Since so many people posted so in journals, I say back to you: HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I hope your days were all relaxing and fun! :D

Aaaand we're back from Thanksgiving with the family! We went up to my grandparents' new house, which was closer to the church, in a nicer neighborhood, and quite a bit bigger. Also, two bathrooms instead of one FTW. It was a little weird since I'm so used to visiting them in their old house, but I am glad they got this new one.

Dinner was the usual of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad and fruit salad, green bean caserole, etc. Plus pie and ice cream for dessert! Yummmmm. Also, this was the first year in which there was actually room enough for all the "kids" to sit at the adult table, lawl. (Our youngest "kid" is in high school now, so...yeah.) I'm still very thankful that I get along with my extended family pretty well; I've never gotten into a nasty conversation with them during get-togethers. Then again, we don't talk politics too much, and if anyone does it's usually in such a tone that no one can take anything seriously. :P

Otherwise, I pretty much spent the time drawing/inking, and playing "Settlers of Catan" with my siblings/cousins about twenty times over. And I only won once. D: Fail. If you've never played it and like board games, pick it up: it's addicting, and the design of it is such that the board is radically different every game.

Also today, I suggested to the family that we go see Enchanted, and they all agreed, even one of my guy cousins! Go me! What's more: everyone really enjoyed it, even the high-school-guys that went with me. XD

My short thoughts:
It was very cute and entertaining! I was laughing out loud through good chunks of it, awwwing at other parts, and the animation fan in me went all happy at the lovely return to 2D. I'd definitely recommend people go see it in theaters, it's worth the money, if for nothing else than the musical number involving hundreds of people just hanging around in Central Park. XD

My much longer thoughts:

Now, don't get me wrong: I really enjoyed this movie; it was something I could easily watch with my family over and over, and that's hard to come by nowadays. I think it managed to pull off what the first Shrek did, but what the Shrek sequels failed to do: make fun of cliches and franchises while still showing that the making fun is all out of love for them. (Galaxy Quest is also a great example of this.) The characters were great and ALL grew throughout the story, and the story didn't try to overcomplicate itself. I more than agreed with the ultimate message, since I'm huge on believing things will work out/trusting in the goodness of others/not every ending should be a sad one/etc. I think, as far as Disney films go, this is a definite step in the right direction.

BUT, it's still not there yet. More of the failed, recent Disney films were stuck in the past in a bad way, while Enchanted was stuck in the past in a good way. But even if it was a good way, they're still stuck in the past. I loved looking for references to other Disney movies in this one (and there were plenty, some hard to find!) but they were all still building off of "Look what we've done THEN," not "Look what we've done NOW!"

Frankly, parts of the plot were predictable. Even before we got to the ball scene, I saw Giselle falling for Robert, while Robert's girlfriend Nancy went back to Andalasia with Prince Edward, since they were both discovering their better compatibilities and since the whole point of the movie was people finding Their One True Love. Maybe this sort of thing is less predictable to a younger audience, but it just stood out to me as a little too obvious.

Speaking of obvious, while I did like the dragon scene at the end (wooo awesome dragon!) I didn't really appreciate the dragon-queen's lines of "Ha, looks like you're the brave little princess, and he's the damsel in distress!" We shouldn't need to have this pointed out to us! It's clear from the moment the dragon grabs Robert and Giselle runs to pick up the sword that there's an ironic role reversal going on, and it's powerful enough that way. Having the dragon point out HAY GUYZ ROLE REVERSAL LOL makes it feel like the movie is assuming the audience is stupid, and I don't like it when movies assume that I'm stupid, or even when they assume that the younger kids watching the movie are stupid.

I really did like the animated part. It made me go "SQUEE!" to see 2D animation on the screen again! I just wish it had more to do with the movie other than "this is why some of the characters seem to act crazy in New York!" When watching the beginning, Giselle just felt like a part of the happy-fuzzy-animals background; like a product of her environment. It was only when she reached New York that you really felt like her innocent, naive, fairytale self was really HER character and who SHE was, and that was what made her interesting. It just kind of seems a shame that that's what the animated world was reduced to. D: It could have been so much more! Dangit, I liked the cute singing animals!

