REVIEW: Beauty and the Beast

YAY! I made it, I watched Beauty and the Beast and I’m… I don’t know exactly how I’m feeling but I hope writing this will help me.

Okay so, if you don’t know about it, I’m a huge, huuuuge Disney fan. Imagine the type of fan who doesn’t live in a country with a Disney park on it and somehow still manages to go once a year. That’s me. I’m not your average ‘Omg, I love Disney movies too!’ type of fan, no. I’m more like “I want to buy Disney posters and fill my house with them”.

Beauty and the Beast has a special meaning for me, thanks to it I learned how to read. I used to have this little plastic book with illustrations of the movie and a cassette. I would put the cassette and follow the narrators words. I even remember the sound it made every time I had to turn the page. Cute memories. There’s also the fact that I think it is one of the best Disney animated movies ever made and the soundtrack… Oh, God. Don’t even make me start on the soundtrack because this will end up being a long, long post.

So, I was delighted by the beautiful cast the movie had. Ever since they said Emma Watson was going to be Belle, I knew she was perfect for the role. I had a lot of people telling me they didn’t picture her at all which struck me as odd because all I could see in her was Belle potential. I never really seen anything with Dan Stevens (the Beast) on it apart from the new fox tv show “Legion” I have yet to watch but I was delighted by his performance in the movie, though sometimes it was a little difficult to analyse because I was not really seeing him.  Luke Evans made such a great interpretation of Gaston, I was so charmed by him and angry, just like I always was everytime I saw Gaston in the animated movie.

Josh Gad and Lefou presented a little more of a challenge. When Disney said that Beauty and the Beast was going to be the first movie to introduce a gay character and that this character was going to be none other than the villain’s silly sidekick I was a little bit unsure that it was the right way to introduce LGBT characters into Disney films. Not only Lefou was on the bad side of the story, making him one of the villains but also because his name literally means “The fool”, and I don’t know about you folks but I found it quite displeasing. I think everyone had their insecurities about the subject. But (and a strong “but”) after watching the movie I think it was amazing. I think my favorite part of the movie was a scene featuring Lefou, I was so surprised by how well they managed to save that. Josh Gad is really incredible and I’m really glad Lefou got his happy ending.

I don’t need to say anything about Ian McKellen, Ewan McGregor, Emma Thompson, Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw or Audra McDonald because some of these are in my list of favorite actors. I think they were an amazing cast so I should mention Lucy Bevan in charge of the casting, I thought her job was done wonderfully.

Of course that being a hella passionate Disney fan means that I’m a little bit critical. In this case not that much. My complain was that they didn’t include “Human Again” and instead wrote an original song that carried the same message. I didn’t expect for the song to be included since it was also cut from the animated version. However I thought they could have done a lot of creative scenarios with it. Sadly, they didn’t.

My second complaint was perhaps the book the beast shows to Belle where they then proceed to travel to a small place in Paris where she was born. Even though I loved the fact that they told us  more about Belle I thought it was a little too much magic for me. I know it’s a fairytale and more magical things are shown, however I think we didn’t need another scene to add to the whole magic aspect of the movie.

I’m not even going to deepen in the way they played with Emma Watson’s voice and how auto-tuned it was. Instead I’m going to say I was glad this movie had a sort of musical vibe, they added more songs giving the film a Broadway adaptation style. My final little complaint was the dress. Belle’s dress was… I don’t know how to put it but… meh? It was as if Disney was making it easier for the people in charge of making Disney Store’s dresses.

In general, Disney delivered a great adaptation much more developed and deepened than Cinderella. I know, I don’t like to compare either but it’s inevitable even though I personally loved Cinderella’s movie.

What about you? Have you seen the movie? Which Disney movie do you think should have a live action adaptation?

Hope we read each other soon!

PS: I have this other post where I talk about some facts about the original Beauty and the Beast movie, it’s pretty interesting! check it out if you feel like it 🙂

Don’t forget

This is a daily reminder to not forget yourself.

Dance around the house a little. Be ridiculous. Blast that guilty pleasure song you hear at night when everyone is dreaming or at morning when everybody is still asleep.

Drink whatever you like in your favorite mug. Drink juice, water, coffee, chocolate milk, even soda.

Watch your favorite show, movie, anime, cartoon. Or read. Read poems, stories, biographies, nonfiction.

Eat whatever you like, today is your day. And if you need to go shopping to get some food, so be it. Buy the most delicious cookies, your favorite snack, your favorite candy.

Change your hair, cut it short or decide to leave it long. Go shopping, dress nicely or stop worrying so much and stay comfortable.

