"To Infinity..."

In 1995 a boy named Andy got a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday.
It was from his favorite movie. 

This is that movie.

Pixar's Lightyear is based on the concept that the Buzz Lightyear toys from the Toy Story movies must have been merchandising from some sort of intellectual property, in the same way that Sheriff Woody and his gang had their origins in the 1950s children's program Woody's Roundup. Ultimately, that idea is irrelevant to the plot of Lightyear, although it's an interesting meta decision to introduce a fictional franchise within a fictional franchise.

The film introduces Buzz Lightyear as the pilot of a Star Command exploratory spaceship that crashes on an alien planet after attempting to escape hostile life forms encountered on the planet's surface.  Buzz, who is responsible for the crash due to egotistically ignoring offers of assistance and the advice of the autopilot, volunteers to pilot the ship being used to test an experimental replacement hyperdrive crystal.

However, he falls prey to the effects of time dilation and drifts increasingly out of sync with the rest of the crew, not to mention his best friend, who grows old and dies over the course of his repeated unsuccessful near-lightspeed test flights. Eventually his robotic cat companion solves the hyperdrive crystal problem, but on his return from a successful test, he discovers that robotic invaders have attacked the colony, and he must work with a misfit team to defeat the villainous Zurg and save the day.

Lightyear is a pretty good space opera. It's a solid little science fiction story with a couple of interesting twists, the art direction is excellent, Chris Evans does a near-perfect imitation of the original Buzz Lightyear voice (my apologies to Tim Allen, but really, it's very good), and it makes surprisingly good use of relativistic physics and the effects of travelling at near light-speed (although I'll be honest and admit that I haven't actually checked the math for the time dilation ratio).

All that being said, I found that it somehow lacked the emotional impact that Pixar normally brings to the table. When I watch a Pixar production, I expect there to be at least one scene that brings a tear to my eye - for example, in The Incredibles, it's the moment where Mr. Incredible tells his wife that he's not strong enough to lose her again. 

It's hard to say why Lightyear isn't more successful in that sense, you can certainly see them trying.  There are some inspirational bits, a couple of tragic moments, a message from a dead friend, and a redemptive conclusion, you'd think at least one of those would have rung the bell to make me well up, but somehow Lightyear doesn't manage to pull it off, in spite of how good it is otherwise.  It's possible that the script's just a bit too heavy handed: as I commented above, their attempts to create an emotional moment are quite obvious rather than being an organic part of the story.

It occurred to me while I was watching Lightyear that it could just as easily been done as a live action film, and I might well have found it more entertaining in that format.  When you look at the cast of voice actors, it's completely feasible for them to replace their animated counterparts: Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi, Isiah Whitlock Jr. - okay, at 44, Bill Hader admittedly feels a bit old to play Star Ranger recruit Featheringhamstan.  That aside, it would be easy for Disney to add Lightyear to its list of animation-to-live-action projects, although they should probably bump it up the priority queue in case Chris Evans starts to lose his hair.

But that takes us to another question regarding the franchise within a franchise and the film within a film.  Granted, Lightyear is Andy's favourite movie, but Andy is a character in an animated world.  In that model, in Andy's reality, is Lightyear a live action production performed by actors, or is it an animated movie? 

- Sid

Missed opportunities.

This morning, my wife Karli and I experienced a rare crossover in our sleeping schedules: she woke up early and I slept in a bit, which resulted in both of us being awake at 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning.  We decided that we should celebrate this unexpected overlap by going out for breakfast, and strolled down Broadway to the Sunshine Diner, one of Vancouver's iconic breakfast spots.

We found a pleasant table in the shade, enjoyed a somewhat expensive breakfast (welcome to the 2022 economy, even eggs are not cheap right now), settled the bill, and started our walk home.

As we left the restaurant and headed past the rest of the outdoor dining, I unexpectedly caught sight of  what appeared to be a familiar face.  

Photography is funny, taking someone's picture can often embed them quite solidly in your memory, and in this case I was certain that I'd photographed the person in question eight years ago at a Vancouver Writer's Fest event, featuring cyberpunk legend William Gibson, and two newcomers on the scene, fantasy authors A. M. Dellamonica and Sebastien de Castell, the second of whom was apparently discussing toast options with a waitress at the restaurant we'd just left.

I waited until we'd walked a discreet distance along Broadway, and then excitedly told Karli of my sighting.  She urged me to go back and talk to him, but I felt reluctant to accost someone trying to have a quiet breakfast on the off chance that I had correctly recognized them from an eight-year-old memory, and convinced her that we should just head back to our apartment.

