Big Screen Breakdown: Frozen

A couple of weeks ago, I got invited to see Thor:  The Dark World at the critics' pre-screening.  For some reason, however, the theater wasn't able to get the film working, so everyone in attendance got to take a complimentary ticket as an apology.  Now, I could have gone back to see the most macho-est of heroes, but I decided to go see the movie with the pretty pretty princesses with the HUGE eyes.

Is that even a surprise anymore?

• Does Disney still market their movies?  I mean, I kinda had my eyes on Frozen for a while, but I don't think I actually heard anything about it at all.  No commercials, no billboards, nothing.  Did anybody know this movie was coming out?
• And what's with Disney movie titles nowadays?  You've got Tangled, Brave, and now Frozen?  It's like they used up the whole budget on the animation, and they could only afford one word for the movie posters.
• Man, musically, Disney has just not got the chops anymore.  The beautiful, classic musicality of earlier soundtracks  has been replaced by this strange, half-pop/half-Broadway feel that clashes with the visual aesthetic.
• Oh, and the line, "We finish each other's sandwiches"?  Way funnier when Arrested Development did it.  Ten.  Years. Ago.
• Okay, seriously:  what the ^%$# is going on with Disney and hooved animals acting like dogs?  Reindeer don't DO that stuff!  Well, at least the reindeer here isn't as annoying as that $#%in' horse from Tangled.
• No, THAT particular obnoxious niche is filled by the bloody snowman.  I REALLY hate the goofy-looking sidekick that serves no purpose other than to sell the movie to the kiddies.  Do the producers really not trust a story to resonate with children unless there's a frickin' plushie in the ensemble?

Ahhhh... I feel better.  Got all the complaining out of the way.  Now for the good stuff.  Buckle up - there's a lot of it.

• It's great to see the art of cartooning continues to influence 3D animation.  Disney's computerized people have never looked sillier - and I really do mean that in the best way.  There are some great character designs here.
• There's definitely a healthy dose of Disney romance here, but the real love story is between the two protagonist sisters.  Disney has finally learned to create some really great female leads, and these two are among the best.
• Remember the reindeer I complained about not five minutes ago?  Actually not that bad at all.  Sven the reindeer is attached to male lead Kristoff, and they've got this great chemistry.  You know what they say about a man and his car?  It's something like that, and it's believable in a way Maximillian the horse never was.
• Oh, and how about that villain?  Uh-MAZ-ing!  You don't expect him to be quite that sinister when you first see him and how silly he is, but, brother, he is SOMETHING else.
• Wait, Idina Menzel is in the cast?  Well, that explains the Broadway vibe.  She and the other singers really nail their parts, and they save a lot of the lackluster music, turning it into something memorable.
• These Disney CG movies sure do have a lot of dancing in them.  My favorite scene from Tangled was definitely the dance in the town square, and Frozen has similar scene right near the beginning.  Not as epic as the Tangled dance, but nice nonetheless.
• Tangled struggled to weave the comedic scenes together with the dramatic ones.  Frozen has a similar problem, but it's far less pronounced.  Actually, the human characters have some of the best comedy in the movie, and it never feels forced.  They've come a long way.
• STAY until the END of the credits.  I thought that was just a thing people did in movies nowadays.  Yet there I was, laughing at some of the best post-film jokes I've ever seen, and I was the only one in the theater.  Incredible.
• And speaking of endings, Frozen has one of the best I've ever seen.  It's the perfect fairy-tale ending:  touching, empowering, and completely in line with everything that came before it.  Even that doofy-looking snowman couldn't completely kill the mood.
• Verdict:  Come on, guys, it's a Disney fairy tale.  Of COURSE it's amazing.  Go see it.  Now.

Climactic Confrontation

Anybody else remember the game Rampage? That was a good game. Actually, that was a TERRIBLE game, but its heart was in the right place.

This picture was actually much bigger when I started it, but I cropped out a lot of bits that didn't work for me - specifically, some of the line work in tail looked awful. So I cropped it out.

Our Dearly Departed

I've been making cake bites for nearly two years now - and, frankly, I've gotten pretty good.  I've come a long way from my early days of working with chocolate, and I've managed to make do with a pretty limited supply of kitchen tools.  Heck, I've even managed to jury-rig a double boiler system without destroying any coat hangers to do so.

Sadly, that has all ended today.  After years of loyal service, one of my staunchest allies in the ktichen has fallen.

Alas, poor Yorick.  You've left us too soon.

What?  Are you telling me you DON'T name your glass bowls after figures from Shakespeare?  Geez - and they say I'M the weird one.

My best guess, not really understanding physics and $@#^, is that the heated water in the pan created some sort of low-pressure environment that sucked the glass bowl down until it simply shattered.  And that's really quite the bummer, because I've got four partially-finished batches of cake bites in my kitchen right now that are sitting around naked because Daddy Braddy can't get their chocolate pants on.

You know, I've never actually seen anything explode in the kitchen before.  I'm just glad the glass bowl shattered into the pot beneath it rather than shooting up and out.  I already have to replace my glass bowl - the last thing I need is chocolate-covered shards of death shooting at my eyeballs.

