Movie Review: Brave

Brave

2012
Disney Pixar
Rated: PG
93 minutes

 

Determined to make her own path in life, Princess Merida defies a custom that brings chaos to her kingdom. Granted one wish, Merida must rely on her bravery and her archery skills to undo a beastly curse. (description from imdb.com)

I really enjoyed this movie. I thought the storyline was interesting. I loved the setting. I loved the characters. I LOVED the animation.

This movie was about a girl who wants to make her own destiny...and does... *after* some serious mishaps, having to break a curse, and killing off a giant evil bear that's plagued her country for years. Set in Scotland, I loved the accents, the clothes, the history, the magic, the folk tale feel of the whole movie.

Merida was a great character - fiery, loyal, loving, but also a typical teenager who blames her mother for EVERYTHING. Her mother and father were loving and funny and her brothers were a full-on hoot. *I would love to see a short with just the boys getting into scrapes!* The members of the other clans were also funny and made for a great interaction with Merida's family.

Most of all, though, this movie was visually stunning. The animation of Merida's wild red hair, her horse, the bears, and the will-o-the-wisps were all amazingly well done. You could see individual hairs. It looked like you could reach out and touch soft fur. Wow. Just wow.

If you like family movies, you will probably really like this one. :)

 

Full disclosure: borrowed from my library

Hunger Games Party

In honor of next week's stupendously exciting release of Mockingjay, I held a "Hunger Games Party" this afternoon. We had a slightly smaller crowd than I'd hoped for, but the teens that came had a blast!

When the teens entered, we had them put on name tags with their names and the district that they wanted to represent. Most of the kids had not actually read The Hunger Games, so I, as President Snow, explained the history of the Games with much disdain.

Since they would be this year's tributes, "Effie Trinket" and I were going to put them through there paces in the Training Arena. First, we had them do some archery practice. We set up three targets and had them use the Nerf Big Bad Bow for safety reasons. They had a blast shooting things and cheering each other on...until we reminded them that they'd soon be hunting one another.



Secondly, we had the tributes practice defensive tactics, mainly camouflage. We gave them black, white, brown, green and red face paints and let them go at it. There were some interesting faces!



After camouflage techniques, we discussed how the tributes would be dropped into the arena. We set up a mini Cornucopia so that they would get an idea of what they'd be up against the next day and had each teen take turns running in to get survival items.



Teens were able to run in to grab items like a sword, a shield, a hammer, a knife, medicine, anti-venom, a waterbottle, rope, wire, a tarp, a blanket, and more. Each was cautioned to not only think about what they'd need right away, but things they'd need to attack, things they'd need to defend themselves, and things to help them survive if they are in the arena for a long time.



Once they had all their items, we ran them through a Games scenario and gave them points for items that would help them along the way. They had a hoot trying to figure out how to justify getting points for items that weren't really that relevant in the scenarios!

Finally, we drew winners for our two door prizes. We gave away a paperback copy of The Hunger Games and our grand prize winner won a certificate to be redeemed for a hardcover copy of Mockingjay when it comes out next Tuesday!!



Overall a huge success! Before the teens left I also snuck in a dystopia book talk and managed to convince the teens to check out five other titles before they left the party. Even better success!!