Scattered Thoughts Yet Again

1. I saw Up last weekend. I liked it, but not nearly as much as Pixar's last two movies: Ratatouille and Wall-E. This one seemed to be aimed at the really little ones, and there's nothing wrong with that, but those seem to be the ones that I don't like as much. Still, it was good, and there's nothing to complain about. It had a good story with well-rounded characters and there weren't any cheap gags like in Monsters Vs. Aliens.

Speaking of that movie though, I actually was less impressed with Up's 3-D. Roger Ebert has been criticizing the recent spate of 3-D movies, basically saying that it's not as good as 2-D. For instance, the colors are much brighter in 2-D and everything is clearer. After seeing this, I'm starting to agree with him. I don't think that the 3-D added anything to it. I'd really hate to see every animated movie go this route. It's bad enough that traditional animation seems to be dead. I don't know about you, but when I watch the classic Disney films, they still look pretty damn good to me. (Got Pinocchio on Blu-Ray and it looks great.)

2. I want to personally confiscate the headphones of many teenagers. Is it because they always wear them? Nah, that doesn't bother me so much (unless it's during class). What drives me crazy is seeing them walk side-by-side, sharing the headphones. Apparently, these kids don't understand the concept of stereo. When I point this out to them, they look at me like there's something wrong with ME, even when I say that they're probably missing a lot of the music. This just further proves my theory that there are a lot (maybe even most) people out there who don't even really pay a whole lot of attention to the music that they're listening to. It's more about fitting in with their friends, showing that they know what the popular songs are. Because I'm sorry, there's no way you can just listen to one headphone and actually be engaged in the music. It's just filling the empty space.

3. I plan on doing some more writing this summer. In fact, my goal is to get something written so that I can start thinking about getting published. I'm going to shelve the big epic novel that I wrote last summer and start writing about my characters from the beginning. Once I'm done with all of that, I'll get back to that story, as I'm still pretty pleased with it. Of course, I want to restructure the plot a little bit, but essentially it'll be about the same thing and reach the same conclusion.