Feenie and Pixar: A Great Hit

My wonderful wife and I had a date night on Tuesday. Meeting downtown, we went to the Cactus Club restaurant on Burrard, and then to the movies. It was great fun and we need to do that more often.

This was my first time at Cactus Club since Rob Feenie became involved with the local chain, and we were very impressed. The service and ambience were good, which always makes everything else so much better. The menu was eclectic but not too long, mixing new surprises with basic favourites. I had the pepper steak, which was cooked to a perfect rare. My gal had the planked salmon, which she declared to be delightful.

One of the nice things was that everything was simply served. My steak came with mashed potatoes and asparagus spears; the salmon with small roast potatoes, carrots and asparagus. All very simple but all perfectly cooked. We will definitely return.

Note: we got there at 5:30pm and beat a huge rush by about ten minutes.

After dinner, we went up to the Scotia and watched “Up” in 3-D. What a delightful experience. Pixar is still batting 100% so far as I am concerned. The animation was perfect, of course, and the use of 3-D was brilliantly handled without being in-your-face. For once (thank God), the little kid was not smarter than the adult — he was just a kid. Excellent show and well worth the time.

All in all, a great date.

Wall-E

The other day we went to see Pixar’s new movie, “Wall-E”.   What a treat it was:  an interesting concept, well developed into a plot, and delivered in their ever-improving animation style.

Pixar’s ability to invest two-dimensional “cartoon” characters with believable life is extraordinary.  In this movie, there is an extended sequence where two robots Wall-E and Eva fall in love — and you can see it and believe it at least as well as watching the best live-action actors.

Technically dazzling and emotionally heart-warming, “Wall-E” joins the list of nine masterpieces in a row by Pixar — not many (if any) studios can boast of that.  I wonder what Walmart thinks of it?

In our location — and perhaps everywhere — “Wall-E” is preceded by a Pixar short called “Presto” about a magician’s troubles with his rabbit.  Don’t miss it — this five-minute wonder is worth the price of admission all by itself!