Ratatouille : Rat-a-too-ee

I had a chance to watch Ratatouille at Pixar last Friday Thanks Keko for the ticket and apportunity. I didn’t want to write this review too soon because I didn’t want to spoil everyone else, but oh well, here it is!

My favourite bits of the film was actually it’s first teaser. In a grand looking french restaurant, you found this little mouse eating the cheese on a tray. When discovered, it had to run away from all the people chasing it. It then revealed that the mouse was the main character of this story! It instantly got me and I dig the whole idea a lot. It’s cute, it’s clever, and probably because I like good food too. Hell, why is that mouse not over-weighting like me, tho?

Ratatouille easily made it to my No. 1 3D animation of all times. It drained me right into a happy dream world as I watched. I haven’t had any of these feelings watching cartoons for over 10 years since Walt Disney still made good cartoons. Rataouille had a dreamy atmosphere, clever plot, well paced story and is a great film for all family members. It had surprisingly lots of fast exciting sequences, way more than I expected from a Pixar film.

The atmosphere was my favourite part in Ratatouille. Especially the night time shot of
Paris, that left me in aw for a good while. The whole film felt like I was in a story book, reminded me so much of me visitting the Small World at Disney Land many many years ago.

When the film ended, I was speechless. I was left in a total happy and fullfill state for a good long while. That was probably the first time I’ve ever had that feeling after watching a cartoon… Before this there were a few that made me almost cry, but not happy and fullfilling like this. Mainly, Monster Inc’s ending when Sulley openned the door to see his beloved girl again. T_T

 

 

~Spoiler Alert ~

The plot and story of Ratatouille isn’t perfect. One major flaw and contradiction in my opinion concerns the main motto of the film : Anyone Can Cook. It was this 1 motto that brought Remy, our mouse, to the restaurant and started cooking. However, Linguini, another main character, started as a garbage boy who couldn’t cook. And at the end of the film, he still couldn’t cook! Combine that to one of Remy’s word early in the film, “Anyone can cook, but not anyone should cook” now that is really questioning, so not anyone can cook without being… gifted? The motivation to lots of Linguini’s action were also unclear. It appeared at first that he just want to have a job at the restaurant and didn’t show any sign that he wanted to cook. But suddenly he just had to sneak around and season the soup in the kitchen… and ruined it… why?

The relationship between characters were also not well laid out. Remy and Linguini had only met for a short time and they didn’t seem to appreciate or even car about each other all that much. When Remy got to cook and Linguini got his fame, they quickly lied to each other and fight like little children. The fighting and getting back together plot didn’t have much of an impact either because of how shallow their relationship was. And don’t get me started on the love story between Linguini and Colette… if people can fall in love that easily then I wouldn’t be alone now, would I?

Another part I don’t like is probably the amount of spoilers that were revealed with various trailers. Personally, just 1 teaser was more than enough to draw attention to this film and let the audience be surprised by all the idea in the actual theatre.

Down to some vocabularies! I just knew from Tob that Ratatouille was actually a real food name, check out it’s Wikipedia page It’s mainly made from Tomato hmm…. I know someone who likes tomato. Wanna go try this someday? lol

Linguini is also a kind of pasta. It’s flat and as small as spagetti. Meaning “little tongues” in Italian.

Dragon Quest 9 goes to DS!

Source

Apart from the DQ9 goes DS, the CEO of Square-Enix, Yoichi Wada, also commented how he thought PS3 and 360 was “over-engineered” and that “There are too many specs–and you also need a high-definition TV, a broadband connection, and a deep knowledge of gaming–these consoles are mismatched to today’s environment. In a year or two years, they will fare better.”

Personally note - since DS has way more user base than 360/PS3, it’s a really smart move trying to spread the DQ franchise onto it. More players, more sells, reaching wider audience and newer fans. What a Win-win situation.

Wait for me, my DQ <3

My first job during school…

It was a long time ago. Working while studying isn’t a very common practice in my home country. I have heard how in western culture, young people work to support themselves since high school and pay for their own college. I was inspired and really wanted to work. And I did, during my time at Chulalongkorn University almost 10 years ago.

