Favorite Pixar Movies

We went to see Toy Story 3 yesterday, after reviewing Toy Story and Toy Story 2 a week ago. So, all these films are fresh in my mind. Given that Pixar seems to have yet another outstanding film with broad appeal, I thought I’d put my list of favorite Pixar movies. These are my favorites, the films I’d most like to watch if you put a gun to my head and said watch one right now. These might not be the “best” films based on artistic merit but the ones I like the best.

  1. Toy Story 3
  2. Wall-E
  3. The Incredibles
  4. Toy Story 2
  5. Toy Story
  6. Up
  7. Cars
  8. Monsters Inc.
  9. A Bugs’s Life
  10. Finding Nemo
  11. Ratatouille

A couple notable things about the list. Yep, Toy Story 3. What a wonderful mix of humor and action and most of all heart. Perhaps the most tissue-worthy climax of any film since Marley & Me, and you didn’t have to kill a dog to get there either.  Obviously, I really love the Toy Story films based on their positions on the list. My favorite Toy Story character? Woody.

Some might be surprised to see the oft-ridiculed Cars so high on the list (especially over the Oscar winners Finding Nemo and Ratatouille). I really liked Cars, and not just because Frat Pack favorite Owen Wilson is the lead voice. I really love the Route 66 theme and did find the storyline to be just as touching as many of the other Pixar films.

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Vacation Scavenger Hunt

My parents pointed us to this article in the Mercury News that is both a fun guideline for a vacation as well as a contest if you can document doing or seeing all of these things:

1. Covered bridge

2. Church with visible bell

3. Sign that is intentionally or unintentionally funny

4. Black bear (not from the wild)

5. Lemonade stand

6. Water tower with writing on it

7. Festival celebrating food, vegetable or fruit

8. House that doesn’t have four sides

9. Mime

10. Someone feeding pigeons

11. Ice cream truck

12. Motel named for two people (i.e. Norma Dan Motel, Tenn.)

13. Obscure historical marker

14. Parked car with more than 10 bumper stickers? (Must be parked!)

15. Building painted purple

16. Blank billboard

17. Closed store with “We’ve moved” sign

18. Ferris wheel

19. Rainbow

20. Something unusual not on the list

Tie-breaker: How many participating teams do you think will find all 20 items?

Traveling overseas?

(You can sub out these for any three above; substitutions must be from a location outside of the United States or U.S. territories.)

1. Sign that includes foreign words and name of U.S. state

2. Windmill

3. Outdoor market selling food indigenous to that area

Consider that our upcoming vacation will take us north into Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Alberta I think we’ve got a great shot at a lot of these, including the “overseas” section in Canada.

We’re slated to travel all the way to Edmonton, so we’ve already have mapped our several “finds” for this list. The West Edmonton Mall has an amusement park with a Ferris wheel, for example. And we’re definitely stopping at Yellowstone Bear World for a little bear watching too.

As we check things off our list I’ll update this post with status updates. When we’re back from vacation we’ll have the full list of photos.