Family: Doing it the Right Way

There’s a single line that makes just about all people happy. “_____ is expecting!” Children are a wonderful gift from God and it’s exciting when anyone is having one, especially the first. Every so often I’ll see an article online saying so and so celebrity is expecting. Depending on who it happens to be, I’ll curiously read the article to find out a little more about that person.

Most of the time the celebrity is single, and sometimes has been with their partner for an extended period of time. This is one promotion in film and in celebrity-life that people don’t take seriously anymore. It puts a huge damper on an exciting new life when a couple did not choose to do things God’s intended way, which is marriage first, children after.

Recently I watched an interview on YouTube with Chris Hemsworth. He was talking to the interviewer about his wife being pregnant, and I had to smile—I didn’t know Hemsworth was married. And then today I was online and found out that as of last month, his wife is expecting their second child.

I wondered who his wife was, so I looked her up. Her bio is a little beside the point, but when reading through it I found out their story. They met through a company that supports them in their careers, they later dated for 10 months, were engaged for five months, and then were married in 2010. Their first child was born in May 2012, and here in 2013, they’re expecting their second.

I gotta say, this is both exciting and refreshing to see Hollywood celebrities do it right. Hemsworth’s wife Elsa said on starting a family, “Having the person that you love by your side and starting a family with them is the best thing that can happen to you in this life. You can't ask for more”. I can’t agree more because they did it right; they are doing it God’s way. And that makes it exciting!

So, to the Hemsworths (though I highly doubt they’d ever read this post from a random BJU college student), I say congratulations and good on ya, mate.

Naivety at its Finest

Blue Sky Studios’ 2011 film Rio was a beautiful film—the picture was spectacular, but the characters, the plot, and the music were just as colorful. I enjoyed the film when I first saw it, but a few flags went up in a couple areas.

Content with Content

I was reading through the comments on my blog tonight (thank you to those who have commented!) and one thing that my friend Leigh said on my post “Friend or Foe?” really stuck out to me. In response to my post on movies promoting demonic activity, she said, “I've always disliked horror movies, but I don't often sit back and analyze why I don't like them.”

Leigh hit it right on the nose.

When the Sand Runs Out

Family is important. I don’t know where I would be without my family, which consists of my parents, five girls and four boys. It is a madhouse at times for sure and as I always say, there’s “never a dull moment”. With all of our contrasting personalities and splashes of humor or attitude, something of interest is bound to happen at least once a day.

Giving Credit Where it is Due

You know what I see in animation? I don’t just watch an animated movie with the plot, characters and the music. I love to go in-depth to see how the creators of an animated movie did it with specific technologies and software that blows my mind.

Take my favorite DreamWorks Animation film How to Train Your Dragon for example. It took the animators up to four years to create every single strand of hair or fur, clothing, tree, leaf, cloud, dragon scale, etc. They worked very hard to make it as beautiful and realistic as they possibly could, and they did a pretty good job at it too.

 

Or take Disney/Pixar’s Monsters Inc. Do you know how many hairs are on Sully’s massive blue and purple polka-dotted body? Thousands. For the creators to make each hair have unique, realistic movement, they had to work on it for 10-12 hours each. That’s beyond impressive.

I know some people who don’t necessarily like a Disney/Pixar or DreamWorks Animation film. They don’t like a particular storyline or think the movie as a whole is dumb. But there is a particular reason that I prefer to watch one of these two companies’ animation films over a reality film.

There is so much time and hard work that goes into each background, every fiber of material, and every color. When you watch the making of some of these top-notch CGI films, it is insane how much work has to be done. These men and women use technology at its finest to bring us a movie that took them years of developing, molding and shaping into a fantastic product of animation.

Combined with amazing talent and thematic scores worth remembering, DreamWorks Animation and Disney/Pixar films will always be close to the top of my favorites list.

I don’t just have high opinions on movie content. I really do love movies and I do have good things to say about films. So here is my point of this post: don’t just watch an animation film and write it off as “stupid” or “boring”. You may not be a big fan of DreamWorks’ Dragons, but do you really know how much work was put into it?

