ALBONE

My two cents on Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is coming up, which means flowers and candy and a whole lotta advertising. Yeah, I'm not really a big fan of Valentine's Day, for a number of reasons.  The true, religious significance of holidays like Christmas or Easter has unfortunately been diluted over time due to commercialization . But there isn't much of a deeper meaning to Valentine's Day to begin with, so it's inherently superficial.  At least that's what I thought. According to Wikipedia (yes, I'm allowed to use this as a source, this isn't a college essay-), the origins of Valentine's Day actually trace back to the Roman Empire. The holiday derives its name from St. Valentine.  Apparently, there were many Christian martyrs called Valentine in the early days of the Catholic Church, one of whom died on February 14th. Some legends have sprung up to fill in knowledge gaps created by time. The most popular one is that St. Valentine (who

 Reviewing a pretty ayt movie. The Lion King is my favourite Disney movie and probably my favourite animated movie of all time. If you've seen it, you probably know why. If you haven't. Watch it. Please. So in the 90's and 2000's Disney released a bunch of direct-to-video sequels to their classic movies; meaning that they didn't come out in theatres. Most of these are either disregarded by fans or completely forgotten about. However, The Lion King 1 1/2 is a really solid "threequel." It's really a recap of the original Lion King from the perspective of Timon and Pumba. As the Lion King is inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet , the Lion King 1 1/2 is also inspired by a comedic version of the play.  What I like most about the movie is that the recap is done in a creative way, with Timon and Pumba watching the original movie and frequently pausing it to make comments and get snacks. There's some good new original songs, there's even a cover sung b

 "Ka-chow" - An anthropomorphic automobile. I like Cars (2006). The vehicles the movie inspired are pretty good too. Honestly, Cars is one of my favourite PIXAR movies. I rewatched it a couple of months ago and I still think it’s a genuinely good movie.  [OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING] The opening scene is just really fun-Lightning McQueen’s ‘I am speed’ pep talk, the cars going ‘nyoom…’ Yeah, I’m not taking this seriously at all. But for real, Cars is more than just fast-paced scene after fast-paced scene. For one thing, the soundtrack is excellent. ‘Real Gone’ really sets the tone for the opening, ‘Life is a Highway’ works quite well from a thematic perspective (it’s about roads), ‘Get your Kicks on Route 66’ is catchy and ‘Life Could be Dream;’ I don’t know… it just slaps. It is really hard to make the case that a movie this ridiculous is enjoyable, huh? Yes, it’s ridiculous and raises tons of questions with regards to worldbuilding, but there’s some really good stuff in this

 Man. Like. Miles. My. Guy. Where do I begin with this one? Over the years, superhero movies have become increasingly ridiculous (I mean that in the best possible way). I mean, in less than 2 decades we went from grounded origin stories like ‘Batman Begins’ to bombastic adventures like ‘Avengers: Infinity War.’ As the scale of superhero stories (try saying that 7 times- actually it’s not that hard nvm-) escalated, it naturally became harder to top the previous big blockbuster. I had a feeling that such large-scale crossovers had hit their peak for a while… Then Across the Spider-Verse completely did away with that.   [OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING] I only watched the initial teaser trailer before seeing the movie and I highly recommend distancing one’s self from lots of promotional material before a movie comes out, especially one like this. Everything felt so much fresher, from the gazillion cameos (Marvel are now obligated to bring Spectacular Spider-Man back) to the large scale chase s