Ain’t It Cool News is reporting that Robert Rodriguez has acquired the rights to remake the 1983 animated cult babes-and-barbarians film Fire and Ice, a product of the minds of maverick animator Ralph Bakshi, legendary (and recently deceased) fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, and comic writers Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas. Apparently Rodriguez is planning to make the film live-action, though presumably with heavy use of green screen like he did with Sin City. It sounds like the deal is pretty recent, so there’s no information on casting or release dates, but as a guy who grew up a fantasy nerd (and Fire and Ice fan), I’m pretty excited about this news.

I was actually considering doing a column about Frank Frazetta’s passing a few weeks ago after his death at the age of 82, tying it into movie via Fire and Ice. I picked up Blue Underground’s remastered DVD a few years ago purely for nostalgia reasons (while cheesy as hell, I must admit that the film held up far better than I expected it to), partly because of an awesome documentary on it about Frazetta called Painting with Fire. It’s a really great doc, one of the better DVD extras I’ve seen. Frazetta, in case you don’t know, gained fame in the 60s for his paintings of classic pulp characters like Conan the Barbarian and Tarzan (as well as lesser-known cult characters like John Carter of Mars – soon to be a live-action film itself), and his artwork on the covers is actually credited with the success of the Conan books (if I recall correctly, Conan made his debut in the 1930s, but it wasn’t until the Frazetta-cover paperbacks started coming out decades later that the character really caught on in a major way with readers, and to this day Frazetta’s visual interpretation is the most universally-recognized version of the character). Even if you don’t know him by name, you probably recognize Frazetta’s distinctive style, which has been seen in everything from book and magazine covers to posters to album covers. He was an incredibly talented guy who’s impact on genre fiction in any medium really can’t be overstated. It’s a shame he won’t be able to see Rodriguez’s take on Fire and Ice, but in the AICN story he says he was in discussions with Frazetta about the project right up until his death on May 10.

Anyway, suffice it to say that the more I hear about Fire and Ice, the more you will.

* * *

Warner Brothers is reintroducing its Looney Tunes characters with a new 26-episode animated series set to air on the Cartoon Network in the fall, but unfortunately it has a silly sitcom-y premise (Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck as odd-couple roommates with the other characters their neighbors? Ugh.) The far more interesting piece of information, to me at least, is that WB is also making a series of 3D shorts Road Runner to air in theaters before movies. I grew up a huge Looney Tunes fan (the Road Runner ones were always among my favorites), so this is far more interesting to me. The first short, in which Wile E. Coyote will fall off cliffs and get brained by anvils (in 3D!) will hit cinemas on July 30, ahead of Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Naturally, I’d be more excited if these shorts were airing ahead of movies I actually want to see, but sometimes you’re the Louisville Slugger, and sometimes you’re the ball.

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Labels: animation, fantasy, geek alert, Movie news, nostalgia

¶ 10:47 AM 1 Comments

Labels: animation, biopic, Movie news, trailers

¶ 10:37 AM 0 Comments

Labels: animation, comics, Movie news

¶ 9:47 AM 0 Comments

9 is an awesome little animated adventure film (not to be confused with the star-studded musical Nine, which doesn’t seem to be getting the Oscar buzz it was clearly constructed to generate) that packs more originality and verve into its opening 10 minutes than most animated movies do in 90 minutes (I’m referring specifically to the ones involving talking animals and/or ogres). There’s a singularity of vision on display in 9 that’s rare enough in movies in general these days, let alone children’s animation.

The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic landscape after a war with self-aware machines has wiped virtually all organic life from the world. But life continues in the ruins, even if it’s not made of flesh and blood; a handful of strange little living dolls is scraping out an existence, dodging larger, ferocious mechanical predators. It’s into this world that 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) wakes up with no memories, and soon finds himself reunited with his burlap brethren. 9 ends up accidentally waking up the sinister machine intelligence that started the war, putting his new friends in danger, he takes it upon himself to shut it down once more, and ends up uncovering the origins of himself and his kind in the process.

Watching 9 again for this DVD review (I reviewed it in theatres as well, check out my thoughts here), I was half-tempted to go back and replace Up on my best of 2009 list with writer/director Shane Acker’s quirky little doll-centric fantasy tale. As much as the critic in me feels that Up is a better film objectively, I found 9 more exciting and fun to watch. With Up I felt like I was more appreciating the adventure than I was really getting into it; 9 actually had me jumping and moving around like I do when I’m really into an action movie (if you’ve ever noticed how some people jerk around unconsciously while playing video games, I do that with movies sometimes [I also do it with video games]). And none of this is a knock against Up, which is a wonderful movie that’s as emotionally affecting as 90% of live-action films released in any given year, and that’s something I can’t say for 9. But 9 really turned my action/geek crank, with its unique look and the wonderfully original world Acker and his team have created. Usually when I say positive things about an animated kids’ movie, it’s in the context of the movie not really being my thing personally, but when I say 9 is a genuinely exciting action-adventure movie, I mean it in the sense that it’s actually better than a lot of action movies aimed at more grown-up audiences.

