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  The beautiful, classic musicality of earlier soundtracks  has been replaced by this strange, half-pop/half-Broadway feel that clashes with the visual aesthetic.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!