Monster's University Movie Review

Saturday night I went out with my friends from College. It's kind of become our thing to see movies then. We were originally going to see Now You See Me, which I still intend to see at some point, but earlier in the week my brother and sister-in-law had seen Monsters University and they both liked it, so I was in conflict about which one I wanted to see. When I met up with everyone I asked if anyone wanted to see Monsters U as well and there were a lot of people wanted to see it as well.

First we had a nice dinner at Jack Astors, which has reasonably sized portions these days. Then we saw a late screening of Monsters U, which meant the theatre was nice and quite. I really enjoyed this movie for many reasons. As usual the graphics by Pixar were amazing and believable for the world that they created. They made the monsters both adorable and completely scary or creepy.  Watching the relationship of Sully and Mike evolve is believable and satisfying. The new characters are interesting and brought in in a way that you hope you will see them again, and even with the ending in Monsters Inc it is possible to bring them in there as well.

Notable characters include the Dean of the Scare School, who's bug-like legs clicking across the ground kept me creeped out whenever she moved on screen, the frats were all very well done also, each member of each house, even when they were only briefly seen seemed to fit in perfectly. I hope they do make another Monsters movie it's a fun world to visit.

I love watching the credits, mostly because there are a lot if fun names in there and I get to say 'someone actually named there kid that?' And I always like to see which departments end up in the credits, like accounting and craft services. So I sat through the credits and before the adorable end credit scene, there was a section for production babies. I don't know if these were just kids born during production or kids that were conceived and then born during production. 

All I all Disney is awesome, Pixar makes amazing movies, both visually and emotionally, and I like credits. 

Go see Monsters U!

The Pirates! Band of Misfits 3D

So last night I saw a preview of The Pirates! Band of Misfits at the Tiff Bell Lightbox with my cousin and his fiance. It’s by the same people that brought everyone Wallace & Gromet, Chicken Run & the Curse of the Wererabbit. It was really funny and really well done, of course. And the surprise for me was that the director of the movie Peter Lord was there for a Q & A.
 I had won the tickets off of twitter from Vinci Genius. From the Q & A we found out that the movie was inspired by a book called Pirates and Scientists. It supposedly takes place in 1837, as you find out in the 1^st scene. The main character of the movie is Pirate Captain, really that’s his name. The other pirates from his crew have equally cool names like Albino Pirate, the Pirate who likes kittens and the pirate with gout. I don’t want to go through the whole plot cause well that would ruin the movie for everyone, so I’ll talk about look. With the 3D it totally takes you into the sets of this stop animation movie, the details are so vivid even with being fantastically you believe it. Also whenever the Pirates are traveling long distances across the ocean they change to an old style map with little cupids on the edges, sea monsters and also the boat has a little trouble getting over a crease on the map.

The voice actors were great as well with Hugh Grant as the lead as Pirate Captain.  The voice actor I was so excited to hear was David Tennant, if you don’t know I love Doctor Who & my personal battle between who is my Doctor is a whole nother blog, David Tennant was Charles Darwin. Just take that thought in for a moment. And as I’ve always found with David Tennant you can’t really tell it’s him. For me it was probably the fact that he was using something closer to his actual accent that made it a little harder to see the Doctor through the animation. Another historical figure in the film was Queen Victoria, but not like a Queen Victoria I think most people have seen before. I always think of Queen Victoria as strong but a fair Queen, in this movie even right at the beginning you’re a little scared of her or creeped out, one or the other. The plot twists just with Queen Victoria are really interesting & defiantly not where I thought that movie was going at all.

The director had brought along with him Pirate Captain & Polly, his parrot, which was cool to see. After the Q & A he stayed around to answer some more questions and to talk to some fans. Now this is the last week of the kids festival at Tiff & there were a lot of kids there & the director was great with them, listening to each of their questions and answering them in a way that they would understand. We got his autograph & our photo taken with him. I love meeting people who get to do something they love & have some sort of fame but appreciate their fans. It was a great night out for sure. I love Tiff events there are so many things going on there.

Now I just got to figure out where to put the autograph so that it doesn't get ruined.