Tag Archives: animated movies

Boy & The World

1026025-watch-gkids-unveils-us-trailer-boy-and-world This movie looks different, feels different, sounds different. Actually, I’d heard it was a silent film, and that’s not quite true. There’s a smattering of dialogue, unsubtitled, but that didn’t bother me. The images and the score are so evocative they’ve already buried under your skin, and you know what’s going on even if you can’t decipher the words. I probably shouldn’t admit this next bit, but upon looking it up, I see that the language is actually just a made up one – backwards Portuguese, apparently – so Boy_and_the_World_2.0.0 that may reassure you while making me look stupid. Incidentally, I don’t speak Portuguese forwards either.

Long story short, the film’s about a young boy searching for his father who has gone to the city in search of work, but the combination of sweet and simple imagery coupled with jaunty music and depth of imagination makes for a pretty powerful message. We see the world through the eyes of a child, and it’s as fanciful as you’d think, but it’s also reflective. I think the larger statement being made is a cautionary tale. At one point the boy seems to have found 960 his father, only to find many identical men exiting an office building. Has his father become a clone? Has the city stolen his soul? Is there simply no difference between men who don’t make things with their own hands?I’m not sure of the exact sentiment the Brazilian film makers were hoping to convey, but that’s kind of the beauty of the thing. In its quiet, it allows the viewer to be making judgments for herself, and my reading of it was obviously pretty damning.

This film actually made its debut right here at the Ottawa International Animation Festival where it received special honours “Because it was full of some of the most beautiful menino_mundo_01_wide-31e6e3590ce09f3e938c01ad238ba8e1298eac2f-s900-c85 images we’ve ever seen” and I think that’s putting it mildly. It’s some of the most innovative work I’ve seen in a while, despite the fact that the main character is basically a stick man, truly thrilling to watch and absorb. There we go, that’s what I’ve been getting to this whole time: it’s a movie that you don’t just watch. You experience it. The visuals feel quite personal and they take you back to your own childhood while thrilling you and keeping you guessing. All the drawings were hand-made by the Director, Alê Abreu, and I just love how he makes this very basic character come to life against a geometric, swirling, abstract background. It’s moving. This is an image-heavy post, and I think you can tell it’s for good reason. Yes, I could talk about this all day but honestly, this is one you’ll have to see for yourself, if only you feel up to risking the nontraditional style.

The Peanuts Movie

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Charles Schulz’ Peanuts is a comic strip that I grew up with. Charlie Brown and his trademark shirt, Lucy and her advice stand, Linus and his blanket, Schroeder and his piano, and Snoopy and his doghouse – these images are forever ingrained. I expect most of you had the same experience, as the Peanuts were everywhere, including lunchboxes, greeting cards, TV specials, pajamas and sheet sets, and everything else possible. Snoopy Sno-Cones, anyone?

Charlie Brown says, “I hope you like red flavour, because otherwise you’re just eating ice cubes!”

The heart of the Peanuts empire was the comic strip, and the love that went into that makes it impossible for me to be too cynical about all the rest of the merchandise that was churned out. Charles Schulz loved these characters and as a result, I loved reading about their little adventures from the day I was old enough to locate the comics in the newspaper index, to the day I moved out of my parents’ house. The Peanuts was a landmark comic strip from start to finish, as Jay wrote about in an excellent piece a few months back.

That was way back on The Peanuts Movie’s opening weekend. It has taken until now for me to get around to watching it, mainly because despite how good it looked visually, I kept hearing that The Peanuts Movie didn’t have the comic strip’s heart. The heart that made the Peanuts so special. And now, having seen The Peanuts Movie for myself, my takeaway was that the Peanuts’ heart stopped beating when when Charles Schulz’s did (RIP).

The Peanuts Movie is not bad. It’s well animated and there’s a basic, tolerable story guiding us through the 80 minute-ish run time. And during those 80 minutes we see and hear lots of things we would expect to find here, like the adults’ trombone voices and the characters’ relationships, like Lucy loving Schroeder and pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. But those are the highlights and it quickly became clear that the best parts of this movie are good mainly because they remind you of the comic strip.

Seeing all these old standbys tied together by a basic plot felt strangely similar to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and my complaint here is the same. Making me nostalgic is neither enough to make me enjoy your movie, nor enough of a reason to have made the movie in the first place. I would have been better off thumbing through a trade paperback of old strips than watching The Peanuts Movie.

So that’s what I would suggest to you: skip The Peanuts Movie and go straight to the source, Schulz’s old comic strips. Because those strips are pure magic while The Peanuts Movie only scores six zig-zag striped shirts out of ten.

