Finding Nemo DVD:
So my Christmas was really good, and most of my gifts were of the DVD variety. (Which was fine by me.) I've been spending some time recently watching some of them, although I'm not even remotely close to getting through them yet. I'll probably still be watching Christmas DVDs when my birthday rolls around in April. So far, I've watched the movie of Pirates of the Caribbean, the first disc (cartoons only) of the fantastic Golden Looney Tunes collection and, as the title of this post would indicate, Finding Nemo. In addition to rewatching the film, which *might* be my favorite Pixar movie ever, I just watched the "visual commentary" tonight.

This is the kind of thing that makes DVDs worth buying. There are three voices on the commentary track itself, but using seamless branching technology, the film breaks off between 5-15 minutes at a time and shows little bits of behind-the-scenes, ranging from a video of Ellen Degeneres speaking whale to CG animators talking about a particular technique. The result is that you feel like you're taking part in an intelligent and thorough discussion of the making of the movie, even as you can compare what they're talking about to the finished product. It might be the best commentary I've ever seen.

Along with the Behind the Scenes featurette and the general quality of Pixar movies, it just reaffirms something for me: If everyone put the same amount of passion and hard work, and had as much fun and investment, in making their movies as Pixar does, there would be no bad movies. Also, I've decided that I would like to work at Pixar when I grow up. Shame I have absolutely no skills that would be applicable to such a job, huh? ;)