Pazu is an orphan who works for the owner of a mine and one night after everyone has left he sees something falling from the sky. He runs up to a platform and sees that it's a young girl floating down from the heavens. Just as he tentatively reaches out to catch her, almost as if she weren't real, she stops floating and falls heavily into his arms, almost knocking him off the platform himself. The girl's name is Sheeta and she is on the run from the leader of an organization who wants to get his hands on a crystal Sheeta got from her grandmother and keeps on a necklace. Pazu decides that he'll help Sheeta escape both the man and an unruly gang of pirates who are also after the crystal. This back and forth chase leads everyone to a mythical castle in the sky. Pazu's father got lost in a storm surrounding the island and Pazu has been preparing to go find the floating castle that his father was searching for. The crystal has great power that can be deadly, and has a connection with this mystical castle in the sky. Will the bad guys get their hands on this potentially deadly power? And if they do, is there anything Pazu and Sheeta can do to prevent a most certain disaster?!
This is a wonderful film. There is action, adventure, romance, and suspense. It's both whimsical and grounded at the same time. The movie is about a dream of a floating castle, but that fantasy and whimsy is brought down to earth by greed and power. The characters are wonderful and I enjoyed the dynamic between Sheeta and Pazu. A wonderful film for all ages.
This is a cheesy little movie from the 90's that is both a coming of age story and a concert on film. The story is about this young girl who gets a bike for her birthday, but when she gets it she realizes that she can't ride it. She doesn't want her friends to know that she can't ride a bike because they might laugh at her and falls into a bout of self-pity. At this point a 'troll' appears in a tree and tells her that she can give the girl the secret to riding a bicycle, but first she must do a favour. The troll gives her a ticket that lets her go into a tree to this underground world, which is a theater. The troll gets her to be a backstage assistant and then tells her that the production was for a birthday party and the birthday boy was missing, so the girl has to go find him. During this time she meets various people and then these people perform on stage in front of a audience also dressed up as 'trolls', which just means they have some feathers and glitter on, but it looks like a live filming of a concert. Some of the performers are Robert Munsch, Fred Penner, Rockapella, etc. So the girl follows a trail of broken candles and ends up finding the birthday boy, who is a dragon. Unfortunately, the dragon doesn't want to go on stage to blow out the candles because he can't blow fire, which he must do on this birthday. The girl then motivates the dragon to just keep trying and to believe in himself and not to give up, and then he ends up breathing fire and lighting his birthday cake. The troll sends the girl back to her own world but before she can tell her how to ride a bike the girl says that she already knows what she has to do and then just keeps practicing until she can ride.
I really liked this movie when I was a kid, cheesiness and all. I liked watching the performances and I liked the story too. Definitely not the best of the 90's but fun none the less.
I came across this short but powerful film after watching the movie sea prince and fire child
***Spoilers below***
The story is about a young lamb named Chirin who lived with his mother and their herd in a meadow. Chirin was more energetic than all the other lambs put together and wore a bell around his neck so that his mother could find him if he wandered too far while playing. All is good in Chirin's life until one night when the wolf king comes down from his mountain and attacks the sheep in their little hut. He starts attacking one or two of the sheep and then sees Chirin and charges for him, but before the wolf can eat him, Chirin's mother throws herself on Chirin and sacrifices herself for her baby. When Chirin is able to struggle out from under his mother the wolf has gone and he finds that his mother is dead, so he leaves the meadow to find the wolf on the mountain and get revenge. When he climbs the mountain and finds the wolf he tries charging him, yelling that he killed his mother, but the wolf doesn't give him the time of day and flicks him down the side of a small drop with his tail, knocking Chirin out. When he wakes up he goes again to find the wolf, but this time tells the wolf that he wants to be his apprentice. sheep are weak and they hide instead of fighting, but wolves are strong. The wolf laughs him off and Chirin goes off to prove himself as a wolf by trying to scare buffalo, a skunk, and a couple of ground hogs or something, but instead of scaring them they just laugh and end up pushing him around instead. Chirin returns to the wolf defeated and then decides to follow the wolf around. The wolf ends up giving in and trains Chirin to live the hard and lonely life of a wolf. After much time has past and Chirin has grown into an adult ram, the wolf decides it is time to attack the sheep in the meadow again, this time with Chirin. Chirin barges into the little shack and the sheep are scrambling around everywhere to hide. One little lamb calls for his mother and she runs to him and shields him with her body, like Chirin's mother did so long ago. This strikes a chord in him and he runs out of the hut. The wolf comes to meet him and tells him not to run away. Chirin doesn't want to wolf to kill anymore sheep so he and the wolf fight and chirin ends up killing him. Then Chirin leaves, more alone and heartsick than ever before, never to be seen or heard from again.
