I finally had the chance to see Avatar.  I was turned away from the theater twice due to sold out shows for the entire day, but I finally got a ticket and marched in with my popcorn bucket in hand and wife in tow.  Reports of varying reliability repeatedly told me that: 1) I have to see this movie 2) I have to see it in theaters and 3) You have to see in with funny 3D glasses on.

With such a large variety of folks telling me to watch it and stressing to see it in 3D, I decided to go big and get all the theater up charges I could find.  So I went out and saw Avatar in 3D on an Imax screen.  That is why it was sold out for the whole day the first two times I went to see it.  Even when I went an hour early for the first show of the day, the showing was sold out.  This time not for the day though and my wife and I got our tickets and had a four hour wait.  We went home and ate sandwiches or something stupid like that.

Then off to the movie theater we drove.  Cutting it a little close I sent her in to pick out the seats and I went to snag the stale popcorn with cold butter flavored oils.  Thank god for previews!

I get in to find the place jam packed and no sign of girl anywhere.  Eyes adjust to the darkness and there she is, best seats in the house.  Well, best seats in the house is where I was looking for her.  Where we actually ended up sitting was closer to the front than ideal.  Our seats were so close that the 3d effects weren’t as spectacular as I imagine they would be without them.  That part was somewhat of a downer.

Oh and even worse, the movie had already started.  Apparently there aren’t quite as many previews on Imax size screens.  Good thing there was about half an hour of exposition at the beginning of the movie.  But of course that brings me to the movie itself.

Avatar…

Avatar is about a guy who is linked up to a smurf body and goes to live in the forest with the gentile smurfs.  He works hard to learn their smurf ways and is eventually accepted into the smurf village.  It is inevitable that he falls in love with Smurfette.  Oh wait, that is Cartman in ‘Dances with Smurfs‘

James Cameron’s use of CGI has certainly improved since the iceberg in Titanic that looked like a four year old drew a blob of jello.  Now he has got us in the magical world of Naboo Pandora where mountains can float and cockraoch-zombie-dogs can run free.

Before I go any further, I will say this movie is dumb.  The story is very formula and predictable every step of the way.  Aside from that, if you can ignore the fact that you can see everything happening beforehand, it is a neat movie with some different ideas.

The alien world was really pretty.  And it was actually an alien world with it’s own rules, flora, and fauna.  Animals and plants behaved differently from everything on Earth.  So that was cool and fun.

One thing that was super gross was the way they communicated with animals.  All the little phalanges coming out of the tentacles and braiding together was gross!  Did anybody else squirm just a little every time?  And I would have liked to see a little more to show the connection between the two.  Even if it is just a suction-cup noise.  Something to illustrate their brains are synced up.

Then there were the points where they kept on yanking people out of the matrix buy slamming on the big red button conveniently placed right by the cyro-tube (or whatever you call it).  Boy that really made me mad each time it happened.  Why would they place that there?  Don’t they know you can kill a person if their mind isn’t ready to exit the matrix just yet?

That bothered me more than it should have.  Yes this movie world has it’s own rules and structures that are separate from other ones, but still!  Didn’t they see the part in the Matrix where Cypher was dropping the freedom fighters like flies?

Speaking of concepts that were stolen from the Matrix. (Although I don’t know if it counts because you need to discount the sequels out of existence to maintain your sanity!) What is the deal with the robot suits?  No kidding, if they life way off in the future should we honestly believe that a clunky robot limited to the strength of a slow clumsy human is the best technology has to offer?

Even if I could forgive having a humanoid battle robot with no weapons built on,  I still don’t know what the deal was with the robot kung-fu action.  Those robots were to clunky for MY future invasions of foreign planets ruled by tribal smurfs.

Let me see what I’ve got next on my list for this movie… Dances with smurfs, check.  Pretty alien world, check.  Gross tentacle connections, check.  Pulling each other out of the matrix, check. Stupid robots, check.  I know I’m missing something stupid from the movie.  Oh yea, the reason humans were there.

Humans were waging war in order to get something they actually called “Unobtainium.”  At this point I’m really wondering what the hell is wrong with the world.  That is seriously worse than George Lucas letting his kids name alien species in the newer star wars films.

