Maleficent Continues Frozen’s “Icy Blast” of Female-Driven Power and Financial Success at the Box Office

While there will undoubtedly be no shortage of male action powerhouses this summer in cinema, Hollywood might soon be getting the message that female audiences can still make for a box office hit, while leaving their guy friends behind.

Maleficent is titular star Angelina Jolie’s first silver screen appearance in four years, and easily her biggest opening weekend ever. Maleficent grossed just over $69 million its opening weekend and took the lead in the box office, pushing X-Men, Days of Future Past, down to #2 at $32.6 million. While some may be saying the film is only “riding the coattails” of victory of November’s female power duo Frozen (also Disney), audience statistics might suggest otherwise.

Disney’s Maleficent, a dark, reimagined version of Disney’s own 1959 animated classic Sleeping Beauty, tells the well known fairytale of Princess Aurora from the perspective of one of Disney’s most popular villains, Maleficent. And while the film script is a testament to subpar writing and character development, and the film is itself an overwhelming mess of CGI magical creatures, Angelina Jolie’s shattering performance is worth the four-year wait. Jolie’s character becomes a terrifying and glorious anti-hero, portrayed as fierce, independent, and a hurricane of revenge. Viciously betrayed by her childhood love Stephen (Sharlto Copley), who has now become ruler of the neighboring kingdom, Maleficent curses his newborn child with the fate of an eternal sleep, triggered by the prick of the iconic, if obsolete, spindle of a spinning wheel on her sixteenth birthday. To spite the king, the coma can only be broken by true love’s kiss, which, thanks to Stephen, Maleficent no longer believes in.

Similar to Wicked, Broadway’s smash-hit musical that turns the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz into an anti-hero complete with depth and heart, Maleficent follows the recent revisionist trend of rehashing old classics to get a new feel. Maleficent echoes Disney’s surrealist 2010 hit Alice in Wonderland, and the more recent Oz: The Great and Powerful, in 2013; Jolie’s villain has spunk, strength, and actual substance, something missing from many of Hollywood’s female characters.

That distinction made all the difference in the box office however, and Frozen’s coattails or not, Maleficent saw financial success. Frozen, notable for its portrayal of not one, but two female leads, has gone on to become the highest grossing animated film of all time, beating out Disney’s The Lion King, and Pixar’s Toy Story 3. What sets Frozen apart from Disney’s previous princess flicks however, is the focus on sisterly love, as opposed to romantic love, which ultimately breaks the spell the characters set out to reverse.

Maleficent behaves in much the same way, with Maleficent ultimately providing the kiss of true love needed to lift the curse that she herself cast. Having come to love Princess Aurora in the sixteen years she watched her from afar, Maleficent is overcome with grief and guilt when Aurora falls into her enchanted sleep, and though she no longer believes in true love’s kiss, commits herself to breaking the spell. As a last-ditch effort, she brings a handsome boy (coincidentally named Phillip) that Aurora once flirted with to the princess’s aid, to no avail. In another departure from Disney standards, the prince, much to the amusement of the audience, confesses that he would feel uncomfortable kissing Aurora, having only met her once. When his kiss fails to wake the princess, however, Maleficent throws him out, convinced that true love cannot exist. After Phillip’s failure, Maleficent’s apology and subsequent curse-lifting kiss is not surprising, but is still a welcome change of pace from the cloying, shallow creampuff romance of most princess movies, something that female audiences took to heart.

Based on Hollywood’s summer turnouts, one would think that the only group filmmakers are targeting is men, and this is not entirely untrue. Viewed as the most reliable, the male 18-25 year old demographic is the most sought after audience at the box office. Movies that appeal to men typically star men, and so Hollywood keeps cranking them out. The logic is that women will go see movies about men, but men won’t go see movies about women. Maleficent, a box office success, sported an audience comprised 60% of women. Frozen’s audience was 57% women. Even more recently, the hit film adaptation of John Green’s best-selling teen romance novel The Fault in Our Stars, starring Shailene Woodley, boasted an audience comprised 82% of women, 80% of those being between the ages of 18 and 25 years old.

Though ticket sales show that men and women, especially the coveted 18-25 year old demographic, attend movies with nearly identical frequency, the movies in theaters disproportionally favor men. What Frozen, Maleficent, and The Fault in Our Stars prove, however, is that movies about women still can be, and are box office hits, with or without a strong male audience. What the films’ content proves even more is that female audiences want to see, and are willing to pay for, substantial movies about substantial female characters.

