Brave -- Pixar's 2012 release

they fix by lists to each other

Superb typo. Would've added a great passive/aggressive twist to the story.

t minus 10 min from watching this in Diane digital 3d

And I don't, for the life of me, understand the global objection to the midpoint plot turn.

― uncondensed milky way (remy bean), Friday, June 29, 2012

fwiw i thought this was a total mess and the midpoint plot turn was one of the few things i did like.

It's totally bloodless and boring, oddly-so, given all the people walking into things or getting hit in the head with things or hitting each other or doing spit-takes or getting tuned into a half-anthropomorphized bear.

Again, someone help me out here: why is it called "Brave?" Is it because she's brave enough to tell her mom that she loves her? Brave enough to follow her bliss, with her mom's permission? Anyway, just a jumble of a movie. I will give it credit, though, for a whopping 10 minutes or whatever of bear mugging when even my daughter was basically "just mend the fucking tear already!"

Hair was better in "Tangled," too. "Tangles" rules, "Brave" drools.

A friend posted the reaction of the kids she brought to "Brave:"

https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/s720x720/552673_4238628841952_1451714355_n.jpg

roffle

your daughter OTM though WHOA WHOA HUGE SPOILER HERE the edge-of-your-seat horseback needlepoint sequence END HUGE SPOILER was up there with the dramatic photocopying sequence in THE FIRM.

would have been a lot more interesting if her daydreaming during sewing lessons had come back to haunt her in her time of need.

just saw this, thought it was pretty swell

waaaaaaaaaaay better than 'up' which was more like 'down' amirite

I was so glad that this movie was not the movie the trailer set up - that was a stupid fucking trailer

like maybe the worst thing you could say about this film was that it was a scene or two short, and maybe could have used more explication about the other bear. but this was a good movie!

though, I know billions of tearful processor hours were spent rendering her hair, I thought in the end it looked like that springy yarn you can get at A.C. Moore for $1.99

dayo is a crazy person, there is no way this was better than up

YOU CANT THREADBAN ME THIS TIME M BISE ON

I will have my revenge...in the Olympics thread

UP would have been better if it had only been 15 minutes long

tbh WALL*E kind of fell apart in the third act

on balance, i think that pixar is great with openings, pretty darn good with act twos, and falls to sentimentality at endings.

I think even I liked "Up" better than this. I can't pinpoint exactly which element felt the most ported in to satisfy some studio note or demo. BELATED SPOILERS!!!!The evil bear and its backstory? The three triplets? The three twins turning into bears? The random witch? The quest/fight or her hand in marriage? Stumbling bear LOLs? I'm amazed they didn't give her a Will O' Wisp as a cute sidekick, though they practically did. That torn tapestry that needs to be sewn together is like a metaphor for the movie. Also, I thought the concluding sentimental resolution/bear fight was totally unearned and dishonest, even for Disney.

the three triplets were awesome! I thought they would be bratty but they were great

Yeah, but they're clearly just there to further slapstick things up. I mean, they don't even have names, do they?

the slapstick was well done I thought, the sort of thing you just can't do w/ live action

Tell that to the Stooges.

I liked this thread better when we were laughing at Wrongo McBloggingpants, less so now that we're just engaging Josh so that he can say how much he disliked the movie in minutely different ways.

ILX is a neverending disappointment.

Here Josh, let me respond to that for you: Much like "Brave," amirite?

You guys don't know what it feels like to have your heart broken. Sniff...

the more i think about this, the more i like it

On a slightly more personal level, as the parent of two small daughters, I'm just looking for a movie that'll strike the same right chords for them that many of my childhood favorites struck for me. As Hollywood seems to have stopped making quality live action films for kids, Pixar is virtually all I've got, so I admit I hold them to a high standard.

so ridiculous to call the bear thing a mid-point spoiler or w/e. it's basically the entire movie. what a terrible ad campaign this had (including the title change)

The triplets names are mentioned at the start, if not in the trailer! Hubert, Hamish and... Harris? I thought this was great, btw. Looked mindblowing. Saw it in 3d and the projection was not great, made a dark movie too dark. Would happily watch again in 2d.

