Thanks to Shanella and Pixar (on twitter) for letting me know that the first official teaser poster for Pixar's 2012 release Brave came out! It's beautiful and intense. The title design, the lighting/sun/sky behind the title design- I'm rendered speechless.
From just the teaser poster and the concept art, it looks like the film will be sort of like Pixar + How to Train Your Dragon + Braveheart + Tim Burton all put in a blender to create a perfect mix of animation + story. :D
And let's see...since this is a Pixar movie:
It's going to be a treat visually (If the poster can give me chills because of how stunning it looks I'm sure the movie's going to be 100 times more stunning!)
characters are going to pretty awesome
the story will probably make us tear up at least a little bit at the end (or as in the case of UP, maybe in the first 5 min)
This is definitely going to be a must see next summer! It really does look fantastic. So fantastic that I'm going to predict that this movie's going to be #5 on my best Pixar movies list! (#5 because Monster's Inc, Toy Story, Ratatouille, and the Incredibles are non-negotiable in my world).
The one thing I'm not looking forward to is the debating that starts whenever a Disney movie comes out. The debates are usually about two things: Princesses and Pixar vs. Disney. (When it comes to Disney princesses and fictional princesses in general, I agree with Meg Cabot. When it comes to the Pixar vs. Disney feud, I think that Pixar rocks and I can never NOT like classic Disney animation soo it's a draw between them for me.)
Hm, I can imagine the headlines already:
"FINALLY Because of Pixar, We Have A Princess We Can All Root For"
"Pixar's Brave Princess Braver than Disney's"
"Brave's Princess is how an animated role model should be"
"Pixar's Scottish Princess Takes the Cake For Best Animated Princess"
(No, of course I'm not still sore about the Academy Award's Tangled snub...and Tangled's loss to Toy Story 3 for Best Song. Ha ha, what's makes you think that?!).
If anyone's going to see Cars 2 this weekend, have fun seeing the teaser trailer for Brave!
Hello. :) Long time no see, eh? How's summer been for you? I hope all of you are doing fine. I've just narrowly survived junior year of high school, and I've used this first weekend of summer to put together bits and pieces of myself I've lost these past few stress-inducing weeks. :)
I've hit a road block with blogging. I've read no books in the past three weeks, nor have I seen movies worth writing about. The linkage I've created a long time ago is now outdated (I mean, every Hunger Games fan knows that Donald Sutherland (!) is going to be Pres. Snow right?) For that reason, it seems I've no other idea than to talk about the most exciting thing that's happened to me this past month: Orlando, Florida! (Disney's at least a little fun to talk about and hear about, right?)
In the first week of May, I've had a lucky opportunity to go to Orlando, Florida with a school team for a national competition and it was GREAT. Meeting and becoming friends with students from all over the country was interesting and eye-opening just seeing how different people are in other regions of the country. I've never spoken to that many people with different accents before (or had that many people point out my mid-western "accent").
Just some pictures and my narration:
Flying over the evergreens. At this time, my friend and I were discussing whether or not we'll ever see an alligator during the course of the trip (we didn't).
No one was actually smiling for being in Orlando when this bus pulled up because this was outside the airport when we had been waiting for our bus to come for over 2 hours already. Being the good friend I am, I tried cheering my friends up as soon as I saw the bus (not ours) but no one cracked a smile. I did end up comforting our travel agent, who was a bit frantic at the time seeing as her clients were very UNHAPPY though she didn't know I was smiling and goofing off because of the Orlando board.
The fact that I started laughing as soon as I saw those two panels just shows that it doesn't take much to make me laugh. :P We went shopping right away at Downtown Disney as soon as we finally reached our hotel and unpacked. The comics strips shown above were in stores all around Downtown.
And so we went shopping for the whole day basically and ate a lot of divine Ghiradelli ice cream.
And...
STORYTIME! When I was holding a Mickey Mouse Stars Wars light-saber in a store and started to wave it around, this random boy, who couldn't be older than eight, came up to me and started hitting my light-saber with his and said something about battling against evil (I'm really not making this up). WELL, since I couldn't just walk away (the boy was getting very into his Jedi role), I started hitting back (softly of course!).