***End spoilers***
This movie touched a chord in me, I think it would in almost anyone. When you first start watching it it seems like it will be a really fluffy vacuous movie that you'll forget 10 minutes after watching it. Instead, it's almost a testament to those who have loved and lost and then let the pain of that loss lead them down a darker road. I know that it doesn't seem like a movie for children, but I think that the way this was handled is appropriate for a children's film. There is no blood or gore, it just deals with serious issues instead of happily ever afters and the vacuous fluff we've become used to. This was made in the 70's so what's deemed appropriate now and what was then has obviously changed, but I think that films like this should be seen by children. Life is not always going to be happy, not everyone you meet will be happy, and sometimes you will be in bad situations.
The character in this film makes a choice to isolate himself and to be mean, like the wolf who killed his mom, but the way the movie ends leaves the viewer feeling his sadness and his dissatisfaction with his own life. It doesn't tell the child what should be done in a sad situation, but lets the viewer make their own decision. I actually loved it when I first saw it (as an adult) because it didn't have that happy, Disney ending. I mean I love happy endings, but our society has really sucked everything out of the 'happily ever after' idea, so much so that a happy ending seems almost false or staged in film. In almost every film you know that the characters will all be happy at the end of the movie, even if they don't end up getting the guy/girl, they are happy with their lives. This often leads to young kids who grow up having to find out that life isn't a happily ever after. There will be bad things that happen and you won't always get the guy/ girl. In fact, romance may not even be the focal point of your happiness, shocking an idea as that is. This movie had an unsatisfied character and left the viewer with something to think about. Chirin's struggle will stay with you after the credits. It definitely leaves an impression on the viewer. Now, whether or not you want to expose your child to the fact that everything is not happy in the world and that the choices you make will effect you in some way or another is up to the parent, but this is definitely a children's film. It's deeper than it seems on the surface and gives a child something to think about. Great film.
Being Erica is a show about a woman who is disappointed with where her life has ended up and as a result ends up seeing this therapist who sends her back in time to reconcile herself with regrets she has about her past. I thought the concept for the show was pretty interesting and I thought that the events of the past she went back to reconcile were relatively universal landmarks that are relatable to the audience. She gets sent back to situations like her bat mitzfah, her first sexual experience, the university group that could have landed her her dream job, event that went both well and not so well with friends and family, and in one episode she was even sent back to before her birth to better understand her parents.
One of the things I liked about this series was that at no point in any of the times Erica goes back in time is she able to alter the chain of events that have happened. She has a list of regrets that the therapist, Tom, sends her back to and she may change her perspective or may do something different from what she did in the past, but the resulting action that happened originally will still happen. The only difference is that she understands the situation for what it is and comes to realize that she is not to blame, or if she is, to own up to her faults and change her perspective or current actions to make things right. So really, even though this sounds sort of like a science fiction with all the time travel, it is more of Erica's rumination of her life and the actions she takes to own her life and make it what she wants it to be.
I thought that the characters were interesting and sufficient attention was paid to each of the minor characters. everyone in the show is given a story (minus Erica's boss, who is discussed more in the second season) and everyone is given a little bit of depth. We learn about Erica more and more with each episode as we see her struggle with her past, so needless to say that Erica grows as a character and who we see at the beginning of the series is somewhat altered from the person who we see at the end. An interesting show to say the least.
I love faeries, and anime, and this is the perfect combination of both. Alright, there are definitely some flaws in the movie. The colours are kind of faded, the bad guy is cheesy, and as is typical of 80's cartoons the girl just whines instead of doing something, among other things. My mind was telling me this as I was watching... but a stronger voice drowned that one out and was wishing I'd seen this movie when I was five years old. I would have loved it then. I still appreciate it now, but there's something about a child's perception that makes magic come alive and this story is full of magic.
It's about the son of the sea king and the daughter of the fire queen. As legend has it, the king and queen are siblings and were very close and always together. The wind saw this, became jealous of their happiness and told lies to each of them making them distrust the other. They quarreled and the fire queen went to live in the sky and the sea god the sea, and the wind was banished to the depths of the sea and his eye was removed. One day the prince of the sea goes to a forbidden place and sees the fire child watching over the eternal flame. He comes back the next day and they fall in love, and from there they try to find a way to make their impossible love work.
One of the things I love about anime is that it's not disnified. Obviously. What I mean by that is that a romanticized ideal is achieved, but not without cost. There isn't a false message that you can have your cake and eat it too. You should strive to achieve your desires, but you have to know that there may be a price to pay. This isn't ominous by any means, don't take it the wrong way, the movie isn't sinister and won't worry a child. The moral isn't that bad will always come from getting something you want, but more that sometimes you have to choose between two things you might like and if you choose one you might mourn the loss of the other, even though the choice you made was the best one and is what will make you the happiest. This isn't always the message in main stream films. Most of the time the idea expressed is that you go through a tough phase, but then by making the right choices all goes well in your life, happily ever after, without regret or pain or thoughts of what if. The story end with the idea that the couple will always be happy in their paradise, but in real life situations life isn't so black and white, and it's refreshing to see films reflect this every now and again, especially films for children.
The fire people are all faeries, and all except for the fire queen have a sprite-like appearance. The prince is human looking, but very lanky, and all of his subjects are fish (so both boys and girls will watch). It was a great film full of fantasy, adventure, whimsy, and romance. Great film.
