Princess and the Frog

Dear Friend,
I saw Princess and the Frog today. Now, let me preface this by saying I wasn't especially looking forward to this film. Frankly, I was torn. As an animation fan, and one who loves hand drawn animation in particular (though Pixar has won my heart even with it's computer animation) I was pleased to see Disney returning to it. (Whoever bought into the piece of garbage lie that "audiences only want to watch computer animation" was a moron.) But on the other hand, the film was set in New Orleans and was proving to be filled with Voodoo. I've got a big enough issue with generic "magic" in movies, but Voodoo is a little too real for me, you know? On top of that, there was the issue with making Tiana black, and all sorts of people complaining about whatever they could find to complain about there. But that's a long story I don't feel like going into.

Anyway, friend, I wasn't expecting much from this movie. On top of that, I had been in a very bad mood and that made me extremely cynical and critical when I sat down in the theater. In fact, I hated the previews before the movie, except for the Toy Story 3 preview (I'm so there!) and the Disney Nature Oceans preview. (Side note, this bad mood has affected me in a way that I am crying at the drop of a hat, so I teared up at both of those previews. At the beginning of the TS3 trailer, with the sad song, and at the "I am wonderful" song part of Oceans. I sometimes hate being weepy.)

So, most people know the premise of this story. A prince winds up being turned into a frog by some evil, magical person and needs a princess to kiss him and break the spell. Well, in this version, the prince in question, Prince Naveen, is actually a self-centered, cocky, good for nothing who winds up in the "clutches" of a Voodoo "magician" named Dr. Facilier. (I may have misspelled that, but look at the name, who wouldn't misspell it?) And the "Princess," Tiana, isn't a princess, but she's a waitress who wants to own her own restaurant. Through a slight mix up, Naveen gets Tiana to kiss him, trying to break the spell. Instead, they both end up as frogs.

There, you know the premise. As it's not my personal policy to give away spoilers in my reviews, that's all you get.
After all, I enjoyed the movie. It lifted my horrendous mood a little. I think it was all I needed. I do take slight issue with one of the "good guys" also did voodoo, but that's probably just another instance of Disney being politically correct or what not. I honestly expected the firefly character, Ray, to be something of an annoying stereotype that I would hate. Imagine my surprise to end up loving the character and finding him amazingly inspirational. Trying not to spoil anything, his storyline just about made me cry, and left a bigger impression on me than the A plot. Not to belittle the A plot, I did like Naveen and Tiana. Naveen may be one of my favorite Disney male leads. (Not that he has a heck of a lot of competition. I can think of Prince Phillip and Tramp... yeah, that's it.) Tiana is a good character, too, and surprisingly her spoiled, rich friend Charlotte is a great character. "Lottie" was one of the funniest parts of the movie.

As for the fact that the leads in the film are black, I was glad to see an animated girl with dark, curly hair. I never quite "got" what girls were talking about when they said they were glad to finally have a Disney Princess who looked like them. Probably because I can't imagine the day that they draw a Biracial princess. But sitting in the theater and just realizing that she had curly hair I felt like I liked her more. Silly? Maybe, but undeniably true. There was really only one moment in the film where Tiana's race was made an issue of, and it, apparently, is a blink and you'll miss it sort of thing. As for where Naveen's kingdom of "Maldonea" could possibly be, who knows.

I wasn't too impressed with the music, which isn't great for a Disney film. It wasn't bad music, but there wasn't an earworm in the bunch. I can't remember the tune for a single song from it right now. I did enjoy the song in the credits, though I don't know if I'd admit it out loud, just online.

I loved the look of the film, too. Especially in the song "Almost There." If they had made the whole film look like that I think I would have still liked it. Probably too stylized for an entire movie, though. I though there were a few breathtaking shots, I'll admit.

In the end, I enjoyed it. It wasn't Disney's greatest film, but it was certainly worth watching.

