MOVIE REVIEW: Need For Speed

Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a video game world? Need For Speed kind of answers that question.

In a video game world, you can drive recklessly and there are almost no consequences! 

Wheee!

You can totally borrow military helicopters from your friends! 

It's on loan, I swear!

You can host a well-known private street race annually that is highly illegal and law enforcement won't even bother to search your ISP! 

Somehow Michael Keaton still has Batman's money.

You can crash at high speeds and (almost) no one dies! 

That'll buff out, right?

Time in the Brig is supplemented by the fact that the soldier guarding your cell has an iPad and she'll totally let you borrow it! Everything you do is cool as long as it's in revenge!

You dirty rat!

Okay, so I went into this film with low expectations. It's a movie about a racing-themed video game, how much COULD I expect? Honestly, I walked out of the theatre having seen exactly the film I was anticipating to have seen. It's not like the filmmakers had pre-existing characters to build upon to make an interesting storyline. Besides, who goes to see a movie about fast cars and fiery crashes expecting an awesome story? No one. The dialog is predictable, and yes, I do believe the phrase "need for speed" is uttered at least once in the film (sorry Goose). And yes, they even manage to play the game in the movie ABOUT the game! It's so meta!

Making Mustangs cool again!

"But, are the cars cool?" you ask. Well, of course they're cool. Bugati, Mazerati, McClaren, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Konigseg... if you can name a multi-million dollar car, it's in there. Plus, there's an exact replica of the game-featured Mustang (although, I honestly don't think Mustangs are all that cool, even souped-up versions, sorry). And yes, they're shiny and they go fast. That's the whole point.

Shiny expensive cars go FAST!

Parents, your teenage boy is probably going to bug you to see this movie. Also, as soon as your sparkly-vampire-obsessed teenage girl finds out that Benjamin from Twilight is in there, and you get to see his butt, she'll probably bug you to go see it too. 

He's over there, on the right.

Heck, mom will probably enjoy looking into Aaron Paul's crystal blue eyes for almost two hours (and sorry, no, he's actually the only character in the film who doesn't say "the B-word" that his character on Breaking Bad made famous). 

Intense hot guy stare!

Yes, I know I'm totally jaded about a movie about fast cars, but that's just me. Lots of the bloggers I saw this with actually enjoyed it. There are some neat car tricks in there and obviously lots of metallic eye candy. Just, don't go in expecting Ocsar-worthy performances and you'll be good to go.

Need For Speed is rated PG-13 and opens in theatres nationwide TODAY! Grab your gamer geek or gear-head friends and go check it out if you like fast cars and/or good looking people. It's all in there. 

*All images in this post are courtesy of and copyright DreamWorks Pictures.*

P.S. Disney totally paid for our concessions to see the movie. I got an ICEE as big as my head, no joke. And it was awesome. So, thanks Disney for the ginormous frozen beverage! 

Image thanks to Meredith of SuburbanCouponMom.com!

Disclosure: I was provided a free screening of this film for review purposes. Opinions are entirely those of TV Mom and TheTVMom.com. Please see my Disclosure tab for more information.

BEHIND THE SCENES with Frozen's Recording Studio!

More about my trip to L.A. last month! WOO! (When can I go back? Ohio weather is schizophrenic this week! I want palm trees again! Wahh!)

Today I'm going to share my experience in the Frozen Recording Studio with Audio Mixer Gabe Guy!

From my Instagram @TheTVMom

Yes, this was the only person who worked on the film who I had enough sense to ask for a picture with during the whole trip. He obviously happily obliged. (Side note, is EVERYONE who works at Disney good looking like this? I swear I didn't meet someone who wasn't model-level-decent looking while there! I'm thinking I don't have a chance of ever seeking employment there if that's the case! HA!)

Gabe Guy giving his presentation

This was my bread and butter, being that in high school and college, I was a huge sound geek. I did all the sound design and mixing for all our high school productions and events. In college, I was actually an Assistant Producer for a local morning radio show. This is my jam. Also... now you know why during the Oscars, my Twitter account was filled with me whining about sound issues. It's a thing with me. Seeing the huge mixing board really brought back some memories for me!

After we learned a little bit about how voiceover recording works, we were each invited into the booth to do our own recording of a snippet of Olaf's performance. Our group through was the first of the day, and no one wanted to be "that person" who volunteered to go first... so Matt Forbeck (of GeekDad.com, who kindly keeps giving me shout-outs, so hi Matt!) and I took the dive and volunteered as tributes to step up to the mic.

My voiceover buddy Matt Forbeck of GeekDad.com

When you step into the studio, you're greeted with a mic with a breath screen and a monitor displaying your characters and your lines. The lines are synched to the characters, and you're given a convenient  countdown to the cue when you begin to speak. Our experience was a little different than that of the actors, because we had the voices of the other characters already recorded for us. Most of the actors either recorded on their own or with some of their other castmates.

