He claims that this will improve movie making, as producers can find out exactly where his test audience loses interest.  But I’m pretty sure this isn’t a good use of a declining stockpile of medical isotopes.

Even with having to duck out every now and then, I thought the movie was good, as did my family.  It wasn’t a kids-only movie; there was some subtlety in it to keep adults entertained, as well as in-your-face animated action for the entire family.  However, if you’re not using the 3-D glasses, there’s nothing in it that I found especially required the big screen.  If it hadn’t been in the cheap theatre (and us on vacation with a little looseness in the budget), it would have been a rental.

The movie started with a short, Partly Cloudy.  Rumour has it that not all theatres showed the short, but if you get to see it, you’ll see how the stork gets the babies to deliver, and what happens when a misfit baby supplier gives one stork the less-than-lovable baby animals.

After that, we get into the movie proper.  Carl Fredrickson, an awkward child, dreams of being like his hero, explorer Charlse Muntz.  He meets the girl next door, Ellie, who shares his dream.  They get married and get old together, until Ellie dies with their dream unfulfilled.  Faced with a forced move to a retirement home, Carl instead ties a million helium balloons to his house to fly away to South America with stow-away scout Russel in tow.

I can’t say much more without spoiling the film, but I definitely recommend it to anyone with a family, or even those without.  Don’t forget to stay for the credits, where you’ll see pages from Carl and Ellie’s scrapbook, with each photo somehow related to the credit (for example, the Music Director’s page features Carl and Russel playing musical waterglasses).

It’s my first movie of the year, and we saw it in the cheap (non-3D) theatre, but I would definitely give it thumbs up.

OK, I wasn’t exactly expecting a standard vampire horror flick, after all its plot is listed as “A teenage girl falls in love with a vampire”.

Girl moves to small town, joins new school.  This family of kids that everyone stays away from happens to be absent from school every time it’s sunny out, which all the students notice but apparently not the administration staff because they still manage to graduate.

OK.  We go into the movie knowing that the kids are vampires.  But why do they avoid sunlight?  Because they melt or burn or otherwise die in a horrible fashion?

No.   They sparkle.  WTF? So now we have super-powerful creatures with no weaknesses whatsoever.  And what do they do with their infinite strength?

They hide.

Sorry, I’m not buying it.  It killed my disbelief, and thus my interest in the movie.