Thanks For The Adventure, Now Go And Have A New One
I had my first workout of the new year today. Situated above the treadmills at my gym are a bank of TVs. Ordinarily most of my viewing choices are uninspired. E4 is only vaguely palatable when How I Met Your Mother or The Big Bang Theory are on. Most recently I have watched a new sitcom on there called Melissa and Joey. As a child of the Nickelodeon era, I'm pleased to see Melissa Joan Hart again but from what I've seen, the show doesn't make the best use of her talents.
4 Music is frequently on and has merit, if only in demonstrating that if you strip away the music and add subtitles, the entire vapid and soulless enterprise of modern pop music is painfully exposed. While illustrating the extent to which most pop stars appear to be in cahoots with Dr Dre and his Beats headphones.
Thirdly and most curiously, I have the option of Al Jazeera. Who are mostly (and unsurprisingly) reporting on the unjust internment of three of their journalists in an Egyptian prison. As I write, the Egyptian courts have ordered a retrial and I look forward to reading about it while attempting to best my time for 5k*.
So you can imagine my delight when the opportunity to watch Up presented itself this afternoon. I suspect it's a film remembered by most for its profoundly moving prologue, chronicling the beginning, middle and end of Carl Fredricksen's relationship with his wife Ellie. The film doesn't quite reach those heights again, but
it remains a visually stunning triumph of storytelling. Leave your cynicism at the door and you'll realise that the only logical way of evading eviction is to tie thousands of balloons to your home and float it to South America.
Having seen everything except the Cars movies, it's tremendously difficult to rank Pixar's output (Brave was a bit rubbish though). I'd certainly place it in a personal top 3 though. The purists may favour Wall-E and the original Toy Story but neither of those films resonated with me as much as Up. Here's hoping that Inside Out, due out in the summer, will continue Pixar's fine tradition of compelling cinema.
* I jest. Also, I'm not entirely sure if I've ever even got close to running 5k on a treadmill.
4 Music is frequently on and has merit, if only in demonstrating that if you strip away the music and add subtitles, the entire vapid and soulless enterprise of modern pop music is painfully exposed. While illustrating the extent to which most pop stars appear to be in cahoots with Dr Dre and his Beats headphones.
Thirdly and most curiously, I have the option of Al Jazeera. Who are mostly (and unsurprisingly) reporting on the unjust internment of three of their journalists in an Egyptian prison. As I write, the Egyptian courts have ordered a retrial and I look forward to reading about it while attempting to best my time for 5k*.
So you can imagine my delight when the opportunity to watch Up presented itself this afternoon. I suspect it's a film remembered by most for its profoundly moving prologue, chronicling the beginning, middle and end of Carl Fredricksen's relationship with his wife Ellie. The film doesn't quite reach those heights again, but
it remains a visually stunning triumph of storytelling. Leave your cynicism at the door and you'll realise that the only logical way of evading eviction is to tie thousands of balloons to your home and float it to South America.
Having seen everything except the Cars movies, it's tremendously difficult to rank Pixar's output (Brave was a bit rubbish though). I'd certainly place it in a personal top 3 though. The purists may favour Wall-E and the original Toy Story but neither of those films resonated with me as much as Up. Here's hoping that Inside Out, due out in the summer, will continue Pixar's fine tradition of compelling cinema.
* I jest. Also, I'm not entirely sure if I've ever even got close to running 5k on a treadmill.
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