Montreal Comiccon 2019 – Day 3: The Masquerade Awards Ceremony, Paige O’Hara & Cosplay

Day 3 wrapped up at Montreal Comiccon 2019. Sunday is the shorter day and with an array of appearances from James and Oliver Phelps (the Weasley twins), Watchdogs 2, Christopher Lambert (Mortal Kombat/Highlander), William Shatner, Paige O’Hara among many others. The Masquerade Award Ceremony took place as well following the previous event’s The Masquerade event. Sunday still had a lot of panels and workshops to check out.

Our schedule included a lot of wrap-up for the Indie Game Zone (which will be talked about over at Game Warp Blog) and capturing some more cosplay and catching The Masquerade Awards Ceremony and finally, the panel for Paige O’Hara.

THE MASQUERADE AWARDS CEREMONY

Following the previous day’s The Masquerade at the end of Day 2 (which I didn’t make it to), Day 3 had the Awards Ceremony separated into 4 categories: Novice, Journeyman, Artisan and Master. In each category, there are honorable mention prizes to armory design, wig and other elements of the cosplay costume itself. Its a pity to not have gone to the actual Masquerade yesterday as most winners didn’t go in their previous day costumes or just retained one element of it, however, here are the winners in each category.

The Masquerade Awards Ceremony – Novice Winners

The Masquerade Awards Ceremony – Journeyman Winners

The Masquerade Awards Ceremony – Artisan Winners

The Masquerade Awards Ceremony – Master Winners

The Masquerade Awards Ceremony – Other Winners

Q&A Panel: Paige O’Hara

Paige O’Hara, known for her role as the voice actress for Belle, was the last panel that I attended. Disney movies are very close to my heart as with the majority of the audience who are big fans of Beauty and the Beast. During the panel, Paige O’Hara talks about her experiences when she started out in Broadway and her experiences working with different voice actors over the span of the Beauty and the Beast movies. She talks about her talents not only as the well-known voice actress but also as a Disney Fine Art artist where you can find her work HERE.

At the same time, fans also asked her to sing different songs and she accommodated to it all, at one point singing a snippet of the song “Belle” and asking the audience to do the chorus while also being asked to sing “Something There” where she asked some of the fans to go up with her to sing it. If there was one word to describe this panel, especially for Beauty and the Beast fans, it was magical.

COSPLAY

Cosplay is a huge part of Montreal Comiccon. While not exactly just Day 3 cosplay, this is the cosplay from over the entire weekend.

Resident Evil

Beauty and the Beast

Pirates

Beetlejuice

Winter Soldier

Michael Myers

Vikings

Aquaman

Horizon Zero Dawn Robot Machine

Thor: Ragnarok

Bumblebee

Mercy

Spider-Man & Deadpool

Tony Stark

Disney

Overwatch

Ghostbusters

Some of them I know and some of them I don’t. If there’s any that I didn’t label that you know where its from. You can leave it in the comments below! Some really cool cosplay this year but it really was just a small portion since Saturday I had less time due to the amount of panels lined up. Next year, I’ll have to definitely make it to The Masquerade.

Day 3 & Cosplay all done for Montreal Comiccon 2019!
Next up tomorrow is the Shopping Haul post to wrap things up!

Music Obsessions [April 2017]

It’s April everyone! I can’t actually believe it! Can you? These Music Obsessions thing swing by so fast and for possibly the first time this year, I feel like I actually have a bit of music going on right now. Maybe it is because I started watching this season of The Voice and its been a pretty cool experience. There are some nice talent there. I can only hope The Voice won’t disappoint me like American Idol did many many years ago when I decided to just stop.

Enough of this rambling! Let’s check it out!

Make Me Like You – Gwen Stefani

Back to Me – KSHMR & Crossnaders ft. Micky Blue

Beauty and the Beast (Minor Key version) – Chase Holfelder & KHS cover

How Does A Moment Last Forever – Celine Dion

 And for The Voice Season 12 performances I’ve enjoyed…

The Voice 2017 Battle – Johnny Hayes vs. Julien Martinez “Hard to Handle”

The Voice 2017 Battle – Jozy Bernadette vs. Troy Ramey “Angel Eyes”

There might be a few more but I’ll end it here. I think its enough music for today! 🙂
Hope you enjoyed it!

What have you been listening to lately?

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

The final part of the Toronto ComiCon weekend meet-up with Drew is our Friday’s night movie going adventure to see the live action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. Drew and I both have Disney segments on our respective blogs and it really highlights how much we love it in general. Plus, we just finished our 90’s Blogathon so hey, it all fits perfectly together. As objective as we would like to be, it is hard to not compare it to the original animation. I am just going to be honest here before we start.

Lets check it out!

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Director: Bill Condon

(Voice) Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Kevin Kline, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Ian McKellan, Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor, Emma Thompson

The beauty of animation is how magical they can be because they are imaginative and creative. To bring something like that to life creates a lot of challenge. There has be matching music and atmosphere and most importantly, the magical chemistry that we can feel with these characters which is usually easier to believe when its animation than in real life. I would be lying if I didn’t go into Beauty and the Beast optimistically skeptical. Why? I haven’t watched anything from Emma Watson since Harry Potter series ended and I only know Dan Stevens as the creepy dude in The Guest and an extremely small part of Season one of Downton Abbey. Not a lot to compare to and I didn’t really look too much at the voice actors either. The question now, after a few days of the initial excitement and thinking about it: does it live up to its original? The answer is no. I have to reluctantly say that because of a few aspects. However, I also never expected it to live up to the original so I still had a lot of fun with it.