Maleficent doesn’t disappoint.

President Commends Students, School in Worcester Tech Commencement Address

           On June 11^th, Worcester Technical High School graduates got to hear from none other than the President himself, as he congratulated them not only for their accomplishments as the Class of 2014, but as a school, and as a community that the rest of America can learn from. Speaking from the DCU center, Obama asserted, “there is nothing ordinary about Worcester Tech.”

            And ordinary they are not. A nearly defunct institution less than 20 years ago, Worcester Tech has been revitalized, both in body and spirit, and has gone from a failing high school, to one that, as Obama said, “has set itself apart.” Now they are in a new $90 million dollar building, and have a waitlist hundreds of names long. Over the past 16 years, Worcester Tech has been transformed. It is now a thriving place of learning where everyone is taking notice.  Standardized test scores have improved across the board, with those scoring in either “proficient” or “advanced” in mathematics up 100%, and in English, 200%. In 2013, the National Association of Secondary School Principals named Worcester Tech principal Sheila Harrity Principal of the Year. Graduates, who will be heading off to college, the military, as well as starting their own careers, are graduating with the skills to “run a restaurant, build a house, or fix a computer.” Skills from a great education that Obama said “will make America stronger.”

            The president had an important message for the graduates aside from “Congratulations”; that each graduate was only where they were in life that day “because somebody somewhere invested in [their] success.” Obama stressed the importance of a country that invests in its students, a country where education is a priority, and a country with young professionals who give back to the community. “I can’t imagine a better investment,” Obama said of the graduates, “You’ve got to make sure you use those gifts.” Some of the students are already using their gifts, leaving high schools with more than just a diploma, but college credits, nursing assistance certificates, and EMT licenses.

            “You’re already doing it, you’re already blazing a trail,” Obama said. And as he shook the hands of each graduate, it seemed true. In many ways, it was a typical graduation: caps and gowns, a procession, and a speaker. Obama was right, though, Worcester Tech is so much more than ordinary. It’s gone from a failing institution to an award-winning center of education, and center of the community. It’s gone from taking, to giving back. “We are strongest when we are working together, and when we’re looking out for one another,” the president said in closing, “And if it can happen in Worcester, it can happen anyplace.”

From Computer Science to NASCAR, Cryptocurrencies in the Modern World

On June 22^nd, the internet’s favorite NASCAR driver, Josh Wise, will be tearing up the track at the Sonoma Sprint Cup in his signature No. 98 Shiba Inu clad “Dogecar.” Sponsored by the growing “Dogecoin” community, Wise’s entry is a testament to excellent fundraising, some good humor, and a growing trend of popular cryptocurrencies taking the market by storm.

            Dogecoin, modeled after the Bitcoin spin-off Litecoin, is a currency of the Internet. Similar to the popular Bitcoin, Dogecoins are obtained through exchange for goods and services, free market exchange, and “mining.” Mining, or “digging” as it is known in the Dogecoin community involves letting your computer solve complicated math problems as it, much like a hacker, searches for the correct computational code to unlock a “block” of coins. When the transaction has been completed, and the code verified by the host network, the miner, or digger as the case may be, is rewarded with a “block reward,” of the respective cryptocurrency (e.g. Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin, etc.). Rewarded coins vary in number, and frequency, and the greater processing power of your computer (the more energy devoted to the task), the more likely coins are to be discovered.

            According to Nathan Wells, student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and user of Bitcoin and Dogecoin, Bitcoins and their respective spin-offs really do function as a currency of the Internet. “They’re like online cash,” he explained, “they can be sent easily and mostly anonymously between any two people with Internet.” Bitcoin isn’t backed by any government, agency, or corporeal capital, the Bitcoin algorithm codes for a finite number of them to exist. Much like gold, the more you mine, the less undiscovered product exists, and a government or independent practice can’t create more of it just to accommodate demand. Supply and demand (as well as any costs accrued in transaction) dictates the price of both.