There’s a darkness to 9 that will intrigue a lot of older kids, but some of the imagery can be somewhat unsettling (genuinely scary monsters, depictions of war and the resulting apocalypse, etc.) If you don’t relish the thought of explaining to a 5-year-old the concept of evil machines releasing a toxin that wipes out all living things on Earth, maybe wait a few years before watching 9 with them. That said, while 9 does have considerably more edge to it than, say, Monsters vs. Aliens, it’s really not as bleak as its post-apocalyptic setting would suggest. The themes of friendship and heroism and personal responsibility resonate with all audiences, and the film manages to be cute and charming when it needs to be without being cloying or saccharine.

The scale of 9, while also providing lots of opportunities for cool little innovative design gags (sewing needles and kitchen knives used as swords, fishing lines used as grappling hooks, broken dolls’ faces atop terrifying mechanical apparitions), also makes our heroes running across a desk into an action sequence, and crossing the street into a Tolkien-esque adventure.

The voice acting in 9 is also quite solid. Casting actors like Wood, John C. Reilly, Martin Landau, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover and Christopher Plummer rather than big-name celebrities gives the performances an authenticity that doesn’t keep pulling you out of the movie because it’s clearly Will Smith or Jack Black doing the talking. Reilly in particular is great, making 2 sort of skittish and jumpy, but he never comes across a coward. Within a few minutes of his introduction, 2 is set up as 9’s best friend in the group, and the viewer never questions it.

Even after multiple viewings, I’m still quite impressed with 9. Director Shane Acker, who expanded a short film he made as a student (which earned him an Oscar nomination in 2005) for his feature debut, is the most unique and interesting new voice in American animation to come along in a long time. If 9 is any indication of what this guy is capable of, his will be a career to watch. 9 is a very cool little flick that I suspect will find an audience as a cult classic on video (the Dark Crystal of this generation, perhaps?), and I recommend it highly.

GRADE: A

THE EXTRAS

It’s always nice when a great movie gets a great DVD, and I’m happy to report that that’s the case with 9. When I saw the movie in theatres last year, I immediately wanted to know more about the world and the people who created it, and this DVD does a great job of exploring both. Writer/director Shane Acker provides commentary alongside animation director Joe Ksander, head of story Ryan O’Loughlin and editor Nick Kenway, and it’s lively and informative. These guys all know movies and have a real grasp of storytelling, and it really comes across. Acker himself is charming and smart, and manages to pepper the track with references to classic films he was trying to pay homage to without coming across as pretentious. And 9 has such a specific vision that it’s a treat getting to listen to the guy who’s vision it is discuss it.

Also included is a mini-documentary on the production of the film, a featurette on the character animation process, as well as Acker’s original short (which is very cool on its own), with optional commentary.

Labels: animation, DVD review

¶ 10:00 AM 0 Comments

THE SHOW

For fans of the 1980s version of G.I. Joe, 2009 must have been the greatest year since the original cartoon went off the air decades ago. There was a shockingly decent big-screen adaptation, The Rise of Cobra (which made enough money at the box office that a franchise seems likely), the even more kickass animated web series, G.I. Joe: Resolute was released on DVD, and now the entire run of the original ’80s cartoon is out on DVD in a killer box set.

I always thought it was a bit odd that Transformers got the big-screen treatment first, as it would seem considerably easier to sell mainstream audiences on a movie about an elite paramilitary unit than a film about transforming alien robots, and G.I. Joe has a deeper, richer history in American pop culture. (Clearly though, such distinctions are academic, as both properties seem to be doing just fine as Hollywood blockbusters.) But G.I. Joe’s importance to an entire generation really can’t be overestimated; every self-respecting child of the ‘80s remembers those “…and knowing is half the battle!” PSAs.

Revisiting the G.I. Joe cartoon series for this review was interesting; the show, even its earlier episodes, are actually way cartoonier and out-there than the military style would initially suggest. In retrospect (both with the help of the copious bonus materials and my own geekbrain), I now know that a big chunk of the creative team behind the show were veteran comic writers, and there’s a wacky, “what crazy adventures will the Joes find themselves in today?” sense to the episodes, particularly the latter ones, that’s very reminiscent of superhero comics of the ‘60s through the ‘80s, when creators didn’t tend to plan their stories much beyond the next few pages, let alone future issues. The Joes’ adventures and Cobra’s schemes grow increasingly bizarre as the show goes on (robots, parallel realities, plagues of killer plants, etc.), but as an adult, I can appreciate the loose, goofy vibe to the show, and the fun the creators must have had trying to top themselves. Obviously, this can go a little far into plain old silliness, which happens on more than a few occasions (at one point Destro and the Baroness try to feed Flint and Lady Jaye to a giant octopus Cobra just so happens to keep at its undersea base, the absurdity of which is never acknowledged). As more than one creator says in the extras, creating an animated show that runs five days a week is a huge undertaking – G.I. Joe was only on for two proper seasons, but runs almost 100 episodes – so the progression actually makes sense. Only in the world of G.I. Joe does Cobra’s weather-control machine seem like a quaint, almost realistic scheme to take over the world.

