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Post by Trey_Vore on Feb 2, 2022 1:57:45 GMT -5
It's not over. Apparently Disney+ is going to give us a 7th Ice Age and a 3rd Rio.
It's official. Disney is graverobbing Blue Sky!
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Post by Trey_Vore on Feb 1, 2022 0:49:09 GMT -5
Recently we got the newest Ice Age movie as a Disney+ exclusive. That movie is The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild. As you probably expected, the reviews are generally bad. How bad? Well, while the earlier movies were at least tolerable, this one might actually be the worst one yet. Its current RT score is 23% from critics. Audiences say? 18%. Why exactly? Let me count the ways: 1) It's a Disney+ exclusive, so no Blue Sky this time around 2) Only Simon Pegg comes back to voice Buck, none of the other VAs return 3) The animation looks weaker 4) The jokes aren't funny 5) The lessons learned are recycled 6) No Scrat! That's right, NO! SCRAT!!I have to say, AniMat's review should be most entertaining.  |
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 31, 2022 22:11:47 GMT -5
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 30, 2022 20:46:25 GMT -5
Happy birthday to you Belchic. |
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 28, 2022 2:14:31 GMT -5
The Angry Birds Movie (2016)
Distributor: Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures/Rovio Animation
Director: Clay Kaytis, Fergal Reilly
Cast: Jason Sudeikis (Red), Josh Gad (Chuck), Danny McBride (Bomb), Maya Rudolph (Matilda), Bill Hader (Leonard), Peter Dinklage (Mighty Eagle), Sean Penn (Terrance), Keegan-Michael Key (Judge Peckinpah), Kate McKinnon (Stella), Tony Hale (Ross), Ike Barinholtz (Tiny), Ian Hecox (Bubbles), Anthony Padilla (Hal), Billy Eichner (Chef Pig)
Runtime: 97 min.
MPAA rating: PG (action, rude humor)
This movie, set on Bird Island, an island of happy, flightless birds, is about Red, a bird with temper issues and large eyebrows. Working as a cake delivery bird for parties, he’s late to his gig and his cake is less than presentable, prompting the family to slam his services so he vents his characteristic rage on them. He gets sentenced to anger management therapy where he is grouped together with two follow outcasts, that being the speedy Chuck and volatile Bomb. When Red’s house is destroyed by Leonard and his pig pals from Piggy Island, the birds and pigs make friends but Red still doesn’t trust them. When the whole thing was just a scheme by the pigs to steal the birds’ eggs to make a giant omelet, it’s up to Red and his pals to lead the birds to recover the eggs. Can Red, Chuck and Bomb succeed in stopping the pigs and saving the eggs?
Anyone who’s ever used a smartphone during the 2010s is more than likely familiar with the phone app game Angry Birds. A Finnish game released in 2009 as a spin on Crush the Castle, it took the world by storm with its simple, silly theme of using bird characters to pop the greedy pigs using a slingshot and real-world physics. Fittingly, the pigs, ie. the villains, were originally meant to be an answer to the swine flu pandemic. It became one of the highest downloaded app games ever, and quickly spawned a wide range of merchandise, including T-shirts, stuffed dolls, Happy Meal toys, Lego sets and crossing over with several different franchises, it was everywhere. Red even got a balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
That said, amidst all the merchandise, there was something else coming up on the horizon: a movie based on Angry Birds. We’ve seen movies about video games before but they don’t have the best track record. Part of the reason for that is you would need to embrace the more ridiculous side of the game while also taking into account whether or not the characters are strong enough to carry a movie.
I probably should start with the story. The movie doesn’t truly have the strongest one, as you might expect. All you really have is a character sentenced to anger management class due to being picked on forever, an unlikely friendship that leads to betrayal and finally embracing the source material. The movie does not expect you to be well-versed in Angry Birds lore, because honestly, there isn’t much. The games themselves were not Shakespeare, all you needed to know was the birds are being used to pop the pigs in order to clear the stage, with a high score and 1-3 star rating.