Arthur Christmas

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Merry Christmas.

You may have learned by now that Matt and I are therapists who specialize in crisis counselling. People can get depressed or suicidal at any time, around the clock, around the calendar, so our office never closes. IT NEVER CLOSES. Which means I’m at work today, and was at work yesterday too, and have worked through the holidays for 7 years running. And that’s okay. It’s not fantastic. I’d rather be at home, or with family, or in bed, or in Jamaica, or pretty much anywhere else, but this kind of work doesn’t come without sacrifice, and I knew that going in. I’ve made peace with it, although I always regret leaving Sean (a measly lawyer) home alone (we don’t live in the same city as our extended families) – albeit with a nice bottle of scotch, The Good Dinosaur on Disney Infinity, and a little droid called BB-8 (who is probably terrorizing our dogs).

The good news is, we do find workarounds. Since I’m working until 11pm on Christmas day, we had our Christmas dinner last night, when I got home from work (did I feel like cooking a big meal after a long day at work? you bet!). Then we settled into the hot tub with a bottle of wine. It was a full moon last night, and unseasonably warm here in Canada (a record high of 16 degrees, I believe – what was it like for you?), and it so we relaxed under a starry night to watch a movie recommended by Carrie called Arthur Christmas.

Arthur is the son of Santa, and the grandson of Santa too. It’s a job that gets proudly passed down in their family, and someday soon Arthur’s brother Steve will wear the suit. He already nearly runs the whole operation, having streamlined the process with his high-tech gadgets. Grandsanta is enjoying his retirement but Santa’s still loving his Christmas Eve missions and is reluctant to pass the torch. Arthur, meanwhile, too clumsy and keen to ever seriously be considered for the role, works in the letter department, answering all the kids who write to Santa. This Christmas Eve, Steve runs an impeccable shift and 2 billion presents are delivered, almost without a hitch. Almost. End of day, an elf comes across one undelivered present. Steve is comfortable with their error margin and Santa’s ready for bed, so it’s up to Arthur, Grandsanta, and an androgynous elf named Bryony to somehow get a bike to Gwen before she wakes up and thinks Santa forgot her.

The movie’s a lot of fun, with just the right amount of saltiness in the sweet to make me happy (not many holiday movies have a Santa threatening to euthanize himself with a rock). Plus the voice cast is top-notch: James McAvoy as Arthur, Hugh Laurie as Steve, Jim Broadbent as Santa, Bill Nighy as Grandsanta…actually, the list goes on like crazy. Have fun trying to recognize them yourself.

This morning Sean and I had a Christmas brunch and gave the dogs each a Christmas steak. No one will ever make a Christmas movie about our non-traditional celebrations (although they tried – it’s called Mixed Nuts), but we did manage to put a little merry in our hearts. And hey – working on Christmas isn’t all bad: I came armed with cheeseball.

Happy holidays.

The Good Dinosaur

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I wasn’t overly excited about this latest Pixar offering. I’d seen the trailers and thought it was a little off-putting to have a cartoony dinosaur dancing around some very photo-real landscapes. Watching the movie, though, it was the furthest thing from my mind. The animation is stunning. I particularly loved the bits with water, the reflective surfaces sparkling in the sun. It was gorgeous.

But there’s a great little story that goes along with it, about a boy and his dog, Spot. Except the boy is a longneck dinosaur named Arlo, and the dog is in fact a boy, named Spot. This movie is set in a make believe time when the dinosaurs never went extinct so they’re living at the same time as humans. Little Arlo is living peaceably on the family farm (I LOVED to see dinosaurs discover agriculture) with his parents and siblings when a “critter” starts raiding their food stores. Spot is a mangy, hungry, feral critter, and the two are at odds until the script conspires to cast them off on an adventure together.

The movie had me both belly-laughing and fat-tear crying within its first 20 minutes. Neither the tears nor the laughs let up, either. It’s a fairly simple story with a lot of Pixar heart. It’s quiet for long stretches (the dinosaurs talk; humans do not) but the characters are so facially expressive and nuanced, you don’t miss it. And every scene they walk through is a painting, with depth of field and detail enough to keep your hungry eyes constantly eating up the scenery (we saw it in 3D).

This movie is probably more relatable to younger kids than Inside Out was, but there are some mature themes here as well. Arlo and Spot live in nature, which is both cruel and kind. The potential for harm is more present in this movie than in other children’s fare, and they don’t shy away from death and grief either.

