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Post by Apollo Chungus on Jul 2, 2022 8:47:10 GMT -5
windfisch Oh cool! I'm happy my write-up got you to watch The Bad Guys, and that you enjoyed it well enough. In regards to the film's target audience being kids, I don't think that would or should have much impact on the decision to rely on the same ol' storytelling beats you see in plenty of mainstream American cartoon movies. The kids aren't the ones telling these stories, after all. If anything, I think that more mainstream cartoon films aimed at kids should be trying to tell more varied stories, so that those kids get to experience all kinds of ideas or perspectives from an early age. Don't stick to the standardized beats and visual styles; go wild, and do things that both interest you specifically and bring something new to the table. The Bad Guys does do that from a visual standpoint, I just wish it had been more risk-taking or unusual from a narrative perspective too. Speaking of unusual films, I watched an animated film yesterday. The Three Caballeros (1944, dir. Norman Ferguson (supervising), Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts, and Harold Young) is the second of a pair of Disney anthology films made during the 1940s as part of the Good Neighbour policy by the US to improve relations with Latin America. This and Saludos Amigos focus heavily on stories and musicians from Latin American countries, but this one I'd been itching to watch for some time. I used to have it on video as a kid but I couldn't remember what I thought of it, and I was really curious after having seen the final ten minutes recently and being amazed at how surreal it gets. That, and various friends from the World Animation Discord had often sang its praises. So it starts normally enough, with Donald Duck receiving presents from his cousins in Latin America. It kicks off with a documentary about the birds, featuring a bunch of self-contained shorts that lean mainly into cute but amusing comedy (I quite dug the bad puns and cozy pace of "The Cold Blooded Penguin", narrated by good old Sterling Holloway). But then José Carioca enters the film, followed by Panchito Pistoles a good while later, and things start getting very weird. The film is mainly known for its scenes mixing live-action with animation, as Donald tries to get his horn on with various girls, but there's a real sense of experimentation from this point in the film both tonally and visually. The scene set in Baía, accompanied by a number adapted from "Na Baixa do Sapateiro", is a mood piece depicting backgrounds coated in deep pinks and oranges with very little animation. The storybook segment discussing Las Posadas is a quiet, gentle tale that acts as a great change of pace between the upbeat live-action scenes and the absolutely frantic antics once Panchito shows up. Then the final scenes of the film just delve into pure abstraction and visual expression, in a way that I'd never expected to see from Disney. I was honestly stunned for words when I first saw this finale some months ago, I might've even applauded it by the end. It's such an idiosyncratic film, with each part going off into its own sense of style, and it somehow comes together to create something so unique I'm in awe of it. There's nothing else like it from Disney, as a form of pure creative expression, and I can't recommend it enough.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Jul 11, 2022 4:15:18 GMT -5
Speaking of unusual films, I watched an animated film yesterday. The Three Caballeros (1944, dir. Norman Ferguson (supervising), Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts, and Harold Young) is the second of a pair of Disney anthology films made during the 1940s as part of the Good Neighbour policy by the US to improve relations with Latin America. This and Saludos Amigos focus heavily on stories and musicians from Latin American countries, but this one I'd been itching to watch for some time. I used to have it on video as a kid but I couldn't remember what I thought of it, and I was really curious after having seen the final ten minutes recently and being amazed at how surreal it gets. That, and various friends from the World Animation Discord had often sang its praises. So it starts normally enough, with Donald Duck receiving presents from his cousins in Latin America. It kicks off with a documentary about the birds, featuring a bunch of self-contained shorts that lean mainly into cute but amusing comedy (I quite dug the bad puns and cozy pace of "The Cold Blooded Penguin", narrated by good old Sterling Holloway). But then José Carioca enters the film, followed by Panchito Pistoles a good while later, and things start getting very weird. The film is mainly known for its scenes mixing live-action with animation, as Donald tries to get his horn on with various girls, but there's a real sense of experimentation from this point in the film both tonally and visually. The scene set in Baía, accompanied by a number adapted from "Na Baixa do Sapateiro", is a mood piece depicting backgrounds coated in deep pinks and oranges with very little animation. The storybook segment discussing Las Posadas is a quiet, gentle tale that acts as a great change of pace between the upbeat live-action scenes and the absolutely frantic antics once Panchito shows up. Then the final scenes of the film just delve into pure abstraction and visual expression, in a way that I'd never expected to see from Disney. I was honestly stunned for words when I first saw this finale some months ago, I might've even applauded it by the end. It's such an idiosyncratic film, with each part going off into its own sense of style, and it somehow comes together to create something so unique I'm in awe of it. There's nothing else like it from Disney, as a form of pure