I miss you too, I just don’t have vlogs to show for them, because everybody said I suck at it, and my webcam is abysmal, and several other excuses I am too lazy to type out because I’m so incredibly tired right now.
=D Hope you’re having a blast. Can’t wait till you get back.
Wow.
The amount of creative and cinematic ability Pixar Studios has continues to astound me, and I’m pretty sure it will continue to do so as long as it keeps making these masterpieces. I’ll tell you now, this isn’t really a review.
It’s an ode to a film franchise that will never cease to amaze me.
I hadn’t watched Toy Story in what seems like more five or so years ago, nor the sequel. The fact that I remember it so vividly really does prove the point of how long that film lasts in your head, especially when you’ve grown up with it. And I think that’s the main thing about this kind of movie: you’ve grown up with the characters.
And the wonderful irony about that is that these movies are about a bunch of toys.
But Pixar has done something they do best—play with our hearts. There’s a lot of that in this film, simply because of the history behind the franchise, and the key part of the target audiences: the teenagers. The ones who have literally grown up with Toy Story, like me.
As soon as I see Woody, Buzz and all the others jump out of the toy chest in Andy’s room, it’s like I’m back to where I stopped, the five or so years after watching Toy Story 2. And I agree that this threequel couldn’t come at a better time, when, fittingly, I was graduating high school and moving on too, like Andy in the film.
By the 15-minute mark, the smile hadn’t left my face.
Perfect scriptwriting, talented animation that keeps the style of the previous two films, voice acting as genuine as talking toys can be, and a plot that’s classic and always works. I mean, it’s undoubtedly a perfect formula.
Throughout, there are enough laughs to entertain the young ones, and the old ones, because all the characters are just as they were, which is why we fell in love with them. And the new characters as well only add to the value of the characters, and don’t subtract, as most sequels inevitably do in bringing in new characters.
Accompanied by the high notes are the low ones. The special thing about these is that we’re feeling them too—most specifically Andy’s separation and passing on of his toys. It’s safe to say we are feeling the say way as we watch the crew try and work around the fact that Andy, like me, is going away.
The empathy is there, the humour is there, but it’s not until later that we finally get to see where this is all going.
Now that I think about it, it may not be the most cohesive plot progression in regards to keeping it with the previous two films, but it’s hardly noticeable when you watch it, because it’s amazing how well Pixar does in keeping you interested. But, as I said, it’s all those elements that come together to make a damn good emotional ride.
When we get to the main part of the film, It got better than what I was already seeing, which is hard to believe. But I think the best way to gauge how much you enjoyed a film is how often your facial expressions change on cue with something happening on the screen.
Like I said, my smile never left my face, but in between them were gasps, laughs, and a constant open mouth with all the suspense and action that occurs.
This is an escape film, after all. But with toys. How awesome is that?
I won’t go into the technicality of it all, because there’s no point in reviewing it. As wholly a film, Toy Story 3 is pretty much flawless, and any flaws you could figure out would be trumped by all the positives, which pile and pile up with each one-liner, emotional sequence, and step in character development.
Plus, there is a part where I am sure you’ll enjoy, or already have enjoyed, involving Andy and all this toys, with a certain other character near the end. Cute.
And you know, that’s all this film needs to be, despite it being so much more.
It’s a cute film, but it’s also a nostalgic film. It’s immersive, funny, witty and heavy at the same time. It’s a mosaic, not a melting pot of film elements.
I can’t say enough about it, but I can’t find what the best thing to say is.
So I’ll say, go watch it if you haven’t already. If you have, I’ll wait until you can grab it and watch it at home with as many friends and family as possible.
Oh, and again with the whole Andy-going-to-college thing struck home, especially for me. There’s a lot of thematic subtext in this film, which I’m pretty sure you can figure out, but the important thing is taking it home with you.
If you take a movie home with you, in your mind, your heart, and everything else—if you’re talking about it, thinking about it, and wondering why its such a wonderful film, and why you can’t watch the characters do everything they do outside the given screen time—that’s a good movie.
