Rethinking Disney

I have avoided Disney for many years. There are many reasons for that, though those reasons don't entirely keep me away.

When we read a book that Jack enjoys that only Disney has made into a movie (or just as often, Disney has made sure that version made before they bought the rights are no longer available) sometimes we get the Disney movie out of the library.

My usual experience has been that Disney destroyed the story beyond recognition, leaving Jack sad and me annoyed. But, it's a good demonstration of why watching the movie doesn't mean you know the story. (Stuart Little was a recent example.)

But we shopped very late this year -- like *after* solstice! (Time and money were both very tight this year. Thanks to a third paycheck this month, we were able to celebrate at all.) That late and with no plan, I had a hard time finding anything locally that was at all acceptable. In a rush through KMart, I saw a copy of an Alice In Wonderland movie. It wasn't the version I wanted, but it was inexpensive, so I figured that if it was a bad rendition, it wasn't a disaster.

What I had failed to notice is that it was Disney movie. (They had put the main actor's name in the spot that usually trumpets the Disney brand, what can I say?)

But we watched it. I saw about 20 minutes of it before I got restless, (not unusual for me. It takes three viewings for me to get through a good movie. A bad one can take dozens.) Rod watched it through, and Jack has watched it two or three times per day.

It's actually a pretty good movie with very little of what I hate about Disney. (Except that policy of making earlier versions very hard to come by.) They took the tack of making it "Alice 15 years later, so variances in the story were irrelevant.

It's once.

But I may have to rethink my view of the quality of Disney movies if this trend continues.

I would still have problems with the Disney mindset, of course, but fair is fair. If they increase the value of their movies, it's only fair to say so.

Walmart carries organics, too. I still won't shop there.

About the pictures: After seeing what Sue and Sari can do with a camera, and having, at Sari's suggestion, watched several YouTube videos about photography, I have decided to start experimenting more with my camera. We took our cameras along on errands yesterday and took photos of the beautiful things in our life. We'll be doing that for a while, I think.