Snow Day Movie, Part 1

Toy Story
M'House
DVD
12/5/07

So we got back from the aborted drive in to work on Wednesday and Jamee got to work from home. Maddy played in the snow for a bit and then wanted to watch a movie, because she's, well, my kid. She wanted to watch The Incredibles, but I wanted her to see something new, so I put in Toy Story, and because I haven't actually watched it in years, I watched it with her.

I forgot Joss Whedon co-wrote it.

You can definitely hear some Whedony sounding dialogue it it, and the bit where the toys confront Sid seems like something he'd write. But then again, I'm sure if we got right down to it, the stuff I thought he wrote probably isn't. Because That's the way these things work.

One thing I did notice this time, and it's a small moment in the movie, is the bit where Buzz Lightyear sees the commercial and realizes he's a toy (Although this time through I wondered what he did whenever Andy came back in the room before his epiphany). It's a short scene, but there's three things I caught:

1. The commercial announcer is Penn Jillette
2. Al's Toy Barn from Toy Story 2 is set up
3. There are shutter bands on the TV.

I don't know if they're actually called "shutter bands," but I'm too lazy to look it up. These are the lines that you see on televisions in some movies: big, dark, horizontal bands that scroll up the television screen. The characters in the movie never seem to notice them. That's because the actors don't see them. The effect is caused by the camera shutter and can be corrected by timing the shutter differently. It's one of those things that lets you know that you're watching a film, like seeing a car moving forward with it's wheels turning backwards.

But we have them here in an animated film where there was no camera shutter, put there intentionally to be noticed a few dorks who would pick up on that sort of thing.

Man, I love Pixar.