Day 3 of NaNo

Dear Friend,
I've written 7,885 words in my novel as of today. Since in order to definitely finish 50,000 words in 30 days you need to do 1,667 words a day, I am ahead of schedule. Since I know I can't write every single day, especially when we visit my Mom's family at Thanksgiving, I wanted to do 3,000 words a day, and am therefore behind schedule. I didn't get to write as much during the day as I wanted to since I went out to vote and run errands today, and then after dinner the idea of writing more for a few hours was not appealing so I played Sims3.

As far as the storyline of the novel, it's kind of boring. I am enjoying it, but I can recognize that not much has happened. The strange thing is I've added two characters I had no intention of adding. I always thought that people who said that characters in their stories did things they didn't plan on them doing were strange. But now I know, they really do.
I came up with a character named Evan to simply fill in an empty "space" at a party, and so far not a day has gone by that I haven't written yet another scene with him. He's not even a nice character! He refuses to talk to my main character because he doesn't like her, but he keeps popping up. Weird.
On top of that, I added a character I had "edited out" during the planning phase. It complicates things because it now will end up seeming like three different men fall hopelessly for my main character and that's a little much even for me. It was supposed to be a love triangle, not a rectangle. Dang.

Saw one of my old students in the elementary school I voted in. He looks almost exactly the same, which is a little weird for a 5 or 6 year old I haven't seen since he was three. I guess he was a little taller, but that's it.

NaNo Day two word cloud

I've made it to 6,276 words! Yipee!!!
This is the second day word cloud. I don't know if I'll do one every day, but it's fun so far, so have another.

My first day of NaNo looks like this in a Word Cloud

My NaNoWriMo word cloud. This is just the text of Day 1. 3,227 words, condensed into a cloud.

And away we go

Dear Friend,
As I announced on my facebook profile about two weeks ago, I'm doing National Novel Writing Month. Now, what that is, thousands of (lunatic) people are challenging themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. You can start anytime after midnight November 1St and you need to finish before Midnight November 30Th. I can hear you thinking, "Do you win anything?" No, but you get a "novel" and a sense of accomplishment if you succeed. Again, you're asking, "Then why bother?" Because it's a challenge, that's why. And so many people have a goal to write a book that they're very likely to never get around to, and this is a way to just buckle down and do it! It's been going on for 10 years before now, and I'm joining in for year 11.
As I'm writing this, I have 45 minutes until midnight. I'm slightly concerned that as the clock strikes twelve I will feel all my ideas and plans rush out of my head, seemingly never to return. I have not outlined any of my plot. Frankly, all I have is a set of 4 characters (I need 6, so those other two better "show up" soon) and a few scenes that I'd like to write. I just need filler. I also need a title, but I suppose that will be easier to think up as the story goes along. At least, I hope it will.

If you want info, you can go to nanowrimo.org and check into all the madness.

Ha, last year I blogged about maybe joining in, but chickened out. This year I signed up before I could rethink it.

Many thing to review

Dear friend,
I just bought four Cd's and watched a movie. So, of course I've got lots of opinions rattling around in my head, and have decided to write them out.

I'll start with the film, as that will be easiest to sum up. I watched The Brothers Bloom a few days ago. I saw the previews last spring during a summer movie preview show. It looked quirky and pretty, right up my alley. The plot revolves around two brothers who happen to be Con men. The younger brother wants to quit this line of work, but the older brother wants him for just one more job. So their last victim is an eccentric, sheltered heiress.
It was an interesting movie, sometimes it was funny, and it was visually stunning at times. I just... well, I wanted to like it much more than I actually ended up liking it. As far as I can tell, they didn't want a rating of PG so they added in pointless language and a bogglingly unnecessary scene on a train in a thunderstorm to bump up the rating. It may also have been too impressed by it's own clever ideas. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. So I can't exactly recommend it. 2.5/5
It did, however, confirm to me that I think Adrien Brody is beautiful. Don't ask me to explain that, I don't get it, it doesn't make any sense, I just find him insanely attractive. (Also, dear brother of mine, who has a habit if bringing up strange topics I've blogged about in front of our parents, let's leave this one off the discussion table, ok? This would just be too weird to talk about with Mum and Pop)

