January 30, 2025 5:52 PM
Orion and the Dark
Last year while I was visiting my family and we were flipping through different movies on Netflix, my six year old niece chimed in and said "I like this movie!" It was Orion and the Dark, and the rest of us had never seen it before so we decided to watch it.
The movie started off really strong, with Orion talking about his anxiety and his fears in a really creative way. He illustrates his fears in a journal and the movie does a great job animating his drawings. His biggest fear is the dark, and Orion meets a character that represents the dark itself.
.---. .====. .' '. / 00 \ : ; |`~~~~'| O '. .' _,.' '.\|/ `---` .' // `. / \ , . | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (() ()) ; ; .___________________.
Dark is actually a pretty cool character. The movie gives him a real personality, and he just wants to be understood. Later we also meet the "night entities", which kind of felt like Inside Out-lite to me. It turns into your typical adventure of overcoming fear and gaining a new friendship, but then at the end the movie gets kind of zany and there's a flying turtle and even time travel?!
We paused the movie at one point and saw that it was written by Charlie Kaufman, and we were like "of course".
Overall, I liked the movie. I thought that it spent way too much time on the night entities (I'm also not really a fan of Inside Out), and I got a little bored in the middle, but I thought the wackiness at the end was great.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After I watched the movie, I googled it, and I stumbled upon a copy of Kaufman's first draft of the script. I was curious how this compared to the final movie, so I read the whole thing.
I definitely laughed a lot more while reading this than when I watched the movie. Here, Orion is a huge movie buff and there are a lot of movie references. (I can totally see why that was mostly cut out of the final script though)
The night entities have a completely different vibe too. They're kind of weird, and they're a lot more interesting than how the movie portrays them. It felt like Kaufman's original vision for the entities was lost in the final script, which is a little disappointing.
The endings were also very different, but in this case, I actually prefer the way the movie ended. They are both a little zany, but the movie really honed in on Orion and Dark's friendship, while the original script was much more focused just on Orion at the end.
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But this wasn't an original story by Kaufman. His script is actually based on a picture book with the same name. And I love picture books, so I had to read it.
__ _ / \ |/_) *** __ | )| \ /| / \ |/\ \__/ | \/ :,\__/ | V _ _ s '*~., AND THE ,.~*' s ### ## ### # # # # # # # # #_# # # #==# ### # # ### # # # # # #
And it is such a well crafted picture book. There really isn't much to the story itself (no night entities, just the dark!) But the book absolutely shines with its illustrations and the way that the words are laid out. There is so much detail, and I made sure to pause and really look at all the parts of each page.
I also really like the way that color is used. Sometimes I just like looking at the pages with different shades of the night sky.
.-~--. .' `. . . . * * . . ) .., . . ' ' . . ' ' . . ' ' . . ' .-*-. ' . ._.' .'.-~-.`.' ,. . : ^_^ ;(_,' . __ , '.___.'// | | | . /, \ | | | . //( *** / C___.' C___/ ^ lm lm
While the movie is enjoyable enough, if I'm going to recommend anything in this post, I'd say that you should read the book. I think it would make a great bedtime story.
January 11, 2025 8:52 PM
The Day the Crayons Quit
Lately I've found that most books written for adults are just not that interesting to me. Picture books are where it's at. Because there are fewer words on each page, I feel like every word is so carefully crafted. Even the placement of the words is important. And the pictures matter. With a novel, you often have one place to potentially add an illustration and most of them have the most uninspired covers. So I wanted to make a blog post with a list of my favorite picture books, but I think that each book deserves its own post, so this will be the first of a new series of posts.
And because I quit my job yesterday, I thought it would be fitting to re-read one of my favorite books, The Day the Crayons Quit. I instantly loved this book when I first read it, and I love it every single time I re-read it. The words are hand written, and each crayon has a different personality.
\__/ __/ \__ \__/ / \ /\ /\ /\ /\ |==| |==| |==| |==| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | /\ | | | | | | | | |--| | | | | | | | | | | | | |AA| |AA| |AA| |AA| |AA| '--' '--' '--' '--' '--' Blue is stubby because he gets used a lot
I think my favorite characters are the orange and yellow crayons. They both think they're the color of the sun, but I personally like to include both colors in my sun.
And don't worry, the colors do come back in the sequel. I highly recommend that as well!
March 20, 2021 10:32 AM
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Great Glass Elevator
Yes, I'm still dealing with sleeping issues. It's not nearly as bad as before, but it lasted long enough that I read all of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator during my sleepless hours at night.