But more so than The Transformers, which shared many writers and producers and actors, G.I. Joe had some episodes that really seemed ahead of their time, with odd touches of irony and meta-humor. For example, in the episode called ‘The Viper is Coming,’ the Joe team keeps getting apparently threatening phone calls from a man with an accent who identifies himself only as “the Viper,” and informs them that he’s coming for them. The episode consists of the Joe team frantically trying to figure out who this Viper is, taking out a bunch of Cobra bases in an attempted pre-emptive strike, but all their work produces no more information about this Viper. At the end, when “the Viper” finally turns up and the Joe team is ready…it’s revealed that he’s actually a window-cleaner with an accent. “I am the viper,” the little old man explains when he arrives. “I’m here to vipe your vindows.” There’s also an episode called ‘Once Upon A Joe’ that is utterly bizarre (which also has a weird cartoon-within-a-cartoon subplot), with something actually called the “MacGuffin Device,” and the writers never miss an opportunity to have one of the characters refer to it by name, the result being so over-the-top and absurd that it seems like something out of a Simpsons episode. And I don’t care what anybody says, G.I. Joe was totally educational: this show taught me what DNA is, regardless of the fact that it was in the context of Dr. Mindbender’s plot to genetically engineer the ultimate Cobra leader, Serpentor (who remains as lame now as he was when I was 8). Knowing really is half the battle.

G.I. Joe’s animation is somewhat crude by today’s standards, and the show’s core premise of selling toys is fairly plain – the second season opens by introducing a slew of new Joe and Cobra characters and vehicles, a.k.a. the new line – but there’s also a clear desire to create an entertaining adventure show for kids, and as someone who spent countless hours being entertained by when I was a kid, I can verify that it remains a fun, silly adventure show. As much as revisiting G.I. Joe was purely a nostalgia thing, I can’t pretend I didn’t have a blast reliving my childhood with this ridiculously fantastic box set.

GRADE: A

THE EXTRAS

The G.I. Joe: The Complete Series might be the coolest DVD collection I’ve ever reviewed. The packaging itself is simply brilliant – it’s an ammo box that opens up to reveal a false control panel, which in turn is lifted to reveal the discs, housed in a pair of nine-disc packs, as well as an assortment of other cool extras (an awesome booklet, stickers and temporary tattoos, and, best of all, a USB flashdrive containing a G.I. Joe comic). This package is just amazing. Props to Shout! Factory. They do the little things perfectly, like using the artwork from the original toy line for the disc art, and including the original toy commercials, which gave me even more of a nostalgic rush than the show itself.

G.I. Joe also has some of the most entertaining bonus features I’ve seen. They’re all aimed at people more or less myself – grown-up fans of the show on a nostalgia kick – rather than kids, and just about everyone who’s interviewed is funny and charming and filled with amusing anecdotes about the show’s production. Even the roundtable discussion with a bunch of the show’s voice actors, which I expected to be a bore, was a riot to watch. There’s a great assortment of extras covering various aspects of the G.I. Joe brand, from a look at its evolution from a 12-inch doll in the 1950s to the smaller plastic figures I grew up playing with, to the comics (and a nice tribute to comics writer Larry Hama, who basically single-handedly came up with all the characters and the G.I. Joe vs. Cobra storyline – the entire post-1980 G.I. Joe mythology, essentially – on a lark because nobody else at Marvel was interested in writing a comic based on a line of toys), to the production of the cartoon to its enduring legacy. I know I’m biased because I’m very much the audience this collection is aimed at, but G.I. Joe: The Complete Series is one of the best DVD packages I’ve ever seen. If you’re a fan of the show, you can’t miss this one.

Labels: animation, DVD review, nostalgia, TV on DVD

¶ 10:15 AM 0 Comments

THE SHOW

I reviewed the Season 1 collection of the original Transformers cartoon a few months ago (read it here), but I recently got an early Christmas gift when a big box arrived here at the office: a box from the fine folks at Universal Music Canada (which distributes Shout! Factory products up here) containing the full-season collections of Transformers as well as G.I. Joe. It was, without a doubt, one of the greatest days in the history of this blog.

Intended to commemorate the 25th anniversary The Transformers, this new box set contains all 98 episodes of the original cartoon and a wealth of bonus features. And as much as it’s tempting to dismiss The Transformers as nothing more than an extended advertisement for children’s toys, the fact that the property is as popular today as it was when I originally enjoyed these shows does say something. Make no mistake, this was a show designed to sell toys (the producers and Hasbro execs are pretty upfront about that in the extras), but the way it’s captured the imaginations of millions of people means it’s evolved into something more than a cynical marketing campaign for 25-year-old toys. Watching Transformers again confirmed that the people who created this show clearly devoted a lot of time and energy into crafting a cool and compelling story, and as one of the kids it was meant to entertain back in the day, I can confirm they were successful. Screw the toys; when I was 7, The Transformers was the coolest thing on TV.

The show, by today’s standards (and more crucially, by an adult’s standards), is, predictably, pretty hokey and silly, but in a charming way. There’s an episode where Hollywood makes a movie about the Transformers and cast the robots to play themselves, and it’s hard to take the Autobots vs. Decepticons confict terribly seriously after seeing Autobots sitting in oversized directors chairs while they wait to be called to the set. That being said, this was a show clearly intended for kids, and the episodes – even the sillier ones – have a fun, breezy vibe to them, and everything bops along at an enjoyably brisk pace, and it’s rare that more than a couple of minutes goes by without some robot-on-robot violence.

