the blog of nathan loding

It’s now been over 72 hours since I watched Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call, New Orleans.” There’s a rea­son this review is going up sig­nif­i­cantly later than my view­ing. I didn’t know what to say. I’ve decided that is actu­ally a good thing. Maybe even a great thing.

“The Princess and the Frog” is a strong return to ani­ma­tion for Dis­ney. And it brings with it a very effec­tive and dark new vil­lain. We all know the orig­i­nal story of the “The Frog Princess.” Dis­ney has changed things up by mov­ing the famil­iar story to Prohibition-era New Orleans, and thereby intro­duc­ing their first black Princess. Wait, a Princess in 1920’s New Orleans?

I don’t like chick flicks. Well, I usu­ally don’t. I will admit to lik­ing one or two, here or there. When Harry Met Sally comes to mind. I’ve always found it annoy­ing when a movie nav­i­gates it’s plot points with pre­dictable ennui. I under­stand why so many peo­ple find them appeal­ing – the fairy-tale essence and the good, happy, roman­tic end­ing – and I appre­ci­ate that. I just don’t like it myself. My col­lec­tion of movies is decid­edly darker, and I don’t think that’s just because of my per­son­al­ity. I’ve always looked towards art to reflect back to me what I see every day, and the art that does that I find attractive.

So I liked “500 Days of Sum­mer.” It was dif­fer­ent, and more a reflec­tion of real­ity than most love sto­ries these days.