Maleficent!

 

On Friday, I finally had the opportunity to see Maleficent at the Hoyts cinema in Westfield Chatswood. At the Candy Bar, there was a special themed soda and popcorn, which also comes with a deck of Maleficent themed playing cards in a special tin. I’m not sure it’s an authentic Disney collectible, but:

The movie itself, I thought was excellent. I was able to become completely immersed in the adventure, which I gather is somewhat different to the original story of Sleeping Beauty (I admit that I have never fully watched it). Without giving away the spoilers, Angelina plays a great pseudo-villain who is more misunderstood than evil. Lasting just over an hour and a half, the movie was well constructed, the effects were excellent, and the intrigue was there. The role of Maleficent is perfectly suited to somebody with a presence like Angie, and she was well supported by the lesser know Fanning sister who plays Aurora.

I know that there will be some people (there always are) who complain that the movie is not faithful to the story, but it’s an updated version of an old adventure, where nothing much is lost from the alteration in the story line. We thought about bringing our 8 year old daughter to this movie, but having seen the monsters, etc, we are glad that we didn’t. Having said that, there were plenty of little ones in the cinema who did not seem the slightest bit fazed by the noise, action and violence- it all comes down to how much of this kinda stuff your kids have been exposed to, I guess.

As I said, I really liked the movie; it’s great that Disney caters for the bigger “kids” too. I give this film an 8.5 out of 10.

 

 

Your Disney Family

I came across this when I was taking a look at the Disneyland blog. It’s called “show your Disney side”, and one part of it allows you to create a picture of your family (just like those stickers you see stuck on the rear windshield of a lot of cars). It’s kinda cute, and customisable. I made you for my family below:

You can create your own via this link (this is the mobile version as I’m writing this on my tablet). There is also some more cool stuff on the site which is worth checking out.

Disney Apps for Android Tablets

Android is still currently the poor cousin to iOS, but the gap is narrowing. The host of apps that are available on iOS are slowly making their way to Android (much more so than Windows Mobile- great phones but short on apps)- a major exception being the Disney Infinity Toy Box. Apart from glaring omission, what are the Android Disney Apps like? I’m going to get a list together, and it’s coming, so- see ya real soon!

Type the word “Disney” into the Google Play Store (the Android equivalent to the App Store), and you’ll be greeted with a number of apps, some of which are free and some which aren’t. Available apps can be separated into a number of categories, including:

• “Theme Park-related”: These are guides which helps visitors to the Disney theme parks (right now, they are for the US parks only). Some of these guides contain live / regularly updated wait times for rides and shows in the theme parks
• Disney themed games
• Disney shows and movies

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be updating this post with apps that I’ve tried.