Frozen (2013)

10 Burning questions from watching Frozen: (spoilers)

1. What's with the African-influenced rhythms in a movie set in a lily-white Scandinavian Europe?  In retrospect, I would have loved to see Frozen set in Equatorial Africa with an Ororo Munroe-like princess as Elsa, who is the area's *only* source of ice and cold and snow.  We still don't have an African Disney princess!
   
   Still, the "Fathoms below"-style opening works well, and then transitions into the sisters' story (and Kristen Bell does all her own singing!), and the death of the parents at sea.  I'm drawn in to the story now.
   
2. Who else knows about Elsa's "condition"?  Surely the servants must know, and probably the Regent?  Who are the equivalent of Cogsworth, Lumiere, and Mrs. Potts?  We never get any sense of who these people are.  There are a few servants in drab clothing, but nothing more.
   
3. Why can't Anna and Elsa talk to one another through the door?  There is no answer for this.
    
4. Why does Anna never go outside?  I understand their parents turning Elsa into a shut-in, but why Anna?  This is a missed opportunity to deepen the rift between the sisters -- Anna is known and beloved by the town, while Elsa is perceived as aloof.  When the coronation time comes, many of the townsfolk are muttering that Anna, not Elsa, should become queen.  Elsa could accidentally freeze Anna's heart during an argument at the coronation; if the freezing process is made more gradual, Anna still has time to go on her adventure.  It also gives time for Anna to begin acting more aloof herself; she doesn't recognize that Sven (I mean Kristof) is in love with her because she has begun to shut people out.
   
   Okay, so after the coronation, Elsa runs off, and is beautifully animated like a budding Disney villain, purple cape and all.  It's a great scene, followed up by "Let it go".  This is where hiring Idina Menzel really pays off -- coupled with the animation, this is an amazing sequence.
    
5. Why does Anna not find the purple cape?  Elsa lets it go into the wind, and it's never seen again.  Missed opportunity for an emotional moment when Anna finds it, especially if it causes Anna grief and concern, while "letting it go" was an act of freedom for Elsa.
    
6. Why are the wolves introduced and then never shown again?  Another job for Chekov's gun. Missed opportunity for the wolves to be the "villains"; with the bay frozen over, they come across and attack the town.  And what about Hans, you ask?  See #8 below.
    
7. Why does Olaf have a musical number that absolutely murders the forward progress of the story?  We fast forwarded through this on a first viewing of the movie.  It astounds me that professionals watched this and didn't cut it.
    
8. Why doesn't Prince Hans allow Elsa to show herself to be a monster?  If he's really the villain, we need to be given a better hint before the final act.  But he *can't* really be the villain, because if he's the villain, it makes absolutely no sense for him to talk Elsa down from murder.  This is a missed opportunity to make him a simple gold digger.  Show us Hans flirting with Elsa at the coronation before he moves on to Anna; it's easy enough to explain away in the moment that he's the 13th son, so his father pushes him at every available princess, and then he appears truly to fall for Anna.  Then, when Anna needs Love's True Kiss(tm), it doesn't work, and he laughs a little ruefully and apologetically that he's in love with the town, not her.  And that's fine, because we've made the wolves the "villains".
    
9. Why is it okay for Anna to fall in love with the second guy she's known for a day, but not the first one?  Is it because Anna doesn't marry Sven, I mean Kristof, right away?  Missed opportunity to put him in the Friend Zone.
   
10. As filmed, Elsa is clearly the one with a metaphorical frozen heart that's the real problem; shouldn't she be the one to commit an act of love to cure Anna's literal frozen heart?  Something isn't quite right here. 

