Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

If You're Having Fun, You Aren't Learning


This wise saying is on the blackboard in the classroom in the movie "Matilda." I warn you now, much of this post concerns that movie, as I just watched it. For me, this was a movie that I have watched for years and years. It came out in 1996, and I would imagine that I have been watching it since then. I would have been 9 when it came out, but I remember watching it often because it came on TV. After watching it again, I realized that I can still quote the whole thing. 

Directed by Danny DeVito, I forgot how good this movie really is. I have always been a fan of Roald Dahl books (I feel like he should have had a penname...if you write children's books, don't have a name like Roald, get a name like Dr. Seuss), and this one always ranked high on my list. I find it especially interesting with books that we grow up with. For me, this was one of those books/movies. If you have never seen it, gather your kids (or not) and watch it. To this day, I have a hard time thinking of a worse villain than the seemingly superhuman and horrifying Trunchbull. 
This screenshot is during a part of the movie where she is chasing Matilda and Miss Honey...it gets me every time. It still makes me feel a little stressed that they are going to get caught. 

I posted on Facebook a few days ago that I felt like throwing 2 of my students into the Chokey, a device the Trunchbull uses for discipline in her school, Crunchem Hall. A few of y'all commented with your favorite lines from the movie and it stuck with me. I nostalgia-ed myself and immediately felt the need to watch it. 

Among the most notorious lines is the "You can do it, Brucie" line where a boy is accused of stealing chocolate cake and is forced to eat a giant cake in front of the whole school. I seem to remember thinking as a kid that I was like Brucie, and I could get fame and glory from my schoolmates if someone would just challenge me to eat a chocolate cake!
Look at old Brucie. You would be hard pressed to be that happy on a daily basis. 

On to Miss Honey. Miss Honey is the sweet teacher that saves Matilda from the wicked Trunchbull. Miss Honey (naturally she is sweet...get it?) and Matilda help each other and they live happily ever after. As a side note, the ending montage song is by Rusted Root called "Send Me On My Way" and it is one of my very best songs to brighten your day. I distinctly remember having a crush on Miss Honey at some point watching the movie growing up. Now that I am all grown, I can confirm that I have a crush on Miss Honey. As a plus, she has a really nice big old house that she inherits...so...there is that. 
90's fashion aside, doesn't she just look nice? 

(Immediately after posting this, I looked up this actress on IMDB and she was in Schindler's List as well as ARMY OF DARKNESS! Amazing)

I highly recommend this movie, and I am suspicious that this is going to start me on a Roald Dahl reading kick for the next few weeks. I guess that is good since I have 0 classes all day tomorrow because of testing. Serenity now. 



Monday, November 21, 2011

I'm Harry Potter, Harry Harry Potter

Lets just get this out of the way:

I love this YouTube video. Now it is going to be in your head while you read this. Now I have you right where I want you...Recently I reread all of the Harry Potter books and watched all of the movies as well. Since I have done that, I have found my mind wandering quite a bit. I hadn't read them sequentially since they were first released, and I have to say that I forgot just how good they really are.

When I was in 6th grade, my teacher shared with us the story of Harry Potter. It was this book that was sweeping the world about an 11 year old boy wizard. It just so happened that I was 11 years old at the time as well. I anxiously waited for each book to come out (and they were coming out every year), and Harry was the same age as I was in real life. I didn't grasp the depth of the books then, but I remember reading and rereading the first 3 about 10 times. The books stopped coming out every year, and I got older than Harry. It sitll played an important part of my preteen years I think.

I can't heap enough praise on the books, which are phenomenal. The movies...eh. I am a little so-so on a few of them. Additionally (Warning, here be potential spoilers), I think the epilogue of the whole book is extraordinarily corny. After reading it as an adult, there are also some lines of dialogue in the book that make me cringe because they are weird. Luckily, there are only 2 or 3. The movies though seem like half of them were written by monkeys.

Here is the age old problem that we find when great books are turned into movies that fail to live up to them. The best theater is the theater of the mind. Nothing can be as true, scary or awesome as it is in our own heads. When movies try to capture that, they always fall short somewhere along the line. In that way, I think movies should try to take inspiration from the books, but also liberties that make them stand alone. Some of the movies did that, some did not.

The Lord of the Rings though...that was spot on. I am also tremendously excited for the 2 Hobbit movies that are going to be coming out!

Lastly, I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on Friday, and watched Aladdin on Saturday. I am now convinced that Jafar is a dark wizard, and possibly an alternate dimension Voldemort. Think about it, he has a things for snakes (even turns into one for a while there), he uses his snake staff to mind control the sultan...he has a pet bird (wizards have birds). I think I am on to something here. Disney should sue J.K. Rowling. JK (that JK was meant to mean Just Kidding, or my initials)