Now, new music reviews. Lately I've purchased the newest offerings from Ayiesha Woods, Barlow Girl, Michael Buble, and Relient K. (Spell check loves all those names right now)

Ayiesha Woods, "Love Like This" is good. I wasn't expecting too much, but the Christian Book store had a coupon to buy two get one half off when I wanted to buy Barlow Girl and I enjoyed AW's first release so I went ahead and got it. It's pleasant and fun without inspiring any strong emotion in me at all. It's good background music, but not my newest worship experience music. 3/5

Barlow Girl "Love and War" is amazing. I was disappointed by their previous release. It did nothing to encourage me or lift my mood. In fact, the last Cd was depressing to me. They more than made up for it with this one. It's encouraging and great for leading me to look to God and see what amazing things He can do and has done. I love the sound of the music and their voices and feel a sort of Beatles kind of vibe from a lot of it. If, you know, the Beatles had been three women, or something. 4.5/5

Michael Buble's "Crazy Love" is pretty good. Same sort of thing from the Canadian Crooner. He's got a few new original songs, such as Just Haven't Met You Yet, which is awesome, but it's mostly covers. They're good, but not amazing. If you like Michael, you'll like the CD. 3/5

Relient K's "Forget and Not Slow Down" is great. Honestly I'd been worried about this release. It feels like RK and I are due for a dud. When I'd heard that this was essentially a CD full of breakup songs I was expecting to dislike it. I bought it anyway. I'm glad I did. Yeah, there are a few melancholy songs that you won't help to lift any mood, there are still great songs that you can listen to whenever you want, single or taken. The sound is great, though occasionally surreal and weird. It might be difficult to put these songs on playlists or in a shuffle since the intros and outtros are almost seamless despite being on different tracks. I still love the CD. 4/5

So, there are my reviews. Hope you enjoyed reading them!

Piece of Cake!

Dear Friend,
Oh my! I didn't post at all in the month of August? Obviously I was too busy watching TCM's Summer Under the Stars programming. Perhaps, there will be more on that later, but not tonight.

I finished Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box tonight. I'm still smiling from the ending. I'm not usually the "tragic" romance type, but dang, that was sweet. Toward the second half of the story if I couldn't solve the puzzle within a few seconds I went looking for cheats because it was getting in the way of the freaking story! And I wanted my story NOW!!!!!! Yeah, I'm not sure if the story was even that good, but it was certainly intriguing tonight. That, and I loved "Anton's" voice. I didn't expect it, after seeing pictures of the character all through the game, but it was a great voice. And the movie parts were cool, I loved the animation.
Every time Luke finished a puzzle correctly and said "Piece of cake!" I wanted to run out and eat cake. He didn't say it like it was easy, he said it like he saw an actual piece of cake. So now, I believe I must bake a cake.

Speaking of cake; (nice segue, there, huh?) I've decided to make a cake that looks like a pineapple. It may or may not taste like pineapple, since I haven't decided on that yet. I'm completely new at making cakes that look like anything other than cakes, so this will be an adventure. Besides, I've owed myself Cookies on a Stick for a long time, so those may have to come first in the baking priority list. The Pocky is waiting and everything...

In other news... found a local school that has a program for what I was looking into, so I may be going to school soon. I just have to pray, work out how to pay for it and how to get there...
"Fun" she said with a sarcastic lack of enthusiasm.

Cabinets, diet, and Mr. Opportunity

I'm helping my parents in the newest diy home improvement project: Refinishing the kitchen cabinets. I'm pretty accustomed to diy stuff, (especially painting, which is a big part of this new project). When we moved into this house I took over the removal of the (hideous, awful, atrocious, evil) wallpaper (from hell) in the master bathroom. In the various times that we've helped friends decorate their homes, I've been my Mummy's assistant decorator, measurement taker, wallpaper remover and ladder climber.
Today's activities got off to a late start, so all we could do was empty the pantry, remove that doors and shelves and finally remove the hardware from the doors. I'm pretty sure that if you give me a screwdriver I can disassemble anything.
We've got a lot of cabinets; upper, lower, island, pantry and wet bar. This will be a long project. I'm kind of looking forward to it.

