Lately, a lot of old short animations have been appearing on DVD locally here in Australia, including some nice Disney collections. I just picked up an excellent Warner Brothers compilation for $9.95 in the sale at Video Ezy. This one features many of their classics, but best of all "One Froggy Evening"! The DVD title is Looney Tunes All Stars, volume 3 and it has a fairly misleading cover - it's less of their usual characters and more of their other best shorts - but at that price, I highly recommend it!

Labels: Animated films

Today we finally caught up with this film. I’m pleased (and a little surprised) to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride! What a tight, well-told, imaginative and effective piece of cinema this proved to be!

With the PG rating, I must admit I had some reservations about how sensitive children might deal with the issues of life and death that this film presents (not to mention the visions of cavorting skeletons and dead characters looking a little the worse for wear). It begins like a far more traditional children’s film using animated figures (such as those old Rankin Bass Christmas specials), with somewhat stilted figures inhabiting a well modelled village.

The contrasting colours – rendering the world of the living in black and white, but mostly greys, as opposed to the more colourful world of the dead – subtley provides a thematic foundation that lends credibility to this world and its characters.

I was sold at the point where Victor started playing the piano, with complete fidelity and accuracy to the piece we were hearing (a rarity in live action films, not to mention animation!). Already a sense of respect for both viewer and work was strikingly apparent, and I relaxed and enjoyed all that followed.

Skeletons – a beloved staple of animators – sing, dance and work through imaginative musical routines that hark right back to Disney’s early Danse Macabre Silly Symphony. They don’t outstay their welcome. In this film, even while working with a potentially high grossness factor, Burton and Co. manage to reign themselves in and maintain a sense of sweetness and wonder amid the darkness. What is pleasing is the sense Burton conveys of a somewhat macabre, but completely non-malevolent world of dead characters. While the living plot, scheme and manipulate, the dead are in many senses powerless, as well as for the most part good-humoured.

The tall and slender figures of the main characters has meant that shots are often set up almost diagonally - camerawork and lighting are skillfully combined with figure animation throughout. The voice acting is consistently strong, featuring Burton regulars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter among a stellar cast.

There is real joy in the character designs. The figure of Emily, the Corpse Bride, is rendered romantically and with affection: even with a skeletal arm and leg, and a stray eyeball, she remains a charming and winsome creation. This character presents a slyly ironic realisation of the Victorian romantic vision of girls as frail and romantically death-like. Much of the story is driven by Emily, and also Victoria (the other young lady vying for Victor’s affections) and these two drive much of the plot between them.

One of the sweetest touches, and one where Burton shows real love for his characters and his material, is the gift that Emily gives to Victor – surprising, clever and completely appropriate.

Throughout this film I felt a sense of “How will Burton get out of this one?” as plot complications interwove with one another, providing conundrums and choices for a range of characters. What I felt in the end was a sense of having been driven deftly down some busy streets by an immensely skilled director at the top of his form: the film unfolds in some unexpected directions, but completely compelled me to follow. Overall, an imaginative film working with some macabre material, rendered with real joy and pathos - very enjoyable!

Labels: Animated films, Movie reviews

Today we saw the new, feature-length Wallace and Gromit film. It's a lot of fun, but in many ways doesn't quite work, though I'm at something of a loss to explain why. The plot, which revolves around Wallace and Gromit's company, Anti-Pesto, working at humane bunny removal, gets a bit bogged down toward the middle but then livens up considerably once the new were-rabbit plot unfolds.

The characters of Wallace and Gromit certainly remain as loveable as ever, and seeing their surroundings more heavily populated with a full range of British eccentrics is entertaining. As usual, there is a multitude of brilliant gags, but for some reason they often fall flat here. How hilarious they are is easily demonstrated by seeing any of them in isolation (as I'd done earlier with the were-bunny bait and bridge sequence). Somehow, in context, there is a narrative seriousness at work that seems to dispel much of the humour, and I think the Hans Zimmer, Danny-Elfman-referencing score is partly to blame (though he is a terrific film composer in general).

Two of my favourite sequences are the opening pan across framed pictures portraying Wallace and Gromit's history together, with its schisms and resolution, and the near-death experience vision of one of the bunnies in an early scene. The early sequences showing Wallace and Gromit's morning routines are unfortunately likely to be over-familiar to fans, but should have plenty of magic for those new to this pair's antics.

There are many sequences referencing familiar films, such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and King Kong, but these at times detract from the action itself. The romance between Wallace and Lady Tottingham-Smith is cute and does add a certain amount of depth, but many of the elements throughout echo A Close Shave a little too closely for my liking.

It is delightful to see this amazing claymation on screen (complete with fingerprints) - replete with beautifully detailed backgrounds and diverse characters. It's well worth seeing for animation fans for the change of pace from computer-animated fare. Somehow the nature of Wallace and Gromit as characters fails to carry a feature-length work fully, whereas Aardman's previous movie, Chicken Run provided real heroism (particularly in the character of Ginger) along with considerable depth and much-needed pathos to help balance the humour. Nonetheless, it is undeniably enjoyable to have Wallace and Gromit back!

J said it was "a bit silly" but still gave the film 4 stars (David Stratton on At the Movies gave it 5).

As a nice bonus, there was a Madagascar animated short, featuring the penguin characters during a Zoo Christmas in New York, and this worked better for me than anything in that film :).