When we got home, I checked my original blog posting from 2014 and took at look at his web site, and decided that it might well have been Mr. de Castell after all. Conveniently, the web site included a contact form, and I thought it would be polite to pass along my best wishes, regardless of whether or not it had actually been him, and composed the following: 

As my wife and I were leaving the Sunshine Diner on Broadway this morning, I turned to her and said, "THAT was Sebastien de Castell ordering breakfast back there!!! He's a brilliant fantasy author, I saw him at a Writer's Fest event with William Gibson a few years ago!"

She said, "Did you want to go back?"

"No, I don't want to interrupt the man's breakfast just to be a fanboy, what kind of Canadian would I be? And I could be wrong, it might not be him."

But, just in case, I would have said that I've really enjoyed your Greatcoat books, excellent stuff, thanks so much! And if it was you, I also hope you enjoyed your breakfast, it took us forever to get coffee.

To my mild surprise and extreme gratification, I received a response a couple of hours later, presumably after he had finished breakfast, returned home, and decided to check e-mail.

Hi Sid,

Yes, that was indeed me. Why didn’t you stop by and say hello? I wouldn’t have minded at all. More importantly, it would’ve impressed my wife tremendously, which is really the primary motivation of my existence. The only occasion on which someone’s come up to my table at a restaurant and asked if I was myself was at the lovely Fable restaurant down on 4th. The person who came up was an as-yet unpublished novelist named Nicholas Eames, who’s now a much more famous novelist than I am.

So just think what you missed out on ;)

Thanks for the kind words about the Greatcoats!

Best,

Sebastien

It's always a pleasure when someone who is in the public eye in any way responds well to their fan base, and I feel that Mr. de Castell's response is both friendly and gracious.  In return, I strongly recommend his writing to anyone reading this post - for more information, please visit:

https://decastell.com/

And, if you believe that lightning strikes twice and you'd like to have your own brush with greatness, you are welcome to visit the Sunshine Diner at 2649 W Broadway in Vancouver, who knows, you may get lucky.  Although, full disclosure, I only go there for breakfast once in a while.

- Sid

"When I was a young Warthog..."

Master Chief: "You told me there wouldn't be any cameras."

Sergeant Johnson: "And you told me you were going to wear something nice!"

- Halo 2

Today, Karli and I paid a rare visit to Walmart in search of the perfect shower curtain ring - we'd purchased a new shower liner at Bed Bath and Beyond, but Karli didn't like their hardware options for hanging it, so we decided to look elsewhere.

While we were wandering around the store, I did a quick pass through their toy section.  Walmart stores often have a surprising range of movie and video game related toys, and I always like to take a look at their shelves to see what's on display.

This time, I was surprised to see a boxed Warthog Light Reconnaissance Vehicle from the Bungie Studios Halo gaming franchise, on sale at half price: twenty dollars rather than the original $39.99 sticker price.  Generally I'm much more of a browser than a buyer, but in this case I decided to add a Warthog to our shopping cart - what's life without the occasional spur of the moment purchase?

The Warthog comes in several pieces, with some assembly required, as toy package labelling cliché would have it. It's not terribly challenging - you snap the tires onto the ends of the axles, mount the tribarrel machine gun into the socket on the back of the vehicle and connect the ammo feed, clip the four red fuel cans onto the rear storage rack, and you're good to go.  The Master Chief figure which is packaged with the vehicle fits snugly into the driver's seat - it's unfortunate that there isn't a second figure to man the tribarrel, but I acknowledge the manufacturer's inevitable desire to make a buck by having you buy a standalone figure or two to fill up the crew.  

My purchase clearly illustrates the difference between what we'll refer to as play-grade and collector-grade toys.  The Warthog mold is detailed and comprehensive, and the body finish has been given some manufacturing equivalent of dry-brushing* for a more weathered look.  However, I feel that a collector grade toy would have more moving parts than just the wheels. The undercarriage is glued together rather than a single piece, but there's no articulation for the suspension, winch or axles, and the tribarrel mount isn't really designed to rotate, which is kind of a shame. The tribarrel itself also seems to be a less sharp mold than the rest of the pieces.

The 3 3/4 inch Master Chief figure doesn't have a lot of detail, although it does have reasonably good joint articulation, which, admittedly is probably better for play time than the opposite. And that's a key element regarding the comments above: a plastic toy made with extra moving parts and realistic suspension probably wouldn't last a day in the destructive hands of a playful 9-year old.

Ultimately, I recognize that it's just a toy, and as such it's definitely a fun little piece of shelf decoration that wasn't too expensive - if you'd like one for your bookshelves, I encourage you to hurry on down to your local Walmart while supplies last.  Oh, and Karli strongly recommends their shower rings, in case you feel that you need a more adult excuse to do some shopping.

- Sid

*  For readers not involved in miniatures and modelling, dry brushing is a painting technique in which almost all the paint is wiped off the brush, and then the remaining paint is lightly applied to a basecoated model to accentuate details and edges, which gives the model a more realistic appearance.