And so there we two were- me, a sixteen year old girl, and an eight-year-old kid having an all out battle between good and evil in the middle of a Disney store. At the end of our battle, the kid later complimented me on my Jedi fighting skills and skipped gleefully away. Yes, I apparently have mad Jedi skillz. Fear me!
We spent the second evening in the Disney Hollywood Studios. Guess where the real buildings stop and where the set starts!
(We were competitive, networking students by day, Orlando tourists by night- we only went to the parks after 5 everyday)
Hollywood studios was absolute heaven because it has a bunch of filmmaking events. Because my advisor knew I liked seeing all behind-the-scenes shows, she took our group to the Indiana Jones stunt show where we saw how they did the camera work, produced stunts, etc. I would've ran down onto the set pieces if they allowed people to down and particularly asked the cinematographer guy to let me sit in his chair, work with the camera, and revel in doing so...but of course I couldn't.
Since this was my first time in Disneyworld and one of my friend's also, we both plotted to get a picture with all the Disney characters. Alas, we ended up taking pictures with no characters at all because by the time we went to the parks everyday, it ended up being too late. But, in Epcot (another Disney Park which was just as amazing as Hollywood studios) the next evening, we did get to see...
college guy in an Aladdin suit working for a summer job
ALADDIN!!!
His bodyguard lady kicked my friend and I out of his line (to get a picture) because he had to go on break. So sadly, he ended up being the only Disney character we got within 10 ft. of, and the
song Prince Ali ended up getting stuck in my head for the rest of the evening (though the
latter's not necessarily a bad thing :D).
Lots and lots of ducks galore.
And...the final Disney event of the trip, Disney's Electrical Parade which was its own magical experience in itself!
One of the dwarves totally waved at me, yo.
So Disney was thrilling. It's such a happy-making place though I've never heard that many crying babies in my entire life. Of course, if Disney was a bit overwhelming for me, it must've definitely been too much for the poor toddlers. My advisor gave my friend and I tours around Disney since we were the only two in our group who haven't been down south before, and we made sure to hit all the classic Disney rides such as the Spinning Tea-Cups and Dumbo, and ate omg-totally-delicious-mouthwatering-scrumptiousfunnel cakes all throughout.
Part 2 of Orlando coming tomorrow!! Muhahwahaha. What? You think I'm going to leave you with just Disney? There's still Universal to go through! We got stuck on A LOT of rides which was pure torture for me because 1) I hate heights and 2) I have an intense dislike of roller coasters in general. So yes, tomorrow = Universal, but for now, I'll just leave you this:
Just some links I’ve been wanting to share (some for a looong time):
Stephanie Perkins’ post about her journey as a writer is so inspirational, and then Kiersten White’s post about dumb girls made me rethink some things...
Attolia fans: I found this page on the Queen’s Thief fansite, Sounis, that shows the gorgeous concept art for the Conspiracy of Kings cover. It’s amazing to see how much work goes through making the physical book itself and be able to look behind-the-scenes.
Dean Hale (Shannon Hale’s husband) wrote this heartwarming post on his blog, Dread Crumbs.
Congrats to Shannon Hale herself, for being mentioned on NPR on her birthday! :)
Choco, in In Which a Girl Reads recently wrote about her favorite underappreciated books. Mine? The Courageous Princess by Rod Esponisa (a lovely graphic novel), Sammy Keyes (my favorite mysteries when I was in middle school but no one seems to have read these!), and basically the rest of Wendelin Van Draanen’s novels. What are yours?
Scott Westerfeld put up some footage of a real Tasmanian Tiger. It's strange to think that they're not really roaming around Australia anymore.
Want to know what books topped the NY Times bestsellers list during the week of your birthday? Find out on Biblioquest’s International! Some bestselling books on my list are The Chamber by John Grisham, Disclosure by Michael Crichton, and Beyond Peace by Richard Nixon. :D What books came out during your birthday week?
