Movie Review: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

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Disney, Entertainment, Film, fun, Jay Baruchel, magic, Movie, movie review, Nicolas Cage, Teresa Palmer, The Sorcerer's Apprentice

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Nicolas Cage (Gone in 60 Seconds, National Treasure) and Jay Baruchel (How to Train Your Dragon, Almost Famous) bring to life this classic Disney tale in a fun and exciting film. The basic story of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice follows one of three apprentices of Merlin who is charged with finding his eventual replacement. Balthazar (Cage) searches for centuries for the next Merlin, the Prime Merlinian. He has Merlin’s little dragon and if the person is right, that dragon animates and becomes a ring. Young Dave sends a quick love note on a field trip to see if a pretty girl wants to be friends or more than friends. She answers the note, leaves it on the bench and the wind sweeps it away. He chases it through New York City and it happens to land inside this run-down antiques shop. Balthazar owns this store and tries the dragon on Dave. It becomes the ring.

The movie continues when Dave (Baruchel) is 10 years older and one of the other original apprentices escapes from his own doll. Hovarth (Alfred Molina) wants to free the main villain, Morgana, from her doll. Trapped in this doll along with her are many of her successors and they are layered so several baddies end up getting freed before Morgana herself is released near the end of the movie. To complicate things a bit, Morgana is actually trapped in the third of Merlin’s apprentices, Veronica’s body. Balthazar LOVES Veronica and wishes to destroy Morgana to be able to have Veronica back.

Disneyland Trip – 2.0

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adventure, Disney, Disneyland, fun, halloween, Main, Travel, trip, vacation

Disney @ Halloween

We were invited to join Dave, April, Ian, Debs and Jake at Disneyland to help celebrate Ian’s 4th birthday and a belated wedding celebration for Debs and Jake.

We had already been to Disneyland earlier this year in February as a treat from my Mom, who was having a birthday and wanted to treat us. People looked at us and scoffed wondering how we could be so rich to afford going twice. We really didn’t pay for the first time.

We were able to get really good tickets at Dream Vacation Builders. They were 5 day Park Hopper tickets at the price of 3 day tickets and they were even discounted further. We stayed 4 days and had a blast the entire time!

Up and coming

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adventure, chillin, Disney, Disneyland, fun, Holidays, Main, plans, relaxing, Travel

The Marini Family (us, that is) seems to always have something going on. I’m cool with that but sometimes it feels good to just relax. Nothing planned, no house/yard work, nowhere to go, no one to see. While rare, I think it’s therapeutic every so often. I don’t think we’ll have much opportunity in the coming weeks and months. But it should be neat!

Coming up on September 8th is our 8th Wedding Anniversary! While we are saving our money for other activities (more later), we are trying to see about going to the Melting Pot somewhere close to that date. That is one of our favorite fancy places to eat and due to it’s fanciness, it’s also a rare treat. It should be great! Plus, we have a $50 gift card to ease the sticker-shock.

Next, we have my 33rd birthday on the 24th. YAY… (I wish there was a font called Sarcasm) This should be a mellow event but I always love birthdays. In another 10 or so years, my feelings might be different.

Then, as best as I can tell, in early October, we will be joining the recently married Deb and Jake Denison along with Dave, April and Ian Yorke to Southern California to the fabled Disneyland Resort! This is what we are trying to save our money for. This will be our second trip to The Magic Kingdom this year. That, indeed is a very rare occasion! We are all so excited and really cannot wait!

Mom wants to join us for a week or so for Thanksgiving and then we are heading up to Washington in February for Chas’ Homecoming. He returns from his 2 year LDS Mission in Cleveland, OH. Of course, I skipped over Halloween, Christmas and New Years, but as far as I can tell, those should be pretty typical this year.

That’s what’s up and coming for us for the rest of the decade!

-Timmy

2 Movie Reviews: Up! and Night at the Museum 2

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amy adams, ben stiller, christopher plummer, Disney, ed asner, Film, Movie, pixar, review, up

Up!

Disney/Pixar has another huge hit on their hands with the masterful Up. Excellent voicework, outstanding animation and it has a broad range of emotions. Yeah, there were some really sad parts. That’s atypical for a Disney/Pixar film. Some pretty big names here: Ed Asner as the main character, Carl Fredricksen, Christopher Plummer as the “inspirational” character Charles Muntz. John Ratzenberger also made his typical appearance as the Construction Foreman, Tom.

The story basically surrounds a small boy who meets a girl who has the same dream as he does. To float to a beautiful South American destination and live forever. The movie shows them getting married and trying to save the money to make this dream come true. But life was not having any of this and kept getting in the way. When urban development wanted to encroach on their home, Carl attaches a huge amount of helium balloons and floats his house away.

The rest of the story I’ll leave to you to go see it. As always, some really funny scenes are included and you can really grab onto this story emotionally. Well done, Disney/Pixar! 5 of 5 plus signs: +++++

Disneyland 2009 Pictures!

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2009, Birthday, Disney, Disneyland, fun, Main, Marini, shumate, Travel, vacation

I’ve posted them on my Picasa account. Enjoy!

Disneyland 2009

Here are some more photos from my Mom’s Camera:

Disneyland 2009 – Mom's Pictures