Tis the Season… to Watch Movies!

I love watching Christmas movies during the holiday season, and since it’s now that time of year, I have yet another list of movies to share, this time telling you my favourite holiday films!

• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964)– This is the only Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movie version I will watch. The animation is perfect and its the most festive, in my opinion anyways.
• A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)– I am so obsessed with Peanuts. I love Charlie Brown and the gang!
• The Little Drummer Boy (1968)– This movie is perfect. And it also happens to be my favourite Christmas song!
• Frosty the Snowman (1969)– C’mon, Frosty comes to life! It’s so good.
• A Year Without a Santa Clause (1974)– This has my favourite holiday songs on it from a movie, which are the Heat and Snow Miser Songs!

A Halloween Surprise: An Event Report

My friend Renee and I made plans in mid-October to attend a surprise thriller event happening at Red Deer College (the college I am currently attending) on October 28. To attend, the poster said you had to bring non-perishable goods for, what we assumed, would have been the food bank. When we showed up at the classroom the movie was supposed to be playing at, there was nobody there! We waited around for a few minutes, walked to a few other classrooms that we thought perhaps the movie event was changed to, and then promptly gave up. There was no surprise thriller happening that night.

The Poster that had the information for the surprise thriller.

My favourite movies released before I was born!

I got really nostalgic tonight when I started singing “It’s a Hard-knocked Life” from the original Annie soundtrack. I decided two things; first, I needed to re-watch Annie for the millionth time, and second, I needed to do a post on all the movies that I love that were released before I was born (I was born in 1997 if you are wondering). These were movies I grew-up watching with my mom, so I think it’s safe to say that they are some of my favourites, and I do watch them all quite often. This post is an appreciation post for all the great movies that were out between the 1930’s until the early 1990’s. Here is my top ten favourite timeless movies in the order of the year they were released in:

• The Wizard of Oz (1939)– It’s old but it’s a gooder!
• Grease (1978)– The songs make me happy in this one.
• The Shining (1980)– For an old horror movie based on a Stephan King novel, it’s quite good. It’s one of the only horror films that I will watch over and over again. I have never read The Shining by Stephen King so I could be biased.
• Annie (1982)– This movie is just so brilliant and heartwarming, and the music and actors are A+.

Movie Review: Doctor Strange

Last weekend I went and saw Doctor Strange with my dad. I have to say that I highly enjoyed the film, and it gave the scyfy nerd in me great satisfaction with the dimensional aspects of the world. I didn’t like how things were changed in the film of course, but I did like Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange and Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One. I still would’ve preferred the Ancient One to be Asian like he is in the comics.

The film is about Stephen Strange, a highly skilled and popular neurosurgeon who loses the use of his hands in a car accident. Strange, not knowing what to do with himself after the fact, does everything he can to fix his hands so he could still practice his life’s work. In a desperate attempt to do so he travels to Nepal to the Kamar-Taj (a temple of sorts) where he meets the Ancient One. The Ancient One teaches Strange about astral planes and the other dimensions in the world- or sorcery as they call it. She does this despite Strange’s arrogance and selfishness. The film essentially shares the journey of how Doctor Strange became Doctor Strange, the comic book hero.

[Image via Wikipedia]

Why diversity is important

 

[Image via Goodreads]

I started blogging in the book community over a year-and-a-half ago. I made a book blog (that you can check out here as I do update it quite regularly) because I love to read and write, and thought starting a blog about books would be the perfect way to kill two birds with one stone; I could read a book and write a review to post on my blog! However, when I started blogging in the book community I noticed how upset people got over who got cast in book-to-movie adaptations. This was something I saw on twitter right away after I started following other book bloggers. Person of Colour (PoC) is a big deal in the book blogging community, especially when we all know that a character in a book or a comic book is supposed to be a certain race. To all the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han is a great example of this. To all the Boys I’ve Loved Before is going to be turned into a movie soon, and the main character, Lara Jean, is Asian. The fact that Lara Jean is Asian is actually a very important aspect of the book. Han tweeted a few months ago that a potential producer for the project didn’t really care about whether the main actress was Asian, as long as she played the part well. Han was outraged over how ignorant he was, since race is an important part of her book.

