Favorite Movies Tag

Hello, everyone! I've been tagged by Hannah from The Writer's Window. For this one, I'm supposed to list my favorite movies. Because I love a lot of movies, I'm going to stick with my top six.
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The Lord of the Rings

 If I had to pick one and only one movie to watch for the rest of my life, I would chose The Lord of the Rings. The word "epic" is often used flippantly, and I confess that I'm guilty of doing so myself, but when it comes to The Lord of the Rings, "epic" is anything but an understatement. I could go on and on about it, but that would take a while, so we'd better move on.

 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Yes, they changed and added a lot. Yes, it was a long movie. But YES, it's still only one step down from the top on my list of favorite movies. One of the things I loved best about An Unexpected Journey was how the dwarves came to life. When you read The Hobbit, you don't really think about many of the thirteen dwarves and how they may very well have their own smaller stories within the bigger one, but in the movie, you're reminded that they each have their own personality, their own story.
 

These next two are pretty much tied for third place:

Tangled
and

Brave
In case no one's noticed, I love fairy tales, fairy tale remakes, and stories that remind me of fairy tales or fairy tale remakes. So, it should come as no surprise that these two would make it onto my favorite movies list. Tangled is ridiculously hilarious and awesome. I love the character growth you see in both Flynn and Rapunzel, all the hilarious lines, and also the fact that they're using a skillet as a weapon. It's probably my favorite Disney movie. (Rapunzel also happens to be my second favorite Disney princess, loosing by an incredibly tiny margin to, guess who . . .)

Yep. Merida of Brave. While a bit more scary and a bit less funny than Tangled, I still love it. I like the whole true love/happily-ever-after dynamic for fairy tales, but it is nice to see something that has a fairy tale feel without romance. Also, I love the way Merida's relationship with her mother develops, and let's face it, Merida's whole family is pretty awesome. Add onto that the fact that, as I mentioned, Merida's my favorite Disney princess (awesome hair+awesome accent+mad skills with a bow and sword+great personality and character development=Sarah's favorite) and it's really no wonder that this is one of my favorite Disney movies.

I want to not go overboard with this, so I'll just do two more movies.

 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
I go back and forth on which Narnia movie I like best quite a bit, but I keep coming back to The Lion, the Witch, an the Wardrobe. I think it's because, of the three Narnia movies, this one stays most accurate to the book. Also, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is one of my top three favorite Narnia books.

The Princess Bride

 Probably the most quoted movie of all time, not to mention one of the funniest. Also, it fits into the fairy-tale genre quite nicely while still turning some of the usual cliches upside down. (So, it should be no surprise that I like it!) And did I mention that it's incredibly funny?

Well, I hope you enjoyed this tag. Thanks for reading! And sorry for taking so long on this post, Hannah!

-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

A Birthday and NaNoWriMo

Hello, everyone!It seems that my blog is mostly dead . . . at least with this post it'll be slightly alive! I apologize for not posting more. I think you'll understand why when you take a look at this:

That, in case you can't tell, is my NaNoWriMo word count, as of 3:45 PM today. Very spiffy, no? I'm having a ridiculous amount of fun with it too, especially since I'm currently pretty close to the climax. And have I mentioned lately how much I love some of my characters? (Particularly Gwen and Emma Alyron?) It does keep me fairly busy, though. Most days, I aim for about 1,800 words. As you can see, my average is a little above that.

However, NaNoWriMo isn't the only thing going on around here, though it might seem like it is sometimes. A few days ago, I celebrated my birthday! I had a lot of fun. My dad and I went to the Botanical Gardens in D.C. in the morning. Since it's an indoor garden, there were still lots of nice plants and flowers to take pictures of. I'll make sure to post pictures once I finish editing them. It'll be a few more days, though, since I only just started editing today.

Later that day, my family and I went to Anita's for dinner. Anita's is a New Mexican style restaurant that I love. I had a Taco and Taquito Dinner, which was very yummy, especially since it had been an extremely long time since I had a taquito. 

After dinner, we came home to eat cake and open presents. As you may recall, I got a recurve bow back in July, which was actually a very early birthday present. On my actual birthday, I also got a Barnes&Noble gift card, a box of chocolate covered cherries, The Princess Bride movie, and the Hobbit movie calender! I was extremely excited about the movie and calender. The Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies, and I think most people know how obsessed I am with The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I absolutely love the calender pictures too. July has the absolute coolest picture of Elrond I've ever seen; he looks very action-y and yet very wise at the same time. That's kind of how I originally pictured him when I first read about him in The Hobbit: incredibly wise, and yet incredibly powerful. December's picture is of Legolas, complete with bow and arrows. I'm not sure if I like the elf or the bow better. The one thing I don't like about the picture is that Legolas is wearing black, and I just don't usually picture him wearing that color. (Aragorn or Elrond, sure. But not Legolas.) The dwarves are also growing on me, especially Thorin, Kili, and Bofur. I still don't like Nori's hair, though. 

After I opened presents, we had cake. Mommy made me a chocolate-cherry cake that looked like one of the notebooks I write my stories in. I was going to post a picture, but they're all on Daddy's computer, unfortunately. We also had cherry-chocolate chip ice cream with the cake, which was very yummy. Then we watched The Princess Bride. I think I like that movie more every time I watch it. After that, it was late, so I went to bed. All in all, it was an excellent birthday.

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for stopping by!

Namarie!

- Sarah