"Fantasia 2000"

10 years ago, "Fantasia 2000" was released, and to commemorate the anniversary, the film is currently being shown at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, running through the end of the month.

The film's run actually starts tomorrow (Thursday, February 18), but there was a special screening tonight that included a panel discussion with some of the people who worked on the film. I was excited to be able to see the movie on the big screen again, but we also like the panel discussions that are often held at the El Cap, so we made sure to attend this one.







The film took a long time to make and complete and went through a lot of changes as far as what segments were going to be used in the final film. It was fun to hear the different stories that each of the participants had.

My absolute favorite segment of the entire film, though, is the Firebird Suite segment, and that's because I absolutely love the sprite that's the main character in the piece. She's just gorgeous.



During the panel discussion, they showed some screen shots from the film. This is the sprite during the early part of the segment.



This is a different picture of her, showing the details of her face and hair.



I love the story of the piece, and the firebird himself is pretty scary and cool, and then there's the rebirth of the sprite after the firebird sweeps through.


The husband has known how much I love the sprite since we saw the film during its initial release. Some years ago, for my birthday, he bought me the maquette of the sprite. It's a gorgeous piece, even though it's in maquette form and not fully painted, but then, I like maquettes. Here's a picture and description of the piece.



For anyone who is interested, it's definitely worth making the trip to see the film at the El Cap.

he only *plays* Jack Bauer

I'd heard some blurb on the TV a couple days ago about Kiefer Sutherland needing surgery for something and was it going to affect "24", which is still in production. Well, then I heard something about some kind of cyst that burst, and then I found this story.

I don't know what kind of cyst he has, but things bursting inside your body is never a good thing. Jack Bauer can be shot and stabbed and go through heroin withdrawal while having a really bad day at work, but hey, Kiefer is only human! I'm glad to hear that there won't be any disruption to the episodes. I'm enjoying this season with Renee being a whackjob, but I'm not as much enjoying Dana's story. Yeah, lady, your sleezy ex-con ex-boyfriend is going to just accept some money from you and then leave you alone. What, are you from another planet? ;)

Here's to Kiefer healing quickly!

"The Last Station" - trailer

When I was going over the recently-announced Oscar nominations, I mentioned that "The Last Station" was probably not a film I was going to see, even though it boasted a fairly impressive cast. But a movie about Leo Tolstoy just didn't grab me.

While I was at the movies today, they happened to show a trailer for this film. And now, I want to go. It doesn't seem to necessarily matter that it's about Tolstoy - it's just a story about a man torn between two sides. It's just circumstance that it was him in this case. Christopher Plummer and Paul Giamatti look to be good, but the scenes of Helen Mirren looked amazing, and that was pretty much what made me decide to see it.

Here's the trailer that I saw today.

hearts and tigers

I was amused when I noticed some time ago that this year, Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year happened to fall on the same day. The endless possibilities!

For Valentine's Day, it's often common for men to buy chocolates for women, and on the lunar calendar, it's now the year of the tiger. So how do you combine the two? Well, I found this heart-shaped box of chocolates with a tiger print cover. That's a pretty good combo.

For Chinese New Year, it's also traditional to give out red packets, and I found this link on how to make your own heart-shaped red packets.

Happy Valentine's Day, Happy Chinese New Year, Happy Presidents' Day Eve, Happy Mardi Gras Eve Eve! ;)

separated at birth

Here are pictures of two actors. Do you know who each is?












OK, the actor in the first picture is Colin Firth, who is pretty well known and who I happen to really like, except for when he played the sleeze in "Circle of Friends", but it wasn't that I didn't like him - his character was just an ass.

The actor in the second picture is Peter Sarsgaard, who has been in a few movies I've seen, so I must have seen him before, but maybe this is the first movie I've seen where he has a prominent role. And for most of the film, I kept thinking how much he looked like Colin Firth, but I knew Colin wasn't in this movie because 1) I didn't see his name in the opening credits and 2) As much as I like Firth, I know he's not *that* young anymore.

Here are a few more pictures of him in the movie that I saw today.













There are so many other moments in the film when he really looks like Colin Firth. Now, he's almost 11 years younger, so he looks like Colin in his younger days, but the facial structure and smile reminded me so much of Colin.


And, since APPARENTLY, I don't remember his exact name or the spelling of his last name, I mistakenly thought that Peter was the son of Stellan Skarsgard, which he's definitely not. Peter's not even English (though he did sport an English accent in the film I saw) - he's an American who was born in Illinois.

2010 Winter Olympics

The 2010 Winter Olympics begins tonight in Vancouver with the opening ceremonies, and in celebration, Google's logo today pays tribute to the Olympics.






That's the picture you get when you save off the image, but it's actually the truncated version. Below is the logo that covers the entire length of the screen, which I like better.







I haven't really been into the Olympics for some time, though I did watch quite a bit more of the last Summer Olympics than I had planned or expected to, and I really enjoyed it. I'm kind of interested in some of the events this time around. I used to really like figure skating and all the downhill skiing stuff, and I was even watching the speed skating stuff during the Eric Heiden days. I'll probably end up catching some of the events over the next couple of week.

Mickey as Indy

Disney has a set of collectible figures that are pretty tall, usually two or three feet in height, so they're called "big figs". They have a new release that we saw a couple of weeks ago that we thought was pretty awesome.






Mickey dressed as Indiana Jones himself! His hat is flocked so it has a soft feel to it. And you can see from the picture below that the idol he's holding is pretty authentic-looking!







"We named the *mouse* Indiana!" ;)

Toy Fair

This year's Toy Fair is this weekend, and it looks like there will be lots of fun things coming out. I'm excited to see what new "Toy Story" merchandise there will be for the new film, probably related to the new characters we expect to see. There's one new character that I hope they have a plush for because I think he's cute and funny. A talking version of him would be nice too, though I hope "Toy Story 3" doesn't end up being as expensive as "Wall-E" was with regard to cool toys.

Which new character am I talking about? Well, here's the imdb listing of his name. We saw a picture of the character at the D23 Expo last year, and we also heard a bit about his character. I think he's gonna be a riot.

Oooo, wait, I found a picture of him! :)

tiny baby kitty

Yep, it's another kitten video.

This one is so small that his (yeah, I don't know if it's male or female, but I'd rather use the male pronoun rather than just "it") head is still almost round because his ears are still kinda flat rather than sticking up out of his head. His eyes are HUGE though - I guess the rest of his head just needs to grow into them.

He's very playful - I laughed at the end of the video. :)

tasty flavors

So, I've rediscovered Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

These are the two flavors I got over the weekend, and I've enjoyed both.











I don't remember seeing the mojito flavor in the store, so I might have to look for that and pick some up to try next time.