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Spoiler Alert!  The rat wins!

So this week, if you couldn’t guess by the title, I watched both Ratatouille and Beowulf. Both were CG animated movies. Both featured main characters that were naked for a good part of the movie. Unfortunately, only one of them was really that good.

Ratatouille is a return to form for Pixar after the disappointing Cars. Granted, a disappointing Pixar movie is still better than most other studios’ movies - but stealing the plot verbatim from Doc Hollywood just isn’t like Pixar. Ratatouille is much more original, features more likable characters and truly jaw-dropping animation.  Even tho I’ve only seen it once (so far), I think it’s safe to say it’s the best Pixar movie since Finding Nemo. If you haven’t seen it yet, you owe it to yourself to do so.

Beowulf, on the other hand, is skipable. It isn’t *horrible*, but it isn’t that great either. It’s very slow-paced for one thing. The beginning drags on and on with nothing notable happening, and then once something does happen….it’s over quickly and you’re back to the movie dragging again. Another problem is the animation. They used the same motion-capture technique that was used a few years back in The Polar Express. They still haven’t fixed the problems with it tho - the characters go from looking realistic to creepy and back throughout the movie.

Finally, the movie ends - and although I was glad to see that it was over, the ending was very abrupt. It doesn’t help that after researching the epic poem that it’s based on, I found that the movie almost completely changes the plot - the only thing it really has in common with the poem is that it contains the same characters.

The 3D effect, which is probably the main draw to the movie, was done pretty well. There aren’t very many “duck” moments in the movie, where you really feel like something’s coming at you. But the 3D effect, even though used subtly, is nice. It’s not nice enough to pay the inflated ticket price to see a mediocre movie though - I’d recommend skipping it.

So, Galyn regaled you with stories of “too many games, not enough time” recently. But he barely scratched the surface. I’m currently working on Ratchet & Clank Future, an amazing game, in-between sessions of Eye of Judgment and Tony Hawk’s Proving Grounds. I’m not a HUGE Tony Hawk fan, but I enjoy picking one up every 2-3 years or so, and this one has been a lot of fun so far. I have Folklore and Zack & Wiki waiting patiently for me on the shelf. And that’s not to mention some other “older” games in my backlog. I picked up a Wii around the time Metroid came out, and with it I got Zelda, Super Paper Mario and Resident Evil 4 - all of which have sat untouched.

Today I placed an order for Guitar Hero 3 (which is completely free, so no guilt there really). Later this month I’m getting Mass Effect (also free…), Uncharted and Mario Galaxy. Oh, and a little something called “Rock Band”. Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard of it - it’s the $170 evolution of Guitar Hero - where you can not only play lead & bass guitar, but can also play the drums and sing. Of course, you can’t do all of that at once - which basically makes it the ultimate party game. Recently, at Galyn’s b-day party, we broke out Karaoke Revolution and Guitar Hero. Problem was, the Karaoke people weren’t so keen on playing Guitar Hero, and vice-versa. This way, everyone will be involed at once, in a face-melting rock explosion. Party at *my* house.

I’m trying to ignore Assassin’s Creed next month, mainly because I don’t think I can add more hours to the day. If I’m successful, then the only other game for me this year will be Orange Box in December - and I think Galyn will kill me if I don’t pick this one up.

Of course, then there’s the movie backlog I’ve built up thanks to recent blu-ray sales. And yet, I’m looking forward to picking up Ratatoille next week, and the Harry Potter collection in Dec. (all on blu-ray). Once you go blu, you never go back. I have a problem picking up movies on dvd now. TV sets I don’t mind so much, but I just can’t bring myself to buy movies on dvd. When Paramount went hd-dvd only, they may have thought they were forcing people like me to jump into the hd-dvd format. What actually occured, in my case at least, is that I passed over movies such as Transformers completely when I would have picked them up day one had they been released on the format I’m supporting. I have no desire to split my movie collection between 2 competing hd formats, and since all indications show blu-ray movie sales far out pacing hd-dvd (and this can be seen by most stores having much larger blu-ray sections than hd-dvd) then that’s what I’m sticking with.

Ah well - I think we have similar conversations to this every year. The spring will come, the release lists will dry up, and all of these things will be watched/played then. And we’ll do this again next year. Ah, consumerism!