CDSM #15 In Which I Struggle to Post Before the Day Ends

So I was originally going to write my second post about werewolves today, but then I became super distracted with a bunch of things: mainly the book I am currently reading. So today's post might be short so I can get back to reading   makes sure this is posted in time.

So today I will tell you all about the first time when I skipped school.

I was three years old.

Here I am rocking pink suspenders and a purple shirt.

So the story isn't really as bad as I made it out to be. I was in Kindergarten with my best friend at the time Sophie. I was three years old (having a late birthday and everything) and I think Sophie was around four. Kindergarten used to only run for half a day. The schedule was simple. We learned our alphabet and our numbers, we had indoor play time, outdoor playtime and story time. Then we got to either go home to our parents or go to daycare. 

Now if I remember this day correctly, it was overcast when we went outside for our play time. My two friends at the time (Sophie from above) and Evelyn (I have no picture) and I were playing by some trees behind the playground. I guess we were having so much fun that we didn't hear our teacher blow the whistle to say that play time was over. Instead we continued to play happily. I can kind of faintly remember looking up and realizing that we were the only kids on the playground. This for my childhood mind was kind of mind blowing. I brought this to the attention of my two friends. We had a very serious discussion (as serious as any 3-4 year old could have) and only when Evelyn started to cry (she was scared of what would happen to us if we got caught) did we go back to our classroom.

I don't really remember what happened after that. I don't think I was punished. 

Well there you have it, I slacked off at school even before I knew that slacking off at school was a thing. Does that makes me some kind of school hipster?

I have this other story about an afternoon where our supply teacher never showed up... but I will save that for a different day.

DFTBA everyone!

CDSM #12 A Crash Course in Werewolf Studies Part One

Today I'm going to begin a Crash Course on Werewolf Studies. I originally wanted to do this as one post, but it seemed almost impossible to condense all the information. So let's see how long this werewolf saga takes! 

Most of the information in this post is based off of a course that I took last term taught by Dr. Renée Ward. 

At the end of the werewolf saga I will offer a Works Cited/Bibliography/Further Reading section which will include Dr. Ward's Thesis because she is awesome.

So here goes nothing:

Defining Identity: Man vs Animal

Before you read my Russian-length novel on "werewolfery" I'm going to ask you three questions, and your homework will be that you need to think about them while you read said Russian-Length Novel. 

Your homework questions: 

1. What is identity? 

2. How to you define your identity?

3. What is normal?

I know, they're pretty heavy questions. But they're important.

The werewolf is a problematic figure because it takes the definition of humanity and the definition of the animal and smashes them together to create an all new figure, one that doesn't fit comfortably in either category. 

The werewolf serves as a liminal figure, he is both human and animal and neither at the same time. Because of this the werewolf causes us to question: what is human? What is animal? What is identity?

Voluntary vs Involuntary

Kirby Flower Smith wrote A Historical Study of the Werewolf in Literature in 1984 where he argued that the werewolf arose from a bunch of different sources. Some of the examples he gave where Out Law Tales (think Robin Hood) or Medical and Physical conditions (lupus = lycanthropy). Smith divided the werewolf into two different categories: the voluntary and the involuntary.

The Voluntary Werewolf retains the intelligence and cunning of a man but is more or less clouded by his bestial nature. The Voluntary werewolf tends to possess a ravaging hunger. They're extremely violent and are partial to acts of impiety: slaughtering children, cannibalism, slaughtering innocents at will etc etc. As you can guess Smith doesn't like the Voluntary Werewolf, for them werewolfery is represented as being negative. Smith views the Voluntary Werewolf to be the true werewolf because the Voluntary werewolf chooses to give up his humanity when they know that what they are doing is evil. The other interesting aspect of Smith's argument  he doesn't see the transformation as a transformation into a different species. Therefore when a werewolf eats a human it is still a human eating another human. HUZZAH CANNIBALISM!

Other interesting facts on the Voluntary Werewolf: they can transfer at will. Transformation can either be Constitutional or Magical. Constitutional Transformation means that the werewolf has an innate ability/gift to transform. While Magical transformation tends to rely on a magical object such as a salve, a cloak or even a spell. There is nothing in Smith's descriptions about the lunar cycle. Also, the Voluntary werewolf tends to be male (most records from the Iniquity and the Medieval narratives have male werewolves).

The most important fact that you need to take away about the voluntary werewolf is free will. He chooses to change. He knows what he is doing. He just likes to eat people and be violent. 

