Review: Robots

Another Netflix movie. I'm actually getting better about watching them sooner after they come in, so we're moving through our (my) queue relatively well. Well, as fast as one can ever move through a 500 movie queue. As a side note, did you know you can max out a Netflix queue? Why, yes, yes you can! Ask me how I know! ;) So, here you go: Robots.

Pretty basic plot, just set with robots. Bright small-town robot comes into the big city hoping to make his fortune and follow his dream. Ends up facing cruel power-hungry dream-squashing industrial giant, making a handful of odd-ball friends, falling in love, and saving the day.

Overall, a common story, but one that can always be retold with new twists, since people love the little guy. No big complaints there. The love story aspect was rather rushed, honestly, and felt a little odd amongst the rest of the story. I dunno, it just didn't seem to fit as well. Everything else was focused on the action and the comedy, and the romance seemed to be glossed over until the very end, like an afterthought.

The other part that bothered me about the writing was the way the comedy was inconsistent. There were some REALLY funny lines, and then there were several minutes spent on fart jokes. That scene definitely dragged a little, but I guess that's because I'm not a 8-year-old boy. Shrek had the similar bouncing around of high and low humor, but it was more broken up than in this movie, so the fart jokes didn't drag sequences on quite so much.

Very nice animation. Not spectacularly beautiful like a Studio Ghibli or a Pixar, but still very detailed and smooth. I liked a lot of the little touches that the designers added in - shop names, similar touches. I always enjoy those little things in animation (like in Wallace & Gromit, for example - little jokes EVERYWHERE!)

The music was more fun than the animation, actually. Well, they had the Blue Man Group helping with the percussion, so it would be fun, wouldn't it? :)

Very good voice talent, for the most part. Robin Williams, let's face it, is practically a cartoon anyways, when he gets going, so he did just fine. Not as good as Aladdin's Genie, but still a good example of his talent. Ewan McGregor had a good, solid guy-next-door sort of voice, a good choice for the main character. Halle Berry was rather a small part as Cappy, the love interest. Pretty nondescript, actually, neither a bad nor a good choice. Not my least favorite voice actress, certainly by far, but it wasn't the greatest use of her talent to be a voice actress. Maybe I'm just being hard, though, since the small part didn't exactly give her much opportunity to shine. Drew Carey was a nice touch as the doom-and-gloom member of the bunch of friends. And Mel Brooks was a surprising voice as Bigweld, the crazy inventor who founded Robot City. Surprising, I think, simply because I don't remember it being advertised. Not surprising in the choice of voice - c'mon, after all his movies, does anyone doubt he can voice a crazy genius?

I think my favorite voices in the movie (even more than Robin Williams) were the villains. Greg Kinnear was a funny touch as the power-hungry-yet-whiny executive Ratchet. Really, any male villain who worries about "oh dear, I'm turning into my mother!" when performing nefarious deeds has some good chances for some fun voice work. And then Jim Broadbent was the insane lord of the Robot City underworld, Madame Gasket. Yes, Madame. He played a female villain. Oh, and what really cracked me up about Jim Broadbent was that the last place I saw him was as the kindly-insane-criminal-mastermind in Hot Fuzz! As Zach commented, maybe he likes the funny-crazy bad guys?

Overall: 3.5 of 5. Likable, but not one of the greatest animated movies I've seen, and yes, I will admit my animation standards are set very high. I won't object to having it on my shelf, but it's more of a less-than-$10 movie than a $15 movie, if you know what I mean.

Thanksgiving observations

We had dinner today with a bunch of our friends from Zach's division. Several of the singles or couples with no/very small kids - everyone with family elsewhere. So even though we're a couple thousand miles from family, Thanksgiving was still a big affair with lots of good people.

