Happy Thanksgiving and other stuff
Happy Thanksgiving to all my US f-list. I hope everyone traveling has a safe trip. And to those of you that do the Black Friday sales like I do with my Mother, I hope you find some great bargains.
Thank you to mad_brilliant_ and chic_c for the virtual gifts.
Under the cut are some movie reviews of the Illusionist and Tangled.
So I wanted to just recap last weekend while I was at the CTN Expo in Burbank. The Expo opened with a free screening of the Illusionist directed by Sylvain Chomet. It's a French co-production with the UK I believe. I didn't know anything about the film before seeing it except that it was by the director of The Triplets of Belleville. During the Q&A I learned that the film is based on a story/script by Jacques Tati. Who is a famous mime actor. I never heard of him until that evening. So since the film is essentially a homage to Tati using a story of his, the main character is essentially animated like he's Tati, and the film has no dialogue. This is a feature length film, with no dialogue. Yet, it was animated so beautifully, each character had so much life to them even if they were not important to the story, that you are engaged in the film. The story is very loose, and the film moves along in a serene pace. There's no real ups or downs, the story is just left to reveal itself in this steady pace. Yet, I was never bored with the film. It was refreshing to see something so different from the Hollywood films. A fellow audience member said after the screening that American audiences are just dying to see good traditional 2D animation, and this film had that, but being a non-Hollywood film, the general public won't see it. Which is sad. Even sadder, since there are not enough animated features that qualify this year, there will only be three nominated films at the Oscars. So that means, Toy Story 3, How to Train your Dragon and maybe Tangled, Despicable Me or Megamind, will be the three films. This film doesn't have a chance.
The weekend ended with a screening of Tangled on the Disney lot. I really didn't know what to expect of Tangled. I knew the studio was marketing the film as a action boys film and trying to gloss over the princess fairytale, but everyone in the business was saying the marketing was off and the film was a fairytale. Well the movie is a musical fairytale, with music by Alan Menken. I enjoyed the film. It was cute. It had some great comedy and acting in the secondary characters. The horse and chameleon are awesome. I didn't really enjoy all the music. Even though I love Alan Menken, most of the songs had that feeling of is this song really necessary to move the story foward. But then once the song got going and the animation took over you enjoyed the sequence. So maybe some weak songs but the great animation pulled it off. I enjoyed the film a whole lot more then Princess and the Frog which really had way too many songs that were not necessary and took away from the story and character development. But overall I still felt like Disney missed the mark. It was pretty darn close and probably the closest they have gotten in a long time. Honestly if they had left out the songs I wonder if it would have been just right. Part of me hates to suggest that because I love musicals, but it just seems like they truly struggle with integrating the music into the story.
I'd recommend seeing both films if you can. The Illusionist is probably only playing in select locations. Maybe only Los Angeles. Tangled should be anywhere and everywhere.
Thank you to mad_brilliant_ and chic_c for the virtual gifts.
Under the cut are some movie reviews of the Illusionist and Tangled.
So I wanted to just recap last weekend while I was at the CTN Expo in Burbank. The Expo opened with a free screening of the Illusionist directed by Sylvain Chomet. It's a French co-production with the UK I believe. I didn't know anything about the film before seeing it except that it was by the director of The Triplets of Belleville. During the Q&A I learned that the film is based on a story/script by Jacques Tati. Who is a famous mime actor. I never heard of him until that evening. So since the film is essentially a homage to Tati using a story of his, the main character is essentially animated like he's Tati, and the film has no dialogue. This is a feature length film, with no dialogue. Yet, it was animated so beautifully, each character had so much life to them even if they were not important to the story, that you are engaged in the film. The story is very loose, and the film moves along in a serene pace. There's no real ups or downs, the story is just left to reveal itself in this steady pace. Yet, I was never bored with the film. It was refreshing to see something so different from the Hollywood films. A fellow audience member said after the screening that American audiences are just dying to see good traditional 2D animation, and this film had that, but being a non-Hollywood film, the general public won't see it. Which is sad. Even sadder, since there are not enough animated features that qualify this year, there will only be three nominated films at the Oscars. So that means, Toy Story 3, How to Train your Dragon and maybe Tangled, Despicable Me or Megamind, will be the three films. This film doesn't have a chance.
The weekend ended with a screening of Tangled on the Disney lot. I really didn't know what to expect of Tangled. I knew the studio was marketing the film as a action boys film and trying to gloss over the princess fairytale, but everyone in the business was saying the marketing was off and the film was a fairytale. Well the movie is a musical fairytale, with music by Alan Menken. I enjoyed the film. It was cute. It had some great comedy and acting in the secondary characters. The horse and chameleon are awesome. I didn't really enjoy all the music. Even though I love Alan Menken, most of the songs had that feeling of is this song really necessary to move the story foward. But then once the song got going and the animation took over you enjoyed the sequence. So maybe some weak songs but the great animation pulled it off. I enjoyed the film a whole lot more then Princess and the Frog which really had way too many songs that were not necessary and took away from the story and character development. But overall I still felt like Disney missed the mark. It was pretty darn close and probably the closest they have gotten in a long time. Honestly if they had left out the songs I wonder if it would have been just right. Part of me hates to suggest that because I love musicals, but it just seems like they truly struggle with integrating the music into the story.
I'd recommend seeing both films if you can. The Illusionist is probably only playing in select locations. Maybe only Los Angeles. Tangled should be anywhere and everywhere.