older brother would disown me if he knew I was giving this fake award to anything other than “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” Mary Poppins was my first favorite movie.  At age 3, when all my friends were dressing up as witches and princesses for Halloween, I apparently wanted nothing more than to dress up as the ultimate magical nanny, so my mother outfitted me with exact matches of Mary’s dress, hat, and parasol.  Best costume ever.


Film that Made Me Question Whether My Father Only Had Children as an Excuse to See More Animated Movies - Chicken Run (Not Disney, but definitely worth a mention)

The premise: A group of chickens must learn how to fly in order to escape their inevitable death at the hands of the owner of a pot pie factory.  I still love this movie and find it hilarious, but my Dad’s love for this flick has always far out-weighed my own.  Which makes me wonder…


 And that concludes my awards ceremony.  I’ve loved reading all of the recent posts; they’ve been making me overly nostalgic and desperate to get my hands on some of my old VHS tapes.

Favorite book post coming later this week, I swear!

P.S. Just realized that I forgot to mention both Aladdin and Tarzan.  They’re pretty great too.

Disney/Pixar: Critiquing Society

Hamlet is only slightly more hairy in this picture. Claudius is also way more awesome when voiced by Jeremy Irons.

Ah Disney... where would I be if it weren't for your teaches and subliminal messaging? I shudder to consider the thought. You have given us, me included, so much. Sure, you butcher fairy tales/stories/plays for adults add make totally happy endings out of gruesome, cruel stories, but that's why we love you. You make your own world for kids to explore from a very young age, but one that many continue to adore as an adult. From the jungles of Africa and suburbia, to the American Wild West and Arabia and so much more, Disney's universe has taken us to many magnificent places.

I love Disney movies. I've long since lost count of how many times I've seen every Disney animated movie. I have pretty much all the Disney songs, and sing them unashamedly. I remember The Lion King was my first movie with I was really little. There was no going back. Then later came Toy Story. By the way, the third one was amazing and I love how Andy grew up with kids my age. It was an extremely nice touch.

The real wonder of Disney is its ability to convey adult messages in kids movies. No, I'm not talking about the not so subtle references to adult content. I'm talking about Disney movies as a critique and satire of life in our society today.

Examples:
Pocahontas: Xenophobia and imperialism are bad.
Cinderella: Slavery being horrible and feminism being important.
Pinocchio: Drugs and lying are bad. Also don't get swallowed by a whale. Not so much fun.
Tarzan: Poaching and deforestation aren't good.
Lady and the Tramp: Wealth does not equal happiness.
Fox and the Hound: Interracial relations being important and possibly gay rights.
Bambi: Deforestation and man being terrible to nature.
Peter Pan: Letting out your imagination and inner child is crucial.

The list goes on and on.

This totally isn't a critique on America today. Nope. Not at all.

Perhaps, the best example of Disney critiquing society in recent movies, at least for me is in Wall-e.

I love this little guy. The first 15-20 minutes of his movie are nearly silent, and yet its possibly the best 15-20 minutes of movie magic ever created, in my opinion which is saying something because I usually don't like silent movies at all.

The message of the movie is clear from the beginning, or at least part of it is. I was actually surprised at how much of a punch in the gut Disney gives the audience with the messages of environmental issues in Wall-e. Not only that, but obesity and being complacent and blindly obedient to the government and corporations that run our society. Disney even makes it a point to push that if the government or the corporations get too powerful and become a fascist society, or is heading in that direction, the people must overthrow their masters and regain control to restore virtue to their society.

Powerful stuff, but that's Disney. Wall-e is easily one of my favorite Disney movies and the message is a big part of that.

Shrek?


Sacrilege, I know. It's not Disney, it's not hand-drawn, and it's not old. But you didn't make any of those things explicit, and it is my favourite animated movie. And I'm going to spend an entire post explaining why.

First of all, I need to get some bias out of the way. Shrek came out in 2001, when I was 8. This means that not only have I watched it countless times (to the point where I can quote pretty much the entire movie line for line) but that it came fairly early on in my movie-watching life and thus has a fair whack of nostalgia associated with it.

