That part at the end, when the chip breaks and the guy just scoops the whole thing up with his fingers... that kills me.
You may have noticed that we at Ars Aromatica are not ones to scoff at obsessive attention to detail. Both perfection and truth to life require it. But perfection I am skeptical of, because it implies a frozen state with room for neither entropy nor growth. What is more marvelous is the imperfection of the familiar, but cast in ever-changing lights to both lift us out of the dreariness of existence and awaken anew in us a love for the humble details that usually escape our notice.
In contrast to the finesse of many animated works today, "Fresh Guacamole" is clumsy, substituting materials for other materials that don't resemble each other at all. And yet the conceit not only works, but breathes, for no matter how gorgeous the execution*, it cannot approach the texture that comes from embracing imperfection—indeed, lovingly recreating it.
*I consider this movie overrated for this exact reason. I do not dislike all CG movies, as I consider Ratatouille the rare film that exhibits both soul and astonishing polish in its execution. You, dear reader, may have different opinions.
Haha, the sound effect of the film totally makes me hungry for guacamole.
ReplyDeleteRatatouille is two of my favorite Pixar films (along with The Incredibles), I just love to watch it over and over and pick up the details (and I always find new ones!).
oh, such brilliance! I need to re-watch it. The dice threw me for a bit :)
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, the round baseball turning into a stack of angular die was enough to break my suspension of disbelief for a moment. The creator does this a lot: if you watch his other "food" video, "Western Spaghetti", you'll see that his substitutions are not always intuitive.
ReplyDeleteBut it's how he advances the idea that makes us accept, in the end, that the die really are chopped onions (some of them staying the same size, others getting smaller, just like onions would if you really chopped them up in that manner). He takes something that seems like it shouldn't work and changes our perception of it. Which seems like a pretty great artistic achievement, to me.
The director of this film has just done an advert for OXO stock cubes, currently on in the UK, where this is basically just regurgitated.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the OXO commercial too, and the onion-baseball does get reused. And the director used a similar idea in "Western Spaghetti", but that video doesn't seem so near in feeling this one as the OXO advert does, so you possibly have a point. I'd hazard that it's very likely that OXO saw this video and commissioned something along the same lines.
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