Author Archives: crunchymetromom

Movie Review: “Frozen 3D”

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Frozen

 

It’s been a long time since I can say I saw a movie that was a home run, and I’m incredibly glad the drought is finally over. “Frozen”, the latest product of Walt Disney Animation, is a delightful musical loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Snow Queen”. The movie opens with ice choppers singing as they hack away at a frozen fjord, while a young boy (Kristoff) does his best to handle pint-sized tongs and his pet reindeer, Sven. In the nearby castle, two young princesses – elder sister Elsa and younger sister Anna – awake in the middle of the night for some mischief. Elsa has the power to create ice and snow at a touch, and the two young girls frolic in the interior winter wonderland. But as the play gets slightly out of hand, Anna is accidentally sideswiped in the head by a touch of ice from Elsa, and their parents (the King and Queen of Arendelle) take Anna to rock trolls to extract the ice before it freezes her forever.

The head troll, Pabbie (voiced by the stoic Ciarán Hinds of “Rome” and “Game of Thrones”), does as they bid, but he warns the King and Queen that he had to remove all of Anna’s memories of magic, and he further cautions them to hide away all evidence of magic. The King counsels Elsa privately: “Conceal it. Don’t feel it. Don’t let it show.” From that point forth, the family is effectively in isolation; they close the window coverings and the castle gates, and the girls are separated for reasons Anna will only learn far later. As the girls grow, Elsa becomes increasingly cold and sad, and Anna becomes eccentric, missing the company of her beloved sibling. Tragedy strikes yet again a few years later, as the King and Queen are lost at sea in a storm, and the girls have to wait in their confinements for enough time to pass before Elsa is due for her coronation as the queen.

The young queen-to-be (voiced by Idina Menzel, a Tony Award winner for “Wicked”) fears accidentally putting her power on display, since her forced isolation and her father’s instructions to hide her gift left her with no practice on how to properly control her chilly creations. Meanwhile, the boisterous Anna (Kristen Bell – of “Burlesque” and the forthcoming “Veronica Mars” movie) explores the town in eager anticipation of the coronation festivities and all the excitement they’ll bring. In her enthusiasm, Anna bumps into Prince Hans (Santino Fontana of “The Importance of Being Earnest”), in a meet-cute involving a horse, a rowboat, and the end of a dock on the fjord. He later sweeps her off her feet during the evening’s amusements, but his whirlwind marriage proposal to Anna is quickly dismissed by the new queen. When Anna challenges Elsa over her decision, emotions flare out of control and Elsa’s powers are revealed to a wide audience, splaying ice spikes and frozen coverings in every direction. Elsa flees, and a distraught Anna heads out after her – leaving Hans in charge.

Hans and Anna

Hans and Anna

As Elsa arrives in the cold mountains, she finally takes the reins off her powers and creates a beautiful castle of ice atop North Mountain, the tallest of the peaks. She casts off every bit of evidence of her prior life, and settles into a blissful exile in her cold fortress. Anna finds herself unable to negotiate the snowy environs on her own, so she enlists the help of Kristoff (Jonathan Groff from “Glee”) and Sven. On their way to Elsa’s new seat of power, Anna and Kristoff bump into an old friend of Anna’s and Elsa’s: Olaf the snowman (voiced by Josh Gad of “1600 Penn” and “Ice Age: Continental Drift”). He is based on the same design Elsa had made for Anna on that fateful night when they were children, and the icy queen’s awakened powers have somehow brought him to life. He tags along, a physical comedian of the highest order. Being blissfully unaware of the limitations of a snowman, he sings a giddy tune about how much he’d love to see summertime that leaves the audience giggling over his naïveté.

Olaf

Olaf dreams of summer

The quartet manages to reach Elsa’s castle, but she’s in no mood to return to Arendelle with Anna, even upon hearing that she has frozen the town in the middle of the summer. She simply doesn’t have the ability or understanding of how to control her powers. The sisters quarrel again, this time with Elsa accidentally throwing a spike of her ice into Anna’s heart. The effect is insidious: Anna is mortally wounded but doesn’t yet realize it. Only after the foursome have escaped the castle do they realize something is horribly wrong, and Kristoff takes the princess to his friends – the same band of rock trolls – to be healed. Only an act of the truest love will save her and warm her heart again, and Kristoff rushes Anna back to Arendelle in the hope that she will find there what she needs to heal the wound to her heart.

Kristoff and Sven rush to Arendelle

Kristoff and Sven rush to Arendelle

The climax of “Frozen” seals it an excellent addition to the growing catalogue of Disney movies featuring women who come by their strength on their own, rather than only through the love of a man. The songs are crisp and effective, and small details in them show the excessive (and occasionally modern) humor threaded throughout this movie. Additionally, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ technology and artistry are clearly improving by leaps and bounds; Sven’s fur and the texture on the snowflakes exemplify the lessening distance between Disney’s internal animation studio and Disney-owned Pixar.

“Frozen” is either a movie for kids that grown ups would enjoy or it’s a movie for grown ups that kids would enjoy. Either way, it’s really a fantastic effort from Team Disney. The songs, written by the husband-and-wife team of Robert Lopez (“The Book of Mormon”) and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (“Winnie the Pooh”), are sure to have the kids clamoring for the motion picture soundtrack in no time.

Anna and Elsa, in Elsa's icy fortress

Anna and Elsa, in Elsa’s icy fortress

I would be remiss if I didn’t talk a bit about the 3D used in the movie. In some films, when I see the 3D version, I end up shrugging about how it’s okay but it didn’t really need the 3D or it didn’t lose much if you watched it in 2D. This is a movie that really begs to be seen in 3D, and it’s the first case in a long time – perhaps since I saw “Avatar” – when 3D  was used properly. Sure, there are a couple of early cases where the 3D leaps off the screen in almost gratuitous fashion, but that’s some of the joy in playing with this technology. Why should all the depth only be leading away from you? If it’s possible to see this one in 3D, I strongly recommend doing so.

There are a couple of scary scenes – but they’re really brief and things move on immediately.  For a movie that runs 1hr 48mins long, you’d think it would drag for the kiddos, but the constant nature of the action and the storyline keeps things moving apace from start to finish. The opening credits are a thing of beauty unto themselves, so moviegoers should be in their seats on-time, and they should stay put through the end credits – to catch a small extra scene at the very end of the credit roll.

“Frozen” is also preceded by a lovely short film, “Get a Horse”, a marvel of 3D animation that should win an Oscar on technical merit alone. The short showcases Mickey and Minnie Mouse in both 2D and 3D, literally giving a chase scene all new dimensions. I’m sure Walt Disney would be weeping tears of joy if he saw it, since both pieces together really show just how far his team’s animation has come.

4 stars out of 4

“Frozen 3D” opens nationwide on November 27, 2013. This movie is rated PG for some action and mild rude humor.

It’s not “Black Thursday”, it’s THANKSGIVING

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(With all due apologies to my friends in the Great North, I’m talking specifically about the holiday we Americans observe on the fourth Thursday of every November)

Something is beyond rotten in the retail world.

Once upon a time, it was amusing to watch dh’s cousin rip through the circulars on Thanksgiving, planning her shopping route and identifying where and when she needed to go to get THE HOT ITEM(s) of the season at 4am or 6am on Black Friday. Of course, I thought she was nuts: I just couldn’t see the point in getting up THAT early just to save a few dollars. Over time, there were more and more stories about people getting into fist fights over items, or people getting trampled as the crowds rush into stores when some imagined opening bell rang out at 4am. And then the starting time became midnight.

SAY WHAT?

For those of you who haven’t worked retail before, let me explain how it works in a nutshell: in order for things to be on the shelves and displays so that you can paw through them with abandon, someone has to take those things out of the boxes in which they were shipped, check to make sure that items required to be tagged are tagged (and tag them, if that’s not the case), and then place them in their designated spot. There are no elves that do this for them. It’s not done by robots. And items DO NOT mysteriously, magically appear where they’re supposed to go without someone placing them there.

So, in order for a store to be ready at midnight, typically, employees will have to be on-site getting the store ready (and that’s a minimum of 30-60 minutes). So, you have people coming to a store NO LATER than 11pm on Thanksgiving to make sure a store is ready to go for a midnight open on Black Friday.

Now, let’s say that the stock has to be put out and there wasn’t enough time to get it all out on Wednesday. In that case, the employees may have to be there earlier – maybe even several hours ahead. So, let’s back that 11pm arrival time to…maybe anywhere from 8-9pm.

And now, let’s go even farther and say that you don’t live in one of the states like I do (the lovely Commonwealth of Massachusetts), and you have stores that are open on Thanksgiving. That means these folks are just plain missing it. Dinner with family? Nope. Traditional football watching? Forget about it. 

We celebrate Thanksgiving as a reminder of a time when we were thankful just to have survived even a small time on the land we were beginning to annex, and over decades Thanksgiving has come to be revered by many as a time to pause and visit with friends and family. But with the seeming unchecked consumerism that’s dominating our culture, Thanksgiving is turning into nothing more than an inconvenient holiday that stands in the way of Black Friday. The name used to refer to the fact that it was the day that retailers typically went “into the black” (turned a profit), yet now it’s coming to symbolize the color of our hearts – we’d rather spend our time drawing up battle plans so we can figure out how to get a game console for 50% off.

This is what we care about.