Let's go back to the comments on #4.  Prior to the coronation, Anna spends a lot of time outside in the town, beloved by the people as she loves them, but there's still an empty place in her heart that used to be filled by her family.  At the coronation, Elsa accidentally freezes Anna's heart, and then even Anna's love for her sister and the townsfolk begins to cool.  That's right, Anna needs a metaphorical frozen heart.  Elsa, on the other hand, has gone into the wastes and is at peace, until Anna comes to confront her.  This goes badly because Anna's heart has cooled to the point where she can't properly express her love for Elsa, and Elsa rebuffs Anna because Anna and the town now have everything that Elsa believes they wanted in the first place: Anna as Queen.  It is only now that Elsa's serenity has been upset by her disastrous meeting with her sister, that Elsa feels herself to be a monster and the town is put into a dangerous, permanent winter.  Anna returns to town as the wolves come out of the mountains, and she plans to wed Hans in order to cure her frozen heart; prior to the ceremony, she discovers this won't work (see #8).  Hans vows to protect the town and reluctantly determines that the best way to end the Winter is to lead a troop of soldiers to kill Elsa.  Anna still has enough love in her heart to ask Sven, I mean Kristof, to take her to warn Elsa.  They arrive just ahead of/at the same time as/just after Hans (whatever works best) and the sisters embrace, melting each others' frozen hearts.  The ice palace melts, washing them down the valley to the fields outside the town, and the wolves are dumped into the bay.  Hans is apologetic for thinking Elsa was a monster, and is ready to return home in disgrace, but the sisters accept that his actions were made out of love for the town, and he is offered a position as protector of the kingdom (and attracting the eyes of a lovely townswoman -- or a chorus of three, if you want a Beauty and the Beast reference).  Sven, I mean Kristof, is securely in the Friend Zone, and our sisters have a happy ending with a bright future ahead of them.

#ThereIFixedIt

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Some beautiful visual moments.  The inclusion of anachronistic popular music doesn't work for me, especially when there's so much good music from the Roaring 20's to work with.  It worked for me in Romeo + Juliet to take Shakespeare's words and put them in a modern setting, along with a modern soundtrack.  It mostly worked for me in Moulin Rouge! to include the modern pop music, because the setting was tied to that place and not strongly attached to an era, and the inclusion of pop music was a bit of a conceit in a movie that had a lot of comic elements.  The Great Gatsby very definitely has a Roaring 20's-era setting, and is dreadfully serious about itself.

Not quite smart enough for its own good (Gmail detecting missing attachments division)

Gmail is attempting to stop e-mails with attachments that don't actually have attachments.  It's a noble goal, but it's definitely not there yet.  I really don't like having to click OK after I've clicked Send.

Darn Tough

For many, many years I wore Thoro socks because they had far and away the best padding for me.  Unfortunately, I still wore through them all too quickly.  Then I discovered Darn Tough. Not much more expensive than the Thorlos, good padding, local company, and guaranteed for life?  Sign me up.


I wore through my first pair in less than two years (though this particular pair wasn't as heavily padded as some of their other styles).  It was incredibly easy to trade in for a new pair at the Outdoor Gear Exchange, a great customer experience overall, but I hope that I don't wear through future pairs quite so fast.

One Last Dance (2003)

The opening scene of One Last Dance is highly promising, there's some beautiful dancing by the professionals, and a few great monologues delivered by Lisa Niemi, but the rest of the movie is a series of inexplicable mini-melodramas punctuated by some truly atrocious acting from Patrick Swayze.  I can't tell whether he can't settle on an accent or if he really talks like that.  This is a shame, because it's obviously a labor of love, and I wanted to like it a lot.

I did like that we finally get to see them dance (almost) the entirety of the piece without interruption, which is quite a long stretch of film, but in the end, I don't understand at all why the has-been dancers were the principals in the first place, rather than teaching the younger dancers the piece. Revivals are typically adapted to the current composition of a company.

Oh! Joy and Rapture! I can organize my Google Apps quick links

Back in October, I was complaining about the loss of the quick links at the top of the various google apps. This was exacerbated by the fact that the App launch widget mostly showed apps I didn't use or were easy to otherwise get to (why do I need G+ to appear first in the App launcher when it's the only app that still has a quick link?).  Needless to say, I was delighted to see this notice today: 

Drag and drop to rearrange your apps.

Woo-hoo!!
 












Even better, you can add shortcuts to apps that only appear on the "Even more" link.  Well, most of them, anyway (sorry, Orkut and Bookmarks)