I was happy to see when I was poring over the episodes that the post-Transformers: The Movie shows were included. (The movie itself isn’t included in the box set, but I already have it on DVD, as I am a huge nerd.) The 1986 animated movie jumped the action ahead a few decades into the future (2005!), and because I always preferred sci-fi, I always dug the “futuristic” episodes a bit more. Even as a kid, the futuristic setting seemed to make more sense to me; transforming alien robots that turn into futuristic cars and planes is a bit more logical than transforming alien robots that turn into handguns and cassette decks.

Overall, by today’s standards, The Transformers is not really that mind-blowing, at least in terms of animation and action. But then again, this is clearly a set designed with the nostalgia audience in mind, and on that level, it’s one of the coolest DVD sets I’ve reviewed yet.

GRADE: A-

THE EXTRAS

This and the G.I. Joe set (which I’ll be reviewing tomorrow) are easily the slickest collections I’ve yet looked at for this blog. The packaging looks great, and it’s awesomely thematic – it replicates the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, first glimpsed in Transformers: The Movie, and slides open the same way the Matrix is pulled apart – and the 16 discs themselves are housed in classy little sets of four each. Also included is a kickass booklet containing recaps of all 98 episodes and character bios.

Packaging and other stuff aside, the Transformers set also has some of the most fun and entertaining DVD extras I’ve seen in a long time. This is probably mostly due to my interest in the property, but rarely have I seen a collection of featurettes this genuinely fun to watch, whether it’s a reunion of several of the show’s voice actors (all of whom are charming and funny and a treat to listen to), a wonderfully fun retrospective documentary on the genesis of the Transformers and the show itself, as well as featurettes on the toys, the comics and Transformers fandom. And of course, the original toy ads, which are an even more powerful blast of nostalgia than the show itself. I remember all of this stuff, and revisiting it was a treat.

If you’re not already a fan of the original Transformers cartoon, this set, as great as it is, probably won’t sell you on it. But if you’re like me and grew up with this show, this collection is simply awesome.

Labels: animation, nostalgia, TV on DVD

¶ 10:02 AM 0 Comments

I found G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra to be one of the more pleasant surprises of this past summer. It’s not going to be in my year-end top 10 list or anything, but it’s a solid popcorn blockbuster that entertained the hell out of my inner 12-year-old. It’s big and dumb enough to be fun, but not so much so that it insults viewers’ intelligence. It’s the sort of movie I tend to enjoy on repeat viewings, so I dutifully picked up the Blu-ray when it came out (I actually appreciated it a bit more the second time, though the film obviously has its flaws; Citizen Kane this ain’t).

That sense of fun carries through to just about the entire cast. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a great young actor, is clearly having a ball as a scarred scientist who evolves into Cobra Commander (one of the DVD featurettes opens with him in full costume reciting Hamlet with the aid of his plastic Cobra Commander mask), and Dennis Quaid is having the time of his life channeling John Wayne to play General Hawk. I even found Marlon Wayans tolerable, and I usually hate that guy. The only real problem in the cast is, unfortunately, the lead: Channing Tatum, who I’ve been told more than once is actually quite a good actor, is wooden and mush-mouthed as Duke, as if he’s the only one in the cast unaware of what kind of movie he’s meant to be in. Hopefully in the sequels (which are coming, as this thing made some pretty decent coin at the box office), he’ll get with the program. The other guy who deserves a shout-out is Ray Park as Snake Eyes; there isn’t really much “acting” here, as Snake Eyes doesn’t talk, but Park, who will be a geek icon forever and ever after playing Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I, is a lot of fun to watch in the fight sequences. Snake Eyes gets a lot of the “wow” moments in the movie, and it was the only real aspect of The Rise of Cobra that turned my nostalgia crank (everyone who grew up with G.I. Joe knows that Snake Eyes is the coolest one; its an immutable rule of G.I. Joe.)

The Rise of Cobra looks pretty sweet on Blu-ray; movies with a lot of fast action and quick edits, I find, tend benefit from high-definition, as the sharper images make it a bit easier to follow all the on-screen motion. (Unfortunately, HD is not as kind to some of G.I. Joe’s frequent green-screen shots; some of the scenes look like they're from a movie made in 1997.) And given that the appeal of this movie is essentially purely visual, that counts for quite a bit.

But as much as I dug The Rise of Cobra, it wasn’t even the best G.I. Joe DVD I bought that day. That honor goes to the animated G.I. Joe: Resolute, which began as a web series of five-minute episodes, assembled here on DVD into an hour-long story. The angle of Resolute is that it’s basically the more grown-up interpretation of G.I. Joe geared more towards the hardcore fans of the cartoon and comic series, who are now, like me, in their 30s. Guns fire real bullets, not lasers, and people – including the Joes – die. It's the version of G.I. Joe that grown-up geeks have been waiting for.

