brave again

this is a random post, but it's what i'm thinking about today, so there you go.

this afternoon i finally watched brave again. i saw it for the first time over the summer at the drive-in. a word about seeing movies at the drive-in: it's more about the experience/atmosphere than the actual movie. i also saw the avengers at the drive-in last summer, and it's hard to really pay attention when you're in the back of a suburban with 6 other people. i don't remember anything about that movie. with brave, i somehow totally missed the parade of bare animated bums in the middle of the movie, which definitely got a laugh the second time around.

i also missed a lot of the artistry at the drive-in. merida's hair is SO awesome in the movie. hair is one of the things pixar does best, in my opinion :) in fact, this picture is from an article all about merida's hair--apparently, it took pixar experts three years to figure out how to engineer natural-looking curly hair. sweet! and people kept telling me that her mom's facial expressions as a bear were really awesome, but i couldn't tell until i watched up close.

and i was critical of the story the first time. i still wouldn't say that brave is my top disney/pixar, but is a pretty cool movie nonetheless, so different from other pixar movies and other princess movies. it's a definite departure from the model to not end a princess story with a marriage/betrothal. instead, the focus is on merida's relationship with her mother and her own independence.

so, basically, i like this movie a lot more than i thought i did. now i need to see the avengers again :)

in other news, tomorrow i'm going to a charter school fair--nerve-racking! i'm hoping to get some good information and experience more than anything else, but it would be great to get some things moving on the job front. so we'll see. if nothing else, i at least know i'm going to eat a good dinner tomorrow night when i have my birthday diner with mom and dad--i think it's going to be a steak kind of night. whatever that means?