Nostalgia aside though, I actually think that Shrek is a good movie, and a lot of that stems from the characters. Individually, all three main characters have actual real character development: Shrek goes from cynic to believer, Donkey goes from sidekick to hero, and Fiona goes from tryhard princess to an actual and literal ogre. But, y'know. Ogre in a good way.

So the arcs of each character are what gives the movie its depth, its actual emotions. That's what makes Shrek and Donkey's journey feel like an epic quest in comparison to the journey in Shrek 2, which feels a lot more mundane despite being to a place actually named Far Far Away. What makes the movie tick minute to minute, though, is the way they bounce off each other. In Shrek and Donkey, for example, you have the typical Lethal Weapon-esque buddy cop action movie vibe, where the two guys who hate each other come to depend on each other, seemingly by way of wisecracks alone, and Shrek and Fiona could be lifted right out of a romantic comedy. They're fairly stock standard relationships, sure, but the reason we keep seeing them over and over is because they're fun, and they work.

What makes all this work is the humour, of which Shrek is kind of a smorgasbord. There's slapstick. There's puns. There's absurdity. There's parody. There are musical numbers (usually accompanied by dumbfounded genre-savvy disbelief from the protagonists). There's thinly veiled sexual innuendo. It has all the things, and they all work, and the movie still works as an epic fantasy romance at the end of it all, which seems like it would be very difficult to pull off.

Then there's the music. Yes, having Smash Mouth in there dates it a bit, but it's also one of the reasons the movie works so well. It gives you something to sing along to (which, as established by every Disney movie ever, is an absolute necessity) while still being a little bit cool. Which is the core of the movie, really. Sure, it's a sarcastic and cynical deconstruction of fairytales, but at its core, it honestly does have a happily ever after. Even if it is in a swamp.

Writing this has actually made me realise two things. The first is that I really really want to go and watch Shrek right now. The second is that given the chance, I'd also really like to sit down and properly pick this movie apart and write it up, because I really think it's well made enough to withstand that kind of treatment and still be fun to watch.

Holidays, holidays! (and animated movies)

Hello everyone!
A week away from school! I'm soo happy, I'm gonna be able to work and catch up with the class, hurray! (or not).

Concerning animated movies...I like a few Disneys (old, new, Disney+Pixar... I don't care ^^), but everybody wrote about them already; I enjoyed watching How to train your dragon, because the dragon is super cute, and Summer Wars, a story about IAs, family, video games and friendship, but I'm gonna focus on...

My favorite animated movies: Miyazaki's (and Studio Ghibli's).
They can be cute, horrifying, there is, almost all the time, an other meaning to the picture, the drawings are wonderful and the stories within a high range of scenarios. Some that I would recommend are:

-Castle in the sky, the first one I saw, which is one of my favourites, even now. I loved the design, the relation between the characters, the eerie atmosphere in some scenes. And, actually, that's exactly the same comment that I want to do about Arrietty, even if both movies are not alike.

-Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle are a bit darker, with less hope (scarier, maybe?), but the designs are fantastic, and I loved the story. It would be hard for me to sum up without spoilers, and people often say that pictures are worth a thousand words each... So... (Actually I've been trying to put images in that article for 2 hours and I'm going to burst if my computer stops one more time so sorry, no pictures, but giyf anyway).

All those stories are stories of loss, love, discovery, travel, and what I really enjoy about them is that 1. they are not predictable, and 2. they are not for children only. (Besides, they are aesthetic, really; and the music is always wonderful). That's the kind of movie I watch when it's raining outside, late in the day, with a blanket, a hot coffee, and chocolate.

Well... DFTBA, and tell me what you think about them, if you watch one or two (or more)!

Animated Movie Magic

I love the older Disney animated movies simply because they have this air and grace about them that's simply breathtaking. The songs were top notch. Everything was beautifully drawn, but with that faded touch to it since HD meant just about nothing.

It's hard to pick a favourite when they all speak volumes about your childhood and each carries a different strength. But the ones that would top my list are: Pocahontas, A Bug's Life, Beauty & the Beast, Snow White, Cinderella, The Lion King, Monster's Inc, Finding Nemo, and Lilo & Stitch.

But I think I would pick Mulan as my favourite Disney princess simply because she was a little bit more bad ass compared to the others. Plus there was Captain Shang. Oh Captain Shang.

