The Movie Review

Last night, Emily and I went out and saw Cars, Pixar’s latest movie which was released this past weekend. We’re both huge fans of Pixar’s movies. Not only are the graphics and animation amazing, but the stories are great and they have excellent character development. Their movies are hard to beat (I think it’s a tie between them, Aardman Animations—specifically Nick Park and his Wallace & Gromit series, as well as Creature Comforts—and Studio Ghibli—specifically Hayao Miyazaki’s and Isao Takahata’s movies), I’m surprised they’ve been able to keep it up as long as they have.

Honestly, neither of us were expecting much of Cars. The trailers looked cool, but it just didn’t look that appealing. I mean, NASCAR? And Tow Mater? Come on. And, the cars look, so… well, Playskool. I knew it wouldn’t be horrible (they’re still a great team, after all), but I was expecting something more along the lines of Shrek 2 or Ice Age 2.

Seeing the trailer for Ratatouille, their next movie (directed by Brad Bird, no less) didn’t help. That was the one I was ready to see. We, of course, had to see Cars anyway and might as well see it on the “big screen.” We didn’t rush off to see it opening weekend, but by Tuesday we were aching to go see what it was like.

So go and see it we did. They, of course, played the Ratatouille trailer before the movie, so were hoping that they didn’t totally skimp out and not even produce a short to play before hand. Oh, they didn’t. One Man Band was an excellent way to make us feel it was worth coming out to the theater just to see it (regardless of how we felt about the actual movie)!

Within the first few minutes I was enjoying the graphics and chuckling that they cast Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen (his intro monologue immediately reminded me of his “peyote” story—as Hansel—in Zoolander). But, all the NASCAR-ness and the first song (which I can only guess was Sheryl Crow) were a bit of a turn-off.

However, I was quickly hearing familiar voices, seeing lots of little inside jokes, and getting the general humor and attention to detail that I’m used to from Pixar movies. After a short while I had forgotten about most of the NASCAR-ness and was forgetting that I was even watching Playskool-esque cars. By the middle of the movie I was in complete awe over the graphics and was completely immersed in the story and the characters (and thoroughly enjoying Mater, as well).

As we walked out of the theater we both asked each other what we thought and both had a nice grin as we realized we really enjoyed the movie. There was no let down, the had completely stuck with their usual type of story and characters. It was Pixar, after all! Is was a good movie! I wouldn’t say it was their best, but it was really, really good and I would totally go see it in the theater again!

Unfortunately, while watching the credits, we got the shock of finding out that Joe Ranft had passed away. I don’t know how I missed the news back in August of 2005 when it happened, but it’s definitely sad. We’ll miss him.

[Moment of silence.]

Update: We’ve now seen it in the theater two more times. So, it’s definitely a favorable review! :D

The Brain Dump

Now, there’s the issue of the second half of this post’s title: the real deal. You know, the cars we drive to and from work every day, around town for errands, and on family vacations.

I’ve had some technical difficulties with them over the years. My first was great and lasted a long time, but I’m currently on my fourth in just as many years. It’s not that they were bad cars, I just drive too much.

You see, I average about 100 miles a day (round trip) for my commute to/from Small Dog. For a year or so I did it six days a week and averaged about 90 MPH when doing so. I was getting burned out and so were my cars. They just had a better way of putting their foot down and saying, “I can’t take it anymore!” I just keep running myself more and more ragged.

As you can imaging, it’s a love/hate relationship. I like driving, but it’s spend too much time in the car, it’s dangerous, and I can’t afford to keep buying new cars and paying speeding tickets. I’m exhausted and I want out. I’ve also been too reckless and have done more than my fair share of damage to the environment: lots of emissions and three cars sent to the junk yard.

What I want is a car that I can’t drive fast, something that’s more efficient and better on the environment, and one that I can feel okay about putting more money into.

A few years ago I started looking at restoring a vintage car. I had decided on a Volvo 122 (preferably a ‘68) and researched the restoration, parts & upgrades, and upkeep quite extensively. A year or so ago I got pretty seriously into electric vehicles and researched them pretty heavily as well (specifically AC drive systems). This might be the perfect solution, so two weeks ago I started seriously looking for a 122 to restore and modify.

Last week I nearly picked up one in California. Unfortunately, it’s not inexpensive to have one shipped all the way over and up to Vermont. One recently popped up in Massachusetts which has been prepped for restoration (well, at-least stripped down, inspected, and ready to start restoration on), and I’m struggling with whether to snatch it up or not.

The price is nearly right and it’s a car I know I can handle and would love to drive. My hope would be to eventually convert it to an AC drive system. However, I always have too many projects, I already don’t get to spend enough time with Emily (I seem to always be working or driving to/from work), and I don’t have a garage to store it in.

However, there’s a possible upside to a project like this. If I were to go the electric route, I’d probably only have a 30 mile range. That won’t get me to and from Small Dog, but I already telecommute every morning and whenever there’s an outage. After all, I’m the IT staff. I don’t have to be physically in the building to do the majority of my work (in fact, my coworker is in California and we work together fairly often, just yesterday we did so via an iChat video conference and SubEthaEdit). In fact, I often work better when I’m not in the building because there are fewer distractions.

If I were to commit myself to dropping back to two days in the building and telecommuting the other three days I would probably be more efficient, I would save money on gas, it’d be better for the environment, I’d get to spend more time with Emily (and do more of the chores around the house), and possibly even devote an evening to doing restoration work on the car. Maybe it’s just a pipe dream, but it seems very feasible and, well, a big step up from the stress I currently put myself through.

As far as cars go, I personally feel that it’s better time and money spent restoring a classic which can still be driven than putting constant repairs into my still new & under warranty car (I guess I just hit my maintenance checkups too fast with all the driving I do).

There are great companies such as IPD and Vintage Performance Developments which still support the Volvo 122s and even produce new parts for them. There’s a lot of technical documentation (stuff not covered in the Haynes manual) over at VClassics and I’ve got an uncle who has owned many, many Volvos over the years. There’s definitely a community still out there.

They’re uni-body, so as long as they’re kept in good shape new sections can be welded in as needed (try that on a modern, plastic car), and they’re relatively simple vehicles, so most parts could be reproduced quite reasonably. But, Vermont is a tough environment in that we use all too much salt on the roads during winter, so it’s have to be garaged for the duration.

However, fear of the day when a part is no longer attainable will always loom over me. Fear of rust as well.

That’s my dilemma… in a long, incoherent, brain dump, sort of nutshell.