Who would’ve thought tap-dancing penguins would be so entertaining?  This is the most imaginative, clever, and energetic family movies of the year - better than Cars, and more subtle and memorable than Over the Hedge.

A few of the things I like about this movie:

• The music is inventive and catchy, mixing together Elvis, Stevie Wonder, cheesy 80s, Prince, soul, and hip-hop. This is a great way to expose children to musical influences beyond pop culture ringtones or Top 40 commercial soundtracks.
• The tap dance routines for Mumble choreographed by world-renowned Savion Glover, and the animators manage to capture the energy of his live performances within the visual of a dancing penguin.  The sound of tapping feet filled the theater as kids tried to move along to the onscreen dance routines - an excellent way to get kids interested in tap and organized dancing.

• Although all the penguins and other birds are accurately depicted, the voices and subtle facial expressions distinguish each one as a unique character.  The Elvis-inspired Memphis is different than Mumbles or his friends, and even the five “Latin” birds appear distinct from one another.  Plus, any voice cast that includes talent as varied as Hugh Jackman, Fat Joe, and Elijah Wood can’t be bad.
• The dialogue is well written, and funny without resorting to cheap jokes or pratfalls.  Also, the young penguins are cute without getting annoying - they’re cute because baby penguins ARE cute, but they don’t acknowledge their own cuteness.
• The camera moves to keep the film interesting.  Whether the camera is following Mumbles and friends surfing down an avalanche or twirling around Mumbles as he breaks into a dance routine, the director knows how to hold the viewer’s interest.

• This is a gorgeous looking film, from the numerous shots of arctic landscape to the underwater ballet of penguins hunting for fish.  Made me wish I’d seen the film in IMAX to see the detail in some of the scenes.
• This is a (secretly) educational movie.  You get to see the food chain, what happens when the food chain is disturbed (i.e. when the fish are removed), how human garbage affects the wildlife (Lovelace’s “talisman”), and the various types of penguins, skuas, sea lions, and other wildlife that exists in the arctic.  As informational as March of the Penguins, but WAY more interesting for kids.  The ending takes a pretty idealized view of the United Nations, but I thought it was a great way to educate kids on the effects of arctic fishing without demonizing the humans. 
• There’s a nice moral to this movie, but it doesn’t bang you over the head with it.  In the end the hero triumphs not by tricking the humans or fighting a rival, but by finding a way to communicate with others and thus “appeal to their better nature.”

Overall this is a great movie - educational, funny, visually interesting, and inventive. Highly recommended for movie fans of all ages!

 A few mini-posts on Turkey Day.

• The excellent Chris Glass linked to a demonstration of how to set up a “Lightbox,” which allows you to take quality photos of any object.  Could be useful for taking photos of things you’re going to post to eBay.
• Metafilter links to Don Norman’s defense of Powerpoint, refuting Edward Tufte’s argument that Powerpoint is evil.  I side more with Don Norman’s view in that Powerpoint is a tool; bad talks are the problem.
• Martin Klasch links to a sequence of all the James Bond opening sequences, including the excellent Casino Royale.  This truly seems to be the future of “television” - no commercials during interesting bursts of content tailored to whatever the user wants to see.
• Ottobib generates pre-formatted bibliography entries based on any ISBN.  Easier than entering information via StyleEase, and WAY cheaper than EndNote.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Drupal has a wonderful “code snippet” at http://drupal.org/node/53089 that lets you organize your categories by vocabulary. I’m implemented it on my online portfolio and love the way people can browse between related projects.

I’m really liking Drupal. It started as a way for me to organize my portfolio, but now I’d like to convert my whole site (including this Wordpress blog) over.  Best to convert things now, before I get so many posts on Wordpress that the conversion becomes a big project.

Next big step: picking a theme.  Foundation seems to be the easiest to set up and modify, although it requires the most work to design.  Still, I think a somewhat original design helps sell my design skills more than a prebuilt theme.

For now, I’m going to focus on the content of the site - at this point, having actual content that explains my projects is more important than worrying about the style.  The content can always be styled later.

Whoa. 

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30649?its_the_ultra_webtacular_spiderman_3_trailer