Blue-ray Review: High School Musical 3

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Dan

To say Amy is a fan of the High School Musical franchise would be like saying Scooby-Doo has a faint penchant for Scoobysnacks. In Amy’s wardrobe alone she has High School Musical socks, shoes, t-shirts, pajamas, and jewelry. That’s not even to mention the High School Musical dolls, stickers, albums, posters, school bags, mugs and activity books that burst from every toy draw and bookshelf.

Oh yes, we know all about High School Musical in our house.

There’s a lot of snobbism abut this sort of film. Cynical mutterings about them being manufactured product rather than artistic expression. But to be fair you could say that about 90% of all forms of popular culture. Excellent as it was, the Iron Man movie would have been no less focused grouped. Just because a film is not targeted at you doesn’t mean to say that it’s automatically rubbish.

There is quality in the High School Musical trilogy. The dancing and choreography is good, the catchy pop songs well crafted, and the acting is above par for a product from the Disney Channel (you want to see bad acting then just take a look at the Hannah Montana TV show). It may be artificial and manufactured, but so is Diet Coke and it still tastes damn good.

Which is not to say that I don’t have problems with the franchise. The all pervasive merchandising leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. I saw some High School Musical kitchen roll in Sainsbury’s the other day. If there is a more blatant attempt by manufacturers to harness the force of pester power then I don’t want to see it. Although to be fair it’s probably no worse than that attached to my own childhood’s holy trinity of movies, Star Wars. In fact even the thought of a roll of R2D2 kitchen roll has me reaching for my wallet.

But I digress.

High School Musical 3 had a significantly bigger budget than the previous two movies, and it shows. The musical numbers are more spectacular, the sets more expansive, and the whole thing feels more polished. Despite this however I think it’s probably the weakest in the trilogy.

The problem isn’t the increasingly obvious age disparity between the actors and the characters they are portraying (Amy: “Why are those grown-ups still at school Daddy?”), but the storyline.

I accept that in a musical the plot is really only something to link the songs together, and certainly have no problem with a basic story; especially in a film aimed at children. But I do like my movies to at least go somewhere. High School Musical 3 just wanders around aimlessly without a purpose. There is an underlying theme surrounding others trying to choose the main protagonists future for them. But that vein was pretty effectively tapped for High School Musical 2, and to use it again just feels like a bit of a rehash. And also, while that motif is very relevant to people actually of the age of the characters, it pretty much goes above the head of the core audience of the film.

There are also far too many characters. The bigwigs at Disney no doubt wanted to leave the franchise open for more sequels and so needed to shoehorn some younger characters in there so there’d be someone to take up the baton for High School Musical 4. This left the film feeling cluttered and a little confusing. In my view they should have just focused more on Troy, Gabriella, and Sharpay with all the other characters and their subplots much further in the background.

We’ve already got High School Musical 3 on DVD, so watching it on Blu-ray was a good opportunity to compare and contrast. And I must say I’m still very impressed with the format. There were quite a few interesting questions asked in my previous review which I intend to tackle in a dedicated post of it’s own; but in short the best way to describe it is it’s like watching a moving photograph rather than a TV screen. Everything is just crisper and sharper.

One thing I did notice however was the length of time it takes to actually start playing the movie and the special features. I’m assuming it’s because the discs have a lot more data on them than DVD, but it certainly does take a noticeably long time to fire up. Still, that’s only a minor annoyance.

So would I recommend High School Musical 3? Absolutely, despite its flaws it’s still a highly enjoyable movie. It’s not one I’d recommend for those without kids though. Unlike Wall-E or some of the other Disney movies it doesn’t really hold up to adult sensibilities all that well. Certainly not my own sensibilities anyhow. But that’s OK, because it’s not supposed to.

You can buy the High School Musical Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk for about £15. You also get a normal DVD version of the film included with it so you can watch it on the normal players in the house too. Amazon also do a pretty good range of Blu-ray playersas well should you fancy one.

Disclaimer
I received a copy of High School Musical 3 on blu-ray to review. I also got given a blu-ray player by Disney around a year ago in order to review their releases. However the opinions expressed in this review are honest and I have felt no pressure from Disney to provide a positive review.

