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Cars 2
Second review, same as the first
A little bit shorter and a little more terse!
Now with MORE RESEARCH! (here be spoilers)
Saw it again Saturday with the pre-arranged Crazy Fun Animation Crew (though apparently some of them went and saw it earlier so didn't come, AHEM).
Well, it felt a lot shorter, as movies do the second time around ... I don't have anything different to say, beyond some brief bulleted points:
Click and Clack - The first time I saw it, I was struggling to put names to the voices of those two chatty Rust-Eze cars ... that is, until the signature 'Don't drive like my brother!' bit. This time it was hard to believe I'd missed it before ... but considering I've only ever heard them, hearing their voices again, voices that (along with Garrison Keillor and Bob Edwards) are permanently engraved in my brain, would obviously not have triggered the 'what movie have I seen them in' switch. It was also very amusing to hear my sister get it at the same point I had the day previously. We were very likely the only people in the theatre to find it amusing at all. [Note for Canadians and others outside NPR range: Click and Clack (a.k.a. Tom and Ray Magliozzi) host a phone-in auto service talk show on National Public Radio called Car Talk. They are so entertaining that even I, who am profoundly uninterested in auto maintenance, made a habit of listening to their show. Aside from catalytic converters, they'd also solve spider infestations, fix What Is That Funny Smell, field calls from the Space Shuttle (really!) and read hilarious things that came their way, such as the classic Vowels for Bosnia.]
Atmosphere 2 - I'm not hallucinating, they did get the various atmospheres of the road trip across the country exactly right – my sister was a fount of 'oh my gosh' and 'no way' during that whole sequence.
Hostile Takeover Bank - For some reason I found Chick's sponsor extremely amusing. I'm sure most of the stickers on the cars were jokes but even on the big screen they were too small to read ... perhaps we shall never know.
James Taylor - There's another voice engraved on my brain, as much a part of Saturdays as Car Talk. That song, though ... it was too long to move the plot along but too short to be a proper musical sequence in itself, which just left it feeling uncomfortable and out of place. Whether or not you like James Taylor is up to the viewer...
Who Was That Car? - This is such a tiny thing, but ... that reporter car who comes and thanks Doc for calling them to take Lightning away? She should not have been petite, curvy, soprano, and blue. I thought she was Sally at first, thanking Doc for calling her to be the attorney at the trial and therefore introducing her to Lightning, etc etc. If I hadn't been so confused the first time I probably would have thought it was her the second, too. Am I just slow? I dunno. But she could have at least been red or something.
One Man Band - Very cool. Me likey la musico. It made me want to find the sheet music. And the expression on the string guy's face when the brass guy falls off his drum? PERFECT. Cor.
Something Fishy - Sorry for the bad pun, but Doc: the only difference between him and Gill (from Nemo) was that he wasn't quite as cool.
Tires - I want to know how they made Doc's dirt-track racing tires look like the tire equivalent of old running shoes. They're circles. They shouldn't look like sneakers! But they do! HOW'D THEY DO IT?
Copied from my comment on Sean's blog (which has big spoilers):
Spurred by the almost universal recognition of the (as you aptly put it) Mad-Libs approach to plot structure, and a couple anomalies in the Pixar canon, I did a little research.
Pixar movies that fit the formula mentioned above: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, Cars (Monsters Inc does to some extent, but it’s in a sort of Formula Limbo compared to the others).
Pixar movies written and directed by John Lasseter: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, Cars
Finding Nemo was written and directed by Andrew Stanton, but Mr Stanton was a co-writer on those first three so maybe some Lasseterisms rubbed off.
So! We have a scapegoat! Don’t go too hard on him, though; he’s saving Disney Features.
A little bit shorter and a little more terse!
Now with MORE RESEARCH! (here be spoilers)
Saw it again Saturday with the pre-arranged Crazy Fun Animation Crew (though apparently some of them went and saw it earlier so didn't come, AHEM).