creative expression, and I can't recommend it enough. I watched that one a year or two ago as well. I've been slowly getting through all the Disney animated films in order of release date, and it's been kind of a drag getting through the 40's (I watched Cinderella last month - the first one after a string of package films in the 40's). This one's definitely the high point of all those package films. Donald Duck flying after all those live-action girls on the beach was definitely funny. As for kids' movies being primarily made for kids...I thought about this recently when I rewatched Cars. I've been going through the Pixar films randomly the past year or so, and this one really sticks out like a sore thumb compared to what came before (and the couple right after). A lot of the jokes are very low-effort, the writing is pretty bad at times, and the whole climax seems incredibly rushed. It must've been entertaining for kids since it became so popular, but it doesn't have the same attention to detail as the other Pixar movies of the time (aside from graphically of course, but even then it didn't impress me too much for 2006). There's a lot of jokes that are just either very childish, or so tired that only a kid would laugh at it. Normally Pixar movies are really good at building some kind of believable world based around whatever theme the movie has, but even that's a bit half-baked here. On the one hand it's not necessarily bad if something sets out the be entertaining for children and succeeds in that I suppose, but at the same time I don't see why you wouldn't just strive to make it entertaining for older audiences as well. There's no real reason to limit yourself there except out of laziness (it'd take less effort to impress or write jokes for children I guess), or a lack of passion. I think even as a kid you can tell, and the pieces of media that are enjoyable to adults as well will always be more fun to revisit and just feel more passionate. Even back when I watched Cars in 2006 as a kid I could tell it wasn't as good as the Pixar movies that came before. Even at a young age I could tell The Incredibles was much more 'clever' I guess. Not that I think they set out to make a kids-only movie with Cars, I just think they failed at living up to their high standards at the time. Something like Ice Age or Despicable Me are more movies that I don't think even really try to entertain adults all too much.
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Post by dsparil on Jul 11, 2022 10:19:17 GMT -5
The rumor with Cars is that Pixar deliberately didn't put a lot of effort into it. Steve Jobs, formerly the sole owner of Pixar before it went public but still chairman and ~50% owner, had a lot of issues with Disney's then CEO Michael Eisner. Disney hadn't been completely fair and above board in their dealings with Pixar, and the company was planning on moving away from Disney after Cars. Eisner ended up being forced out of Disney after 20 years as CEO a little before Cars came out, and the new CEO, Bob Iger, made it a priority to fix relations with Pixar and ended up being it. Had things still gone south with Disney, Ratatouille would have still been distributed by Disney but with them taking a small cut so Pixar did try there. I find it a slightly believable rumor, but Cars had such a long development period that there's a lot of holes in that idea.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Jul 11, 2022 17:02:31 GMT -5
That's an interesting rumor, I wasn't aware of that one. I know the inception of Cars goes as far back as 1998 apparentely, and it seems there was some genuine passion for cars (the vehicles, not the movie) from those working on it, so that kind of goes against that rumor. At the same time, there was also a falling out between Lasseter and Jorgen Klubien, so who knows how their beef contributed to the film's quality. Considering how much worse it is than other Pixar movies from the time it's not entirely unbelievable, but that also just might mean people are looking for an explanation as to why it is.
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Post by spanky on Jul 12, 2022 9:15:28 GMT -5
Can confirm kids love Cars. My 4 year old adores all of them, even the goofy shorts. My take on it is that some animated movies are just exclusively for children and that's fine.
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Post by windfisch on Jul 12, 2022 13:22:09 GMT -5
I must admit that I liked Cars just well enough. It's a decent movie, albeit one that feels very by the numbers, drawing inspiration from Doc Hollywood (not exactly groundbreaking material either) and probably that movie where Tom Cruise drives around in ovals really fast, which I never felt like watching. In fact, I find few things as boring as the mere thought of watching Nascar racing. So while I cannot empathize with the movie's giant car-boner in the slightest (Would you please cover your children's eyes and ears, spanky ?!), what saves it for me is that i find it kinda charming in how earnest and old fashioned it feels (at least when it's not super silly). That and the pretty landscapes.
But otherwise I agree, it's pretty far from Pixar's strongest efforts.
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Post by spanky on Jul 12, 2022 13:35:16 GMT -5
windfischHey now, I am from Indianapolis, we live for auto racing around here...though maybe not NASCAR so much You also have a point about the movie's earnestness - it has an unironic love for the open road, small towns and cheesy pop country music. I wouldn't consider myself a gigantic fan of the movie either - it's an excuse to sell toys* but the Americana stuff actually tracks with me nowadays. *this really shouldn't be a criticism considering that most of my beloved childhood cartoons were also toy commercials.
