Tammy and I saw Pixar’s newest offering, “Cars”, on opening night. We really enjoy going to the Movie Tavern. They have pretty good food, served in the theater (Brilliant!) and it’s almost never crowded. Notice I said, “almost?”

We arrived thirty minutes early, which is about thirty minutes earlier than we usually show up for a show at the Movie Tavern. Much to our surprise, the was a line … a looong line … that reached all the way from the friendly ticket taker at the back of the lobby to just outside the front door. Fortunately we managed to get our usual seats (the two seats by themselves at the back of the theater). Whew. Still, I was concerned that the two thousand* movie goers under the age of 10 who shared the theater with us might disrupt my viewing pleasure. Turns out, it wasn’t too bad.

The previews were all for computer animated movies. ALL of them! How could this be? It seemed like just a few years ago, it was a remarkable feat to produce a full length CGI feature. It’s a brave new world … and I sound like a crotchety old man**. Hmmm.

One more, bit of boring background before we start the review. A few years ago, my uncle told me a remarkable story. Uncle Barney is a very successful auto mechanic back in Amarillo. His shop is located on what used to be “Old Route 66”. He had some unusual visitors one day. A bunch of Pixar producers pulled into the lot and invited him to lunch. (At this point in the story, my jaw unhinged.) They were doing “field research” on a new car movie and wanted to talk to him. When I saw the first previews for Cars and saw the rusty tow truck with the silly southern drawl, I thought, “Holy lug nuts! It’s Uncle Barney! They put him in the movie!” Not quite. Barney doesn’t have that much of an accent, nor is he as dumb as Larry the Cableguy acts, but still. It was really amazing.

Okay. Sorry. Let’s get the show on the road. (Pa-dum Tshhh!) I am a huge fan of Pixar, so I am hard pressed to do an unbiased review. Still, Cars was awesome! Every time Pixar releases a new movie, I am totally blown away (again, jaw unhinged) by the beauty and complexity of their CGI. I remember gaping at the wide shot of the airport in ToyStory2, the thousands of ants in BugsLife, and the depth and realism of the water in Nemo. In Cars, my mouth was gaped more than it was closed. It seemed like 90% of the movie contained graphic elements never dreamed of ten years ago. Forests, waterfalls, huge sunset vistas. It was all stunning. (Be sure to look for the dim reflections of the cars on the freshly laid asphalt.) Tammy reached over and closed my mouth at least once (and I’m not making that up).

As for the story, it is Pixar as usual: Great character development, rich plot, and a good message. Tammy felt that it “dragged” a little in places, but I didn’t notice. The humor was spot on, with plenty for kids and grown-ups alike. There was one double entendre, but it was so well masked that only a few of the folks in the audience really got it. (There’s a few of us gutter-minded people in every crowd, right?)

One of the really cool things about Cars is that they used real people for several roles. The real Richard Petty and even his wife have several lines. One of the ensemble cast (the Sheriff) was voiced by a guy famous for his books about historic Route 66.

Another unusual aspect of Cars was that the environment was completely non-human. They avoided any contrived explanations of how and why the cars talked and drove themselves by completely removing humanity from the world. This is a pretty bold idea but it came off flawlessly. Even with the humans factored out, though, they stayed as real as possible (okay, I know talking cars and reality are not best buddies. Hang with me.) The physics of the cars’ movements seemed to “work” in my mind. They weren’t rubbery toys. Even though they gestured with their tires and had eyes in their windshields, the bodies stayed nearly rigid which gave it a very believable feel.

I really tried to go into this show with an open mind, so as not to taint my review, but alas, it seems a forgone conclusion that I rate this movie highly. There is no doubt that I will add it to my Pixar collection and I can’t really find anything to detract. So, I’m giving Cars five out of five grins.

* Estimation based on the decibel level before the movie started.
** Sound like because, at times, I am.

