Especially the main character, Carl, caught my eye. Just look at the face... Ok, maybe not the one here that I drew. Go look it up, my craptactular sketch doesn't do it justice. But when you look at Carl's face, it's such a wonderful combination of angles and curves. Harsh, square jaw and eyebrow lines with long and thin wrinkle accents. Then in the middle is a big, round and smooth nose smack dab in the middle. His hair is so wavy, and white. And right in the middle, fat and thick glasses. It's just a gorgeous combination of (seemingly) mis-matched styles that end up being so pleasant to look at. Absolutely fantastic art direction. The other characters looked good... But Carl was just so absolutely striking.
The other thing that stood out to me was the animation done with the animals. All the little mannerisms really add up, both the dogs and bird seemed so... Plausible. And even more than that, they did a good job at making each critter have its own personality. I mean, yeah - giving all the dogs english voices is kind of cheating in that category, but it all comes together well. I particularly liked Kevin the Bird, he seemed awkward and goody.
Two days ago, I watched Amelie. It's such a quirky movie - the delivery is incredible. It's such a fantastic change from the cliche and predictable films we generally see coming out of North America. There was very little predictable about Amelie, however. I really, honestly, had no idea what was around the corner. They did a good job keeping you wondering as the plot unraveled. And the small nuances that had zero bearing on the plot... Totally brought everything together. It made average people that aren't really that important to plot seem so much more significant than throw-away characters. Fantastic film. And, like Up, it's an overwhelmingly uplifting and positive film. There were a few of the submissive, almost underlying elements that I made a connection with. Good movie, and French is such a lovely language to listen to.
Two happy-go-lucky uplifting movies in a row? It's a rather unhealthy and unbalanced dose of happy endings to get so close together. I'm working on offsetting that by reading Anne Frank's Diary, and I think I'll watch Jakob the Liar shortly. I mean, they could end up all happy-like, but considering they're both about Jews during WWII... I'm guessing that's not the case. Oh well, I've been on a bit of a WWII binge lately. I've seen Saving Pvt Ryan and The Desert Fox recently, and I still have Grave of the Fireflies, The Thin Red Line, and Das Boot ahead of me. Good stuff.
In other news, us iPod Touch owners just got screwed over again. Thanks for your fantastic post-purchase customer support, Apple!
-Cril
Yann Tiersen - Comptine D'Un Autre Ete - L'Apres Midi
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