Announcement

I know there are only two people actually following this, and I'll probably let you know on the forums we visit. But I thought I'd take this chance to say that I'm going to be moving to a different blog. This one is alright, but for one it's blocked from using adsense. Though, to be honest, adsense makes no sense to me at all. Heh. Pun.

Anyway, the new url is Right Here!

So, enjoy it, I'm going to be posting my movie reviews, and in the future, book reviews, there until I get the main project I'm working on online.

A Christmas Carol

So, it's already been made clear that there are more adaptations of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol than...something that there is a lot of? Personally I haven't seen that many versions. In our family the George C. Scott version was our choice of poison.

Ebeneezer Scrooge has been portrayed by many different actors. Alastair Sim, Patrick Stewart, Scrooge McDuck, Mr. Magoo, the list goes on. But you know who I never expected to play Scrooge? Jim Carey... Well, him and Tim Curry. But, if you're at all familiar with the 1997 animated version then you can probably figure out where I'm going with this.

That, and you've probably been paying attention to all the previews and trailers.

So. Jim Carey as Ebeneezer Scrooge. Odd as that sounds, he actually did a good job. Not actually seeing him on screen helped, which allowed you to focus on his voice acting.

As far as the visuals go, they were spectacular. The downside of this is that I felt like they overemphasized said visuals. There were too many pratfalls and physical comedy that felt out of place.

A lot of the humor was juvenile, which made some of the more frightening elements stand out all the more. For that I commend this movie, they weren't afraid of dumbing down what is in fact a ghost story.

Which brings me to another point. The majority of the dialogue was taken straight from the Dickens' novel. Frankly, a lot of people would think that old english would be a little hard for the kids to understand, and since animation is typically a medium focused at children this is surprising. It shows that they not only took the source story seriously, they took the audience seriously.

So, it's worth watching. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and despite some frightening elements the movie is fairly suited for children.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

What can you say about a franchise that is either loved or hated all over the world? (Well, at least in the U.S., I'm not sure how popular Twilight is in Europe, or if they've even heard of it in places like the middle of Mongolia, or Africa. Some would say not knowing about this series would make anywhere a paradise--starvation aside). Frankly, the books aren't the best written, that much is obvious (of course personal preference isn't really determined by quality all the time). Personally I enjoyed them when I first read them. Though, the series did culminate by doing everything to piss me off. Interesting character? He's actually a borderline date rapist. Interesting relationship development? Turns out Mr. Borderline Date Rapist is also a pseudo-pedophile. Thank you very much.

But, that's not what we're here to talk about, now is it? We're here to talk about the latest cinematic installment of the Twilight Saga (why is everything a saga these days? Does Hollywood even know what that word means?): New Moon.

To start off; it wasn't actually as bad as the first movie. A lot of the technical problems from the first movie have been fixed. The eyes are obviously red or gold on the vampires (though frankly, red eyes look quite silly in combination with dark skin, with pale skin they look creepy, but that's kind of the point), and the sparkles are actually noticeable (a problem I would have preferred if they hadn't fixed. At least in the first movie I could pretend the vampires weren't sparkling in the sun).

The acting was decent, especially from the Volturi (Dakota Fanning is creepy!!). More enjoyably, the Volturi's acting served as an excellent comedic foil for Kristen Stewart's ineptitude.

Now, for the reason why I watched this movie. The werewolves! I was a little worried that they were going to screw them up, the one clip I saw from the trailers made the wolf look too small, too fake. But, I was wrong, the wolves were quite satisfactory. And that scene was actually quite enjoyable. The Wolves were somewhat smaller than described in the books, but it worked great, and the transformation scenes were quite impressive. There weren't enough fight scenes for me, but those that were there did help a great deal to spice up the movie.

Frankly, Bella is unbearable. She's badly written, badly acted, and really just comes across as a place holder for the reader. Her actions in the movie are understandable...actually, I'm not even going to try to be even handed with this. There's no excuse, her behavior is just...urgh. Well, let's put it this way, she's a character, but far from a role model. Which, when you think about it, can be both good and bad. In this case, not so good.

But I'll be honest, I wasn't watching this for the romance, I was in it for the werewolves. And I want to make this very clear: I mean them when they were in their wolf forms, not their human forms!

So, in conclusion, what do I think? While not the best movie, it had its moments. The Volturi were great. Kristen is no actor, and Patterson looks like he's thinking about the pay-check the whole time. Why else would he still be there? Well, that and his contract. There are better vampires out there, but I just think of Bella Lugosi anytime one of them steps into the sun (yes...he's preferable to the sparkles).

