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best of disney
Final Disney Rankings
October 17, 2014 July 6, 2015 | Rachel's Reviews
So what you've all been waiting for! My ranking of the Disney Canon!
I will add in Big Hero 6 when I finish that review but here are my current rankings. I'll go least to best
54. Dinosaur– slow, predictable, looks ugly, CGI is awful, attempt to be thoughtful ends up stupid, the writing was maddeningly bad
53. Chicken Little– mean spirited, frenetic, unfunny, none of the episodes connect, animation underwhelming. Feels like they didn't even try
52. Brother Bear– every choice was wrong. Badly animated characters, strange voicework, predictable and unbelievable story, unlikable characters, underwhelming music, strange singing choices. The humor never works. Huge disappointment.
51. Home on the Range– Trots out tired 'save the farm' storyline, terrible puns, strange voice choices, underwhelming songs, jokes and illusions to westerns don't work, some of the animation is ok and the yodel song was well done. Otherwise skip.
50. Three Cabelleros– 2 ok shorts surrounded by lots of Donald shouting and chasing women around Rio. Watch Saludos Amigos instead.
49. The Rescuers- some nice animation but shrill, mean spirited villain overwhelms the picture. Not enough hope makes film feel depressing and cold. Watch sequel instead
48. The Aristocats– lazy mismash of 101 Dalmatians and Lady and the Tramp but with cats. Duchess feels apathetic and bored. No sense of tension in the plot and chemistry between her and Thomas nonexistent. Designs and backdrops underwhelming and strange voice work. Lame villain who's actions don't really make sense. Some alarmingly bad animation where the mouths don't quite match up with the vocals. Ok songs.
47. Fun and Fancy Free– Bongo is well animated but strange message and oddly paced, Say it with a Slap is one of worst Disney songs, Mickey and Beanstalk is Ok but feels kind of lazy and slow. I like crazy Donald. In between live action segments feel strange and unnecessary.
46. Pocahontas– Savages is the films saving grace. A wonderful number but Pocahontas is kind of an unlikable character. She doesn't listen and has no chemistry with John Smith. The animation is boxy and too geometric and the villain with all his GOLD is so boring. Plus, it's a real story, important to a people, which makes it more insulting.
45. Hunchback of Notre Dame– Some good elements but the attempt to combine an adult story with juvenile elements creates a tonal mess. Very frustrating. A man tries to dump a baby down a well after killing his mother, he sings a song about wanting to rape and kill another woman and he lights a house on fire containing a family inside. And we have singing gargoyles! What was Disney thinking…
44. Fantasia 2000– Takes the original concept of concert films and turns it into a cheap celebrity clip show. I hate the CGI. The music choices are strange. Whole thing feels second rate except for Rhapsody and final number
43. Sword in the Stone– The film everyone else likes but I don't. Arthur does nothing to prove he should be able to pull the sword in the stone. None of his 'lessons' actually prepare him to be king. On top of that it looks blue and gray and ugly throughout. Madame Mim isn't introduced till end and it's Merlin not Arthur that takes her on. I don't get why it's so popular. Sherman Brothers songs are ok and duel is fun but again doesn't have anything to do with the story and Arthur.
42. Bolt– Forgettable but enjoyable film. Decent vocal performance, fun story but nothing to spectacular.
41 Oliver and Company- A mess of storytelling, terrible villain, but some of the visuals of New York are nice, cool subway scene at the end and 2 dynamite songs.
40. Make Mine Music– one of the strangest entertainment experiences of my life. Kind of 'so bad it's good'. Each of the segments in this package films feels so strange especially the story of the Whale Who Sings Opera, who they kill off and send to whale heaven for no reason except to teach kids that miracles don't exist and people hate goodness and light (strange message). It's so odd but oddly entertaining.
39. The Black Cauldron- A lot of problems but I liked the villain and Gurghi's sacrifice. All in all I enjoyed watching it, even with issues. It looks beautiful and score is fantastic. Terrible voicework throughout, and kind of unlikable characters with weak motivation but enough to keep me mildly interested.
38. Saludos Amigos– Disney's goodwill mission to South America spawned this movie and it is better than Three Cabelleros. First of all, it is shorter (45 min). It has more segments and they are all pretty good. Live action is tough to sit through but again it is short. Generic but entertaining.
37. Meet the Robinsons– Nutty time travel story with a convoluted but entertaining plot. Great and surprising villain. A little cluttered but I enjoyed it. If you have a kid who likes things that are a little bit out there I bet they will love this movie.
36. Treasure Planet- Beautiful steampunk look, but feels slow and story is the same old story from grade school we've seen a million times. Unpredictable looks but predictable story. Plus, some of the world doesn't make sense so it is hard to feel suspense or tension.
35. Wreck-It Ralph– Fun premise of bad guy in video games who gets tired of being bad is fun but they spend too much time in Sugar Rush and some of the voice performances are annoying. Could have been much better but still enjoyed it. A good villain.
34. Fox and the Hound– A sentimental soapy flick if there ever was one but it embraces that soap so I enjoyed it. Bear scene very good but intense for small kids. Friendship and forgiveness nice messages. Music and female characters super bland
33. Princess and the Frog- Looks beautiful and a wonderful lead character, Tiana, who works hard, sets goals and has a unique dream for a princess. Dwells too much on occult, cluttered, shouty and underwhelming lead man and songs. Villain good but not my cup of tea
32. Peter Pan- Probably my biggest disappointment in rewatching the Canon. It's not bad but slower than I remember it mixed with slapstick that is pretty good. The songs are ok except for Redman and You're Mother is a snoozefest. People are very mean to Wendy throughout especially the other female characters. Still, it's charming in it's own way.
31. Bambi- Beautifully drawn and I love how the score is the sound effects creating rain and fire so effectively. Great voice work but the story is meandering and is basically a year in the life of a baby deer. Not enough to grip me although the death of Bambi's Mom is traumatic, we haven't gotten to know her very well and she is quickly replaced by a bland Faline. Still, I own it and enjoy watching it. It's very good. (Bambi is our first B graded picture so I like all from now on a lot. That's 30 films with a B or higher!)
30. Lilo and Stitch– LOVE, love, love the Nani and Lilo sections and Ohana themes. Love Hawaii backdrop and the watercolors. I love the Elvis music. I do not love Stitch. I wish they had gone more ET and less cockroach. He's too mean, takes it too far and looks too gross. But the stuff I like I really love
29. Winnie the Pooh– A worthy entry in the Winie the Pooh series. Lovely, simple story for young children. Not too scary and nice message. Beautifully drawn and enough humor to entertain adults. Voices are a little off but I enjoyed it. Love the music.
28.Hercules– a guilty pleasure of mine. Disney's first attempt at a super hero movie and I enjoy it. I love the gospel muses and the music. The villain is dry and funny and Megura is sassy and a lot of fun to figure out. Pain and panic are very funny too.
27. Tarzan- Looks gorgeous. The flow and feeling of Tarzan surfing on the trees looks great. Jane is a lot of fun too and not always the damsel in distress we expect. Sidekicks are lame and villain a bore. Songs especially You'll be in my heart are great.
26. Melody Time– Aside from Ichabod and Mr Toad, my favorite of the package films. Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill are lovingly drawn with good music and tightly written scripts.
25. Pinocchio– I know some will be shocked to have this so low on the list but it is so grim and sad with no sense of retribution or punishment for the wrong doers. I guess the kids just stay as donkeys. Some of the story and design choices don't make a lot of sense but as a morality play on film it works well and Pinocchio and Geppetto are both likable and the music is classic especially When You Wish Upon a Star.
24 Robin Hood– Great dry wit and folksy music save this recycled animation cash grab. It's very entertaining and has some fun action sequences too. It goes on for one act too many and becomes a little repetitive. Great villain. I love it!
23. Lady and the Tramp– Lovely Norman Rockwell style animation with an appealing dog couple (may be Disney's best romance ever filmed…hmm). Siamese song is a little insensitive but brief and then we never see them again which is strange. They could have been more important to the story? Great side characters of Trusty, Jox and Trixie. Fun jazz inspired score and songs by Peggy Lee. A little too predictable and syrupy to be in top 20 but close.
22 Atlantis- A fun treasure hunt with eclectic cast of characters who are funny and surprised me from time to time. I enjoyed seeing an original land, language, culture. Looks great. Kind of like a cross between anime and comic books with a bit of steampunk thrown in. In the minority on enjoying this picture, but I thought it was an entertaining adventure. Kida is a weak character but as she isn't one of the core group it doesn't matter too much. This is the first A of the list so the rest are all very strong.
21. Emperor's New Groove- More laughs crammed in than any other Disney movie and they worked. Very funny script and appealing enough characters to support the humor. Great villain, good voice performances. Especially when you know the troubles they had making it, it's a wonder it produced something so entertaining. Creative story too.
20. Aladdin- One of Disney's best characters and certainly the funniest single character. The Genie (aka Robin Williams) is hilariously spastic and full of energy. Nice chemistry between Aladdin and Jasmine and she has more spunk than a typical princess. Jafar is an ok villain. Animation is ok. But nice messages throughout, great songs, and a very entertaining picture for both boys and girls (and parents!).
19. Great Mouse Detective- Fun Disney take on Sherlock Holmes. Ratigan is hilarious villain with a over-the-top scheme to take over England. Basil and Dawson are very well done. The kidnapping scene at the beginning is pretty scary for young kids and the bat in the toy shop is a scary sequence. The saloon song I could do without but all in all a very fun movie. First extended use of CGI is very effective.
18. Rescuers Down Under- One of the rare sequels that is infinitely better than the original. Much less of the villain. Much more hope for Cody. Bernard and Bianca are back and a lot o f fun. John Candy is hilarious. Flying sequences gorgeous. Some of the CGI doesn't hold up but for the most part a great adventure story. Like Indiana Jones for little kids. Underrated score by Bruce Broughton.
17. Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad- Don't really think of it as a package film but definitely the best of that era. 2 American stories Wind and the Willows and Sleepy Hollow are done very well. Both dark in different ways. Toad more of a morality tale and Ichabod a classic ghost story. Basil Rathborne and Bing Crosby great as narrators. Beautifully drawn with scares and humor balanced out perfectly.
16. Snow White and the 7 Dwarves– Still holds up amazingly well. Animation is beautiful especially in scenes like the transformation of the queen and the haunted forest. Some humor and emotional scenes too. Not a huge fan of the voice work and especially the high pitched singing. Great villain who isn't satisfied unless she is the best at everything. 2 leads are pretty bland but ok.
15. Big Hero 6– Maybe recency bias but I loved Disney's first Marvel super hero movie. It's got heart, action and a script that surprised me. Plus, it looks gorgeous and has a unique world with very likable characters. I just loved it!
14. Mulan– Love the character of Mulan who joins the army to save her father. Li Shaang and rest of army appealing and fun. Eddie Murphy very good as Mushu. Completely forgettable villain given no nuance or subtlety. A few minutes after couldn't remember his name. It also could be a hair shorter but I love it.
13. Lion King- A lot of pop music in both the songs and pacing. Draws you in. Very entertaining. Terrific villain and villain songs. Mufasa's death is heart breaking. I love the message and story. The humor can be a little annoying but I still love it. Amazing Hans Zimmer score. Animation is stunning.
12. Dumbo- Such a sweet movie about accepting differences and how they make us special. A wonderful friendship between an unlikely pair of Timothy Q. Mouse and Dumbo. Pink Elephants on Parade is brilliant. Love the watercolors and simple backgrounds and feel of the circus. I don't think the crows are all that racist and it's just a lovely little movie with huge heart.
11. Alice in Wonderland- Not for everyone but if you can handle non0linear storytelling you will enjoy it. It's basically Alice meeting a bunch of eclectic characters in Wonderland. It's bright and colorful and clips along nicely. Only part that didn't work for me was the Walrus segment. It stalls the story and I kept wanting to get back to Alice. So much better than Tim Burton versoin. Mary Blair drawings are stunning, bright and geometric. It's nutty and weird and you will love it.
10.Sleeping Beauty- Gorgeous literary style animation. It feels like paper dolls in segments. One of most dynamic Prince in Disney. Amazing villain who should have been invited to the party! The fairies are fun. The alcoholic fathers I could do without and Aurora is too perfect and bland but the Tchaikovsky's ballet as the score is neat, the battle between Phillip and Maleficent is awesome. A great movie!
9. The Jungle Book- All comes down to the music and villains. I hate the ending but Shere Kaun and Kaaa are very good villains. All the voice cast is fantastic and it is edited so well. Hardly a minute goes by without some action or a song. It clips a long so well and is consistently entertaining. Sherman Brother's best music aside from Mary Poppins.
8. Frozen- A movie that showed a different kind of love- love of friendship and of sister. The voicecast features the best singers of any Disney movie. The songs are great. The message of not being who you are raised to be is moving and powerful. The animation is gorgeous. Just enough humor. I love it.
7. 101 Dalmatians- Best of the sketch films by far. Terrific and tense adventure. Fabulous villain with Cruella Deville. Lots of great characters and puppies are so cute. The scene where they get to the truck disguised is a nail biter. All the side characters on the journey and the twilight bark are a lot of fun. Roger and Anita are one of my all time favorite Disney couples. I love it
6. Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh– 4 lovely stories of our friends at the Hundred Acre Woods that are just about perfect. Full of humor, great songs, and a little bit of zany scares with the Heffalumps and Woozles. The ending is perfect and really moved me. Winnie the Pooh symbolizes childhood and this movie is like a big hug.
5. Fantasia- A stunning concert experience. It's like combining the best symphony and gallery you've ever been to into one experience. The music is gorgeous. The inspiration they get from the music inspires me to be more creative. It's not a movie in a traditional sense but an experience like Tree of Life. I like all the segments but probably enjoy Sorcerers Apprentice, Nutcracker Suite and On Bald Mountain the most. If it feels long divide it up and watch it over a week. Nothing wrong with that. . Those who hate this film probably aren't the biggest classical music fans and wouldn't find going to a symphony or art gallery very enjoyable. I loved it.
4. Tangled- Proof that Disney brilliance isn't only in the Golden Age and Renaissance. I LOVE the villain an villain song. The idea of a mother manipulating her daughter for her own selfish desires is so evil. The side characters including Maximus are great. Rapunzel is so kind and likable. We all know someone like her who is indecisive and naïve but charming. Flynn is a wonderful narrator and a complex, funny character. The animation is stunning especially the lantern scene in 3D. It's Disney's first attempt at a romantic comedy and they totally pulled it off.
3. Cinderella- Just about a perfect movie. Cinderella has warmth and kindness. She works hard and tries to be optimistic. Lady Tremaine is a fantastic villain who's soul purpose seems to be to control Cinderella. The scene tearing the dress is devastating because we saw how tenderly it was given to her by her friends. The mice are cute and loyal friends. Small characters like Lucifer, Bruno, Archduke, and the King all have fun personalities. The Fairy Godmother is perfect and the music sublime. A Dream is a Wish is a favorite of mine and Bibbity Bobbity Boo a classic. The Prince is bland and they fall in love at first sight but at least we have gotten to know him a little bit through the King. It's a great movie!
2. Little Mermaid– Truly my co-#1. I love Ariel's journey to find out who she is and where she belongs. I love her curiosity and determination. I love Ursula and her drag queen crossed with a truck driver persona. I love the music especially Part of Your World and Under the Sea. I love the look of it and all the bubbles and colors. It's so well paced and the characters, even the Prince, have real heart. They are all trying to do the right thing in their own minds. It is also very funny with Les Poissons a hilarious slapstick number. It was the most magical experience I had at the movies as a little girl and I just love it.
1. Beauty and the Beast– and co #1 goes to Beauty and the Beast. A perfect movie. The music is stunning. Belle is a fabulous heroine who we would all want to be friends with if given the chance. Gaston is hilarious and his journey to madness very interesting. The Beast is such a monster and yet he does change and grow until you are almost sad to see him turn into a human. I could listen to Angela Lansbury sing the title song all day. She is great in it. Jerry Orbach as Lumiere is perfect. I loved the broadway play and the movie is so entertaining. The animation looks amazing. The computer graphics hold up and still look fantastic. It's a stunning picture that will entertain the whole family no matter the age or sex.
Here is a video version if you prefer that. If you are on youtube I would love a few likes.
Movie 53: Frozen
There will be spoilers in this review so if by some miracle you haven't seen the movie stop reading and watch it. (I personally don't care about spoilers but to some that is a big deal)
Here we go! The big controversial post . It was so big, it seems you either love it or hate it, and I am on the loving it side! Let's get cold and talk some FROZEN!
Make sure to look at my initial review after seeing it in 2013. At the time I thought all the songs ran together like a Sondheim musical without a standout cabaret like number. Boy was I wrong on that one!
But I also said in my review
"It is worth your money and will be an experience that will stick with them forever just like the princess movies stuck with me. Plus, these are strong, independent women who come to their own rescue without the need of Prince Charming. Love that."
I still like that. I think in many ways Frozen is the new Little Mermaid. It's about a girl who is told by her parents she has to live a certain way, a way that isn't right for her. She learns through the movie to be herself and that her parents were wrong. The only difference is Ariel is never led to believe her ambitions will hurt anyone but herself. They do end up hurting other people, but Ariel is never fearful of that. From the get-go Elsa almost kills her sister and the fear that could happen again causes her to be paralyzed into not living her life. In a way she is brainwashed into believing she is wrong and bad. Ariel is rebelling but Elsa cannot rebel because people will die.
But the appeal in the characters of Ariel and Elsa is similar. Both feel uncomfortable in their own skin and both break free through the course of their movies. They both have freedom anthem songs and they both greatly appeal to young girls for that reason.
Before writing this post I asked my twitter and facebook friends why their daughters liked Frozen. Some of the responses:
"My 11 year old loves the new songs, the twist they put on Hans and when Elsa saved Anna by unfreezing her with the power of love"
Another says