War is hell. No doubt about that. When a war lasts over twenty years, it’s even worse. Such is the case with personal computing platforms. The road is strewn with the corpses of the fallen: IBM, Commodore, Tandy, even Atari. We are left with the “Big Three”, Macintosh, Windows, and Linux. For years I’ve lived in the Windows world, and peered into the other two from a distance, rarely reaching out to touch the grass greener. At my last job, I brushed closest to them. I managed the web servers with Red Hat Linux and our primary client was a school district running entirely on Macs.

In that torturous year (torturous for more reasons than OS platforms) I gained a pretty good understanding of the philosophy behind each of the Big Three. Now for the first time, I have formulated a metaphor which, I believe, best describes how these things “think”.

Imagine your computer is a car, a utilitarian piece of machinery who’s sole purpose is to get you from point A to point B. When you slide into the driver’s seat, you are confronted with the operating system. The OS, then is the system of communication between you, the driver, and the mechanics of the car.

Let’s start with the left most end of the spectrum, the Macintosh. When you climb into your “iCar”, the first thing you notice is how plush it is. Soft, comfortable seats; huge windshield giving you a fantastic view of the road; and the best car audio system on the planet. Sure, it’s a little pricey, but what a ride! Once you’ve taken it all in, you decide to take it for a spin, but what’s this? There is no steering wheel! There are no peddles. Instead you have a single, big, shiny, back-lit button. It say’s “GO”. You press the button and miraculously the iCar drives you to work. “Brilliant!” you marvel. You press the button again, and the iCar drives you home. You never even had to look at the road. Then you decide to go out for dinner. “I think I’ll try that new Tex-Mex place,” you say. You press “GO” and before you know it, you’re sitting in front of the world’s best (and most expensive) Italian restaurant. “Wait. No. I want to go the the new Tex-Mex place. Besides, Italian gives me gas!” You press “GO” and the iCar promptly drives you to a newer, less reliable Italian place. “Are you deaf?! I said, ‘Tex-Mex’!” Before you know it, your parked outside of Pizza Hut. “Curse you, iCar!” you shout, banging the “GO” button with all your might. The iCar then promptly locks its doors trapping you inside until, hours later, you manage to kick out the side window and walk home.

In the center of the spectrum is Windows. The Win-mobile is exactly what you have come to expect from a car. Steering wheel, accelerator, brake, etc. There’s a radio, but each station plays more commercials than songs. There’s a CD player, but it destroyed your favorite CD last month, so you’re afraid to put another CD in it. You get behind the wheel and drive to work, battling traffic the whole way, bruising your behind on numerous pot-holes (program errors), cursing the tailgaters (pop-up ads), and around every corner is another construction zone (security update). After a grueling commute, you grudgingly get back into the Win-mobile to drive to dinner. You arrive at the Tex-Mex place only to find there’s a two-hour wait to be seated, because everyone in town decided to come to the same place to eat. The food is great, but was it really worth all the trouble?

Finally, on the right end of the spectrum, we have Linux. To your surprise, the car is totally free! You just walk up to the dealer, get in “car” (Linux is not real concerned with catchy names. Who needs marketing when it’s free?), and drive away. However, “car” also has no doors, no windshield, and no seat belts. If you want those, you’ll need to buy the Red Hat “car”. You decide it’s worth it. Now you feel a little more comfortable behind the… umm. Where’s the steering wheel? Oh, well, that comes standard with Suse “car” (but Suse has no doors), but if you really think you need it, you can get the wheel for free and bolt it on yourself. You do have you’re own wrench set, right? You manage to survive your commute, though you had to stop two or three times and tighten the bolts on your steering wheel, since the wrench wasn’t really the right size. Now it’s time for dinner. Where is that Tex-Mex place? Voila! You’re “car” comes with a phone book (man page). You open the book, look up “Tex-Mex”. Instead of directions to the restaurant, you find the following instructions. “Put fajita meat in tortilla. (These can be downloaded for free). Frozen margarita is strongly recommended. The tequila is in the trunk. Once you’re drunk, you should avoid the cops. Just in case, there’s a gun in the glove box.”