If it’s not your cup of tea, fine! We’ve all got our preferences on what to watch. But just because you don’t like it, does not make it stupid. Give the movie creators the credit they deserve. To you, it’s just a simple movie; but to them, it’s their hard work that enables them to put food on the table.

 

P.S. The two How to Train Your Dragon images are from a new poster that is promoting How to Train Your Dragon 2, going to theatres in June. I posted these to point out the amazing detail (leather, skin, scales). Pretty cool stuff if you ask me! Really, you cannot enlarge these photos and tell me they don't look fantastic.

Copyright Image Fanpop.com

Copright Images Berksgrapevine.com

An Advertisement Bombshell

There are a lot of different styles of clothing out there. The typical trendy brands worn by my generation are American Eagle, Loft, Aeropostale, Gap, New York & Company, Banana Republic, A.N.A., and tons more.

A Lasting Effect

I like listening to music as much as any other person, but there are a few genres that I simply won’t listen to because of content. Rap is one of those genres. There are also a few singers whose music I will not listen to. One of those is Jamie Foxx.

Out with the Corny

My college and career leader is known to dub the classic Hallmark films as “corny.” Some of the films are alright, but for the most part I tend to agree with him. A Hallmark film might be cute or decent, but as it is directed towards the conservative community, the end result is usually with a mediocre response.

Dissecting Disney: Part 2

This post idea also came to me as a result of watching that YouTube video on “Disney’s Top Scariest Scenes.” I don’t recall which number this film was, but I definitely agreed with him on the film for being on the list—the scene was “Hellfire” in the movie “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”.

Dissecting Disney Part 1

A couple days ago I was bored out of my mind and decided to waste a little time on YouTube. I soon found myself watching a clip called “Disney’s Top Scariest Scenes”. As each clip played, the man who made the video commentated in the background to give us some context for each film, and to explain his reasoning for assigning that particular clip that number. A few were shown that I had forgotten about since my childhood years, but number one truly caught my attention.

The Ultimate Gift

I know it’s just barely November, but coming up in the next month is one of the world’s best holidays: Christmas! I love Christmas—my family gets together with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, we eat great food and open presents together on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning my siblings and I will wake up our parents around nine and we’ll open presents until long past noon. Our family is so big it is quite a time-consuming project.

Flawed Expectations

I’m sure by now I’ve stressed enough the fact on how much I love Disney. I won’t take the time to divulge in it fully because I’d rather not bore you. We’d be here all night.

But I think there is a certain mindset that little girls learned from Disney films long ago, and now they aren’t so little any more: mainly, they are in college and searching for that special prince or true love’s kiss, as my mom and I jest.

Media Vandalism

There are quite a few different genres of music out there and tons more lifestyle promotions in all that accessible content. I’m sure a few possibilities have come to your mind already—we’ve all heard a song or two that we didn’t find appropriate according to our own standards. Drinking, premarital and extramarital sex, and drug use are usually the “really bad ones” that come to people’s minds. But it’s a biiiiiig world out there and as noted, there’s a ton of music too. Surely these aren’t the only forms of questionable content?

You’re right, they are not.

Quality Time

One thing I’ve noticed in recent years is how much our media affects family life. At the end of the day everyone in the family pulls out their iPods or computers and focuses on the news, movies, TV shows, music, E-books, Google, YouTube, Pinterest, and the list goes on.

But no one looks around the room to see their family members doing the same thing—endlessly tied to media and not paying any attention to each other.

What would it take to put aside the devices and the media for a single night just to play a board game with your brothers or sisters, or have a meaningful conversation with your parents? When was the last time you ate a meal together as a family instead of in the living room in front of Doctor Who or that 800-page novel you’re reading?

Quality time spent together helps a family grow. Doing meaningful activities as a family, whether playing a board game or going to the zoo on a Saturday afternoon, knits a family closer together.

So next time you’re at home with your family, go to the closet and locate Clue or Life, or go online and figure out how much it would cost for your family to go to the zoo or an aquarium for the day. The more time you spend together, the more memories you’ll make that you can look back on and smile.