            According to Nathan, people like cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin “it’s anonymous and doesn’t require any middle-men like credit card companies or PayPal.” Despite this perk, because Bitcoin isn’t dependent upon corporeal capital, it and every other cryptocurrency is subject to the whims of the market, which can be quite inconsistent. “I got into Bitcoin a few years ago because it seemed like a cool idea,” Nathan said, “and I thought other people would want to start using it too. It ended up being a pretty good investment.” Nathan purchased around 20 Bitcoins in 2012 at around $13 per Bitcoin, and sold most of them off when they peaked at $30. Laughing, Nathan explained, “Bitcoin peaked at about $1,000 a few months ago.” But though he acknowledges he didn’t strike it rich, “I still ended up making a pretty respectable profit.” Though there are few stores online that accept Bitcoin, Overstock.com does, and there are sites where users can exchange Bitcoins for credit to Amazon.com, which Nate has done. Currently, the price of Bitcoin hovers around $632, while only a few days ago it hovered around $680. Media craze tends to correlate strongly with Bitcoin peaks, as do events such as businesses making the move to accept Bitcoin as tender on their websites.

            Dogecoin, on the other hand, weighs in today at $0.000411. Currently the seventh largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Dogecoin has a fan following and clientele all of its own. “It’s kind of silly, but I think it has it’s place,” Nathan said, “People on Reddit have been using it a lot.” Reddit, the social networking service, news website, and self-proclaimed “front page of the internet” has served to skyrocket Dogecoin from an Internet joke to a legitimate Internet currency. Originally a joke prevalent on the subreddit /r/doge, a page that serves to feature the popular Doge meme, depicting a surprised looking Shiba Inu dog complete with captions of incorrect grammar in the iconic Comic Sans font, Nathan says that Dogecoin has blossomed into something real, and surprisingly, charitable. “I haven’t spent any of my Dogecoin yet, I only have about $0.50 worth, but there are a few stories of people getting together and raising a lot of money in Dogecoin.”

            Earlier this year, the Dogecoin community established a fundraiser to raise $50,000 for the Jamaican Bobsled team, which had qualified for, but could not afford to attend the Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia. In just two days, $30,000 worth of Dogecoin had been raised, and the Dogecoin to Bitcoin rate rose by 50%. Spurred on by this surprising chain of events, the Dogecoin community was inspired to collect $30,000 in donations for the “Doge4Water,” fundraiser to build a well in Kenya. The campaign was successful, receiving donations from over 4,000 donors, including one anonymous Dogecoin patron who donated 14,000,000 Dogecoin, roughly equivalent to $11,000 at the time.

            Now, similar to the Jamaican Bobsled Team, the Dogecoin community is once again lending support to the “underdoge.” in March of 2014, the Dogecoin community successfully raised $67.8 million Dogecoins (then approximately $55,000) to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Wise. On May 4, Wise drove the Dogecoin/Reddit-sponsored Shiba Inu clad racecar in the Aaron’s 499 event at Talladega Superspeedway. Though Wise finished 20^th, on May 16^th he won a spot at the Sprint All-Star Race by virtue of an online fan vote, beating out longtime crowd favorite and GoDaddy.com spokeswoman Danica Patrick, and came in 15^th. Now again, the Dogecoin community is gearing up for June 22^nd, when Wise will be sporting his colors at the Sonoma Sprint Cup. And when he’s tearing up the track, you can be sure the announcers will be commenting not only on the paintjob, the humor, but also on the cryptocurrency community that made it all happen.

The American Dream: Faith, Love, and the Perfect Slice of Pizza

            Walking into Pizza Plus Pizza, a popular little pizza shop in Natick Centre, you might not expect a slice of philosophy to be served up with lunch. It’s what was at the top of the menu however, when I sat down for an informal interview with proprietor Kamil this past Sunday. Pizza Plus Pizza has been one of my favorite haunts since I was a little kid, and measuring my height against the stainless steel counter top was something I always looked forward to, though not as much as the pizza itself, which in my opinion, remains the best in town. Though I’ve known Kamil since I was small, I’ve never had a truly personal conversation with him, and it was a pleasure to just sit down and talk, albeit for only half an hour. With the little television and the comforting sounds of busy pizza production in the background, Kamil opened up.

            Kamil, as I knew, hails originally from Egypt. Born in 1969, he is the youngest of ten children, all of whom graduated college, a source of pride for the family. After graduating college however, Kamil pursued a number of different careers, for varying lengths of time. He worked with the Egyptian department of education for six years, as well as living in Italy as a receptionist for an Italian tourist company.