An Important Notice

In case you'd forgotten.

Kissy Face

Amirite, ladies?

Thoughts on an Autumn Morning

Of all the houses I looked at in the home-buying process, the one I chose own me over in part because of the apple tree growing in the backyard. Now, I don't know anything about how to take care of a tree like this, but I'm excited to learn.

The first thing I've learned about the tree is that it gives out a lot of stuff... especially leaves.

So Satuday morning, I found myself outside, raking leaves for the first time since I moved into the house. Now, maybe it's just my negligence, but there were a LOT of leaves. Luckily, I happen to really like raking: it's a chore that requires just enough physical exertion to engage the body, but not so much that it overwhelms the brain's ability to think. I found myself asking a lot of questions as I worked, like:

Why are there electrical wires growing out of my apple tree?

And...

What the heck is that thing?

Oh, it's a shovel. Why is there a shovel in my apple tree?

But the biggest question I had to ask myself was...

Just how in the heck am I supposed to fit all these leaves into one yard waste bin?

Cooking with Braddy: Hot and Sour Soup

I'm a new convert to tofu. I've never really cooked with it before, but I find it a pretty satisfying substitute on those days when I try to cut back on meat. And one of my favorite tofu recipes is my dad's hot and sour soup, adapted from a recipe that he pulled from America's Test Kitchen.

I say "adapted," because I got a copy of the recipe, and I'm pretty sure that it's nothing at all like what my dad actually makes. But, then again, I also cribbed a few notes from a crock pot recipe I found on. Pinterest, so it's not like I was working directly with the undiluted recipe directly from my dad's brain. I made a lot of substitutions, cribbed a bit here and there... and I wound up with a dish that was neither "hot" nor "sour."

It was, at least, soup. Hoorah for small victories!

Ram-Girl Lonely

Sometimes I draw girls, and sometimes I draw monsters... and sometimes girls are monsters, too.

Is it clear that this is a girl with ram horns? Sometimes I'm not so sure, when I do distance shots like this.

Adventures in Animation: Super Anime Haiku Edition

So during the months leading up the move (and for several weeks thereafter), I indulged in a lot of television. More than usual, and most of it was imported for our friends in the island nation of Japan. Should I be embarrassed?

Eh. Some of it's really good.

So here's a quick commentary on the shows I watched. Some were good, some we're bad, and all are worthy to be commented on in the form of haiku. Enjoy.

Another:

Someone here is dead.

Is it you? Or is it you?

It's not Bruce Willis.

Horror anime is something I could conceptually get behind. This... didn't quite do it for me. 

Clannad:

Your wife and kid died?

Cry, and become a robot.

Then they'll be okay.

Allegedly one of the best anime of all time. It's adapted from a dating sim. I think it's better if you've played the game. Otherwise...  PBPTHPBTHBAHAHAHAHAHAHA,

Spice and Wolf

Everything's better,

Economics or romance,

With naked wolf girls.

A surprisingly thoughtful and exciting look at medieval economics... that happens to star a girl with wolf ears... who happens to be naked a lot.

Haibane Renmei:

We've wings and halos,

But we are SO not angels.

I think we're in hell?

It's a story about redemption and forgiveness, and there's no shouting or fighting. Guys, this show was SO GOOD.

Revolutionary Girl Utena

Are they lesbians?

Are they? Are they? Huh? Are they?

(Spoiler: Yes they are)

Some great animation, intercut with some absolutely ridiculous stock footage.

Wolf's Rain

Surly pretty boys

Take a walk to Paradise.

Also? They're all wolves.

The show's kinda boring. But the theme song sounds like something Sting might have sung if he was down on his luck, and that's not bad.

Puebla Magi Madoka Magica

Mami is pretty,

And she shoots guns from her skirt.

Huh? Her head's bit off?

Duuuuuude... This show is DARK! You wouldn't guess it from all the... tulle?

Mushi-shi

In truth, ghosts are just

Microscopic fungus that

Loves to eat your eyes.

How can a show be simultaneously scary and soothing? I don't know, but somehow, this show NAILED it.

Princess Tutu:

She is just a duck.

She is also Sailor Moon.

Ah! The pink! The pink!

This show is awesome. Do not mess with Princess Tutu!

He's My Monster!

Aww... look at his little monster bum!

Recently, my two favorite subjects for drawing have been girls and monsters. Part of me really wants to branch out and try new things, and part of me thinks "Girls/Monsters" would be a great title for a webcomic or something like that.

An Eye in the Dark

Man, I really thought this was going to be creepier than it wound up being. Showed it to my buddy, and he's all, "Aww, that's sweet!" Dangit, sweet was NOT the target!

All that hatching in the background? Took me two hours. Whew.

It's Coming From Inside the House!

Man, owning a home gives you a completely different sense of things than NOT owning a home does.  I have never, EVER been to Lowe's Hardware in my life as much as I have been over the last month... and the scary part is I now LIKE going to Lowe's.  I have no idea how my priorities shifted that much.

