New Imax: Legends of Flight

We love the Science Museum. Always have, always will.

Last night, we took advantage of our Science Museum membership to see the European premiere of the new Imax film, "Legends of Flight".

("Oh! Another premiere!!" Thing One said. I really have to stop this, as they're beginning to think it's normal.)

I was really looking forward to it. I thought it might be like my first-ever Imax film I saw in the late 1970s, "To Fly!" which was shown at the at the National Air & Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

"Legends of Flight" is predominately about the development of Boeing's new airplane, the 787. It also shows some other historic airplanes, such as the Constellation and the Harrier jet.

In some respects, it was like the best bits of "To Fly." There were several scenes of amazing cinematography, especially when the glider is flying over what appears to be Alaskan glaciers. They also used animation pretty well, showing the structure of a plane versus the physiology of a bird.

But the film also certainly marked a cinematic milestone: the use of Imax technology to show a business meeting. I wish I were kidding, but I'm not. They actually had several (not just one) Boeing (or should that be boring) meetings about the development of the 787. Is that really the best use of Imax technology? I think not.

The boys loved it, and both awarded it a thumbs-up. I might have given it a thumbs-up if there had been less meetings and more flying.

Yet again, I am either a good mother for taking them to something exciting, or a bad mother, for not getting them home until 10:30 p.m. on a school night. It's a toss up.

"Legends of Flight": if you'd like to see a business meeting through the magic of Imax, this is the film for you.

Pixar Exhibit: It's Incredible!

With just over a week before it closes, the boys and I headed out to the Pixar animation exhibit at the Science Museum. "It's Incredible!," Thing One said, with the pun probably unintended, but well done just the same.

Pixar, for those of you catching up with the rest of the class, is the animation studio responsible for "Toy Story", "A Bugs Life", "Monsters Inc.", "The Incredibles" and the soon-to-be-released "Cars." Our family's love for Pixar cannot be adequately described. To illustrate: when we recently painted the toy room in our house, we painted it not red, but "Incredibles red."

The exhibit had hundreds of pictures and models that Pixar animators made for the movies. I wasn't really sure that Thing One and Thing Two would like or appreciate it, but they did. They loved seeing the models and some of the pictures. We also loved the spot where we could watch all of the Pixar short movies (or "shorts," as they say in the business) and the final video montage where the pictures came to life, via computer animation.

The highlight, hands down, was the Toy Story zeotrope (pictured above). We loved it so much we went back to watch it four different times. This was worth the price of admission alone. Characters from Toy Story, including Buzz, Jessie, Wheezy the Penguin, the aliens and the toy soldiers, performed various stunts on the round sculpture as it spun around under strobe lighting. Buzz bounced on a Pixar ball. Jessie did rope tricks. The toy soldiers parachuted into the action. When the zeotrope stopped, you could see that each of the characters was in a slightly different position so that the 3-D animation could occur. Even the adults around me were enraptured, with several people laughing and gasping at how wonderful it was.

(The picture above is courtesy of the New York Times and is the zeotrope from the New York exhibit. Ours was slightly different, as we had Jessie, but no Woody. The picture also doesn't really do it justice. To really appreciate it, you have to see it in action.)

The Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted the exhibit first, at the beginning of the year, then it travelled transatlantically to London. You could tell that the exhibit started life in an art museum, because it certainly had an artistic-- rather than scientific-- feel to it. But the exhibit definitively proved that what Pixar does is art.

It truly was incredible.