I kind of love that the first book starts off like this:
These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket. Their names are Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine.
And these two very old people are the father and mother of Mrs. Bucket. Their names are Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina.
Love the fact that Dahl just calls them "very old people" and the fact that their names are "Joe and Josephine" and "George and Georgina". Little things like this amuse me when I'm reading.
I remembered the story pretty well since it's so popular that two movies were created from it. The book is actually a lot simpler than the movie, which I appreciated. In the original movie, there's a scene where we think the final golden ticket has been found, but it was actually a fake. There's also a scene where Charlie and Grandpa Joe sneak into another room and drink this fizzy drink that they weren't supposed to. It was kind of weird, because Willy Wonka clearly noticed them "breaking the rules" but it was like "eh, whatever, you still win." I thought it was a weird addition to the movie.
But I'm talking about the book. Charlie is 100% wholesome in the book. The book is simple and silly which is my favorite kind of book.
Now Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is something that I think I had only read once or twice in my life, so there was a lot I didn't remember. But I have to say, this is even more ridiculous than the Chocolate Factory. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I can see why this sequel isn't as popular. There's a kind of racist section of the book. There's some more adult humor in it. Maybe it gets a little too political at times. There are really two separate stories that just get hastily strung together in the end.
But hey, in my bouts of insomnia I was laughing at all the insanity in the book, especially during The Nurse's Song. (Google it if you're curious.)
I really enjoy Roald Dahl's writing style. I think it influenced my own when I was in middle and high school. Maybe if I read more of his stuff I'll be inspired enough to figure out how to end a story I wrote many, many years ago.
January 31, 2021 5:47 PM
Winnie-the-Pooh
About a month ago, I said I was going to read all the Roald Dahl books. And since writing that post, I haven't read any more of his books. The problem is that I don't own any of them, so I have to take them out from the library, and with Covid, they only do curbside pickup. I have to request the book first, and the first few books I requested have taken a really long time to be available.
So, I decided I would read a book that I already own. At the moment, I only own four reading books, and one of them isn't even in English. I hadn't read The World of Pooh in such a long time, and it's my favorite book ever, so I figured I was due for a re-read.
One of the things that I don't think I appreciated before are the poems. Pooh is always turning his thoughts and adventures into songs and poems.
It's a very funny thought that, if Bears were Bees,
They'd build their nests at the bottom of trees.
And that being so (if the Bees were Bears),
We shouldn't have to climb up all these stairs.
There is so much in these two books that makes me smile and laugh. I love the writing style and the nonsensical logic. Every character is just so damn snarky and mean to each other without meaning to be. Well, except for Eeyore. I think he means it. It's all lighthearted, so no one takes anyone else too seriously.
"Thank you, Piglet," said Pooh. "What you have just said will be a Great Help to us, and because of it I could call this place Poohanpiglet Corner if Pooh Corner didn't sound better, which it does, being smaller and more like a corner. Come along."
But besides the silliness, there are also really touching moments in each story. And sometimes those are a little silly as well.
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.
_ {" `,.-~--. ,"\ _.-~~~-._ `; ` ,; ,-' `~. : :____,'_________________`._ ,'. .,; /\ .,.' `. ; },~ ' { / / \ \ (\, -' `. ,: : : : ; : : ; ,'~~'. \ : . .\ /. ` ., __,./ Y _ : `-.; ; ; { } :' ; Y~-~'; .~: ; `.,.-' y~-'_. `~-~" /////// J) "~' ////// /////// ,, /// ////////////////// //////// Piglet is actually much smaller than that, but, you know, limitations of ascii art.
Winnie-the-Pooh always gets a solid 6 out of 5 stars from me.
December 30, 2020 11:34 AM
Roald Dahl
As a kid, my favorite author was Roald Dahl. I was just really into his weird, kinda gruesome sense of humor. I had mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to read more, and I decided that [re-]reading all of his books would be on my lifetime TODO list.
I'm also trying to read them in the same order he wrote them. The first book he wrote is called The Gremlins. Apparently he wrote this in partnership with Disney to make a movie, but the movie never actually got made. It was alright. It certainly read like a Disney movie.
The next book I read is a collection of short stories in Someone Like You. I don't think I'm really a huge fan of short stories. Some were kind of interesting, some kind of dragged.
Overall, not that exciting yet. I'll start getting into his bigger hits next.
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