Twitter Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox
‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ balances Dahl’s aggressive oddity with Anderson’s preciousness; given Wes’ recent missteps, animation is a promising path
Animation
Twitter Review: Coraline
Like Selick’s other animations, ‘Coraline’ is merely weird. While imaginative, meticulous, and thematically rich, it’s dull and oddly inert.
Tagged: Animation, Coraline, Henry Selick, Reviews, Twitter, Twitter Reviews
Twitter Review: Up
‘Up’ made me cry at least twice, but its well-supported message undercut its admittedly spectacular spectacle. That’s its point and problem.
Tagged: Animation, Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Pixar, Reviews, Twitter, Twitter Reviews, Up
Box Office Power Rankings: March 20-29, 2009
The $59.3-million opening-weekend domestic take for Monsters Vs. Aliens is being touted as proof that 3D is a viable way to pry people off their couches and get them into the damned movie theater. Nearly 56 percent of that amount came from 3D theaters, even though 3D projection accounted for only 28 percent of the movie’s screens. That all sounds impressive, but consider that WALL·E took in $63.1 million its first weekend, Kung Fu Panda $60.2 million, and Cars $60.1 million. Yes, those were all summer movies, but they didn’t benefit from the higher ticket prices for 3D that inflated the take of Monsters Vs. Aliens.
Devouring the Oscars: Best Animated Short Film
I’ll start with an admonition: You have no reason not to have a horse in the short-film categories for the Oscars. These should be your favorite races, because they require relatively small investments of time. If you see and hate The Reader, you’ve lost 124 minutes of your life. If you see and hate Lavatory – Lovestory, you’re out 10 minutes. And the chances of you hating Lavatory – Lovestory are much smaller. Alas, each has about the same chance of winning the top prize in its category.
Tagged: Academy Awards, Animation, Oscars, Short Films
The Humans Are Dead
A few caveats at the outset: Bad Dog Ginger was causing disruptions resulting from her intense interest in a cat at the drive-in, and five-month-old Emily was causing disruptions because her normal sleep schedule was itself disrupted. So I did not have the opportunity to concentrate fully on Pixar’s WALL•E. But I doubt that my attention would have been rewarded. Once the movie zooms to a bustling cruise (space)ship, WALL•E is fine, but it felt like Monsters, Inc. 2 – manic and bright and silly.
Tagged: Animation, Pixar, Reviews, Science Fiction, WALL-E
Short-Film Week: “Gem” as Faint Praise
The animated T.R.A.N.S.I.T. is a feature-film plot distilled into 10 minutes, and it shows the ways in which the short film is more forgiving than longer cinematic forms. This movie operates wordlessly almost as a plot outline, and it’s gorgeous to look at and challenging to keep up with. It feels like a small, perfectly cut gem. On reflection, that’s a good analogy, because Piet Kroon’s 1997 short is a beautiful piece of visual craftsmanship that fails as art in any rational analysis.
Animation on a Human Scale
With its sixth feature, Pixar succeeds wildly at its first human endeavor. But beyond The Incredibles’ myriad charms as entertainment, the movie could prove to be groundbreaking, building a bridge between the studio’s wonderful family-oriented work and a new way of making fantasy pictures. It portends great things.
Tagged: Animation, Brad Bird, Pixar, Reviews, The Incredibles
Animated Ennui
Most reviews of the Oscar-nominated animated French movie The Triplets of Belleville suggest the film is a wonderfully wacky laugh riot. I liked it, but its strength for me was the way it balanced an inspired visual stylization with a dark human reality: the way people sleepwalk through their lives with single-minded purpose but little joy.
’Toon Politics
What interested me most seeing Who Framed Roger Rabbit recently were the movie’s political implications.
Tagged: Animation, Reviews, Robert Zemeckis, Ways of Watching
