No Two Snowflakes…

So… this time I will be writing a review on the recent-ish addition to the Disney movie collection, Frozen. Just so you know ahead of time, there may be some spoilers, but I promise not to give away the ending!

Similar to Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Tangled, Frozen was made using 3D animations as opposed to the familiar drawing-type animations of The Lion King, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and many of the other well-known Disney movies.

As a result of my tendencies to dislike change and 3D animations in general, it took me a while to warm up to the characters, but once I got over my biases, I found the whole thing to be quite enjoyable.

When comparing the art to previous Disney films, the art in Frozen was by far the most beautiful. Although the glow effects from Tangled are a close second, I felt that the effects in Frozen were a lot less attention-grabbingly (that’s not a word, is it) random, and worked more towards subtle enchantment.Speaking of effects, my favorite were by far the snowflake ones.

(btw, Elsa’s ice castle is sooooo cool~~

…impractical, though)

Anyway, the overall plot was good and still included the hidden themes that let even adults enjoy the so-called “children’ movies”. For example, in The Lion King, the whole “Hakuna Matata” thing almost definitely refers to drug use (sorry, but it’s true… you’ve got “forget your past”, losing track of time (when Simba gradually grows up), nonsensical stuff (like about the stars)… “no worries”….). In Snow White and the Seven Dwarves… well… just think about that to yourself for a while and I’m sure you’ll get it….

Ahem. Moving on….

So, in Frozen, there are several hidden themes, the most noticeable of which is a focus on capitalism, or just the world of business in general. Arendelle is a major trading port, and the Duke of Weasel… Weselton “seeks to exploit Arendelle for profit” (-Wikipedia).

Not only that, but the shopkeeper of a general store randomly placed in the forest that is posing as a trading post (which I must admit is quite hilarious) charges ridiculously expensive prices for his winter supplies (that are obviously in disrepair) while also advertising for summer products when it was very clearly snowing outside. He also happened to ask about the weather at some point and…pfft!

Anyway, these characters and their objectives, along with several other things (Khristoff selling ice to make a living, etc.) all point to one of the most basic principles of business: do anything to make a profit (although, Khristoff is a prime example of someone who might be a bit too naive when it comes to down to it).

Speaking of the characters, I really love the development of the main characters; although, I kind of felt that the side characters were a bit too simple….

Even though the point of most movies is what the main characters go through, I feel that the side characters are just as important to add more depth to stories. I understand that it is not always easy to show it, and that  Frozen is really meant mostly for the younger generations (while still appealing to older ones), but it kind of… disappointed me, I guess that more effort wasn’t put into the side characters and most of them were stuck with being able to be summed up completely in one sentence or less.

On top of that, I was pretty disappointed by Anna. I am 90% sure that Anna is supposed to be the main female lead and Elsa the secondary one, but she is so normal and experiences so little development that Elsa overshadows her.

It might be too much to ask, but I was hoping she would go through more than just “Oh, I guess I really was wrong, but that’s okay because now I got it right” (trying really hard not to put any spoilers). I feel like she was more of a flat character (meaning she didn’t change much), rather than a round character like Elsa (pretty much the opposite of “flat”). Truth be told, if most of the story line didn’t follow Anna, I think I might have completely considered her as another side character.

Part of the problem is that she and Kristoff are much too similar. Now, this wouldn’t have been a problem if she had some special characteristic that set her apart, but mainly all that drives her is her naive views of love and the world around her, and she is considerably lacking in any strong personality traits (besides naïveté and overdone awkwardness) that draw the viewer’s attention.

The characteristic didn’t have to be anything particularly unique, maybe she can actually (sort-of) defend herself by accident, or has a passion for learning, or anything, really. I felt like the producers tried too hard to make her “normal” and left out the important bits. In other words, I strongly believe that they should have given Anna’s character more complexity.

I also kind of wanted Anna to have some sort of secret power that was sealed with her memories, like calling summer after the winter (you know, because she has red hair and is very active), but unfortunately that hope was a little too unrealistic (and fantasy-like… I don’t think everyone likes the concepts of elemental-magic as much as I do) and that kind of disappointed me too. But, well… that one was kind of my fault….

