Review: Inside Out

Review: Inside Out

Inside Out is the latest film from Disney*Pixar. They have taken us to so many wonderful places and told amazing stories. This time they take us inside the mind of an eleven year old girl who is is moving from one stage of her life into the next, and has to deal with a ton of emotional baggage. That's where this movie really shines.

Meet the voices inside your head: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. They reside in the
headquarters (pun intended, I'm sure) and help to form your responses to everyday occurrences. Imagine you see broken glass on the ground. That's where Fear might take the controls to help you stay safe. Broccoli? Disgusting, right? You don't get the toy you want at the store? Anger takes the controls and lights a fire under you! All of them work together to make you.

What makes this movie so interesting and fun is the visual representation of the mind and your personality. What makes you you. We all have different personalities and coping mechanisms. What emotion is driving us? Is it fear? Anger? Joy? What aspects of our lives form our personalities? For Riley, we get to see her Five Islands of Personality. The five things that make her who she is. Each one helps us understand who she is. We dive even deeper into her mind and explore what happens to memories, where imagination lives, and what resides in our subconscious.

The title of the movie really implies how the movie is set-up. We see Riley and who is she is not so much by her actions in the film, but by how she comes to those actions before she carries them out. We get to know the main character from the inside out. Instead of her just making a disgusted face to her parents, we see how she comes to make that face. We know all of her actions before she is even going to do them, thanks to her emotions. It's a very different way to experience a film.

I thought Anger was the strongest character in the film. Not only was he animated superbly with over-the-top expressions and actions, but he was really developed into a full character with his own emotional story arc. He also leads us to a critical moment in Riley's life, one he later comes to regret. Fear is visually wonderful and has a great scene when he is watching Riley's dream. Disgust was kind of along for the ride, but didn't really speak to me as a character. Joy and Sadness, who form the core story of the film, work really well together. And, as we find out, are inseparable. We also get to meet Bing Bong, Riley's imaginary friend (voiced by Richard Kind), and some other fun characters. But I don't want to spoil it for you!

I think the greatest thing about this movie is the sense of introspection you are left with after the film ends. Suddenly, you are aware of what drives you. What pushes you forward. How you react to situations. Maybe it'll make better humans of us all. After all, look at what happens when Anger gives us ideas . . .

Final Thoughts:
Inside Out is a must-see film. It is visually splendid, moves along at a good pace, and takes us to places we've never been before. Listen carefully for a nod to a Disney Parks attraction. The humor is wonderful. It let's us laugh together as an audience and at ourselves. Most of all, it will leave you a little wiser and perhaps give you some perspective.

Disney Infinity 3.0 Inside Out Playset!

With only a few weeks before Inside Out appears in theatres, it seems wise to introduce Disney Infinity fans to the playset that will accompany the movie.

The playset will be a sequel story to the film, so it's a good thing the movie comes out before the playset. This playset stars Riley babysitting. While babysitting she falls asleep and accidentally changes the channel on the tv to a scary movie. This wreaks havoc with her subconscious and her emotions go into crisis mode. Enemies include broccoli, swamp creatures, and bats. We love bats!

This playset is mainly focused on platforming. Unlike 2.0, which was combat heavy, this will be a nice addition to the playset family and offer a totally new experience and promotes cooperative play. This is where Disney 3.0 needs to up their game and make the playsets available for online play.

All the emotions have their own special abilities to help get through the platforming challenges. This is great because it makes the player use all the characters in the playset instead of sticking to the ones they like the most.  Anger can run across lava, Disgust can high jump, Fear runs quickly, Joy can glide across large gaps, and Sadness can walk across clouds. All unique abilities to promote the platforming theme.

Clouds are a big component of the levels. Sadness can walk across them with ease, but any other character can only step on them briefly before they disappear; you must jump quickly if you want to get past them without using Sadness. If you're playing co-op, Sadness can pick up another character like Anger and walk across the clouds with him, easing your co-op partner's troubles. Similarly, Anger can pick up Sadness and carry her across the lava should she need it. The entire set can be played single player, but cooperative two-player gameplay is highly encouraged.
Another element is called musical gameplay. Here, you flip switches back and forth, turning on and off various platforms. You must match the musical lines and which platforms you're going on to get through the various areas. This means precisely timing and syncing up with the beat to do so.  Additionally, a gravity feature switches your perspective, turning the world and making you platform upside down.

New Marvel and Disney Character List

It looks as if Disney Infinity 3.0 has given away how many new characters will be available for the Disney Originals collection and the Marvel Super Heroes collection. 