So, as we were there, I noticed a few things:

1. The military community is really good at taking care of each other. Not the military itself, mind you - that is kinda hit or miss as to what they provide for their families. But the community is good at it. I was asked by 3 different friends of mine (I don't know how many more Zach was asked by) to make sure that we had someplace to eat Thanksgiving dinner at. Everyone here knows that we're all scattered and may or may not be able to be with family for the holidays. So, we all eat together and form a makeshift sort of family, all stuck out here in the same boat. I never noticed that in the civilian world. 2 different Thanksgivings while I worked at Horrible Job in SC, and I don't remember even being asked what I was doing for Thanksgiving, even though everyone knew my family was 2 states away and my boyfriend was stationed on the other side of the country. Just a different mindset, with the assumption that "it's a holiday, you'll find a way to celebrate with friends and family since they're here or pretty close by," not the assumption like on a military post that friends and families are time zones away. Just an observation.
   
2. You know it's a bad/frustrating place you're stationed at when 3 of the people at the table (all different households) all mention that what they are thankful for is either having received orders and knowing they are about to leave here, or that they are about to receive orders in the next few weeks, again meaning they are about to leave here. Yeah, not a good sign.

That's all, really. Nothing too deep and meaningful, as I'm totally stuffed and though not quite in food coma-realm, am definitely ready to head to bed :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends and family scattered about!

A Happy Blogoversary pattern!

Two years of mindless rambling now, so here's a free pattern to celebrate!

I've finished the Banana-rama Wrap (which is what I began calling it - the whole banana fiber thing was a constant source of amusement as I was knitting it!) so here it is, all written up, in case someone else is ever looking for a quick wrap for some unique and unusual yarn! It's nothing remarkable, but if it helps someone else who's got a few skeins of unusual yarn that they want to use up and this saves them from thinking too hard on it, well, then it's worth it!

Banana-rama Wrap

Materials

• Yarn: 4 skeins banana fiber yarn, approximately 80-85 yards per skein (This is a bulky yarn, with recommended needle size of US 10.5. I got mine from from the Animal Rescue Site store, one of the Greater Good websites - check it out!)

• Needles: US Size 15 needles (10 mm)
• Notions: tapestry needle or crochet hook to weave in ends.

Gauge

4 in x 4in = Approximately 10 stitches and 12 rows in pattern stitch (3 diagonal lines of stitches in the pattern across, and 4 diagonal lines vertically)

This gave my wrap final dimensions of 29 in x 78 in (there's a lot of stretch and drape to the final piece, so dimensions are only approximate).

Really, though, gauge is not important to this piece. Find a needle size that gives you a drape you like with the yarn you're using.


Directions

Cast on 50 stitches.

Garter Stitch 4 rows.

Begin pattern stitch:

Row 1: K1, *[yo, K2tog] repeat from * to last stitch, K1
Row 2: Purl
Row 3: K2, *[yo, K2tog] repeat from * to last 2 stitches, K2
Row 4: Purl

Repeat pattern rows until piece reaches desired length.

Finish with 4 rows of garter stitch. Bind off. Block piece to desired dimensions.

Enjoy! As always, if there are questions, please let me know. I don't write up many of the projects I've "wung" so feedback is always appreciated!

And, of course, the standard wording applies. Thanks very much for checking out my pattern. You are welcome to make any of my patterns for yourself, a friend, or charity, but please do not sell the finished product. If you would like to share the pattern, please do not sell it or try to pass my work off as your own. If you make one of the patterns, I would love to see pictures! Please consider sending me a picture, or letting me know on ravelry (I’m oddbird26).

W is for...

Wind.

There are two seasons here in the High Desert: Heat and Wind. That's all.

There IS about 2 weeks on either end of the seasons, where they transition from one to another, and the weather's actually pretty nice during those stretches. Unfortunately, that's about all we get in terms of Fall and Spring here, nothing longer. Just long enough to make you think "maybe the desert isn't quite so horrible an environment to live in."

And then the next season starts. Bah.

We've already had the Windy season start this year. Had a MASSIVE wind storm hit back around Halloween to usher in the season this year. And I mean Massive, as in, had there been rain, it would have been classified a tropical storm, almost a hurricane. (For those who didn't grow up on a hurricane-prone coast, hurricane-force winds are 74 mph and up). Living in quality-built on-post housing, you're just expecting the roof to get blown off some days with those storms. Thankfully, though, we're on the leeward side of our building, so not directly being slammed by the wind. Helps a little.