How much thought did it really take to come up with that name?  And what were the rejects? “Cantfindium?” I could come up with more, but I think I have already done more brainstorming on the topic than James Cameron and others who helped write this thing.

Well that just about wraps up this session.  Just a recommendation left to give.  Should you see this movie?  Okay sure, but only with the funny 3D glasses.  If you can’t get to a 3D theater, then wait until you can rent the movie on dvd.

*Also when the big bulldozers rolled up, my wife apparently wasn’t the only one who immediately thought of Fern Gully

After a push from John Lasseter to get back to traditional animation, Disney has now released a new movie done in the traditional cell animation style.  Sure the studio used computers, but rather than being modeled and rendered in 3D software this movie has the traditional organic animation style to it.  If you haven’t seen this movie yet, then go.  It would be a good idea to bring a date.  She will love it.

The story goes mostly to the style of the classic princess fairytale storyline.  Not the fairytale of ‘The Frog Prince’ it does steer away and add some cool twists to that fable.  The classic princess and prince formula that was once the key to movies from Disney studios.

The girl who is called the princess actually isn’t a princess, but rather a hardworking girl from a poorer section of New Orleans.  The movie takes place in roughly the 20’s when people still liked jazz music.  Her main objective throughout the movie is to open a restaurant and make her dad proud.  So in order to do this she saves pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollar bills in jars.

Over the period of about 10 years she has just as many jars filled.  This is while working double shifts and not spending time or money on anything.  Why she didn’t convert her coins to cash is beyond me.  A couple of dollar bills stacked up would have taken a lot less space in her sock drawer.

When she gets closer to making her dream come true she gets transmogified into a frog.  Ouch!  There goes that dream!  But she doesn’t let her lack of humanity stand in the way, as she skips through the swamp collecting characters like Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz.

The animation on this movie is great.  It looks terrific.  The multiplane camera work was there.  The movements were believable.  This movie could have come out in the 40’s or 50’s when Disney was at it’s princess movie peak and it would fit right in.  I don’t claim to know anything about possible effects of the racial tensions of the time, so I am speaking solely of the look and style of the movie’s animation.  That and how clean and seamless the animation is would simply blow minds away.

Back to the story, one thing that is noteworthy is that the villian didn’t actually have any powers.  Spooky voodoo had powers and he could control them somewhat, but it put him in serious debt to the underworld.  The shadowman was a pupet, even if he didn’t believe it himself.  He was controlled by the man.  Then again, who isn’t?

There were quite a few references to the days of disney gone by.  My personal favorite was “The Firefly Five Plus Lou.’  Back in the heyday of Disney animation, a number of Walt’s 12 old men (his key animators) had a jazz group called “The Firehouse Five Plus Two.’  I was watching this movie and thinking about how much Walt would have liked it and how well it was made, but when that omage showed up, tears actually started down my face.  What a great way to honor these men.

Of course that was the big happy grand fanalie, so crying at that point made me look very out of touch with reality.  Just a few minutes before there was a really emotional part of the movie where an important character is on his deathbead.  Everyone else in the theater is sad and mopey, but I’m sitting there munching on popcorn.

With that, see this movie.  It is a princess movie.  It is a cartoon.  It is beautifuly.  Find an excuse to go see it.  Tell your friends you’re going to see Avatar again.  Then go see this movie.

I’m not sure what exactly convinced me to watch Brother Bear, the movie that was so bad that Disney had to actually SHUT DOWN IT’S CELL ANIMATION STUIDO because of it.  Nonetheless I watched the cartoon and came to one conclusion.  Disney should have shut down a lot more after releasing this movie into the world.

The movie is about a young tribal guy who hates bears and must learn to love bears.  When he is given his ‘life totem’ which will tell him how to act and live, it is the loving bear.  This makes him so mad that he goes and throws rocks at a bear.  The bear says ‘Stop it’ and the boy’s brother falls off of a cliff.

The movie was so bad that I don’t even remember the names of the characters.  So I’ll make them up. Jojo is the main character who hates bears.  Squeejo is the older brother who falls off a cliff.  Lastly we have Ronjo, the middle child, I’ll tell you about him in a second.

