Pixar's "Brave": Why It's A Big Deal

    We all love Pixar's films, from Toy Story to Up Pixar is constantly wowing us with their amazing story telling and masterfully crafted animation, but even though all their movies have been epic they have never had a movie hosting a female main character, there have been female side characters but never main characters, this is something we are glad that they are finally redeeming. Its about time that we saw more movies come out that features female characters leading the story, thus "Brave" is a big deal, the first Pixar film centered around a girl instead of a boy.

    The newest preview for Brave has just recently come out and it looks great, we are all looking forward to Pixar's latest original work with anticipation. From what we can tell from the preview this is a reversed princess story, here is a princess who does not wish to be a "stay at home princess" but wants to be able to venture into the world, go in adventures and fight, instead of staying home and learning to be miss perfect and wait for some prince to come take her away. Of course her parents oppose it, specially her mom, but she will go out anyway and prove to the world that a girl adventurer can be more qualified than their male counterpart, this is a good message, one that needs to be shared more, the restrictions placed on people because of them either being male or female is prejudice and something we should constantly work on fighting against.

  We live in a world where there are more girls going to college than guys, where women have become presidents of corporations and countries, where we have more female workers than men in various parts of the United States, this is a big deal, it is something that  needs to be broadcast to the new generation, telling them that it doesn't matter what you see in magazines or TV you are good enough, you are smart enough and you can accomplish anything no matter what your gender is, so don't let the media fool you into thinking you can't be successful in the world.

   Think about all the animated movies that have come out as of late, now try and remember which one of these movies was lead by a female character, maybe one or two, and to take this thought even further, think about those movies that had leading female roles, which one of those was targeted towards everyone versus the ones that were targeting only the female population? What we mean to point out here is the fact that Pixar is releasing a movie that has a female leading character that is being targeted to all audiences and not just the female population, this is a big deal. Here is why, this is Pixar making the stand in saying that its about time we embrace the female lead character and stop being scared to have a girl win the battles instead of a guy.

    This is not a new thing here, even in other movies we see this phenomenon happening all the time, think "Transformers" the only reason there is a girl included as a character is sex appeal, that's about it, in a sense it sells, but in another sense the whole formula is disgusting. Let's think of another movie, how about "Lord Of The Rings", notice there are no female characters within the party that sets out to destroy the one ring, and don't say "that was another time, he wrote it forever ago" cause we can always counter with "Narnia" which hosted some strong female lead characters and was written around the same time, C. S. Lewis is the man, let's be honest. 

   The point here is simple, we need more movies with strong female characters, we need to encourage the new generation of women to aim for the heavens, to surpass their male counterparts, and achieve that which we have thought to be unachievable. This year we do actually have some good movies coming out hosting strong female roles, we'll be featuring a few of those on our Friday post, so stay tuned for that. On Wednesday we'll be talking about some reality TV shows that are nothing but negative influences on the next generation and how we need to start fighting against such shows.

     We hope you are as excited as we are about "Brave" and hope that this Monday will be a great one for you. To all the Mass Effect 3 people out there, be sure to get some sleep tonight.

Love from your humble blogger,

The Importance Of Personal Growth: Heroes

      There is a difference between heroes or people we look up to and role models or mentors, at least for the sake of this entry. Heroes are people we look up to that we do not have interactions with, and probably will never do so, this could be a movie celebrity, a music artist, a sports icon and so on. We all have either a few heroes we love or just one person we idolize and follow. This does not mean you are a stalker of said person, it just means that that person is somewhat of hero to you, he or she is someone you resonate with or someone that inspires you to be better, and thus there is an inherent importance of caution when deciding who will be the heroes in your life.

      There are good celebrities and bad celebrities, there are those that we should look up to and those that are headed down a road of destruction that we should stay away from. The issue here is advertising, some celebs are horrible people lacking in good character and function more on selfish actions than anything else, we've seen plenty of those throughout the years, though through TV shows and advertising some celebs that should never be looked up to are regarded as great role models. We aren't saying here that Kim Kardashian is a horrible human being, we are also not saying that she never does anything good, what we are saying is that one should think twice before modeling their lives after hers, that Kim is not the best role model in life, we could include a series of other actors/actress, musicians and so on that one should not look up to like Lindsay Lohan for instance, though Lohan went off the deep end the example stands, there are plenty of good people to look up to and plenty of bad, be careful who you idolize for they will influence your life.

    Though there are plenty of bad people out there, there are some actresses that continually blow our minds with how awesome they are. There are so many good examples here, Natalie Portman is a clear choice, here we have a good actress who doesn't do the whole paparazzi thing and became amazing with her rap on SNL, she won our hearts that day. She is not alone though, there are plenty of other actresses that are regarded as not only good actresses but good human beings like Julia Roberts, or Emma Stone, both of which have been in amazing movies and have had the opportunity to be horrible human beings but have chosen the higher ground and seek to portray good images of themselves, here are people worth looking up to.

   The guys are a lot funnier here, only because their cases are so obvious that only a few people really miss the point here. An example of a bad hero "The Situation" from Jersey Shore, some people actually look up to the guy and every time they do our hearts die a little of sadness, we're talking a guy so ridiculous that Abercrombie and Fitch actually paid him not to wear their clothing on the show, yeah that happened. There are really cool guys out there though, this is also a solid list like Ryan Gosling, Paul Rudd, Ryan Reynolds, and so forth, though our favorite has to be Hugh Jackman. Hugh is not only an awesome actor he is also known for being best friends with his limo drivers, security and so forth, the guy just drips with charisma, he's a man worth looking up to, here is a guy that actually is attempting to live a good life.

    There are those though that inspire us with their words, either written or spoken words, these people come forth and establish an example of what it looks like to attempt to live a life worth re-living. Here we cannot help but mention C. S. Lewis who authored the great Narnia series, here was a good man who gave us great works of fiction and also great works on life. There are so many authors we could bring up here, one notable author who happens to be looked up to within almost all mediums of entertainment is Neil Gaiman. Neil is the author of one of the most famous comic book series out there called "The Sandman", he was also the author of books like "Coraline", "Stardust" which were both made to movies, and now there is talk about his book "American Gods" to be made into a HBO show, which is of course due to his brilliance as a writer but his character played a huge role into him getting as far as he did. Neil is a rare breed in the sense that few people do not like him, everyone that has worked with him love him, thus here is a man worth looking up to, here is a true hero.

NPH is the man, 'nough said

     One might think that who your heroes are does not influence how you behave, but this is not the case, a simple truth in life is that you will always be influenced by the people you look up to, its an inescapable truth, one you should know, for it is important to discern who those heroes are and if they are worthy of being called that, analyze your own life and seek people of good character, thus by doing so you will grow in a positive fashion. To sum up the series, one should always be careful when choosing a mentor, the friends you surround yourself with, and the heroes you look up to, choose people of good character and you will grow to possess good character, so choose wisely.

  We hope you have a great weekend, be safe, and rest well,