As for Disney/Pixar collaborations, my favourite is without a doubt Toy Story. I mean seriously, I bawled my way through Toy Story 3 while I lamented my chil

dhood being over. But outside of that, Wall-E is a top pick all the time. This one is a little bit more of an unpopular choice cause a lot of people never really favoured this one. Somehow or another I was really taken by the simplicity of the storyline and it was just something completely different. Any movie that starts off with 10+ minutes of zero dialogue has to be one of a kind! Together with this comes the unpopular opinion of the day: I don't quite like Up. I know so many people that bawled their eyes out watching it but I never took to it. To me it was simply mediocre!

Rambling:

The reason why so many of us love these animated movies of our childhood is simply cause we watched them during our childhood. We remember them in a simplistic manner without looking into the details of the cinematography, or the storyline etc. We don't spot the holes that exist within them like we do now. We cling to that innocence.

A recurring theme that arises when teenager and young adult revisit these movies is how messed up they actually are. Or how creepy the villains were. Or how fake the storyline is. That's the fact of life. We no longer view it with the childlike innocence that we used to. But we still love them because we can remember the original joy of watching these movies. I love watching them back, but sometimes I view them with a conscious decision to do so light-heartedly for fear of losing that love I have for the movies in view of the fact that they weren't perfect.

Case in point in this, which I found on Tumblr when looking for a picture to post here:

Thanks a lot, Internet.

But nonetheless, these movies are a beauty. The songs were a beauty. The characters were a beauty. Scratch all that. They are a beauty.

My Top Ten Animated Disney Villain List

So I'm writing this list from personal preference. I'll try and explain why I've placed them in the order I have. If a certain villain hasn't made this list it doesn't mean I don't like them. I've just tried to keep the list to movies I have watched recently.

10. Mulan's Shan Yu

There's not much to say about this guy, that's probably because he doesn't say much over the course of the movie. But why did he make my list? Well for one specific scene... errr... well what happens off screen. When he "returns" the little girl's doll. The fact that we don't see exactly what goes on and only see the result makes him that much creepier. Whatever you come up in your mind will always be worse then what any movie will ever be able to show you. You know that he and his men brutally murdered everyone in that town, including the soldiers that tried to save the towns people. This guy is a monster.

Even the way he (and his men for that matter) is animated is completely different from the normal people. He's bigger, he's couloured differently (he's gray, he's dressed in black) and hell, his eyes are inverted! They're black, yellow and black! Seriously Disney! Do you WANT to give me nightmares?

9. The Lion King's Scar
I'm a Shakespearian nut. So I can't help but love The Lion King, which is CLEARLY a retelling of Hamlet (and I love Hamlet) Scar isn't scary like Shan Yu, he's kind of likeable in a weird twisted he's-that-sketchy-uncle-the-family-doesn't-like-to-talk-about kind of way. And he's voiced by Jeremy Irons.

To go along with the idea of The Lion King as a Hamlet adaptation, Scar is clearly Claudius. Yet, unlike Claudius, Scar makes a horrible ruler. He wanted the power and was willing to do everything to get it, including killing his brother. But once he acquires all of the power he could ever dream of, he doesn't know what to do with it and causes Pride Rock to fall into a horrible state, he even causes a drought. I mean seriously dude! How did you STOP THE RAIN! (This of course a nod to the fisher king story... I'll blog about it at a previous date probably). Scar's own incompetence is his downfall, his own minions turn on him in the end.

8. Beauty and the Beast's Gaston
In my blog a few months ago I posted about going to see Disney's Beauty in the Beast in theatres. I'll post a link here. When I watched Beauty and the Beast as a kid, I always had to skip the opening sequence with the Enchantress and the stained glass. Something about it terrified me. Looking back, I think it probably was the music, but I can never really be sure. Beauty and the Beast was never my favourite Disney movie when I was little... but now that I'm older I find I like it more... and man Gaston is a creeper. Like seriously. He freaks me out.

The way Gaston acts around Belle is scary. The only way to describe it is like he's a predator. He's constantly cornering her, pushing her up against walls. Whenever he's in frame with her he takes up more of the screen. Like look at this still: when he's asking her to propose to him. He has her cornered. He's clearly the dominant on. Granted, Belle is able to get rid of him easily by opening the door. But you can't help but worry about what he is willing to do to get what he wants.