Jojo is given his totem and starts throwing rocks.  The big bear wants the Jojo to stop it, but instead Squeejo falls off of a cliff.  Jojo is pissed at the bear and goes off to avenge his brother by killing the bear that somehow caused his brother to die.

Ronjo is pissed at Jojo, but will not help him out in killing the bear.  Ronjo does decide to follow Jojo from a distance, only to find out Jojo gets killed by a bear.  Ronjo is now pissed as hell because he could have helped avenge his dead brother the first time, but now he has to really take revenge.  I don’t know how you can avenge two brothers that were killed by the same bear, and I guess that you wouldn’t actually see something like that in a Disney movie anyways.  That explains why Ronjo never actually was able to take revenge.

Now for the twist.  Jojo isn’t actually dead.  He got turned into a bear.  HOLY SMOKES RIGHT?

After killing the bear that watched his brother fall off of a cliff, Jojo is crushed by the tremendous weight.  So he did die… I guess.  But the ghost of Squeejay said no, you can’t be dead yet.  So Squeejay brings back his brother from beyond the grave and stuffs him into a bear’s body so he will learn his lesson.

Ronjo gets to the top of the mountain and sees Jojay the bear running off after killing Jojay the mancub and leaving behind a broken spear and the bear totem.

At this point in my life I am really questioning many things.  Why did I watch this movie?  More importantly, why have I gone so far in writing about this movie?  And what am I doing with my life?

Nobody in their right mind would watch this movie.  I would rather go watch Legally Blonde 2 or keeping with the theme, let a bear watch me fall off of a cliff than spend any more of my precious time thinking about this movie.

Flintstone in some great looking stop motion. Apparently it was made for a movie called “Flintstones on the Rocks” Which is about Fred and Wilma having marital problems. Seems a little bit darker than the usual chronicles of Bedrock. It came out in 2001 and a quick search looks like it might be hard to find.

A smurf movie?  Seriously now?

Apparently so, the director Raja Gosnell has signed on to direct “Smurfs,” a live action/animated movie starring the blue little buggers from Belgian cartoonist Peyo.  Can we let the eighties die already?

Speaking of aging animated characters, Spongebob SquarePants has been around for 10 years now.  I don’t have much to say other than, wow that’s a long time for a cartoon.

I think that after a couple seasons my cartoon will have to end.  I don’t want the quality to go down here and lose my fan base.  It’s not like I’m making Scrubs or the Simpsons or something here.

The other day I watched the new movie ‘UP’ from Disney-Pixar.

I’m not entirely sure what to think about it. Yes, it was a great movie. Yes it causes an emotional response from everyone who watches it and happens to be human. Still, I feel weird about it. It could have been because the kid was an annoying chuckle-head, the bird was an annoying siren, and the dog was an annoying dope.

The main premise of the story was absolutely great.

(And here come the spoilers!  Go watch the movie, then come read the rest.)

(more…)

The latest Dreamworks animation just came out “Monsters vs. Aliens”  and for some reason I decided to go.  If you are looking to waste a chunk of change, perhaps you should burn it before seeing this movie.  Perhaps it wasn’t THAT BAD.  I do remember going to the Simpsons Movie in theater as well.

The script was absolutely terrible.  The characters were flat.  Every single line in the movie was cheesy.  The story was boring.  There was no tension in the movie.    There were one or two good gags in the movie, but certainly not enough to justify an hour and a half.

And there were five people making the screenplay?  Furthermore there are two more people credited as story writers?  This goes to show two things.

1. Committees cannot write good movies.
2. Anyone can get a job as a screenwriter.  What recession?

The most disappointing part about this movie is how good DreamWorks did on Kung Fu Panda last year.  I really thought they were going to be setting the bar a little bit higher after seeing what a GOOD movie can do for them.

This movie is in 3d, which is cool because the theater gets to charge an extra 3 bucks per person for silly looking glasses.  If only the theater would be optimized for that technology.  I’m sure that the 3d picture is better in other places where they have a decent sized screen and actually turn down the sidelights during the movie.

In the very first scene of the movie there was a 3d gimmick done only to remind you that you were watching a 3d movie.  A paddleball was done into the camera.  How clever!  Good thing I have these stupid glasses.

I really hate getting ripped off from bad movies.  The best part of this movie was the trailer for the new Pixar movie.