Some Hard Questions (and My Opinion On Them)…

Some of my favorite Ghost Stories on film.

1) Casper

2) Personal Shopper

3) The Innocents (1961)

4) The Uninvited (1944)

5) Ringu (リング, "Ring")

6) The Haunting (1963)

7) The Stone Tape

8 ) The Shining (1980)

9) The Others (Spanish: Los otros)

10) The Sixth Sense

11) Kuroneko (藪の中の黒猫, "A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove"; or simply "The Black Cat")

12) The Woman in Black (1989)

13) Any episode of BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas

14) Kwaidan (怪談, "Ghost Stories")

15) David Lowery's A Ghost Story (Masterpiece.)

16) The Changeling

17) Hasta el viento tiene miedo (known in English as "Even the Wind is Afraid" and "The Wind of Fear")

18) Stir Of Echoes

Fun Fact:

This scene from the 1992 film, Bram Stoker's Dracula adapts a real legend regarding the first wife of Vlad Ţepeş, the Wallachian Voivode also called "Dracula".

According to this legend, while Vlad was away from his fortress (Poenari Castle), an arrow message was shot into the chamber of the princess with news of the Ottoman army's attack on the castle the following morning. Rather than risking capture, the princess jumped from the castle tower into the river below. In the film however, she jumps after hearing false news of Dracula's death.

The river in this legend was later named "Râul Doamnei", meaning "The Lady's River". In a later scene in the film, Dracula names the river "Argeș, River Princess". But Argeș is actually the larger river that Râul Doamnei connects to.

Out of all adaptations of the ballet and short story, this has gotta be my favorite version of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.

I hope you like rodents! ^^

As much as I'm mixed on Mutant Mayhem, I still give it my most favorable, most sincere wish for success.

May three of the most successful movies in 2023 be animated movies. May artistry be celebrated. May the ratings go higher than PG and beyond if the storytellers need it to be.

Fun Fact:

The Cheshire Cat was first introduced in Lewis Carroll's novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". The character was inspired by an old phrase "Smiling like a Cheshire cat". The origins of that phrase are still debated to this day, but the most widely accepted theory is that it refers to a cat living in the English county of Cheshire, which is known for producing a lot of milk and dairy, which cats love, hence the smiling. Carroll decided to personify the cat from that phrase, he gave it a physical form, a personality and magic powers. In the book, the cat doesn't play quite as large a role as he does in the Disney movie, but the two have very similar characteristics. They talk in really confusing ways that are sometimes funny but also kind of annoying, they raise philosophical questions to Alice even though she clearly doesn't understand them and while they sometimes appear to be making a situation worse for her, they're actually rooting for Alice to succeed and even are helping her indirectly.

Our tour begins before we even enter the Mansion itself in the Magic Kingdom, where you can see some of our guests in their corruptible...mortal...busts.

Pictured here, we have the Dread Family. Uncle Jacob Dread, Bertie Dread, Aunt Florence McGriffin Dread, Wellington and Forsythia Dread, and Cousin Maude (Dread, I'm assuming).

They were a family of six who once inhabited the manor before one day they all met their gruesome fate at each other's hands. Uncle Jacob was poisoned by Bertie for his wealth. Who was then shot dead by Florence as an act of revenge. Who was then smothered by bird seed by Forsythia and Wellington, who were then killed in their sleep with a mallet…by Cousin Maude. Who, as the sole surviving member of the Dread Family, burned to death because she liked to use matches in her hair instead of hairpins (really amazing thinking there Cousin Maude…🙄). And now, the Dread Family is no more and haunt the halls of the esteemed mansion.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein

Fun Fact:

God of War's Grýla was based on a real giantess from Norse mythology.

In myth, she's not actually related to Angerboda at all, but the game got a lot of other things right. Like how she's enormous, absolutely disgusting and she did still have a cauldron you didn't want to end up in. Sagas from 13th century Iceland describe Grýla as a parasitic beggar woman who wanders around town, asking peasant farmers to give her their disobedient children. The parents could easily turn her away, but if their kid had been a real tachrán lately, they might just give him/her up. When Grýla was given a child, she'd throw them in a sack attached to one of her 15 tails, then take them home, toss them in the cauldron and get a stew going. Legend says that the naughtier the kid, the better the stew tasted and that she never ever had a shortage of food.

In God of War, she's not exactly nice to Angerboda, but she's never so horrible as to try and eat her. Instead, she uses her cauldron to harvest the souls of animals she traps around Jotunheim.

Compared to her mythology, her God of War counterpart is actually kind of nice...

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein