Brad Bird won an Oscar this year for BEST ANIMATED FILM with Ratatouille. As someone with kids, I’ve watched a number of his animated films. I have watched them more than any other films I like. Because they are animated kids films, it might seem ridiculous to consider Bird an auteur. But if you agree with the auteur theory which “champions the idea that a film (or a body of work) by a director reflects the personal vision and preoccupations of that director” (from Wikipedia), then Bird is an auteur.

In the three Bird’s film I have mentioned, there is a common preoccupation with the ideas of being misunderstood and being great. The Iron Giant, the Incredibles, and Remy (the rat) are all misunderstood. And all are great. All three of them struggle with others who don’t appreciate their greatness. Worse, they are seen as a danger to others, so they have to hide their greatness, and only manage to exercise it after a struggle. (Remy is a danger to any restaurant that has him in it.)

In The Incredibles, there is an elitism to that greatness. Bird’s shows you are either great or you are not, and no amount of smarts or gizmos can make up for it. The line “If everyone is super, no one is.” is used a number of times. This elitism softens somewhat in Ratatouille. There is still that separation of the great from the not great, but it is not always obvious who is great and who is not. This is very different from The Incredibles, where it is obvious that the Supers are obviously better than you and I.

Elitism comes up in a number of ways in Ratatouille. The notion that “anyone can cook” is scoffed at by the wonderfully named critic, Anton Ego. As well, the chefs themselves are superior. And of course, it is set in France, the home of elitism (at least as seen by many Americans). But this elitism is pushed back in a number of ways. For example, the best cook is a rat, and the best dish prepared is ratatouille.

But these films are more than just about misunderstood geniuses. Love is highlighted in different ways in the different films. In The Iron Giant, there is a father-son bond between the boy and the giant. In The Incredibles, there is the love of family. And in Ratatouille, there is romantic love. Love is one of the driving forces.

In The Incredibles, my favourite of the three, there is also something I think that is quite incredible: a signifigantly long portion at the beginning exploring midlife crisis in a “kid’s movie”. The best animated films have always sprinkled adult subtext in them — especially humour — to help adults enjoy the films at a level that kids can’t appreciate. (It’s almost like a dog whistle). But Bird deftly explores the problems that Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) has as he struggles with his job as an claims adjuster. Bob struggles with this throughout the film, but it is strongest and sustained at the beginning.

This works really well, but it took my four year old son to show me why. When we saw the film for the first time in movie theatres, we all enjoyed the entire film. However, when we bought the DVD, my son quickly learned to scene select past all that midlife crises part (which takes up a good third of the film, it appears) and get right to the action. The film is so well made that it is easy for a four year old to deconstruct it in a way that he can still enjoy it, yet an adult can appreciate the entire film. It may sound easy to do (to structure a film like that), but I think it is rarely done, which is odd, since I suspect that MOST kids will skip to the good parts over time.

The characters are so well named in all the films, but I love the names in The Incredibles. When they are not the Incredibles, they are an average family, the Parrs. The weird kid Buddy goes on to be a bad guy called Syndrome. The French bad guy who blows things up called Bomb Voyage. The shrinking daughter is called Violet, and the very attractive young woman who is seemingly attracted to the middle aged guy is called Mirage.

Which brings me to Edna Mode, who seems to be a cross between Edith Head and Anna Wintour (and who is performed by Brad Bird himself). She is my favourite film character in a long time. My kids and I would rerun just the parts she was in. She is devastatingly funny and a great creation.

It almost goes without saying that the film technique of each of the films from Bird (and Pixar) get better each time. However, the attention to detail is not just in making more realistic animation. It is spread throughout the film. When making ratatouille in the last film, there is a wonderfully animated part where the person making the dish naturally cuts out parchment and places it over the food before placing it in the oven. This is as it should be, but it is one of many examples in Ratatouille where they make the effort to include details even if most people couldn’t care less. Ridley Scott gets high marks for such things: Brad Bird should too.

Bird considers animation to be an art form. It is when he makes it.

If you were to ask people about auteurs at this years Oscars, they might point out the Coen brothers or Paul Thomas Anderson. But there was another auteur there as well, and if you want to see good filmmaking, I suggest you check out his films.

Bird has a new film coming out in 2009. I am looking forward to it. (And lord knows, I will likely see it forty times, whether I want to or not! 🙂 )

businessweek.com has a good article that shows the challenges China has in transforming itself from being a producer of cheap goods and other people’s goods to being a producer of goods that are highly valued and Chinese. It’s a road Japan has travelled many years ago. See Budweiser, Miller…and Tsingtao?

I love magazines. When I am commuting, there is nothing better. But other than plane travel, I haven’t bough a magazine in along time.  Magazines have been losing out to the Web. When I see all the amazing content online, all free, it is hard to justify buying magazines (and later throwing them into the recycle bin) when I can feast on all that is on the web.

I think flickr can make a better case than me. For people like me who love New York City, check out:

While there are still magazine out there with better content, the argument for them over the web will get harder and harder to make.

 
There was lots said on the world’s cheapest car awhile back. A lot of it was facile and derogatory.

What it reminded me of was the computer business. Computer prices level off from time to time, and the impression I used to have was: well, that’s it, you can’t make them cheaper than that. Faster maybe, but not cheaper. No sooner would I think that than someone WOULD come along and make it cheaper.