Think about yourself, compliment yourself, read essays, exams, writings that got you a good grade or a compliment in school, university or work.

Don’t feel unloved. Remember love comes in millions of ways and forms.

And remember: You come first, then the world.

Random topic: The Big Wedding and Whitewashing

Hey guys! I have been thinking about doing this for a while now. I wanted to start a sort of section (?) in my blog where I discuss or more like write about random topics. Sometimes I want to write about things here but I feel like I can’t because they come from nowhere. Like maybe about a movie that premiered a long ago and I just watched. Or an old book, or something about Harry Potter, you get the idea?

Anyway yesterday I watched The Big Wedding (2013) with Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, and Susan Sarandon between other known actors (Ben Barnes, Amanda Seyfried, Katherine Heigl, etc.) It called my attention for the amount of great actors it had and also because I love Robert De Niro.

It was a really bad movie overall, the plot was predictable, full of jokes that had the intention of making you laugh but failed miserably and kind of aimless as well. Like a really, really bad comedy you knew it was going to be bad because no one knows about it and you thought you might have seen one of the actors in one of Grey’s Anatomy’s episodes but you’re not quite sure except this movie had A list actors that you can’t really understand how is it that they ended up agreeing to make this movie in the first place.

But that was not what bothered me. Yeah because if I’m going to start this Random Section thing in my blog might as well do it to complain about things. What made me hate this movie was the fact that they used Ben Barnes, a known english actor, they tanned him a bit and used him to portray a colombian young man who was adopted by a north american family. They even made him speak spanish.

I know this is not new. Hollywood does it all the time, they whitewash even the tiniest characters with no importance. However, I cannot help but be mad about it. Cause it wasn’t just that. Alejandro’s (Ben Barnes character) biological mother was from Colombia and was supposed to come with her other daughter to his wedding. She was supposed to be this really religious woman who prayed and stuff. Stereotyping much? Not only that stereotype but his biological sister was supposed to be this really promiscuous girl who jacked off Alejandro’s brother (the one from the north american family, not the colombian. That would be incest and even if they weren’t blood related they still both were Alejandro’s siblings so it was kind of weird)

So it’s like that for South America, we are seen as religious prudes or we are whores who only think of sex. I also know it’s not only with Latinos. Ghost in the Shell (2017), a movie adaptation of a japanese manga is getting boycotted because Scarlett Johansson, one of Hollywood’s most whitest actresses probably is portraying Motoko Kusanagi. A character that should have been given to an actual japanese actress. Which for me was really devastating since I used to admire Scarlett Johansson. Her trying to defend her decision on why she thought it was okay to pursue the role didn’t help at all.

But because I’m latina I thought maybe I told you a little more about other roles that were supposed to be for Latinos but ended up going for american actors.

• Catherine Zeta-Jones in Zorro

Though Shakira and Salma Hayek were considered for the role of Elena in Zorro, Catherine Zeta-Jones ended up playing her in both movies Zorro, and The Mask of the Zorro. I do think that these were spanish characters from spain and not South America. even though a lot of South American countries have spanish heritage. (Take me for example half of my family comes from Spain)

• Al Pacino in Scarface

In famous movie Scarface he plays the role of Tony Montana, a Cuban drug kingpin.

• Meryl Streep (and others) in The House of The Spirits

I love Meryl Streep just as much as the next person however in 1993 she portrayed Clara Trueba in the movie The House of The Spirits based in the book by chilean author, Isabel Allende. The movie is set in Chile and the filmmakers decided to cast Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Winona Ryder.

• Ethan Hawke in Alive

Are you guys familiar with the famous case of the uruguayan rugbiers who got stuck in Los Andes after their plane crashed? It was really well-known because a lot of the rugbiers who survived had to to resort to anthropophagy, meaning they had to eat their dead friends to survive (yeah that’s a  horrible way of putting it) Anyway I guess it was a good plot for a movie because in 1993 Hollywood decided to make the movie casting Ethan Hawke as Fernando ‘Nando’ Parrado, the Uruguayan rugbier.

• Hank Azaria in The Birdcage

In the movie The Birdcage, Azaria portrays the  role of a gay Guatemalan housekeeper. He won a SAG award for his role.

• Johnny Depp in Before Night Falls

In Before Night Falls he plays two cuban characters, Lt. Victor and Bon Bon, a drag queen. Javier Bardem, a spanish actor won an oscar for playing Reinaldo Arenas, the cuban poet and novelist.

