Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 7: Belle

Beauty and the Beast (1991) is a slight improvement on the usual princess mold. Belle is a bookworm, and isn’t doing the endless chores that the earlier princesses love so much, although she’s still all over the animals. And the inanimate objects are positively adorable – if you don’t love Chip and the Angela Lansbury-voiced Mrs Potts, you don’t have …

Read more

Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 6: Pocahontas

(This is a tad late, sorry!) Faces of woe! The third last Disney princess, Pocahontas (1995), isn’t really a “princess” – and it’s the only one here based on an actual historical person. It’s pretty loosely based – they’ve changed her age, love interest, home, story, appearance – ok, they’ve just kept her name and ethnicity, and the names of …

Read more

Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 5: Cinderella

“I’m staring so hard into your eyes I’m going to forget the rest of your face. That’s part of my charm!” Cinderella (1950) is one of the classic Disney movies, and in my mind, the Disney version is the definitive version. As you might have come to expect after reading my whinging over the past few weeks, there are a …

Read more

Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 4: Sleeping Beauty

(symbolic shackles!) Today’s Disney theme is Sleeping Beauty (1959). As far as I’m concerned, Snow White (the second in this princess series) and Sleeping Beauty are pretty much the same damn film, just released 22 years apart. The things that annoy me are just the same: passively hanging around cleaning for a flock of short people, being frightened in woods …

Read more

Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I (only kind of) Hate Disney (this week) Part 3: Mulan

Hurray! This week on Michelle’s Disney cheese and whine hour, we have Mulan (1998). Since I’m the slanty-eyed gook in the banner at the top of this blog, you’d be right to guess that this is a Disney film with which I have a particularly strong relationship. I watched this as an impressionable tween when it first came out, and …

Read more

Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 2: Snow White

Time for another edition of Ranty Lab Muffin! Today we’re dealing with Disney’s first animated feature: 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It feels wrong to lay into a senior citizen of a film from contemporary perspectives, so let’s quickly breeze through a few obvious points that I largely covered last week in my grumpy Jasmine rant: – Hot …

Read more

Disney Princesses Challenge, aka I Hate Disney Part 1: Jasmine

I’ve never really been a fan of the Disney Princess franchise, not even as a kid. I loved the catchy songs, and the bold and cheerful animation, but the films never sat well with me, and as a child, I didn’t really have the analytical skills nor the vocabulary to explain why. So when a few girls from Aussie Nails …

Read more

Chemical vs. Natural

It’s probably no surprise to anyone that, as a science geek, it irks me when I see scientifically incorrect things in popular media (I have been known to yell at the TV during Mythbusters). But what really upsets me is when advertisers and marketing gurus try to use scientific terms and absurd claims to bamboozle people into buying their products. …

Read more