Hm, I've been watching too many animated movies recently. WALL-E, Monster's Inc, The Incredibles, Madagascar 2, Bolt, Horton Hears a Who, all in a few days' time. Surf's Up, Ice Age 3, the Toy Story first and second, and that recent-ish Wallace and Gromit film are next on the line-up.
Out of all of these, I haven't (or hadn't) seen the second Madagascar, Surf's Up, and the third Ice Age. Oh, how I love my school's shared film library. I can just download movies to Lothario whenever I'm in the lab. It's great. It's superfantastic. I don't have to pay anything. Except..uh..tuition.
I've been subconsciously comparing all the studios to one another while watching these. I still think Pixar is boss. Nothing in their movies feels unholy, unclean. They all have an almost classic feel, like I'm watching Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King again. They feel timeless. They feel like Winnie the Pooh - have you read the original? (It's a clean and beautiful and nostalgic story, and the characters are both grown-up and childlike at the same time, and it holds different meanings for children and for adults, without leaving anyone out. It reminds me of the movie for Where the Wild Things Are, which is basically childhood made understandable for people who've grown out of it.) There's comedy in their movies. There are jokes and giggles. But the jokes are not the things that stick in the long run; it's the underlying messages and the perfectly captured feelings, not forced down your throat but gently moving their way into your mind, that make them last. Sure, I laugh at gags in movies. But what stands out to me is that even after ten viewings of Up, I still cry during the Married Life sequence in the beginning. I genuinely feel the emotions pouring out of the little robot in WALL-E. I can believe that a monster can learn to love a little human girl as a daughter, and still tear up when he has to bring her home. That's what I want in a movie. I want to feel things. I will laugh at jokes but ultimately, I want a master of the craft to show me a real piece of life.
Anyways. Enough Pixar-idolizing for now. I sound like a nut. Back to what I was saying.
From Blue Sky I've only seen the first two Ice Ages and Horton, but I think they're heading in a Dreamworks direction when it comes to story and audience-catching devices (dry wit, silly references, things pointed obviously at the adults in the audience). I'm still not sure how I feel about them. Animation-wise, I'm not sure their modelers are quite as detail-oriented as the other studios, yet. It may have been the style of the movie. But I think there could have been more. Even with a simpler, smoother style, there could have been more.
Dreamworks is not my ideal. Their movies are silly, funny, cute, whatever. They hit a comedy point. But they don't hit an emotional point, for me. And sometimes I find myself thinking their comedy is almost obscene, in a weird, dirty-but-clean way. It's hard to explain. Some of the sub-plot directions they started heading caught me completely off-guard, and not necessarily in a good way. Also, it's really really difficult to make a sequel effective. I'm thinking they were trying too hard. Also, it seems everything with Dreamworks is a franchise. The end of Madagascar 2 felt waaaaay too much like an opening for a continuation. In my opinion, every movie should have a completely satisfactory wrap, and the story artists should be good enough to be able to develop a sequel that really feels like it works, instead of just doing it for the money. I liked the song when Alex was dancing towards the end, though. It was catchy. And there were certainly a lot of big names on their cast list.
And let me just take a minute to criticize the choice of Miley Cyrus as voice actor for Penny in Bolt. If you know me, you know I really don't like that girl. But while I was watching the movie, I wasn't trying to purposefully poke holes in her work. I just really didn't feel it. Voice acting is an interesting thing. I think the best voice actors retain their own sound, while creating something new for the character, that separates the two and gives the character a life of her own. Dakota Fanning does it in Coraline. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen do it in Toy Story. Jim Carrey and Steve Carell have it in Horton. John Travolta, her co-star in Bolt, gets it. But I don't think Miley has grasped it. Her near-sickening cutesy Southern drawl is pure Miley-Cyrus-characterization, and it shines through full-blast in Penny. I couldn't get into the character of Penny, because her voice was so very separated from her face, in my mind. She has such a sweet face, and it didn't feel like the right sound for her. Has anyone else seen it? Has anyone noticed that, or is it just me?
As for Bolt as a movie, it's a charming story. I quite like the cat. I thought the pacing was done well. It is definitely a Disney movie. It lacks the all-encompassing goofy antics of a Dreamworks or Blue Sky feature, restricting most of the silly to one sub-main character, most of the sarcasm to another. Its earnest hero is typical Disney. (We do not count things like The Emperor's New Groove as typical Disney; Kuzco is definitely not a typical Disney hero.) It is a quest-story and a friendship-story. It's not really very extraordinary. The ending is very very predictable. It's not a ground-breaking, earth-shattering movie. And frankly, some of the animation (background characters mostly; humans mostly) doesn't look well thought-out. But what can I say? It's a Disney movie. It marks a point when Disney is heading out of its slump, but slowly, carefully. Like The Princess and the Frog, it's not phenomenal, but it's not bad. It's certainly getting somewhere. And it's a crowd-pleaser.
Though I haven't watched a stop-motion recently ('recently' being in the last week..), they hold a special place in my heart. There's something really respectable in the craft of stop-motion, and mind-bogglingly masterful. In features my general opinion is the smoother the better, if we're talking about the technical aspect. That's one of the reasons I love Coraline so much. I can tell it's stop-motion - there's something fluid and strange and beautiful about stop-motion that sets it apart - but some people thought it was done in CGI, which is quite an accomplishment, I think. Watching the commentary version was an exciting experience for me; it was a lot of explaining how they made it, and it's quite remarkable. Then again, there's something to be said about the lumpier movements of the characters in Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit, for example. It's charming. I am not quite as awed, but there's something very sweet about claymation. Now, I haven't seen The Fantastic Mr Fox yet, but I'll be interested when it becomes accessible. The jerky movements of the animation in the previews were off-putting for me, but maybe I'll find something in it. I've heard the story is good. I guess we'll see, eventually.
Hm. Now I kind of want to watch Beauty and the Beast. Maybe I will do that. (It's three in the morning, I just finished watching Horton. I should probably get to bed. But I've been drinking Mountain Dew all night and we have a snow day tomorrow. Pity, really - my drawing class was supposed to go to the Met tomorrow. Figures the one day we have a field trip..ah well. Anyways. I guess I'll stay up another two hours..) But after that, Surf's Up. I've never seen it, but Tom says it's good. We'll see. (Who even made it? Was it Sony? Or was it some obscure unknown studio? Happy Feet was done by some VFX studio in Australia or something; they had the gross creepy integration of real humans filtered to, I assume, seem less real, but they ended up in the Uncanny Valley, and..just no. Anyways. I think Sony did Surf's Up. And speaking of Sony, I oughta check out Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs when it's in the film library. Reggie said it sucked. I kind of assumed it sucked by the trailers. So far Sony hasn't given me much of a reason to give them a place in my mind. We'll see.)
I'm getting a bit babbly. Off to Beauty and the Beast. Good night.
Hm, lots of opinion in this one - also a lot of italics,
Olivia
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
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Yeah but NPH was in Cloudy...
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