As I kid I just saw Gaston as a loser that is standing in the way of the true romance of the movie (yeah, check my blog post about that one). Now, being older and more aware, well I just can't ignore the wrongness of this character.

7. Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent
SHE INVOKES THE POWERS OF HELL! ENOUGH SAID!

Seriously though, this woman is terrifying. She's an evil fairy, who when she doesn't get invited to a party puts a curse on the baby princess saying that she will die on her sixteenth birthday. Kind of cold. Then, when one of theGood Fairy's undermines her, Maleficent goes out of her way to stop the Prince from reaching Aurora BY TURNING HERSELF INTO A GIANT PURPLE AND BLACK DRAGON! SHE CAN CHANGE INTO A DRAGON! A DRAGON!

I think she's more terrifying then the witch in Snow White for that reason exactly. A Dragon is ten times more terrifying then a Poison-Apple-Toting Old Crone. Also, I think the Dragon approach is a lot more effective.  Not much else to say about this one, other than I have most of Sleeping Beauty blocked out of my mind, probably because of her.

6. Aladdin's Jafar
To most family and friends, the fact that Jafar is this high up on the list may come as a shock. Jafar was my FAVOURITE. DISNEY. CHARACTER. EVER. when I was little. I had every single Aladdin movie, I watched the TV Show like any other avid three year old fangirl would (I'm not sure if he ever actually showed up in the TV Show...) I had action figures and well.... there are pictures of me fangirling at Disney World.

Jafar, is similar to Scar in the fact that he wants power, but he doesn't know what to do with it when he finally gets it. It's because of this that Aladdin is able to capture him. I don't know why I was so obsessed with him as a child, or if my love for him was just the very beginning of my love of villains over the good guys which I still suffer from. Jafar makes this list, because he's never really defeated in the first movie. The best that Aladdin and friends can do is capture him in a lamp and hope that it's never found ever again.

5. The Hunchback of Notredame's Frollo

Frollo finds his way on a lot of lists these days. Everywhere I turn Bloggers and Reviewers are talking about how Frollo was probably one of Disney's more ambitious and risky villains to be released. I agree with this completely. Frollo is a rather complicated character. Throughout the film he is in constant battle with his temptation for the gypsy woman Esmeralda. He of course comes to the conclusion that this temptation is her fault and she needs to be destroyed for it. In this scene, where he confronts his instability (in song, as only a Disney character can. Watch it here) what really scared me were the red cloaked figures that were watching him and (possibly) judging him. The entire sequence was amazingly animated and you're able to dive right into the psyche of one of the most screwed up villains. Even his death is epic and symbolic. He falls into (what metaphorically have to be) the fires of hell. This is deep twisted stuff.

4. Fantasia's Chernabog

This is another one that I think goes without saying. HE'S SATAN! HE'S ACTUALLY THE DEVIL! DISNEY ANIMATED THE DEVIL! AND HE'S STICKING OUT OF A VOLCANO! As a kid I never saw Fantasia, and my first introduction to Chernabog was his appearance in Kingdom Hearts. I thought that he was just another monster that Square Enix had thrown into the game to be one of the final-ish bosses. It was in my third year of university when I was taking a mass media course did I come to realize that Chernabog was an actual creation of the animators at Disney. (Also, a fun fact this movie was originally released on my birthday: November 13th) Chernaborg is in the final movement of Fantasia: The Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria.

This is by far my favourite section of the film, just because of how different it is. The audience gets to see evil, total incomprehensible evil in the forms of ghosts, demons and ghouls who perform for their master. You feel fear for the little town nestled so close to the giant demon and just when it looks like all is done for. The sun and goodness arrives and defeats the evil. As a film major, I can't help but notice the clear nods to German Expressionism Film (which I spoke about briefly in my film noir post). It's beautiful in it's dark way and I highly recommend you check it out here.

3. Hercules' Hades
I've always loves Hercules. I know that it is not an accurate representation of the original mythology. It takes the original source material, and dumbs it down and turns it into a sugary fluff. But it's soooo entertaining. People either really love or really hate this movie and a lot of that has to do with Hades. Hades is the more likeable character in the movie.