G.I. Joe: Resolute was written by British comic writer Warren Ellis (a personal favorite of mine), and he gives the proceedings a sense of near-future realism he injects into a lot of his comics. Ellis is big on research, regularly drawing inspiration from magazines like Scientific American, and Resolute feels far more like it’s set in the real world than Rise of Cobra in terms of the technology used. Resolute still has a sci-fi edge, but nothing here is as out-there as the wacky stuff seen in the feature film. Ellis is great at writing smart, capable, clever characters, and the dialogue in Resolute run circles around the Rise of Cobra script. And Ellis’ take on Cobra Commander, who manages to be both funny and scary at the same time, is probably the best version of that character I’ve seen in any incarnation of G.I. Joe.

It’s a bit odd that the actual cartoon version of G.I. Joe is more realistic and hard-edged – and just all-around better – than the live-action movie, but there you have it. The world of movies (particularly movies based on a cartoon based on a toy line) can be a strange place.

GRADES

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: B
G.I. Joe: Resolute: A

Labels: animation, Blu-ray review, geek alert

¶ 9:23 AM 0 Comments

THE MOVIE

One of the central ironies of my movie-geek existence is that I love animation but have no patience for kids’ movies. Sometimes this means I’m pleasantly surprised by the animated children’s movies I do end up reviewing; nobody was more shocked than I was that I picked Kung Fu Panda as one of the best movies I saw last year (check out my original review here). But on the whole, I try to avoid kiddie comedies about animals with celebrity voices; I’m not their target audience, and I haven’t had the patience to wade through a movie’s worth of flatulence-related jokes and tired pop-culture references for one or two gags actually aimed at people old enough to shave since I suffered through the original Shrek in theaters (the last time I went to see something “to see what all the fuss is about”). So I was sort of dreading reviewing Monsters vs. Aliens. And while it wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared it might be, it also wasn’t anything special.

The premise of Monsters vs. Aliens will pique the interest of any other kid who used to fill spiral notebooks with drawings of, well, monsters fighting aliens. It opens with Susan Murphy (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), a normal gal who’s irradiated by a mysterious meteor on the day she’s supposed to marry a buffoonish local weatherman (Paul Rudd). Needless to say, spontaneously glowing green and growing to 50 feet in height while at the altar puts a kibosh on her nuptials. She wakes up in a mysterious U.S. government prison built in the 1950s to contain what was then an increasing number of freakish monsters sprouting up on American soil. There Susan meets Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a brilliant scientist who accidentally crossed himself with a cockroach, à la The Fly; B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a sentient (if technically brainless) blob of blue goop accidentally created by an attempt to combine a genetically-engineered tomato and a desert topping; The Missing Link (Will Arnett), a merman believed to be the missing link between humans and fish; and Insectosaurus, a Godzilla-sized insect grub that was the result of some Godzilla-style atomic testing.

Monsters vs. Aliens is a light-hearted superhero-style movie (maybe it’s because I’m a comic fan, but I got a heavy X-Men vibe from the concept of a group of freaks with amazing powers protecting a world that hates and fears them) with a nice message for kids to be yourself. Susan’s personal journey through the film, learning to accept her situation and to stop looking for her own self-worth through other peoples’ acceptance of her, makes her particularly positive role model for girls.

There’s a little less for adults to latch on to, but there are some really clever references to classic ‘50s monster movies (Link is obviously patterned off of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Ginormica/Susan is a riff on the 50 Foot Woman; the recording booth glimpsed in the extras shows some really cool, retro-style movie posters for each of the monsters as if they actually were featured in films of that period).

My problem with Monsters vs. Aliens was that it never quite gelled the way the better movies of its kind does. The action, while there’s a considerable amount of it, is largely unspectacular, and the best setpiece in the whole movie comes at the mid-point (a pretty cool sequence set on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge), and even then it doesn’t hold a candle to anything in, say, Kung Fu Panda. The character designs are passable, if a little generic, and the voice work is solid but unspectacular (as a devoted Arrested Development fan, I kept waiting for Arnett to cut loose and crack me up, but he never quite gets there).

Sometimes I feel bad about ragging too hard on a kids’ movie – I’m the first to admit I’m hardly the target audience for Monsters vs. Aliens – but then I think about movies that I really genuinely like that also happen to be aimed at younger audiences, like the aforementioned Kung Fu Panda and The Incredibles (which I realize I mention as the gold standard just about every time I discuss animated movies, but I happen to think it is the gold standard for movies like this). Movies like that, as well as WALL-E and 9 (read my review of that cool little movie here), prove that a movie can be entertaining for kids and not be bland and unimaginative.

Which sounds a bit harsh for a movie like Monsters vs. Aliens; it’s not a terrible movie, it’s just very content to aim for the middle of the road (one of the directors helmed the second Shrek movie, and I hate that franchise with a white-hot passion; it represents exactly the kind of garbage that I rail against whenever I talk about animated movies), and I think kids deserve better. The premise of Monsters vs. Aliens is perfect for a fun adventure movie for children, but there’s a strange hollowness to the proceedings. I didn’t hate Monsters vs. Aliens, and it’s certainly decent enough to hold a parent’s attention as they watch it with their child, but given the standards set by superior movies in this genre, it’s a bit of a letdown.