No, a great movie.
But this, Toy Story 3, is one of the best.
It’s the last, and its bittersweet, but it was a great time.
And, after all, there are always new toys to play with.
You feel like your doing something important? Like you’re fighting for a cause? Do you think that donning a black mask and carrying a 2x4 will make your voice be heard any louder?
Then you’re an idiot.
This year’s G20 summit in Toronto wasn’t something I was paying too much attention to, since it really didn’t effect me, and Toronto was going to be crowded, and I didn’t want to be trapped in thousands of protestors trying to get somewhere.
And then I hear about vandalism, violence, and property damage erupting in the downtown core. Places where I’ve walked down, like Yonge Street, where shoppers go to enjoy themselves and I can find pretty much anything to walk into and browse. Now it’s locked down with police brigades in riot gear and pseudo-wannabe anarchists trying to stick it the ‘man’ by breaking shit.
Tell me why you’re not an idiot if you do that.
Seriously, what the fuck are you fighting for? Most of you are early adults, either in college/university or just out of it. Does all the budget talk effect you? Are you part of a labour union? Has one of these G20 countries changed the way you live your life?
You live in Canada, you fucking dolt. Why don’t you uphold its image?
Or are you too obsessed with the opportunity to be like Che Guevara and lead a ‘revolution’ against 20 of the biggest, most industrialized and advanced nations in the world? You screaming ‘We want change!’ is like a distant call to their ears.
They have better things to worry about than you.
So the next time you try to violently represent your ‘cause’, think again. There is no other way you will be heard, and breaking windows of shops that I want to visit next weekend doesn’t help anybody in any way whatsoever.
What worries me is exactly the fact that most of you black bloc protesters are young adults. To me, this is a cry for attention, not a cry for change. A feeble, pathetic attempt to bring something new to the table. What you want is to feel important, because you’re drawn into this idea that fighting anything resembling authority and normalcy is something you don’t want.
Don’t even get me started on the concept of ‘anarchy’.
You’re a thug. That’s all you are. You’re bringing something Torontonians and all of Canada has always avoided, always tries to prevent, and never experienced: widespread, mass violence. Why? It’s so counter-intuitive. Not only are you misrepresenting the people, but I can’t push the point enough that you’re not changing anything.
You want to fight for less security spending, yet you’re breaking windows.
Smarten up. We’re Canadian. We’re respected.
We’re fucking better than this shit.
Only recently did I ever get into techno. A long time ago, I was really a pop-punk kid in middle school, the kind of the music you want to associate yourself with because it was cool in the early 00’s. But now, I like to think I’ve advanced in musical taste in diversity and appreciation. And something I always value is some in-your-face, all-out, overwhelming beats.
That, obviously, comes in the form of electronic music. Now, to me the genre of ‘electronic’ is so god damn broad it shouldn’t be called a straight up genre, because there’s so many sub-genres within it that are, by themselves, just as expansive. Take House music for example, one of my favourites, as it now incorporates so many different elements its hard to pinpoint a specific, classic House DJ. Despite this, I still go with Daft Punk, cause they’re OG when it comes to House.
Dance is another genre with lots of expansive sub-genres, and really I think Dance music is just music that you can find it nightclubs and whatnot, which is basically everything, so I still don’t follow the categorizing scheme of these things, but whatever.
The fact of the matter is, I’ve grown to love hard electronic music not only for the methods in which DJ’s can create beat construction and the subtleties or intense abruptness of drops, but just because the amount of fist-pumping you can do to this kind of music is absolutely endless.
Which gets me to Sovgner, formerly known as Knuckles. He’s an underground DJ hailing from Paris who, from what I have heard so far, makes beats like no other DJ I’ve heard yet. Plus, from him, I’ve discovered a few more insanely good DJ’s that too make beats that I’ve never heard before.
To me Sovgner is part of a DJ scene that’s slowly starting to rise in notoriety, because of the power of the intarwebz and the willingness for people to search up this kind of music.