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Post by windfisch on Jul 12, 2022 17:50:32 GMT -5
windfisch Hey now, I am from Indianapolis, we live for auto racing around here...though maybe not NASCAR so much You also have a point about the movie's earnestness - it has an unironic love for the open road, small towns and cheesy pop country music. I wouldn't consider myself a gigantic fan of the movie either - it's an excuse to sell toys* but the Americana stuff actually tracks with me nowadays. *this really shouldn't be a criticism considering that most of my beloved childhood cartoons were also toy commercials. Indy five-thous...illion - Isn't that just Formula 1 for the globally challenged? (For the record: I find F1 *slightly* more interesting than NASCAR, but barely so.)
Also: You managed to find appropriate words not in my active vocabulary: "Americana" - sounds about right to my good old Euopean ears. And I really wasn't kidding about those landscapes - without them the movie wouldn't work for me.
That said, I reject your cynicism towards childhood cartoons. But maybe that's because back in my day shows and movies had actual meaning. Just imagine Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Batman (89) and Robin (97) being made to sell us merchandise? Haha! Ridiculous. Unthinkable as it may seem today, the 80s and 90s were a period of moral integrity. edit: also purity and enlightenment.
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Post by spanky on Jul 12, 2022 19:08:52 GMT -5
windfisch Globally challenged?? Globally challenged?? It's only the biggest single day sporting event in the entire world with over half the drivers in the 2022 race being from outside the USA! I think my cynicism towards 80s cartoons is tied to my childhood trauma of my mother selling a gigantic box of my M.A.S.K. toys at a garage sale for 5 dollars...
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Post by windfisch on Jul 12, 2022 19:51:11 GMT -5
windfisch Globally challenged?? Globally challenged?? It's only the biggest single day sporting event in the entire world with over half the drivers in the 2022 race being from outside the USA! I think my cynicism towards 80s cartoons is tied to my childhood trauma of my mother selling a gigantic box of my M.A.S.K. toys at a garage sale for 5 dollars... Okay, okay, I take it all back. I was under the assumption it was basically just F1 for the US only. Shows how little I know.
There used to be a time when I was crazy about the M.A.S.K. series, watching it regularly after school at a friends place. That said, it's not a show I had thought of often since.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Jul 13, 2022 6:49:28 GMT -5
Watched a couple of films this past week, and they were very cool in completely different ways.
Kelly's Heroes (1970, dir. Brian G. Hutton) is a film I've only ever seen the back half of, but it's such a charismatic back half that I decided to watch the entire thing with my folks the other day. A group of US soldiers that gets all the hard work and none of the publicity during the Normandy Invasion of WWII decide to sneak past enemy lines and rob a bank carrying millions in gold bars. The movie is ostensibly a comedy, but what's remarkable is that you could watch it as a straightforward action flick and it's just as compelling to watch. Scenes such as the group slowly trudging over a minefield or infiltrating the town where the bank is housed are excellently tense and deliberate. This lets them contrast effortlessly against the more boisterous scenes of the characters' banter or the tanks (led by Donald Sutherland playing what can only be described as a tank driving hippie) charging into a railway station while blasting Hawaiian music.
The lack of music plays into this notably, with only a handful of scenes getting a tense underscore to punctuate the rising tension of the moment. It gives a deadpan energy to the more comedic scenes and a weight to the more dramatic scenes, not overegging either with music that would influence how the viewer interprets those moments in a way that might damage the overall work. It's a film I can only best describe as charismatic, playing out its ideas with a charming degree of self-confidence that results in something so compellingly made. I'd highly recommend giving it a watch if you're able to do so.
The New Gulliver (1935, dir. Aleksandr Ptushko) is a retelling of Gulliver's Travels that combines a live-action actor playing Gulliver with stop-motion puppets for the Lilliputians. I've not read the original novel (my only experience is watching the Fleischer movie from 1939 and another live-action/animated adaptation that I can only barely recall), but the plot soon turns to a workers' revolution, with Gulliver at their side when he sees the royal class' cruel oppression. It's framed through a boy in a scout group, dreaming that he is Gulliver (the main character from his favourite book) and unconsciously inserting his communist ideals into the fabric of the story, and I like that framing despite it resulting in the viewer possibly thinking "of course this was a Russian film during the 1930s".
What's particularly notable is how spectacular the character animation is. The antagonists showcase a variety of deeply expressive characters, both in their skittishly energetic body language and their goofy caricatured facial animations. It's amazing how detailed the faces are, using lots of unique poses to match the dialogue in exaggerated ways. The scenes where they're the sole focus are a riot (the introduction of the king and the debate in the council chambers is my favourite).
By contrast, the workers aren't characterized to nearly the same degree, with them all sharing the same look: muscular body type, almost bronzed in the way they're rendered, with no identifying facial features. That does sound rather boring compared to the other characters, but I think that perhaps there's a point to it. Maybe the workers all looking the same is to represent them through a symbol - the proud ideal of the worker who must rise up - rather than something meant to be taken literally. Their lack of expressions and individuality could be seen as a kind of stylistic oppression, that they're not allowed to have a unique identities like the ruling class can (in which every character is presented with their own look).
