I had the pleasure of finally seeing Inside Out in theaters this past week. It's been one I knew I wanted to see for a while now, even before it's release and positive buzz. The concept really intrigued me from the first teaser I saw and I was definitely not disappointed by the final product. It is a unique, fun, cute, and insightful film about emotions and growing up, which is something that is universally poignant.

The premise of movie follows a young girl, Riley, as she moves to San Francisco from her beloved Midwest home with her parents, and the struggles that come with that transition. We see the emotions play out inside her head throughout the story, which is obviously where a lot of the fun and heart comes from. The movie does a really good job setting up how the concept works with the different major emotions; anger, fear, joy, disgust, and sadness (as seen above from left to right). We see how memories are made, stored, and forgotten within the film's setup, which is very entertaining yet also very in depth and spot on. I'm not an expert on emotions and what not, but from what I understand (and have heard elsewhere) Inside Out takes the premise seriously and gets a lot of the science right.

While the movie is not as laugh out loud funny or heart-wrenching (at least for me) as some of the other Pixar movies, I appreciate it for its originality and insight. We could use a bit more empathy in our lives and this movie has a great message about that as well as how to process our own feelings and how to help others process theirs. A great moment in the movie showcases how sometimes we just need to feel our sadness and not just pretend it doesn't exist.

I definitely recommend seeing Inside Out if you get the chance before it is out of theaters. If not, it would absolutely be worth a rental. I'd also love to hear your thoughts if you saw it!

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Recently I just wrapped up reading the main story line of 'The Blackest Night' event in DC Comics. The story centers around the Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, which is one of my favorite superheroes.

The basic premise of the story is that the emotional light spectrum (based around the ROYGBIV framework) has split. Where there is usually just the green light, powered by will, there is now lanterns for all of the aforementioned colors. Yellow is powered by fear, red by rage, blue by hope, orange by greed, violet by love, and indigo by compassion. This creates an imbalance, more or less, that realizes the prophecy of the "blackest night" which would extinguish all the light in the universe and end the chaos this splintering of the emotional light spectrum caused.

Long story short, this plot involved a lot of discussion of emotions, their causes, and their validity. Certain lanterns are obvious opposites of each other and an emotion like greed, turned up to 11 (so to speak), is just chaos. In the end though, all of the different colors are able to come together to end the rampage of the undead husks of the "Black Lanterns" that are destroying life all over the universe. They come to an understanding of each other at times, or at least an acceptance that for some, the power of their ring is the one controlling them, making them a single-minded embodiment of greed for example.

This was my big takeaway and my favorite element of this story line. People feel what they feel, we shouldn't judge them or assume anything about what they're feeling. Sometimes rage is the appropriate response to injustice. Sometimes hope is the hardest thing to do for someone. Sometimes fear can make good people do misguided things. In the end though, it furthered my love of the Green Lantern to know that no matter what else is going on, you just need to have the will to carry on because there are people that care about you and it gets better.

I highly recommend all of the Blackest Night story. It's action-packed, involves the whole DC Universe, and has this great undercurrent of emotional stuff. Check it out and let me know what you think!