Mary and Max.

Mary Daisy Dinkle and Max Jerry Horovitz are two unlikely friends in the 2009 clay-animated black comedy called Mary and Max.

Mary and Max, directed by Adam Elliot, is a tale about two pen pals: Australian eight-year-old Mary and American forty-four-year-old Max.  Mary finds Max's number in a phone book at the post office and writes him a letter to ask where babies come from in America.  Mary's adult questions give overweight, anxiety ridden Max anxiety attacks every time he receives her letters.  Eventually, he needs to be institutionalized after one of her letters and when he stops writing Mary freaks out and pretends to forget about him.

This movie is incredible!  It is now one of my all-time favorites.  It really hit me.  I shed a lot of tears while watching and felt oddly empowered by the movie.  It's about being different and only having one other person in the world understand who you really are.  It's about overcoming the difficulties life has thrown at you and beating all the odds.  It's about friendship and love.  It's really about self-discovery and growing up.

The movie not only has an incredible story-line but great claymation and voice acting as well!  Mary is voiced by my all time favorite actress ever, Toni Collette.  Toni Collette has starred in some of my favorite programs ever like United States of Tara where she plays a mother with multiple personality disorder.  She's also fantastic in In Her Shoes, Little Miss Sunshine, Connie and Carla, Clockwatchers, and Muriel's Wedding just name my favorites.  She's AMAZING. I could go on and on.

Max is voiced by the talented and super cool Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Hoffman has been in everything from The Hunger Games to Along Came Polly to Charlie Wilson's War.  This guy does it all!  He is hilarious in comedies and great in his very serious roles.  I'll never be able to forget him in Along Came Polly as Ben Stiller's very strange friend who sharted at a party.  Also, I found this awesome picture of him playing basketball from the movie and ALWAYS thought he was saying "Letter A" and not "Let it rain."  Learn something new everyday!

I really could go on all day about Toni and Philip but this is about Mary and Max.  Apparently, according to the director, the movie is based off true events.  The character of Max is based off Elliot's own pen-pal in New York.  According to sources from Wiki, the movie took about 57 weeks to shoot and used 133 separate sets, 212 puppets, and 475 miniature props including a fully functioning Underwood typewriter which apparently took 9 weeks to design and build.

I really love the look and feel of a good claymation.  I've seen videos of people making claymation's and it takes a lot of hard work and time!  They set up the puppets then move them, take a picture, move a little, take a picture, and so on and so forth.  It's a long process but worth it in the end for how amazing it looks.

If you like claymation, Australia, Toni, Philip, weird storylines, and general awesomeness then check out this movie!  It really left a mark on me and I'm not sure why.  It's streaming right now on Netflix!  Here's the trailer. I couldn't find anything better than a trailer but at least you can hear how wonderful the music is in this movie.

Also, because I love Along Came Polly here's a clip of Sandy taking what is obviously his spotlight.  Just give him the freedom to rock out, guys!  Also, please note his outfit.  It's tight and makes him even funnier.  I never realized how much I love Philip Seymour Hoffman until this moment.

The Reef.

It's still Shark Week right?  Well, I decided another shark movie would be a good idea.  I came across The Reef last night while browsing Netflix and decided to give it a try.  It was a good decision because the movie was great!  I've seen it around on Netflix but thought it looked stupid; you know, just another dumb college kids giant shark film.  Luckily, it was none of those things.
 

I was happily surprised to see actual adults!  They weren't partying, naked, or drunk.  Already, within the first 10 minutes I was happy.  The movie is about four friends coming together in Australia to go on a boat when it capsizes!  The main dude decides the best option is for them to all swim back to an island they were at the day before.  Ten miles away.  In the open ocean.  In Australia.  Sounds like a horror movie to me!  The captain decides to stay behind on top of the capsized boat while the four friends swim their way to the island.

It was even before this point that I had predicted the order of which everyone would die.  I was almost correct!  I think it's fun to predict what's going to happen when watching movies or television shows.  It keeps me from getting bored and losing interest.

The Reef is an Australian horror film directed by Andrew Traucki and was released in 2010.  The Reef was Traucki's second film and his filmography includes all Australian horror.  Being an Australian film, I was unfamiliar with the cast but sometimes that can be a good thing.  Especially in horror, it is nice not to see familiar faces in movies because some big names are too well-known to see eaten by a shark.

Unlike 2-Headed Shark Attack, this movie is not hokey and is much more realistic.  It's a regular shark eating regular people.  They even used shots of real sharks which is super awesome and does not usually happen.  I guess because shark movies are often about giant sharks, two-headed sharks, dinosharks, or octosharks to name a few.  I mean, you can't really use real footage of that!  So kudos to the filmmakers for finally giving us a real shark movie.

The one thing that is silly about The Reef is that probably a shark won't eat people or follow you while you swim in the ocean.  The only reason sharks ever bite humans is because they're curious creatures and think we're something else.  In this movie, when the shark bites the first guy in half it comes back and eats the rest of him.  I'm pretty positive that would not actually happen.  Of course, if the movie were totally realistic then it wouldn't be very entertaining.  Poetic license is a very useful tool.

To celebrate this last day of Shark Week, the cool people's favorite week of the year, please turn on Netflix and stream this excellent shark movie.  Enjoy the movie trailer below, it was the only clip I could find!  Also, apparently this movie is based on some true events.  I have a feeling it was pretty loosely based.