Oh, wait, I totally do know how that happened, and it rhymes with "one-hundred thousand shmollars."

It's not all roses and putty, though.  Some of the things I've had to deal with since moving in are a little more stressful... specifically, a chronically wet basement.  Now, I moved right before the rainy season, and I knew going into this thing that the basement was going to be a problem.  I also knew that I needed to get some gutters installed on the north side of the building ASAP, as there are a lot of drainage issues up there that could potentially cause some flooding.

I figured I hadn't acted quickly enough when a puddle appeared in my basement within a week of me moving in.  Now, Momma Bradford didn't raise no fool, so I took immediate steps to get the issue resolved.  Meaning, of course, that I permanently relocated my two grossest towels to the basement to serve on mop-up patrol.

Oh, and I guess I called some guys to get the gutters installed ASAP.

So we're about two weeks into the waiting on the gutters thing, with me going downstairs to clean up as much of the water as I can, when it hits me:  We haven't really had that much rain recently - definitely not enough to justify how damp it's gotten downstairs.  So I wake up one morning, rush downstairs, and check on the ground.  Dry as a bone.  Puzzles, I go upstairs, take my shower, and get ready for work.  Just before I leave, though, I decide to check on the basement again.

BAM!  Puddle City.

Turns out it's not all bad news. The leak, it seems, is somewhere between the tub's faucet and the shower head. That means that I can't shower, but I can take a bath. Yup, I can certainly bathe all six feet of me in a four-foot tub... Provided, of course, that I tape the drain over first, since the stopper in the tub doesn't work. But it's either that or smell funny until I can get the plumber in.

So, yeah... Leaky shower, not leaky foundation.  On the one hand, it's a relief.  The gutters would have been a nice solution to the drainage issues around the house, but there is no way I could guarantee that they'd fix it entirely.  Now that I know where the problem is, I know exactly how to fix it, and then it'll be fixed for (mostly) good.

On the other hand, "fixing" the leak is going to require tearing down a whole wall.  But I guess you can't make an omelette without tearing about your house.

OH, WAIT.

Why I'm Still Single 53

Cast Out

What's your angle, huh?

Seriously, the only reason I drew this picture was to experiment with drawing figures at an angle rather than the usual "straight up and down." It was hard. I mean, I couldn't just go up to a girl on the street and say, "Hey, mind if I lie down on the ground and look up at you?" Poses are HARD.

Cooking with Braddy: "Mayan" Hot Chocolate

I don't know who this "Stephen's" guy is, but I think we've all been had.

With the threat of snow this weekend, I thought I'd try a hot chocolate recipe I've been sitting on for nearly two years. One more time, I've gone back to the Mighty Spice Cookbook for a new recipe. It won't be long before I've posted my thoughts on all the recipes in the book.

I wanted to get a good quality chocolate bar for my first attempt at this recipe, but the Smith's by my house had a pretty poor supply of the Lindt bars I usually use. All the 70% dark chocolate bars were several months past the "Best When Used By" date. So Ghirardelli's won out.

Chocolate and chili go together amazingly well, which should be no surprise, since the two flavors pretty much grew up together. The recipe only calls for a pinch of chili flakes, so there's not really that much heat. Actually, I probably could have added more. The cinnamon, though, was a great flavor to add, and the honey adds that last bit of sweetness to really make this quite the treat.

Big Screen Breakdown: Ender's Game

The record will show that I'm not Orson Scott Card's biggest fan. I'm not talking about his politics (because I do not want to start that conversation on the internet), there's just something about his writing that I've always kinda hated. But given an opportunity to see Ender's Game in the theater on opening day with a bunch of friends, I figured I could set my prejudices aside for a night of fun and popcorn.

• Ender's Game was one of my favorite books when I was a kid, and I was surprised to find how much of the story I still remembered. I was pleased to see that the story made the transition to the screen intact... mostly.
• Roughly 3/4 of the book never actually makes the transition to the big screen. The actual "story" aspect of Ender's Game is intact, but there's precious little character development. Frankly, the movie suffers for it.
• Actually, there's not a whole lot of "game" in this Ender's Game movie. I wanted to see more of the war games - those were the best part of the book.
• At least they made standing around giving orders look pretty good.
• I really like Asa Butterfield, but I'd like to see him try to make something other than an angry face.
• Most of the cast is pretty good, given the material they have to work with. Hailee Steinfeld especially wows as Petra.
• Isn't Petra one of the tributes in The Hunger Games?
• Oh, there was a trailer for the next Hunger Games movie. It's looking pretty good.
• Oh, and then there was that trailer for the next Hobbit movie. Lee Pace from Pushing Daisies is the bad guy. SO excited!
• And then there's this other monster movie coming out, that's all about Gargoyles vs. Frankensteins. It looks amazingly awful.
• And then Keanu Reeves is playing a samurai, for some reason?
• Oh... um... Ender's Game... It sure was a movie that was based on a book that was a lot better than the movie that they made out of it.
• Verdict: ...Those trailers sure looked interesting.

A Day For Music

Sometimes I just do my best thinking outside, ya know?