Perhaps part of why the movie felt a little off about the parody part was because the movie was clearly a romance story. There is nothing wrong with this, and as far as romance stories go, it was an excellent one! I don't usually have the patience for romance stories, so the fact that I liked this one so much says a lot. However, the movies that they're parodying...aren't really romance stories. Snow White isn't a romance. Cinderella isn't a romance. Neither are Aladdin or The Little Mermaid, really. Perhaps Beauty and the Beast is the one that comes closest. They're stories that have lots of romance in them, but they aren't really romance stories. It feels like Disney is still treating their old, classic movies like a means of merchandising rather as real, living characters, what with this sudden obsession with the princess line of merchandise. Like they've forgotten that there's more to these characters than just Finding The Man Of Their Dreams, even though that's the very thing they're parodying. The Disney princesses are interesting because they are fascinating, strong characters all on their own, not because of who they marry. Giselle is funny and sweet not because she's a parody of the Disney princesses, but because she's a parody of the idea of Disney princess merchandising. And just like her predescessors, I think she's got the spunk and character to stand all on her own, if Disney will just give her the chance. (And I don't mean in the "single, independent woman who needs no husband" way. Just as a woman is not automatically weak if she's married, she's not automatically strong if she's single, either.)

As far as Giselle's character and the parody-of-romance idea goes, however, that's more of a nitpick. I've never been really huge on chick flicks or romance films, anyway, so that could easily just be a "needs moar action!" bias. Again, REALLY, I enjoyed the characters and their story a lot. Despite my nitpicks, the story and the characters, ultimately, were very solid.

I think what stood out to me the most, and what has been nagging at me most about what Disney has been putting out, is that I saw nothing new. It was a sweet story, a story with a message I really believe in and with adorable characters and (YAAY!) some fun musical numbers to pull it off, but it was all stuff I had seen before; that I could predict. When Walt Disney was alive, he was all about innovation: about trying something new, pushing the art form to places it had never gone before. What I wanted to see more of in Enchanted was innovation. And I'm not talking about just innovations in technologies; anyone can see that fancy new special effects and That New Dynamic Hair System Autodesk Just Released doesn't matter crap to a good movie. I'm talking about innovations in the storytelling itself: a new way of pushing the art form of animated storytelling, a new spin on a character, a unique way of presenting information, anything to keep it just from riding on the coattails of a franchise. I think that's where Pixar has been succeeding so much. With movies like The Incredibles and Ratatouille, they not only told great stories with loveable characters like Enchanted, but they were INNOVATIVE and what they did was new and unique. I wasn't trying to predict how The Incredible or Ratatouille would end, because I'd never seen anything like them before, and I didn't know what to expect. That's also why I'm looking forward to Wall-E: It looks like it takes on that same innovation, that use of great characters in a way I haven't seen before.

So basically, that's the next step I want to see Disney take. I know they can do sweet characters like Giselle and Robert, and funny, good-moral stories like Enchanted. But I want to see them try something new; not be afraid to experiment and push the limit of what kind of stories they tell. If anyone can afford to experiment, it's Disney, and they still seem afraid to get their feet really wet. I also want them to get out of this crappy mindset of today's youth-entertainment-makers in the assumption that Children Are Stupid and Fragile. Children are neither, and dammit, if they story calls for it, they can handle you killing off Bambi's mother or Simba's father.

HOLY CRAP HOW'D THIS GET SO LONG. DDD: ARGH, I make it sound like I didn't like the movie, but really I did! I think people should go see it; bring your friends! I think most of this horribly nonsensical ramble is brought on partly by me missing my childhood dearly, and partly by this deep-seeded desire to get back animation the respect and love I think it ultimately deserves. And since I still don't have a job doing it yet, instead I spill out my thoughts on the movies I see. :P


If you don't want to deal with all that TL;DR, here's just one more thought having to do with animation and innovation:
I'm really glad we went to see Enchanted instead of Beowulf.

OKAY OFF TO BED NOW. @_@

Drawing: So many comic things! TLS comics done, YAY!

Writing: Notes and scripts.