James Dashner's right. I really, really liked the King’s Speech. Yeah, I’m jumping on the bandwagon, because wow, everything was just so elegant: the acting, cinematography, the music...
Speaking of the King’s Speech, the Oscar/Academy Awards nominations came out a couple days ago if you haven’t seen them yet. The nominees aren’t as predictable as I thought they would be, so I’m really looking forward to February 27th now. ;)
But it looks like the academy made a huge mistake with the Best Animated Feature category because why isn’t TANGLED there??!? I mean, Toy Story 3 is going to win anyway, but a nomination is a nomination, and it was a criticaland box-office success! (And...I unquestionably adored every bit of it.) It deserves a nomination! :(
*sigh*
Anywho, in a somewhat related note, Meg Cabot back in December wrote about the Princess Thing. It’s worth reading. :D
Anddd, that’s all for now. Ciao for now! I'll have a review of Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly very soon...
My friends and I got together yesterday afternoon, and after a loong series of emails and phone calls about what movie to watch, we finally decided on the Princess & the Frog. I've been wanting to watch it for a long time, (I mean, a traditional, hand-drawn, Disney movie, in 10 years?!), so let's just say that I was a little more than ecstatic to watch it. After finishing it, I guess it's fair to say that I really, really, really, really liked this twist of the Frog Prince. (Is that enough reallys? :D)
It's post-WWI New Orleans. The film follows Tiana, who's a hard-working girl, saving enough money to fufill her (and her father's) dream of becoming a chef, and owning a restaurant. Along comes Prince Naveen, who comes from the fictional kingdom of Maldonia, who dances his away into the city for the Mardi Gras masquerade ball in hopes of finding a rich girl to marry, because you see, due to his carefree lifestyle, his parents cut him off, and now he's totally broke. Everything is turned upside down, when he gets tricked by a voodoo master, Dr. Facilier, and he's turned into a frog. After finding Tiana, and convincing her to kiss him (because he believes she's a princess due to the costume she's wearing), she turns into a frog herself. Together, with a couple of new friends, they go on an odyssey to turn themselves back into humans, and learn about themselves, and maybe even find true love along the way. :)
There were four things I absolutely LOVED about this movie: the characters, the animation, the culture, and basically the story. Each character had a well-developed personality, and for this reason I was especially enchanted by Prince Naveen (hehehe :P). We got to know him more than we do the other princes. He's a bit of a weirdo at first, but he's cool and quirky. The last couple of scenes with him and Tiana were especially sweet, and I just liked how supportive he was of Tiana and her dreams. :D The other characters were also eccentric, like Ray the Firefly, Louise the Alligator who dreams of becoming a Jazz musician, Mama Odie the crazy voodo lady, and Tiana, herself.
The animation was sweet, and I liked going back to the original way of hand-drawn movies after watching CG movies all the time. It was...refreshing. And, I enjoyed seeing the Mardi Gras celebrations, and hearing the different style of songs. Though the songs weren't as good as other Disney songs like the one in the Lion King & the Little Mermaid, a few were still catchy. Oh yeah, and the fact that I understood all the little bits of French that were spoken made me happy. :P
The Princess and the Frog tells about how hard work is also needed along with hoping and wishing, friendship, finding out the difference between what you want and what you need, and like all other Disney movies, love. :D It's quirky, sweet, cute, hilarious, and maybe even a little heart-warming at times, and...it's a Disney movie! Now, who doesn't like a good Disney fairytale rendition, huh? Huh?! :D
You are part Cinderella. You are hard-working and never complain, however, your trust is sometimes misplaced and people sometimes take advantage of you. Still, you are beautiful inside and out, and one day you will realize it and find true love.
You are part Pocahontas. You defy convention and sometimes do what is considered taboo. Unfortunately, others do not always appreciate your differences, so it's good that you are so strong-willed. You are loyal and you believe in fate. Your true love will find you one day.
Wow, I wasn't expecting that! I would've liked to be Ariel or Belle, but Cinderella and Pocahontas do sound like me, pretty much. I think I'm more like Cinderella than Pocahontas though, but I like them both!