"My son loves Sven. He is 3. Whenever he sees a moose or cow anywhere he will say "There's Sven"
"My oldest 5 says she likes the movie because the princesses are the good guys…she likes how they win"
So that gives you an idea of some of the appeal to youngsters.
Because I've seen this reaction from the kids in my life it has seriously bummed me out to see the negative backlash around Frozen. It makes me sad because I was allowed to love The Little Mermaid and nobody said I was stupid or it was awful. I had never even heard of anyone not liking Little Mermaid till a few years ago. It all goes back to my Content, Content, Content post. If you don't care for it fine but do not make little girls feel badly because they do like it. Youtube is especially brutal. Every video of little girls singing Let It Go has so many hateful comments. Get a life people.
I've felt very defensive of the movie because of these girls and boys who love it. So, in the comment section if you hate it please try to keep the discourse to a respectful level as we have done so far on the blog. I will try to let you guys discuss and not get too involved.
The Production-
On the blu-ray there is a cool featurette about the history of The Snow Queen at Disney. Evidently in 1940 there was a plan to make a package film of the works of Hans Christen Andersen but it was eventually scrapped.
Early Concept Art
Evidently pitches for The Snow Queen happened after The Little Mermaid in the 90s and again in 2002 by exec Harvey Fierstein when it was rejected by the studio.
When John Lasseter was made CCO after the purchase of Pixar by Disney he assigned Chris Buck of Tarzan fame to begin working on the Snow Queen. Buck decided:
"he wanted to do something different on the definition of love"
Josh Gad was evidently involved early on when it was closer to the original story but in 2010 the concept was rejected again.
After the success of Tangled, they picked up the project again and in December 2011 Disney announced Frozen and gave themselves under 2 years to complete. Quite the ambitious project but I guess with so much groundwork being done on story and ideas that helped.
Immediately song writers for Avenue Q, Kristen Anderson- Lopez and Robert Lopez, were brought on board and the idea of the 'frozen heart' was developed with the songs.
They had a challenge of creating a fairytale movie without a traditional villain. Pixar's Brave tried to do this but much less successfully. We had to always keep our heart open to Elsa. Buck said of writing "That was a concept and the phrase…an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart"
Jennifer Lee from Wreck-it Ralph was brought in as co-director and she said "Anna was going to save Elsa. We didn't know how or why?" Lee then went on to rewrite the script again and with only 17 months left till it's release. (Pretty amazing what they pulled off).
I guess in the original script Elsa was in fact more 'evil from the start' and didn't want Anna to get back to Hans. Anna was also more brooding and resentful about her spot as the second daughter.
Then the Lopez's wrote Let it Go and the song was so powerful they rewrote the script again with Elsa as a more nuanced character.
"Forget villain. Just what it would feel like. And this concept of letting out who she is[,] that she's kept to herself for so long[,] and she's alone and free, but then the sadness of the fact that the last moment is she's alone.."
Then they decided to switch things up again and make Hans duplicitous and a sociopath type character. This had certainly never been done with Disney. Every character had been pretty obviously bad from the start even if the characters don't see it such as Clayton in Tarzan or Radcliffe in Pocahontas.
2012 they got the voice talent on board and went with Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, Santino Fontana, and Broadway superstar Idina Menzel. In my opinion Frozen has the best singers in a Disney musical bar none.
That's only a handful of the details out there. They did amazing things with the set designs, backdrops, story etc. I personally find them all fascinating but most importantly there is a definite sense of teamwork with Frozen because it was created under such time constraints all facets were working together at the same time. Beauty and the Beast was very similar.
And all that teamwork produced something very special. Something a lot of people responded to in a way a movie hadn't done in a long time. With on demand and high def the days of people going to movies 12+ times were kind of passed us but Frozen had that kind of success and it made over a billion dollars. It stayed in the top 10 until March which was the same time it was released on DVD!
A Storybook-
I thought it would be fun to do something different for the story portion. I wanted to tell you about the story but also explain why it was different and why people responded to it. (I've been thinking about this review the whole time writing the blog). I was at Costco and found this 'Busy Book' and I think it does a good job explaining each of the character's appeal, story and why they are different.
First we have Elsa
That sums up Elsa pretty well. Worried she will do harm she hides her powers and then runs away causing the freeze.
ANNA-
Then there is Anna
Anna really is all of the adjectives loving, energetic, fearless optimist. She is a really complex character who is stupid yet brave and combined with Elsa they are a great team. She also has great romantic comedy banter with Hans at the beginning and Kristoff as they search for Elsa.
OLAF-
Olaf is our fun snowman who I think is in the movie just the right amount to remain funny.
Olaf is big-hearted and willing to sacrifice himself for his friends. A terrific character.
KRISTOFF-
Anna meets Kristoff and he is not a fan of hers at first. They have a lovely romantic banter. He is a simple guy and wants to sell his ice in peace.
Kristoff is the pleasant side of Elsa. Kind of the character that is allowed to be who he is and isn't stymied by his parents (or trolls!). He prefers to be alone but also has a 'very kind heart'. I love Kristoff. He will tell you what he thinks even if you don't want to hear it. Love that.
SVEN-
Then we have Kristoff's friend Sven who I am so glad they did not make him a talking reindeer.
Sven could have been a throw-away character but they give him a lot of humor and heart.
HANS-
Finally we have our villain who again doesn't start as a villain, Hans
THE SONGS and more Story
Let's talk for a second about the songs, which I LOVE!
We start out with a very strong introductory song called Heart and it introduces us to the theme of ice and a frozen heart. The choral work is beautiful. Reminds me a lot of The Lion King intro or Hunchback of Notre Dame choral work.
We then get our introduction to Anna and Elsa. This involves Elsa hurts Anna with her magic winter powers. The trolls tell the family that they must shut magic out and hide it for everyone's safety and until she can control it.
This is a bit of a plothole because why not explain to the family that love is the antidote? Surely she could work on that instead of being just shut in? But I put that along with Gothel telling Rapunzel her actual birthday or the Beast being 11 when the spell was cast. Somethings have to be in order for the plot to start, so not a major stumbling block for me.
Anyway, Elsa shuts Anna out because her parents tell her to. We then get a great song of storytelling and character development with Do You Want to Build a Snowman. The girls parents die and all along Elsa follows orders and keeps away from her sister to keep Anna safe.
The day for Elsa's coronation comes and Anna is excited to finally be opening the doors. Elsa is naturally nervous. So we get a song called For the First Time. Kristen Bell is wonderful in this song.
The ball comes and Anna meets Hans and falls in love with him and they sing a very funny song- very well sung by Kristen Bell and Santino Fontana. It pokes fun at the instant love tropes used in many previous Disney movies.
Anna and Hans ask Elsa for her blessing and she refuses causing them to fight and her powers are revealed. Elsa runs away and Anna goes after her.
Elsa realizes now everyone knows she might as well Let it Go! I don't know if any of you have ever had a secret and then it is finally out but I have and it feels great. It's out there and you can be you!
Anna meets Kristoff and Sven and together they meet Olaf Elsa's snowman creation. He is a wonderful character and in the movie just enough to not get annoying. His song is well done by Josh Gad. Turns out he dreams of summer.
Anna and Elsa meet but Anna is unable to convince her to come back and Elsa doesn't want to because she can't face all the people and doesn't know how to bring back summer. In an accident she strikes Anna in the heart and tells her to leave. This is all very exciting!
In probably the weakest section Kristoff takes Anna to meet his parents (although Olaf is very funny in these scenes). Turns out he was raised by the trolls from the beginning of the picture and they want Anna to fall in love with their fixer upper.
It's not the best song but I don't hate it and it is well sung by Broadway veteran Maia Wilson. I can certainly think of comic relief songs that are far worse.
The trolls tell Anna she must have an act of true love to reverse the spell. They all assume it must be a kiss and head back to find Hans. Unfortunately he is a true villain and has captured Elsa and refuses to kiss Anna, in an attempt to claim her throne.
I don't think Disney has ever had a villain who has been so duplicitous. It is very effective and genuinely surprised me. I thought Hans was going to be a match for Elsa but no.
Finally we get our ending where Anna is frozen and Elsa devastated but it turns out her love for Anna is the act needed to break the magic.
To me the ending was just about perfect.
Some claim this is 'false feminism' but I disagree. The point of Frozen was not to make a feminist picture. It was to show a different type of love. Whether it's the love of friendship Olaf shows, the loyalty Kristoff shows or the sisterly love between Elsa and Anna the film does an excellent example of showing the power of each kind of love. It's not trying to be a female empowerment film. It could have as easily been about two brothers loving each other.
The fact that some people cheered it for not having a Prince Charming moment does not mean that was the main point of the ending. The filmmakers are not responsible for every person's response. They were trying to make a movie about different types of love. Whether that is especially feminist or not is up for debate. I thought it was refreshing and moving. Most of the love in my life has been through friendship and I have always been very close to my 3 sisters so I related to the emotion very well.
Movie Review/Conclusion-
I watched Frozen every day this week, so 4 times before writing this review. I have a high tolerance for repetition. If I like it, I like it on the 100th airing as much as on the 1st. Seriously it does not damper from over-exposure like it does for others. I don't know why but that's just the way I am. So for me, the popularity of Frozen has no effect in dampening my enthusiasm.
I love it's story of a girl who is told she can't be who she is, that she is dangerous, and then her eyes become open and she becomes empowered. It is the Little Mermaid for girls of today and I love seeing that. I love young girls have an anthem in Let it Go like I had Part of Your World. That's a great thing.
I think the story is a lot of fun. I love the ending. I totally buy them focusing on a new type of love that we haven't seen in a Disney movie. Whether it is feminist or not I don't really care. It's the love of sisters and I certainly relate to that. I love the surprise in the villain, which I think is very difficult to do in a fairy tale. Movies like Treasure Planet look beautiful but fail to surprise me. Frozen did just that.
I think the comic relief is in just enough and there is real heart to it as opposed to say Trashing the Camp segments of Tarzan which are much more grating than In Summer or Fixer Upper. All the singing is the best in any Disney film. It really elevates even so-so numbers.
I loved the world they created. Elsa's castle is gorgeous. The costumes and character designs look great. Even Elsa's hair is cool. Elsa, Anna, Kristoff and Olaf aren't stock characters but have nuances we haven't seen in a Disney film. Kristoff is kind of a loner and glad to be so which is refreshing. Anna is very interesting and complex. She is naive, silly, impetuous, free spirit but in a realistic, sweet way. She is allowed to make mistakes in the script and can even be sarcastic.
Elsa is this brainwashed girl who grows throughout the film. She is a villain for a bit but you always like her so she's not the villain. It is very well written. Most Disney movies have one heroine and I liked there are 2 and together Anna and Elsa balance themselves out well.
Like I said, I know there is tons of backlash but this is my blog and my opinion and I love Frozen. I think it is a terrific movie with great characters, songs, story and animation. I am sure there will be tons of people who feel differently and please share but remember to be respectful and keep the language clean. I worked really hard on this post so please actually read my thoughts before responding.
Thanks and GO FROZEN!!!
Overall Grade/Conclusion- A+
Best and Worst of Disney 1937-1959
August 30, 2014 August 31, 2014 | Rachel's Reviews
As I have been doing my reviews people have asked me 'what is your favorite of what you've reviewed so far?' It's tough because I like all of them for different reasons. But I thought it would be fun to give some highlights of the first 20 years of Disney which I just finished by reviewing Sleeping Beauty.
Overall Best Film- Cinderella
It's really hard to decide but I'd pick Cinderella because it has the whole package. It's got a likable heroine who we actually get to know, great songs, it's got artistry in scenes like Sing Sweet Nightingale, a terrific villain in Lady Tremaine, brilliant voice work and just the right touch of humor.
Overall Worst Film- Three Cabelleros and Fun and Fancy Free
I gave 2 films D grades, Fun and Fancy Free and Three Cabelleros. FFF I thought was just lazy. The Bongo story is odd and kind of slow. Mickey and the Beanstalk is fine but not great. If it was a little tighter with a better villain I would have enjoyed it more. Three Cabelleros is in my opinion worse than Saludos Amigos because it only has 2 shorts and then there are songs where the characters are shouting and lots of Donald chasing human women. They aren't awful but just for Disney they are weak entries.
Best Artistry- Fantasia
Alice in Wonderland is amazing but Fantasia is like a combination of the greatest art gallery in the world and symphony in one experience. It blows me away.
Fantasia isn't really entertainment . It's goals are bigger than that. It is trying to inspire creativity in hopes the viewer will not simply absorb art and music but give their own spin on it, their own interpretation. It inspires me every time I watch it and I think people who don't like it just don't like classical music.
Strangest Scene- Dumbo
Pink Elephants on Parade
It's like every bad dream you've ever had jumbled into one crazy sequence. It is also comes from Dumbo and Timothy getting drunk which is strange and has absolutely no purpose in the story. I love it!
Strangest Character- Make Mine Music- Willie the Whale who sings Opera
Is that not one of the oddest images you've seen?
Make Mine Music was full of strange moments but Willie the opera singing whale was the strangest.. He just looks so strange. He looks like a giant chalkboard eraser. And why did he have to die?The narrator actually tells the children watching "Willie's singing was a miracle and people aren't used to miracles. And you faithful friend don't be too sad because somewhere in whatever heaven is reserved for creatures of the deep Willie is still singing" That's such a strange message for kids. 'people don't like miracles and so they kill them and send them to whale heaven."
Scariest Scene- Pinnochio Pleasure Island.
As terrifying as The Headless Horseman is nothing will ever top little children being turned into donkeys to be sent to salt mines. And it is even scarier to know it is never resolved. Pinocchio escapes but that's it. Nobody saves the kids or turns them back or anything. It's nuts!
Best Villain- Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty
From Captain Hook, to the Devil, to Lady Tremaine all the early villains are good, but Maleficent is all of those villains put together in as she puts it 'the mistress of evil'. She's over the top, funny, creepy, and gives the best fight of any villain in any Disney movie. It actually feels like she might get away with everything when she enchains Prince Philip in her dungeon. It isn't until the 90s we get such a great Disney villain.
Best Song- When You Wish Upon a Star- Pinocchio
I could have also picked 'A Dream is a Wish' from Cinderella but it is very similar in message to When You Wish. They are both great melodies and have words about hoping for goodness and happiness in life.
Worst Song- Say it with a Slap- Bongo from Fun and Fancy Free
Here's a great message for kids- when you really love someone slap them as hard as you can… (Red Man song from Peter Pan is probably the worst but the melody is actually catchy, just the words super uncomfortable)
Best Original Score- Bambi
Clearly Fantasia should be the winner but since it is using classical music, Bambi wins because it's music actually becomes a character within the story. It animates the forest with wind, rain, and other sound effects in the score.
Saddest Moment- Dumbo- Baby Mine
Bambi's mother dieing is very sad but we haven't gotten to know her very well and it all happens quickly, not giving us much time to process it before we are moving on to love in the Spring. Dumbo's encaged Mother singing him a lullaby is a long scene, a beautiful song and a tender moment. It's sad but not in a bad way. Dumbo is such a satisfying picture because it has moments of all different emotions- fear, anger, laughter, sadness etc.
Funniest Moment- Peter Pan- Hook and the Crocodile
I had forgotten how much slapstick is in Peter Pan and it is all done very well. I laughed throughout the film.
Most Romantic Moment- Lady and the Tramp- Spaghetti
I think spaghetti became romantic food because of this scene. Great song, and about as romantic as dogs could be. Such a lovely little movie.
Most Underrated- Melody Time
Melody Time is the strongest of the package films. Make Mine Music is entertaining in a 'so bad it's good way' but I genuinely liked Melody Time. The Johnny Appleseed short is sweet with nice songs and Pecos Bill is fun, if a little bit too long. It was tough for me to find but if you can hunt it down give it a watch. It's gentle and sweet and I liked it.
Most Overrated- Peter Pan
There is a lot to like in Peter Pan. Don't get me wrong. I just wasn't as enamored with it this go-around for some reason. I don't like the way Wendy is treated, especialy by the other female charcaters when she hasn't done anything wrong. The slapstick is funny but nothing too memorable. The artistry and music aren't great. Love Tinker Bell and Hook but other characters are kind of bland. It's a lot of fun but not the masterpiece I remember it being. Plus, we have the awkward Red Man song.
Trippiest Movie- Alice in Wonderland
This movie is so trippy it doesn't even worry about a plot. It just introduces Alice and the viewer to character after character and I love it!
I enjoyed watching every single one of these movies. And more importantly I learned a lot along the way. Even a movie I didn't love like Three Cabelleros was interesting because of it was requested by the US Government, and it was quite effective in winning the loyalty of the South American countries to our cause. It makes the choices made in the movie interesting. So, there is always things to like about any Disney.
Mostly I love the artistry. I love movies but I think animation has a special ability to combine mediums and challenge the limitations of human actors in live action. You can have a child turning into a donkey where in live action the scene would be very expensive.
I also feel inspired by Walt Disney to take some risks and try new things. He was certainly willing to leverage years of hard work over risky propositions and I admire that. Of the first 16 films what are your favorites and have my reviews made you curious to watch any of the movies? I hope you do and let me know what you think!
Now on to 60's and 70's. Both of these periods would be less productive for Disney. In 60s Disney made and released 3 films:
1. 101 Dalmations
2. Sword in the Stone
3. Jungle Book
1. The Aristocats
2. Robin Hood
3. Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
4. The Rescuers.
So that will be my upcoming reviews. Thanks for reading! I'm having a blast!


