Category: Review

My Issue With Disney Live-Action Remakes (and Some Suggestions)

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After going off about the soon-to-be-released Mulan live-action adaptation, (and seeing that they are remaking the animated Robin Hood,) I do need to give credit where it’s due on that film because it does not have the issue that I most take with Disney’s live-action remake:

The live-action movies should be human stories. Any non-human characters are unsettling and live in the Uncanny Valley.

The example I get most heated about is the 2017 Beauty and the Beast remake. (I’ll talk about 2019’s Lion King in a minute.) When the movie was first announced, I’ll admit even I was excited, even about the casting of Emma Watson! (Who among us did not fall for that Tumblr rumor that she was cast years and years ago with Guillermo Del Toro to direct?) But then I saw the trailer… with the creepy live-action Mrs. Potts and Lumiere and Cogsworth…

NO THANKS

I can never unsee them. I actually stopped wanting to see the movie and only watched it on a streaming service much later because my husband is a big Emma Watson fan. (I can’t get into the music in this post…) It is just really unnerving to have so much time spent on non-human characters.Read More »

Thoughts on the Upcoming “Mulan”

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The Mulan live-action adaptation release date has been pushed back to July 24, after being delayed indefinitely and after the red carpet premiere took place earlier last month, before Hollywood was shut down.

Amazon.com: Mulan 2020 Poster 27x40 Original D/S Movie Poster ...

Will I watch it? Absolutely.
Am I excited to watch it? No. I’m really really skeptical of how much I will like this movie, even though I do really want to like it. Watching the first trailer planted many doubts in my mind that I’ve ranted about enough to friends that I figured it was worth it to write it all down to save everyone some time the next time I need to get this off my chest.

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2019 in Books

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2019 was a great reading year for me in that I didn’t feel like I read too many painful books. However, I am disappointed that I didn’t complete my Goodreads reading challenge, breaking my streak of exceeding my challenge 3 years in a row. Last year, I read 29 books and thought that, with my past pattern of exceeding my reading goal by a few books, I would be able to get to 30 this year. It seems that I may have plateaued at 29 for the time being, however, so I’ll need to re-evaluate how much reading time I have to achieve these goals.

Here are the books I read in 2019!

2019inBooks.jpg

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2019 in Film

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Another year, another list of movies! This year marks the first full year I had AMC A-List, which I didn’t take full advantage of but did make it easier for us to watch more movies more spontaneously. I had thought that moving to New York would mean we would watch fewer movies but having A-List has meant that we spent more weeknights at the movies than at home.

(For every movie I saw, including movies released before 2019, and other media I consumed, please check out my Media Log.)

BeFunky-collage.jpgRead More »

Media Log 2019

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This year, I was inspired by my friend Ben Hong (who himself got the idea from Jen Myers) to track nearly all of the media I consumed, as a supplement to my movies and books recap. As I’ll be resetting the Media Log page on this blog, here is what I logged in 2019.Read More »