I realized a few things about my own musings on the topic, and have been trying to get them down. Like, originally I was going to write down two separate Top Five lists but could never manage to take out either Toy Story 3, Finding Nemo, or Ratatouille, and it turned out my "best of" was really a "favorites" list.
I admit that it's been at least a decade since I've watched The Incredibles, and I'd wanted to watch it before going to see the sequel this past summer. Neither of those things have happened, but it remains the general plan: binging them.
For me, the combination of Finding Nemo's graphics, the constant propulsion, the varying settings in both the ocean and in a tank, combined with the juxtaposition of the two kinds of "bad-daddy-ing"---over-protection and assuming control versus over-confidence and pushing---made up for the predictable machinations of the plot. Also, I could see how Dory's thing could be annoying as hell, but, ever since her days as a stand-up on A&E back in the early 90s, Ellen has always cracked me up, and the Dory shtick still cracks me up.
Well, more so there than in Finding Dory, anyway.
The motivations and specific scenarios of the characters in Toy Story 3 definitely make it one of the most emotionally complex and original story-lines Pixar's ever made. I saw it in the theater in Austin, in IMAX 3D. (That almost deserves its own exclamation point.)
Disclaimer: IMAX 3D is not a good way to see any movie. The screen is too huge to see it all at once anyway. Normally with IMAX, a viewer is immersed in the word of the movie. With 3D on top of a screen that big, only the center of your field of vision is in 3D. Everything else is blurry. The whole experience turns into a three dimensional tunnel surrounded by clouds of scenic blur.
The incinerator scene, engulfing me in 270 degrees of three-dimensional garbage flakes, was one of the most powerful and mature scenes I'd ever seen.
Ratatouille came out when we were living in New York, and I was out of work at that time. It hit really close to home for me, and complicated an already complicated situation. I was never Remy, and I never really wanted to be, but I understood him, and the world he saw. It's like the piece of art that shines a light on something you know very closely, or hold dear to you, but is off limits to others. (Check out the movie "Waiting..." for the same kind of thing.)
I'd wanted to say more about those movies in a more polished and less after-dinner-beer form, but I was motivated to show off my Christmas Present from Corrie and the Boy.
Before that, two more quick Pixar bullet points to remind myself for later:
- You make me want to go back and watch Brave again, which is good. I'd love to compare it to Moana.
- How about the graphics of The Good Dinosaur? Like the backgrounds and the Nature, with the capital N? They stood out to me in a movie that pissed me off more than I wanted it to.
Watches!
A watch. That was the gift.
I liked my watch. It was sleek and readable, the leather band made it low-profile and comfortable, and the blue face worked for my eyes, both reading and reflecting. Cass also likes the watch, and was prone to wearing it, having me tighten it to the tightest hole on the strap (and still it would swivel on his arm).
I'd been thinking about getting a new watch for some time, but I never seriously pursued it. Corrie had noticed me "not-seriously" pursuing it and did her thing.
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| Christmas tree light bonus! |
I'd been researching the wooden watch fad, if that's a thing I'm currently a part of, and found some timepieces that I thought looked pretty cool and cost a reasonable amount. I'm not typically the kind of guy who accessorizes for myself. In fact, I've been mistaken for homeless on multiple occasions. (Wait, what?)
Corrie got in there and found something she thought was cool, and got it. She said that she was going to get a watch that she could have inscribed, but then she found this one, with the cool, clear glass on the back, and decided it was cool enough.
She was telling me all of this as I looked at it in its box. Glass on the back?
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| Real tree; that's how we do... |
Of course that's an automatic watch. Back in the late 90s I had a boner for them when they were called kinetic and I was ignorant to the true provenance of the technology.
For the record, I'm fairly certain I saw this watch on the sites I was perusing. I thought it was very cool, but it was never something I would get on my own. It's way too cool for me to ever consider getting myself. Which is weird...maybe?
While many of my colleagues and friends and smart watches, technological marvels that are one-part Dick Tracy and one-part Star Trek, I've gone the other direction.
My watch is made of wood and metal. It has no plastic, takes no batteries, and uses no electricity. Springs and a tungsten fly-wheel compel the nearly sweeping second hand...and both of the other hands, too.
This is the first kind of invisible clasp watch I've ever had as well:
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| Bonus Cass sighting |
I've thought back to the most memorable watches I've ever worn. The vast majority were the belt clasp. One time mom got me a "rugged" watch for Christmas, because I'd said I'd been looking for a band that could hold up to my lifestyle. Whatever that was. This rugged watch had a canvas and Velcro strap. I can report that it did, indeed, hold up. Another time I bought a watch at a pawn shop in Portland, Oregon (I was in need for the classroom), and it had a fully metallic wrist band that worked like an eighties-era elastic bracelet. That meant it didn't have any clasping to mess with.
Every other watch, I'm fairly certain, has been the belt clasp style.
So far so good on this new clasping system.
Lost steam there at the end.
To sum up: Love my new watch.
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