Sean was a little less moved by the film than I was (which, I suppose, is always the case) but I felt quite emotionally connected to it. Maybe it’s because Spot reminded me a lot of my little nephew Jack, both in looks and in temperament (Jack’s Papa calls him ‘Joe Pesci’, completely endearingly, for his wildman ways, though Jack is not yet 2). And maybe it’s because of the very simple but very moving and dignified way they deal with loss. At any rate, I’d say it’s a welcome addition to the Pixar family and a worthy way to spend your time and money at the cinema. I wish I could get in there and tweak the ending just a smidge (let me know how you felt about it), but overall I walked out with puffy eyes but a singing heart.

Love Pixar? Be sure to check out our contest – you could win a prize pack including a copy of Inside Out on DVD.

Paprika

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In the near future, a device called the DC mini will allow a new kind of psychotherapy, whereby a person wearing the device during sleep will allow his or her therapist to view their dreams. The DC minis aren’t quite ready yet, but Dr. Chiba is already using them outside the facility to help her patients, like Detective Konakawa, who has recurring nightmares, by assuming her alter-ego Paprika in the dream world, and guiding him through the source of his anxiety.

Despite secrecy, the lab is broken into, and the DC minis fall into the wrong hands. Still in their early stages of development, the devices lack access restrictions, so when they’re stolen, they allow anyone to enter anyone else’s dreams. Soon the scientists at the lab seem to be falling prey to dream invasions – bad dreams being implanted by the thieves of the device – which have real-world consequences.

As dreams and real life start to merge, does the film get confusing? You betcha: kind of like the best dreams do. It’s surreal, of course, fresh and fantastic, but trippy, and rife with the problems of translated-from-Japanese dialogue. You might get a brain bleed trying to make sense of this movie, which I suspect is meant to be experienced more than understood anyway. If it sounds a little like Inception, you’re not wrong. Christopher Nolan was influenced by Paprika, but while Satoshi Kon’s film is able to play with the fluidity between dreams and reality more recklessly, Nolan’s film irons out the incongruities and presents something a little easier to follow and swallow.

Satoshi Kon is not just a film maker, but a film lover as well, and he uses the dream sequences in Paprika, now watchable and movie-like, as an homage to his own favourite films. There’s a parrallel between dreams, movies, and how we use both to construct narrative in our own lives. The imagery is truly like nothing you’ve seen before, and paired with a very unique soundtrack, it lifts you out of, and beyond, the usual movie going experience.

The Peanuts Movie

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The Peanuts comic strip ran in papers for nearly 50 years – from 1950 right up until 2000 – 17,897 strips in all, making it (arguably) the longest story ever told by a single person, Charles M. Schulz. Schulz wrote and drew every strip himself.

This is the very first strip, featuring the original Patty and a character called Shermy. More popular characters appeared later: Schroeder (May 1951), Lucy (March 1952), Linus (September 1952), Pig-Pen (July 1954), Sally (August 1959), “Peppermint” Patty (August 1966), Woodstock (introduced April 1967; given a name in June 1970), Franklin (July 1968), Marcie (July 1971), and Rerun (March 1973).

Franklin appeared in 1968 at the urging of a schoolteacher who thought it might help normalize friendship between a black kid and a white kid. Schulz was initially worried it would seem patronizing, but the strip was published and was ahead of its time.

Schulz was pretty wily about gender discrimination too, once having Charlie Brown refuse sponsorship of his team when they wouldn’t allow girls (or dogs!) to play. Although some of the holiday specials on TV mentioned God, the strip itself tended to stay fairly neutral.

Schulz necessarily always wrote several panels in advance, so when he retired in 2000, there were still a few to be published and he actually passed away one day before his final strip ran.

This weekend The Peanuts Movie hits theatres, looking better and brighter than ever. The Schulz family is ever in control of the Charlie Brown empire; Schulz’s son Craig and grandson Bryan wrote the script and hand-picked Steve Martino to direct because they felt he’d shown a “faithful to classics” with his adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! They’ve used archived music and classic settings so even though this movie is rendered in 3D CGI, it should still feel familiar to old fans of the strip and the movies we’ve watched on TV every year since infancy. Animator Bill Melendez provided the voice of both Snoopy and Woodstock ever since the first Peanuts cartoon, 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas. He died in 2008, but the new movie uses archival samples of Melendez’s Snoopy and Woodstock voices from previous cartoons. Musician Trombone Shorty will even be providing the old “wah-wah” of the adults in the Peanuts universe with a plunger mute as always.

