How to Train your Dragon

[blamebrampton]

One of the few upsides of Evil Mag TM is that I am back reviewing in print rather than just for web formats. Which is why tonight I watched How To Train Your Dragon (DVD release). I know that at least one of my flistees loved this in its cinema release, and I have to agree, it's wholly charming!

The animation is vibrant and refreshing, the characterisation consists of actual characters rather than entirely stock, the hero is a natural philosopher rather than a classic Viking -- it was all the things I tend to adore. But what made me burst out with laughter is that it slips in a Norse gravegoods misinterpretation joke! Someone on that writing crew is at least friends with a costume historian, and this amateur one appreciates the wink!

Thoroughly recommend this for everyone with small people, or with an adult academic interest in the postmodernist approach to storytelling through technology exemplified by Dreamworks (feel free to use that excuse next time someone raises an eyebrow when you buy a ticket to a kids film without a kid in tow, I have a Very Dull lecture that goes with it if you need more.)

Comments

[ant-queen.livejournal.com]

on a slightly related matter, I am currently training my Dragon. I've just installed Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software and currently in the process of training it to recognise my voice and speech patterns. In fact, I've just dictated this entire comment :-)

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

HEE! You are SO ahead of the times young Ant! And that's a decent program, not a single wacky made-up word in the lot!

[ant-queen.livejournal.com]

It is spookily clever. While it does have the occasional mistake, it apparantly scans your word docs and emails to learn your writing style and context for particular words. I have a friend named Krystal, so I was expecting to have to correct when I told it "send email to Krystal", but lo and behold, it picked her out of my contact list.

Now I'm just waiting for it to say "I can't do that Dave" :)