The Incredibles on DVD…
Sarah Vowell is a rockstar!
Ok, maybe we’re going a little overboard here, but we love Sarah Vowell. The Incredibles DVD just came out this week and it was our favorite film of last year, well, a tie with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The Incredibles was a perfect mixture of raw creativity, amazing visuals, great characters, and a good story. Leave it to Pixar to hit another home run. (Disney - are you paying attention?)
Surprisingly, our favorite part of the disc wasn’t the movie itself, it wasn’t the commentaries by Brad Bird, (the director), it wasn’t the rendering errors gag reel, it wasn’t even the Jack-Jack animated short. It was the Vowellet video essay. First, a little background: Animated movies have voices done by actors. The voice-actors for The Incredibles were holed up in a recording studio for a good number of years recording the voices for our favorite band of super heros, and usually spent weeks on end recording such mundane quotes as “Oh the robot has lost its arm”, or “The robot is slipping”, etc… The animators then take that recorded audio and animate the characters based on the characterization and personality that the voice actor has given them. Well, that and a whole lot of creativity from the amazing Pixar animators mixed in for good measure. So, where is this leading to? One of the extra’s on the 2-DVD set was a short video essay by Sarah Vowell, the voice actor for Violet, (the oldest of the Incredibles children), and a regular contributor to public radio’s “This American Life”. The character Violet is the young teenager who starts the movie having confidence issues. Sarah Vowell is a very unlikely person to play the character Violet, until you hear her voice. She’s perfect for it, her voice and comic timing are impeccable.
So, to our amazement, the video essay called Vowellet had us cracking up so much that we’ve seriously watched it almost 4 times so far! The video starts out with Sarah giving us a peek into her world, that of a writer. She explains that her work rally isn’t visually interesting because she basically sits, and thinks, and types. THis extra at first seem completely out of place in the DVD set, but, like we stated earlier, it quickly became our favorite extra. Who could not love a lady who claims that she is basically allergic to spring and who thinks of Abe Lincoln as an action figure. (Our favorite part of the video essay? When Sarah introduces the action figure of Violet to her Abe Lincoln “action figure” collection: “Violet, Abe, Abe, Abe, Abe, Abe, Abe.” Seriously - this puts us in tears.) Trust us, its sure to be a classic!
If you haven’t gotten your copy of the DVD, there are more extras to love than just the Vowellette video essay - but sadly it seems that Pixar has stooped creating “Bloopers”, well, it’s well worth going out to get it and sitting down with some popcorn and having a blast. We give it a 5/5.
How about you? What are your impressions of The Incredibles? What did you think of the extras? Chime in!
Article from dizzyblog.com
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