            When speaking of learning Italian, though he is not fluent, Kamil stressed how important bilingualism, and how “when you learn [another language] you can deal. When you learn you can educate yourself, and take another step ahead.” In Egypt, the native language is Arabic, and Kamil started learning English at 11 or 12 years of age, similar to how the United States has middle schoolers start Spanish or French at the same age. Now, he tells me, English is being taught in those as young as kindergarten. “I believe that even from the A-B-C’s you should learn another language,” Kamil says, “A child is like a white page, you can write whatever you want on it, you can learn.” It’s this conviction that leads him to speak Arabic in the home to his children, though English is predominant in their lives. “I try to encourage them in the house to speak our native language, to keep it as a skill,” he says. “All language is skill.”

            Coming to America didn’t require skill in the same sense, however, but faith, and extraordinarily good timing. In fact, when I asked about his decision to come to America, he smiled and said that it was not his plan, “but God’s plan.” Some thousand men and women stand in line every day to get visas, and maybe only 5 or 6 are given out, but his application for a green card was accepted, and in 1999, Kamil stepped off the plane in JFK airport in New York. From there, following a community member’s advice, he boarded a bus to Boston, not even knowing where it was, in pursuit of a promised job opportunity at Pizza Plus, and three days after landing in America, he was already working.

            “I had never worked in [a] Pizza Place before,” he said, “I had not even been [a] big fan of eating pizza before I came here! That’s tough.” After insisting that Pizza Plus serves my favorite pizza in the world, Kamil smiles, thanks me, and says “we do it with love, because with love is the only way we can exist.” And that love tripled when in 2004 Kamil became an American citizen, and was able to bring his wife of three years, and their young daughter over from Egypt. According to Kamil, five years are required before you can become an American citizen, and he spent those years building a foundation, working both at Pizza Plus and part time elsewhere, over 80 hours a week, looking, as he said, “for the opportunity. “

            Opportunity knocked again when Pizza Plus’s previous owner decided to sell the business. Without the funds to purchase it in full, Kamil bought the business with two partners. Before long, however, it became too small for the three of them, “because we’re all supporting families, and the families are growing.” When the three of them decided to go separate ways, Kamil took the initiative and finally purchased Pizza Plus Pizza for his own. “This is the land of opportunity,” Kamil says, knowing countless immigrants have said it before him, and “Right now I’m happy with it, because it’s the resource I can support my family [with].”

            The opportunity of coming to America has its struggles as well, though. “I spent 21 years learning through college, and now I’m making pizza,” Kamil said. The tough part is given all the years of study in Egypt, and the change of the career all of a sudden.” The immigrant experience also had its downsides. Kamil told me about when his father died, and he was not able to return home. To return home would have required a 12-hour flight, plus another eight hours inside the country. “This is the price of being immigrants,” Kamil said.

            When asked about what gets him through the hard times however, Kamil has his answer ready: faith. “Faith is number one,” Kamil said. “We believe in ourselves, and we believe in God.” And Kamil insists it’s not just the work, but practice as well. “If I go through [a] hard time, and I have no friends, no family, I lift it up. And I find [an] answer always.”

            My last question was more for myself than anyone else. “If someone asked you for a piece of general advice, what would you say to them?” “There are two ways,” Kamil said, “One way leads you to success, one way leads you to maybe either death or jail. We can decide which way we can go.” Casting around for the right words to make sure his advice is sound, Kamil decides on what is known as the classic rags-to-riches mantra, “If you work hard, you’re going to reach the point that you want. Nothing is impossible unless we believe it’s impossible.” Kamil tells me that we are the ones who make our future, and that if we’re good people, with good hearts, and good relationships around us, we can find success someday. Based on that definition alone, Kamil is one of the most successful people I’ve met.

            My pizza comes, handed to me by another smiling man I’ve come to recognize at Pizza Plus. He is also from Egypt, and I wonder what his story is like. As I look down and dig into my “Brian Special,” pepperoni, extra cheese, and black olives, named for my dad, Kamil smiles at me. Though he’s a shy and profoundly humble man, he looks pleased with himself after our interview. Once I’ve put away my audio recorder, he wants to add something. “One more thing,” he says excitedly, as his last thought occurs to him. “America is [a] blessed land. This I believe. Even everywhere you see is green. Make what you can with your opportunity. You will find it.”

            And as I walk out of Pizza Plus Pizza and into the brilliant summer day, I believe it.