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Non-Review Review: A Christmas Carol (2009)

I’m yet to be sold on the Robert Zemeckis school of “motion capture.” Don’t worry, I don’t hold a prejudice. I’m just waiting to be convinced, and I worry that Zemeckis – for all his championing of the technology – might not be the one to do it. For, as impressive as the technical merits of his technique might be, I think that Zemeckis has yet to find a story that truly needs to be told in that format, or at least a story that resonates in that format. Much as Pixar have somewhat validated computer-generated animation (a school of filmmaking that met with a ridiculous amount of cynicism in its early years), I think the key to proving the worth of this sort of approach lies in finding a story that connects with audiences, while demonstrating the strengths of the tool being used to tell it.

While it’s an enjoyable enough holiday film, A Christmas Carol simply is not that film.

Totally Scrooged...

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Steve Jobs & Pixar…

A lot of people have already written a lot of very thoughtful and inspiring pieces about Steve Jobs, and what the inventor means to the world. Technology experts, heads of industry, world leaders, columnists, celebrities… everybody seems to have an opinion or an anecdote about the man who made Apple possible. I honestly don’t feel like there’s too much I can add to a conversation occurring all over the world about a man who revolutionised what we thought was possible in terms of media and connectivity through the iPhone and countless other innovations. Still, I can’t help but think of Pixar when I think of Jobs, and I think the animation studio stands as a testament to one of his innate abilities, one that was just as important as his drive for new ideas and his insights into technology: Jobs had that unique ability to spot and judge potential from a distance, and I think it would be unfair not to consider Pixar when discussing the inventor’s legacy.

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Non-Review Review: Finding Nemo

You know, even after all this time, I think that Finding Nemo views with The Incredibles as my favourite Pixar production. I respect and appreciate the sheer artistry and technical skill that went into Wall-E and I think Uprepresents the company’s most mature work to date, but I think Nemo perfectly captures everything that I love about the company – the maturity, the humour, the adventure, the technical skill of it all. Plus it has perhaps the best voice cast of the films.

The life aquatic...

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Non-Review Review: Cars 2

Cars 2 is a Pixar film that runs on an engine, rather than on heart. Technically, it’s magnificent. It’s well put together, features a winning cast, a lot of quite wonderful jokes and absolutely stunning action movies. However, the movie fails to make even the most basic of emotional connections. We’re always watching a bunch of cool cars doing cool car stuff, but we never feel good or bad about it. Even when a handful of cars meet tragic ends over the course of the movie, we never feel bad about it – we don’t really care about them, so we’re never concerned at the dangers they face. It’s a shame, because it’s a stunningly beautiful piece of animation, it’s just missing that wonderful soul that Pixar seems to install with its movies as standard.

Lightning, cameras, action!

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June in Review

It’s been a heck of a month. It has also been while since I’ve done one of these “wrap up” posts, which are probably more for myself than for anybody else, when I pop onto the blog in my old age and want to laugh at what a foolish young man I was with all manner of crazy and poorly-thought-out ideas. So I try to post one of these at the end of point out some of the stuff that I wrote that I’m kinda happy with – the stuff that I might want to read first if I ever look back on this so I don’t despair of the man I was. Or some nonsense like that.

Anyway, just last night I was delighted to submit a last-minute article on Transformers 3 to the superb Morality Bites blogathon. It’s always great to be asked to take part, even if I’m rarely the most organised person taking part.

Anyway, this was the month when I was lucky enough to end up on the IMDb Hit List twice… in the space of a single week. I still can’t understand how that happened, but am genuinely humbled by it. As I’ve said before, it’s an honour to be noticed by the kinda people who love what you love – it’s a huge source of pride that the on-line film resource thought that my hastily-collected gibberish was worthy of attention, and I am still a little bit giddy and star-struck. There’s nothing like being acknowledged by the guys who do what you do… but 1,000,000x better. Sorry, this is a long rambling waffle.

The first post to be selected was a post on this year’s Comic Con that wondered if the move away from the event could foreshadow a fading interest in the geek audience

Then, a few days later, I happened to get up there again for a piece I am honestly glad that people noticed, something about Pixar. Because I genuinely love Pixar, and I don’t get to talk about them often enough. And because Cars 2 is getting a lot of criticism, and sometimes I worry we ignore the really good stuff in life…

… I was especially honoured when the wordpress team also freshly pressed the very same article. The guys are exceedingly wonderful to let myself and all the other bloggers a platform to share our (sometimes haphazardly formed) thoughts with the world, and it’s really great when they do notice something you’ve written. It’s good to know that maybe the people who work hard to offer you a service like this one got a little enjoyment from your effort – like you’re giving a very tiny something back. It is an absolute joy to be listed in such a way.