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Christmas in South Carolina never looks like the snow-covered winter wonderlands you sometimes get in the more northern states. But the important elements of the season are there: time spent with loved ones, plenty of good food, and the joy of giving.
It's something that the 25-year-old Daniel had wanted to do for some time. As an Army private, he was no stranger to blood-pumping situations. He'd been watching skydiving videos online for months before he knew about Jessica's gift and after Christmas, he ramped it up even more.
When the day came Daniel and Jessica went down to Skydive Carolina together with Daniel's mother Darlene and spent a little time getting to know the instructors they were going to jump with. Daniel's guy went by "Chip" and was a 49-year-old veteran skydiver with over 8,000 jumps under his belt. To know that he'd jumped out of an airplane more times than most folks have been in one certainly inspired confidence.
One by one, each person went from standing firm on their own two feet to free falling, with nothing between them and the ground but two and a half miles of pure air. It was Jessica's turn and then, after a break to put some distance between them, Daniel Pharr and George 'Chip' Steele plunged out into the blue.
To adjust his course, he had to use the parachute's steering toggles. But because the pack was strapped to Chip's back and Chip was strapped to his, Daniel could only reach one toggle, giving him the power just to turn right.
Though the approach was far from graceful, Daniel managed to position himself well enough for the impact that he didn't break any bones. He got out of the harness as quick as he could so he could tend to his instructor. Seeing Chip was completely unresponsive and not breathing, Daniel immediately began administering CPR.
Unfortunately, when paramedics arrived to take over for Daniel, they could tell that it was too late to save him. An autopsy would later show that he had suffered a heart attack in mid-air and had died as they approached the ground or sometime shortly thereafter.
When the paramedics had a spare moment from trying to tend to Chip, Daniel asked them to borrow a phone to call his mother and girlfriend. It had been ten or fifteen minutes since that radio call when they heard Daniel's voice and learned that he was safe.
"The likelihood of you surviving," Daniel said, " decreases absolutely amazingly by factors exponentially if you panic." And even for a soldier, he exemplified exceptional calm under pressure. "He's as cool as the backside of a pillow," his father, Daniel Lee said. Cool as he is, they forced him to agree to never go skydiving again.


