Last week, I saw Toy Story 3. It is, admittedly, a good film, but I feel as though it may fail on two distinct levels. While the characters, plot, voice-acting, animation and directing are all top-notch, I feel that the problem with this movie was tone. The idea of Andy leaving for college and the psuedo-mortality theme of toys being relegated to an attic, daycare, landfill, etc, seems, in my mind, a bit over the heads of Pixar's younger audience members. Perhaps I'm not giving America's youth enough credit, but on the other hand, I thought Wall-E delivered incredible messages in a packaging that was much easier to process for those both young and old. Staying fit, going green, etc. are all take-away messages that are practical and hopeful. Toy Story 3's take-away, after the college elements have been stripped away, plays like some sort of New-Age message about life after death, positing that in the face of death, we must be true to ourselves and accept with passive calmness what is coming, and perhaps, things may turn out for the best. Perhaps I'm reading too much into a movie about toys, or perhaps I'm simply in a ranting mood. I honestly did enjoy Toy Story 3, and I would happily recommend it to friends of the series. Further, I would also suggest that one watch Toy Story and Toy Story 2 again before seeing TS3. I did not, and found myself disengaged somewhat from characters with which I knew I was supposed to be feeling a deep, aching, empathy.
On a different note, and with a further tilt of the overly-analytical eyebrow, on the same day I also saw Montana Shakespeare In the Park's Julius Caesar. As it was on July 3rd, and the last performance of that show in Bozeman, they preambled the show with a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Sitting next to the Montana State University Duck Pond on a tarp, listening to an archaically-phrased attack on a tyrant while the echo of fireworks went off in the background, I realized that maybe, for once in my life, the old platitude that a liberal arts education actually has an application waiting for it out there somewhere was true. The events of Julius Caesar detail the overthrow of a potential tyrant (Thanks Sparknotes). The Declaration of Independence, I hope, needs no introduction. This makes me begin to think that the liberal arts is a degree that not only entitles one to observe blindingly obvious connections, but also to work as a revolutionary. Who else has less to lose in a revolution than a starving poet/writer/fashion critic/journalist/blogger? Who has the endless hours to contemplate the injustices of a distant tyrant but the privileged children of the elite, given entirely too much knowledge, entirely too little experience, and entirely too much time on their hands? It's thoughts like these that make me wonder if somewhere, on an FBI watchlist in a forgotten computer bank in a bunker deep underground, there's a collection of every alum of every single liberal arts university in the country. They are, after all, dangerous intellectuals. As for the show itself- semi-solid, an interesting wrestling match at the opening, and easily making me reevaluate my relatively low opinion of student theatre in general. It appears that the Columbia community has been showing off some acting skills that, unknown to me, are at least comparable, if not entirely dwarfing, those of certain Montana troupes.
As for surfing in Montana? On our bejeweled, if imaginary, coastline? On our high mountain peaks? On our rolling plains? I say thee nay. Instead, look yonder, to the wake behind that noblest of watercraft, the motorboat. Using a miniature surfboard (not a wakeboard, thank you very much), one can use a towrope to jolt oneself upright, and then surf the continually generated wake behind the boat, dropping the towrope entirely. My single brief experience wakeboarding amounted to no more than me being dragged around a lake on my face for about forty minutes, being told cheerily all the while that the trick was to, "just get up," and then the fun would really begin. As to what this fun was, or to how I was to "just get up," I remained in the dark. Surfing behind a motorboat, or wakeskating, as I believe it's properly called, holds no such shallow promises. Easy, hilarious, and fun as heck (look at me, I'm Johnny Tsunami!). Overall, a fantastic Fourth of July activity.
That's all for now wonderful people. Hope you all had a fantastic Fourth!
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