movie thoughts … Saving Mr. Banks

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MV5BMTc0MTQ3NzE4Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzA4NDM5OQ@@._V1_SX214_AL_[1]I’ve watched segments of this movie here and there over the last couple of weeks, but last night I was feeling a bit laid up and eventually got around to watching the entire thing from start to finish, and I have very fixed feelings about the film.

The movie on its own, I really enjoyed – I thought that pretty much every actor in it was perfect in their own role, from Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson all the way down to the guys who played the Sherman brothers and even Paul Giamatti as her driver. Watching it full out definitely helped me to understand the flashbacks more because I hadn’t seen the very beginning before the Banks had to leave their home in my first couple of go-arounds. Despite all of the frustrations as Walt works to persuade Mrs. Travers to give him her rights to Mary Poppins, there’s all sorts of charm and whimsy to the movie and it was really a lot of fun.

I swear, I’ve been singing Let’s Go Fly a Kite to Christopher for weeks after watching the scene with them all dancing and singing for the first time!

So with that said, the problem that I have with this movie – THE BIG PROBLEM – is that especially coming from Disney, it loses pretty much all of its credibility if the movie wasn’t actually true…

Frankly, from reading all of the accounts about how this actually went down, it’s insulting both to those involved as well as to the audience that this movie ever got made, seeing as though it seems that we’re pretty lucky that the breakthrough that was Mary Poppins on the silver screen in the first place barely happened…

The film also depicts Travers coming to amicable terms with Disney, including her approval of his changes to the story. In reality, she never approved of the dilution of the harsher aspects of Mary Poppins’ character, felt ambivalent about the music, and hated the use of animation. Disney overruled her objections to portions of the final film, citing contract stipulations that he had final cut privilege. After the film’s premiere, Travers reportedly approached Disney and told him that the animated sequences had to be removed. Disney dismissed her request, saying, “Pamela, the ship has sailed”.

Although the film portrays Travers as being emotionally moved during the premiere of Mary Poppins, presumably due to her feelings about her father, co-screenwriter Kelly Marcel and several critics note that, in real life, Travers was in fact seen crying at the premiere out of anger and frustration over the film, which she felt betrayed the artistic integrity of her characters and work. Resentful at what she considered poor treatment at Disney’s hands, Travers vowed to never permit The Walt Disney Company to adapt any of her other novels in any form of media. Travers’ last will, in fact, bans any Americans from adapting her works to any form of media.

Now I know that as much of a fan of all things Disney that I am, Walt Disney was no saint … but I guess I just don’t get the need to do it again 50 years after the original movie came out … especially considering that in real life, P.L. Travers actually died back in 1996. Despite the original creator of Mary Poppins being absolutely unsatisfied with the movie, Disney got to make it anyways, and it was a HUGE HIT – the movie was undeniably groundbreaking, and it won all sorts of awards, and I just learned that its profits were actually what ended up financing the construction of Walt Disney World right here in Florida!

In the world of cinema, Mary Poppins was a monumental success in every way imaginable.

So why couldn’t that be enough? Why couldn’t a new generation of movie producers in the 21st century leave it alone and not further to sully the history that was so rocky to begin with by offering up this fictional account that seems to only have very loosely actually reflected how Disney came to acquire Mary Poppins for that breakthrough hit that was critical for the studio’s success? Are filmmakers so out of original ideas that they need to twist and contort the company’s history into this puff piece that makes the entire happening seem to be wrapped with a bow by the end when in reality, it seems to have scarred the creator of Mary Poppins for the rest of her life?!

It’s almost as if modern Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks served to have the same effect for Walt and Mrs. Travers’ relationship as the film preached Walt had wanted to do with the movie Mary Poppins to her actual memory … that is, to gloss over all of the bad parts and instead leave everyone smiling and happy and singing at the end, which would be fine if this were a fictional tale but for something that was actually a part of the company’s history instead is wildly inappropriate and disingenuous to the original creative behind that beloved tale.

And that disappoints me because like I said, if it wasn’t supposed to be based on real life, it’s a great story and it really draws you in to the creative give and take behind such a classic, cherished tale, but The Walt Disney Company ought to know better and this is one story  that if they were really this far off base with, it should’ve been left alone.

People always like to reference back and say, “Walt wouldn’t have liked this or that!” and it’s typically unfair comparisons – the fact that Mary Poppins still came out despite such friction is a good example that Walt was a bit more ruthless than we’d like to remember him by. But it still does make you wonder – if after getting away with a Mary Poppins 50 years ago the way he ultimately did, would Walt have rubbed her face in the dirt with this retelling of the story behind the story that we got with Saving Mr. Banks???