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The Scoop on Food
Should Your Kids Follow Your Diet Too?
By Sally Kuzemchak
Have lunch with a group of friends and you'll be hard-pressed to find someone around the table who's not following a special diet, whether it's vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, Paleo, or simply "clean" eating. I get it: We're all trying to figure out the way of eating that's best for us, and my own diet has undergone its fair share of tweaking too. But the recent controversy over a Paleo baby food cookbook got me thinking: When we change our diets–whether it's going meat-free or cutting out gluten–should we take our kids along for the ride?
In some cases, your diet could represent moral, religious, or ethical values that you want to pass along to your kids. "Being vegetarian is part of our moral map, similar to being a gay ally or supporting environmental causes," says a vegetarian friend of mine. "We want to teach our son why we believe that having a vegetarian diet is a morally conscious choice." If there's a person in the family with a food allergy, intolerance, or medical issue like celiac disease, that might also mean everyone in the family must abstain from certain foods (at least at home).
But what about diets we follow because that way of eating simply makes us feel (and, let's face it, look) better? A friend of mine switched to a Paleo/Primal diet, avoiding processed foods, grains, refined sugar, and dairy. "I eat this way because my body responds the best to this type of diet," she says. "I have more energy, I'm happier, I sleep more soundly, and it's easy to maintain my weight." Though she now serves fewer grains with dinner and cooks more bacon-and-eggs breakfasts, her son and daughter don't follow her diet (and neither does her husband). "My kids drink milk for protein and simply love bread and cereal. Their bodies seem better able to process those food categories better than mine can," she says. She's also okay with keeping some processed foods in the house, including granola bars for their lunchboxes and chips for her husband.
When changing up the family's way of eating, it's smart to keep these things in mind:
Watch out for signs that your child is distressed or negatively impacted by the diet. If your kids seem fixated on foods that aren't allowed or are sneaking or hiding food, it's time to talk with them and think about relaxing the rules. Even "clean" eating, which simply focuses on whole and unprocessed foods, can be hard on children if it's restrictive. Read my post on the topic, "When Healthy Eating Goes Too Far".
Avoid using extreme language when talking about any food. Words like "poison", "dangerous", or "fattening" can be alarming for kids and create negative associations with food.
Consider giving your child a choice. "We have been clear with our son that once he is old enough to make his own fully formed moral decision, probably age 10-12, he will be allowed to decide if he wants to eat meat," says my vegetarian friend.
Allow your kids to learn how foods make them feel. You've had decades to figure out that soda makes you sluggish or that gluten triggers your headaches–but your child is still learning about food and eating. Obviously, medical issues may make certain foods off-limits, no questions asked. But otherwise, letting a child experience, say, a bellyache from too much candy on Halloween isn't the end of the world and is actually an important learning opportunity. "As they age, I'm certain my kids will try different ways of eating and settle on one that they like best," says my Paleo/Primal friend. "I'd rather they experience this for themselves so that they'll make healthier choices because THEY want to, not because mom said so."
Sally Kuzemchak, MS, RD, is a registered dietitian, educator, and mom of two who blogs at Real Mom Nutrition. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. She is the author of Cooking Light Dinnertime Survival Guide, a cookbook for busy families. In her spare time, she loads and unloads the dishwasher. Then loads it again.
Image: Family eating together via Shutterstock