The Involuntary Werewolf on the other hand is a victim who is devoid of malice. The transformation is not their choice, and they remain kind hearted despite the fact that they turn into a wolf. Smith doesn't see this as problematic. 

Overall Smith sees the werewolf in very black and white categories. 

Montague Summers and Why We Don't Like Him (Much)

So Montague Summers also wrote on werewolfery, and he took the categories that Smith had created and ran with them. Summers also drew on documents from the 16 and 17 Century. His major issue is that he looks at sources without their historical context. Some sources and these sources in particular are influenced heavily by their time periods.  Summer condemns the werewolf. His religious outlooks heavily influence his analysis of the werewolf. His views towards pre-Christian culture is tainted. Interestinly enough he knows he is biased and announces this. He is writing entirely from his out theological and philosophical view.

To Summers all werewolves are inherently evil:

"All such transformations are effected by diabolical power (no matter what it is somehow connected to the devil"

Some of the Methods of Transformations (According to Summers)

• A Glamour - caused by a demon seems  to be transformed but not an actual physical transformation
• Mesmeric Trance - Sorcerer in a trance and has a wolf familiar - mind goes out in the animal
• Cloaking - a casting over - aerial effigy of a beast on a witch after preparation by the witch
• the demon surrounds the witch with the effigy of the beast

In his opinion to no physical act of change ever takes place. Also werewolves are slaves of Satan.

So What Is Summer's Useful for?

Summers has one use (other than being extremely interesting to read in my opinion). He does an in-depth analysis of etymology (if you're into that thing). The werewolf is a universal creature. It is also interesting to notice the different names for the werewolf all have guttural sounds when you pronounce them.

werwulf (German)

loup-garou (Old French)

garall, garoul (Old French as well, but southern)

varulv (Norwegian)

rargr, varg-ūlfr (Old Norse)

lupo mannaro (Italian)

vir (Latin) = man

   

So Ends Part One on your journey through the history of werewolves... What's up next? Well stay tuned for more Cannibalism, Scape Goating and the Sympathetic Werewolf!

Feverish Music Rant

Hey guys!

I said that I would have my bedroom post up by today, but I'm still sick and my room is a total mess... so I thought (since I haven't posted in a while) I'll post about this weeks new theme and post my bedroom post later on in the week...

SO! MUSIC!

When it comes to music, I'm all over the map. I like to have music playing in the background at all times. But it really depends on what I'm doing when it comes to what music I play. When I'm cleaning or doing homework, I just turn on the radio to the Top Hits... so right now I'm getting a lot of "Call Me Maybe" and "Gangham Style" mixed in with Taylor Swift reminding me that we will never ever get back together.

Popular music is weeeeiiiird.

When I'm writing, I tend to listen to a mix of Lady GaGa and Florence + The Machine:

Both of them have really different styles but have similar, off beat weird personas. But Florence is a little bit more heartfelt while GaGa is a lot more weird. The real difference here is I will listen to Florence + The Machine for fun while I've kind moved on from Lady GaGa.

But you might be asking, what do you like to listent to when you want to listen to music....

Well to try and answer your question I love to listen to Flogging Molly, Our Lady Peace, Great Big Sea, David Bowie (I have this weird David Bowie love that I blame Labyrinth for forming), Howard Shore, Tool, Green Day, Billy Idol, Queen, Scouting for Girls, An Amalgamation of Songs from different musicals, Eric Hutchinson, Mummford and Sons and Gotye (I just love his song Eyes Wide Open). 

There are other bands, musicians and composers that I like, but I'm currently drawing a blank... I'm going to blame the cold meds for that.

I like to think that musical tastes say a lot about a person, but I don't really know what my musical taste says about me.

But I think that's a question for another day.

So I'll leave you all with this:

Enjoy!

ConBravo 2012

So I went to ConBravo this year!

ConBravo is a small convention held at the Holiday Inn in Burlington, I went for the first time last year, and had a pretty awesome time. So this year when I heard it was happening again and more people from Channel Awesome were going to be there I just had to go back.

What is Channel Awesome you say? Well check out That Guy With the Glasses and immerse yourself in the nerdy awesome that is Internet Reviewing. Then get back to me!

This year, The Nostalgia Critic, The Nostalgia Chick, Linkara, Spoony, Paw, Maven of the Eventide, The Angry Video Game Nerd and Doctor Holocaust were on the list of special guests. Having many of times told my old roommate that I needed to hug all of them, this seemed like the opportune time to get that started, in the least creepy way possible.

My kinda creepy photos taken over people's heads.