TL,DR: Good movie, pretty art (forgot to mention catchy songs), but character development on anyone besides Elsa was a bit lacking.

the Great Gatsby (and friends)

First of all, sorry about that last post, I didn’t put as much effort into writing it as I probably should have and I felt that it was a bit bland. Hopefully this one will be much more interesting.

So, the following post is about what I found interesting about the history of the novel The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald with references to the following articles: “How ‘Gatsby’ Went From a Moldering Flop to a Great American Novel”, an excerpt from “So We Read On” (this can be found by clicking on the link and then clicking the “read an excerpt” button near the bottom of the page), and “A novel fact: Wartime – and the U.S. military – boosted sales of ‘The Great Gatsby’ from good to ‘Great’ “. There may or may not be some spoilers in this post, so if you haven’t read the book yet, you might not want to read this post. If you decide that you still want to read this post despite not reading the book… Well, I can’t really do anything to stop you, so have fun!

Now, despite lots of people saying they enjoyed The Great Gatsby when they read it, I felt it was a bit… bland. When I read it, I felt that a key something was missing from the novel. The descriptions were very detailed, but I wasn’t quite able to enjoy them and I felt that a part of each character’s spark of personality was missing. I think part of the problem was I wasn’t really interested in the novel when I read it; too many other things on my mind at the time. Maureen Corrigan, in her book So We Read On (link above), talks about how she felt similarly when she first read the novel, but liked it later, so maybe I need to read it again some other time outside of school.

Anyway, I found it interesting how today The Great Gatsby  is a big success and five movies have been based on it, when it was a great failure when it first came out. To those of you who enjoyed Gatsby, back when Fitzgerald first wrote and published the book it was known as “a dud”. The saddest part is, when he died the last check he got was only $13.13 and the copies of Gatsby that weren’t sold from the second printing of it were in the warehouse rotting. I don’t understand why most great writers and artists end up dying before they become famous. Okay, I guess it’s probably because the public is not yet ready for their “innovations”, but I wish that more would be recognized for their work before they died because many of the works of the great artists/writers, who don’t get recognized during their time, end up lost permanently. I can’t give you any examples off the top of my head, but for many of the “greats” (the “great” Gatsbys, haha, I just made a connection; you know, Gatsby didn’t amount to much during his life, like the artists/writers, but afterwards he received more recognition as being great (okay, okay, only from Nick… But still!)), much of their work is already lost and we don’t know it because nobody cared enough at the time to save what they did do because “it was garbage” (or “a dud”, whichever you prefer).

So, moving on from how I thought it was interesting that Gatsby was able to go from considered horrible by most to wonderful by many, when people discuss the history of Gatsby, they often mention how the Great Depression followed soon after Fitzgerald wrote it and how his book almost seemed to prophesy it (somebody told me that it’s supposed to be “prophesy” here, but I’m not really sure. I guess this is what happens when you try to use words from the English language that you almost never use, and by the way, I did look it up, but the results were very confusing for me). Obviously, Fitzgerald didn’t really know the Great Depression was coming, but (despite not enjoying the book much) it’s still pretty cool how his book reflects how the people viewed their life of partying as afterwards. In his book, Fitzgerald was pointing out how throwing big parties all the time is a waste and doesn’t do you any good, and after the Great Depression, people also looked back on their lives before and considered it a waste in much the same way: a waste of money, time, valuable brain cells (alcohol isn’t good for you), food (that is thrown up after being eaten because people tend to throw up when they’re drunk and have eaten too much), etc. Sorry, I kind of went a bit too much into the details there… Also, I kind of went a bit parenthesis-crazy on you guys, so I hope you’ll just bear with me for this post. I’ll try not to do it too much, but I really, really like using parentheses for my extra comments.

So, I may (or may not) add more to this post later after my brain has recovered from being fried (and possibly fighting to get through a cold-induced fog), so until then, that’s all. See you in about a week (give or take a few days)!