On the other side of the glass

By the way, the breath screen does very little once you put the headphones on. You seriously can hear every breath you take when you put on your headphones thanks to the super sensitive recording equipment. The screen just prevents those breaths from being recorded as fuzz over the actual speaking. I could hear my heart beating too. Being the first to step up to the mic is nerve wrecking!

Image courtesy Matt Forbeck. Remind me to stand up straight!

We were given the choice of recording a few lines of Olaf introducing himself to Anna and Kristoff or the opening lines to "In Summer". Being first to the mic, I did NOT want to subject a whole bunch of people to my caterwauling, so I chose Olaf's introduction. "I like warm hugs!"  Unfortunately, our videos of Olaf with our voices were delayed, so you'll just have to use your imagination for that part right now. My friend Meredith at SuburbanCouponMom.com got to do it when she went last fall for the premiere, so click the link to hear and see her talents!

For fun, I whipped up this little slideshow of some of my other blogger buddies doing their voiceover recordings (all images courtesy Disney) because the photographer was with a different group than mine for the morning, and of course I set it to "In Summer" for effect (music and lyrics copyright Disney). I know I am right there with Olaf wishing for summer weather, only I won't melt, I'll thaw.

Frozen Recording Session 2014 by Slidely Slideshow

Disclosure: I received a trip to Los Angeles in exchange for my coverage of the Frozen Blu-ray release. Please see my Disclosure tab for more information.

Original TMNT Cast Reunion on Nick March 14th!!!

HOLY COW!!! If you're an '80s kid like me, this is HUGE NEWS. The original voice cast from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series are reuniting this weekend for an hour long special on Nick! Friday, March 14th at 7pm Eastern/Pacific, tune in to see "Wormquake!", where Leo must decide whether or not to ask for Splinter's help when facing Shredder's newest assassin and Donny and Casey have to set aside their differences to battle Kraang.

Original TMNT - Image courtesy Nickelodeon.

From the press release: Viewers can prove their Turtle fandom online in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Wormquake Play Along,” a play along experience where fans will get a random set of 12 tiles – each one being a cut-out from a scene in the series. Some tiles will be from the episode “Wormquake!,” while others are not. As players watch the episode to see if there is something that is in their grid, they can tap it to toss a ninja star on it. At the end of the episode “Wormquake!,” players will get a Turtle fan rating of 1-5 shells based on how many tiles they spotted correctly. Kids who get a 5-shell rating get shown a printable Turtle fan certificate.

Check out an exclusive SNEAK PEEK of the Turtles episode below!

TMNT “Wormquake!” Clip from Jessica Wilson on Vimeo.
Ahhh! Who is as excited as I am??? (Side note: the original turtles SO were not dorks! Low blow, new turtles!) The weekend lineup continues on Saturday, March 15th at 10:30am E/P with brand new episodes of breakout hits Sanjay and Craig and Breadwinners.

Behind the Scenes with FROZEN Animation Rigging

Time for another episode of "What the Heck TV Mom Was Doing in L.A. Last Month" and more coverage of Disney's Oscar winning animated film, Frozen! This time, we head to the Animation Rigging Lab under Animation TD Supervisor Greg Smith.

Welcome to Disney Animation Studios Rigging Lab!

First we sat down and were treated to a neat presentation about the way the CG animation worked and how the team for Frozen had some challenges that they actually created new software to overcome. For instance, Elsa's hair, and to a lesser extent Anna's, was rigged with individual clumps of hairs, totalling more than 400,000 individual hairs--which is about four times what a normal human being has on their heads and at least double what Rapunzel had in Tangled! This gave the animators a chance to actually "style" the characters' hair in much a similar manner as real hair. And speaking of hair, Olaf too had some "hair" issues that the animators had to deal with... he only had sticks for hair remember, but they had to be bouncy and full of life. You'll find out more about that by watching the video below (which, I promise, is only around seven minutes long).

Presentation on Anna's clothing from patterns!

Other obstacles included clothing--each female character wears full undergarments and petticoats, and they're all animated separately based on the type of fabric they are supposedly made from! Since fabric moves differently based on what type it is, that posed yet another challenge for the animators, which they touch on in the video below.

An animation rig! Dual screens, yo.

Being the geek that I am, when given the opportunity, I asked what operating systems they used for their various animation programs. Our Olaf hands-on demonstration (at the end of the video you can see a minute of my "animation" work!) was given to us on PC, and they used a Mac for their presentation (as well as I noticed on our tour that they were omnipresent on desks throughout the department)... and they responded just as I thought they might... Linux! He couldn't remember what breed of Linux system they used, but it was Linux-based. To those of you whose eyes glazed over or skipped this last paragraph entirely, I apologize, but I thought it was super interesting. It's why I asked... and immediately texted TV Dad to let him know, being that he's a Linux guy.