God, I hope not.

HealthyBlog ’14 – Pics or It Didn’t Happen…

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So as I blogged about last time, my focus right now is simply in trying to teach myself how to eat better, and I think for the most part I’m succeeding.

It’s true that last night I caved and ordered pizza because it was a really hectic day and I felt that I’d earned it…

But looking back over these pictures from the last week or so, my meals have definitely been looking better than they did in the past. Big reductions in processed foods – no chips, cookies, or crackers – with fruit and vegetables and cheese for snacks instead, and I’m also not snacking in the late night hours nearly as much as I used to.

It’s a slow process, but I think my body is starting to adapt because the cravings are going down and it’s easier to turn back to a piece that I’m writing instead of agonizing at 12:30am about wanting something to munch on. Which reminds me that I wanted to write something about Snacking While Bored … will have to try and remember that for next week!

Anyways, here are a few of the highlights…

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I think one of my next focuses will be learning to make better choices when I’m going out to eat, too. I still don’t think that I did nearly as bad as I have in the past, but I did eat out for a couple of lunches (Subway, Firehouse Subs) and dinner (Chinese) – lunches because I was in a hurry and dinner to spend some time with the wife. And next week is probably going to see more eating out because Sara’s sister will be visiting, so I need to carry these same principles over to when I’m eating out, too.

For what it’s worth, when I ate at Red Lobster a week or two ago and this last week when we had Chinese, I did take food home both times … which is significant because both places typically serve huge meals and I end up gorging myself and regretting it soon after … so that’s something.

Scale-wise, I think I’m going to just avoid it altogether for a while and let myself focus on this other stuff. I’m a little frustrated because it had gone down, but yesterday was floating right back where it had been before, so I’d rather not let it demoralize me as I focus on making changes to the diet instead. I know that the actual weight loss is going to take a long time – no sense obsessing over it if I can make positive changes elsewhere.

Three Positive Things for the Week of 9/14

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I saw where a couple of people on Facebook were posting things like this, so I thought I’d give it a try too! Three positive things to highlight from the last seven days…

Robo-Wife
Last week Sara trialed this zapper thing to help with her ongoing back pain and it turns out that it was kind of a godsend. It’s basically like a TENS unit on steroids that they implant beneath your skin, and then it just runs constantly to confuse your body into thinking it’s not in pain. In three days time, she absolutely loved it and can’t wait to get one put in for real, which should make life in general a bit easier for her soon.

Writing Payday
I don’t think I’ve ever felt better about my writing career than I did this week. Something triggered – I know not what – and I made more last week than I did the entire month before. I think this might finally be a turning point, and I’m very excited to see where it goes from here!!! :mrgreen:

Feeding a la Spoon
Granted I think I’ve done it a handful of times before when Sara wasn’t home, but this week feeding Christopher via spoon officially became part of our nightly routine. I think I like the bottles better because they’re not nearly as messy, but I suppose one can’t subsist on a liquid diet forever.

For what it’s worth, at least we’re getting a tiny bit better at putting more of the food in his mouth than on his person… 😉

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Dream Journal : Lego Heights are still Heights, etc…

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So apparently I was at the top of some hotel that was doing this competition with Legos – I don’t really know much about it, save for that me and a friend were sitting on maybe a 5×5 spire that was extremely high up in the air.

And it was really starting to get to me!

The perspective got a little better when I mentioned my extreme fear of heights to my friend who, after doing some very dickish joking around that a man hundreds of feet up in the air with a fear of heights in no way appreciated, then showed me that there was apparently a lot more to the platform than just what we were sitting on and once I climbed down a little ledge, I could stand on what was the actual roof and suddenly there was much more room and I could see all of the other Lego models that they had built around the roof for this promotion.

Of course, when the people showed up to finally bring us back down, that’s when I had my camera out and wanted to take pictures of all of the new models … but I was rushed down pretty quickly because someone had reminded me that I was terrified of heights!

There were also a lot more people doing the competition when it came time to come down than I realized … maybe they each had their own scary Lego spire to sit on at opposite corners of the roof or something … I don’t know.

…

In another dream last night, I had a review with one of my teachers from grade school and that was really weird. Apparently we had to leave comments “reviewing” our teachers and one that sparked a lot of attention referred to one teacher’s class as “a pyramid scheme” … to which the teacher seemed to take great offense!

…

In another one, for some reason my sister had started calling my Dad by his first name instead of Dad. That was also kind of weird.

