You Got a Friend in Me

There’s not a lot of times lately where I go to a movie theater, see a movie and then immediately want to watch said movie again.  I’ll be honest, when it does happen it usually happens when the name Disney is attached to the film and even more so when the name PIXAR is there.  Tonight, I got to see a sneak preview of Toy Story 3 in IMAX 3D and I can say right now I cannot wait to see this movie again.

It’s really funny to me because the Toy Story movies were never my favorites of the Pixar stable (the top spot, for me, has always been Monsters Inc w/ Incredibles and now Up trailing close behind) but sometime last year something changed.  I think, I blame the Toy Story Double Feature they did back in October.  It’s not to say they suddenly became my all time favorites but I’ve gained a new respect for the movies.  Part of this is the technological advances, another part is the amazing character, but the heart of it is really the emotion and the phenomenal storytelling within the films.  They’re buddy comedies but they’re really so much more than that and I think the third installment really showcases that.

It’s hard right now for me not to give anything way in a review.  I want to talk to everyone about everything I saw but I’ll try to give no more away here than trailers & sneak clips have.  The story of course centers around the toys of Andy’s room as they deal with the sad but inevitable fact that Andy is 17 now and ready to head to college.  Through a series of misunderstandings they end up being donated to Sunnyside Day Care; a place that seems too good to be true (and really is).  Leading the toys of Sunnyside is Lotso Huggin’ Bear and his gang of minions.  It’s up to Woody to help bust the toys out of Sunnyside, defeat Lotso and make it back to Andy before he leaves for college.

Again, without spoilers, I can tell you that the first 10 minutes of the film are fantastic!  They’re hilarious and a great callback to the first two movies (speaking of callbacks there’s a really good one that I’m sure only nerds will get involving the fate of a character from the first film.  It makes up for the other character that gets mentioned that actually had me really upset. I’ve said too much).  Spanish!Buzz is amazing but we all knew he was going to be from the trailers.  There is also some really great fluffiness between Buzz and Jessie (but I’m a hardcore fan of them so I’m partial).  The new toys are all pretty good additions, but I still feel like there are just too many of them and most of them we don’t get to spend enough time with in order to form the bond we have with Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the others.

The film is about an hour and 45 minutes and the pacing great.  There was no one second where I was looking at my watch to see how much longer we had (I do that in every movie so not doing that is a big deal).   I heard the kids behind me get a little restless at one point but they were kind of bratty through the whole movie so they’re probably not a good indicator.

As for the story itself, it’s about growing up and moving on.  It’s about friendship and family and doing anything for those you love (even letting them go).  I don’t know how Pixar does it every time but one minute I’m laughing hysterically and the next I’m crying like a baby.  There’s one scene near the end especially where, had I not been surrounded by people I would have just lost it (I mean I cried silently but I would have been blubbering if I was alone).  The end; it was everything one could hope for and though a little bittersweet was mostly heartwarming.  The scenes after the credits went back to the funny and gave me enough time to sniffle and wipe away tears so I could go back into the real world.

So Toy Story 3 is really the perfect ending to the whole Toy Story franchise.  It’s the same amazing storytelling, the same characters we know and love and more importantly it has the same level of heart.  I know I, for one, can’t wait for it to be Friday so I can jump back in line and see it again :D

You’re Standing on my Neck

(Note: I need to work on this whole bligging thing… I mean I pretty much wrote this incoherent babble 2 weeks ago and I keep not going back and fixing it. I apologize to the no one that reads this :P)

So my birthday was the 24th and apparently I’m hard to please (that’s not the point of this blog but I just wanted to put it out there).  See, there were only three things that I definitely wanted as presents for said birthday: an external hard drive, a computer mouse and the complete series of Daria on DVD.  I received the last of those gifts a week early from my parents (much to the chagrin of my brother and a friend who were planning to get me the same thing.  Honestly, it’s probably a good thing I got it early so I didn’t end up with 3 copies) and then proceeded to watch the entirety of the series in the week leading up to and following said birthday.

I guess before I really get into the things I’ve been learning in this retrospective television phase, I should kind of explain what the show meant to me.  I warn you here that if you haven’t seen the show, don’t remember it at all, or just don’t care, this probably isn’t the entry for you.  I’m doing one of those things where I count on my reader having previous knowledge so I can be lazy and not completely explain myself, so I guess I apologize in advance. 
Daria started in 1997 and I probably didn’t get into it until 98 or 99.  At the time, I was probably far too young to be watching.  I was just starting middle school (actually I was probably in 6th grade) and, I assume, fairly impressionable.  When it gets down to it, it’s my parents fault. 
I live in a house hold where a large part of our time together has always been spent watching cartoons.  Even to this day, if we’re all hanging out watching tv it’s more likely Spongebob than anything live action.  Both my parents enjoyed the show and it wasn’t vulgar or stupid so they had no problem with us watching (and the jokes that were “bad” went over my brother and my heads at that age so no harm no foul).  The show lasted for 5 seasons and ended about the middle of my high school career.  [/end back-story]

In re-watching the show, I realizing just how much the it did impact my life.  Not just because I remember almost every episode and can quote major sections of dialogue or the other trivial things like always wanting combat boots and red hair (her and Ariel, I swear!) or having a thing for scrawny guys with dark hair (oh Trent) or wanting to be a writer.  In a weird way I blame the episode “Pierce Me” for why I wanted a belly button piercing (way to miss the point) and the episode “Through a Lens Darkly” for helping me decide I wanted get contacts.
It’s bigger than all that superficial stuff though; it honestly helped shape my outlook on life

I’m sitting here trying to figure out exactly how to explain this.  Daria is sarcastic and has a bleak outlook on life.  She’s witty, unpopular and able to see the worst in a situation.  Then again, she’s not heartless, no matter how much she tries to make it look that way.
As I said, this is what prepared me for high school.  I was ready for everything to suck.  I was ready to feel out of place and smarter than everyone. 
In my high school’s defense, the world wasn’t as black and white as it is on television.  There were cliques but they weren’t socially mandated and mingling was allowed.  And I wasn’t the unpopular brain, I was somewhere in between (honestly my GPA was closer to Jane’s skating by than Daria’s 4.0).  But that being said, there’s a level of understanding that I took from the show (and from my upbringing really) that High School doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things.  You make the most of it, but there’s only so much you can do.  And people are just inherently stupid.  Not to sound elitist, but they are and you’ll have to deal with them but you can get through it.  If anything, Daria is the reason that when I’m actually mad at someone I’ll tell them I don’t like them to their face and they’ll never be the wiser (they usually think I’m just joking)

I’m sure there’s more that can be said for all of it, but I’ll leave it there.  The way I look at it, if people try to say that cartoons cause kids to be violent, they really should look into studying how cartoons cause kids to be cynical and to hate stupid people.