This is a fun book about a king who likes taking a bath. The story is short and fun to read, but it's the illustrations that make this book noteworthy. They are lush and expressive and whimsical and the attention paid to detail is wonderful. The story is simple and if it was illustrated in another style would be like the endless board books simplistically introducing life skills to toddlers. However, this style makes this story an adventure. The pictures perfectly punctuate the prose in the most flattering way.
The story is about a page who asks the court to get the king out of the bathtub and several people try different things to get him out. A knight tells him there's a battle out side, the queen tells him it's time for lunch, a duke tells him they should go fishing, the entire court tells him to dance at a masquerade, but instead of leaving the tub he makes the person join him in the tub to do whatever they suggest to him! At the end when everyone is at wits end the page pulls the plug and the king finally gets out.
A fun book to read with illustrations that will get their imaginations working. The award on the cover is very much understandable.
Even without knowing what this film was about, knowing that it was James Cameron's new film and that he spent something like 10 years creating this was enough to know that this was going to be something of a hiccup within movie going society. so going into the film only knowing that the graphics would be 'groundbreaking', I of course thought it would suck. however, I was pleasantly surprised.
I've heard and spoken to people who were not very impressed by the plot and pass the film off as a 'Pocahontas in space' kind of story, and it's true, that's an accurate description. Something to keep in mind however is that all stories borrow from that which came before it, and most often the best stories are simply re-imaginings of earlier ideas. It could be said that pride and prejudice is nothing more than a glorified Cinderella story, but that doesn't make it bad. basically, even though this movie is a blockbuster, try to keep an open mind.
The film takes place in the future and focuses on this marine, Jake sully, who lost the use of his legs on the job. he gets called back to duty when his scientist twin brother dies, to take his place as an operator of an organic being grown from his brother's DNA and the DNA of the Na'vi, the people on the planet Pandora. Earth is running out of resources and humans want to farm an ore found on Pandora (which has become the equivalent of gold or diamonds). So the army recruited a team of scientists to create these beings that could be used to communicate with the natives and essentially move them out of their home so that they can mine the ore underneath the tree they live in. Of course the scientists only have a professional interest in Pandora, in the people and the land, but are funded by the government/ military and are therefore at the disposal of the source of the funding. On his first journey to Pandora, Jake gets separated from the other two scientists he's with and is forced to attempt to survive the night in this unknown and deadly jungle. Before an unfortunate 'death by jungle dog' incident, he is found by the chief's daughter, Neytiri, and she saves him. Before she can leave him to fend for himself, the holy being of the Na'vi signifies to her that he is important so she takes him home and he is ultimately given a trial period in the tribe to learn the ways of the people. As he learns more about the na'vi he comes to support their perspective. Pretty standard stuff, but the plot isn't what grabbed me most about this film.
One of the most obvious themes in the movie was the push for environmentalism, or preserving our planet. The reason humans were in Pandora was because their planet was dying, because the people on earth used and wasted almost all of their resources. This of course represents the perspective of mainstream north American society. It's pretty much an accepted philosophy that the economy rules nature, destroying nature in the name of money is logical even if it may rub some people the wrong way. it's logical. But people haven't thought this way forever, not all people and cultures think this way, and an alternative perspective is represented in the Na'vi. For them nature is the economy. to harm or destroy whatever is alive is akin to harming yourself. This of course is reminiscent of a sort of aboriginal ideology that takes time to respect the living aspect of nature and the symbiotic relationship they share with it. This connection to nature is presented in a very literal sense in the movie. the Na'vi literally connect to their environment. They all have a long pony tail hairstyle, and at the end of their hair are these tentacle- like feelers that can wrap around certain things and allow them to 'plug in' to that thing. this allows them to create a bond with animals they ride and with the tree that represents their deity and holds the memories of their people. This was a lot like the way people today are constantly 'plugged in'. Whether it's cellphones, iPods, computers, TV, radio, we are rarely without our technological network to connect us to our world, or the part of our world we care about. It might be harder for the average post-colonial North American to truly appreciate a connection to nature as did pre-colonial societies, so M think the way this was presented helped get that message across.
my favourite scene in the movie, and the reason I enjoyed the movie as much as I did was the scene when Neytiri and the general were fighting near the end of the movie. I loved it because symbolically they were both 'plugged in' to the technology of their own worlds and were using that connection to fight each other. Neytiri was connected to a this wild, jaguar/ jungle dog animal through the 'bond' and the general was sitting in this robot, gundam wing/ escaflowne kind of idea. the two of them had to use where they came from as a means to fight the other, they couldn't just face each other person to person. They were kind of like Jake's Na'vi body, Jake was sitting in some lab somewhere while his intentions were lived out through a body not his own. Basically their ideals and I guess you could say worlds were fighting against each other with the help of the intentions of the people behind the wheel.
It was not the most ground breaking film I've ever seen, nor the best told story, but overall I'd say it was a good movie and worth the watch.
