This movie is a DELIGHT!
WARNING: sensitive viewers are warned that there is quite a lot of non-damaging violence. Our sensitive nine-year-old didn't like the constant slap-stick violence. Our desensitised five-year-old loved it.
The animation in this movie is gorgeous. GORGEOUS. The fur, the feathers, the shine on rabbits' front teeth. Look how far this industry has come! It's seamless computer-generated astonishment.
The story is very true to the heart of Beatrix Potter's original text in the beginning - some scenes are absolutely replicated: Peter squeezing through the bottom of Mr McGregor's gate; the soil sieve used to trap Peter in the garden; so many of the characters beautifully represented - Jemima Puddleduck, Mrs Tiggywinkle, Jeremy Fisher and Pigling Bland - lovingly rendered.
Even when we veer away from her much-loved text, the spirit is still there.
We sat quite close to the screen and it was so delightful to hear the children further back in the theatre laughing hard at the stunts and prank set-ups. I don't think any of us needed to have had the books in our lives to enjoy the film.
My five-year-old granddaughter likes to visit the bathroom several times during a movie. On our second visit, I asked her if she was enjoying the movie, she said "I love it. I want to buy it. I will be very disappointed if I can't."
“I love it. I want to buy it. I will be very disappointed if I can’t.”
From the opening scene as the sparrows fly onto the screen I loved it. I don't think I need to own the movie but I sure do want to go and see it again as soon as I can.
I'm including the second official trailer that shows WAY more of the movie (so spoiler alert) but also gives a good taste of the type of violence I was talking about earlier. This way, you can decide if your little one can cope or if you have to get a babysitter and go on your own :)
Associated links
- Beatrix Potter (Wikipedia)
- The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Wikipedia)
- James Cordon as Peter Rabbit (Video)
Today is good soup-weather - so I'm making some after buying a new, bigger saucepan for the job. The apartment smells of clean, warm laundry and vegetable soup. I absolutely love weekends when I can spend a lot of time inside reading and pottering about. I'm having a really lovely weekend, actually - soup today, movies last night, lunch with the lovely Kincaids and Woods-Williams on Saturday, out with same on Friday night for Fox's birthday and my leaving drinks. A very nice weekend indeed.
Willo, Teh Fox and I went to the 10:45pm session of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull last night. It was cold and clear, with the smell of Winter in the air. Rugged up with coats and scarves, we made our way into Hoyts in the city.
I've had Indy's theme music in my head for two weeks, having been working on some promotional stuff for it at work. I was like some cinematic Pavlov dog, humming the tune everytime I dealt with a piece of film collateral or Indiana Jones trivia.
The movie is predictable, uncomplicated, a bit naff at times, but lots of fun. I had a good time, and I was genuinely pleased to see Henry Jones Jr one more time. I honestly hope I don't see him again though; this was a nice curtain-call, but that's enough George - don't drag any more of your horses into the streets, just let them enjoy their pastures.
I left my job as Interface Developer at Citrus on Friday.
I am not good at leaving - I find it difficult to know when to leave and how to go about the process of leaving, and then on top of that, I'm an awkward hugger - so I avoid any action on the leaving front until I absolutely *have* to. I stay too late at parties, I stay too long in jobs, and I over-stay my welcome in relationships.
In one of my previous jobs, many years ago, I left resigning from the company late - I stayed and stayed, hope making me think things would change, my heart kept telling me that the person at the core of our pain might change even though my mind assured me people hardly ever do. This time, and for a change, I listened to my head and took the opportunity the University of Melbourne offered me and I start there on Monday.
Leaving is never easy for me - I hate resigning, I dislike saying goodbye, I feel uncomfortable being the focus of attention on the last day and I say dorky things because I'm nervous. Maybe leaving isn't supposed to be easy. I have learned, though, that if I'm unhappy with a large incompetent part of my working process that continues to impact on my daily levels of satisfaction, then staying and trying to ride it out isn't always the best course of action for me either.
I was asked several times in my final week if I was excited to be leaving - which I kept finding was a strange question to answer given a) how much work I had to get through in my last week and b) how much I love working with the talented Studio team at Citrus. Yes, I was and continue to be excited about the new challenges ahead of me, happy to have Flash in my life again with the added challenge of learning Actionscript 3, looking forward to learning all about Flex, thinking about all the things I've learned since the last time someone had me design a learning module etc, but I am genuinely sad to be leaving such a great team of online designers, developers and friends.