All the wind makes running outside challenging too - becomes an exercise in timing (pun only slightly intended!). You have to try and get out at the lull of the day, so no morning or evening runs if you can help it; the wind's worse as the sun comes up or down. A friend doing a long run over the weekend made it almost 3 miles out of a 10 mile long run, and then the 16 mph gusting drove him indoors to the treadmill.

And on just a personal note, the wind is unsettling. Maybe it's just where I grew up, but strong winds always came with storms. There was something big and dramatic that came after the restlessness of the winds. Closure, I guess, after the restlessness. Now, it's just that ongoing stirred-up feeling. The same way the summer sun is just ongoing-ly oppressive without break, that's how the winds are for stirring me up. There's a quote from a Raymond Chandler short story that I didn't realize how true it was until I got out here:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

• "Red Wind" (short story, 1938), published in Trouble Is My Business (1939)

Not that I'm fingering carving knives or anything, but it's just basically the feeling that these hot dry desert winds are the type of wind to make a person go crazy. He just says it better :)

Holy cow, actual FOs!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I've actually managed to finish some projects!!

First up, Abrazo! It's actually a really quick pattern; I just had a way of making it take longer than it might have otherwise needed!

To first hurdle to overcome was when I messed up the waist shaping on one side, so I had about 8-10 stitches that I undid, dropped down, and reworked. Took a lot of DPN handling, but anything to prevent me from reworking several inches of the whole sweater!

The next delay was deciding what to do around the armholes and neckline. The original pattern called for a single crochet edging around all those openings. Unfortunately, that doesn't work with my shoulders. I'm a little too broad for a vest that narrow to look good, so I had to figure out what I wanted to do instead. I ended up picking up stitches and doing a K1P1 rib for 4 rows around each opening. Like the finished look on me a lot better!

So here you go: all done!

Next up, the Bananarama Wrap. That one I'll talk more about in a few days, when I publish the pattern too. But, it IS done!

V is for...

Vicious beasties!

We have 2 protective defenders of the house living here. Both our little fur-babies are very diligent about defending the house from such invaders as bootlaces, cardboard tubes ("drrtrrs" in our house, as that is the sound they make) and remote controls. Yes, remote controls. Apparently the buttons on the remote are something akin to bunny crack. On the remote on my last DVD player, I was down to just the 8 on the number pad. I think they are made of the same type of rubber as ballpoint pen grips. Which I am missing on many of the pens in my desk. Joey is very efficient.

But Scruffy doesn't let Joey have all the fun. There are shoelaces to be conquered! It's interesting that he ignores totally the laces actually IN the shoes. I think it's because those are already contained and conquered, being in the shoe and all. But those wild and roaming shoe laces must be dealt with. And the funniest thing is how he attacks them. Either leaping like a salmon (a uncoordinated 16 lb furry salmon) or rolling on his back to attack the dancing string. It's a riot!

Side note:

I know this title is a little misleading for this particular picture, as you might think that they are vicious towards each other, that's not the case. It's just the only picture I have of both fuzzies in the same shot. Typically, Scruffy runs from Joey. Yes, that is the 16 lb cat running away from the 5 lb bunny, but that's how it is. And Joey's never been aggressive towards him either! Scruffy's just a big chicken, and as long as that keeps our pets from rough housing and hurting each other, that's fine with me.

Veterans' Day

To all those who have served and fallen,
To all those who have served and come home,
Past and present,
Thank you.

Nerdy Excitement Abounds!

We're going to Stitches West!!

By "we," I mean my knitting buddy and I. We were talking at Knit Night one night, and both of us had had the thought that since we're relatively close to Santa Clara, why not go to Stitches West? Being military spouses, there's no telling when/where we're headed next, and there's no guarantee that we'll be close enough to attend ANY of the Stitches in the near future, let alone the big one in Santa Clara.

And so we are going! And even better, we've got a buddy to go with!

I'm very excited about my class list. I'm going to a class on steeking, one on crocheting for dummies (well, for knitters at any rate - not a dummy, just don't know what to do with only one needle!), two on different aspects of designing sweaters, and so on. Have two classes with one of my favorite designers too (Melissa Leapman, author of 2 GORGEOUS books of cable patterns, among other things). I think Sarah (my knitting buddy) and I only have one class together, actually, but that might be a good thing. We can share notes at the end of the day, and it'll be like going to twice as many classes! Divide and conquer!

