Disney's Christopher Robin (2018)

As I mentioned in my previous review of 2017's Goodbye Christopher Robin, A.A. Milne's series of children's novels were a substantial part of my childhood. However, I grew up more with Disney's version of the stories and came across the source material later on. While I admired Goodbye Christopher Robin for being relatable on a personal level, I liked Disney's Christopher Robin on a conceptual level in addition to being somewhat relatable. I found the concept of an adult Christopher being a bit jarring at first, since the first image that usually pops into mind is the character as a child. The film's overall premise is unprecedented, as this is something that has never been attempted in the history of Winnie the Pooh. (Yes, in Goodbye, we saw an adult Christopher, but that was only for a brief moment) It was a take on the concept that was fresh and new, and it was beautifully accomplished. Despite the tone being darker than one is used to with this franchise, it manages to take many of the right steps in achieving a solid result. For starters, it has the prolific Jim Cummings reprising his role of Pooh and Tigger. Additionally, it is littered with references to Christopher Robin's source material. Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, and Piglet are designed as stuffed animals, with an appearance hybridizing Disney's version and that of Christopher Robin's original stuffed animals. However, Rabbit and Owl were designed with a more realistic aesthetic, probably as a nod to the fact that A. A. Milne himself created them rather than his son.
 As a minor spoiler, the title sequence also contains some events in Christopher Robin's life that mirrored his actual counterpart, such as being sent to boarding school and serving in World War II afterwards, in addition to distancing himself from his plush animal friends. However, instead of resenting his father like what actually happened, the film takes an approach similar to the Robin Williams movie, Hook. Christopher Robin simply grows up, leaving the remnants of his childhood behind. Surprisingly, the beginning of the film portrays him similar to that of A. A. Milne himself, albeit to a lesser extent (this is a Disney film, after all). However, when Pooh and the gang re-enter his life, he slowly begins to rediscover his inner child and slowly begins to share his former life with his wife and daughter. Ewan McGregor once again nails his role as the title character, just as he did as he did with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Lumiere (has there ever been a bad role of his?). As mentioned previously, I found myself relating to this version of the character like I did in Goodbye; I am a total workaholic, and at times I have made decisions that involved choosing work over family and friends. After seeing this film, I have decided that when I am back in my hometown after graduating from college, I am going to spend more time with them and make up for any time that was lost. While it is alright to have a stable career and a dream to work for, one must never forget their loved ones, because the person could almost push them away in the process. I believe that if Christopher Robin never reunited with Pooh, he would have slowly lost everything that he held dear to him.
Overall, I would highly implore each and every one of you reading this post to see this movie! It is heartfelt, it brings on so many feelings, and its message is absolutely fantastic! You do not need to be a fan of Winnie the Pooh to enjoy it, it is a movie that is definitely for everyone; it will definitely resonate with you.

The History of Nostalgia Critic Sneak Peek

Ten years ago, on July 3^rd of 2007; an illustrator from Chicago uploaded a small video onto YouTube; a two-minute review of the Michael Bay film, Transformers. Inspired by James Rolfe and his unique style of videos; the man would become an iconic figure in the history of online filmmaking. He would later inspire content creators such as Lewis Lovhaug (aka Linkara), Eric Rodriguez (aka Blockbuster Buster), Mat Brunet (aka AniMat), and myself (aka the creator of this video). To this day, this man has achieved fame, stardom, and a loyal fanbase that grows by the second. To the average viewer, I bet you are wondering “who is this guy?” This man can only be summed up with one phrase: “I remember it so you don’t have to.”

              Before we dive into the history of Nostalgia Critic, let us take a moment to explore the backstory of the man behind the character. On November 17^th , 1981 in Naples, Italy; Douglas Darien Walker was born. He was born to parents Barney Walker of the US Navy; and the late Sandra Walker, a former opera singer and therapist). His grandfather was a pioneer in the frozen food industry, responsible for inventing a pie filling that could be frozen without the worry of the sugar crystallizing. On top of being from a family of innovators and military men, Walker was also born as a descendant of composer Heinrich Schutz. As a child, Walker was always intrigued by the art of cinema, along with many of the franchises young boys were enamored with in the 1980s such as Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (both of which would become subjects for many of his iconic reviews).

Little is known about his childhood, aside from him being bullied in the ‘90s due to his name being similar to a certain Nickelodeon character. He would finally pave the path to his destiny when he started attending Northern Illinois University, majoring in film and communication. After his college days had run their course, he would start a career as a simple illustrator. It was at this moment Walker and his brother (Rob Walker) would start paving the way towards Nostalgia Critic’s conception.

