Pun Salad

• Julian Sanchez detects the philosophy of Ayn Rand in Ratatouille. Is Brad Bird a crypto-Objectivist? Cool! (Arguable spoilers at the link, which means you should just go see the movie, for goodness' sake.) But that's not all …

• Peter Suderman says:

  I have a lot to say about Ratatouille, even beyond that it's the finest movie about a French rat chef ever made (which it is), and that, so far as I can tell, it's the best movie of the summer, and currently vying with Fincher's Zodiac for the best movie of the year.

  But he doesn't have time to say much beyond that, so he links to …

• Ted Pigeon, who states:

  Make no mistake, though; this is a brilliant movie. Not a brilliant Pixar movie. Not a brilliant animated movie. A brilliant movie. So brilliant, I contend, that I would proclaim Brad Bird as one of the really unique voices in American cinema.

  Ha! I knew it! Ted's got a lot backing up this soon-to-be-conventional wisdom. But he also links to …

• Brendan Bouzard, who (among other things) claims:

  Ratatouille's greatest formal innovation might be the incredible way it articulates focus as a storytelling element into popular computer animation. Its execution here is flawless, perfectly mimicking the depths-of-focus one might expect from various lensings used in the film, and adding yet another layer of stunning false indexicality to draw a viewer into the narrative.

  Gosh, that almost makes me want to find out what the Sam Hill "false indexicality" might be. If you haven't seen it yet, though, pay some attention to the focus.

Animated movies aimed at kids are pretty risky, but this turned out to be a win. The creativity is from Aardman Animations, but unlike their venerable Wallace and Gromit, this is a purely animated feature. It has the Aardman "look", though.

The tale is of Roddy, a pampered pet mouse kept in posh surroundings in Kensington. A home invader dispatches him, via the loo, to the sewer system underneath London. A classic fish out of water story, his efforts to get back home land him in even more complications.

Since the overall plot is pretty much the same as Cars, or any of a few hundred other movies, the movie has some work to do to rise above mediocrity. And it does. The visuals are clever, the dialog is funny (delivered by some excellent voice talent); even the music seemed above average to me. Lots of gags flash by; I missed a lot of them, but that's why we have the IMDB trivia page. It's not quite up to Pixarhood, but gets close enough so I didn't feel my time was wasted.

So it's an excellent movie to watch with the kiddos, and not bad even if you don't have any kiddos around.