Sunday, December 8, 2013

"What does Cornelius look like?"

Good evening my dear friends. I am literally three movies away from completing my New Year's Resolution (in your face statistics!). I'm not gonna lie; I feel like I'm getting to the end of a marathon and I'm pretty excited to get it over with. Not that I don't entirely like these last few movies per say, 52 movies is just a lot to watch.

Anywho....

To start this post off I want to talk momentarily about Chicken Little. This movie is like an embarrassing blemish on the face of a teenager on picture day. The story is inconsistent and has a confusing tone, I mean the opening sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the movie and there are so many underdeveloped characters. This is also one of those odd movies where there isn't a clearly defined antagonist but there are several that make a half-hearted attempt.

As Disney's first attempt at a completely computer animated movie it is a total let down. This movie looks like Nickelodeon's Jimmy Neutron....not the full length movie even, but the animated cartoon that followed after. Come on Disney! This is just bad. It's not like ya'll were lacking for funds when this movie was made, you could have taken the time to make a good movie.

One redeeming quality: Fish Out of Water. That character steals every scene he's in and he doesn't even say anything!

Here's the original short of which this movie is based upon. It has a wicked twist ending so be sure to watch the whole thing:



I think Disney realized their mistake with CL because the next movie they came out with is Meet the Robinsons and O.M.G. this movie is wonderful! I remember seeing this movie during my freshman year of college up in Ye Olde Logan Towne where there isn't much else to do besides go see a movie (and I saw A LOT of movies). Frankly, if there had been other things to do I probably would have done that instead because the advertisements for this movie made it look super lame. So thank you Logan, for being such a boring small town.



Robinsons does a lot of things well. It doesn't take itself too seriously. It tells a heartwarming story about family that always makes me a little teary eyed at the end. (Fun fact:Walt Disney was an adoptive parent himself.) The design of this movie is fabulous. I like the different tones of all the time periods portrayed in this movie. The past is always shown in muted sepia tones demonstrating how our memories dull over time, becoming dimmer and dimmer the further removed we are from the actual event. The future on the other hand, is bright and optimistic. It's full of clean and curvy lines. In fact, the whole design of this movie reads like the 1950's ideal of what the future would be like. It's such wonderful eye candy. Basically, Meet the Robinsons is Disney's way of tenderly reminding the general public that they are still relevant.

I love Jamie Cullum. He does the voice of the singing frog and I feel like everyone should be a fan of him because he is AmAzing.

Interesting side note: this is the first movie where Walt Disney Feature Animation changed their name to ""Walt Disney Animation Studios." It features the studio's new logo which displays the first few seconds of "Steamboat Willie." It's also the first Disney movie to resurrect the old tradition of featuring a short before the actual movie (something that was commonly done back in the day). Since Robinsons was shown in 3D and 2D it had two different shorts depending on which one you saw, both of them were classic Disney cartoons and they are delightful.

Bolt is the last movie I'm going to discuss in today's post. And with it I'd like to bring to your attention the issues I have with computer animation:

I am not against computer animation entirely. I'd have to be a sadist to dislike Pixar and some of the charming stuff Dreamworks has come out with lately. However, computer animation (and this is entirely my opinion, I'm aware that not everyone shares this point of view) seems to be a glorification of what technology can accomplish. I so frequently hear how amazed people are that something was done or made on a computer. I don't hear how impressed people are by the person that made those graphics as much as I hear how impressed they are by the computer that made those graphics. Traditional animation on the other hand is, in my opinion, a glorification of what the artist can accomplish. It is impossible to ignore the hand of the artist when watching likes of 101 Dalmations or Pinocchio.

I also don't understand why traditional animation is completely overshadowed by computer animation these days. It doesn't seem to be cheaper or faster to make a movie on a computer rather than by hand and it certainly seems to take the same amount of manpower. So why is computer animation completely monopolizing the industry these days? This is a legit question to me so if anyone out there has an answer, I'd like to hear it.

That being said, let's discuss Bolt. This is not a bad movie. I'm kind-of obligated to like it for the same reason I'm obligated to like The Rescuers and Inspector Gadget: there's a little girl in it who shares the same name as my darling sister Penny. There are also a few things in this movie that remind me of Animainiacs, namely the three New York pigeons, the fact that this story chronicles the journey of a scrawny stray cat and a demented dog as they try to find a home (albeit the dogs are both demented for very different reasons) and that Bolt's sole purpose in life is to keep a little girl safe....not unlike a poor dog named Buttons who is always trying to save a little girl named Mindy while her negligent parents look the other way.

However, last week I was having a general conversation about animation with a friend of mine at school. He was telling me that the issue he has with computer animation is that there is an attempt to make a fictional world look too realistic and then make the characters in that world look too cartoony which makes for an uncomfortable juxtaposition. I didn't really get what he was talking about until I watched Bolt and then it suddenly made sense. This movie is a prime example of very cartoony looking characters walking around in an environment where they clearly don't belong.  It doesn't work. Meet the Robinsons works because the characters fit the environment. Bolt on the other hand fails in their attempt.... It's still a decent movie though.

I also watched The Princess and the Frog this week but I'm going to hold off talking about it until I've watched Tangled....I have similar issues with both of these movies.

Until then, cheerio!

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