GRADE: C

THE EXTRAS

Monsters vs. Aliens is the first Blu-ray Disc I’ve reviewed, and it looks fantastic. Pretty much everything looks great in hi-def, but I find animation in particular looks really fantastic. (I’ve only picked up a few BDs since I got a Blu-ray player – well, technically, a PlayStation 3 – but roughly half of them are animation of some form or another.) The level of detail in the characters, from Link’s scales to Insectosaurus’ hair to Susan’s skin, is remarkable, and the bright colors in the movie’s palette (this is a kid’s movie after all) really pop from the screen.

Blu-ray, of course, also allows for even more special features, and the Monsters vs. Aliens disc is no exception. There’s a standard commentary track from co-directors Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon and producer Lisa Stewart that’s actually quite dry, but the ‘Animators’ Corner’ Blu-ray-exclusive feature is far superior, basically a video commentary track that showcases storyboards and rough animation, cast and crew interviews and footage of the actors recording their lines. It’s pretty cool stuff, combining what are now standard DVD bonus material like commentary and making-of featurettes into something even cooler.

The other main extra feature is the new short film, B.O.B.’s Big Break, which is in 3D (the disc includes four pairs of old-fashioned, two-color 3D glasses). It’s not much different than the proper film in terms of its tone and style, but in the past these sorts of extras have sometimes been packaged as separate discs, so its inclusion on the disc is a nice touch. As great as this new 3D technology is in theaters (I didn’t see Monsters vs. Aliens in the cinema, but I have a friend who did, and while he really didn’t care for the movie, he said the 3D was amazing), it doesn’t seem to have evolved much in terms of the home experience. Like a lot of similar recent home-video 3D releases, like My Bloody Valentine 3D, the 3D in B.O.B.’s Big Break is sort of hit-and-miss; sometimes it really seems to work, and other times I just got a minor headache from looking at everything through green-and-red glasses.

There’s also a pile of standard DVD extras (albeit in HD), including some deleted scenes, a character-specific karaoke game, a look at other DreamWorks animated properties, including the Shrek Broadway musical. Overall this is a disc filled with stuff to keep the kids amused for hours.

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Labels: animation, Blu-ray review

¶ 11:13 AM 0 Comments

Labels: animation, Movie review

¶ 9:16 AM 0 Comments

THE SHOW

Ah, nostalgia. I’m guiltier than most of looking back on beloved things from my childhood with rose-colored glasses, except I usually find that when I revisit those things as an adult, they’re actually pretty bad (see The Neverending Story). Such is the case with most children’s entertainment; it typically just doesn’t hold up to adult scrutiny. There are obviously some exceptions to this – I love the original Star Wars movies as much today as I did as a kid – but my expectations going into reviewing the spiffy new 25th anniversary DVD collection of the first season of the original Transformers cartoon were guarded at best (also: I am old). While I was pleasantly surprised by the show – which has the same basic story of the blockbuster movies, following a war between sentient alien robots taking place on Earth – I still can’t really discern how much of my being entertained was due to nostalgia (but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say “quite a bit”).

The original Transformers, for context’s sake, was probably the one thing (or “property,” in the more cynical parlance of our times) I loved more than Star Wars when I was a kid. That changed as I got older, somewhat predictably, but back in the day before I was a geek who watched cartoons and collected toys (as I write this I’m looking at Japanese import figurines of the ‘80s-era Megatron and Starscream I picked up a few months ago sitting among the menagerie of toys on my desk), I was a kid who watched cartoons and collected toys, and Transformers was as good as it got. I distinctly remember watching all 16 episodes from this DVD set sitting on my living room floor as part of my weekday Transformers/G.I. Joe afterschool double-bill. While Transformers is obviously a show intended for children, and one with the primary objective of selling toys (a box full of old plastic doodads at my parents’ place proves it was quite effective), the storytelling is more complex than I remember it being. Storylines and plots go across several episodes, and because the characters are giant robots, the creators seem surprisingly free to show the Autobots and Decepticons get violent with each other. The animation ranges from decent to sort of sketchy, but it’s nowhere near as crude as some of the other cartoons of the era. Overall the show holds up pretty well considering it’s a quarter-century old.

The new DVDs are clearly intended to capitalize on the new movies and if you were a fan of the original show like I was, the new Season 1 set is fun little blast of nostalgia. If you’ve got kids of your own and they’re into the new movies, then I’m sure they’ll appreciate the classic cartoon.

GRADE: B

THE EXTRAS

The bonus features on this new Transformers DVD set is aimed squarely at the nostalgia crowd. The main attraction is a featurette on the origin and evolution of the Transformers brand through toys and cartoons and comic books, featuring interviews with Hasbro execs and comic writers and such. It’s really interesting stuff for an old fan like myself, especially learning that Transformers started when American toy executives tried to market Japanese transforming-robot toys (which were all the rage overseas) to North American audiences by attaching a story to it – the now-familiar tale of Cybertron and the war between the Autobots and Decepticons – and that was the spark that ignited the whole phenomenon. Considering it was dreamed up by a bunch of marketing people at a toy company (aided by comics writers), the storyline at the core of Transformers really has stood the test of time to a rather remarkable degree. It’s probably tied to my childhood attachment to the Transformers franchise, but I actually found myself wishing the featurette ran beyond its 15 minutes.