Well, it felt a lot shorter, as movies do the second time around ... I don't have anything different to say, beyond some brief bulleted points:
Click and Clack - The first time I saw it, I was struggling to put names to the voices of those two chatty Rust-Eze cars ... that is, until the signature 'Don't drive like my brother!' bit. This time it was hard to believe I'd missed it before ... but considering I've only ever heard them, hearing their voices again, voices that (along with Garrison Keillor and Bob Edwards) are permanently engraved in my brain, would obviously not have triggered the 'what movie have I seen them in' switch. It was also very amusing to hear my sister get it at the same point I had the day previously. We were very likely the only people in the theatre to find it amusing at all. [Note for Canadians and others outside NPR range: Click and Clack (a.k.a. Tom and Ray Magliozzi) host a phone-in auto service talk show on National Public Radio called Car Talk. They are so entertaining that even I, who am profoundly uninterested in auto maintenance, made a habit of listening to their show. Aside from catalytic converters, they'd also solve spider infestations, fix What Is That Funny Smell, field calls from the Space Shuttle (really!) and read hilarious things that came their way, such as the classic Vowels for Bosnia.]
Atmosphere 2 - I'm not hallucinating, they did get the various atmospheres of the road trip across the country exactly right – my sister was a fount of 'oh my gosh' and 'no way' during that whole sequence.
Hostile Takeover Bank - For some reason I found Chick's sponsor extremely amusing. I'm sure most of the stickers on the cars were jokes but even on the big screen they were too small to read ... perhaps we shall never know.
James Taylor - There's another voice engraved on my brain, as much a part of Saturdays as Car Talk. That song, though ... it was too long to move the plot along but too short to be a proper musical sequence in itself, which just left it feeling uncomfortable and out of place. Whether or not you like James Taylor is up to the viewer...
Who Was That Car? - This is such a tiny thing, but ... that reporter car who comes and thanks Doc for calling them to take Lightning away? She should not have been petite, curvy, soprano, and blue. I thought she was Sally at first, thanking Doc for calling her to be the attorney at the trial and therefore introducing her to Lightning, etc etc. If I hadn't been so confused the first time I probably would have thought it was her the second, too. Am I just slow? I dunno. But she could have at least been red or something.
One Man Band - Very cool. Me likey la musico. It made me want to find the sheet music. And the expression on the string guy's face when the brass guy falls off his drum? PERFECT. Cor.
Something Fishy - Sorry for the bad pun, but Doc: the only difference between him and Gill (from Nemo) was that he wasn't quite as cool.
Tires - I want to know how they made Doc's dirt-track racing tires look like the tire equivalent of old running shoes. They're circles. They shouldn't look like sneakers! But they do! HOW'D THEY DO IT?
Copied from my comment on Sean's blog (which has big spoilers):
Spurred by the almost universal recognition of the (as you aptly put it) Mad-Libs approach to plot structure, and a couple anomalies in the Pixar canon, I did a little research.
Pixar movies that fit the formula mentioned above: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, Cars (Monsters Inc does to some extent, but it’s in a sort of Formula Limbo compared to the others).
Pixar movies written and directed by John Lasseter: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, Cars
Finding Nemo was written and directed by Andrew Stanton, but Mr Stanton was a co-writer on those first three so maybe some Lasseterisms rubbed off.
So! We have a scapegoat! Don’t go too hard on him, though; he’s saving Disney Features.
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(speaking of Garrison Keilor, did anybody bother to see the "Prairie Home Companion" movie?
Ditto everything you said before about the feeling and atmosphere of a long drive across the desert, at different times of the day or night - like the part where he takes the off-ramp and finds himself suddenly lost - yeah. I also thought the "Hostile Takeover" Bank was really funny.
There were a few times, like the one you mentioned, where I was momentarily confused and mistook a bit player for a main character with a similar paint job or shape. To be fair, I suppose there's only so many possibilities as far as body color and shape, especially when it comes to modern cars, which frankly all look the same to me - so the fact that they kept so many characters distinct from a million background characters as much as they did is a minor feat.
That perfect face you're talking about in "One Man Band" is definitely my favorite part of that - some of the facial expressions of the little girl were really great, too.
I suspect the identification with old sneakers may have come from the subtle way they handled the soft, worn surface of the rubber on the tires - those guys don't miss a single visual detail (and neither do you!).
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Sarah (reporter) and No Name (Not Chuck) are big here (Alice 95.7), and apparently Lasseter listens to their morning show. I, however, listen to 106.5 at home, and 105.3 in the car. I'm a rebel.
http://www.radioalice.com/gallery/pixar/image01.asp
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I know I fell for the theatre trailers that started out like a car test drive commercial- the scenery was just that lifelike!
I also am looking forward to it for the music.
Oh, and Click and Clack are in it! Great! That is the perfect addition to such a movie!