You can see in the picture above just how many different controls there were to move Olaf around, and how detailed his face animation can get. It was fascinating and I likely could have spent far longer in that room than anyone would have been comfortable with being that I'm not a Disney employee... but I digress.

So, here's the moment you've all been waiting for... the VIDEO! It's super short, and of course I didn't think to start taping until after the comment about Elsa's hair, but there is lots of interesting information to be gleaned from a mere seven minutes! Again, sorry for the video quality (iPad!), and your sound needs to be all the way up to hear it, but since we were in a smaller room, it's more clear than the Director/Producer interview video. Enjoy!




Finally, a funny story! So, as we were walking out after our session, one of the other bloggers asked for a photo of the three guys who gave the presentation. They giggled and asked if she needed them to pose a certain way, and she asked them to stand nicely or something, which they gladly obliged. I, being the not-too-swift-on-the-uptake gal that I am, also tried to grab them for a photo (one walked away), and jokingly, I told the two guys who remained they didn't have to pose any particular way for me. So, this is what I got:

This is why you should ALWAYS have them pose!

Yep. One smiled like a goof (what computer guy ISN'T a goof?) and one hid from me entirely. I couldn't help but crack up and told them that it was absolutely perfect for my needs. And it is. So, thank you awesome computer animator guys for indulging the silly side of my blog!

Stay tuned for more Behind the Scenes looks at Frozen here at TheTVMom.com, including (hopefully!) video of ME voicing Olaf in the recording studio! Plus, continuing coverage of my L.A. trip: The Pirate Fairy, Saving Mr. Banks, Disney Studios Lot, and the Animation Research Library and Archives!



Disclosure: I received a trip to LA in exchange for my unbiased coverage of the Frozen Blu-ray release. Please see my Disclosure tab for more information.

Q&A With Directors and Producer of FROZEN!

By now you've already heard about the Oscar wins for Frozen. And, if you're like me, you know the words to "Let It Go" by heart, and maybe you even sing them in the shower..... no? Just me? Surrrrre. Wink wink.

Image courtesy Disney.

During my trip to LA last month, one of the things we were fortunate enough to experience during our tour of Disney Animation Studios was an amazing roundtable session with Frozen's Directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee and Producer Peter Del Vecho. We were given the opportunity to ask them questions about Frozen and their experiences during the making of the film.

Image courtesy Disney. Do you see me setting up my TARDIS iPad to film?

Image courtesy Disney. Peter, Jennifer, and Chris.

Some of my fellow bloggers asked some great questions, like what got the movie green-lit? Were there any favorite scenes cut from the film? Did anyone get to go to Norway for research? Was it always a musical? Why didn't Kristoff get a backstory? Is there any chance of seeing Kristoff's story? Why does Oaken have an accent? My question, which comes at 10:26 in the video below, was "why was it not 'The Snow Queen', why the shift to 'Frozen'?" Also, does Chris Buck perhaps give us confirmation of Frozen on Broadway???

From my point of view on the couch!

It's a long video (nearly twenty minutes), but if you're a fan of the film, I highly suggest listening to the whole interview. Sorry about the sound quality, an iPad doesn't make for great film equipment! But, if you turn your speakers up all the way, you should be able to hear everyone pretty clearly. They are such storytellers, and their talent shines through in their thoughtful answers to our questions.




(I also apologize for the "Vertical Video Syndrome", which I attempted to fix a little bit with the title across the bottom.) 
This was an incredible, life-changing opportunity, and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it! It was definitely very cool sitting at home with one of my best friends and getting to shout "I totally got to meet those people!" as these three accepted their Oscar. Once again, a huge congratulations to all my new friends at Disney Animation Studios on their phenomenal recognition! Stay tuned for more coverage of the Frozen Blu-ray, DVD, and On-Demand Release, coming everywhere March 18th! Or, if you just can't wait, you can download it now in Digital HD!
More coverage of the trip from fellow bloggers:

• Geek Mom
• Moscato Mom
• Adventures By Daddy
• Nicki's Random Musings
• Geek Dad
• Susan's Disney Family
• Our Kids Mom
• Sassy Mama in LA
• The Rock Father
• Mom's Review4U
• Mama Noticas (Spanish)
• Akron Ohio Moms
• Mama Latina Tips
• Sippy Cup Mom
• What U Talking 'Bout Willis
• MiscFinds4U
• Daily Leisure
• DAD - Dad All Day

Disclosure: I received a trip to Los Angeles in exchange for promotion of the home release of Frozen. For more information, please see my Disclosure tab.