There’s a handful of vintage toy commercials from when the toy line launched in the ‘80s, and even more than the show itself, it prompted a flood of old memories. But even better is a rarely-seen (I don’t remember it and I watched this show religiously) PSA with Bumblebee in the mold of the classic G.I. Joe “knowing is half the battle” spots. Running away from home, apparently, is a bad idea. Thanks Transformers!

Labels: animation, DVD review, Theme weeks

¶ 11:09 AM 0 Comments

THE SHOW

I’m not really a South Park fan. I’m familiar with the show, and I think it’s had some pretty hilarious and smart stuff on it (which I’ve seen primarily in clips on the Internet – there’s a Wheel of Fortune gag that’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, ever), and because of an ex-girlfriend who was REALLY into it, I’ve seen the 1999 movie, Bigger, Longer & Uncut, more times than I care to think about. (It’s a pretty funny movie, I’m not knocking it, I’ve just probably seen it 10 to 15 times more than was necessary for me.) Basically I think South Park is okay from what I’ve seen, but I haven’t been blown away enough to seek it out and watch it. So what does the show’s 12th season have to offer a guy like me? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
The first thing that struck me about season 12 of South Park is that if there’s a true successor to The Simpsons out there, it’s this show (Family Guy seems like the more obvious choice, because it’s a total ripoff from The Simpsons; working against it however, is the fact that it’s repetitive, hackneyed drivel). It went through the same period of almost gag-inducing mainstream popularity when it first hit (remember how ubiquitous Cartman t-shirts and dolls were when it first hit?), and once that faded the show sort of evolved into being a satire of media, society, and – eventually – the show itself. South Park a smart show made by smart people, that often – arguably too often – traffics in decidedly lowbrow humour, but make no mistake, there are some legitimately sharp minds at work here. It’s funny and it’s actually about things, and even when creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone err on the side of heavy-handedness in getting their message across (often in the form of a somewhat tongue-in-cheek speech from one of the kids at the end), the point they’re making is more often than not a good one.

Season 12 of South Park is far enough in that, if you’re not buying what Parker and Stone are selling at this point, the show’s probably just not for you. But it’s packed with awesome and hilarious pop culture references ranging from the somewhat obscure (the Heavy Metal parody “Major Boobage,” which had me in stitches the entire time) to the very obvious (a ham-fisted spoof of High School Musical). But for a season of television that ran last year, some of the jokes seemed weirdly stale (they just got around to making fun of goth kids? Really?), and in the aforementioned High School Musical spoof they actually directly reference the hugely successful tween franchise, despite the fact that, by that point in the episode, it’s beyond obvious that that’s what they’re satirizing.

But despite the crude animation, they manage to make a running gag of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg literally raping Indiana Jones (a metaphor for Crystal Skull’s crappiness) actually sort of creepy and disturbing – particularly when they riff on the infamous scene in The Accused. And the post-election night episode (which the staff remarkably turned around in 24 hours), “About Last Night…”, reveals that rather than being bitter political rivals, Barack Obama and John McCain are actually comrades in an elaborate Ocean’s 11-esque scheme to steal the Hope Diamond (also: Michelle isn’t actually Barack’s wife, and Sarah Palin is actually a brilliant British burglar merely disguised as a folksy hockey mom of questionable intelligence). When South Park is firing on all cylinders like that, it’s right up there with The Simpsons. A very funny show.

GRADE: B+

THE EXTRAS

I guess it’s because I don’t watch much South Park and therefore don’t have any of the previous season-set DVDs, but apparently Parker and Stone only do “mini-commentaries” on most of the episodes (as opposed to full commentaries), and evidently what this means is that they only talk for the first couple of minutes of each episode, and then they just stop. It’s a move that makes a certain amount of sense – it’s better than them trying to find ways to fill time for 20-odd minutes at a time. I respect it, even if I would have enjoyed hearing from them some more, as they’re both incredibly smart, funny dudes – but at the same time it’s sort of weird that after five or so minutes, the commentary ends and you’re left just watching the episode. It’s an odd choice, but I’m late enough to the South Park DVD party that I’m sure fans are used to it now.

There’s also a nice range of featurettes, including brief making-of bits about specific episodes (like the post-election show), and a six-part making-of mini-documentary, “Six Days to South Park,” which follows the day-by-day creation of an episode. It features six animators and producers and directors and editors explaining the process for creating the show, but conspicuously absent are Parker and Stone; I guess at this point they’re more the idea men, focusing on writing and other stuff, and now the nuts and bolts are handled by other folks (I could be wrong but I seem to recall reading that in the early days they did much of the animation themselves), and it’s cool that they share the spotlight with their incredibly hard-working crew (they regularly turn out episodes in a matter of days, which is pretty amazing, regardless of what you think of the “crude” animation). Overall this is a very solid DVD set.