You have to feel sorry for the guy. He's the God of the dead. he's stuck in the Underworld while his Brother Zeus has the Earth and the Sky and his other brother Poseidon is the Lord of the Sea. Hades clearly got the short end of the stick and is now just out to take what he sees as being his fair share. Of course, he has to be stopped because well... someone has to be the bad guy in this flick. I'm going to reference the Nostalgia Chick and her review of the film (watch it here) where she makes a really good point about this film. Hades always keeps to his word. When he makes the deal with Hercules during the climax he does give Hercules his powers back like he said he would. It is Hercules who shows the more villain-like qualities (lying, attacking Hades in cold-blood, etc). Say what you will, Hades is one of the more fun Disney Villains.

2. The Emperor's New Groove Yzma and Kronk
I love this movie. The Emperor's New Groove is one of those movies that I can watch over and over again and it will never ever get old. This is completely and totally because of Yzma and Kronk. These two are comedy GOLD. Everything about their relationship is perfection. They play off of each other so well and it just works. The Emperor's New Groove is a fun buddy cop kind of film that doesn't take itself too seriously. It has a moral but it doesn't feel like it needs to hit you over the head with it. Instead it does everything it can to make its characters memorable.

The strongest point of these two is by far their play off of one another. But they are able to hold their own by themselves as well. Think of Kronk inventing his own theme music when he tries to dispose of the now llama-afied Kuzco or Yzma's flea rant. These two make the movie, and I think they're one of the only villain duos that are "reformed" at the end of their film.



And My Favourite Disney Villain is:


1. The Princess and the Frog's The Shadow Man (Dr. Faciller)

I didn't get to see The Princess and the Frog until its DVD release. This had nothing to do with the controversy that was surrounding it, I wasn't trying to avoid it, I did want to see it. One of my friends was one of the animators. And I love the original hand drawn style. I just never got around to seeing it. But when I did. Damn... The Shadow Man. The Princess and the Frog was good. It was cute and it had the same feeling that the original princess movies had... even though the message was slightly tweaked. Tiana was likeable, and it was nice to see a Disney Princess have some form of character development OTHER than just finding a Prince to marry.

But that's slightly off topic. The Shadow Man or Dr. Faciller was by far the best part of this film. He's one of the best evil character's that Disney has put out in a long time. And his villain song (watch it here) was fantastic. If I had seen this as a kid, he would have terrified me to no end. And what happens to him at the end of the movie would have also given me nightmares. The Shadow Man is a middle man. He's playing with forces that he can't really control and the fact that he could unleash total evil into the world. All in all he's a lot of fun. I wouldn't say you find yourself rooting for him by the end of the movie, but you feel kind if sad that he's gone.

So there you have it! My Top Ten Favourite Disney Villain List. Thanks for reading guys and DFTBA!

Nothing to do with animated films...

So you know last week I said that my glands had swollen up. Turns out I probably have glandular fever (also know as mono). I'm going for blood tests next week, Yay!
I thought I'd let you know that even if I don't post for a while, I am still alive, just probably asleep :)
DFTBA (you have no excuses, I'm remembering from my sick bed ;) )
Ali
xx

A Post About Nothing, and Everything (Also a love story))

First of all: 4000 views! Wow!

Yeah... sorry I didn't post last week. I had a 15-20 page research paper on Plato's Demiurge, the Bacchic cults and the Greek gods. It ate my life last week. I'm back now though!

Now, on to my post for last week (my post for this week will be up in a couple of days), which will be about a short story I wrote for my girlfriend around Valentine's Day. Yes, it's a love story, but hopefully it's not too much of a "love story" if you know what I mean. Let me know what you think!

Bits of Stardust

Her leg twitched slightly, brushing up against his. His hand rose and fell with her stomach, the cotton fibers an ocean of purple on which his palm floated. Her arm twitched again and punched his bicep involuntarily. She was a boxer in her sleep. He grinned at the sweet look on her face, her eyes fluttering wildly under the lids and her mouth slightly open. Her body expelled a cloud of deadly carbon dioxide gas through her jungle of bed head hair. His hand sunk into the ocean as her stomach dove.

His body rarely allowed him to sleep in late nowadays. He had woken near dawn, but could not bring himself to wake her. He had contented himself to lie beside her, she in his arms and him in hers.

