hair change

Now I know what it feels like to be a Red Cap.

prickvixen had tried out a bottle of Special Effects 'Blood Red', but was dissatisfied with the end effect - it's a slightly varied red, sometimes a little magenta, sometimes a little orangey, depending on the light. Not the pure red she prefers. I borrowed the remaining portion of the bottle and used it. Not only did the stuff look just like blood on the gloves, I'd swear its scent has an occasional note of that coppery taste of blood.

It won't look blazingly red on me, because it's over the varying pale magenta/blue that my hair had been. I didn't give it an especially thorough application, mostly just worrying about covering up the places that had completely faded. Most of my hair did get touched with it, but I won't be surprised to find faded purple or blue quite visible here and there after the initial rinse-off. It should be interesting.

I have refrained from quoting the lyrics of a certain Rush song. People who have more than one or two of their albums probably know which one I mean.

movie

Finding Nemo was good. Lots better than I expected it to be from the first previews; characterizations that seemed like cliches in the trailers were more nuanced than one line like "Grab shell, dude!' would indicate.

Interesting notes around it:

• In the annoying deejayed muzak before the lights dimmed and the previews started, one piece of treacle was not advertised as being on a major label, but as available on cdbaby.com. It was still predigested pap, but it was cool to hear something less inherently megacorp in that context.
  
• 'Brother Bear' looks painfully sentimental. Having a soundtrack by Phil Collins will not help. The soundtrack of that trailer has the exact same effect on me as the soundtrack for the 'Spirit' trailer did: any desire I may have had to see the film is now destroyed, because I am afraid of being subjected to more music like that.
  
• Now that I actually work in animation, I don't eagerly keep up with what's coming out soon. I can't stand to read 'Animation Magazine' because it's rehashed press releases and interviews with executives. So I was surprised at the content of the little teaser trailer for Pixar's next flick: after four movies about toys and monsters and fish, they're going to finally dare to try their hand at one starring humans. Highly stylized and cartoony models, with highly realistic rendering. The audience laughed at it; we shall see if they can actually pull it off for a whole movie. I've said for a long time that this is the direction 3D animation should be going, rather than mindless aping of reality; we'll see if Pixar can make the average American agree with me.
  
• I just realized that there were no commercials before the previews. Lights dimmed, there were coming attractions, then a short, then a movie.
  
• Before the feature, they ran 'Knick Knack', which was the follow-up to 'Tin Toy'. A text card before it said something about 'Ten years before Toy Story, Pixar did this.' A girl sitting behind me said "I was two then!"; I felt rather old. Despite its simplicity, the short is still entertaining. And I noticed that even back then, Steve Jobs was somehow involved; he's listed in the 'Thanks to' screen of the credits. I wonder if they'll ever dig so far back as to show 'Andre and Wally B', one of Lasseter's very first cartoony-CG films. I think that one was done before Pixar split off of ILM's CG department, though, so the negotiations could be murder.