Posted on January 7, 2012 at 8:00 am
There’s a mini-“Tangled” sequel before “Beauty and the Beast” 3D! Here’s a sneak peek! A full sequel is scheduled to appear on the Disney Channel this spring. Stay tuned.
Posted on December 21, 2011 at 8:00 am
Two box office champion directors and a cult favorite joined forces for a film that was a first for all of them, a 3D motion capture animated story. It is clear that director Steven Spielberg, producer Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings”) and co-screenwriter Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”) were thrilled at the total freedom of animation, bringing storyboards to life without any pesky problems posed by weather, local ordinances, camera placement, safety, or the laws of gravity. And so they have created a film that is non-stop, brilliantly staged action, with every mode of transport and obstacle, half Indiana Jones, half M. Hulot, with a touch of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, turning the entire material world into a giant Rube Goldberg contraption. Wonderfully cinematic shots and transitions show us how the masters have fun with pure, unleashed movie story-telling.
The comic book stories of the boy reporter Tintin created by an artist/writer known as Hergé (Georges Remi) are wildly popular in Europe but not well known in the US. Tintin is brave, capable, inquisitive boy of indeterminate age, probably somewhere around 14. His excuse for getting involved in all kinds of adventures is that he is a reporter though neither the books nor the movie waste any time on the details of actually writing or filing stories, or, indeed, on any facts about Tintin’s origins or family. He has a dog, Snowy, who is as intrepid as he is, and their journeys give them many chances to rescue one another in many exotic locations.
Spielberg and Jackson (whose WETA firm did the animation) did not try to copy the iconic linge claire style pioneered by Hergé, though there is a sly nod to it in the delightful opening credits and in a street artist’s sketch of Tintin at the beginning. Instead it is an intensely detailed motion and performance capture with hyper-real textures and 3D effects that make the vertiginous chase scenes feel very visceral. Tintin (voice of Jamie Bell) buys a model ship that turns out to be of great interest to a mysterious man named Ivanovich Sakharine (voice of Daniel Craig). That leads Tintin to an adventure that involves cities, a desert, an opera singer, a potentate, pirates, dim policemen (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as Thompson and Thomson), as he is drawn into a multi-generational saga involving lost treasure. Along the way he meets up with Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), a drunken sailor who is part sidekick, part clue.
It has a lot of alcohol for a PG movie and some parents may be uncomfortable with the repeated references, some intended to be humorous, to drinking and drunkenness. And some will find the non-stop action overwhelming and just too much to process, even in these frenzied movie-as-video-game days. Even the exacting eye of Spielberg and the prodigious talent of WETA have not quite mastered the physics of movement with motion capture technology. The textures are wonderfully vivid and tactile and the angles and velocity are superb and the seas and ships toss convincingly. But the weight of the bodies when characters leap or fall or objects crash feels strange and somehow off and the faces never find the right spot between the realism of the textures and a more stylized or cartoony look. This is one element where they should have been more true to the original.
Posted on November 22, 2011 at 7:17 pm
A-| Lowest Recommended Age: | 4th - 6th Grades |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for mild thematic material, some action/peril and smoking |
| Profanity: | None |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drunken adult character |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Sad losses of parents and mistreatment of orphans, characters in peril |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | November 23, 2011 |
| Date Released to DVD: | February 27, 2012 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B003Y5H5H4 |
Martin Scorsese’s enchanting “Hugo” is a thrillingly immersive adventure. It is about two orphans trying to solve a mystery. It is about the way that stories help us make sense of life. It stretches from the very beginnings of movies and the transformation of images through imagination into pure magic to technological advances that go beyond anything we’ve ever seen before. Scorsese, perhaps the greatest living master of cinematic storytelling and certainly the most passionate movie fan in history, waited until he and the medium reached a point where 3D was ready to be more than a stunt and become an integral element of the story and with his first film for families he stretches the frame in ways it has never been used before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR-kP-olcpM&feature=youtu.beIt is based on the Caldecott award winning book by Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret
They had been working on it together and with the help of his father’s notebook and the gears from some toys he has stolen from the station’s toy shop he is getting close. But then the proprietor of the toy shop (Ben Kingsley) has confiscated the notebook. The proprietor’s adopted daughter, the book-loving Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz of “Kick-Ass”) who is hoping for an adventure, holds the key to the mystery in more ways than one. From the opening moment, with ticking sounds that surround us as Hugo peeks out from the number 4 on a huge clock dial. The intricate pendulums, gears, and catwalks hidden inside the upper reaches of the station are enthralling, with brilliant production design by Dante Ferretti that seems to surround us.
