Elijah David

This month for Top 10 Tuesday, I thought we'd visit a topic that shows up in a surprising way in Albion Academy : dragons. They can be good; they can be evil; they can be humorous or quite solemn. Whatever they are, they make stories interesting and dangerous. As it has been said ( but NOT by Tolkien ), "Always remember, it’s simply not an adventure worth telling if there aren’t any dragons." Onward to the dragons! (Be sure to keep a wizard and a fire cloak handy.) Maleficent (Disney's  Sleeping Beauty ) She's the self-proclaimed Mistress of All Evil™and a cunning villain bent on the destruction of other people's happiness. Maybe she's a fairy, maybe she's a dragon, maybe she just needed someone to show her true love, but whatever the case, she's one of the most iconic dragons in cinema. Mushu (Disney's  Mulan ) On a lighter note, we have Mushu, the Fa family guardian demoted to gong-ringer for failing to protect one of his c...

A while back I made a deal to swap movie thoughts with Mirriam. She picked Kubo and the Two Strings , reviewed it quickly, and praised it left and right. (If you haven't seen it yet, go out and do so. It's a gorgeous Japanese hero myth.) I chose Pete's Dragon because I was excited to see what a fresh take on one of my favorite childhood films would look like.* Seven or eight months later, I can finally deliver on my end. (Oh the glories of Netflix.) First things first: yes, this movie is different from the original (and not just because it's not a musical). It is, like the other Disney remakes preceding it ( Maleficent and, to a lesser extent, Cinderella ) a new spin on things. In all three cases, this is a good thing. Breathing new life into old stories is part of the ongoing process of storytelling. I really appreciated the fact that the filmmakers wanted to take the heart of Pete's Dragon (an orphaned boy befriended and cared for by a dragon before fin...