A new blog has appeared!

What will you do?

Fight         -->Run Away
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Good choice.
Anyway, clearly this blog will not focus on originality, which is just fine with me. Even the font is unoriginal, but according to font nerds/purists Times New Roman is the one true font that begat all other fonts, so that's what I'll go with. And yes, there are font nerds. It's kind of sad, really...but there has to be a nerd for everything, I suppose.
Most posts will probably be about what movie/tv show I watched or book I read recently, so I'll just do a quick little review of two things I've been watching recently: Despicable Me and A&E's Hoarders. I really like critiquing things I watch and I figure a blog is a good place to practice for all the papers I'll have to write in my literature classes next semester.
When I watch children's movies, I give them a little lenience for having incoherent stories or predictable endings. However, it irks me to no end when the show relies on cheap humor and stupid gags to appeal to children. I'll admit, fart jokes are hilarious. But I'm going to stand on my soap box of hypocrisy and declare that I really hate it when that's the only funny thing in a movie. Thankfully, Despicable Me is pretty well-done, with bits that everyone can enjoy. It doesn't have as much universal appeal as a Pixar movie, and most of its humor lacks too much depth (as far as I can tell... maybe I just haven't watched it enough times), but I'd still define Despicable Me as a good movie. It won't be replacing Pixar's UP as my favorite, but I have watched it 3 times and enjoyed it each time. There are strong similarities between UP and Despicable Me, as both main characters go through a transformation with the help of children. However, I'd say that Gru's transformation is a little more bumpy. His character is this super-villain who is susceptible to cute things, but all it takes is one trip to the theme park (super happy fun land? Whatever it was called..) and he's all buddy buddy with the girls. It was cute, but a little too abrupt for my liking, which is why sometimes I wish movies could be a little longer so they can explore depth of character like books can. But that's why TV series are novels and movies are short stories.
A&E's Hoarders is one of those shows that exploits the weakness of people and lets the general public gawk in horror while comforting themselves that their life isn't as flawed as the person's on tv. Sometimes the show is interesting, and sometimes I found it extremely repetitive and dull. Of course, I'm only on episode 4, but I can't imagine the rest of season 1 being any different. One thing that I do like is that they make the afflicted hoarder decide what they do and do not want. They give them complete control, and they focus on the person, rather than getting results. Only one place was really cleaned fully, and that was a small apartment filled with newspaper/garbage. However, when they let the kids come help, the kids start trashing anything and everything because they understandably lack the patience to deal with their parents' indecision, which seems very contradictory to the show's message. They even state on the show that if the hoarder doesn't deal with everything themselves, they are more likely to start hoarding again, so bringing children seems at times to be counterproductive. I also vaguely wonder about the wisdom of the show to introduce the hoarder's name and location, as I think name would be more than sufficient. It's an embarrassing disorder, and broadcasting the place they live, even though only vaguely, seems a little too personal to me.
I've got a backlog of shows/movies I can talk about, so you can probably expect a new blog or two. My job is nice and lets me watch stuff while I'm at work, provided it isn't too busy, but I'll probably talk about a video  game in the next blog just to switch it up. Have a happy new year!
-Wren