It never fails that if I think to myself, "Ok, time to cut back on the sugar, stop drinking soda, and maybe loose a few pounds." my mother will buy a boat load of cookies and candy. She'll also load up the fridge with vanilla coke. I'd decided I wanted to drop five pounds, and we've got a fridge filled with sprite and vanilla coke, two types of oreos, cupcakes, inside out junior mints and hagen-dasz ice cream. Maybe I should try to gain five pounds instead. I never mention that I want to eat less sugar, since that would be, you know, too easy. And as the only person in the house who (usually) eats sweets, I fell slightly obligated to consume these goods. Besides, if it's freshly baked, you can't save it for too long before it goes bad, you know? *sigh*

I crossed our entire kitchen to hear the Mr. Opportunity radio commercial. I also left my dad looking confused the other night while we watched tv and Mr. O came on and I got really happy. My Dad just looked at me like I'd lost my mind. My Mom just said, "Rob Paulsen" and that was enough explanation for him, apparently. Really, he ought to have figured that out on his own. =)

The lightning scared the cat

Dear Friend,
We had a thunderstorm last night. It seemed to pass directly over the house. I was looking out of my window at one in the morning, seeing the yard lit up like daylight. Only it wasn't the warm light of day, it was the cold, bluish light you only get from a storm. Just then I heard a scratch at my bedroom door. Apparently the thunder scared Zoe.
Which, frankly, scared the **** out of me!
I am very used to the idea of a pet being frightened by a storm. We had a dog who was afraid of thunder, in addition to hot-air balloons, trash bags and fly swatters. He hid during each storm that came within earshot. I also had a hamster that once gathered up every single piece of food in her cage and carried it in her cheeks until the rain had passed. So, I'm aware that animals can be concerned about the weather.
However, I've never had a cat freak out at some thunder. I've had house cats nearly my entire life. House cats don't worry about weather. They don't worry about anything. They're cats. Their job is to be fed, pet and loved. They've never been rained on, or felt strong wind. The environment is always kept at a comfortable temperature for them. So what would they care about a storm outside their oh so comfortable house?
I'm sure you've heard of those stories with animals acting strangely before disasters? Well, so have I, and coming up to my room at one in the morning is strange behavior for this little cat. Therefore, I was half convinced that we were going to have a tornado rip through the house or something. I spent the duration of the storm sitting up, reading and trying to take my mind off of my impending doom.

Turns out, the cat is a chicken who's freaked out by loud noises. And yes, the thunder was loud. There was very little delay between the flash and the boom. But still, I had a very short night's sleep for no real reason.

Grumbling ahead

Dear Friend,
Have I complained about problems from my laptop enough yet? I thought so, but the darned thing just keeps giving me new things to gripe over. Something is wrong either with the power cord (not too expensive to fix) or the DC port (likely really expensive). As such, I'm using my parent's desktop today. I don't want to risk damaging the port even more if it is damaged.
I don't want to go into details, too much, but lately I feel like if something can go wrong, it will. That's a terrible way to feel; it's frustrating and scary and sad.
I'm the sort who will put on a brave front, but I'm getting tired of it. I want to talk to someone, I want to have somebody to confide in and get sympathy from for once. I know that if I didn't keep everything to myself all the time some people would willingly try to help or at least listen to me, but I don't like to burden others with my problems. See, right now, instead of finding someone to go talk to, I'm typing into a computer. I may even delete this paragraph before I publish. (I'm trying not to, though)
The most open and emotional post I've made lately was about LOST, and that's because I typed it up before I thought. I finished watching an episode and got online. Even the unsent letters post was spontaneous. I refused to name names or specify any of that, too, but it was emotional.

Gah, now I feel like I'm rambling. Another problem I have with being open.

I just... I don't know. It'll all be OK. No matter how self-pitying I get, I always know deep down it'll be OK. I just wish I felt OK right now.