Patrick R

A lot of the broken logic and messed up physics (it always bothered me the way they replace the light fixture on Sid's front porch) feel like growing pains of being somewhere in between a cartoon and something that feels like a real physical space. There's so much you can get away with when everything's removed from reality, but once things begin to feel more or less like the real world then all of a sudden Buzz's flying is obviously impossible and fake. But the "Buzz doesn't move in front of Andy stuff" never made sense to me, even as a kid. I bet Pixar knew it too, which is why they didn't really have any scenes of Andy playing with Buzz outside of montages.

I just took a bunch of bullet point notes. I will echo everyone else's surprise at the rough animation. Facial animations especially are JACKED. I always remembered this as being roughly equal to 2 & 3 but noooo no no no. Speaking of faces, the humans all look really really creepy. I don't know if this is because of animation limitations or just really terrible design, but Sid's sister is the craziest looking thing in any Pixar movie. Truly unnerving. Sid is awesome. Sid has way more imagination than Andy. If I had to guess which one would grow up to work at Pixar, it'd be no question. To think he's probably traumatized for the rest of his life because he likes to build things is messed up. I was shocked at the lack of textures in general. If you look at the duct tape around Buzz at the end, it's just a plain grey. And the textures on the aliens look WEIRD, especially compared to Toy Story 2. I concur with Ben, the pace is really great. I wish more live action movies would be daring enough to come in at 80 minutes. It used to be way more common in the era of the double feature. The hardest I laughed was either "Marie Antoinette...and her little sister" or all of Woody's pull-string quotes. "Somebody's poisoned the waterhole!" is HILARIOUSLY dorky. All those dorky quotes really made Woody feel like a real toy from a real time and place. I watched it too many times as a kid to really be objective about this sort of thing, but I really love the army man sequence. I think it's beautifully staged and edited. Maybe the most iconic sequence in the entire film. All the voices are incredible. Amazing casting all the way through. It's a shame it took a children's film for the world to realize the comedic potential of Don Rickles and John Ratzenberger as a duo, when it was too late for them to star in their own movies. The animation feels a bit more "cartoony" and key-frame based than later Pixar stuff. Lot of more visual gags than later Pixar films. Probably because the facial animation wasn't at a point where you could really do strong subtle character-driven comedy. But maybe also the studio just wasn't there as comedy writers. I think maybe they just didn't finish the scenes where Woody and Buzz are running through the arcade machines. The bottom of those machines look like a first pass. Getting things to convincingly feel like they have weight and are propelling themselves through the world was still a little rough. A lot of the toys have so few points of articulation that they look fine, but whenever you see the birthday kid's legs running through the room, or Scud chasing them down the street, things feel a little floaty and off. All in all I'm still all about this. I can't not be, it's too deep in my blood.

If you hold X while riding Rambi he starts to kick up dust and then he just runs through the whole level.

Carol, man. Carol. Best looking movie of the year.

Ministry of Fear is essential.

As you may have guessed I already watched Toy Story, but I wrote up all my thoughts in a text document while they'e fresh, so I can do it whenever.

If you give the premise of Toy Story ten seconds of thought you realize how insane it must be to be a sentient being who only exists for a giant's fleeting amusement, to have to suppress your personality and life whenever that giant happens to be around. Kafka on fucking wheels.

Well I guess I need to get a library card. You didn't ask and don't need help, but I'd love an episode that covered E.L. Doctrow's Ragtime.

That's wonderful.

Genesis is definitely just "Sega" because it'd sing that to you whenever you turned on Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

One of the reasons I find fiction about same-sex relationships so valuable, beyond any matter of representation, is that with heterosexual relationships in fiction I always have a wonder if the author is trying to make a statement about what they perceive to be the differences between men and women. Characters can't just be individuals, because they carry that baggage.

It sounds like a dachshund sneezing.

I think your reaction to the racial slurs is totally valid. I wasn't in your theater, but there was a lot of the same laughter over the word in my theater. Thing is, I think audiences laugh for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they laughed because they are genuine racists, but I think it's just as likely because they were uncomfortable. I'd hate to judge them, Lord knows I laughed a lot during many of the film's more nasty moments. Not because I approved, but because the movie is so audacious and over-the-top and I felt like anything could happen at any time. Also my parents were sitting behind me, so that cut to intermission exploded my brain with nervous energy and I laughed HARD. As far as the rest of the movie goes, I definitely responded to it so much because it made me feel like a horrible audience member. Or something. I'm still trying to work it all out in my head.

Am I the only one who gets irrationally, somebody-didn't-push-the-clear-button-on-the-microwave level angry when I hear people say "Sness" instead of "Ess En Ee Ess" when referring to the Super Nintendo?

I played two 2015 games this year. That said, they were Downwell and Undertale, which are both great.

My sister is all "no, really, come out for one drink" and then I get home and kill a bottle of vanilla vodka and then it's all night long. THERE'S A KNOCK UPON YOUR DOOR YOU BETTER LET IT IN A KNOCK UPON YOUR DOOR YOU BETTER LET IT IN and THERE ARE WORDS YOU'VE NEVER SAID AND NOW IT'S TIME TO SAY THEM Being around my family makes my own alcoholism feel quaint. I'm going to watch The Clouds of Sils Maria because it's the best fucking movie, for real though, watch that shit. People think it's mysterious or confusing and I do not understand that at all. Really digestible and straight-forward.

I guess in my head I can see how fast-paced motion controlled dogfights in space are a different technology than radio controlled puppetry, but the disconnect between this watershed moment in special effects still putting a dwarf inside a can so it can wiggle it's head always blows my mind.

I can't imagine C3PO done as a puppet, but isn't R2 literally on wheels for 90% of his shots? They couldn't have just used remote control?

It's not the cheapest whiskey available but is by no means a premium whiskey. I don't know how it is in Germany but in American there's a pretty strong craft liquor industry rising on the heels of the wildly successful craft beer industry, so anywhere you go Jack is gonna be just above the bottom rung.

I don't want to venture into the spoiler filled Star Wars VII thread, so I'll ask here: Is Kenny Baker in this again? I saw that R2 is in it, but did shove a dwarf into a tin can in the desert again? Why did they ever put a person inside of R2-D2? This seems to me to be the most baffling thing in Star Wars history.

I just spent an hour of really solid internet detective work to track down a local band I saw play once in DeKalb in 2008 and none of the songs I wanted to hear were on their Myspace. The world is miserable and cold, solid all the way through. https://myspace.com/thepatiencemusic

In Canada you have Pic A Pop and Crown Royale.

Yes.