And then there's the vendor's area! Sarah is looking for a spinning wheel, and as we live beyond the edges of civilization, it's hard to get to a store that has wheels to sample, so she wants to take advantage of seeing all the different types. I haven't gotten into spinning yet (I think Zach would explode if I started bringing more fiber into the house!) but I do have my own shopping list. I will try to abide by the Zach-Imposed Yarn Moratorium (as Anne dubbed it) but I am looking for buttons for several sweaters I have planned for next year, Mara and the February Lady Sweater among them. I have found that I wear cardigans a lot here, more than pullovers, because of the way temperatures bounce around so much inside and out, so am making more cardigans as a result. And cardigans need buttons! They can't all be closed with a pin like my purple one :) Thinking of pins, though, I'd also love to find a nice shawl pin or two, and I'm sure there will be plenty of options there at Stitches! And, as much as I say I'll try to abide by the Moratorium, if I find some absolutely gorgeous, too-good-to-pass-up yarn, well... we'll see ;)

And yes, as I'm sure you can tell from the abundance of exclamation points in this post, I'm very excited!! :) Yet another reason I can't wait til February!

Review: Rope

Another Netflix picture (since we rarely get anything worthwhile at the theater here, and when we do it's never convenient for me... sigh). Was on a Hitchcock kick on my Netflix queue and came up to this one, which I actually hadn't seen before. So here you go: Rope.

Summary: Two preppy spoiled brats (college age) kill a classmate, really just to show that they can commit the Perfect Murder. They stow his body away in a trunk in their apartment and proceed to have a dinner party in the same room, with the victim's nearest and dearest in attendance. One of the dinner guests was a former teacher to all the boys, and starts realizing something is amiss, triggering a cat-and-mouse game among the men.

This seems to me one of Hitch's lesser known movies, and I could kinda see why, but at the same time, there was a lot that I really liked about it. It wasn't exotic locales or anything like "To Catch a Thief" or "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and it wasn't edge-of-your-seat suspense like "Psycho" but it was good nonetheless. It was a little slower than some of his other movies, too, but still interesting to watch the dinner party play out, knowing that there was something disastrous to be found and wondering when it would happen.

This one was really interesting visually, too. The story originated as a stage play, and so Hitchcock set about the project as Filming a Play. Which meant it was all one shot, no breaks or anything. In reality, it was filmed as 1 take per reel and then spliced together, so that meant about 10 minutes a take. Still impressive! It does have a few shots where you can tell that they were splicing reels - shots zooming in and then out on a door or on someone's back. Nothing irritating, just noticeable if you think about it. And like any good Hitchcock, there are just some great shots. My favorite was watching one of the killers in the kitchen through the swinging door. Just a great bit of camera work.

Jimmy Stewart was kinda miscast here, I do have to say. I dunno, he just didn't seem the type to have crazy ideas about justifying murder. And there was definitely a sexual spin that the script could have taken concerning the boys and their former instructor, which just doesn't really fit Jimmy Stewart. Not that he did a bad job in the part or anything, just that he didn't really seem to fit the role.

One comment in the extras from the screenwriter was that they originally didn't intend to shoot the murder. The whole movie was supposed to progress with the viewer not knowing at all if the murder had even taken place! The audience would have seen the whole cat-and-mouse without knowing how much the boys' bravado was actually covering up. I honestly REALLY wish they'd taken that route. That would have been such a good twist on the movie. But, I'm not a filmmaker...

Oh, and one last bit of trivia - Hitch's appearance. There's actually supposedly 2 in this movie. If you look at the signs outside the window of the apartment where the whole play takes place, one of them is the stylized caricature of Hitchcock. You know, the one that's all round lines, that was the picture in the opening to the Hitchcock Hour? Well, it's that but in neon lights :) They said in the extras, though, that Hitch wasn't comfortable with the cameo being just the sign, so he's one of the pedestrians walking the street outside of the apartment during the opening credits.

Overall: 4.5 of 5. Not one of his best, but still a very good Hitchcock. Certainly shelf-worthy.