The fabric of her pajamas ran across leg again, pushing aside his and grazing his leg hairs. He clenched his teeth and desperately tried to keep himself from crying out with laughter and flailing his whole body. He did not want to wake her. He tensed his body until the tickling stopped. God, why did he have to be so ticklish?

His other arm rested behind her head, his fingers just inches from her neck. They begged him to give them free reign on the open fields of skin. He reluctantly held them back, secretly longing to touch her soft skin. Caress the skin, the tiny hairs she hates to admit cover her body. Treat her as if God himself handcrafted her body and gave her to him to keep safe and unblemished. Make love to her skin with his hand.

The pressure of her body on his arm’s arteries caused his arm to scream for air. How could he remove his arm without disturbing her? Carefully, he slipped his arm free of its prison. Inch by inch, more of his arm cried out in thanks as it began to breathe freely again.

He was almost free, his wrist sliding through the tunnel of neck and pillow, when a piece of dust flew up his nose. Pressure built in his nasal cavity. His hand jerked slightly as he plugged his nose with the other. She stirred. For a moment, he sat there, heart pounding like a drum solo. She sighed. He took a short breath. She rolled over onto her side and off his hand. The sneeze faded away.

The boy sat with his book of blank pages and began to write. He wrote every day. Otherwise, his work would never be finished, and would still be unfinished when he returned to the dust of stars that made him.

After finishing, he gazed back over to her, peaceful and quiet. He saw the love in the look of her closed eyes.

He felt the familiar twinge in his chest. He had a headache.

He grabbed a cup and filled it with water from the bathroom sink. He brought it back and stood by the bed. A single ray of morning sunlight broke through the window shades. It crawled up the side of her head, just barely walking across her face. He held the cup too loosely in his hand and water spilled over the edge, onto her shoulder, chest and neck. He froze.

Her eyes blinked open once, twice, three times before she turned and saw him. A smile made of granny-smith apples and maple syrup played across her face.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to her lips.

Women in charge were hot.

Dust and boxes, that’s all that was in the attic. Her cat meowed at the door. The girl, crippled by time’s embrace as she now was, opened the door to the room of forgotten memories. “What’s in here, Beethoven?”

The cat waltzed into the room as if he owned the place. He ran to a stack of boxes and began to rub his side against one of them. The woman reached for the box, but her hand shook with the effort and the box fell to the ground. “Beethoven, look at what you’ve made me do,” she said sarcastically. She bent to pick up the box, but stopped when Beethoven meowed again, impatiently.

The cat jumped into the hole between the boxes. “Beethoven!” She tried to move some of the boxes to get to the cat, but he jumped back out, an old book clasped in his mouth. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, silly cat!” Beethoven dropped the book at her feet and purred proudly.

The woman picked up the book. She had never seen it before. Curious, she opened to the first page. She recognized the meticulously handwritten print, though she had not seen it in many years. In her mind, she read his words in his deep, slow voice.

“Love is a story of two. Two actors perform on a stage, for all to see, but never know. Two members sit in the audience, whose minds’ council never uttered. No one else can understand their love story. They only see a shadow playing across their eyes and guess at its wonders. For the story contains no words, no great epics nor ballads, only memories of lost moments in a sea of emotion and forgotten dreams. Such is life; life, the story of love.”

The woman sat and read his thoughts from days in their youth, until they parted and he wrote on alone, but always for her. She read without pause, until the final page and the final passage.

“I grow weary, love, though I have enjoyed sharing our memories with you. I can barely write now, I must be growing old. Keep this book of no words. I wrote it for you, us, our memories. I’m moving to a new place soon. It’s considerably smaller than my apartment, but it’s in the country and there’s acres of grass for us to lay in. I would really like to see you. I know many leagues and years separate us, but I would like to see you again. I have missed you all these years.”

The woman choked on her own tears. She had seen him, many times in the past years; the first time on a trip to see her mother.

Hours later she knelt by his home. His tomb was not made of marble or gold, but of earth and the dust of stars. She laid a bit of mistletoe on the stone above him, mistletoe he had given her as a Christmas present so many lifetimes ago.

“Oh, look, love,” she said, “mistletoe.” She bent and kissed him, sucking on his lips until they were red and bruised.