Labels: Animated films, Movie reviews

I just got back from taking J and L to see Dreamworks new animated feature Madagascar. It’s not bad, though it’s fair to say my expectations were fairly low, and I must admit I had reservations about seeing it at all, given the premise. Madagascar is a place that I’m keen to visit – an oasis of spectacularly unique and unusual wildlife - so for that reason, I was always going to find this film disappointing.

The focus of the film is a group of four African animals (albeit with some penguins and monkeys along for comic relief), and Madagascar seems to be merely a device, an incidental backdrop for some of their interactions. To have Madagascar, a fairly overpopulated island with massive overclearing problems, treated as a mythical last wilderness seems to me absurd, though the jungle backgrounds are beautifully executed with a high degree of research and detail evident.

The film opens in the depressing environs of the Manhattan Central Park Zoo, which has tiny barred enclosures that look like something out of the Victorian era but make no sense in terms of containing the animals (such logic apparently isn’t important to the film). The animals, particularly Alex the lion, are treated purely as entertainments and Marty the Zebra finds his 10th birthday a depressing and cathartic turning point. Gloria the hippo (the film’s only female animal character) and Melman, the hyperchondriac giraffe, perform the primary supporting roles to the volatile friendship of Alex and Marty.

Like all Dreamworks animations, this film is primarily a male buddy movie, though the main characters are unfortunately underdeveloped, with the emphasis being on wisecracks and slapstick humour (fairly well-done if that’s your thing). While the computer animation has a very artificial storybook look to it – Alex’s paws seem oddly as if they’re cut out of gingerbread at times – the character designs are excellent, and this stylisation works in the story’s favour.

The captivity aspect of the Zoo has some clever echoes, with the animals thinking themselves in San Diego Zoo’s leafy havens at one point, and Alex putting himself back into captivity at a later stage (a neat psychological touch). My favourite sequence is the imaginative crate scene, which finds the four main characters in effectively separate frames on screen – making clever use of the format and seeming like a living comic book.

Alongside this, the grouping of sundry lemur (and other) species into a massive conglomerate of partying morons, chanting “I Like to Move it, Move it,” is an unedifying spectacle. There are touches here that show what another film might have been like. The central team of a ringtailed lemur leader (thanklessly performed by Ali G), an aye-aye sidekick and a cute mouse lemur have a lot of promise, but little chance to deliver on it. Signs of both imagination and research are present, primarily in the streaked tenrec, geckoes and chameleon, but the film-makers' thoughts are ever far from Madagascar itself.

Possibly, the worst aspect is the casting of the “foosas” as hyena-like, ravening, speechless marauders, swarming in a ridiculously enormous predatory crowd. The fossa (or fosa) is a rather large member of the civet family, indigenous to Madagascar, always in low numbers and now critically endangered. It’s a solitary and wary hunter, always seldom seen (not to be confused with the fanaloka, a smaller striped civet which has the scientific name, fossa fossa). At any rate, “foosas” get a raw deal as the obligatory baddies in a scenario which is actually trying to raise questions about carnivores.

Worst of all, the entire film gives no hint of the desperate environmental situation of Madagascar and its remarkable wildlife. Maybe it’s too much to expect of a film, but somehow the title and setting seem to me expedient and meaningless. The central story – that of buddy team Alex and Marty – could as well have been told in the backwoods of some American setting with no loss to the story at all.

I’d hate to think this was people’s only impression of Madagascar. There are now many excellent books on the place and its wildlife. As a general travel book to start with, I’d recommend The Lonely Planet Guide to Madagascar.

All in all, Madagascar is an okay family film, with some fairly entertaining sequences, but far from a classic.

Labels: Animated films, island wildlife, Movie reviews

While I'm being a bit nostalgic, I've been searching for some obscure animated films that I vaguely remember, but no-one else seems to :).

La Musetta (1962) - may have inspired Disney's The Aristocats. Whatever, at least it's readily available on DVD, under the title Gay Purr-ee.

Hugo the Hippo (1976) - fairly dark and imaginative children's film made in Hungary, but voiced for the US market by the Osmonds and various fine actors. The sharks were scary and the people even scarier! There was apparently a VHS NTSC release which may have been edited.

And the really tough ones to find, made here in Australia!

Grendel, Grendel, Grendel (1980) made by Alex Stitt, from the novel by John Gardner and superbly voiced by Peter Ustinov. This was a significant film at the time and quite well-known, and did get a VHS release oveseas, but it's currently unavailable in any form.*

And most interesting of all:

Marco Polo Junior Versus the Red Dragon (1972) made by Eric Porter, who was Australia's answer to Walt Disney. Maybe I saw this at an impressionable age, but it really amazed me at the time!

It's been remade in the US recently as Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu, but what disturbs me is that there appears to be no mention of Porter's original film (or of Australia) even though the characters and situations appear to me to be identical (see character sheet below)! The original Australian version was released on VHS in some countries (though now completely deleted), so a comparison might prove interesting - this bears further investigation, particularly of the credits on the recent version.**

(*The Grendel picture is the cover to the newly released soundtrack CD from 1M1 records - ** The Marco Polo images are an original 1972 film poster available from the eBayer dealer, John Reid, and a 2002 animation still character sheet from Lobitos Creek Ranch animation).

Labels: Animated films, Eric Porter, Marco Polo Junior Versus the Red Dragon