Movie ratings and kids: A Personal Essay

I grew up in a home that loves to watch movies. My mom owns almost all of the Disney movies on VHS and my younger brother and I would spend hours each day watching them. My mom was really into finding good kids movies that we could watch, but she also allowed us to watch movies like The Lord of the Rings. I remember watching The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) with my dad when I was six and crying so hard because of how gory it was. I also vaguely remember watching a horror movie with my mom (around the same time) and loving it. I just remember watching the screen; a women was lying on a bed and this robotic spider thing was trying to kill her with its legs. I loved how scared I felt, but at the same time I knew that it wasn’t real, so I had no reason to fear that that would ever happen. I guess at the time I didn’t believe that robots existed or that they could kill us. Both my parents, when together, didn’t really care about movie ratings because they knew that we would see that stuff anyways, so why not watch with us and let us ask questions? But of course, there were certain things we couldn’t watch, so scenes in movies would be skipped forward. I remember watching the movie Bridesmaids (2011) with my mom and stepdad when it came out. The very first scene in the movie was of two people having sex. My mom instantly panicked and turned it off, telling my brother and I that we’d have to wait a few years before we could watch it.

Book to movie review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

I recently went to see Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children at the Cinema and, although I really enjoyed it, I couldn’t help but notice the differences from the book and the movie.

(Image via Wikipedia.)

I thought it might be fun to compare the movie to the book because the nerd in me really wants to, and I’ve never done something like this before. I also recently read the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children trilogy by Ransom Riggs over the summer so it’s all pretty fresh in my mind. (You can check out my reviews for the trilogy on my book blog here and here.)

My Top Five Favourite Movies

Here’s my top five, forever changing, movie list, with nice, short descriptions telling you why you need to watch the movie (by nice I mean: just watch the movie). This list is not in any particular order:

I, Robot (2004)-

Movie description: Del Spooner investigates the alleged suicide of the U.S. Robotics co-founder, Alfred Lanning. The company makes robots that help mankind with daily chores, like cooking and cleaning. He is later convinced that all robots in this future dystopian world are evil, and that the co-founder of the robot company did not commit suicide.

This movie has been a favourite of mine since I was a kid. It has great action, an interesting plot, and it makes you feel for the characters. Plus, Will Smith is one of my favourite actors!

But is Disney actually diverse? A book review

Over the past several decades, scholars from all over the world have questioned the lack of diversity in Disney films. The anthology Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality, and Disability consists of eighteen essays, all edited by Johnson Cheu. The essays question the hidden lack of diversity in what are considered Disney’s most diverse films. It is divided into four sections that centre on the four different topics being discussed: “Beyond the Fairest: Essays on Race and Ethnicity,” “Traditions and Transformations: Essays on Gender and Sexuality,” “Of Beasts and Innocents: Essays on Disability,” and “Up and Out: Essays on Reimagining’s and New Visions” (which talks about where Disney is headed in terms of diversity).

Babies, birds, and human girls: A movie review

On Sunday I took my five-year-old cousin to see a newly released movie called Storks (2016). I do have to say that it was good despite the fact that I spent majority of the movie telling my little cousin to stop talking after she kept asking, “is it over yet?” every ten minutes. Often she would ask me questions or comment on the movie (really loudly) making the whole theatre chuckle and stare at us (which was actually pretty cute, even though it was probably distracting for some of the movie watchers). Thank goodness no one complained.

But anyways, on to the movie!

Storks used to deliver babies to humans. They now deliver packages for the global internet company called Cornerstore.com because the CEO of the company, Hunter, sees more profit in that line of work. Junior, who is about to be promoted as the new boss, is told to fire Tulip, the only human working at Cornerstore.com. In an attempt to try and prevent Tulip from getting hurt, Junior tells her to work in the mailing room and not to leave.