Occasionally Scorsese will tease us a bit with 3D effects — the inspector’s nose is one example. But more often it is subtly done. Dust motes glisten several feet in front of the screen to create a sustained illusion of depth. The children’s search takes them to the movies and then to a library where they research the brief history of cinema from its invention by the Lumière brothers and the early audiences who jumped when they saw a train coming toward them on the screen. They see Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a giant clock in “Safety Last” and we get glimpses of classics from Buster Keaton’s “The General” to D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance.” And they meet a film scholar who has the last piece of the puzzle. Scorsese and screenwriter John Logan make the children’s adventure and the movie history mesh like the gears that operate the station clocks and the result is a rare story with something for every age. Scorsese lingers too long on Butterfield’s face and some of the other images and some of the scenes could be trimmed, but by the time it all comes together in a joyous celebration of film it is clear that the ultimate tribute to the cinematic giants is standing on their shoulders. (more…)
Posted on November 22, 2011 at 6:12 pm
A sleigh pulled by reindeer? That’s so five decades ago. With the population topping seven billion and the Duggars getting ready to welcome baby number 20, Santa (Jim Broadbent) needs all the support modern technology can provide. He may not be on Facebook or Twitter, but he has swapped the sleigh for a state-of-the-art spaceship with a cloaking device, and he has a battalion of elves with the precision technology of Seal Team Six and nifty hand-held devices with naughty/nice indicators. Santa’s head of ops is his burly son, Steve (Hugh Laurie), who barks orders from mission control in camo fatigues and a high and tight haircut. Meanwhile, his bumbling but kind-hearted brother, Arthur Christmas (James McAvoy), sits by himself and answers letters from children old school-style, one at a time by hand, wearing a fuzzy Christmas sweater decorated with candy canes and reindeer-faced slippers.
The British Aardman studio is beloved for claymation films like the “Wallace and Gromit” series, characterized by off-beat characters literally showing the fingerprints of the humans who created them and a refreshing unwillingness to focus-group their stories to make them bland and culturally non-specific. While this one has some accommodation to American sensibilities — surely a little girl from Cornwall would address her letter to Father Christmas rather than Santa — the Aardman sensibility has thankfully been transferred to the digital world without looking sterile or boringly hyper-real. Steve’s goatee is shaped like a Christmas tree, an elf has a pierced eyebrow, and a reindeer has a plastic cone on his head. The settings, especially on the North Pole, are deliciously intricate and the characters understatedly quirky. I longed for a pause button to explore the witty details, especially the Enigma code-inspired analog machines Arthur and his grandfather use to send messages.
Santa’s family is endearingly flawed and familiarly dysfunctional. He loves his sons and knows he should retire, but he just cannot give up the spotlight, even in playing a Christmas board game with his family. His father, Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) longs for a chance to show he can still take the starring role. I was especially taken with Mrs. Christmas (Imelda Staunton), whose comfy demeanor hides some unexpected skills. Steve is a numbers guy who is comfortable with a delivery record that is almost perfect and he is angry and frustrated at not being promoted to become the new Santa. Clumsy, anxious Arthur knows that no child should be disappointed on Christmas morning. So when one gift is mistakenly left behind, it will be up to Arthur to save the day. With Santa and Steve in bed and mission control shut down, Grandsanta, Arthur, and a spirited stowaway wrapping elf (Ashley Jenson as Bryony) set off in the sleigh to deliver that last gift, a pink twinkle bicycle, to a little girl in Cornwall before sunrise.
From the brisk Justin Bieber video that opens the story to the warm-hearted happy ending, this is a holiday charmer that shows us how imperfect families can still feel just right.
Posted on November 19, 2011 at 6:23 pm
I loved the original Happy Feet, but five years later only liked this sequel. It’s still a lot of fun to see dancing, singing penguins, but the meandering storyline never catches hold.
In the original, a small Emperor penguin named Mumbles (Elijah Wood) could not sing like the others but loved to dance and ultimately found a way to be true to himself and be a part of the community. Toward the end, the movie took a darker turn by acknowledging the impact of climate change on the Antarctic’s pristine world. This movie seems to have adopted the same template with a few random variations. Once again, there is a mash-up of music from a variety of genres (now a more familiar idea in this post “Glee”-era) and a small penguin who does not fit in, but this movie begins with the environmental crisis as the penguins see something — and a color — that is new to their black and white world. The ice is beginning to melt and underneath is green grass.
Wood returns as Mumbles, with rock star Pink replacing the late Brittany Murphy as his spouse, Gloria. Their son son Erik (Ava Acres) is a misfit like his father. He cannot sing or dance and after a humiliating failure in front of the whole penguin tribe, he runs away from home, followed by two of his friends, Atticus and Boadicia (charmingly voiced by Benjamin Flores Jr. and Meibh Campbell). As Mumbles did in the first film, they meet up with some Adelies penguins led by the wild, sweater-wearing Lovelace (Robin Williams), who has a new friend, Sven (voice superstar Hank Azaria), a penguin with the ability to fly — and a secret about his identity. Mumbles goes after the penguin chicks, but on the way home, they find that the ice has broken apart so that their community is cut off. They cannot get back and their friends and family cannot get food. They will need the help of the Andelies and some other friends to rescue the Emperor penguins and find a new home. Meanwhile, though the penguins have no idea, a couple of microscopic krill named Will and Bill (voices of Brad Pitt and Matt Damon) are on an adventure of their own, trying to move beyond the hive mind of their species to evolve into something more independent.
The music choices are delightful but too often just frustrating snippets. The relationship between Mumbles and Erik never comes to life. The segments about Will and Bill are far more engaging (the movie I’d really like to see is the Pitt/Damon recording studio riffs), but they are not integrated enough to the rest of the storyline until a Cindy Lou Who moment at the end. It’s nice to make a movie about how everything is connected but in this movie, it does not really hold together.
