Wall-E
We went to see Wall-E tonight before leaving for a weekend at my parents. It lives up to Pixar's usually high standards and Ora 5 and Aspen sat through the whole thing; we measure movies by their ability to hold our kids attention. Ewan even made it an hour and a half before he became to restless to stay in the theater. This is especially impressive since the movie has little dialogue. Very few words are spoken for the first 45 minutes to an hour of the movie, but it is still able to convey a lot of information and you are never confused by what is happening. I found myself wondering what the writer's, Andrew Stanton, script looked like. Pages and pages of description rather than dialogue.On the surface it is a very simple adventure and love story; however, very early in the movie I began to notice some underlying ideas. I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone, so if you want to read on click here.
I wanted to end on a positive note: Wall-E is a positive influence on everyone he encounters. When he encounters the first human, John, he literally knocks John out of the status quo and awakens him to the things around him. He also does this to a female human and she and John re-experience everything they have not noticed before. When he encounters the captain, the dirt on Wall-E causes the captain to want to learn everything about their abandoned planet. When Wall-E encounters a group of malfunctioning robots (imagine an insane asylum for robots), they band together to help Wall-E save the day. People and robots become more than they were before their encounter with Wall-E.
Labels: movies
posted on Friday, June 27, 2008
Indiana Jones and the Pursuit of Belief
Enid and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull tonight and took Ora 5. I wasn't planning on taking Ora, but he has been begging to go and I remember doing the same to my mom and dad when Temple of Doom came out. They gave in to my begging/whining, so nostalgia took hold and forced me to take Ora.The movie was fun, but Last Crusade is still my favorite. I've seen a couple of comments on why Temple of Doom was not as big a hit as Raiders of the Lost Ark and it got me to thinking. Lucas says that fans did not like Temple because it was darker. IGN's reviewer said it was "because the core of the story...has little or nothing to do with the historical, intellectual or emotional journey of Henry Jones Jr." I disagree with both these assessments.
Indiana Jones movies are about Indy's journey from non-believer to converted. In each movie Indy is presented with an historical item that has a belief system attached to it: the Ark is Jewish, the Sankara stones are Hindu, the Holy Grail is Christian. (I won't spoil the 4th movie, but it also has a belief system.) He does not believe in any of these belief systems at the beginning of each movie. In fact in all 4 movies he (or another character) refers to them as bedtime stories or fairy tales. During the course of the movies, Indy witnesses events that cause him to believe that the belief system is true.
The reason that Radiers and Last Crusade are the most popular is because as a Judeo-Christian-based culture, the belief systems presented in those 2 movies are most closely aligned to our own belief systems and therefore easier to accept. Temple and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are further from the beliefs of our own culture and therefore it is more difficult to join Indy on his journey toward belief.
Labels: movies
posted on Thursday, June 05, 2008
Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
My first blog post on martindale.org was in regard to the VeggieTales movie Jonah. Tonight we saw their second movie The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.It was fun, but not nearly as good as a Pixar movie in terms of animation quality or budget. The kids liked it, which is more than I can say for Ice Age or Robots.
Labels: movies
posted on Friday, January 11, 2008
Pirates 3
We went and saw Pirates 3 tonight. Not as good as the first 2 with many squandered opportunities to make it great. I was confused by the part that happens after the credits. Elizabeth faithfully waits for Will to come ashore after 10 years separate, but she doesn't appear to be 10 years older. I thought this was a horrible job of continuity until Rick reminded me what Jack went in search of just before the credits.Labels: movies
posted on Friday, July 06, 2007
Meet the Martindales in 3D
We went to see Meet the Robinsons this morning and as you can see we got the goofy glasses.
The movie was great. Some parts were very predictable, but I didn't see the end coming. One interesting side affect of 3D glasses is that the villains are scarier. The hat is a villain and in a couple of parts flies toward the screen. This scared Aspen a bit.
At first I was looking at the screen and trying to decide if the whole movie was 3D or if only seemed that way because it was a 3D animated movie. I quickly realized that the entire movie was going to be 3D and wondered how the did it. I soon saw the answer on the Disney Channel: When animating a 3D movie, you create a scene by placing all the characters into a set in the software. You can manipulate them however you want to create the scene. Then you place virtual "cameras" in the scene to capture what is going on. By adding a second camera beside the first, you create a 3D affect. One camera records the image the left eye will see and the other records the image the right eye will see. The further you pull the 2 cameras apart the more the objects appear to pop out of the screen. Using this technique, it is easy to make any computer animated movie 3D. The only changes that have to be made is deciding how far apart to place the two cameras for any particular scene.
I also noticed that 3D technology has changed a lot over time. This was my first 3D movie (not counting theme park rides like Spiderman, Terminator and Captain EO), but before the movie they ran a 1953 Disney short film with Donald Duck and Chip & Dale. I took my glasses off briefly during the short and you could distinctly see the 2 images that were on the screen giving a very blurry affect. When I did the same thing during Meet the Robinsons, the 2 images were much closer so it looked out of focus, but you could still watch it. (Now that I know that they can move the two cameras apart for certain scenes, I'm curious if those scenes would look much more blurry than the scene I saw without my glasses.) Now, both movies use different degrees of separating the images; however the same glasses worked for both. My children both had "kids packs" and on the back was the older style, blue and red 3D glasses. I tried watching the movie with those. I saw 4-6 separate images which made it so blurry that I couldn't see a thing.
Anyway, very cool movie! Very cool experience in 3D.
Labels: Aspen, Enid, Ewan, movies, Ora 4, Ora 5
posted on Saturday, March 31, 2007
Missed it by that much and broken promises
One hour before the show, I tried to buy tickets online for Meet the Robinsons in 3D.I was the link for the 8:30 show indicating it was not sold out, clicked the link, selected 2 adults and 2 children ($42!?!), and clicked Next. A message said that I could not purchase tickets for this show because it was sold out!
I went back to the first page and, sure enough, the link was gone and time grayed out, indicating the show had sold out.
I turned to my son, whom I had already told that we would see the movie that night, and gave him the bad news. He was so upset. He had been very good that evening on the promise that if he was good we could see the movie tonight.
I promised him we would see the first show the next morning and promptly bought the tickets right then.
posted on Friday, March 30, 2007
Lightning McQueen is American Made
When I got home today, our Cars DVD had arrived in the mail. Ora told me "Lightning McQueen was born in the south."Knowing the answer already, I asked "Why do you say that?"
"Because it says so in the song," he replied referring to the lyrics in the movie's first song.
posted on Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Bond, Freerunning and It All Happens in LA First
My wife and I saw Casino Royale a couple of nights ago. It was really good. Today, I was talking to Orion:"What did you think of the beginning of the movie. That guy was jumping off buildings and bouncing like off elevators like a rabbit."
"Yeah, it's called 'freerunning'," Orion said.
"What?"
"Freerunning. It's been out here for a couple of years. You can even take classes in it."
"I guess it all happens in LA first."
Here's some videos of people who are involved in freerunning. It's like someone made Jackie Chan into a sport:
Freerunning legend Henk:
Russian freerunner:
French News broadcast on the origins of freerunning:
posted on Thursday, November 23, 2006