HealthyBlog ’14 – Feeling Good About Eating Better…

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It’s funny when you look back and realize just how hard it is at training your body to not want the horrible crap that you’ve been feeding it for years and years and years!

That’s something that I’ve realized lately that I really need to tackle because although I’ve done marginally ok with my last task of upping the breakfast and tea antes appropriately, over the last couple of months I’ve probably circumvented whatever good effects have resulted by stuffing myself full of pizza and chips and other miscellaneous junk food the other five meals of the day.

…so that sucks, but we’re trying…

The last couple of days have been a bit of a mental battle as I’ve tried to steer myself away from my usual snacking and eating and towards that real food target that I’m gunning for. And it’s been tough because we really haven’t done much grocery shopping for actual meals lately – instead, one of us runs to the store and buys whatever they want to eat for the next couple of days … and a lot of it is usually crap … and then a day or so later, the other will go. So on my part, there have been a lot of hot dogs and frozen pizzas and microwave chicken – easy stuff – of course, coupled with lots of junk from the bakery and snack aisles that taste delicious, but end up disappearing and thus making me feel like crap two days later when I’m like, “Seriously – those cookies lasted how long?!”

I’m actually pretty proud of our trip to the store last night, though – lots of produce, some meats and cheeses, and almost no junk carbs to speak of whatsoever!

As you can see, I had kiwi as a snack last night and what inspired this post is the notion that even though at the time I could’ve plowed through a bag of Sweet Chili Doritos just the same, instead I had a kiwi and a cup of tea and not only was it hundreds of calories better for me, but I ended up feeling a lot better about myself when I was done. I think that’s important and is going to come into play here more in the future as I try to reprogram my brain to be less dependent on chips and cookies and other snacks with hopes of enjoying other snacks like fruits and vegetables just the same.

I mean, I’ve done it once before – it’s been over three years since I gave up on drinking soda and I really don’t think that I’ve ever looked back. There was a time when I used to like a Coke with certain meals, but even that has changed for the better – I pretty much steer clear from soda altogether unless it has some sort of booze mixed in with it.

…which isn’t very often at all, mind you!  😉

In a way, it’s a little sad because I’ve enjoyed some of these foods for so long, but it goes along the lines of facing growing older – if I want to enjoy as much of it as I possibly can, these changes need to happen. Plus, the wife and I have talked about it a lot and we REALLY don’t want to pass these kinds of bad habits on down to our kid now, either. I don’t want him to struggle with being overweight for decades because he was taught all growing up that eating five Oreos at a time is ok. I want our house to be the kind of home where there’s always lots of fresh fruits and vegetables around, and we cook actual meals instead of heating them up or deep frying them, and eating is something that you do for fuel, not just because you’re bored.

In retrospect, it’s also a little shameful to look at the calendar and realize that I’ve been conscious about my weight for over a decade now – pretty much ever since I moved to Florida in 2003. That’s way too much of a person’s life to be living it so poorly … if I had a time machine, I’d go back and tell my 20-something self – who was only a little overweight at the time – that it really does get a lot worse if he doesn’t take diet & exercise a little more seriously in between chugging cans of Dr. Pepper and playing Warcraft 3 until four in the morning!

If it takes a little bit of guilt to keep me away from the bad foods and steer me towards the ones that’ll keep me around as long as possible, then maybe I deserve it at this point. And I don’t mean that in a negative way – I mean that very much in a realistic way.

I’m feeling surprisingly good about my direction as of the last three or four days – now let’s see if we can talk the scale into reflecting that. 8)

Writing something else…

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I’ve been supposed to be working on another project for the last couple of days, but I’ve just been really stalled out and no amount of staring blankly at the screen and trying to avoid Internet distractions has been able to help get me back on track, so instead I thought I’d try something a little different.

I realized that I haven’t blogged here in about a week, so here are a few random brain drippings with the hope that their departure from my head will somehow lubricate my creative process into doing what it’s supposed to do once more… 🙄

Birthday #34
Birthdays just aren’t as fun and exciting when you’re in your 30’s as they were in the past. I guess it’s probably best that I have child now so that I can funnel that annual excitement into his celebrations. Would you believe that his half-birthday is coming up at the end of this month?! I sure as hell can’t!

