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 Much Needed Evolution of Cable

          There are many things in our culture that have sudden evolutionary leaps. It's usually without warning and it covers a specific item that had not evolved in a long time. I believe that the next big leap we will be seeing soon is the downfall of cable television, and the rise of streaming companies.

          Take Netflix as an example, specifically their instant stream option. Soon Netflix will no longer have the "ship to home" dvds and be completely instant stream active. No they haven't made an announcement about this, but it is bound to happen, it would be the biggest marketing move and would put them above their competition by a whole lot.

          On instant stream you basically select your shows, everything you could want you get to watch, without commercials and such. This is the way of the future. Instead of paying for 400 channels that you don't watch, you'll be paying for one service and get to pick what you want to watch and what you don't, and if you add a Pandora style meter you'll be able to get rid of all the shows you don't like and be suggested shows you might like, hence you'll always be introduced to new shows of your choosing.

         This might seem like it needs an extra touch, something to organize it, and I agree. Microsoft has unintentionally given us the best model for what tv could be like in the future with their Xbox 360 Live program. Within the layout of this service Xbox has joined Music, Movies, Games, and other internet services all on one package. This is brilliant, it's simple to use, looks clean and neat and would offer the consumer infinite personal customization possibilities. Why would you sign up for cable, which would inherently force you to pay for channels you don't watch, when you can have a company that allows you to pick and choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, all in one Netflix style package.

          Here is my shout out to all business men out there, please do what you do and make this a reality. By doing this you would revolutionize the media empire and quickly become one of the most famous companies in the world. I don't really care about credit, I just want this service right now. It'll eventually come to pass, this is a simple fact. Cable hasn't really changed all that much, the only recent leap was Tivo, though it was a good leap they only got their feet wet, there is a lot to do still and much room to grow.

        So business men and scientists, do what you do and change the industry forever.

   Love from your humble blogger,