Just saw Madagascar 3. I take it back. Brave is a masterpiece.

If I have to hear the 'circus afro' line in Chris Rock's screech again, I will actually kill a zebra.

my student played this, this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e21dN7d01Dc

Brave is a masterpiece.

I knew you would see the light. ^_^

i saw this again, and it held together much better now that i knew where the plot was headed from the beginning. it really is cool that the mother figure is essentially a second protagonist, and that her hopes/concerns/fears are taken as seriously as merida's. i was also able to accept the "our land is imbued with magic and we are part of the land" premise without as much grumbling this time, mostly because i love the sound the will-o-wisps make -- like a baby whispering and inhaling.

also if you know someone who likes "call me maybe" this is a great way to make them angry at you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBmFT4sLCSA

mostly because i love the sound the will-o-wisps make -- like a baby whispering and inhaling.

The wisps were very Miyazaki like. Is it Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke that has similarly sweetly muttering sprites?

Man, seriously though, if I had stumbled into a 3D screening of the manic "Madagascar 3," it might have made me barf. I saw a review that accurately described it as a bunch of brightly colored moving shapes. It does have its moments of "Pig in the City" weirdness, though, and as a couple of friends pointed out there is this surreal druggy undercurrent.

Also, further proof - crossover with Wes Anderson thread - that Noah Baumbach is not funny enough to punch up a comedy. One of the better gags involves a boy getting stuck head-first up an elephant's butt.

Purgatory is endless loop of Madagascar movies for you, Josh; the worst are the ones that died in storyboard

The evil bear and its backstory? The three triplets? The three twins turning into bears? The random witch? The quest/fight or her hand in marriage? Stumbling bear LOLs?

this sounds fantastic!

^^^^

it is a really good! honestly, i think a lot of the criticism abt. story story clichés (girl proving herself, etc.) are rooted in a really ingrained sexism w/r/t the narrative structure; there's an implication in many of the negative reviews that an archetypal female coming-of-age/self-advocating story is trite and unworthy. but the film is at its very root about myth, legend, folk tradition, etc., and more about the telling than the tale.

Otm, and I think a lot of the hand-wringing about the demise of Pixar isn't just coincidental with its first female-centric film,l. Did people freak out with Cars 2, or were they just, Oh Lasseterpaws?

Ha, you mean the first female-centric Pixar film that fired its female director mid-development?

Oh, and people freaked the fuck out about Cars 2. Far more than they have for Brave.

Ha, you mean the first female-centric Pixar film that fired its female director mid-development?

This keeps getting brought up, but nothing I've read about it smells of any anti-woman shenanigans.

Pixar's recent run of movies has been disappointing: two sequels and two below par original stories, Brave being one of them. Brave is a Disney princess movie without songs. It's okay, but it's a bit muddled, a bit slap-dash. The animation of Merida's hair is the only outstanding thing about the film, and maybe people expect too much of Pixar, but Brave just isn't up to anywhere near their best.

that is hardly empirical

it is a really good! honestly, i think a lot of the criticism abt. story story clichés (girl proving herself, etc.) are rooted in a really ingrained sexism w/r/t the narrative structure; there's an implication in many of the negative reviews that an archetypal female coming-of-age/self-advocating story is trite and unworthy.

This. Guys who are like "mother/daughter relationship, ugh, cliche" should have to name five films off the top of their heads that focus on that. I've seen very few Pixar films all the way through, so I can't say whether it's up to the gold standard, but I liked it more than Toy Story and Up - all had great characterization, jokes, heart tugging, set pieces, but this one didn't have a fucked up message about the sanctity of your material possessions or turn a character into a murderer just to provide an action climax.

Also, I loved how every guy in this film was a well-intentioned oaf.

obv not in a place to say for sure, but i wonder if the identity/empathy issues were a little mature for small kids. saw it with my wife and sister and both were affected by it, but for all I know there are young girls who wanted it to just be a bad-ass tomboy adventure as much as a lot of adult men did.

It's hardly about their relationship, or barely. It's really just another story of royalty rebelling from destiny or whatever. Tangled had a more complex mother/daughter relationship.