Now what making it cheaper did was 3 things.
1: it made people realize that there was no lower limit to how cheap you could make computers. And there is still no limit.
2: it greatly increased who could get access to computers, and everytime more people gained access to computers, better things occured.
3: It changed the design of the computers. Making more computers makes them better, not worse. 

And it is on that last point that I think that the world’s cheapest car could be a good thing.

For more, see Tata Nano: The Worlds Cheapest Car at New York Times. According the the Times:

“Over the past year, Tata has been building hype for a car that would cost a mere 100,000 rupees (roughly $2,500) and bring automotive transportation to the mainstream Indian population. It has been nicknamed the “People’s Car.” “

… walking!

First off, people can tell from the way you talk. It’s obvious. And it is obvious that you are squeezing them in. If they don’t mind being squeezed in, that’s fine. But if you owe them more, that’s not a good thing to do. For whatever else you say, what you are “saying” is that the only time you have for them is “down time”, your “time scraps”, that they are “not important”. If the call is important, take the time to call them when you have time. Better yet, arrange to meet them in person.

What goes for walking holds for other downtime as well, such as commuting, waiting in a food court, terminal, etc.

Do I have to say never call someone in the washroom? Yes, it is a stupid thing to do, and yes, I have seen people do it often, and no, I never do it, and you shouldn’t either. The only way I want someone to phone me in the washroom is if they just remembered they owe me a million dollars and that they are bringing it over right away. Then it’s ok. 🙂

Ok, ’nuff said. 🙂

Instapaper is a great solution to the problem of too much to read (on the web) but never a convienient enough time to read it. Go to the site: you will become an instant fan.

Thanks to Victor Chan for the great tip!

John Maeda has a great web site. There is much to discover here, including the Laws of Simplicity.

Here’s the first one:

“Law 1: Reduce. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.”

To get the rest of the laws and other thoughts by him, it’s simple. Click here.

Note! If you want to read more about Haiti on this blog, click here.

For the latest on what is happening in Haiti, I recommend the NYTimes.com. They have a great section on Haiti here)

As I was going through the TIME archives, I noticed a quote from a Haitian government official on some matter of importance. It reminded me of something that struck me when I read “Paris, 1919”: the seeming importance of Haiti in world affairs. True, it was not as important as the Great Powers, but it was one of the countries at the table, both literally and figuratively.  It appears to be a middle player at the beginning of the 20th Century. And then it sadly declined.

One account of this is found here.

If you know people who like to worry, here’s a list of new things to worry about that they likely haven’t even considered!  See:

10 Disasters That Could End It All At Any Given Second

My favourite is rogue black holes. 🙂

(Thanks to transbuddha.com for the tip and Nasa for the image)

The globeandmail.com has a copy of the story from Reuters on how:

“A woman in Germany who became pregnant after an online sex auction has won a court battle to force the website that hosted the sale to reveal the names of the winners, so she can find out who’s the father. Six different men won Internet auctions to have sex with the woman in April and May last year. They were only known to her by their online names”

When I read this, my first thought was: I feel sorry for the child born from these parents. To call the father a “winner” is a stretch, to say the least.

Do I need to say more?! 🙂 Click here

TIME now has what appears to be all their articles online since 1923. It’s like being able to go through old magazines online and see what was being said then. It’s not obvious from their home page: look for the input box at the top with the “Search” button next to it.

As a test, I tried two well known and very different people: Einstein and Hitler. With Einstein, we see Relativity already well established (there are films out on how to explain it, and there is talk about an upcoming eclipse to demonstrate it). Nothing too surprising. What did surprise me was the articles on Hitler. You get to see this terrible force coming into but not yet in focus (at least through the lens of TIME). TIME uses terms like “Bavarian Fascisti” and even “monarchists”, although “nationalists” comes up too.

Regardless of your interest, TIME has made a great start of putting it’s material online.

Chuck Norris has a serious suit against a Penguin book that mocks him. I think he has a good case, regardless of what you think of Chuck Norris. However, the Yahoo! News title seems to continue the mockery with the headline:

Chuck Norris sues, says his tears no cancer cure – Yahoo! News

Perhaps he did say that, but most of the quotes in the following news article are pretty much what you expect coming from a lawyer.
But click on the story and you decide.

You can go and Search Video Archive of Charlie Rose and pull up all sorts of great stuff. Go on…there’s nothing better on TV right now.

The good folks at getty images have revamped their site, making it even better to access their wealth of material. Check it out! Changes are, if you look at advertising (and who doesn’t), you are already familiar with their work.

I read alot of kids books. I enjoy them even when I am not reading them to little ones. Poppleton is my favourite series, with the possible exception of Stella and Sam. the Poppleton stories are wonderfully illustrated in watercolour, with plenty of small details to point out. The language is straightforward but not “Dick and Jane”, and the stories are fun to read aloud and to listen to. Even the characterization is good (yes, I know, they are only short books, but trust me. 🙂

I bought as many of them as I could find at Indigo. Here’s one, the first one we had.

Poppleton and Friends by Mark Teague

And here’s one of the Stella books:

Stella Star Of The Sea by M Gay

I highly recommend them.