It's a need to watch movie if you're a fan of the series. Stay away if you absolutely loathe this series. And if you're undecided, this is a somewhat silly movie, but it actually has conflict (though it does show up a little on the later side), which helps. A lot.

Animation – Why Should We Care?

I love animation. From a young age I grew up on Disney movies and the odd Don Bluth film (specifically ‘An American Tail’ and ‘The Land Before Time’). I grew up outside the US, in Germany, where American cartoons were rare, and not even having an antenna made it even harder to watch anything besides the videos my grandmother sent us. Videos with recordings of American cartoons. From these I watched Spiderman, X-Men, Batman (this one in particular got me in trouble a few times – more on the topic to follow), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Gargoyles and even the Simpsons. There were other shows that I watched, Power Rangers and Beetleborgs to name a couple, but I always loved the cartoons, and lamented the fact that I never saw anything other than those episodes that grandma recorded, or the VHS tapes she bought for us.

Maybe a lack of exposure in my early childhood has allowed me to keep the fascination I have for animation? Possibly, but I hope that isn’t the only reason. Animation has plenty of merits besides nostalgic value, even if a large number of series are remembered purely because of this.

So why do I care so much about animation? A main factor is the potential it holds. So far in the west all we’ve seen as of late are humor themed cartoons, when the art of animation could be used for so much more. Humor is of course great in any story, but there is so much potential for other types of story telling, from dramatic to action. I like fantasy movies, unfortunately it takes a big budget to make such movies look as good as the Lord of the Rings. With animation it costs no more to make a fantasy themed movie or show than it does to make any other animation of equal quality.

Unfortunately for some reason too much western animation seems to be either developing atrocious looking art styles, or hasn’t improved since the sixties. A good example of this would be the Dragon Lance movie. I watched it, hopeful that I’d get a faithful adaptation to a book I quite enjoyed. What I got instead was the laziest job of animation that would have looked better if they’d just let the monkeys with the typewriters they used to write the script do the animation as well. The art style harked back to the style of the G.I. Joe and He-Man cartoons. And the animation quality was about the same. Actually, I think it might have been choppier.

Then we come into the use of CGI. I don’t mind CGI; in fact I love the Pixar movies. Problem? When you try to mix it with traditional 2-D animation, and do a bad job of it. I could go on about the lousy CGI dragons in the Dragon Lance movie, but I think we’ve suffered enough.

Sadly enough––when you get down to it––despite the fact that Disney fired the monkeys…I mean writing staff… and replaced them with baboons, they still have the best animation out there. Of course cost is always an issue, but I’ve seen amateur animation online that is better than what any non-Disney American animation studio out there produces.

Which brings us to anime. I love anime, the Japanese know how to take animation seriously and utilize it’s full potential. Anyone that has seen Cowboy Bebop can’t even begin to claim that it’s a childish cartoon show. Nor could they say that it’s nothing but a smut filled crap shot that adult oriented animation in the west has become. “Hey look, we can make our doodles say ‘Ass’.” Yes…let us leave it at that.

Anime is especially enjoyable because it isn’t stuck to a single genre. Where American cartoons seem to be stuck on comedy—with the quality setting set to juvenile—Anime knows how to not only mix intense action scenes and drama with comedy and slapstick humor, but has actually produced shows with moments that can bring me to tears. I had to try really hard not to cry during Hughes’ funeral in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Now I ask you, when was the last time Spongebob made you cry? And I don’t accept tears of frustration. Has any western cartoon actually brought you to tears because of the emotion of the scene? Have they fleshed out the characters, suspended your belief long enough to make you think, “Is this really happening? Or are we going to get another cheap happy ending tacked on?”

Don’t get me wrong, I like happy endings, but it it’s no good unless we not only feel that the characters have deserved it, but that we as the viewers have deserved it. For example, ‘An American Tail’. By the time Fivel finally reunites with his family, not only has he deserved it, but we’ve been with him the whole way. We cried for that little mouse every time he thought he’d found his family but was proven wrong. We screamed every time he just barely missed them. By the time that movie is over, we were so emotionally invested in the character and his pain that we knew we deserved that happy ending.

Of course many of the issues with animation nowadays revolve around the shoddy writing. Seeing as I’m a writer not an artist, you can expect plenty of commentary on the writing. Of course I plan on reviewing more than just animation, but everything I review will have writing of some kind or another. But, to start things off, I’ll be focusing on animation.

In the end, there’s some crappy animation out there and this needs to change.