Also if you buy it from one of the links I’ve given I get an extremely small kickback from Amazon

Originally posted at allthatcomeswithit.com and used with permission

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Blue Ray review: Wall-E

Posted on May 5, 2009 by Dan

I must admit that I’ve seen Wall-E before. In fact the movie was the first film both my kids saw at the cinema. It made quite an impression on Evan in particular. When we were watching Hannah Montana at the pictures the other week Evan kept asking indignantly when Wall-E was going to show up. To be honest I had a fair bit of sympathy for his protestations myself.

So, just in case you aren’t familiar with the plot, it concerns a lonely little garbage compactor robot left all alone on a polluted and desolate earth that has been abandoned by a consumerist and wasteful humanity. A probe droid, EVE, turns up looking for signs of life. Wall-E falls in love with her and follows her back into space.

It’s a good film. In fact it’s a great film, certainly amongst the best animated features that I’ve ever seen. It’s funny, engaging, innocent, and satirical all at the same time. But most of all it’s incredibly brave. Brave to spend the first 40 minutes or so with no dialogue at all, relying on body language, emotive beeping, and the pure skill of the animators in order to communicate what’s going on. And also brave to completely discard the convention of getting big name actors to do the voices. And as a result the movie comes across not just as a 98 minute advert for merchandising like so many animated films these days, but as a piece of lovingly executed art.

In short, I like it. I like it a lot.

And what’s more I like the Blu-ray format too. When we first got the player Kerry and I rented the Incredible Hulk just so we could put it through its paces. While we were impressed with the picture quality it didn’t really move any mountains for us.

But Wall-E on Blu-ray? Wow.

To say the picture was crisp would be an understatement. It’s so sharp that you could cut yourself on it. The scene where Wall-E and EVE are dancing in space made me come out in goosebumps just like it did in the cinema. It was beautiful; there’s just no other word to describe it. It’s obvious to me that Pixar and Blu-ray are pretty much made for each other, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the relationship between the two develops. The trailer alone for the forthcoming film Up was awe inspiring (those balloons look fantastic).

The features were pretty impressive too. Much more extensive than your average DVD. Of particular merit was a bonus exclusive blu-ray short cartoon called Burn-E, which is a story of a maintenance druid that takes place in and around the various scenes of the mean feature. Both Kerry and I found ourselves laughing out loud at it, and we’re generally a family that keeps our chuckles to ourselves. There were also games, commentaries, a documentary on the history of Pixar, 3-D set fly throughs, deleted scenes and all manner of other goodies. Not bad for about fifteen quid.

Disclaimer
I received a copy of Wall-E on blu-ray to review. I also got given a blu-ray player by Disney around a year ago in order to review their releases. However the opinions expressed in this review are honest and I have felt no pressure from Disney to provide a positive review.

Originally posted at allthatcomeswithit.com and used with permission

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Website Review: Poisson Rouge

Posted on September 17, 2007 by Dan

There are many things that my daughter has inherited from me. Blue eyes, fair hair, a hearty appreciation of the simple fart joke. One trait I have passed to her is a tendency to spend too much time messing around on the computer.

At an age where I was just coming to terms with the on/off button of the TV, she is an accomplished IT technician. She’s mastered the intricacies of both the mouse and the macbook’s touchpad, she understands the concept of hyperlinks, and she recognizes the majority of the buttons on iTunes. She is, in fact, more computer literate than around 30% of the people I work with.

There are a number of websites my daughter enjoys. The TV tie ins such as Cbeebies, Nick Jr, and Playhouse Disney. But by far her favorite website is Poisson Rouge.

The outstanding feature of Poisson Rouge (or Red Fish for any fellow francophonicphobes out there) is it’s simplicity. There are no unfriendly menus, no instructions to follow, and most importantly no need to be able to read to use it. The numerous games are varied, intuitive, and elegant; but above all the site is a great deal of fun.

Amy will quite happily sit in front of this website for hours if we let her, racing snails, painting fingernails, and doing jigsaws. It’s educational too, but not in a crass ramming it down your throat type of way. It subtly teaches hand eye co-ordiantion, problem solving, letter and number familiarization, and logical thinking.

In short, It’s great, and deserves to be on the bookmarks list of any parent of a pre-schooler.

www.poissonrouge.com

Originally posted on allthatcomeswithit.com and used with permission

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