Labels: animation, DVD review, TV on DVD

¶ 11:34 AM 0 Comments

I love animation, and have since I was a kid (kids loving animation is not unusual; I just didn’t grow out of it). One thing I did grow out of was the more kiddie-centric aspects of animation – like any good geek, I bristle at the suggestion that animation is for kids – and I’ve had to turn to Japanese anime and Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim shows like The Venture Brothers and Metalocalypse. But ever since I was little, computer animation in particularly has fascinated me (I loved Tron and Dire Straits’ ‘Money for Nothing’ video), and as that’s replaced traditional cel animation as the standard for theatrical animated films, many of my friends has heard me grumbling that I’m eagerly awaiting Hollywood to stumble across the fact that computer animation can actually be used for something other than children’s movies about celebrity-voiced animals. So when I started seeing trailers for Kung Fu Panda, I groaned; it just looked like more of the same. I don’t bother with the kiddie animated movies, not since I suffered through the first Shrek in theatres and swore never again (though as a comic book geek, I rather unsurprisingly worship Pixar’s The Incredibles). So I was pretty surprised at how thoroughly entertaining Kung Fu Panda is.

The story follows Po (voiced by Jack Black), a food-loving panda who works at a noodle stand in ancient China where his (presumably adoptive) father, a duck, is pushing him into taking up the family business. But Po dreams of being a kung fu hero like his idols, the Furious Five. When their enlightened master decides it’s time to find the prophesied Dragon Warrior, Po is the one he chooses – much to his idols’ dismay. They’ve been training for years to become the perfect fighting machines, only to have their places usurped by a fat, bumbling fanboy with no kung fu skills. Further complicating matters is the return of Tai Lung, the former prize student of the Furious Five’s master, Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) who believes he should be the Dragon Warrior, and is willing to take the prized Dragon Scroll by force.

The plot of Kung Fu Panda is by no means original, borrowing liberally from Star Wars as well as tons of old-school kung fu movies. But that’s actually part of the movie’s charm, and really, kids movies are not the place to look for groundbreaking stories. Kung Fu Panda does what it does really well, managing to be funny without resorting to fart jokes like Shrek and packaging a nice little morality tale about believing in yourself without getting too preachy or sappy about it. On top of all this the movie’s action scenes are legitimately fun and cool, particularly the sequence where Tai Lung breaks out of the prison he’s been locked in for 20 years. The filmmakers behind Kung Fu Panda clearly get and appreciate classic kung fu movies, with co-directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne even mentioning The 36th Chamber of Shaolin in the commentary as one of the inspirations for the training sequence. They also mention their goal was to push the boundaries of action in a family-friendly animated film, and they pulled it off with gusto. Kung Fu Panda perfectly marries martial arts action with classic Chuck Jones and Tex Avery cartoons.

The cast is also great. (Listening to Dustin Hoffman seriously talk about what it takes to master kung fu is worth the price of admission alone.) Like a lot of people, I used to think Jack Black was pretty awesome, until, like a lot of people, I got tired of his shtick and now he gets on my nerves, so I had low expectations for him going in. But maybe it’s the fact that it’s just his voice here and not his face, maybe it’s the fact that Po is actually a character and not a collection of tics and nonsensical phrases (his Homer Simpson-esque love of food isn't all that original, but then again it’s not like The Simpsons invented that whole thing either). Black was actually one of the things I enjoyed the most about Kung Fu Panda, with several of the jokes working almost entirely because of his readings. The Furious Five – Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Jackie Chan) and Crane (David Cross) – are also a high point, but unfortunately the celebrities they lined up to voice them don’t get a whole lot to do (a fact acknowledged – and lamented – by Stevenson and Osborne on the commentary). But the real standout is Ian McShane as Tai Lung. McShane manages to inject the film’s villain with a ferocity and scary intelligence reminiscent of his mind-blowing work as Al Swearengen on Deadwood, and the whole movie kicks into a higher gear any time Tai Lung is onscreen.

As a fan of more grown-up animation, I’ve been hoping that the success of the excellent Beowulf would make Hollywood realize that there are audiences old enough to shave that enjoy animated films as well. I’m not sure how that's going to work out (though I have high hopes of Pixar’s rumoured adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ cult sci-fi novel A Princess of Mars), but in the meantime, I can handle more talking-animal animated movies if they’re as good as Kung Fu Panda.

GRADE: A-

THE EXTRAS

The Kung Fu Panda DVD has quite a few extras on it, but a lot of them are activities and games for young viewers. The more substantive among them include a nice look at the history of kung fu as well as the animal-themed fighting styles seen in the movie. There’s also the aforementioned commentary from directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, which is kind of interesting, if a little dry. I don’t imagine kids will be all that interested in it.

Kung Fu Panda is available individually and packaged with a direct-to-DVD companion piece (it’s sort of equal parts sequel and prequel) called Secrets of the Furious Five. The main feature runs about a half-hour, and tells the origin stories of each of the Furious Five in the stylized, 2D animation style seen in the main movie’s very cool opening sequence (it reminded me more than a little of Genndy Tartakovsky's excellent series Samurai Jack). Unfortunately, only David Cross reprises his role from the movie, but Secrets of the Furious Five mostly follows the characters in their youth, so it’s not really that noticeable (though Jackie Chan’s son, Jaycee, fills in for his dad as Monkey). There’s a handful of extras on the Furious Five DVD, but they’re exclusively for kiddies. Overall Kung Fu Panda is a solid DVD package for a fun little flick kids will love.

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Labels: animation, DVD review, martial arts

¶ 12:06 PM 1 Comments