(My Youtube review)

I know some of you have been wondering when I would finally post my Jungle Book review here on the blog. I posted my youtube review on Thursday night, so make sure you are subscribed to both the blog and channel because sometimes I don’t have time to update both at same time (I’m only one person friends 🙂 ).

I also wanted to wait to see the Jungle Book a second time on IMAX today before posting this review. I find on these big films it is often helpful to see the movie twice just to make sure my first read was accurate. I can confidently say I had the same experience in both screenings, so I’m pretty assured about my feelings.

It’s a good movie. I liked it a lot. Is it perfect? No but what movie is? Let’s talk about the pros and cons.

Today I had a fun new experience.  Since 2013 they have had one of the most successful local comicon’s here in Salt Lake and I’ve wanted to attend but since I don’t read comic books I wasn’t sure it would be worth it.  Well, this year it happened to fall on the week after my birthday so I thought why not? and I decided to go to Comicon.

It started today and it was a mixture of fun and not so much fun.  Luckily I think next time I will know what not to do and have more fun. When I arrived I didn’t know which part of the Salt Palace Convention Center the Con was on so I parked on the West Side.  Big mistake.  I wish the organizers had put a sign or something because I had to walk to the very most East side through 3 other…

I’ve developed a fun tradition with my friend Joan at Bitsy Creations who is a talented graphic designer to make a custom Christmas card.  Here’s a little slideshow of my previous year’s cards.

Here is this years card.  Merry Christmas!! Thank you for every blog you’ve read and support you’ve given me.  It means more than you will know.  I hope you enjoy Scrooge Month and have a very wonderful holiday season.

One thing which has been continually  brought up on the blog is the issue of darkness or evil in a movie and when does it cross the line into disturbing and violent.  It’s a hard question to answer to be honest.  It is kind of a ‘I know it when I see it’  situation but I will try to explain.

Few things to keep in mind.

1.  I am not a fan of scary movies or horror- I personally do not like the sensation of being scared, never have, never will.  I recognize that is my personal preference and there is nothing inherently wrong with horror movies, but everyone comes to movie viewing with a set of likes and dislikes such as disliking musicals or romantic comedies.  I am Legend, Rear Window, Wait Until Dark are about as scary as I get.

Even a very popular super hero franchise is…

So after the grant was finished with Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros Walt Disney was left with a problem.  The army took many of his artists into it’s service and much of the rest of his staff was busy making training videos and propaganda films for the US Government.

If Walt wanted his feature film division to stay in tact and be functional after the war he would have to do something to keep releasing films.  That is why we get the next 4 short subject or package films.  Anyone can tell these are scrapped projects picked up again, clumsily clobbered together to get as close to an hour of material as they could because that is literally what they are.

In some cases that produced hidden gems.  In others boring segments that should have been kept in the scrap pile, but in many more cases it creates things…

Production- (If you want to read about the segments skip down to Segments)

In modern movies typically we see a hit followed by a million imitators.  Not the case with Disney.  Even in later, more commercial years they followed Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast with the different feels of Aladdin and Lion King.  However, this was never more true than in the early years.  A mammoth hit of Snow White was followed by 4 films that couldn’t be more different- Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi.

Fantasia was the 3rd animated feature film by Walt Disney Studios and it is a bold undertaking to be sure.  Originally Walt was worried the character of Mickey was going to be forgotten by the public and even the studio.  As his master creation Walt didn’t want this to happen and had developed an idea for the Sorcerers Apprentice.  Music had been written…