But that’s the end of the month. Plenty of stuff happened before hand.  I was really looking forward to Green Lantern, only to be a little let down by it. I also wrote a geeky article for another site I occasionally write for about the links between Grant Morrison and Christopher Nolan’s Batman, which I’m also a little bit geeky proud of.

Outside of nerdy stuff, I wondered about classic films I hadn’t seen (one (and a bit) to cross off: Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse Now Redux), and if even a great film can be far too long. Oh, and when we start thinking of the family of famous celebrities as their own individuals rather than extensions of their relatives.

So, it was an awesome month. I can only hopt the next is nearly half as good.

Pixar and the Weight of Expectation…

Well, it probably had to happen. I know it’s probably not statistically impossible, just highly improbable – but I guess that I always knew (deep down) that Pixar’s batting average was too good to last. I mean, I (at the very least) really like all of their films, and I genuinely love the majority of them. And that fact is borne out by the Rotten Tomatoes ratings of the various films. The vast majority rank in the 90% to 100% range, something any studio would kill for: Toy Story (100%), A Bug’s Life (91%), Toy Story 2 (100%), Monsters Inc (95%), Finding Nemo (98%), The Incredibles (97%), Ratatouille (96%), Wall-E (96%), Up (98%), Toy Story 3 (99%). Even the single film that ranks lowest, the only one not in the range, still had mostly positive reviews, Cars with 74%. However, Cars 2 looks to have bucked that winning trend, with reviews that not only fall far short of Pixar’s impressive average, but is actually pretty negative.

I can’t help but feel more than a little bit sad.

Do Pixar need to get in gear?

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Non-Review Review: Kung-Fu Panda 2

I think the original Kung-Fu Panda might be my favourite Dreamworks animated film. A lot of people go on and on and on about how that particular studio’s animation can be measured against that of their competitor Pixar, with arguments about intellectual and emotional maturity and sincerity. Some argue that the reason Pixar dominates their field is because they don’t treat animation as something just for children. Others suggest that they have a mathematical formula devised to break human hearts. Personally, the feeling I always got from Pixar films that I only fleetingly sensed in the work of Dreamworks, was that those creators were essentially making their dream movie – each and every Pixar film seems lovingly crafted according to a creative vision not based around the “rules” of the industry, but around good ideas and the kinds of stories those people like to tell (and like to hear). I think that is why the original Kung-Fu Panda worked so well, and also why Kung-Fu Panda 2 does such a great job as a follow-up.

They know kung-fu...

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Non-Review Review: Toy Story 2

For my money, Wall-E is perhaps the strongest Pixar film from an artistic point of view. The Incredibles is perhaps the most consistently entertaining. Finding Nemo is the most emotional. Truth be told, I could probably find a way to rank almost every Pixar film so that it was my favourite in some way or another, because they’re all pretty much that good (although I’ll concede that Ratatouille, A Bug’s Life and Cars were merely “good” or “very good”). So, having completely picked apart any lavish praise I could shower on the film, I have  a very special fondness for Pixar’s Toy Story trilogy.

Just say Jesse...

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See the Aborted Monsters Inc. 2 Trailer…

I’m a sucker for all things Pixar, so when this turned up on-line, I thought I would share it. Basically, it’s a trailer for the original planned Monsters Inc. 2: Trouble in Scaradise movie that was in development at the company few years back. It’s apparently radically different from the iteration of Monsters Inc. 2 that we will see hitting our screens next year, but the writers of the original film found some concept art that had been prepared for their draft of the film, and decided to give us a taste of what their version of the film might have looked like. I think it was interesting, but it does seem a little close to Toy Story 3 (with a child abandoning the objects of their fantasy), but perhaps I’m too harsh. Give it a look below.

The Princess is Dead, Long Live the Princess: Disney Won’t Be Letting Fairy Tales Live Happily Ever After…

Apparently Disney are putting an end to the production of fairy tales, which is somewhat ironic for a studio which has an iconic fairytale castle as its distinctive corporate logo. I suppose it was sort of inevitable coming from a studio that was terrified of advertising Tangled as a “princess” movie. Disney board director John Lasseter explained the decision:

Today, among little girls especially, princesses and the romanticised ideal they represent – finding the man of your dreams – have a limited shelf life.

It’s very clever to couch his argument in what might be considered modern feminist terms  – “finding the man of your dreams” is such a fifties aspiration for young girls, after all – but I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable with what Disney plans to replace them with. I’ll admit that I am a relatively conservative individual – I just don’t like change – but there’s something unsettling about such a major refocus, and perhaps what it says about pop culture as a whole these days.

Okay, so maybe Disney needs to work on its female leads...

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