Warmed by Disney's Frozen

Well, it has been a long looong time since I last wrote in this blog. Funnily enough I have been busy (I made my own photo Christmas cards!- I missed the last postal dates for international post - shit! I ate quite a lot of cake! I cleaned the kitchen, I held my best friend's new baby - don't drop her! don't drop her!, I made two deserts for a dinner party and cooked chocolate sea-salt fudge and finished my Christmas shopping!), but I have also felt a little blue in the last few months and a low mood tends to make me lazy when it comes to writing.

I can't explain the reason for feeling melancholy. Sometimes it just comes over me. A little wave of sadness and I am low for a while. I still go to work and see friends and eat dinner, but everything feels a bit muted as if I am doing it all through steamed goggles. Once I come out of my funk (and usually do quite quickly), everything looks sharper and brighter and my creative juices start flowing again. It is the same with photography. I stopped taking photos in November because life got just a bit too stressful. And then I was ill. I must have a very crap immune system since I catch everything that comes along. I was sick for a whole week of my holiday and then sniffled and snuffled my way into work the week after.

But now it is one week before Christmas, I am about to embark on a seasonal break from work until early January and of course the idea of eating, sleeping, reading and watching Christmas movies fills me with a calm sort of joy. The first seasonal thing I did was decorate Christmas cookies at a cookie decorating party. Below are some of creative efforts (I was going for a tartan theme):

Woah! That's a lot of gingerbread....and food colouring.

Once I was into decorating the cookies, I was then in full blown Christmas mode and I started decorating the flat. Unfortunately my track record with Christmas trees is pretty bad - ie. they die. Then they lie around dead for three weeks after New Year until the council comes and picks them up - which is rather disturbing. Imagine a residential street strewn with piles of dead fir trees, lit only by faded yellow street lamps. I half fancy they are going to shuttle jerkily to life and descend upon London like an apocalypse of tree zombies.

But...more to the point Christmas trees are very expensive in my neck of the woods (eg, urban city area with no actual 'natural' woods), so I popped off to Waitrose and bought some fake berry branches. I was not going to let a little thing like a lack of tree stop me. With the help of my mother (an expert at all things Christmassy), we came up with a beautiful, yet beguiling table decoration:

I name it 'The ClaraJean Berry Tree' - with added origami birds.

After decorating the house, attending a cookie party, five Christmas parties and events at work (one of which ended with the whole room smelling of alcohol and my colleagues doing the Macarena at 8pm - much to early in the evening for such cheesy music) and a visit to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park (complete with rum laced mulled wine and currywurst), I decided it was time to force my husband to sit through one of my favourite Christmas traditions - the obligatory Disney movie! This year I chose Frozen. It seemed appropriate. The heating in our flat has long been dysfunctional and this year two heaters gave up the ghost completely. Kaput. No warmth or interest from landlord to fix the situation. We migrate from room to room dragging our oil radiator on wheels behind us like sad pilgrims. We have blown the yearly-thermal-long-underwear budget and I routinely wear four to five layers of clothes, even in bed. Luckily my husband and I are now used to this state, having lived without heating on and off for more than three years.Someday we will be able to afford our place and fill it with insulation and heat it like the Bahamas whenever we want. Until that day, we visit the local multiplex regularly to indulge in their utterly environmentally-unfriendly habit of roasting a movie audience.

Frozen is a great Disney movie. It has all the classic elements of what you wish for in an animated production from Disney - a love story, family values, a plucky heroine, a sarcastic hero, some pleasing musical numbers, beautiful animation and a talking snowman. Who doesn't love a talking snowman? I also really enjoyed the design of the world the movie portrays, which appeared to be both Swedish and Norwegian. Even my husband, who professes to be not interested in children's films, yet eyeballs them with gusto whenever I persuade him to watch one with me, loved it. The whole experience was made all the more charming by a little girl in the front of the cinema who giggled hilariously whenever the talking snowman, Olaf, appeared on screen (see! I told you! Everyone likes a talking snowman!). Before long, my husband and I were giggling at the little girl giggling. One of my favourite scenes of the movie was this one.

For those of you watching on a mobile device: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzvS0ATxB4

I have a Swedish colleague at work and she even finds this funny. 'He's Swedish!' she exclaimed when I showed it to her! I spent the rest of the day going 'Yoohoo' at her, which she seemed to enjoy, until I was finally silenced by a mince pie.
But of course one of the main parts of a Disney movie is the music. I can sing from memory many of the Disney songs I heard as a child, including from films such as Bambi and Dumbo (which I must have seen when I was four or five). The big number from Frozen was 'Let It Go' performed by Idina Menzel (famous for her role in Wicked, the Musical and Glee). Idina has a pretty powerful voice and I felt that she fitted the character of the Snow Queen Elsa perfectly.

For those of you on a mobile advice, you can access the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moSFlvxnbgk

I loved the visual effects on the big cinema screen during this scene. Several people in the audience swayed back and forth during this song and I was sure someone was going to spring up and pounce around the aisle to this musical number. I also loved how this story was set in the same universe as the Disney film Tangled. What can I say? I love continuity in films! In November there was some controversy surrounding the design of the female characters in Frozen. Feminists objected to their large doe-like eyes and their tiny waists. I suppose they thought it would give little girls an unrealistic idea of what a female body should look like. I can see the point they were making, but since it is animation, most of what is in the film is exaggerated anyway and unrealistic. There is a talking snowman for god's sake! It is a cartoon and designed to be fun. I think if we want start a dialogue on bad female body-image then I think we should look at the front covers of women's magazines and the amount of photo-shopping that is done to produce those images. The female characters in Frozen were the stars of the show. They were brave heroines and they took charge of their destinies in a far more liberated way than Cinderella or Snow White ever did in previous Disney adaptations.

All can say is Well Done Disney! I will be singing 'Let it Go' in the shower tomorrow!