Initially, I found out about Sovgner through watching a Staff Pick video on Vimeo:
KNUCKLES | BLAKE - WHAT I LIKE from Paul Bryan on Vimeo.
From there, I did a little research, and in the French House scene, I can assume that Sovgner gets talked about in nightclubs, but elsewhere, I can assume that he’s relatively unknown, and I’d like to get all his music, but that seems like a difficult task. What sucks about underground music is that it’s so unknown you can’t even illegally download it, because no store you know sells it near you.
Where’s the fairness in that?
At any rate, Sovgner (Westernized spelling; it’s a European name I think), exemplifies everything that is incredibly about techno, and specifically electro house, where just about any hard bass coupled with ‘saturated melodies’ makes your head bang and fist pump so much you get lost in it all.
Or something like that.
Check him out, and it should lead you to a whole other area of underground electronic music that contains probably the best I’ve, and you will, ever heard and hear.
Now that I’m looking at those two posts below me, a neat idea struck me.
And that happens rarely, but when it does I take advantage.
I have Aurally Audacious Endeavours, which have not seen much action for a while since, well, all the music I send you is probably music you already know, and I’m too mainstream anyways for you hipster kids these days. But that will continue on, hopefully at a faster pace.
My reviews have died. That’s unfortunate. But it is the summer, which means 2 months of complete and utter boredom, considering I don’t get off my ass and make some legitimate money to pay for things like…well, important things. Knowing that a job is not something I can illegally download or buy from Dollarama (what if I worked there?), you might see a re-emergence of my satirically cynical commentary on SUM NEXT MOVIEEZ.
Creative Writing is a tag that is probably pretty cool to have in this blog, since it’s the one thing not geeky (I hope) that’s on here. In the near future I will be posting more stories/articles/essays that I've done in the past, or just posting a rant that comes as I write it down, and the same goes with stories. You may see some old stories come back up, and possibly, if we're all lucky, unfinished stories get finished.
If you don’t already know where I’m getting at, I’m talking about something new. A posting event, if you will. Like FML or LATFH, only not a dedicated blog for showing you things. A little taste of that wouldn’t be bad though, I mean, look at I SAVED LATIN! where they just post a video or picture and they’re done with it. Which, I have to say, is a much easier and better way to blog, instead of writing all this useless crap you don’t even read, I mean—
Yeah, I’ll stop. The point is, given those images below gave me an idea; coupled together, they look awesome. No, more than awesome.
They look epic. So, this new weekly (I hope) posting event will include similar pictures. If I can find them, and given my time browsing the intarwebz, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
These are essentially epic pictures of the week.
I may call it Epic Pictures of the Week.
No. Something better.
The Weekly Epicture.
Damn, I’m good.
Stay tuned, kids.
Ambient music, to me, is one of the most interesting genres of music. The broadness of its capabilities and contrastingly, the simplicity of its sounds have the ability to keep you in awe, and more often than not, send chills down your spine.
Out of all instrumental music, Ambient is the most fun to listen to, because the instrumentals are so diverse and at the same time meld together in a way you’ve probably never heard instruments combine sounds. The beauty of it is, they almost sound like one.
The same thing goes with Post-Rock, only its the distance between those instruments used that create the atmosphere and, well, progressiveness of the songs. Ambient music creates that atmosphere immediately, and maintains it throughout. Each crescendo, each break in the beat, doesn’t take away from that atmosphere.
It’s hard to explain, but for me personally this is what ambient music does, and why I love it so much. So when I find out about bands like The Album Leaf, I’m always left speechless.
Which is fitting, considering this is music with no lyrics (for the most part).
Enjoy.
Check out their most recent albums, In a Safe Place and Into the Blue Again.
Since I’m apparently a sellout for being bored on a Friday night and wanting to design something cool, because you know, I like to DESIGN THINGS, I’ll have to clear something up.
Haters be hatin’
Like jeez, all I did was put my face on the top of my blog. Apparently that’s a crime now. Fucking nothing pleases you god damn people. And in my opinion, it’s a damn good banner, so I think I’ll keep it.
Just to spite you.
Yeah, what now?