Beauty and the Beast’s best part is creating its atmosphere and the world. It is absolutely gorgeous. The effects and CGI put us right into the setting of the town and especially the castle and forest areas. There was a darker tone however, it does manage to capture a great part of the magic that made the first one great. Of course, the original animated film offered up some of the most beautiful animation with its rich colors and catchy musical tunes. That comes to the second part that gives this movie something more. While retaining a lot of the music from the original, they manage to put a few new songs in. The nostalgia and magic of the old music still is the fun parts of the movie plus it shows a true determination of creating a animated film with this one that stays true to a musical with actually not a lot of dialogue.

Belle is one of my favorite heroines/Disney princesses. To be honest, Emma Watson did a decent performance. I can’t say that she was particularly memorable though. She fit in well because she had a good enough singing voice and the movie’s overall magical appeal swept me away. That isn’t to say that I didn’t like her. I just can’t really pinpoint a part of hers that stuck out to her. On that note, her chemistry with the Beast worked well enough that the story made it easy to fall in love with the story again even knowing what would happen and in that final scene where there’s that twist, I had tears in my eyes, which was definitely unexpected. Turning over to Dan Stevens as the Beast, his face was pretty much CGI and yet perhaps it is because of that, it was easier to keep it imaginative. When he was angry at the beginning, there were moments of fear and later as he softened, his features also made it so much more gentle. There was so much more to love in how Dan Stevens portrayed the Beast than Belle which seems to be the opposite of how I remembered the Disney animation.

The stars and the most dynamic characters of the original was almost always these supporting animated enchanted characters. Who knew that clocks and candelabras and teapots could make us fall in love with them, right? That is something that really stands out also in this live action. The voice cast is a fantastic ensemble with Cogsworth being voices Ian McKellan, Lumiere by Ewan McGregor, Mrs. Potts by Emma Thompson and of course, the man who tends to sneak into every movie in some supporting part and almost makes it shine, the grand piano (Maestro) by Stanley Tucci. I loved them the most in this live action adaptation (or is it a remake?). There are so many similarities to the original but somehow their enchantedness makes it easier to imagine them in this way.

Finally, we can’t not talk about the most self-absorbed villain, Gaston. I honestly like Gaston quite a bit and his sequences especially the Gaston songs and bits are quite humorous in the animation and I’m pretty happy about how they approached this character and Luke Evans take on it. There were a lot of funny moments and it helps a lot. The ending battle with the Beast was a little underwhelming but it was never meant to be overly long even in the original. Gaston isn’t really a true threat ever. I’m not sure any believes that he’ll amount to anything too much especially not when his right hand man is Lefou who is just there for comedic relief. Josh Gad didn’t quite stand out as much either.

Overall, Beauty and the Beast is a decent live action take of the original. In comparison, it is hard to meet the original’s masterful animation however there is still a lot to love especially because this one takes good care in creating a beautiful environment and magical atmosphere. The winter and snowy landscape with the dark but beautiful castle captures lots of mystic, especially watching the take on the castle falling apart as the magic wears away from each rose petal falling. While some characters are a little underwhelming in their portrayal, the majority did a pretty great job however the magic of the story itself did carry itself and shadowed the shortcomings in the moment.

Have you seen Beauty and the Beast?

Ten Anticipated Movies of 2017!

2017 is here! I’m sorry for the tardiness of posting up the 2017 outlook post. I’m working on that and just settling on a few little decisions that I haven’t made up my mind on but that should be up tomorrow. However, in the mean time, I feel super late talking about my list of anticipated movies of 2017 and this post is going up later than usual also but its the holiday and I’m taking it easy.

Before we jump into the list, please note, this is preliminary and usually doesn’t include any indie movies because I usually don’t catch on to those until very close to release date or a ton of you have talked about it or Fantasia. Or I’m too busy with Netflix movies to look too much into it.

And you’d like to check out anticipated games of 2017, you can find that over at That Moment In HERE! I’m not doing a separate post talking about this so I figured I’ll just give it a mention here in case it interests you. This post is a collaboration with my Game Warp co-host but our choices are pretty similar with just a few exceptions.

Without further delay, here is my ten anticipated movies of 2017 in the order of release (according to Cinema Montreal site).

XXX: The Return of Xander Cage
(January 20)

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
(January 27)

Beauty and the Beast
(March 17)

The Fate of the Furious
(April 14)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2
(May 5)

Bon Cop Bad Cop 2

Alien: Covenant
(May 19)

Wonder Woman
(June 2)

Spiderman: The Homecoming
(July 7)

Jumanji
(July 28)

No trailer yet…

Superheroes, sequels and remakes is what this year’s anticipated movies for me is all about. It kind of makes it seem like a little scary because we all know how these things can just really go completely wrong. While a lot of people are done with Resident Evil or just haven’t really liked it from the beginning, I’ve liked it a lot for the “so bad its awesome” factor. I like the action and the over the top and everything that is wrong with it. I’m super excited for Beauty and the Beast and actually my girl friends are pretty much decided to go see that one. Hopefully everything will work out. The wildcard in this list goes to Bon Cop Bad Cop 2 which is a French-Canadian film that had a huge following back in 2006 for its first film. I have no idea how it took ten years or eleven at the time of release to get it out but I’m pretty stoked about it.

And now for some honorable mentions and other titles that has me intrigued but a little skeptical.

Honorable Mentions:

• The Lego Batman Movie
• Logan
• Power Rangers
• Pitch Perfect 3
• Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
• IT

Intrigued but Unsure:

• Monster Trucks
• Before I Fall
• The Space Between Us
• World War Z 2

What movies are you anticipating in 2017?