Save the movies and other media for the rainy days. Go do something with your family.

Friend or Foe?

I went to a friend’s sixteenth birthday party in high school; we had a great time playing games and eating pizza, his parents were great hosts and everyone from the school and church was invited. It was a great fun-filled evening.

Following the food and games one senior pulled out a couple of movies and held them up. “Here are the options,” she said. She held up the one (I honestly can’t recall what it was); there was a mediocre response. Tossing that case away, she held up the other option but covered the picture up with her hand and called out, “Or, The Grudge.” The response from the group of teens was almost unanimous.

Almost unanimous.

Destructive Influences

If there is one thing I hate, it is being scared so bad I almost wet myself. I hate it when my friends jump out at me from behind corners or as I’m washing my face in the sink, I look in the mirror to find my friend looming over my shoulder in order to scare the bejeebees out of me. I hate being scared.

Controlling Content

How many of you have seen The Goonies? In case you haven’t, let me give you a summary. It’s a great film about a bunch of teenagers who set off on a great adventure to find a pirate’s treasure so they can save their town from being bought and destroyed by a rich man. Throughout the film the kids have to avoid the pirate captain One-Eyed Willie’s booby traps, and must run from a trio of thugs bent on taking the treasure for themselves.

Overall it’s a pretty good film for 1985, and it was one of the first films for actor Sean Astin, who is best known for his role as Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings franchise. The film is fun and the plot keeps you on the edge of your seat.

But I must say that I have a serious issue with this film: the language.

How old are these kid actors? Astin was 14 years old, as were fellow actors Feldman and Quan; actor Jeff Cohen was only 11. And I must say that nothing annoys me more in a movie than when children under the age of fifteen are cursing some of the vilest pieces of our language because some adult script writer told them it was appropriate.

And not only were these kids asked to speak foul language in the film, there are a few scenes when the kids bring up an innuendo of some kind. I don’t find this type of content appropriate no matter the age of the actor, but an eleven year old? Come on.

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now how much this truly bothers me. And I hope it bothers you too. Let’s go through a few more examples of language content, shall we?

Considering Content

How old were you when you began wanting to make decisions on your own, outside of your parents’ rule? Fifteen? Thirteen? Ten?

I can’t remember exactly how old I was. I suppose I was thirteen or fourteen when my friends started watching different movies or listening to new music genres. The difference between me and my friends was that I was a follower—I did things out of peer pressure, to fit in. Most of my friends took on a leadership position; they went out there and made choices because they initially wanted to.

When young people get into that preteen stage, it is perfectly normal for them to want to move outside of the boundaries a bit, to roam free from under their parent’s protective shelter. They want to be “free” and have “more space”.

This is just part of the growing experience to figure out what kind of people we want to be in life. Most teenagers will admit that one thing they consider on a regular basis is their future: figuring out their identity or life’s calling.

But along with that natural push for freedom comes all the responsibility with deciding what to believe religiously, ethically, economically, etc. And in today’s society, what could better influence our young people other than devoted family and friends?

You guessed it: media.

Absorbing Content

If there is one thing that I have observed about children, it is this: children are sponges.

That might sound a bit strange and maybe you chuckled to yourself, but hear me out. Children absorb everything they see and hear. I’ll let that first thought soak in (haha) as I continue.

Roles Reversed

Aside from size, my family is your typical, ordinary family. We operate in the same way that families have been operating for centuries: the kids go to school and help with chores, mom stays home to cook and clean, and dad works all day in order to provide for the family. Day in and day out, this is what my family does; this is what makes life normal for us.

But I’ve noticed in recent years a change in how the family operates. Instead of mom staying home to cook and clean, she gets a degree in college and gets a job, leaving dad to stay home and care for the kids and take care of the house.

Who's Buying You?

I love being entertained. I always have been, and I always will be. The film industry is something that has always had a special part in my life (perhaps a little too much…*ahem*). But what’s wrong with entertainment today, aside from the fact that I may be a little obsessed with Disney?