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text:
Q: How do I show that for small enough $x,$ this equation $f(x) A v(x)= x v(x), f(x)\to 1, x\to 0, ||v(x)||=1, A$ fixed non-zero matrix, can't be true? I've the following:

*

*a fixed $n \times n$ matrix $A,$ that's a nonzero matrix and has at least one non-zero eigenvalue.

*a scalar function $f: \mathbb{R}\to \mathbb{R}, f(x)\to 1, x\to 0.$

*a vector valued function $v: \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}^n, v: x\mapsto v(x) \in \mathbb{R}^n, ||v(x)||=1 \forall x\in \mathbb{R}.$

*The equality of vectors in $\mathbb{R}^n: f(x) A v(x)= x v(x) \forall x$ sufficiently small.

I'd like to show rigorously (if possible!) that for small enough $x,$ this equality won't hold. Of course if $n=1, A$ is a non-zero scalar, $v(x)= \pm 1,$ so we get $f(x)A(\pm 1) = x (\pm 1) \implies Af(x)= x$ which will have different limits ($A\ne 0$ for the left side and $0$ for the right side) as $x\to 0.$ So in this case we're done. However if $n>1, $ we can't do this. So here's what I tried so far

*

*Taking norms on both sides doesn't help either, as that'd yield:

$$ |f(x)||A|||||v(x)|| \ge |f(x)|||Av(x)||= |x|||v(x)|| \implies  |f(x)||A|| \ge |x| \implies ||A||\ge 0, x\to 0. $$ This is useless...

*

*Observing that both sides have different "growth rates" w.r.t $x,$ - now I'm not very satisfied with this argument, and if possible, I'd like to rigorize it. I'm considering taking some suitable norms on both sides that'd work, but I'm running into trouble here. More particularly, I'm thinking of something like having some norm inequalities like

*$n_1(Av(x)) \ge n_2(A)n_3(v(x)), n_i's$ are suitable norms in question:
on the left and
*$|x|n_3(v(x))$
on the right, and trying to pass to $x\to 0,$ then canceling out $n_3(v(x))$ from both sides.
Note that: we can try to answer a simplified version of the question assuming $f(x)\equiv 1,$ so trying to show that:
$$A v(x)= x v(x) \forall x \in \mathbb{R}$$ won't hold?
Thank you for your help!

A: It is unclear what is given in the problem at what is the goal. Nonetheless, it is not hard to see if the equality holds and that if $f(x)\neq 0$, then $v(x)$ is an eigenvector of $A$. Being unit vector $v(x)$ has at most $2n$ possibilities. Not only that. The fraction $\frac{x}{f(x)}$ also has at most $n$ values, which are the eigenvalues of $A$.
If you can clarify the set-up, we might be able to figure out what you need.

