July 2015

Pixar's Film History - One Subjective Assessment

  • Posted on: 29 July 2015
  • By: Jay Oyster

Cars is severely underrated, no matter what your criteriaI don't write much here about movies. I'm not really sure why. I've been a devout fan of cinema for a long time, up to and including running the movie theater at my college while I was an undergrad. I took quite a few classes on film, including several with the respected film theorist and historian Louis Giannetti. I guess it's been because everyone and his brother has become an 'internet film reviewer' in the last two decades. So I usually stay out of it. But I'm still passionate about watching movies. And as my wife often somewhat bemusedly notes, while completly lacking any interest in this particular genre, I am a complete sucker for an animated film.

Chronological list of the Pixar films released over the past 20 years

Something's been picking at my brain recently. As I said, I love animation. Always have. From early Disney, through experimental shorts in the 70s and 80s, all the way up to the latest computer generated stuff. And I feel a bit out of sync with the world when it comes to the flicks of the greatest of all animation houses . . .Pixar.

I mean, yes, I agree that their films are, in general, among the best ever made in animation. They've released 15 feature films in 20 years. And their consistent level of quality has been astonishing. But when people talk about Pixar movies, they never seem to quite think the same ones that I do are truly the greats. It's disconcerting at times. I mean, why wouldn't everyone agree with my opinion. I'm just so . . . correct. Sigh. You are all very clearly confused.


First Woodwork in Six Months

  • Posted on: 20 July 2015
  • By: Jay Oyster

As you can tell from my posts here, I've not taken much time to woodwork the last few months. We were disappointed in March by our inability to get a mortgage. The banks changed the rules on us and will basically not allow us to buy a house this year. That disappointment and the fact that I'm stuck again in a temporary home shop caused me to, albeit temporarily, give up on the whole idea of working wood in my home.

Ikea four drawer cabinet converted into a stained-glass storage cabinetBut the last few weeks I've been hankerin' for some sawdust on my hands. Adriana gave me a concrete excuse this past Friday by asking that I 'repurpose' an old Ikea dresser. It seems fitting, no, to re-establish some woodworking skills by tearing apart and rebuilding a piece built by the custom woodworker's scourge of the North? I'll need to post a full project page, although it's not really much of a project. Still, it resulted in a custom piece of furniture that just exactly meets the needs of someone in our house.

My wife is a really talented worker in glass. She's made quite a few pieces in stained glass, and she's developed almost as large a collection of glass as I have collected wood. Currently, she's storing it, wrapped in paper, and piled in cardboard boxes. Needless to say, this makes it hard to know what she has and harder still to make design decisions. This kind of shelving is quite common in stained glass supply houses. It's not meant to be pretty, but functional, and she seems quite happy with its function.

Project page: Glass Cabinet Conversion from Ikea Chest of Drawers