I didn’t want to be an engineer. I never wanted to. It’s just weird how I managed to get into it. Anyway. I wanted to design, I wanted to do arts. So I started doing free lance jobs and had been doing it for over 2 years. My work covers quite a lot of things, from architectural 3D presentation, graphic and website design, label and package design for small products and worked on some magazines. It was a fun time.

But alas… I spent all my time working free lance that I didn’t even care about my college and failed so many classes.

The experience was awesome, and the money wasn’t bad for a stupid little student I was at that time. But I slowly realized how all those things weren’t really worth it…. My friends started graduating and get themselves real jobs. And in only a year, they moved up and suddenly got ahead of me with their jobs, designing far greater things at greater scales than I ever had. I was the first among my friends to work, but ended up behind everyone else.

So anyway. Here are one of my first jobs, some labels and packages designing job. At first, he assigned me to only design the stickers. Onces I did the stickers, my client wanted the bottle. Then he wanted the package, then he wanted the foldable and displayable box, then he wanted a 3D presentation of the whole product, then I had to take the design to the factory and manage the manufacture.. After all was done, he paid me the p sticker price… “That’s the only price we talked about!” and it wasn’t even that much. /sigh. Talking about newbies.

If penguins can fly…

Altho my blog name is a penguin, it has nothing to do with the new movie Surf Up whatsoever. I just like Penguin. I do want to see Surf up, but not as badly as Pixar’s Ratatouille…

Talking about Ratatouille, I went to Borders today with Chi Ya and got myself a brand new hard cover Art of Ratatouille. I couldn’t resist… saw it on the shelf and had to grab it right away. I heard it’s cheaper to get online, but if you’re crazy about these kind of things, you’ll prolly understand why I didn’t care so much… Beautiful arts both 2D and 3D, if you haven’t seen it, run to your near by bookstore right now. Yes, now.

Anyway, to help add this entry a little content, I’m posting a few links to Ratatouille related clips.
Ratatouille Japanese Trailer This one is hella cute. WAY cuter than the US trailer
Cooking Digital Food in Ratatouille Bouncy, juicy CG steak… You have been warned.

More random stuff, May 30th.

Let’s start with a little Pixar’s clip about their digital food in Ratatouille. Those have to be the best digital food I’ve ever seen, gotta love that bouncing steak….

Followed by Microsoft Surface preview clip. Now this is -the- true Next-Gen o.O

Everythings looking good this summer with all the new gadgets/concepts being introduced.

Brad abandoned Sigil, Vanguard acquired by SOE.

Ok, when I heard about this, I litterally feel like this icon above. Brad McQuaid was very well known and gained a lot of trust among the online gamer community being the creatore of EQ1 back in it’s glorious day. A lot of people, including my close friend Jeeb, followed Brad into his new game, Vanguard : Saga of Heroes.

From a reliable source, it turns out that Brad actually hadn’t showed up at Sigil office

for years

Leaving his team to fend for themselves even during the release date dead line. Yet he kept appearing on interviews on various websites speaking as if he’s still in full control of the studio. This was quite a shock and it disheartened many of my Vanguard friends: they felt betrayed.

I haven’t played Vanguard for quite some time now due to some personal stuff. But for the short time I played, I felt the game had lots of promising feature that, if it has had a good leader since the beginning, should have led the game so far high into its success. Sadly that doesn’t look like the case anymore. Anyway, you can read more about it in these links.

SOE’s official announcement of Sigil acquisition
Brad McQuaid abandoned Vanguard
A few insights from Todd Masten (He made music for Vanguard, one of the game’s best aspect)
(Added) Interview with ex-Sigil employee

I feel sorry for Sigil employee who put trust and stuck themselves to this game. Now half the company lose their job, yet Brad moves up to CEO of SOE, supervising the Vanguard team still…

Random stuff in May

Ok, just to keep track of some cool stuff I found during the last couple weeks.

more breath-takin art work on Zbrush 3 beta forum.

Conan visitting ILM.

Marvel & DC (Mac & PC Parody). There’s a whole series making fun about Spider-man 3

And.. totally random. I did a little personality test online. And it said,
You have a crush on someone who is afraid to like you back even though you will do almost anything to make him/her happy. Poor you.
I found it kinda funny. I don’t know about the “someone” part, but the part about myself was so true. Oh well