So the adventure started at 6:30am on Saturday morning, where I made my way to Chelsey's House carrying my life in a suitcase. We hopped in the rented car, stopped off at Tim Hortons and got coffee, tea, ice caps, everything we would need to make it through the first half of our day. We drove to the Con, signed in and got into our very first line. The Linkara and Spoony signing.

After that we went to a very useful panel on "Creating an Online Persona" followed by The Channel Awesome Q&A.

Also, I found Batman, errr well maybe it's Abed dressed up as Batman. When you think of it, it is kind of ridiculous because now you can dress up as someone who is dressing up as someone else. Stop and think about that for a bit.

BATMAN

The last panel we made it into was hosted by The Nostalgia Chick on "Being a Girl on the Internet" This panel was both interesting and important because it focused on how to deal with idiots online. Most of my income comes from video production and blog posts, and given the recent events, which we all discussed on in our facebook group this seemed like an interesting topic to hear from first hand from those who have had bad experiences. The Nostalgia Chick (aka Lindsey) managed to be really funny, but really informative on the subject. Out of all of the panels I went to, this one was the most open and felt more like a dialogue between the Panel Runners and the Audience. I really wish I had managed to record it, but the sound wasn't that great.

After that, we went to the Dance for a bit, got kind of bored and headed off to the Bad Fanfiction Readings. I'm hoping to channel some of that into the wonderful story that we are all writing. The most memorable story we listened to was about a Gothic Vampire Girl who went to Hogwarts, and goes on a date with Draco Malfoy to see a Good Charlotte Concert. Draco then drives them in his flying car to the Forbidden Forest where they have sex only to be caught by Dumbledore.

Instant classic.

Sunday was a little less rushed. We got in line for the Channel Awesome Signing and after waiting for 2 hours we didn't get in. Luckily, the one Reviewer that we really wanted to meet, tweeted that he felt really bad that not everyone could make it into the signing and that if you came up to him he would sign "ALL THE THINGS". We managed to catch him when we were leaving and got his signature in our books.

Also, Linkara was walking around talking to fans and taking pictures. So this happened:

It's not really the best picture of me. But it's very clear that I'm very happy.

You also can't really talk about Conventions without talking about the shopping aspect. I bought myself a PS2! Which I am SUPER EXCITED ABOUT! But the best part of my hall was a replica of the Elder Wand. I really need to start working on a wands display. I have two of them now. The Elder Wand and Voldemort's Bone Wand.

All in all, I had a really awesome time. It's great when you can meet the people who inspire you and it's great to meet new people who can inspire you further:

I mean seriously guys, check this guy out on youtube. I kind of fell in love with him (as creepy as that sounds).

DFTBA!

My One True Love aka Food

Food, glorious wonderful fantastic food.

There is nothing like a nice big juicy steak, or a platter of fresh sushi. When it comes down to it, I'm pretty much willing to try everything.

Luckily enough for me, my boyfriend shares this love of food. Since he travels a lot for work this gives us an opportunity to go to many different restaurants in many different places. In this post I will discuss some of my favourite places that I've been to in the past few years.

Ye's Sushi: An All You Can Eat Feast
http://www.yessushi.com/home.html

Eat ALL OF THE SUSHI

When I moved to Waterloo, I wasn't that experienced in the eating of sushi. My friends and I used to walk over to the grocery store near our high school and grab sushi to go there. When I got to university though, a friend of mine insisted that we go for All You Can Eat Sushi. A monster was born.

It took a lot of convincing to get my boyfriend to try sushi (three years to be exact). But now, every Saturday the two of us make the trek to Ye's and have lunch. This picture is taken during one of our many of our lunch ventures.

The Keg: Super Expensive Steak
http://www.kegsteakhouse.com/en/
The Keg is expensive, and when I say expensive, I mean sell all your textbooks, don't go to school for a term and miss two rent checks. That might be overstating it a little bit, but I'm assuming you guys get my drift. But let me tell you... it's TOTALLY WORTH IT. In the handful of times I've gone to this place, I HAVE NEVER had a bad steak. EVER. It's like magic. The steaks are juicy and thick and as I type this my mouth has started watering.

I feel like I'm a horrible person if any of you are Vegetarians or Vegans. I'm a monster. :(

Caesars: Welcome to Your Italian Food Coma
http://www.caesarssf.com/
This place is fantastic. I've been twice, what you do is you sit down and choose how many courses you want and then your entree. The last time we were there we had the seven course meal with the entree of veal. I have never had a bean salad as good as I had at that place. If you love your italian food, this is the best place for you to go. It's in San Francisco in the North Beach area. So if you're ever in California this is worth the trip, it's even better then the Golden Gate Bridge (I SWEAR).

