Disney's Earth movie

We took Avery to see Disneynature's Earth movie on Saturday, and I have to say that I was rather disappointed. That's not to say that it was bad, in fact the footage was stunning, and was amazing to see on the big screen.
In our household we are big fans of nature shows, which I think I may have mentioned before. We regularly watch Nature on pbs on Sunday nights, and love to see and learn about this amazing planet we live on. For this reason, we fell in love with and purchased Planet Earth when it was released on DVD a couple of years ago. It is Amazing!! Truly it is. We don't even own an HDTV - just a regular, though admittedly quite large, tube tv, but even so, it is still quite breathtaking to watch. The footage is spectacular, and makes me want to go out an buy an HDTV just to see what it looks like in HD! Also, each episode has a little mini feature at the end showing you what adventures they went through to film that particular episode, and those are rather fascinating to watch! Makes me wish I could go out an do stuff like that too :) Also, if, like my husband, you don't like nature shows that seem bent on making you feel guilty for all the terrible things we're doing to our planet, Planet Earth is still an excellent choice, because it lets you enjoy all these amazing things without guilt-tripping you until the last couple of episodes on the final disk. And even those, if I remember correctly, seemed to be quite open-minded and interesting to watch regardless of whether you're a tree-hugger or not :)
Now, you might be asking yourself - What does my love of Planet Earth have to do with my dislike of Earth?
Let me tell you.
It is a complete rip-off.
I knew that it was made by the same people who brought us Planet Earth, but what I didn't realise was that they just took highlights from Planet Earth, threw them together with a new narrator and new supposedly more "entertaining" script, along with some "new" footage which was probably just the stuff that didn't make it into Planet Earth, and packaged it all together and called it new.
I also thought it was going to be aimed at a younger audience, since it is Disney, and the marketing made me think that it was going to be following the three animal families in a fun, child-friendly sort of way, but it wasn't really any different from any other nature show in that way. Avery got bored and spent the second half of the show wanting to walk up and down the stairs, and I don't really blame her, I would have got bored at her age too.
If you are trying to decide whether to spend the money to go and watch this movie in the theatre, here's what I would tell you: If you haven't seen Planet Earth, or if you'd like to see some of it on the big screen, go and see it. If you have young children, get a babysitter. If you've seen it and were blown away by the majestic beauty of our planet, buy Planet Earth. You won't regret it :)

Dogwood

We've got a beautiful white dogwood tree in front of our house. We are going to be moving in the next month, so I decided I had to take some pictures of the lovely blossoms of this tree since it would be the last year we could enjoy them in our own front yard. But here's the excellent thing - Gabe went by the new house last week and told me that there are two beautiful dogwoods in our new yard, one pink and one white!! I'm so happy :)

Little Dorrit

I love PBS. There are so many great educational as well as entertaining shows! Gabe and I have been big fans of Nature for a long time, and always used to settle down to watch it every Sunday at 8pm, although it doesn't happen so regularly now that we've seen most of them. I love when the time comes around for them to air Masterpiece Classics again! I'm not so into the Mystery or Contemporary seasons, but then I haven't really given them much of a chance. The past 3 weeks they've been showing Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. I am really enjoying it. I've not really read much Dickens before, and hadn't even heard of Little Dorrit before I started watching it, but of course, the BBC usually does such a great job with these productions, and after watching the first episode I decided that I just had to read it! So I looked it up on my trusty palm pilot library, and there it was! So I started reading it with the intention of finishing it before the televised production finished.
I sort of know why I haven't read Dickens before now. I am really enjoying the book, but he does write in a very round about sort of way, if you know what I mean. He's very verbose, and the excessive descriptions and tangents tend to slow the story down. I find myself skipping through certain paragraphs and pages because they're not essential to the narrative and I just want to find out what happens next. I hope that doesn't make me a bad person! I am still really enjoying the book, and I'm quite sure I will read some more of his works, but I just don't know if I'm going to have time to finish Little Dorrit before the final episode airs this Sunday.

