Ratatouille!!!
First off, I just saw this movie last night and I gotta say that it was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. It was so good that I called my mother immediately afterward at 12:45 at night to demand she see it. It was so good that its gotta be among only two or three movies I've ever seen in my life where the crowd immediately and spontaneously erupted into applause at the closing credits. Now, I like pixar a lot (Cars was sorta weak, but then again I don't really care about cars so much) and I think anything Brad Bird touches basically turns to gold, but I gotta say that this was, in terms of emotional maturity, leaps and bounds above anything they've done in the past.
Heres my problem with most animated movies these days... they all operate under the same basic formula. Lets call it the Animaniacs formula: Basically they take some simple, attractive, committee-selected premise (penguins have been the popular ones these days), fill it with celebrity satires, voice it by whoever is popular at the time regardless of their ability to voice act, stuff it with as many jokes involving obscure pop culture references as possible, and then try to "wow" you with the animation technology. Typically there will be some attempt at a love interest with a few contrived sappy tear-jerker scenes thrown in to make dumb people believe there is some depth below the constant barrage of cheap jokes.
The thing about Ratatouille was that it was so simple. I'd read a bunch of reviews of the movie and wondered why everyone was talking about it having one of the best renditions of an artist they've ever seen, but they are right... the movie is all about food and cooking.... about the love of cooking. It wasn't just a vehicle to launch a bunch of cooking rat gags... the creation of art was basically the heart and soul of the movie. Who ever does that? It takes such balls. And the one thing that most critics agreed on, besides the movie being excellent, is that pretty much nobody is going to see it, which they lament greatly... Everyone wants this movie to fly, because if it bombs, nobody will try it again (apparently a bunch of Disney executives are strongly hoping it bombs so they can give pixar the finger and go back to making bullshit). Unfortunately I think they may be right because whenever I've mentioned it to people lately, I tend to get the same response: "Rata what? Ive never heard of it. Oh wait..... the cooking rat movie? whatever". Go see it. Its really good.
Anyway, I found this picture on the Big Throwback myspace profile, from this past thursday, and I thought several of you would be pleased to see it. Ive taken the liberty of annotating it for reference:
1- Me
2- Angela (in red)
3- beeporama, dorothymonkey, and mirvana!
4- Very drunken Pitt BioE graduate students
5- Random young attractive people
6- I pointed this girl out in particular because... well... damn. She is the reason I get my ass up and jog around my neighborhood every morning. All you fellas know what i'm talkin about.
Heres my problem with most animated movies these days... they all operate under the same basic formula. Lets call it the Animaniacs formula: Basically they take some simple, attractive, committee-selected premise (penguins have been the popular ones these days), fill it with celebrity satires, voice it by whoever is popular at the time regardless of their ability to voice act, stuff it with as many jokes involving obscure pop culture references as possible, and then try to "wow" you with the animation technology. Typically there will be some attempt at a love interest with a few contrived sappy tear-jerker scenes thrown in to make dumb people believe there is some depth below the constant barrage of cheap jokes.
The thing about Ratatouille was that it was so simple. I'd read a bunch of reviews of the movie and wondered why everyone was talking about it having one of the best renditions of an artist they've ever seen, but they are right... the movie is all about food and cooking.... about the love of cooking. It wasn't just a vehicle to launch a bunch of cooking rat gags... the creation of art was basically the heart and soul of the movie. Who ever does that? It takes such balls. And the one thing that most critics agreed on, besides the movie being excellent, is that pretty much nobody is going to see it, which they lament greatly... Everyone wants this movie to fly, because if it bombs, nobody will try it again (apparently a bunch of Disney executives are strongly hoping it bombs so they can give pixar the finger and go back to making bullshit). Unfortunately I think they may be right because whenever I've mentioned it to people lately, I tend to get the same response: "Rata what? Ive never heard of it. Oh wait..... the cooking rat movie? whatever". Go see it. Its really good.
Anyway, I found this picture on the Big Throwback myspace profile, from this past thursday, and I thought several of you would be pleased to see it. Ive taken the liberty of annotating it for reference:
1- Me
2- Angela (in red)
3- beeporama, dorothymonkey, and mirvana!
4- Very drunken Pitt BioE graduate students
5- Random young attractive people
6- I pointed this girl out in particular because... well... damn. She is the reason I get my ass up and jog around my neighborhood every morning. All you fellas know what i'm talkin about.