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text:
April 23, 2007 | General News
Nigeria: More uncertainty after polls
By ISN
Marred by violence and myriad fraud allegations, the credibility of Nigeria's state and presidential polls could lead the already troubled country into more uncertainty that may reach well beyond its own borders.
An election day truck bomb aimed at the Nigerian electoral commission headquarters, meant to taint the country's electoral process, failed to go off. Instead, it was organizational chaos, violence and fraud that combined to deal perhaps a fatal blow to the credibility of what should have been landmark elections in Africa's most populous country of 140 million.
Two votes set apart by a week were meant to elect 36 state governors and legislatures on 14 April and a new president and national assembly on 21 April. If successful, it would have been the first time one elected government transferred power to another elected government in oil-rich Nigeria's military-dominated, post-independence history.
While more than 20 people were killed in election day violence during the first poll, the presidential poll was much calmer, but perhaps even more fraudulent, observers said.
"The presidential election was less violent compared with the governors' race last week, because Nigerians are more concerned over state issues, the things that affect their lives more directly," Charles Dokubo, a senior researcher for the Nigerian Institute for International Affairs, told the Christian Science Monitor on Monday. "When it comes to the central government, most Nigerians believe the battle was already lost before it began. Their vote does not change anything."
While President Olusegun Obasanjo's ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) - which has taken a comfortable lead - and the government-appointed Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) hail the elections as free and fair, independent observers and opposition parties are unanimous in condemning the vote as fatally flawed.
The many varieties of fraud
According to the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of election monitors drawn from local civic groups, the 14 April vote was so flawed that results in at least 10 states should be deemed unacceptable. The group also said that in the 21 April polling, voting either started late or did not take place at all in half of the country.
"We are calling for a repeat of the elections because you can't declare the president with results from only half of the country," Innocent Chukwuma, chairman of the TMG, which has some 60,000 observers across the country, told ISN Security Watch.
Irregularities observed during state elections were significantly worse during the presidential vote a week later, said the Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI), which sent 59 monitors to Nigeria. The group concluded that the elections failed to meet standards it had observed around the world, including other African countries.
"Recurring incidents included under-age voting, voter registration list errors, stuffed ballot boxes, group voting, party observers and police instructing individuals on who to vote for, lack of privacy for voting, lack of results sheets and other materials, falsified results sheets and early closings," said the IRI in its preliminary report on the presidential ballot.
"Neither the spirit of Nigerians who went to the polls to cast their ballots nor the dedication of the thousands of poll workers struggling to execute their responsibilities in polling stations throughout the country were matched by their leaders," the group added.
Ahead of the Saturday presidential vote, a coalition of 20 opposition parties had called for the cancellation of the first ballot that handed victory to the PDP in 27 of the country's 36 states. After initial threats to boycott the presidential vote, they agreed to participate in order to have grounds to challenge what they said would be a flawed outcome.
With the ruling party candidate Umaru Yar'Adua taking an early lead, the top two opposition candidates - Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria People's Party and Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Action Congress - have both declared the election as unacceptable.
"Now that we have participated and seen the level of fraud, we will compile our evidence and challenge the election at the courts," said Buhari.
Abubakar also vowed to challenge the results, describing the poll as the "worst election ever."
"All that we are saying is that this president, this INEC, lack the credibility, the impartiality to conduct a free and fair election for Nigerians to express their will," said Abubakar, who fell out with former political ally Obasanjo after he helped stop moves to lift the two-term presidential limit to keep him in office.
The split between Obasanjo and Abubakar spawned a bitter power struggle that forced the latter out of the ruling party, with Obasanjo later backing Yar'Adua, a little known state governor from the country's mainly Muslim north, to succeed him. Obasanjo also tried to stop Abubakar from running for the presidency using allegations of corruption cited by the electoral commission to disqualify him.
However, the vice president mounted a legal challenge to his disqualification which paid off when the Supreme Court ruled within days of the election that his name be put on the ballot. By then the seeds of the organizational chaos that plagued the elections had been sown.
Despite all the criticism, INEC chairman Maurice Iwu praised the poll, saying: "I do not know any other country in the world that would have done it better. "We were able to print 65 million ballot papers in three days, had them flown into this country and distributed for an election. It is a tremendous effort and Nigeria should be praised for it."
The effort was apparently not good enough as election materials either arrived late or failed to arrive at all in many parts of the country, according to witnesses, voters and election monitors.
The fungus of political instability
In the face of widespread criticism of the organization of the ballot, the government has in turn accused the opposition groups of trying to create the atmosphere for a military takeover and warned that it would take action against any such moves.
The immediate signs are that the political battle will shift to the parliament and the courts. Senate President Ken Nnamani, a strong critic of Obasanjo, has recalled senators now on recess to meet on 24 April to deliberate on the conduct of the elections. The parliament has the power to remove Obasanjo from office and appoint an interim government to organize fresh elections.
Information Minister Frank Nweke is accusing Nnamani of seeking Obasanjo's ouster to "satisfy his inordinate and megalomaniac ambition." But opposition candidate Buhari wants the senators to remove Obasanjo for the sake of Nigeria.
Regardless, few are holding out much hope in any of the three presidential candidates to foment positive change in Nigeria plagued with poverty, rampant corruption and unrest. "All the candidates are tired old faces on Nigeria's political scene, reminders of the country's failed and militaristic past. All come with plenty of baggage," the British weekly magazine, the Economist wrote, pointing to the dubious or not corruption charges against Abubakar and the opposition's Buhari, who is most remembered for his political oppression as a former president and general.
In the meantime, with Nigeria teetering on the edge of a major crisis, analysts fear the ramifications will go far beyond the country's borders. Nigeria is the world's eighth-largest oil exporter and there are fears a growing insurgency in the main oil-producing Niger Delta region will intensify with a prolonged political crisis, damaging global oil supplies.
Fighting between the two ballots pitting security forces against Islamic fundamentalists in the northern city of Kano underscored the sectarian fault-lines in the multi-ethnic country, which is roughly evenly divided between a mainly Muslim north and a largely Christian south, with a history of one civil war and bouts of ethnic and religious violence.


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A baby was living in a filthy garage in Anacortes, Washington, with his parents, who were arrested after police found them over the weekend. According to Komo News, police investigated the garage after a concerned citizen called them. Apparently, an unclear number of adults had been living in the garage without heat or electricity for an unknown amount of time. The conditions were described as "disturbing" as police found pesticide, rat poison, dirty clothing, and empty cans in the small space.
"What they found was really quite disturbing. There were four adults present. All of them appeared to be under the influence of heroin. There was heroin and paraphernalia as well as other drugs found on the scene," said Anacortes Police Chief Bonnie W. Bowers.
The baby in the filthy garage in Anacortes is lucky to be alive. Bowers said that the tot was in a playpen of sorts with quite a few items piled inside with him. She said that the baby could have suffocated. The child was cold when he was found, and he was taken to a nearby hospital for care. He has since been released and has been placed with a foster family through CPS.
"It's a shock that there's a baby involved and at risk, however, drug use and heroin use permeates every community — small, large, affluent, poor — it's universal," Bowers said. According to Seattle PI, the baby's mother and her boyfriend (presumably the baby's father) were taken to Skagit County Jail. They face charges of criminal mistreatment and possession of heroin, and are both being held on $100,000 bail.
There have been a few cases of babies being found in strange places this year. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, a new mother dropped her infant in a drain because she apparently did not want the child. The incident happened last month in Australia. The mother was found and arrested, and the baby was doing well at the time of the report.
"The tiny 4-pound boy is only a few days old and was taken to the city's general hospital for treatment of injuries including a broken arm. A woman has been charged with attempted murder after a newborn baby was found in a drain in Sydney's west on Sunday. Police will allege the baby, believed to have been born on Monday, was placed into the drain on Tuesday, 18 November," police said in regard to that case.


STERLING SILVER PLATED BASE METAL NECKLACE Sterling Silver plated base metal 2" pendant with 16" chain and lobster clasp. Genuine leather band. Lead and nickle free. Made in Israel. Designed by Haim Shahar. This necklace draws the attention and makes you shine. it is simple yet elegant and adds a bit of fun as well.


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Q: Render tab characters in HTML I have to render some text to a web page. The text is coming from sources outside my control and it is formatted using newlines and tab characters.
New lines (\n) can be replaced by br tags, but what about preserving tabs? A brief search reveals there is no way to directly render tab characters in HTML.

A: An alternative to the non-breaking space would be the em space (  or  ). It is usually rendered as a longer space, if that is an advantage.

A: A Quick & Dirty Way
For a quick fix, you can use the xmp tag to stop the browser from collapsing whitespace. The xmp tag contains text that should be rendered uninterpreted (and in a monospaced font).
The problem is that xmp tags have been deprecated since HTML3.2, and have been dropped from the HTML5 spec altogether. In practice, browsers still support xmp tags, so they can still be useful, but not in production.
The Proper Way
Tabs are for tabulating data. The proper way to tabulate data in HTML is to use the table tag. Every line in your original string translates to a row in the table, while each tab in the original string starts a new (left-aligned) cell in the table.
Imagine you had this (tab-aligned) string to begin with:
Spam    1.99
Cheese  2.99

Translated to HTML, that string would look like this:
<table>
    <tr> <td> Spam   </td> <td> 1.99 </td> </tr>
    <tr> <td> Cheese </td> <td> 2.99 </td> </tr>
</table>

Note: If you wrapped the tab-aligned string in xmp tags and styled the HTML table to look like plain text, the rendered results would be the same.