Too Much Pizza
Is it even possible to eat too much? I think it might be because I found myself kind of grossed out by it the other day. Granted, it was one of those ready-made Little Caesars pizzas that kind of taste like plastic anyways … for some reason I have a memory in my head of them previously tasting a lot better than they do today, although granted that may be partially influenced by the number of birthday parties that I used to attend at our local Little Caesars

…which is gone now. I think there’s a Walgreens in that building or something? You really can never go home…

Every. Simpsons. Ever.
Apparently FXX’s 552-episode marathon of The Simpsons ended tonight. I watched it for a little while here and there … I wish I could’ve binged and watched as much as possible, but that writing thing mentioned above kind of preceded sitting on the couch and watching cartoons for 12 days straight!

A Very Merry Disney Christmas
I’m really looking forward to the holiday season this year because December is going to be filled with lots of company for us, which we typically don’t have because we don’t like to travel in the wintertime and most people have their own goings-on back home for Christmas. But this year will be cool because my sister & co are coming down the week before … and we’re trying to work out the details to spend it over at Disney World … and then as soon as she’s out, at least one of my cousins will be here for the next week, which will also be super cool because since I moved away I’ve really only ever seen them for weddings and funerals…

New Timeshare Owners!
Another exciting thing that seemed to take all summer was that Sara & I bought into the Disney Vacation Club, which is Disney’s timeshare program, and we’re really excited about that. A big part of the purchase was funded by some money that I inherited from my grandparents after my Grandpa died in January … I knew that I wanted to use it in a way that I could remember them both for years to come, and so 28 years of vacations over at Disney seemed like a pretty good investment once we finally found a DVC resale that fit the bill!

We’re hoping to be able to use our new points for the previously mentioned Christmas Disney trip, though we haven’t gotten our membership cards yet and I hear that reservations in December are pretty hard to come by. I’m very curious to see firsthand how easy reservations in general are to book, both during peak times like Christmas as well as just random weekends on short notice, because that’s going to greatly impact how we use our membership in the years to come.

Food / Diet / Bleh…
I don’t want to talk about this one.

No,  seriously – the past couple of weeks have been very much a rut in multiple ways, but tonight was a little better food-wise, so maybe that will be a turning point? I know that Sara’s really frustrated herself lately, so I’m hoping that maybe if we’re both on the same page at the same time, that’ll help us both start to move in the right direction just a bit.

Plus, both our fridge and pantry desperately need a good cleaning out, so I think that might happen this week in support of these efforts.

I guess it’s bedtime now.
So much for getting back into the groove tonight! I guess we’ll just have to see where we stand tomorrow and then go from there, but I’m also trying to somewhat get my sleep schedule less ridiculous so I’m trying not to let myself stay up writing (or not writing) all night anymore.

I’ve never really been a scheduling person, but it would probably do me a lot of good. 😛

Drop the Ice Bucket Negativity

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I’m the last person you’ll see standing in line to film myself dumping a bucket of ice water over my head, but it’s hard to sit on the sidelines and look down at all of these people when the result is having raised over $50 million for ALS in just a couple of months!

Yet a lot of people … well, some people – definitely not as many as those participating in the challenge … feel the need to do that sideline jeering about how you shouldn’t need peer pressure to donate to charity or you could just send them money without making a spectacle. The critique of some videos making it seem like they’re dumping buckets over their heads to avoid making a donation is another common one, and to that I can only say … WHO CARES???

I don’t think that the people who make this critique understand the concept of viral momentum, or even how fundraising is supposed to work.

See, I could pull out my checkbook and write a donation to ALS for $100 right now – no big deal.

But nobody else knows that I did it, and that’s not to say from a bragging standpoint, but more from an influential standpoint.

If nobody knows that I did it, then nobody has the opportunity to say, “Hey, Scott gave $100 to ALS. That’s a good idea – I think I’ll do it, too!“

You’re being short-sighted if you think that all of these videos are just about seeking fame and attention because what each and every one of these videos does, even if those in the video don’t personally donate afterwards, is that they help to spread the message just a little further. And that’s powerful.

Because think about it – until this summer, when was the last time that ALS even crossed your mind? Did you even realize that ALS is Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or were you like me and had to discretely look it up when all of these videos started to flood your Facebook feed?!

The data speaks for itself because according to the ALS Association’s latest press release, in the last two months alone they’ve attracted 1.3 million NEW donors and raised $67.7 million MORE than they did during the same period last year.

So seriously, who cares if your cousins post a video of them dumping water on their heads without any intentions of making a donation, or if President Obama “only gave $100” when you think that he should’ve given more. This goofy, little viral charity gimmick has been a monumental success this summer, and everyone from movie stars to politicians to athletes to CEOs to your obnoxious, little cousins are all helping to spread the word around the Internet that has gotten more donations for this terrible disease than ever before!

