I've just had a much better weekend. Lots of rest, some nice weather for a change, no long journeys, and relatively little awfulness from the band. So, that's all to the good.
On Friday, Lady Chocolat and I headed off to the cinema to see "Brave", Pixar's latest film. Which has been released in Scotland and Ireland ten whole days before the English release because... well, just because I guess. Maybe they've been distributing guides to the accent or something, so our English friends can unnerstaun it, or something.
I enjoyed it immensely.
"Brave" is an animated film suitable for children, but it's definitely one of the more "adult" Pixar films - it's much more "The Incredibles" than "Finding Nemo", or "Cars". While there is some comedy (and genuinely funny comedy at that), the story is really quite grown-up in nature. Or at least, I thought so.
The next two paragraphs have a couple of minor spoilers, so you might want to skip them, or the rest of the post...
The film was also quite unusual, in that at its centre it was about the relationship between a mother and her daughter - it's actually much more common for films, and especially animated films, to be about fathers and sons, about brothers, or be 'buddy' movies about two men.
But an animated, fantasy, action-oriented film about a mother and her daughter? Yeah, you don't get that very often.
There's not really much more to say. The film shows the same care and attention to detail that can be expected from all Pixar films, they have a great cast (mostly with authentic, rather than Hollywood, accents - no Mel Gibson here), the animation is flawless, the songs are suitable emotive (but lacking the sucker punch of "Toy Story 2"). And at no point did anything in the 3D fail to work for me.
Basically, it's just a really, really good film.
#27: "Conqueror", by Conn Iggulden (The fifth and final part of a six-book series. No, I don't get how that works. Also, an excellent book, almost as good as "Death of Kings". I wonder what he's going to do next?)
1 comment:
We saw Brave this weekend too. :) Thought it was pretty good for a kids movie. However, there were two mistakes that annoyed me a little:
1) When he starts mimicking the girl and says "firing arrows through the air" that simply wouldn't have been in their vocabulary since "firing" didn't come about until the invention of firearms and explosives. It should have been "shooting".
2) Splitting the arrow. That is so cliché. While it is possible, it's highly unlikely and you wouldn't be able to split it right down to the wood and have the arrow come through the back of the boss. If the arrow had gone through the entire shaft of the other arrow and then through the boss it must have been because the centre was soft, so, why didn't the first arrow go through the boss? She didn't seem to be overdrawing either, so where'd the extra power come from? However, I realise it was for dramatic effect.
Anyway, it didn't affect our overal enjoyment, I'm just a picky archer. :)
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