              According to a post on the forums of ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, Rob Walker stated:

 "It was sort of organic. Not really spur of the moment, nor totally planned either. Before he did any of this, Doug went through like a mid-midlife crisis. He got big into all the things he watched as child, including ordering a DVD of old 80s commercials. Of the shows and movies he tracked down, some still held up. Some did not. Some things I didn't recognize at all, but there was a two year age difference, so occasionally we saw something the other missed. Point being, he made it his quest to track down old things he remembered and I constantly made fun of him for it. Finally, I asked when this whole freaky phase was gonna pass, and he said, 'Now. I think I'm done. I'm all out.' So that nostalgia thing was DEFINITELY there…”

              Doug was far from done. This obsession with his childhood would not die; matter of fact, it kept growing stronger by the minute. He wanted to relive his childhood and express his opinions to the world; the question is, how was he going to do so? This is when a fledgling site known as YouTube became a major player in shaping Mr. Walker’s destiny. In 2007, YouTube was still in its infancy (only being live for two years prior), as well as the “streaming video” industry as a whole. Very few innovators came before Walker, one being the legendary James Rolfe (aka The Angry Video Game Nerd).

Walker’s first series of videos was known as Five Second Movies, a series of short videos which summarized a film in a severely truncated (and comedic) amount of time. This series paved Doug’s path to stardom, and allowed him to express his opinions on movies in a satirical way. An effect of this set of videos created a trend amongst other content creators, as many began to create their own “Five Second Movies”.  The trend would later catch the attention of The Times and unfortunately, YouTube’s copyright system. Doug Walker instantly became a YouTube icon from something he merely considered a “hobby”, simply by combining humor with his love for cinema. He knew he wanted to raise the bar and see if he could do that while actually being on camera, so the viewers could see the true extent of his humor.

According to Walker himself, “At the time, I wanted to see if I was actually funny; (you know, not my Five Second Movies and my editing) I wanted to see if I was actually funny, so I came up with this character that was betrayed by his childhood. He actually felt really p****d off that his childhood wasn’t as good as he remembered it, and gets really angry at it and annoyed.” The character he intended to create was inspired by icons such as Daffy Duck, Lewis Black, Stephen Colbert, Bill Murray, as well as infusing aspects of himself for a personal feel. After the character was conceptualized and given a “halfway-professional” appearance, it was time for Mr. Walker to start work on his first review. This begged the question, “what was going to be his first review?” Of course, his first review on July 3^rd 2017 would be an adaptation of one of his childhood favorites; the 2007 Transformers movie.

Character Spotlight: Harry Potter

Before we begin, I want you all to answer a question for me. Do you believe in and love the concept of magic, wizardry, and the supernatural? If you answered yes to this question, then I am pretty sure this is a character you will love reading about, and I must also warn you that there are spoilers lurking throughout this post, as was the case with Jean Valjean in the previous installment of Character Spotlight. This character's backstory... is a bit tragic, even more tragic than being arrested for stealing a loaf of bread and being imprisoned for almost twenty years. This character was orphaned at merely a year old, and forced to live with his abusive aunt, uncle, and cousin. His parents sacrificed themselves to protect him and to this day, he wears the mark of their murderer which also serves as a radar to detect when the latter is near, a powerful sorcerer who cast an unforgivable curse who is known simply as "He Who Shall Not Be Named..." as even his supposed name is a taboo among the citizens of the Wizarding World. This character, like Valjean in the previous spotlight, is known by many names such as "The Boy Who Lived" and "The Chosen One". Who do I refer to him as, you may ask? I simply refer to him by the name his parents gave him at birth, Harry Potter.
Harry Potter was born to parents Lily, a muggle (or non-magical person) and James Potter (a wizard) on July 31st, 1980 in the small town of Godric's Hollow, named after Godric Gryffindor, one of the founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. While his first year and three months were simply magical (no pun intended), the next decade was filled with sorrows and misery, as he was left with his only biological and brutally abusive relatives, the Dursleys. However, that would soon change when his uncle's house became flooded with letters from Hogwarts and an encounter with the half-giant who would become a lifelong friend of his, (and one of my favorite characters in the entirety of the series) Rubeus Hagrid. It was here where young Harry Potter learned he was a wizard, and not just any wizard, but the wizard who defeated Lord Voldemort in his infancy. Throughout his adventures over his tenure as a student at Hogwarts, Harry faces hordes of enemies such as trolls, basilisks, dementors, dragons, and Voldemort's army of dark wizards, the Death Eaters. However, in those battles against Voldemort, there have been some losses as well. Along with his parents, Harry has had to face losses such as that of his headmaster and mentor Albus Dumbledore at the hands of Professor Severus Snape, the loss of his godfather Sirius Black, and the loss of his friend and late brother in law, Fred Weasley. Later on, he married his best friend's sister, Ginny Weasley, and became Head Auror of the Ministry of Magic. I enjoyed reading about this character's adventures in my childhood, and was deeply saddened to see it end when I closed the final book after reading it, and I was equally saddened when the film series concluded after the events of Deathly Hallows Part II. The book series sparked my love of reading and literature, and the movie series was one of my many inspirations as an animator and filmmaker. Like Valjean, Quasimodo, and Tarzan, I will always hold Harry Potter in high regard, and I am eagerly looking forward to when The Cursed Child is released at the end of the month.

Next Month's Character Spotlight

Hey everyone,

I hope you all enjoyed this month's character spotlight that I posted last night. If all goes well I hope to do one once a month, and I need your help deciding next month's! In the comments write which of the choices you would like me to to a Character Spotlight on, whether it may be:

1. Mowgli
2. Harry Potter
3. Quasimodo
4. Kunta Kinte

I look forward to hearing input from all of you and I hope you enjoy next month's character spotlight!

