Zorac's LiveJournal

When Apple bought NeXT, giving them what became Mac OS X, lots of talented engineers and the return of Steve Jobs, it was joked that NeXT had in fact bought Apple for minus $400 million.

Will today be remembered as the day when Pixar bought Disney for minus $50 billion?

1. Four day weekends are good. Especially when they cause a pair of four day weeks.
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5. GIP! Yes, I have been known to perve over Nala at this particular moment in The Lion King. What about this surprises you?

This is a follow-up to yesterday's post in which I mentioned the movies we went to see, but failed to give any sort of reviews. Shame on me.

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This Saturday was different from usual - no trip into Oxford for retail therapy and a movie. I had vague plans to head into London for the Apple Expo, but when I looked out the at around nine to be greeted by pouring rain, I went for plan B - which mostly involved going back to bed. Much of the weekend was taken up with watching much of the extra material from The Two Towers extended DVD set. Alas, I failed miserably to remember all the amusing quotes I had earmarked for LJ post titles, so I've had to settle for a bit of paraphrasing (yes, PJ suggested that Rohan should get a branch of Gap). Somewhere along the line I managed to get some RS coding and other useful stuff done, but it was mostly a weekend of doing not very much.

Yesterday, of course, it was back to work - but at least it's only for half a week and, besides, things have been reasonably quiet of late. Last night's movie was Highlander, something I picked up on bargain DVD a couple of weeks back on the grounds that I haven't seen it and have heard much about it. Big mistake. That movie made Revolutions look good. Yes, there were a few interesting ideas, but that was about the only redeeming feature (OK, there was the Queen music, but even that was overloaded). Crowning moment: a scene with two characters - one Scottish, and one Spanish. The Spaniard is played by Sean Connery, and hence has a Scottish accent, while the Scot is played by Christopher Lambert and has an I-don't-know-what-the-devil-it-is-but-it-sure-as-hell-ain't-Scottish accent. Nuff said.

Today, I wasn't taking any chances, so I went straight for the Disney: Hercules. The more I watch it, the more I like it - Disney most definitely not taking itself seriously - and even sending itself up (...and you are wearing his merchandise!). The input of Gerald Scarfe is a stroke of genius - he gives the artwork a very unique look and a strong visual identity (alas, the CGI work is pretty sucky - which doesn't bode well for Disney dropping 2D animation). Hades is possibly my favourite Disney villain (if only someone had shown him the Evil Overlord's handbook...) and Megara is great too.

As for tomorrow's movie, I'm at the mercy of the airline as I fly to Chicago. Wheeeeeee!

Amazon haven't been winning any prizes for promptness of delivery lately. I had an order go into 'dispatching soon' a week last Friday, but it was only after chasing them up via email that they finally sent my order off (in two packages for some reason) on Saturday. This led to happy!zorac this morning on finally, after many years of waiting, receiving my very own copy of The Lion King on DVD. I shall not squee about the movie any further as I have done so previously. Instead, I shall squee about cute!ickle!beanie!Simba - which leads to a GIP, and goodnight.

It's been so long since I last did a big whopper of an RL update that I've almost forgotten how. Or perhaps not. Here follows a tale of two weekends and many movies.

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Monday sees us finally checking out of the Swan, hermorrine's friend kindly furnishing with transport to the airport - via a Mexican lunch with her and the girls. The flight was for once smooth and uneventful - except for a malfunctioning Jetway leaving us stuck on the plane for half an hour before we could actually disembark.

In the evening, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean (the movie, this time) - which was great fun, but finishing late enough to scupper any chance of a sit-down dinner and reducing us to take-out. This we ate chez hermorrine while watching Better Off Dead - a t00by movie if ever there was one - before heading to bed.

Sunday was the symposium's closing morning. The last event was the charity auction over brunch - we only caught the tail end of it, but a few of the items went for really quite impressive prices. We said a lot of goodbyes, and there was much hugging and taking of photos.

In the afternoon, we made our way over to DisneyQuest - home to neat interactive games. Among other things, we got to don VR helmets to fight comic-book villains with a lightsaber or fly a magic carpet, paddle a raft through a virtual jungle, pilot a multi-legged rescue vehicle on an alien planet and do battle with the Pirates of the Caribbean. I also got to play on a bunch of classic arcade machines - the original Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac-Man etc.

In the evening, there was cheesecake - and packing.

On Saturday, we didn't get up until quite late, so I only ended up seeing one talk in the morning, although I did do some browsing of Kompulsive Alley. Lunch followed much the same pattern as Friday - low scores for the food (a cottage pie and Bertie Bott's) and high scores for the speaker. Ari Rapkin gave a very interesting multimedia talk about how ILM work some of their magic - the cloth simulation being her particular area of expertise. Plenty of nifty clips, including Dobby out-takes and naked!Yoda.

In the afternoon I only went to one talk - a very enthusiastic Steve Vander Ark and angiej on the Past, Present and Future of the Wizarding World - see The Harry Potter Lexicon. I also actually did some shopping - picking up a copy of the Gnome TossFling game for $5, a couple of books (one HP related, one not) and a magic wand - soon to appear in an icon for voldie_zorac. There was also the entertaining Fandom Squares for those of us skipping the Founders' Feast.

In the evening, hermorrine and I took advantage of our money-off coupons for the buffet at Gulliver's - which was nice, particularly in getting to have multiple desserts! I got bullied into putting footwear on by the safety-paranoid staff (it's a fair cop) and had my photo taken with Goofy. Later on, we hosted a game of Trivial Pursuits, where I showed off my lack of knowledge of American Sports and History and expetesso showed off her strength at snapping corkscrews (the one we were sent up was obviously a touch flimsy - on the second attempt, the hotel sent up a Cast Member armed with a more heavy duty one).

Our last day in the parks was at EPCOT, the park of two halves. In the morning, we did parts of future world, featuring (among other things), the Big Giant Golf Ball (aka Spaceship Earth), Honey, I Shrunk the Audience (yet another 3D movie thing), Body Wars (Star Tours-like motion ride with synchronised video) and the all-new Test Track - fun, if sometimes violent and very fast.

Afternoon saw us working our way around the World Showcase (a.k.a the Magic Snackdom - and yes, we did indulge). Not heavy on the rides (beyond a gentle log-flume in a Viking boat), this was more a sightseeing trip. A special mention goes to the "Human Statue" who was doing a hilarious job posing for photos with the tourists. It's all very authentic - and yet at the same time, all very fake. Dinner was at the Rose and Crown - a fair stab at faking up a British pub, where we did have an excellent view for the evening's fireworks.