(grunts) you got... friend... urgh.. me.

Okay, last nights shitstorm did settle down eventually; due to it though we had to spend.the majority of the day clearing out junk from our old house and cleaning it for someone staying in it for a few weeks. After this I was knackered so played burnout paradise. I was amazed to discover, after skipping through all the emopop and generally shit songs, that there was a whole portion of the soundtrack dedicated to classical music. Somehow it made a beautiful experience blasting around a city causing major accidents whilst being soothed by some Tchaikovsky or Claire de Lune. To make amends for last nights blog, here is a belated review of Toy Story 3. I went in having heard it was great etc etc, but this is the critical viewpoint of each and every pixar film released in the last few years, so I didn't have sky high hopes. However it started off as an engrossing family movie, developing into a really gripping action, ultimately coming to a genuinely heart-wrenching ending. While it is commonplace for Disney / Pixar movies to tug at the old heartstrings its been a while since one did it as effectively as this. But coming back to the movie as a whole you actually tend to forget that it is a bunch of toys populating the screen; it is not like a standard kids' movie, pixar have clearly noticed that the original's fanbase are now in the region of 18 years old so have created a much more mature movie. It has an easy to follow but still constantly moving storyline with multiple things happening at once, backstories and genuine tension in many places. All the characters are very well written, and its not a spoiler to say this, because everyone who's seen the trailers knows that many of the new characters show a very dark side. This brings me to the next point; the mature theme is carried most clearly in a few really dark scenes. It's not new for Toy Story to be a bit unsettling, with Sid doing his experiments back in the first one, but this time there's some really freaky scenes, notably including a monkey with cymbals who screams with his eyes popping out at intruders, lit in such a way that it is pretty horrific, and secondly in a baby doll with the traditional gammy eye. It's appearance alone is creepy but one scene sees it sitting on a swing at night and when alarmed its head rotates 180 degrees and the whole thing plays out like a horror movie. It may be that you only notice these things when you are older, similar to the endless smutty jokes in shrek, but its of no detriment to it; it should be applauded that pixar have done what they have no obligation to so; take risks and push for more. For the majority of the film I was feeling a 9 but the final act gave me the wow factor required to bump it up to a 10/10. Song of the day is related to burnout; its the Aquarium from carnival of the animals by camille saint-sæns. I, ignorantly, always thought this piece was written by Alan Menken specifically for Beauty and the Beast, but in playing burnout it suddenly came on with the details below. This adds another section of the carnival of the animals to some of my favourite classical music, so I'll have to investigate the whole piece when I have internet back.