Colors of the Wind and Defying Gravity

I recently stumbled upon something at a used bookstore. Defying Gravity: The creative career of Stephen Schwarts. 

Needless to say, I was intrigued. But I did not expect to learn that the guy who wrote the songs for Wicked also wrote the songs for Pocahontas. Which includes one of my two favorite Disney songs (Colors of the Wind and Let it Go). 

He also wrote songs for Prince of Egypt, which I love. And Hunchback of Notre Dame - the Disney version. Here's something he said about the latter movie:

"My favorite character I have ever written is Frollo, who is probably the most despicable human being in anything I've done; I love him as a character. He was so totally self-justifying and in such denial of his own true motives. It was really fun to go to dark places in myself I would never let myself do in real life. It made me understand why actors love to play villains." 

Because it made me think of the villain post I wrote a little while ago XD

Another good piece of advice from his book: Writer's block means you're acting like an editor too early. Let yourself suck first. 

Start Somewhere Else

Since I took my research roadtrip for Evva's story, I realized that some of the locations were inconveniently out of the way. I tried working that into the story, but it made for an awkward time jump. 

Sooo, that means that I had to go back and start the story somewhere else. All the research I did for the original location is no longer relevant. I did make a stop at a place that works for the new starting point. But I didn't spend much time there. Sigh. 

Fly Away Home

Fly Away Home doesn't get enough attention. It's such a beautiful movie. The basic premise, for the purpose of this post, is that a girl rescues some goose eggs. They hatch, and her dad teaches them to fly along with his small airplane, so they can migrate. 

I recently watched the bonus features on my DVD, which made me like the movie even more. The dad was based off of the guy that actually taught geese to fly with planes: Bill Lishman. His ultimate goal was to teach endangered species their traditional migration routes. Of course Bill Lishman didn't teach a little girl to fly a plane. But he is a person you see throughout the movie. Whenever the dad is flying on screen, that's Bill Lishman. And the two of them became great friends. 

They raised a few clutches of geese to make this movie, since goslings grow up fast. A couple of the cllutches were imprinted on Amy (Anna Paquin). And the rest were imprinted to fly along with the plane. 

My movie had an unusual commentary. It played the film with no dialogue - only soundtrack and commentary from the composer. So there would be stretches where the movie played with no sound. Then the composer would talk at the same time the music was playing. It was odd, but I love hearing about soundtracks. He doesn't write melodies for characters. Instead he has melodies for different themes through the movie. Such as planning, flying, and flying with the geese. 

I've always loved the music in Fly Away Home. I've looked many times over the years, but iTunes never carries the soundtrack. Just the opening song (which is gorgeous). I finally dug the soundtrack up on Youtube, so that's something. 

And the best part? At the end of the movie, Bill Lishman took his plane and flew those geese south. 

Early Miyazaki in Sherlock Hound

I just discovered that Sherlock Hound is an entire series. I rented it from the library a long time ago, but it turns out that was just a few episodes squished together into something like a movie. 

It's something Miyazaki worked on before Studio Ghibli. He didn't do all of the episodes, but you can definitely see his influence in parts of it. There's a swimming submarine, just like Fujimoto's underwater boat. Another ship looks like Goliath in Castle in the Sky. And there's plenty of air travel. 

There's also a cartoony feel about it, reminiscent of Castle of Cagliostro. 

And the girls are tough. When one lady is kidnapped, she ends up with her captors wrapped around her finger. Not unlike how the pirates all dote on Sheeta and Fio. 

And wow, I think The Great Mouse Detective stole quite a bit from this series. 

Kokedama

A couple months ago, I first noticed kokedamas. At least, I first heard of them by name. I finally looked them up, and stumbled across guidelines for how to make one. That kind of stuck in my head, and I had the vague idea of trying to make one later in the winter, when I could find moss. 

I didn't want to go buy moss, because a lot of the time it's ripped illegally out of forests where it doesn't always recover. But we always get some in our garden when it gets wet outside. A few days ago, I was pulling weeds out of my tiny native grass lawn (I want to make it bigger when I can afford more native grass seed!). I noticed that moss was growing at the edge of the grass. I immediately got excited about making the kokedama. Moss doesn't hurt your lawn. It just kinda creeps in if the lawn isn't very thick. But I used my fingers to comb out a pile of moss, which I put in a saucer full of water. I did research that night, and the next day I dug up a baby lemon button fern that had split off from the parent. 

Then it was time to make a dirt ball. After some sculpting, I made a beautiful sphere of potting soil. Then it came time to press a hole into it, and the entire thing fell apart. So I started all over. And because my moss didn't come in a solid sheet (no idea where they harvest/grow/manufacture that kind of thing), it was a beast to wrap around the dirt. But I finally strung the moss into a nice green orb around my fern. 

It turned out pretty nice! I don't mind if there are a few grass blades sticking out of it. Now we'll see how the fern fares in its fancy new home. It's getting a new frond, at least! 

So that's how you make a fancy planting arrangement without having to buy anything. XD Especially moss. If you read the book Gathering Moss, you'll understand (Though I guess I did buy the potting soil). 

The Unseen Perfect

A little while ago, I posted about how I had to come up with a bunch of books for a character to read. 

Then John Green posted a video about "books within a book." He really likes them, because a book that exists within another story can be infinitely good. You'll never actually read it to find faults with it, so you can think of it as being a flawless masterpiece. 

Whereas I don't think you can call any real book "perfect." 

It's tempting to do that with the books I invented. Leave them as titles and ideas, so they can be pictured as "perfect masterpieces" by the characters, and the readers. 

Except I really want to write those stories XD So their time as an unknown perfect may be limited. 

IMAX is wasted on me

I think Imax is wasted on me. Unless it's one of those curved screens. 

I just saw the Odyssey with my cousin. It's the first movie filmed specifically for Imax, so I thought it would be good to see it that way. But I was focused on the story and characters, so I had no idea that it wasn't an ordinary theater screen. Even though it cost a lot more. 

My other cousin said that you can see it on even better screens, but there aren't many of them. I wonder if I could even tell the difference. 

If I see a movie in 3D, I also kind of forget part way through the movie. 

It's interesting that the movie decided to kinda delete the gods. In the book, they were a very real and physical presence. In the movie, they're only shown as forces of nature or hallucinations. I guess it's going for the view that you can't have faith in a god if they're so easy to see and talk to. They have to be sort of unknown and mysterious, to test your faith? That's just speculation. There were plenty of humans in the movie that had magic.