There are ten additional spaces on the Disney Originals list. If we count up the new characters that have been announced: Mulan, Mikey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Sam Flynn, Quorra, Joy, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, and Fear. We come to the conclusion that this will be all the Disney Originals for 3.0.

As for the Marvel Super Heroes roster we only know of Hulkbuster and Ultron officially. Logically, we guess that Scarlet Witch, The Vision, and hopefully Ant-Man will be the other three characters yet to be announced. This would make sense since those three characters become the New Avengers and will move forward with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

We'll keep giving you the latest and greatest news for Disney Infinity 3.0 so stay tuned!

Review: Doctor Who "Listen"

The episode, Listen, written by Steven Moffat, is probably the strongest episode of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who so far.  Well written and incredibly spooky, Listen shows us a new side of The Doctor we’ve never seen and explores the childhood nightmare of the thing under the bed. The whole episode deals with the idea of fear.

Listen begins with the Doctor asking the questions, “What is the perfect camouflage?” In traditional Doctor Who fashion he is manically talking, ranting, and discussing his ideas out loud. He lists the different types of camouflage then asks,

“Question – Why is there no such thing as perfect hiding? Answer – How would you know? Logically, if evolution were to perfect a creature whose primary skill were to hide from view, how could you know it existed? It could be with us every second and we would never know. How would you detect it? Even sense it? Except for those moments when for no clear reason you choose to speak aloud. What would such a creature want? What would it do? Well? What would you do?!”

This propels the episode forward with the Doctor trying to discover what this creature is. We come to understand that everyone has the same dream The Doctor did, a dream where you wake in the middle of the night, step off the bed, and something grabs your ankle. He asks Clara if she had it, and she did, and so has everyone else in the universe. In the meantime, however, Clara has a date with Danny Pink and things go sour. She leaves him at dinner, and takes off with The Doctor to discover the perfect hiding creature.

What follows is  probably one of the more haunting scenes in Doctor Who history.

Clara talks with a small orphan named Rupert. He fears something in his room. She tells him it’s nothing and there are no monsters under the bed. She crawls under the bed and invites Rupert to join her. As she talks with him and she convinces Rupert monsters aren’t real something sits on the bed. We never saw anything walk into the room. They crawl out to see something sitting in the center of the bed with a red blanket over it. All it does is sit, vaguely human in form. The Doctor rushes in and tells them not to look, to ignore it. The Doctor gives this advice with the creature on the bed behind them:

“Let me tell you about scared. Your heart is beating so hard I can feel it through your hands. There’s so much blood and oxygen pumping through your brain it’s like rocket fuel. Right now you could run faster and you can fight harder. You can jump higher than ever in your life and you are so alert it’s like you can slow down time.

What’s wrong with scared? Scared is a superpower! Your superpower! There is danger in this room. And guess what? It’s you. Do you feel it? Do you think he feels it? Do you think he’s scared? Nah. Loser!”

The creature then ends up standing behind them. Clara and Rupert turn to look. The Doctor tells them not to. Don’t look. It runs off. At the end of the episode we don’t know what it ever was. Disappointing, but not the point. The point of this episode is dealing with fear and we learn The Doctor is afraid of the dark. In a brilliant, full circle story, The Doctor has a real fear. It’s a must watch episode which is why the details here are vague. Time travel, The Doctor as a child, Danny as a child, Clara’s future revealed, etc. I know that scene haunted me for a few days after.

The episode was rewarding, developing The Doctor, Clara, and Danny Pink. We got to explore our deepest, darkest, fears, but also learn that they are a super-power. That is what fuels The Doctor, not fear itself, but the power that comes with fear. Clara leaves us with this thought:

“This is just a dream, but very clever people can hear dreams. So please, just listen. I know you’re afraid, but being afraid is alright. Because didn’t anybody ever tell you? Fear is a superpower. Fear can make you faster and cleverer and stronger. And one day you’re gonna come back to this barn and on that day you’re going to be very afraid indeed. But that’s okay, because if you’re very wise and very strong fear doesn’t have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind. It doesn’t matter if there’s nothing under the bed or in the dark so long as you know it’s okay to be afraid of it. So listen. If you listen to anything else, listen to this. You’re always gonna be afraid even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like a companion, a constant companion, always there. But that’s okay because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home. I’m gonna leave you something just so you’ll always remember. Fear makes companions of us all. <she leaves Dan the Soldier Man at his bedside>”