Character Spotlight: Jean Valjean

Out of the dozens of characters I have read about over the years, very few have prominently stuck out over the course of my life, such as this one. This particular character is an underdog, a philanthropist, a Christian, and a redeemer. He is known by many names such as Prisoner 24601, Prisoner 9430, Monsieur Madeleine, Monsieur LeBlanc, Ultime Feauchelevent, and his name given to him at birth, Jean Valjean. Why has this character stuck out from all the other characters I have read about? What makes him so special? Before I can answer these two questions, let's go over his story and struggles as told in the pages of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, published in France in 1862.
Before his journey began, Valjean was a simple woodcutter who worked to provide for his sister and her starving children. However, that changed one Winter night. To obtain food for his sister's children, he threw a stone into the baker's window and stole a loaf of bread from the shop. As a result, Valjean is arrested on the charge of theft for five years, and is sent to Toulon prison under the name "Prisoner 24,601". However, Valjean strongly desired to return to his family, and made numerous escape attempts which only extended his prison sentence from five to nineteen years. At the end of his sentence, he is put on parole with a yellow passport in his hand. However, there was a bit of a "monkey's paw" to this yellow passport, as wherever he went across the countryside of France, he was unable to obtain lodging, work, and food, as the people he encountered did not trust him, except for one. This man was known as Bishop Myriel of Digne.
For the first time in nineteen years, he felt as if he were an actual human and not an animal. However, Valjean's thieving intentions lingered from the bread incident years ago, and he stole the silverware of the Bishop, only to be arrested the next morning. In a surprising turn of events, Bishop Myriel gives Valjean the silverware and a pair of candlesticks to sell, telling him that he used the candlesticks as an offering for Valjean's soul to God. While travelling, Valjean inadvertently steals a fifty-sous piece from a young chimney sweep named Petit-Gervais, which causes him to break his parole. Desiring to change his life, Valjean abandons his life as an ex-convict and in the course of eight years he becomes a successful mayor in the town of Montreuil-Sur-Mer.
Unfortunately, the shadows of his past loom over him as he is soon greeted by former Toulon guard turned police inspector, Javert. While it may seem that Javert was simply assigned to the town, he had an ulterior motive as he had a feeling that Valjean was hiding somewhere in the town. Needless to say, it was a bit of a shock to him when he found out his boss was the criminal he was searching for. How did he find out, you may ask? Valjean put it upon himself to rescue a man named Feauchelevent, who had been trapped under a toppled and broken cart. While rescuing him, he accidentally reveals his strength to Javert, who begins to piece together that Madeleine is Valjean. After rescuing the old man, Valjean manages to secure him a job as a gardener in a convent in Paris. Later on, he rescues a woman on the streets named Fantine and assists not only in nursing her back to health, but attempting to obtain her daughter from an inkeeper couple in Montfermeil. However, he is interrupted when he learns another man has been arrested under the false pretense that he is Jean Valjean, so he rushes to Arras and confesses that he is indeed the real Jean Valjean. Unfortunately upon returning to Montreuil-Sur-Mer, Fantine passes away from the shock of this revelation and Valjean is arrested once again and branded with the new number of 9,430.
Months later after faking his death, he arrives in Montfermeil and adopts Cosette. However, as was the case in Montreuil-Sur-Mer, Javert is once again in pursuit of him and transfers over to the police in Paris.
Years pass, and throughout,  Valjean is caught in a wild series of adventures and events, from becoming a gardener in a convent to assisting in a student revolution. If you wish to learn about more of those adventures, Les Miserables can be easily found online or for free from a digital book seller such as iBooks, as the entirety of the novel is in public domain. Valjean unfortunately dies of grief  an unspecified amount of time after his adoptive daughter Cosette's wedding. As he dies, he sees visions of Fantine and Bishop Myriel carrying his soul into heaven.
I asked at the beginning, why is Valjean so significant? Why is he of importance? Valjean shows that despite coming from a rough upbringing, one can overcome adversity and be successful. Valjean manages to go from being a thief to a philanthropist in the course of almost twenty years, nearly the same time span in which he was imprisoned. He evokes change in the people he encounters, change in those with rough upbringings such as Feauchelevent, Fantine, Cosette, and surprisingly Javert. The change he evokes in Javert is so powerful, it drives the police inspector mad to the point of drowning himself in the Seine, unable to accept the fact that this convict he has been pursuing is indeed an honest and changed man. Javert believed that "he should have perished by [Valjean's] hand", and was utterly destroyed when Valjean chose to let him escape rather than kill him when given the opportunity, another aspect of Valjean that causes him to stick out in my mind. Valjean is a man who highly follows Christian morals and values, in a time where science and education were becoming prominent in developing countries.
I leave you with this, no matter what the upbringing, no matter what the circumstances, and no matter what trials and tribulations one may face, any man can change, and any man can turn his life around. Prime examples have occurred through history, such as Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, JK Rowling, and Victor Hugo himself. I bet it has even occurred to many of you in life, or I bet many of you have seen or known people that it has happened to.