Sidebar: I have a tiny head. Yeah, I said it. I no longer wear glasses, but my sunglasses are either XS if I can find them, and children’s when I can’t. Back when I did wear eyeglasses, in the dark ages before Prada, my first pair were Nintendo brand, but my second and third were Peanuts brand. They were even more awful than you’re imagining, and no, I will not be posting a picture. I find it interesting that Charles Schulz actually disliked the Peanuts name. He didn’t come up with it, an editor did “It’s totally ridiculous, has no meaning, is simply confusing,” he said. “And has no dignity. I think my humor has dignity.” And I think he’s right. Except for my glasses. Those were hilarious but totally without a shred of dignity.

As you may have guessed, the boys are dragging me to see Spectre tonight, but my heart will be in the theatre down the hall. So to soothe myself a bit, here are a couple of fun things I’ve come across while in serious-research-mode:

Which Peanuts character are you? I can’t vouch for its authenticity because it just called me a Sally Brown (Charlie’s little sister) and I’m nobody’s second banana. Still, if you take it, be sure to share your results in the comments!
Peanutize yourself! Ever wondered what you’d look like if you made a cameo in the strip? Now you don’t have to. May I present:

Sean

Matt

Jay

Shaun the Sheep

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If you like stop-motion animation, Shaun the Sheep is worth checking out. If you happen to like stop-motion animation and fart jokes, well, this movie’s going to make you feel like a pig in mud. And if you don’t like stop-motion animation, ask yourself why, and see if Shaun the Sheep makes you squeal with delight. Because this movie is simply beautiful to watch.

Having tried to make a stop-motion re-enactment of the war of 1812 for history class one year, using GI Joes, I have an appreciation for how difficult it is to pull off something passable. Getting to a flawless finished product like Shaun the Sheep must be insanely difficult. The effort is all on the screen and it’s marvelous. This clearly was a labour of love for all involved at Aardman Animations.

As for the story, it’s strictly for kids, but the target audience is going to be as happy as a dog with two tails (as they were at our packed Saturday morning screening). The interesting thing is there are no actual words being used by any of these characters, it’s all just noise. Minions did a similar thing and did it well, and I’d say Shaun the Sheep one ups Minions because not even the humans speak English (which is ironic for a movie coming out of the UK) yet the story still seemed clear and easy to follow even for the younger audience members.

There are lots of laughs for kids here but fewer for adults. A few gags are universal (counting sheep in particular) but it seemed that the writers were just throwing the occasional bone to the expected parental crowd rather than trying to make this movie appeal directly to all ages. As Jay has mentioned in the past, that across-the-board accessibility expectation for animation is a product of Pixar’s excellence that didn’t traditionally exist. I won’t hold the lack of adult focus against Shaun the Sheep, because it’s a throwback by nature and as a kids movie it hits the bullseye.

I give Shaun the Sheep nine farm animal references out of ten.

Minions

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There’s nothing wrong with the Minions movie, as long as you call it what it is: a kid’s movie. In the olden days, kids’ movies would have primary-coloured protagonists with annoying, high-pitched voices who got into non-sensical high jinks with little to no thought to plot. And we were fine with this, because we’d pop it into the VCR and let it babysit our kids for a while, and we’d pay as little attention to it as humanly possible. But then Pixar came along and raised the bar. Sure they improved the quality of computer-generated animation, but they also did something few had done before: the movie spoke directly to the adults in the audience. They found a way to appeal to children, and also the child in all of us. So the other animation studios have (tried) to follow suit.

Despicable Me was reasonably successful at this – if you remember the Evil Bank where Gru goes to get an evil loan, you may have caught the sign, which identified the bank as (Formerly Lehman Brothers) – think the kids got that one? I took a poll. They did not. What kids did notice, however, was the bright yellow pill-shaped sidekicks, aka the Minions. They squeak gibberish and generally look cute while acting devilish – what 3-year-old can resist? In fact, these little sidekicks are modeled after three-year-olds, full stop. Sidekick spinoffs are meant for them, not us.

Minions are occasionally funny and occasionally annoying as fuck. You’ll get tired of the joke well before it’s over, but this movie isn’t made for you. It’s not even made for your adorable nephew. This movie is made to move merchandise, and dear god has it been successful on that score. A movie is a $12 ticket and maybe a $25 DVD, if they’re lucky. But adorable, rotund minions are potentially a whole line of toys waiting to happen. Action figures! Plushies! Jigsaw puzzles, sticker books, back to school supplies, board games, snack packs, fart guns, voice changers, licensed goddamned EVERYTHING! And we should know. Having recently visited Universal Studios, we Assholes were briefly (but memorably!) turned into minions. Thankfully we were turned back because the park was already overrun as it was: the minions were everywhere! You could eat them, buy them, have your picture taken with them. The Minions are a machine now. You may feed it dollars to keep it quiet.