A comment about Twilight

I love Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. When I started reading the first book last summer, I could barely put it down, and I read all four books in about 2 weeks, and it only took me that long because I had to wait for the 3rd and 4th books to arrive after I ordered them from Amazon. I was hooked. At some point I might go into more detail about my opinions on the books, but my main reason for writing this is to say that I do not like the movie!!
I know that it hardly ever happens, if at all, that a movie based on a book lives up to the book. One exception I can think of to this rule is I Am David which is based on the book North to Freedom, and even in that case I don't know that it's that the film is better than the book, it's just that the book is written for a young audience (9-13yrs), as well as the fact that I saw the film before I read the book. Both are just absolutely beautiful. If you haven't seen I am David, please please do! It is such a beautiful film, and even brought tears to my husband's eyes, and he never cries!
So anyway, as I was saying, I don't think I went into the Twilight film with unrealistic expectations, because I know a movie can never live up to the book it's based on. I even was expecting to be disappointed because of course, Robert Pattinson doesn't look anything like the beautiful Greek statue of an Edward in my head! But seriously, even with the low expectations I had, it still managed to disappoint me. And here's the weird thing, every one I went to the cinema with, and almost everyone I've spoken to about it since, seemed to really like it, and I just don't understand it! Even the people who were with me in my dislike when it was in the theatres are switching teams now that they've seen it again on DVD! So of course, I decided that I just had to see it again, so that I could try to see why other people like it. I also wanted to watch it with my husband, who has never read the books, to get an unbiased opinion, because I felt that it not only didn't live up to the books, but wasn't even a very good movie taken solely on its own merits. See, I'm trying to be open-minded about it! But alas! I remain unmoved, I still think it's not only a poor adaptation, but also an unimpressive film in general.
I understand the need for cutting things out of the story for time reasons, such as there being only one school dance instead of two, and even the need for minimising certain characters for the sake of time, like Jasper who apparently had no special powers in the film, but there are some things that were just plain unnecessary. Anyway, here are some of the things that bothered me as a lover of the books, and I'm just going to stick to the things that I think were completely unnecessary in the squeezing of an entire book into the length of a movie.

• There was no dazzling. Bella just seemed to be mad at Edward the whole time, and then all of a sudden they just sort of decided they were in love. My husband even said this, although, as I've said, he hasn't read the books. He said it also just sort of seemed as though Bella was only interested in him because he was dangerous and a vampire, etc, so it seemed more like some weird fascination than love.
• Why do Bella and Charlie eat at a diner? In the books Bella instantly starts cooking and looking after Charlie when she moves in, and that's part of her whole "17 going on 35" thing. The wise-beyond-her-years thing doesn't really come across, and she just seems like a normal moody teenager.
  
• Why did they decide to cut out the part where Jacob tells Bella that the Cullens are supposedly vampires, and she goes to a bookstore to buy a book about Quileute legend instead? I mean, it didn't save any time, since Bella and Jacob still had their conversation on the beach, and Bella still researched it all on the internet, so I don't understand why they changed it. Especially since telling Bella that the Cullens were supposedly "descended from an enemy clan" doesn't break the treaty in any way, so how will that play out in the later movies?
• The meadow. All wrong. In fact, that whole bit where the two of them randomly decide to walk out of school and walk up a mountain is just plain weird. "I need to show you what I look like in the sun!!" Raah!
  
• The way they made the first kiss some premeditated thing by having Edward show up in her bedroom with the sole purpose of kissing her. Wait, I think that was even the only kiss? I can't remember now. Either way, she did a whole lot of moving and getting into it before he suddenly had to fly into the wall...
  
• I'm afraid I didn't think Bella or Edward were very good actors... *sigh*
  
• The Cullens' house?? Where did that come from?? Okay, so they got the glass thing down, but it was just not even close. And Edward's room was small and kind of messy.
  
• The clearing where they played baseball - tiny. It was supposed to be huge, what with them being super strong, super fast vampires and all. How are they going to fit the entire Volturi in there in the fourth movie?

There was a lot more than this that bothered me, or even made me cringe while I watched the movie, but these were just some of the things which I felt were completely unnecessary, even considering the need for reduction in the book-to-movie process.

Some things I sort of liked. (Yes, there were a couple of things...)

• The part where they're making food for Bella at the Cullens' house prior to her arrival. Not in the book, but I thought it was kind of cute and funny.
  
• The part where Charlies cleaning his rifle before he meets Edward, and he snaps it and says "Bring him in" Again, not in the book, but made me giggle.
• Charlie and Renee were cast quite well I think.
  
• ummmmmmmmm.........I'm trying to think of something else, but nothing is coming to me....how sad

I suppose the bottom line is that a movie based on a book should always leave the viewer with a desire to read the book. Don't you think? I'm almost positive that if I had seen this movie before I had read the book, it would have inspired not even a spark of desire. I asked my husband that question, and he said it didn't make him want to read the book either, even though he thought that overall it was an "Okay" movie.