A: Why not just wrap the content in a <pre> tag? This will handle the \n as well as the \t characters.

A: replace \t with      .
Each space you want will be a
As pointed out this isn't completely correct as it only pretends to be a tab as HTML doesn't actually output format a tab as you would expect.

A: If you're already replacing line breaks, why not do the same for tabs...?
str_replace("\t", '    ', $text);

A:  ,  ,   or   can be used.
W3 says little about this...
The character entities   and   denote an en space and an em space respectively, where an en space is half the point size and an em space is equal to the point size of the current font.

Read More at W3.org fro HTML3
Read More at W3.org for HTML4
Even more at Wikipedia (about spaces)


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Carnival Girl
Cutting Edge Books has performed a marvelous job preserving mid-20th century fiction. The publisher's new editions of classic titles by the likes of Howard Hunt, Ovid Demaris, Ralph Dennis, and March Hastings position these vintage, sometimes expensive literary works, into the spotlight for a whole new generation of crime-fiction and mystery fans.
One of the authors that Cutting Edge has focused on is Stuart James, an underrated crime-noir author that also served as a staff writer and sports reporter for magazines and newspapers. James also became an editor for Midwood Books, a subsidiary of paperback powerhouse Tower Publications. I thoroughly enjoyed the Cutting Edge editions of James' novels Frisco Flat (1960) and Judge Not My Sins (1951). I was happy to discover another Cutting Edge title, Carnival Girl, authored by Max Gareth, a pseudonym employed by James. The novel was originally published in 1960 by a small, low-budget publishing house called Chariot Books, home of other underrated novelists like Arthur Adlon and John Burton Thompson.
Norma is a gorgeous Midwestern girl raised by an alcoholic single mom. When she's nearly raped by her drunken stepfather, Norma runs away from home. In the book's opening pages, readers find Norma at an Indiana diner using her last dime for food and coffee. Thankfully, the waitress displays some pity, and arranges for her to catch a ride "west" with a truck-driving customer. However, Norma doesn't realize that the waitress earned an extra tip by selling her to the highest bidder. On a lonely stretch of blacktop, the trucker rapes Norma before she escapes to a nearby farm. After being sized-up by a farm laborer, she manages to escape what is perceived as an attempted rape by flagging down two people traveling with the carnival.
The carny duo (slang for employees of a carnival) convinces Norma that she can make it in the carnival as a stripper. Back then, a fan favorite at rural, small town carnivals is the peep show, where men and boys with enough coins could enter a tent to watch naked women dance. Norma learns a few tricks and before long she is the carnival's number one attraction. But, she draws the attention of three specific men.
Speed is the good guy daredevil that performs motorcycle tricks. He falls in love with Norma, but she doesn't have the same feelings for him. Instead, Norma is lusting after Lee, the bad boy carnival drummer. There's also a man named Frank, who pitches Norma a lot of cash to come to St. Louis to work his nightclub. But, she later learns that Frank is in deep with the Mob and if she takes his job, she'll be passed around as a prostitute making a meager living lying on her back for criminals. It's a twisty, hot triangle with innocent Norma caught in the middle.
With Carnival Girl, Stuart James completes a vivid, often disturbing character study of this young, unfortunate woman and her abrupt, violent end of innocence. Like Judge Not My Sins proved, James was such a clever storyteller with an uncanny ability to make his characters lifelike. By using a common crime-noir trope, the traveling carnival, James is able to submerge this inexperienced character into a world of depravity. Norma is a living doll thrust into dangerous situations and guided by seedy men with below-the-belt motivations.
Carnival Girl isn't the proverbial happily ever after story of love on the run, but instead a more provocative look at young men and women pursuing carnal desires no matter the cost. It is these types of stories that made Stuart James such a talented, organic storyteller.
Posted by Paperback Warrior at 6:00 AM
Labels: Cutting Edge, Stuart James
Conan - The Scarlet Citadel
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How Is Your College Student's Work/School Balance? Four Factors You and Your Student Should Consider
March 15, 2017 February 13, 2012 by Vicki Nelson
The increasing cost of college suggests that it may be necessary for more full-time students to work – and that more students who work are working more. College students may feel that they need to work more, and parents may wonder whether or not their college student should get a job while in college. But before you and your student make any decisions about whether or not to work while at school, and how much to work, have some conversations about the realities, the benefits, and the challenges of working while attending college full time.
One of the first things to consider is whether or not the perception is accurate that more students are working more. According to a recent study by the Bureau of Economic Research, the average weekly hours spent working by full time undergraduates has decreased in recent years. This may seem odd during these days of higher and higher tuition costs. According to this study, between the 1970's and the year 2000, the number of hours spent working at paid employment by full time college students rose steadily then leveled off between 2000 and 2008 at about 11 hours per week. From 2009 to the present, the number has decreased to about 8 hours per week. (These averages include students who do not work at all, so the number of hours worked by students who do work are actually somewhat higher.)
Investigators in this study cite the poor economy and lack of job availability as the primary reason that students are working less. It does not appear to be a choice or decision made by students. In fact, according to another survey conducted by the Institute for College Access and Success in 2011, 76% of adults between the ages of 18-34 agree that it is more difficult to afford college than it was five years ago. Two-thirds of 2010 college graduates left college with debt, with the average debt approximately $22,250.
Students who work may be working fewer hours, but are fewer students working? According to the Bureau of Economic Research study, this answer is – slightly. In 1970, approximately 33% of full-time students had jobs. By 2000 that percentage had risen to 52%. This number declined to approximately 45% of students in 2007 and may be closer to 40% of students in 2009.
So, although overall, fewer students may be working and students may be working fewer hours than a few years ago, most students feel the need to work in order to help pay for tuition, fees, books, or living expenses. If your student is one of these individuals wondering whether to get a job at school, it is important that you and he talk about the realities. Here are a few things that you may want to discuss:
Help your student understand that not all students work and that finding a job at school (either on or off campus) may be more difficult than she anticipates. He may need to start his search early, or wait until he is an upperclassman to get a prime on-campus job.
Discuss costs of college and additional expenses frankly. How much do you expect your student to contribute? Will he be responsible for part of tuition? For books? For his own living expenses? How essential is a school-year job?
Talk to your student about how many hours per week it is reasonable for her to expect to be able to work and still do well academically. Most students have shown that students who work between 10-20 hours per week actually do better than those students who do not work at all, perhaps because they must exercise better time-management skills. But students who work more than 20 hours per week may find that their academic work suffers. Your student should keep in mind the rule of thumb that he should be studying approximately two hours for each hour spent in class.
Help your student consider whether she will look for an on-campus or off-campus job. There are advantages and disadvantages of both. However, studies have also suggested that students who work less than 20 hours/week at on campus jobs show the greatest gains of all. Students who work on campus tend to be more engaged in their college career and make important campus connections.
According to statistics and studies, the ideal may be for a student to work 10-15 hours at an on-campus job. But each family situation is different. Each student is different. As a college parent, you can help your student determine his reasons for working, his interest in being involved in other campus activities, and his ability to succeed academically while balancing work, studies, social life, and other responsibilities. The important thing is that your student make an informed and considered decision, weighing the benefits and challenges of his choices.
Should My College Student Get a Job at School?
Should My Student Look for a Job on Campus or Off Campus?
Is Your College Student Investing Enough Time Studying?
Getting to Know Your Emerging Adult College Student
Staying Safe and Healthy in College – A Roundup of Helpful Posts
This is an amazing resource for all college parents, thank you!
College consultant
My daughter is a new college student starting in August. I was disappointed to find a lack of real resources and real conversations out there for parents of college students. When I came across this site, I was excited to see all of this information you've put together for newbie college parents like myself.
E.G., Parent from Massachusetts