Even better, this is all done in the name of Christmas – a holiday that (if you read your Seuss, as I have) is supposed to be about something more. It’s supposed to be about spending time with loved ones and caring for others, not screwing your fellow man/woman – who makes a nickel over minimum wage – out of one of the few holidays he/she has a decent chance at actually celebrating.

To be sure, the people who work on holidays do get paid for their time, but it’s hard to say that the compensation is really paying them what their time is worth. If we, as a society, felt that it was important that everyone had access to decent wages, we’d probably be far less likely to have those who felt the pressure to take shifts they didn’t want (and anyone who thinks that all people who work on Thanksgiving WANT to work on Thanksgiving is completely deluding themselves). If we, as a society, are willing to say that some things are more important than the pursuit of the outrageously underpriced HOT TOY/CONSOLE/iTHING, then maybe we should give our friends and neighbors a break.

I know that the football I watch on Thanksgiving is put on by network staff, team players, team coaches and team staff who work on the holiday. I also know that the people who work in those stadiums and parking lots are working on the holiday. They signed up for that job knowing that working certain holidays was likely to happen. Police officers, fire fighters, EMTs, members of the military, people who work at gas stations and rest stops…these are also people who’ve signed on for the idea that they don’t get the usual days off that so many of us do. These other folks, the ones who are working retail, they’re doing this primarily because some corporate wonks saw a hole in their profit schedule and the rest of the lemmings followed suit.

So my point is this: we need to stop shopping on Thanksgiving. Just stop it. We shouldn’t have started in the first place. Black Friday is its own unique kind of nightmare that I’m refusing to participate in – and it’ll be a cold day in all the circles of Hell before I think it’s okay to stroll into a store on Thanksgiving to buy a $4 sweater from someone for whom that represented 30mins of their pay. That’s insane. That’s privilege of an order that’s beyond what’s okay.

If we want to declare Thanksgiving the start of the Christmas season, how about we really honor what Christmas aspires to be: a time when we consider the needs of others before those of ourselves. We all deserve better than to have every holiday co-opted in the name of the almighty dollar.

Thanksgiving Stuffing

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The funny thing about this recipe is that I actually made it last year for Thanksgiving, as a try-out on a recipe idea, with the full intention of posting it on the blog. And then, er, I just kinda got distracted. Even funnier – I forgot to take a picture of it. So, yeah, I’m two for two. BUT, this is me finally posting it, and when I make it AGAIN for Thanksgiving this year, I promise to update this post with a picture.

Now sure, stuffing is easy as all get-out: just open up the box and pour it into boiling water, right? Well, yeah…if that’s what you want. And while some of the boxed stuffing is pretty tasty, it’s also heavily laden with salt and other stuff, and I really wanted to see if I could control what went into my own stuffing and have it come out easily as well – if not better. I was very pleased with the outcome, and I’m definitely looking at this as a good go-to recipe for big meals. Since we have taken to grilling our turkeys, the oven is typically free for items like this – so bear that in mind when planning your cooking schedule. Also – make sure that you try a bite of it before you put it in the oven so that you can be sure you’re happy with the level of flavor. I don’t aim for super-salty, and if you’re used to that in your stuffing, you may find the need to adjust the salt level. I will note that I don’t call for low-sodium chicken broth here; if you are looking out for salt, I highly recommend using that instead of the “regular” stuff.

Prep Time: 1-1/2 hrs (but can be spread out as you have time and may go faster if you’re a faster chopper than I am…which is always possible!)

Cooking Time: approx. 1 hr

Serves: 8-10

Ingredients

2 loaves of bread (14 cups when chopped into 1/2″ cubes) – ciabatta & sourdough

7 celery ribs (2 cups chopped)

1 small yellow onion (1 cup chopped)

8oz mushrooms (3-1/2 cups minced in 1/4″ pieces)

2 Tb butter

3 Tb olive oil (divided)

1/2 Tb dried chervil

1/2 Tb dried parsley

1/2 Tb dried thyme

4 cups chicken broth

Make it Happen

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. Chop all of the items that are noted above for chopping and set aside separately; make sure to have the bread in a large bowl. (Seriously, this is the biggest amount of active time…put on some music and just go with it.)

2. Melt butter and 2 Tb olive oil in a deep pan, adding celery and onion. Stir to combine.

3. In a separate pan, sauté mushrooms in another 1 Tb olive oil for approx. 5-7 min.

4. Add the herbs and broth to the celery and onion pan; stir well to combine.

5. Add the mushrooms to the bread and stir well to combine.

6. Add the broth mixture to the bread/mushroom bowl; stir well to combine.

7. Immediately pour the mixture from the bowl into a greased or enameled roasting pan or a greased large baking dish and cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 350F for 30min.

8. Remove part of the foil and cook for another 15-20min until the stuffing is browned. Remove foil and serve!

Happy Thanksgiving!