Lego Movie

This is a far cry from most of what I have been reviewing lately but this flick was just too fun to pass up. Admittedly, I was going to skip on this one until I saw who was behind the story. If you have not seen CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, you have my encouragement to find it and see it now (like right now, this review can wait). It’s probably more epic than this movie and I am not joking when I say that. Anyway, with a surprising amount of humor, not really part of LEGO’s smaller efforts, this one not only comes across as brazenly entertaining for kids, but adults as well.

Centered around a construction worker the fate of LEGO kind hangs in the balance; if “The Special” can’t fulfill  the prophecy and overcome Lord Business and his extremely structured way of keeping the LEGO verse under his wing... This one is loaded with surprises. It would take a much longer review to cover it all, but the basic message (yes of course it has a message – it’s still a kids movie also) is that structure is good when creativity is thrown in. Too much structure or too much chaos end up in basically all the disaster you can imagine. We don’t just get a big picture “buy our blocks” commercial which I think a lot of people may have expected. How good is THE LEGO MOVIE? Well at the time of this review, it’s been crushing everything else that has come out for 3 straight weeks.

From Batman to Bad Cop I can’t say enough about what a fresh view of awesome this is. In fact everything…yes everything is awesome.

I give this movie a solid 7 out of 7. I honestly can’t think of one thing I would have changed about it. Even the soundtrack is great. 

Rating Definition : SPECTACULAR GENIUS THAT MAKES OTHER GENIUS’s THINK THEY ARE UN-CREATIVE, this is a movie that if you skip it will actually shorten your life span and make your skin dry out. Yeah, I am serious. These films end up on the scale of epic-ness that even giving it a 7 out of 7 seems like a small number. It should be more like an 8 out of 7 sending it straight into the arena of mathematical impossibilities!!!!!!

Southern Bricks

Southern Bricks is one of Australia’s newest LEGO User Groups, or LUGs was officially formed only three months ago, but on the first weekend of November they put on their first public show at Toy Corner in the suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. Around 2,000 people visited the store over the weekend of the 2nd and 3rd of November to view some of the truly epic creations from six different builders from across Adelaide, as well as kits new and old. South Australia has an active LEGO community, but hasn’t had a public face for quite some time. I spoke to Tim Burdon, one of the designers for Southern Bricks, and got the low down on some of the awesome builds on display.

The first thing to grab my attention as I came through the doors was the FJ Holden, a model that rang some rather distinct bells for me. Tim told me that the model is based on an original model built by LEGO for the world’s first LEGO store which opened in Sydney in 1984. Since the store closed in the early 90s, the model has been housed at the Australian National Motor Museum in Birdwood, South Australia, which is where I was remembering it from.

It was at the Museum that Tim took several photos of the original, which he then blew up and used to build his own version brick by brick, counting individual studs for spacing. The next step saw Tim reverse engineer the model into the LEGO Digital Designer program, giving him a record for any future builds. He had to separate it into three different files though, as brick count of approximately 5,500 pieces of LEGO crashed the program! The original version took approximately 3 months to design and build, whilst the version that was on display here took him around 3 solid days. 

The largest piece on display was the truly epic “A Day at the Dionysus” by Tim’s brother Michael Burdon, and was described to me as “a two-year labour of love and hate”. Named for the Greek God Dionysus, patron of the arts, the scene is built from over 50,000 pieces of LEGO and houses over 400 Minifigures, many recognisable from the Star Wars range as well as from multiple series of the collectible Minifigs.
It is Michael’s largest creation to date, and next January he will be taking it to Brickvention 2014 at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. This piece was great fun, with lots of funny little details. It also incorporated the Cuusoo Back to the Future DeLorean and a custom TARDIS for double the time travelling action.

 This castle is, believe it or not, a work in progress. 
The builder has been working on it over several years 
and plans to make it around twice its current size.

 Doctor Jones, meet Captain Solo.
 Captain Solo, Doctor Jones

 Also on display was the 3,152 piece Super Star Destroyer, which was packed up by Tim after the show by (and I hesitate to relive this experience) dropping it prow first onto the ground. Photos of that tragic event are up on Toy Corner’s Facebook page.

I for one had a great time at the show, and my son seemed to have fun too. He especially loved some of the train kits and custom builds.

 Southern Bricks have an active building group of between 15-20 people at the moment, but are hoping to grow as their events get bigger and bigger in 2014. The group will be hosting a LEGO vehicle-based event on the 4th and 5th of January 2014 at the National Motor Museum, with a small display of custom creations as well as a 'Come and Build' area for people to put their LEGO skills to the test. They’re also planning a major LEGO event for later on in 2014. Make sure you like their page on Facebook to stay up to date.