animation
Pretty much every big screen reboot of a beloved childhood TV show has been terrible. Yet for people with a certain nostalgia for it, they will end up loving it regardless of quality. I never watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I was growing up, which is why I can recognize that the recent Michael Bay-produced reboot is terrible, but a worrying amount of people I’m friends with can’t see it as anything other than an extension of what they loved when they were younger.
The only thing missing from Dreamworks’ new film Penguins of Madagascar is sanity. But we don’t go to watch a film about characters set in the Madagascar universe expecting logic. So when an octopus yells at his harmoniously compliant servants:
Big Hero 6 takes the cultural stereotypes of the East and West, smashes them together to a fine powder, and fabricates from it a 100-minute ride that is so eye-poppingly pretty, so gently moving and so explosively inventive that it’s the most unabashed, jolting fun you’ll have at the movies this year. Even after turning out two very strong features like Wreck-it Ralph and Frozen, Disney proves once again that its capability to push boundaries of imagination is strengthening by each passing endeavor. Disney at its absolute peak Based on a Marvel comic, directors Don Hall and Chris Williams gather the immense arsenal of talent at Disney to conjure up on screen the beautiful cherry-bomb of a city called San Fransokyo – a hybrid mash-up of the architectural sensibilities and culture of San Francisco and Tokyo.
Jon Lovitz is a name most young folks don’t know or remember. He is an alumni of Saturday Night Live way back from 1985 to 1990. If you don’t know him from there then maybe you remember him as this guy.
It’s rare that we see such a rich fertile imagination in cinema. Hayao Miyazaki didn’t create movies but fantastically textured worlds that were so unique and yet so specific to his sensibilities. Miyazaki films can’t be categorized, and that’s what makes him such a distinctive auteur.
If you head over to Cinefix on YouTube, you’ll be leaving hi-def behind and heading back to the 20th century. Cinefix takes your favorite movies and gives them a retro flair that you’ll love. Think Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 were a little long winded?
In the following animated video, a dozen and more story worlds are mashed together as Gandalf and Gollum fight, Batman goes into battle with the Joker and Two Face, Sith battle Jedi, Superman and Superwoman fight crime together. This must be one of the best promo-reels I’ve ever seen, and it’s definitely a must-see! Watch the video – you’ll definitely enjoy it.
In this animated short film called Francis, a young man tells us about his memories of a camping trip. As he grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, he’d often go camping in the Quetico Provincial Park, up on the border of Minnesota and Canada. However, he won’t be going back there any time soon, not after what happened there to Francis Brandywine.
Wow. I didn’t go into How To Train Your Dragon 2 expecting my world to be rocked, but… it sort of did.
Don’t we all love overpriced coffee? For one, The Lego Movie is chock full of adult humor, and makes for an excellent watch for the grown-ups among us, too.
I came across this animated short film called Wind. It’s a graduation film by a film student, Robert Löbel, of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. I loved this.