• Madonna in Evita

This one hits home. Madonna portrayed Eva Peron, the famous argentine first lady in the movie Evita. I’m not even going to comment on this one.

• Natalie Wood in West Side Story

In this movie, where two street gangs are rivals, on of them is puerto rican and though they did cast Rita Moreno as Anita and that earned her an Oscar, they also casted Natalie Wood as Maria, bummer.

There’s a lot more actors and actresses who have accepted roles that could have easily been portrayed by latino actors, black actors, asian actors. And thought it always comes in question whether the filmmakers or the actors should carry the blame, remember the filmmakers do the casting but the actors also accept the roles.

source: Latina Magazine

Hope we read each other soon!

P.S: I don’t hate any of the actors by the way (except Johnny Depp, I don’t like him) I do think that they should have thought about if before accepting those roles.

Los Angeles feelings

I’m back. Back here and back from vacations. This time, back from California.

Let me tell you a little something, I don’t really remember when was the first time I thought about moving to a specific place but I can clearly remember that moving to United Stated was always a fixated point since I was 17 years old.

I think I had this idealized idea of moving to Los Angeles because I’m a huge Hollywood fan. I love movies, they’re great when you want to get away from the reality of your life. And so I fell in love with the idea of moving to a place where things were different. Now I’m not stupid, I know that it’s not like in the movies, it never is. But after having the chance of going to check it for myself, I can definitely say that my wish of moving there is definitely still there. The fact that Disneyland is close from there increase my interest a lot as well.

So my trip started in Anaheim. If you have been reading this blog you will know that I’m a big Disney fan, like big, big Disney fan. So it was a must for me to go to Disneyland, the original park.

My experience was really different from what I was expecting but I wouldn’t say it was bad. If there’s something I learned is that if my dreams come true and I get to go a second time, I am definitely not going on a sunday. It was our last day and our second time in the park, me and my sister could only do one game because of how long the lines were. It also didn’t help the fact that by the time I was there a major storm had step upon us. I heard people saying it was one of the biggest California had… my luck.

Despite that I do believe it was a magic experience. Back in Orlando (where I have been going to Disney once a year since like 2012) I never met any character, finding them was impossible but in Disneyland characters seem to appear all the time. I got a lot of pictures with a bunch of them, Aurora from The Sleeping Beauty, Nick and Judy from Zootopia (I was fangirling hard) and more… some of them are in my instagram if you want to check it out.

Now though I loved Disney in California I have to say you get a better experience when you go to Orlando. To start with you have a lot of choices regarding hotels. I was used to staying in hotels inside the Disney resort, you get more full of the magic spirit Disney gives you but they were so expensive in Anaheim that we had to stay somewhere else. I don’t complain thought, It was a really nice hotel.

After Anaheim we drove all the way to Las Vegas [Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas” sounds in the background] If I’m being honest, it was never my kind of scenario but I loved it. Of course I did more of the tourist part of it, I was with my grandparents after all (which sounds like i had to behave properly but it was more like me and my sister asking them to behave) The only reason I played once was because I’m 21 and I don’t look like it I wanted to sit and play so someone could ask me for my ID. I don’t know, haha, I just wanted to show someone I was 21. It didn’t work, nobody asked me nothing and I lost 20 dollars.

And after Las Vegas we finally stayed 10 days in Los Angeles. You have no idea how in love I am with that city. Maybe I still have that La La Land kind of feeling around me, I was so dazzled. Generally when I go on vacations I get to a point where when I’m on my last days there I am ready to leave, like I’m fulfilled or something but here I didn’t want to leave at all. I wanted to stay and do all the things we did all over again.

And it wasn’t as if everything that happened in our trip was beautiful. We did get the chance to go to a lot of places but we have a lot of family arguments not only between each other but with my mother who was back home. But that’s for another post/story. What I’m trying to say here is I loved my trip to Los Angeles.

I have a lot of pictures but I don’t really want to bore you. Instead if you’re a Harry Potter fan then that’s good because I’m going to end this post with some pictures I took of the Warner Bros. Studio Tour.

(Starting with the La La Land café where Mia worked and Warner recreated)

My sister had to refresh my memory cause I honestly didn’t remember seeing this in La La Land. Also, now that I’m talking about the movie how do you feel about the whole Oscar’s mistake. Iconic. I’m so happy for Moonlight but at the same time I would have love for them to receive a proper recognition. (My sister thinks it was rigged and honestly it’s kind of suspicious)

Also this!

RIP

I loooooooved Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them but you know what I loved even more? The aesthetic. A very much deserved oscar for best achievement in production design.

 

Hope we read each other soon!