It is a beautiful, crisp morning today in Pasadena...I think the last blast of heat has left, leaving cooler evenings and more comfortable days.
Pasadena manages to take beautiful care of their buildings. This is a newly renovated one, now home to the Urth Caffe, a favorite stop in the morning. Even on the hottest morning, the thick walls and breeze-way manage to make it one of the coolest places in town. Enjoy the hand-made and site-specifically designed tile work. So well done!
a visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on a canvas.
I'm drawn to the primal intent I see behind the hand of the artist. One rising star in the world of editorial illustration who has not only managed to keep her 'hand' visible while transferring into the digital realm, indeed is all about pentimento, is Wesley Allsbrook. I think she is an amazing, resourceful and prolific young artist. I never tire of her work, she has a true and fresh vision. Her use of color is intuitive and gutsy.
Wesley does amazing things with water: physically, metaphysically and metaphorically.
Scroll to the spread and double-click on "Taken by Pirates" for close ups. Each image has it's own beautiful palette. It is a shame that the huge typeface need cover her work, but that is the nature of commissions art directed by the patron. Her interpretation of the play of objects and light on and through water is assiduous and delicious. She often includes and is very generous with her process drawings on all her websites and blogs. I'm such a fan and can't get enough!
Here is her explanation of how she developed her interpretative skills as a student at the RISD.
Here are three young artists who have managed to earn a living as scribes. With hand-drawn calligraphy, they take it to the next level with digitalization and the creation of fonts. One would think the genesis of their work was digital, because their figures are so evenly handled, but you'll see in the videos, that most of the work is done by hand and only slightly tweaked digitally, where they manage to keep the organic individuality of their work.
Joluvian is from south of the Equator, and a Master Calligrapher. He is über-versatile stylistically and a consummate mark-and-shape maker. Here, he shares the tools he uses and goes from the actual drawing board to a vector program.
...the artist's hand that is, a theme I'm going to focus quite a bit, as while many of us transitioned from traditional mediums in the late 80's to the digital world, we continue to appreciate hand-written notes, natural light and eraser crumbs. The irony of the spate of Photoshop tutorials on learning how to distress images is not lost on me and is up there with whiskered jeans.
I was out walking the other day and saw this hand-painted house plaque and was able to get up close. It is carefully and beautifully painted. The wall isn't smooth either but has some tooth that probably affords the artist a degree of control. It's a vertical surface as well, - did the artist use a mahl stick? Most likely.
You can see that the touch-up paint is a little lighter than the original, and can't miss the amount of control the artist had. Beautiful!
Now, the above sample is very tightly executed and I appreciate this type of control because it has been my style as well in some areas of my work, but those aren't always the kind of samples I will show you. In the next few posts, I will bring you other wonderful and diverse mark-makers.


AKIRA said he would not comment.
Last night, AKIRA Kawakami (MCZ's Producer)'s radio program once a year, 'All Night Nippon ZERO' was broadcast.
Broadcasting was recorded on February 8, next to the venue where MCZ is rehearsing the Valentine event.
Although it was not broadcasted, according to the comments of fan who participated in the recording, AKIRA seems to have made the following greetings after the show.
This is no excuse but anything.
In the entertainment world, there is nothing to say about people in different offices and people who are managed by others.
So, I do not say anything.
I do not think MCZ members will tell something in future.
-- This message seems to be conscious of the recent coverage of MOMOKA.


There is no any comments or reviews yet. Do you know something about SUNY Albany Hillel which is located in CC320, Albany, NY, 12203, United States? Please add your comment or review about this place and help others to know more about SUNY Albany Hillel.
Near SUNY Albany Hillel there is also 8 similar College Rec Centers which are located near 171 km from its direct location.


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3 University of Wisconsin Peer Mentor Salaries
University of Wisconsin Peer Mentors earn $21,000 annually, or $10 per hour, which is 29% lower than the national average for all Peer Mentors at $28,000 annually and 100% lower than the national salary average for all working Americans. The highest paid Peer Mentors work for Cal Poly Pomona at $33,000 annually and the lowest paid Peer Mentors work for University of Wisconsin at $21,000 annually.
$27K Madison, WI Peer Mentor Average Salary at University of Wisconsin ·
-$1K (3%) less than national average Peer Mentor salary ($28K)
-$3K (10%) less than average University of Wisconsin salary ($30K)
$18K University of Wisconsin Peer Mentor without location (2 salaries)
-$10K (43%) less than national average Peer Mentor salary ($28K)


Colorado Springs-based X-IO Technologies has fundamentally transformed itself. On Tuesday, the company announced that it has signed a letter of intent with Violin Systems to sell the storage business that has been their core since the company's inception two decades ago. They also rebranded themselves as Axellio, and will focus on developing the edge-computing and hyper-converged intrastructure [HCI] business that they have developed much more recently.
X-IO was originally founded in 1997 as Xiotech, and was rebooted in 2002 as the Seagate Advanced Storage Group. The first version of what would become their flagship X-IO Intelligent Storage Element [ISE] dates from 2006. The Xiotech name returned in 2007, when Seagate spun the organization off. It was in turn later rebranded as XIO, and then, with the hyphen, as X-IO. The one constant the company had however is that in a densely populated storage market, they couldn't sell enough product.
"I came in as CEO three and a half years ago, and we looked closely at our data storage business," said Bill Miller, CEO of X-IO – and now Axellio. "It was clear that we really didn't have enough scale for our marketplace. We have been thinking since how we would get more scale. We didn't have the muscle to do so ourselves in a market where scale and volume matter. We didn't have the access to financing to overcome this by growing organically. We looked at acquiring someone else. We had been using some of our engineering talent around hyperconverged and edge computing, where the market isn't quite so competitive, and we thought we could do some interesting things there. So we decided to sell off the storage business. As Axellio, we will focus on the edge computing and HCI businesses that we will grow as a startup, and we have sufficient financing to pursue that.
The new technology has been under development for approximately three years, and came to market in 2017 as the Axellio FabricXpress. In its initial form, it was an edge computing platform for streaming big data analytics, and has since been expanded.
Axellio FabricXpress has been effectively broadened into four product areas – edge micro clouds, micro data centres, transportable applications and HCI. The Micro Cloud is a purpose-built solution for implementing scalable cloud architectures and running cloud native applications at the speed needed to offer real-time insights. The Micro Data Center is a 2U architecture that uses graphics processing units to run machine-generated data, data analysis, crypto-currency, and complex problem solving. Portable Axellio is an edge-computing system in two suitcases that meet commercial airline standards, including one suitcase small enough to carry on the plane. The system lets IT teams travel simply, effectively and flexibly, to set up a mobile data center anywhere at a moment's notice.
The HCI business in particular has enormous potential, which Miller said has been jump-started by a partnership with Microsoft.
This FabricXpress solution is uniquely designed to "scale in" by converging storage and compute in a 2U chassis, and uses NVMe over PCIe to make the most of virtual workload CPU performance improvements in Windows Server 2019.
Axellio will take their portfolio to market through a hybrid channel strategy.


Easy Watermelon Smoothie Recipe – simple, light, sweet and refreshing drink, made in two minutes with just five simple ingredients. Perfect for summer!
It is watermelon season and by far my favorite time of the year! The weather is hot and humid around here, but knowing that this is not gonna last forever, I love it! That's why I like to make hydrating drinks like this Easy Watermelon Smoothie Recipe.
But honestly, to me – watermelon is a great fruit to enjoy year round, if you can find it at the supermarket.
Why Make a Watermelon Smoothie?
I also been making myself a watermelon smoothie to pour into my favorite on the go cup and take in the car. This is why today I'm sharing this Easy Watermelon Smoothie Recipe with you.
Watermelon is also perfect for drinks, salads and smoothies. You may be asking yourself, can watermelon be used in a smoothie? Absolutely! It is perfect for summer smoothies. You may use it fresh or frozen.
It is great for salads and appetizers, too!
Watermelon is a perfect ingredient for on-the-go meals and snacks!
These watermelon feta bites are my favorite.
You can also blend just watermelon slices and make watermelon water. It is naturally sweet and super fresh! Great for hydration!
This Easy Watermelon Smoothie Recipe usually makes my mid morning or afternoon snack, that keeps me full and hydrated. It is perfect to take to the pool or in the car on the go.
In this Easy Watermelon Smoothie Recipe I used fresh watermelon slices, frozen strawberries, hemp seeds, lime juice (optional) and almond milk. I've also tried this recipe by adding just a little bit of yogurt and it tastes amazing!
Almond milk – it adds some thickness as well. This is a watermelon smoothie with milk.
sweetener – I never use a sweetener, but I understand that some people would like their smoothies more sweet. Use a sweetener of your choice.
What sweetener to use in a watermelon smoothie?
Anything from dates, regular sugar, maple syrup, agave nectar, liquid Stevia or erythritol could be used to sweeten this smoothie.
Why do i make a watermelon smoothie?
Because I usually have watermelon at home all summer long. I get bored from using it for just snacking. It makes a great, light homemade drinks.
This Easy Watermelon Smoothie recipe is relatively low calorie.
How to make this Easy Watermelon Smoothie ?
You place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Then pour into a glass or a to go cup and enjoy!
Can you make this Easy Watermelon Smoothie Recipe without a blender?
No, you can't. Blender is required to make its texture nice and smooth.
Place all ingredient in a blender and blend until smooth. Serve immediately.
This sounds like such a refreshing smoothie, Mira! I love how easy this is and so perfect for this time of year. It's been so hot and all I want to do is cool off with some frozen drinks. This sounds great for just about any time!
I love watermelon and this is a great way to enjoy it.