It's rather interesting, and I might try to write something about it for the cartoon blog I've mentioned once or twice, even just as a way of spotlighting a really cool film. Things take a while to get going with a long live-action introduction, and the soundscape can sometimes get grating when it's utilizing both chipper music and high-pitched voices for the Lilliputians, but it's a solid movie. The scenes where it mixes live-action elements with the animated models are very cleverly done, sometimes even using puppets moving in real time to keep up the illusion, and are a treat to watch. This is another one I'd happily suggest watching, and it can be easily done thanks to the magic of Youtube:
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Post by Woody Alien on Jul 20, 2022 8:40:58 GMT -5
Watched on Netflix Robert Zemeckis' Welcome to Marwen, which was a huge flop in theaters and not only because it was smack dab in the middle of Zemeckis' descending parable, before the horrible The Witches remake. He may be good with motion capture animation, CG tricks and live action/animation blending, but if the films themselves are kinda shit there's not much that can be salvaged. The live-action part is about the real life story of a man who built a miniature village set during World War II to overcome his trauma, and the animated part is seeing the doll that live there coming to life, doing stuff and killing Nazis. Basically it seems like a much more serious, sappy and boring Small Soldiers, with the dolls creepily resembling their actors. The film is tonally inconsistent, overly long, with some self-indulgent references (there's a Delorean time machine model built with random junk); Steve Carell is very good as usual but his character kind of acts like a creep towards the women that are helping him in his post-trauma life or that he just randomly falls in love with and then transposes into the dolls in his diorama. Of note is that among the women there is Gwendoline Christie who plays the part of Carell's Russian caretaker (and one of the dolls of course): that character is exactly as useless, forgettable and shortly-appearing as is her own Captain Phasma from Star Wars. I'm starting to think that Game of Thrones was a stroke of luck for her and nobody will ever care about her outside of that franchise.
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Post by lurker on Jul 21, 2022 18:52:56 GMT -5
Please let it be better than the Jeremy Irons one...
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Jul 31, 2022 11:55:37 GMT -5
I watched Top Gun: Maverick in the theatre yesterday. I didn't care much for the original when I watched it a couple years ago (neither did the others I went with yesterday), but this one looked promising, and it's been a while since we went to the theatre anyway. They don't really make these kind of blockbusters anymore. It felt very 80's/90's in some ways. Not in the sense that it calls back on that era, but just the feel of the characters, writing, story. The action's great, no shakey cam or quick cuts, just clearly presented and definitely worth seeing in theatres.
I'm as tired as anyone of sequelitis and 80's nostalgia, and I didn't even care for the original Top Gun to begin with, so the fact that this was so great was a very pleasant surprise.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Aug 12, 2022 10:23:22 GMT -5
Finally got round to watching another film recently.
American Pop (1981, dir. Ralph Bakshi) is an animated film made with the same rotoscoping films as Bakshi's work of the day like Fire & Ice and Lord of the Rings, but instead of being a fantasy adventure, it's an inter-generational story about a Jewish family that came to America after the Pogroms inflicted in Russia. Each generation has a fascination with music; be it to sing it, play it, or write it; but they get caught up in the trials and tribulations of their circumstances, changing with the decades as we go from the 1890s to the early 1980s. As such, the film is filled almost wall-to-wall with arrangements and performances of classic tunes of the times.
There's a mixed media approach that was kinda going on with the rotoscope era of Bakshi's work, and there's some very cool stuff done with it here. Rotoscoped animation is mixed with backgrounds full of stylized characters, interspersed with photographs and footage of the real world events occurring around the film. It reminded me a bit of the Norwegian film The Tower, which also utilized live-action elements to point out that "yes, a lot of what happened to these characters did actually happen in our world". Admittedly, there is an incongruity with how much more exaggerated and surreally people are rendered in the background compared to the rotoscoped main cast who have to look more like conventional humans, though characters sometimes get a bit more loosely drawn on occasion.
In terms of the narrative construction, I quite dug the "stream of consciousness" in going from one generation to the next. The pacing changes a fair bit too; the first two generations have their stories progress very quickly in the film's opening half, while the second half lingers much more on the last two generations. I did find the first half a bit more engaging, but I suppose that's more the movie changing from what I'd grown accustomed to. The pacing is very brisk, to the point where I can understand feeling left behind when so much of what's going on with the characters inside is left up to suggestions and sparse dialogue. It's definitely a film where you have to connect a lot of the dots to stay engaged, but I felt like I was able to follow along with the ideas they were intending me to observe.
I've only seen half of Bakshi's filmography (this, LOTR, Fire & Ice, and Fritz the Cat), and I'd say that this is probably my second favourite film by the man.
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