The Story of the Corner:

Have you ever found a location in your house or apartment where the air currents collect the dust and dirt into a ball of surprising size? Upon further investigation you may find unusual things inside that ball of dust, like paper clips or socks. This blog is a little bit like that, but for my life. As little bits of dust and dirt collect on my mind I'll be cleaning things off and looking for the more valuable items (everybody needs more socks). This blog will be serving as the receptacle of whatever comes out--good or bad.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Frozen: A Commentary in Seven Posts (Three)

Critical Reception:

In some ways this is the easy one. I can just post some reviews for the film and talk about them. The bulk of the work is on you, dear reader. You have to go to all that trouble of opening the links in new tabs and glancing through them. I hope you can handle it.

This is also a chance to vent a bit. (SPOILER WARNING) This here article (SPOILER OVER) is just not a classy move on a news website. The title is a spoiler! Bad form! I don't know if the blame lies with the author or the site managers, but it really cheesed me off, as this was the first article I saw about the film after its release. So, my experience was colored a bit by having the "big reveal" announced two weeks before I even saw the film.

Here's some other reviews I grabbed:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2013/11/26/frozen-review/2941351/

http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/movie-review-frozen.html

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/frozen-2013

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/01/how-parents-can-turn-em-frozens-em-big-twist-into-a-teachable-moment/283055/

Admittedly, the last one isn't so much a review as a musing about the film, but I like it and I think there are some good points worth sharing.

Based on my past experience (at least one example of which is on this blog), the big surprise here is from USA Today. I don't care for Claudia's reviews, nor her writing style. She tends to try hard to make adjectival puns in reference to the content of the film, and it usually seems strained. I also find her overall (excessive, overwrought?) use of adjectives to be assaulting. I've never seen her give four out of four. She's usually very harsh on films which, at the very least, aren't so bad. Her reviews for "Thor: The Dark World" and "Pacific Rim" especially got hit hard. It's like she didn't know what she was going in for. All of that is background for me to say that I don't trust her, and that makes a four out of four star rating more than mite bit suspicious in my eyes.

I should be clear that I have a very positive view of the film. I really did enjoy it. I laughed. I smiled. I might have been a little moist in the eye a few times. Maybe it's a little bit of my internal contrarian, or perhaps just my training to analyze combined with my person tendency to think about things way more then they really should ever be thought about, but I can't bring myself to give it a review above 3 stars (maybe 3.5 if someone gave me a personal argument) our of four in my book. I think that's pretty darn good. (To borrow the rating system from a podcast I enjoy, this would still be "Best Movie Ever.")

A more complex and complete discussion of my true opinion, and the reasons behind it, will come on Sunday. I can warn you, it is going to sound really harsh, but mostly because it will be the time for me to "let it go" as far as my hits against the film.