Spirited Away

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I don’t know if I need to turn in my Asshole card for saying this but I’m not into Japanese animation. To be fair, I don’t know much about it. All I know is that Howl’s Moving Castle didn’t do it for me and neither did Ponyo, even though I know they should. Part of the problem, as Jay pointed out, is the rock and hard place in which we’re caught between reading subtitles or enduring bad dubbing. Recently though, I was on a date with someone who said that I absolutely had to see Spirited Away and next time- in the event of an uncomfortable silence- it would be nice to have “So, I finally saw Spiritied Away…” in my back pocket.

I was a little discouraged to discover (shows how little I know about the wonderful world of Japanese animation) that both of the above-mentioned films I had so little interest in were from the same master of the medium (Hayao Miyazaki) as Spirited Away. Not a great sign that this was going to be the movie that finally turned me on to anime.

Even though most who have seen it tend to regard it as a modern masterpiece, I was still surprised how much I enjoyed it. I chose to watch the dubbed version, which being supervised by Pixar’s John Lasseter wasn’t nearly as distracting as usual. I made the right choice, partly because the English-language script was specifically written to match the lip movements on screen and was supported by well-cast voice actors. Mostly though, the images are often so bizarre, so imaginative, so exquisite that I would have hated focusing my attention to just the bottom of the screen even more than I susually would.

The plot centers around a bathhouse where dirty spirits can come to relax and the cast of characters include talking forgs, giant babies, stink spirits, and dragons. What drives it though is one human child’s journey into the unkown as she confronts her many fears to save her parents who are stuck in the spirit world. It’s like Finding Nemo in reverse set in a brothel.

Oh yeah, the brothel. Apparently Miyazaki saw Spirited Away as his commentary on prostitution in Japan. Even at a glance, the parallels are hard to miss but, after reading up on it, the metaphor is even clearer. I’m still not as enthusiastic as I am about movies like Wall-E or Up but it’s nice to see an anime film for once where I can understand what all the fuss is about.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

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Apparently I’m a bit of a masochist this week – after watching a bunch of foreign movies, I’m watching a few more, including the last Oscar-nominated animated movie on my list, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, because why watch any old cartoon when you can watch one that’ll make you work hard reading subtitles?

And if you’re thinking that a subtitled cartoon doesn’t sound like much fun, then let tell you about the animation, which is very minimalistic and quite drab, and the story, which is goddamned depressing.

Okay, the truth is, it is quite beautiful. Yes, the lines are simple, hand-drawn, but it is quite lovely. And the colours might more optimistic be described as soft, like water colours. It certainly makes for a stark contrast from the Pixar fare we’re more accustomed to, which doesn’t make it bad, just different – and for me, less engrossing.

The tale is this: an old man, a bamboo cutter, finds a tiny person in a bamboo shoot. He brings her home and when he and his wife decide to raise her, she changes into a baby, but one who grows rapidly. The old man is convinced she is a beautiful princess, so when he finds gold in the bamboo patch, he moves his family into the city and buys her a title, along with everything else that money can buy. The princess is unhappy. She preferred her simple life back home. She’s saddled with a tutor who teaches strict lessons in civility and the etiquette of nobility, while the princess just wants to laugh and play.

The most interesting scene for me was when the princess decides to run away from a fancy party where she’s meeting suitors – the animation goes to black and white, with a shot of red that really speaks to her fleeing. It was so much stronger a visual than anything that had come before it that it was arresting, and kind of woke me up out of the stupor that I’d been in.

I was watching, as I said, the original Japanese version, with English subtitles, but there does exist a dubbed version James Caan, Mary Steenburgen, Chloe Grace Moretz, Lucy Liu and Darren Criss provide the voice work, and I wondered if maybe that would make it more approachable and help me to get lost in the story. I normally find dubbing to be unforgivably distracting but about half way through the movie I switched over and, well, yeah – lots of white voices behind traditional Japanese characters? Not working. Either way, it felt very abrupt and cold. And if there were times I felt I was picking up on some social satire despite the fact that this is a retelling of a Japanese piece of folklore many centuries old, I still failed to connect with a message in any meaningful way. The translation is so stiff and awkward it earned chuckles from me it never asked for.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Those are some FRESH tomatoes, but me? I thought it was ketchup. Generic ketchup. Sundried, generic ketchup. I promised myself on a previous review not to feel guilty anymore when I disagree with the critics’ consensus. Where others saw beauty, I felt mostly boredom. And with the exception of a beautiful scene under cherry blossoms, I never felt done right by this movie.