Carmines: Homestyle Italian-y Goodness
http://carminesnyc.com/
The first time I went to Carmines I was on the New York City Film Trip in Highschool. My friend's Mom told him that he should get a group together and go to this restaurant. Which we did. Carmines presents its meals in a family style. Each dish is around 26 dollars but can feed four people. You have to go into this with the same mentality of all you can eat sushi, the more people you bring the more varieties of dishes you can order. Every time I have returned to New York City I've made sure to stop here at some point. To my glee I found out that there was another one of these places in Washington DC.

And I will end this off with:

Lombardi's Pizza: To Good to Describe in Words
http://www.firstpizza.com/
If you're ever in NYC, you need to go here. It's located in Little Italy, the wait is around 40 minutes, but it's worth every second. We had a spinach and cheese pizza... and it was the best pizza I have ever tasted. I have accepted the fact that I will never find pizza this good... ever again. And once I excepted it... everything felt a little bit better.


But today is Saturday, which means I have to run soon... Saturday as you have guessed is sushi day... and its time to go eat my weight in fish!

----

Now for some off topic things:

Sorry I haven't been posting a lot lately. School has been kicking my butt. I'm taking summer courses to get myself ahead for the next term. Yup, I know I'm crazy.

On top of that I am also working away on summer NaNoWriMo.... So hopefully by the end of this month I will have a 50,000 word manuscript of a new novel.

Wish me luck and I'll keep you guys updated!

Dolphin Trainers, Marine Biology and Other Pass Times

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I'm BAAAAAAAAAAACK!

<Insert Jack Nicholson here's Johnny jokes here>

I am happy to announce to everyone that I finished my 3rd Year of University and am ready to not do any serious thinking for the next few weeks. As fellow University students you all know EXACTLY how I feel right?

I have a few blog posts to catch up on, but as for right now I'll just do the most recent topic: What I wanted to be when I grew up.

When I was really little I had one passion: Sea life. The second best day of my childhood-life was when I went to Sea World (the first best day of my childhood-life was Disney World for one specific reason but that's a completely different story). At Sea World there were dolphin shows, whale shows, Shamu, Shark Tunnels to walk through, fake helicopters to ride and ALL THE FISH YOU COULD EVER DREAM OF. It was my own personal heaven. My Mother bought me a stuffed animal penguin and the Sea World Factbook (which I still have to this day) and I spent the rest of my Florida vacation curled up with my penguin looking at the pictures of the dolphins dreaming of the day when I could go swimming with them. In my little mind, the most perfect career that could ever exist was to be a dolphin trainer. I wanted to spend the rest of my life teaching dolphins tricks and swimming with them. It was like a fairy tale.

Now my parents weren't to keen to have their Eldest Child go into Show Business, so one day as I sat there staring dreamily at the photographs and talking endlessly about the tricks I would teach my pet dolphins my parents tried to sway me. As you can guess, this didn't go over that well. Until my Dad said in exasperation. "Why don't you just be a marine biologist?"

"What's a marine biologist?"

"You're a scientist who studies ocean life."

In other words my little mind imploded with possibilities.

Now these were the days before the internet was super big (kinda hard to remember that). So I had to go to the library. My career as a Marine Biologist was off to a strong start. I knew everything about everything. I begged my parents to take me to the Zoo to see the fish. My parents had to tape every single episode on the ocean that ever aired on the Discovery Channel. I was obsessed.

So what happened?

Well it was the Discovery Channel that did me in in the end. I learned the hard way (and a super graphic one at that) that there was a darker side to Marine Biology. I wasn't all driving in boats, swimming with the dolphins and writing a few notes down on a note pad. No, the Discovery Channel taught me.... I'd be cutting dolphins open. As a sensitive little girl, that was way too much for me to comprehend. The marine biology dreams died instantaneously.

I took to something a little bit safer... history. From grades 5-10 I was convinced I was going to be a Historian. That was until I made the mistake of taking a film course and picking up my first camera.

When I look back at all the jobs I wanted as a kid I was pretty all over the map. At one point I was convinced my calling was to be a Pretzel Salesgirl at Carnivals and Fairs, I also wanted to be a Power Ranger and Batman (who doesn't want to be Batman).

It's kind of funny looking back and seeing how much I've changed. But you know. There has been one thing that has stayed constant....

I still love fish.

Quick Note

Hey guys! I'm still around.

It's my crunch time at school right now, so I won't be able to post till this weekend.

Just wanted to say I haven't abandoned you


DFTBA
- Alexandra

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!

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