It’s a great thing, so stop being such a sourpuss about it and just be amazed! Unlike the next stupid cat video or political scandal, this one is actually doing a lot of good, so can’t we just enjoy that without trying to poke holes in the bucket?

Troubled Teen Talk, Revisited

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I watched this documentary on Showtime the other night – I actually watched part of it again this evening because I had missed the beginning the first time, and it was so disturbing that I can’t go to bed without airing some thoughts.

Apparently I actually wrote about this same topic a couple of years ago after coming across a single story about survivors of these kinds of camps, but the video … seeing these people in the flesh, and the brainwashing, and the psychological abuse that these kids are put through … I don’t even know.

I don’t know – being a parent now myself – how someone in the role of guardian of a child could ever take such drastic of measures to control their teenage menace. I just can’t imagine, and Sara and I talked about some of it last night … wondering if our son will struggle with drugs or alcohol or sex, and what we can do to prevent it, and how we might react and work through the issues if we can’t…

BUT I WILL NEVER PAY SOMEONE TO SHOW UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT TO SHUTTLE HIM AWAY TO GET FIXED.

Even writing that sentence makes me feel like I’m writing a work of fiction because it just seems unfathomable to me that such a concept could even exist here in the real world by people who aren’t already involved in organized crime.

Want another one that’s probably going to give me nightmares once I finally do go to bed tonight???

Here’s another documentary – this one is apparently of the transport people who are hired by these parents to come escort their kids to these camps. It’s an entire sub-industry on its own, too – Google “troubled teen transport service” and there’s a number of companies that specialize in kidnapping children in the middle of the night … except that it’s totally legal because until you’re 18, your parents can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want with you.

How these people are able to sleep at night after doing over 2,500 “cases” … and by “doing cases,” they mean “kidnapping children” … I just don’t even know how to process that.

The idea that a teenager could be walked kicking and screaming through a major metropolitan airport, and nobody would stop them – police, airport security, airline attendants, the TSA – because the escorts are also carrying a piece of paper signed by the parents authorizing the whole charade … it just sickens me.

Think about it – if you were walking through the airport and heard a kid screaming that they were being kidnapped, wouldn’t you try to do something to help???

It’s terrifying to see so much information come out about this – that it’s a $2 billion industry and that thousands of these facilities exist all over the world … and not just in foreign countries, but also right here in the proud US of A.

Who knows – maybe in some cases, a few of the flags on that map aren’t representative of what is shown in Kidnapped for Christ and maybe they’re able to do some real good, but I just refuse to believe that any good whatsoever can come from stealing your child away in the middle of the night – with the exception of violence that requires calling the police. We have a system in place for these types of things … in extreme emergencies … but coming out to your parents as being gay, or having anxiety issues or some other medical condition that your parents don’t know how to deal with … this is just unacceptable.

As if the picture wasn’t bad enough, here are a couple of kids who died at the hands of these people…

What’s shocking to me more than anything else is reading the parents’ reactions after their kids come out of these programs and how they seem to show no sense of responsibility for their actions whatsoever. In both cases above, the parents were shocked and feel like the camps didn’t take adequate care of their kids … after they had committed them to be taken away themselves, mind you.

And even the parents of the one of the three teens in the movie – it’s reported that they threatened to sue the filmmaker if the film came out, presumably because it makes them look like bad parents (which they are), and even in the Reddit AMA that the kid (now adult) did recently, he mentions that his parents don’t like to talk about it and get angry and dismissive when the topic is brought up.

I’m pretty sure when you sentence one of your own to be subjected to abuse by strangers in another country, you waive your rights to feeling embarrassed about it pretty much for the rest of your life.

Then again, in the documentary he also quotes his mother as saying, “I could never love a gay son…” when he came out to her.

These types of people don’t deserve to be parents.

Give them up for adoption, wards of the state, or whatever, but this is just plain ABUSE – and anyone who thinks that it’s ok because it’s being done in the name of God doesn’t deserve to be around children ever again, either.

Some teenagers act out in really bad ways. Most teenagers act out in one way or another – that’s part of what growing up is all about. But far before that, when they’re just old enough to run around the playground while the supervising adult may be looking the other way, we teach them never to talk to strangers and to scream really loud if anyone ever tries to coax them into their car.

We tell kids to only go with adults who they know and trust, but what do we do when apparently it’s their own parents who they can no longer trust???

This is just wrong, and something needs to change. Now.

Here are some places you can go for more information and ways you can help:

If this industry isn’t the poster child for the need of government regulation, I’m not sure I want to call myself an American anymore.