Matt’s Blog

I’ve always admired the architecture in the Star Wars movies, particularly the massive scale of Coruscant (pictured). Apparently so do the people over at the Architect’s Journal.

Many of  you have been wondering what I’ve been so busy with this summer, well now I can tell you:

http://topsellingauthors.com/world/top_stories/1383/3056/matt_roe

Last night we discovered some of the cool things you can do with a flashlight and the extended exposure settings on your camera:

I came across the following screen on at a gas station after I had finished filling up my car on the way to Texas.

If I push “Cancel” do I have to put the gas back?

Last Saturday I went to see Pixar’s new movie: Up.

IMPORTANT: To conduct a decent review I need to talk about the movie so if you haven’t seen it yet, and don’t want to find out what happens before you do, come back and finish the rest of this post afterwards.

First, I’ve got to give kudos to any movie that can have the audience on the verge of tears in the first 20-minutes without any dialog. Right away you form an instant bond with Carl Fredricksen as we watch him meet, marry, love, and bury his wife Elle. In this story we find the explanation for the elderly Carl who just wants to complete the vision of adventure that he and Elle had dreamed of, but which always seemed to come in second to the demands of everyday life. Instead of dismissing Carl as just another cantankerous old man, we’re drawn into his experience and emotionally invested in his mission to fulfill the memory of his late wife. Add Russell, an ambitious young “boy scout,” who plays the young idealist to Carl’s mature reservation and the stage is set for a redemption story of a depth that I did not expect to see in an animated movie.

It had always been Carl and Elle’s dream to move their house to “Paradise Falls” in South Africa, but as life wore on those dreams had to be put on hold until Elle finally passes away. Carl, now alone and facing off against developers who want to tear down the house in which he and Elle made their life, finally decides to lift off (literally) and complete the vision that his late wife had proposed in her childhood. Carl faces many challenges, but moves onward with single-minded focus on fulfilling their vision until he finally lands his house at the location he and Elle had decided upon all those years ago. It’s only then, while reviewing their old photo album, that he realizes the dream of adventure they had envisioned had already been manifest in their marriage, and that now he needed to do as Elle implored on the last page and “…go and make your own adventure.”

The symbolics of moving on are thick as we watch Carl empty his floating house of all his possessions in order to make it light enough so he can fly to the rescue of Russell who has already set off after the film’s villain.

While there’s a lot more to the story than that, I think that the storyline I described is the part that I found the most interesting. Perhaps it’s because I’m nearing the point where I need to move on, but I definitely felt for Carl as he remained committed to what he thought would put the memory of his late wife at rest. And I understood the feeling of freedom that came when he realized that the only way he could do that would be to let go of all the old and pursue after his calling.

On a lighter note, Doug the “talking” Labrador retriever, is one of the funniest characters I’ve seen in an animated film. If dogs could talk, they would sound exactly like him.