Monday, May 9, 2011

I'm...unenchanted

So I (finally) just watched the movie Enchanted with my friend John before he left for a lovely two-week vacation in Korea (JEALOUS, btw!). It was okay for a time killer/break from schoolwork/summary of Disney movies. Basically, yeah, it wasn't original at all...combined all the traditional fairytale movies that Disney (?) has already covered.

Upsides:
-The original concept of juxtaposing reality with fantasy was sort of a new idea (if there was any originality at all)
-Patrick Dempsey has a cute face
-There was a bit of magic
-Some of the songs were cute :)

Downsides:
-It just doesn't seem fair to take the credit away from Classic Disney moves and mush it into one big copycat later on
i.e. Enchanted = Snow White + Sleeping Beauty +...more?
-Amy Adams and that guy who plays Cyclops (always forget his name!!) were annoying at times
-The whole moral that the movie was trying to convey was shot down almost immediately after it was established.

--In case you're not sure what I'm talking about, here's what I mean. The main point of the movie was to provide a realistic outlook on life in an optimistic way. A naive, fantasy-crazy damsel in distress, Giselle, awaits her prince's rescue, but eventually learns the importance of being realistic about love and finding it through dating and getting to know someone that you can love "forever". Bad stepmom shows up, kills her, kiss of TRUE love revives her, she awakens, defeats the dragon with her chipmunk friend's help, and lives happily ever after with the REALISTIC love of her life. MEANWHILE, her "true love's" former supposed fiancee who he had been dating for 5 years was dropped just like that and she ran off to lalaland to marry the fairytale prince, who had hardly spoken 3 sentences to her. I really hope children don't watch this. Describing the moral value of this movie in the words of love, I would say Disney is sending "mixed signals".

Since I haven't seen a Disney movie in a LOOOONNNNNG time, I was enjoying the silly humour, funky (though archetypal) characters, and remembering a precious part of my childhood throughout the movie--UNTIL it got to this horrible ending. I'm sorry, but the title of this blog post (spin-off from the popular teen saying, "I'm unimpressed", in case you didn't get it...) summarizes my feelings towards this movie.

P.S. If this movie isn't Disney, I apologize. Just swap all the times I used Disney with words like fairytales, or childhood stories.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Funfunfun Partying Partying

So, I'm back at school this summer doing my 3B term. I'm still in the process of switching out of the Science and Business program and hopefully into Biomedical Sciences or Honours Science. Well here's the program for the next four months:

BIOL 140L Intro Microbio Lab - Haven't had it yet, but heard the instructor can give tricky quizzes.

BIOL 241 Applied Microbiology - I LOVE how this is a survey course. Me being me, I'm not one for details but I like big picture stuff. Plus, my prof is awesome. She's extremely knowledgeable and makes a (potentially) boring subject interesting. Hope the lab isn't too much work...

BIOL 303 Intro Developmental Biology and Embryology - study of embryonic development, basically. My prof is the (in)famous Dragana Miskovic--heard she's scary and whatnot, but I actually like her. She's no nonsense and she throws in dry humour jokes. Love those (no sarcasm).

BIOL 308 Molecular Biology - Don't know if it's the nature of the course or if it's the prof, but I feel like we haven't done anything for two classes now. Bruce Wolff is also infamous for his boundless stores of knowledge to go with his brawn (sarcasm). Perhaps shrugging, going off topic, and ignoring bolded/capitalized terms in HIS OWN NOTES are the new signs of genius...? This is the only class I have trouble staying awake in.

CLAS 104 Classical Mythology - Learning about the Greek/Roman gods. Awesomeee! My only regret is that Persephone doesn't have her own Chapter in the textbook or is an area of emphasis in the course. Psh, their loss, Persephone. ;) The prof is nice though, and he makes it very interesting--then again, I can't decide whether credit is due to him or the actual course content. Only downside is that there is a lot of reading (i.e. 140 pages for the first week!!).

HRM 200 Basic Human Resources Management - Like the prof. She has a strong voice and seems like another no-nonsense prof. Don't like the fact that we have to do ASSIGNED team projects...always a risk in university because at least in high school, you know who you're dealing with right off the bat. Course seems straightforward, and to be honest, I chose it because it is a well known birdie at UW. :)

So I'm finished my Day 4 of school, and I've already been trying so hard to study and stay on top of healthy eating/living habits. Surprisingly, it's going well! Although, the last thing I've been doing is having fun. While going through the countless pages of reading assigned for all my courses, that's one of the many thoughts that I "iron-willedly" had to suppress from my mind in order to stay focused on the task at hand. I eventually unsuppressed it so I could write this little complaint.

I find it annoying and pointless if people describe themselves as "fun-loving" or "knows how to have fun". Makes me see them as pretentious and egocentric. After all, the descriptor "fun" is rather subjective in nature. Who isn't fun-loving? It just depends on what people find fun. Not to endorse it or anything (because I find it super lame and one of those comedies where I feel forced to laugh after not laughing for a looong time), but Dwight Schrute is a prime example of this phenomena. Normal things that his coworkers find "fun", he doesn't, and at first glance he seems like a grumpy "un-fun-loving" guy, but you start talking about potential customers, and he's all smiles and fuzzy peaches.

Anyway, all this reading has made me quite brain-tired, so I'm going to end my post here. The reading must go on.

P.S. Orange is my least favourite colour, and I'm not feeling too happy/great right now. Hence the font colour choice.