She read the engraving at the bottom of the stone, which he wrote in a notebook of words he never meant to publish. “There is no life in this universe but that of stars, and we, in all our wanderings and pains, are no exception. We are all, every atom, every molecule, and every soul, not but stardust shining in the void of space, and some shine brighter than us all; glittering in every atom there ever was or ever shall be.”

She rose and atoms coalesced around her, embracing her, kissing her, making love to her skin. She melted into his fingers again. Two stars, made one, shining brighter than all the rest. No one but the universe saw them, and no else could understand.

© 2012 Matthew Elkin

Yes, I'm Still Alive! But My Computer Isn't

So here I am. Back from the dark hole known as NO TECHNOLOGY (I kid, I kid. It's surprising but I can survive without all of my tech).

So what's the story?

I had this great blog entry almost done. I had been writing it in the airport which made me feel very much like John and how he always seems to be vloging from the airport. I hopped onto my plane and was on my way to visit San Francisco. Five hours later, when I was settling myself into my hotel room getting ready to enjoy the complementary wireless internet, my laptop (for lack of a better term) took a swan dive. When I tried to turn it back on it made a few grunt like clicks and fell silent.

What was I thinking? I was on the opposite side of the continent in another country... I had homework to do, footage to edit... pictures to send to loved ones. As you can guess I was freaking out.

So the next day instead of going to the Aquarium of the Bay, I hiked it out to the Apple Store. Where the nice guy at the Genius Bar told me that he had no clue what had happened. Pretty much the only way they were going to be able to fix my poor laptop would be to gut it and slowly replace parts until it decided it wanted to start working again. Only, they didn't have all of the parts needed at this specific location.

As you can guess, my laptop is still out of commission. I'm writing this blog post on my boyfriend's laptop. Which just happens to be the exact same type of macbook, which is tripping me out (well not exactly the same... but it looks the same). So I'm going to do my best to catch up with the blog.

I was going to blog about my trip, but I think I'm going to wait till I have my pictures. I don't think anyone would argue if I broke form in say... a week and posted some pictures of my trip. :)

So onto a real post:


THE REAL BLOG POST: Let's Talk About FILM NOIR!

So today, we're going to give a film history lesson! Or at least a really vague one!

Film Noir isn't really a genre of film, no one originally set out to make "a film noir" instead it was a stylistic movement. The French claim to have coined the term. After World War II Hollywood exported a lot of films over to Europe, since the European Film Production Companies had all shut down due to War Time. The French had at least a four year backlog of movies to go through, so it was pretty easy for them to notice some stylistic developments.

So when you think of old school detective movies, you're probably thinking about our good buddy: Humphrey Bogart. Here he is to the right. Bogart was a pretty famous actor in his time. He was Rick in Casablanca and Sam Spade the famous detective in what was considered the first film noir The Maltese Falcon (1941). The film noir detective moved away from the classy "British style" detective like Sherlock Holmes. In "the Sherlock mystery" the focus is on the act of solving the crime, not the crime itself. In Film Noir, there is a lot more focus on the Detective. He may not even be a good guy. You have three kinds of heroes in film noir. You have your detective hero, your criminal hero and your victim hero. I tend to prefer the Detective Heroes, I find them more interesting. Just a personal preference.

So other major stylistic aspects of film noir? Well the use of shadows, vertical blinds and low/canted angles. To help set the mood. Unlike Classical Hollywood Cinematography where editing is supposed to be invisible, in Film Noir, the editing and the mood are supposed to be a representative of the Detective's psyche. Or to show the good evil dynamic. For example the picture of the two people in the car. In this shot the woman is lit up. She's supposed to appear as good and angelic. While the man is half in shadow.... indicating his shady past.  The world of film noir is not a happy one. Once you defeat your criminal, there will always be a bigger and badder one waiting to take his place.

But what I find the most interesting is what goes unsaid in these films. What makes these movies so clever is how they go about alluding things, what was considered unsavoury by Hollywood. I will explain.

In the 1930s Hollywood was in a bit of trouble, the Stars were partying too hard, movies showed nudity, drugs, alcohol problems etc etc. Anyone could walk into any movie. There was no rating system. So instead of facing government censorship, the Production Code was created. By the time Film Noir started the Production Code would have been around for a decade. The writers became pretty clever in finding ways to step around the code. The wording of lines, showing images (phallic symbols like tall thin buildings or long trains going into tunnels etc). Once you know these signs the movies get more... interesting?

