Ali's Articles

  After doing my post about my kitties, here's another pet like post. In 2016, Illumination Studios released a movie called, “The Secret Life Of Pets.” It got decent reviews, nothing special but still good. However, whether it was seeing the trailers or seeing the movie, there had been a lot of complaints about how it is a rip-off of Pixar’s debut movie, Toy Story. Instead of toys coming to life when no one is around, it’s about what pets do when their owners aren’t home. The stories involve a toy or pet is the center of their owner’s attention, but one day that all changes when their owner gets another one, much to the jealousy of the protagonist, this leads to a rivalry between the two, which eventually leads to the two getting lost and separated from their owner, the two have to put their differences aside and work together to get home, while also sparking a friendship by the end. Granted, Toy Story is better, but I find Pets to be charming in it’s own way. However, 8 years be...

  Here's a picture my friend made for me! Ever since I was born, I loved animals. I loved seeing and playing with my grandparents’ old dog, seeing animals to pet at birthday parties or day camp, especially pigs and rabbits and I loved going to the zoo or farms.  When I was little my favourite animals were fish, from my love of Finding Nemo, to having different pet fish, seeing my nanny’s pet fish and seeing them in different tanks at the pet store or aquariums, but as time went on, my favourite animals became cats. From cuddling the cat puppet my uncle gave me, my dad showing me pictures of the cats he and his brother had as kids, looking for neighbour’s cats, and/or spending time with them, playing with stuffed cats and seeing them at the pet store. Even before the stories I’m about to tell, my love of cats got stronger as I got older, from hanging with friends’ cats, one time visiting these two kittens my friend’s sister was fostering, following Instagram accounts revolving ...

  Before we had streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime, we had different ways of watching our favourite shows or movies, we currently have blu-rays but before that we had DVDs, with commentaries, separate menus, neat bonus material and sometimes the menus could be entertaining too (not that blu rays are bad, I just wish it wasn’t just one menu and it could be affordable for everyone, DVDs nowadays are bland and blu-rays have more bonus material, which isn’t fair for those that can’t afford blu rays). However, there’s one piece of home media we had before we had all those, there was another way to watch our favourite movies or tv shows and they were called VHS tapes. They may not have had menus, some didn’t have bonus material and you’d have to rewind or fast forward to certain parts and to start again, which can be time consuming, but I find that they have a simple charm that I tend to enjoy and have some neat benefits I’d like to talk about today.   Trailers VH...

  Before we begin, let’s get into a little history   Ahh, yes, the 2000s, a rather interesting time, a new century had begun and things were evolving. Technology was evolving as DVDs were the new trend as VHS tapes were declining, and CDs were becoming more popular than cassettes and cell phones were evolving. And animation is no exception. Computer animated movies were becoming more popular while hand drawn animated movies were declining. While the 90s had some computer animated features like Toy Story, Antz, A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, it was really in the 2000s when it was starting to rise. While films like Shrek, Monsters Inc, Ice Age and Finding Nemo did really well critically and financially, hand drawn animated movies like The Road To El Dorado, Atlantis The Lost Empire, Spirit Stallion Of The Cimarron, Treasure Planet, Sinbad; Legend Of The Seven Seas and Home On The Range were doing really poorly financially and/or critically. The companies that made said hand d...