Thursday Movie Picks: Adopted/Foster Families

Happy Thursday, everyone! And a happy Autumn to you too, or Fall. Yesterday marked the 2015 Autumnal Equinox, and so now is the time I can officially put cinnamon in everything I eat and drink. I have a nice supply of autumnal fragranced Yankee Candle Tarts ready to burn until it’s socially acceptable for me to feel Christmassy.

Anyway, Thursday Movie Picks is a fantastic series hosted by Wanderer at Wandering Through the Shelves, where each week she picks a theme and we all choose 3 movies that we feel fit. This week we’re looking at Adopted/Foster Families, and it’s a weird one for me, as all 3 of my choices are animated, family movies. I’m not sure if that means a lot of family movies contain adopted/foster families, or that I just watch far too many animated movies. Hey ho, here we go!

Perhaps not the most functional adopted family in the world, Despicable Me (2010) features Gru, a super-villain decides to adopt the 3 orphaned girls who tried to sell cookies to use them as part of his master plan to steal a shrink ray from his nemesis. Gru tries to abandon the girls at an amusement park, but is forced to ride the rollercoaster with them, and slowly, he grows to love these girls as his own. It all ends happily ever after for their little family with a ballet dance recital the girls perform for Gru, his Mother and all the Minions. 

My favourite ever Disney movie, Lilo & Stitch (2002) has a slightly unconventional adopted family. I mean ohana. Lilo lives with her sister who struggles to look after them both after their parents died. Lilo’s sister lets her adopt a dog from the local shelter and of course, Lilo picks the weirdest looking one out of them all, Stitch, who just happens to be an extraterrestrial experiment gone wrong. Stitch’s behaviour almost winds Lilo up in care, but he eventually learns the meaning of ohana, which means family, and family means that no one gets left behind, or forgotten.

Perhaps it’s odd to choose the sequel, but  thought Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) has some really endearing moments in regards to Po the panda and his adoptive father Mr Ping, a goose. In the sequel, Po struggles with his past as memories come to the surface about his mother. After learning that she died protecting him from Lord Shen of the peacock clan, and eventually defeating Lord Shen himself, he returns home to Mr Ping and declares him to be his father.

Thursday's Thought: Disney DVDs

Apologies in advance, as this is more of a Thursday Ramble than a thought. In fact, it could possibly be a Thursday Story That I Find Funny That Probably Isn't, but that just doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely. Nor do I want to make a new banner for that.

I promise there's a point to all of this, if you can make it to the end. The other day, I was feeling either unwell or grumpy, and all I wanted to do was watch my favourite Disney movie, Lilo & Stitch. I knew I must have it on DVD somewhere, but alas, whether it got lost in last year's move or whether it's still at my parents house (could it be old enough to have been on VHS?), it wasn't on my bookshelf. Great.

Cue a trip to our local shopping centre the next day, which is fairly large actually. Not quite as big as Birmingham's Bullring, but not far off. There were a good few shops I could check to find the DVD I was looking for. Well, HMV, a shop which specialises in films & music, didn't have it. Oh, they had Lilo & Stitch 2, some sort of Christmas Special and probably another 3 Lilo & Stitch variations which I'd never even heard of, but not the original.

I didn't even want to ask for fear of coming across as the crazy lady hunting down a children's film. It might have been better if I had a child with me, but all I had was a very bored fiancé. We tried another shop which only sells second hand copies of DVDs and CDs, and I hear a very excited shout of 'I've found it!' from across the room. He's found it, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. Thanks to the power of Google, this is what the case looked like:

See the spine? There's no number on it. All of my other DVDs have a number on, and eventually I would love to collect them all. It was only up until this point that I realised not every Disney DVD has the number on them. As you can imagine, I had a very disgruntled fiancé after I announced I couldn't buy this version. I had to give up.

Ironically enough, as soon as we got home, I put Netflix on to find that they had added a new film that day. Lilo & Stitch. Can you believe it? Well, at least I finally got to watch it! 

One week later, I was doing my food shopping at the local supermarket, and lo and behold, they were doing an offer on Disney DVDs. Two for £8.00, what a bargain! They even had Lilo & Stitch, and what was that I saw? It had the number! Queue lots of excitement, the throwing down of my basket, and a text to Jenna, because she absolutely had to know what I had just found.

Oh and yes, that's A Bugs Life in my basket too. I loved that film when I was younger.

So now here lies my point, sort of. Do you collect Disney DVDs too? And if you do, are you fussed by the numbers?

Sorry, I'll resume blogging with purpose tomorrow.