All in all, film noir is a pretty fun genre. And once you've seen a few of them, you start noticing them referenced in so many other movies like Pulp Fiction. Noir has survived and has spawned Retro-Noir (contemporary films taking place back in noir-times) or Neo-Noir think Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.


So to end this mammoth of a blog post. I'm give a list of a few Noir Movies I recommend and have watched recently.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) *there are three different versions of this movie. Watch the 1941 version, it has Bogart
Casablanca (1942)
Gaslight (1944) *a hybrid genre movie melodrama and noir. Reallly really good.
Phantom Lady (1944) *has a female detective
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Brick (2005) *Has a baby Joseph Gordon Levitt

Disney Movies For All Ages

Hey guys,

first of all, sorry for missing last week's post. I was abroad and without really realizing it, it became Sunday already and then I was traveling again and now it's already two days into the new week. Time passes by too fast!

I left home a bit more than two weeks ago, first I spent one week in Poland at ze boyfriend's place and then we went together to some ski jumping competitions in Germany and yesterday we came back to Poland. And tomorrow we'll fly to Norway for five days! Next Monday I will fly back home and then university starts again. So that's what I've been up to in the last few weeks; I'm always trying to use my vacation as much as possible - I hate just sitting at home, doing nothing, I prefer to travel and even sitting somewhere else doing nothing is better!
I always feel more inspired when I'm away from home, I have more ideas, I'm more creative, and even if I don't really have time or opportunity I always feel like planning or starting new projects. Do you know that?

So this week's theme is Animated Movies and I want to share some childhood (and adulthood) memories with you.
I had a couple of Disney movies on VCR and those I watched approximately a thousand times. There is for example The Lion King, The Lion King II, Aristocats, The Jungle Book, Tarzan, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, which I would all count to my favorite movies and I still enjoy watching them!
I was never allowed to watch Snow White and Sleeping Beauty because my sister was too scared of the witches, so those I probably only watched 995 times. I used to have The Fox And The Hound on VCR, but my mother lent them to the daughters of a friend of hers and I have never seen that tape again. That happened around 15 years ago and I still hold a grudge against them because they claim that they don't have it, and obviously they are lying!
Since I only watched the movies my parents bought me, there are some left that I have never seen so far. Don't shout at me, but those include Pocahontas, Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin, Mulan and The Little Mermaid. I actually really want to watch them and I am planning to make a Disney Movie Rewatch Marathon (anyone with me?) soon.
There are always movies that I never really liked. Pinocchio for example, mainly because there was also a TV series about it and it was super scary. I've also never really made friends with Alice In Wonderland, I don't really like the story, I think it was just a bit too crazy for me.

And can we please talk about the fact that most Disney movies are really tragic and not at all suitable for children? In almost every Disney movies there are dead or dying parents and I still cry when Mufasa falls down that cliff.
Lately I've watched Up! and it was also so sad that I cried through the whole end of the movie. I don't know if we just didn't realize as children how sad those movies actually were, or if we just didn't care so much, but I can't imagine showing my child how Bambi's mother gets shot. Okay, that's not true, if I had to suffer through that, then my child will have to suffer too. 'Cause I'm gonna be a good parent! xD

A few weeks ago they showed The Lion King in 3D in cinema and of course I had to watch that! I've never seen it in cinema and it was really impressive. I watched it dubbed, I've actually never seen it in English, and I still know most of the words and I could sing every song of it. What I also never noticed is that this movie is amazingly well translated. Normally, dubbed movies are pretty crappy translated, especially jokes are over translated literally and just don't make sense in German. In Lion King they somehow managed to find an equivalent for every single pun and joke there is, so it really doesn't matter of you watch it in English or German. I'm curious, is it the same in other languages?

Sorry if this was a bit chaotic, I could keep rambling about Disney movies for another two pages, but I'll continue to do that in the comments of your posts and for now I have a FIFA game with my boyfriend to win. By the way, to those of you who play games: can you recommend me anything (I'm playing on XBox)?

DTFBA,
Sarah