Pixar Onward Official Trailer

Interesting to see this, especially from around 1'09" where a favourite piece of music kicks in

Lion King

Cinema is cheaper on Mondays than other days so we took advantage and the three of us headed off this week to see the new Lion King. Disney are currently engaged in a plan to remake in sort of live action form all their cartoons. This is the first I've seen and I thought it was okay. It's still not live action. Apparently the opening shot is the only live action shot in the movie.

Rather than slavishly follow the original script they have shown some flexibility which seems wise. Perhaps the main problem is that it is not likely that the new film will outstrip the original. It is simply a different form of the previous one, something like a remake. Often it is as good sometimes, other time the task is impossible (how can anyone top Rowan Atkinson's original Zazu?).

10 Pop songs where words are spelled out

1. D-I-V-O-R-C-E - Tammy Wynette

2. L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. - Noah and the Whale

3. L-O-V-E – Nat King Cole

4. 'A' bomb in Wardour Street - The Jam

5. I'm a man – Bo Diddley

6. Respect - Aretha Franklin

7. Gloria - The Them

8. Mickey Mouse Club Theme – Anonymous

9. Lola – The Kinks

10. Kalamazoo - Glenn Miller Band adn the Modernaires

Iss Smee

We had our annual fancy dress in the garden last Saturday celebrating Sibyl and Gwilym's birthdays. Peter Pan was the theme and I went as Smee. Great fun.

10 Famous Ambulance Drivers of WW1

Walt Disney Publlic Domain(notice the cartoon he has drawn on his ambulance)

1. E E Cummings (writer) - volunteer Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps

2. Jerome K Jerome (writer) - French Army ambulance driver

3. W Somerset Maugham (writer) - volunteer British Red Cross ambulance corps

4. Maurice Ravel (composer) - volunteer ambulance driver or truck driver

5. Ralph Vaughan Williams (composer) - Royal Army Medical Corps

6. Jean Cocteau (dramatist and filmmaker )

7. Stafford Cripps (politician)

8. Walt Disney (Animator and film producer) - volunteer American Red Cross, but served after the armistice ending WWI was signed.

9. Ernest Hemingway (writer)  - volunteer American Field Service

10. John Masefield (writer) - served as hospital orderly in British hospital for French soldiers in France

Six stars for Saving Mr Banks

 

Saw the film Saving Mr Banks this week with Tom Hanks (Walt Disney) and Emma Thompson (P L Travers). I went with Eleri as it was one of those rare moments when we both think we'll like a film and we're able to get round to seeing it. Put simply, it was absolutely stunningly brilliant. This is what films should be like but rarely are - funny, sad, interesting, evocative, nostalgic, simple but compelling, telling a story. It is even worth knowing why it has the title it does.

I do not honestly know whether I have seen a film in the cinema that both made me laugh out loud and quietly cry. It's extremely rare for a film to do even one of those things. When you throw in the fact that it is about a film I know (Mary Poppins) and yet a story that I don't know (the life of P L Travers) then the recipe is a powerful one. I especially loved the moments when the Sherman brothers are writing a song and trying to get it right and because you know how it should go you get a tremendous buzz waiting fro them to work it out.

What was so funny? The hilarious way the Emma Thompson character objects to almost everything that is suggested and treats the co-writers like naughty schoolboys. So sad? Chiefly P L Travers inability to forgive herself but plenty of sadness from Walt and others too.

Seeing this film has convinced me that Gravity was very poor indeed as are most of the films that come out. Almost never do I want to see a film again but this one I would happily see again. I'd also like to watch Mary Poppins again some time.

10 Successful People They say had Dyslexia

1. Hans Christian Anderson
2. Marc Bolan
3. Winston Churchill
4. Leonardo Da Vinci
5. Walt Disney
6. Albert Einstein
7. Michael Faraday
8. Francis Schaeffer
9. Auguste Rodin
10. W B Yeats