However, I will say that going into this movie, you were fully aware of its caveat. If there was ever a “Just Here For Godzilla”, this is it. The story doesn’t need to make very much sense or follow a lot of strong plot points, it’s just a set up because what you really want to see is the selling point of the game, that being to launch the birds to destroy towers and combat the pigs. It does take a bit to get there, but the reason for the movie doesn’t disappoint.
The movie’s animation quality is actually very nice. With it being done by Rovio Animation, that being the creators of the games rather than farm it out to a third party to compromise creative control, the game designers would most definitely know exactly how the characters should look. In the games themselves, the birds and pigs all are ball-like, almost like disembodied heads. In translation to a movie though, that is not going to fly, so they now have full bodies, with a torso, arms/wings and legs. The re-designs work well and fit naturally onto the characters. The climax of the movie is definitely its biggest highlight with them fully embracing the ludicrousness of it’s source material. They thankfully didn’t blow it all on the climax though, as the look of the islands and King Pig’s castle are all well done. The movie had a lot of internal love from it’s parent company and in that it shows; it easily helps make the movie well worth seeing.
Now, about the movie’s characters. Well, they are sort of a mixed bag. These are not the strongest characters in video gaming and they don’t have much to go on. That’s not truly the point of the game, in that you play it because it’s fun. For a movie though, well I’ll go and describe them. The movie’s hero, Red, is a red bird with anger issues. Under normal circumstances, he’d be seen as the bad guy because he seems to indulge in his anger and would be seen as a criminal because a lot of what he does could be judged as assault. His actions are seen as justifiable though, in that a lot of birds surrounding him are tools. As an example, he was picked on a lot as a hatchling, and a lot of other birds made fun of him. A dad is a jerk about him being late when he wasn’t and then Red throws the cake in his face. Another bird sneezes on his popcorn and he throws the bag on him. This doesn’t lead you to think he should be the one attending anger management therapy though. His buddies thankfully aren’t like that though. First off Chuck the yellow bird is like the hyper one who always does everything super-fast; he is almost like if Frozen’s Olaf was on a sugar rush and was always bolting around every time he’d move. His other pal Bomb is more of a dummy that inexplicably knows how to explode; it makes no sense in context but it worked in the game. They can both have moments of being annoying. His anger management instructor Matilda is a new-agey teacher that is holding in her rage until it’s time, and Terrance, who you probably knew as the wrecking ball, doesn’t get any real dialogue, almost like he’s supposed to be a restrained killer along the lines of Hannibal Lecter. The Mighty Eagle is like a past-his-prime legendary alpha male bird that under better circumstances could have been a great character. However, you’ll never have guessed that at some point he was ever a great hero; partly because he never had any roles on Bird Island; he was just a bird that is always describe as full-of myself attitude and only helps when the time comes. The pigs, led by Leonard, are never meant to be seen as heroic at all; they are just always meant to be seen as bad. That is not saying they’re bad, as a lot of humor is used to make them likable. Ultimately, not everyone is likable and some of them don’t get a lot of screentime. I’ll even say that some of their moral compasses are lacking. I will say they are acceptable but not amazing.
Complaints are in the end, meaningless as the movie never was once trying to change the world. It was always meant to be funny and it succeeds in doing that.
I’ll just close by saying The Angry Birds Movie is what you’d want it to be by the end. The movie is not high-art or meant to be award-winning by any stance and this movie doesn’t leave you hating the premise. It was nothing more than a silly idea that gives viewers what they want. It could have been a lot worse.
The Angry Birds Movie (2016)
TreyVore rates it: C
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 27, 2022 15:19:10 GMT -5
Up (2009)
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar Animation Studios
Director: Pete Docter
Cast: Ed Asner (Carl Fredricksen), Christopher Plummer (Charles Muntz), Jordan Nagai (Russell), Bob Peterson (Dug), Bob Peterson (Alpha), Delroy Lindo (Beta), Jerome Ranft (Gamma), John Ratzenberger (Construction Worker Tom), David Kaye (Newsreel Announcer)
Runtime: 97 min.
MPAA rating: PG (some action, peril)
This movie is about a cranky elderly balloon salesman named Carl Fredricksen who made a career for himself as a balloon salesman. As major fans of dirigible pilot Charles Muntz, he and his wife Ellie were planning to go down to Paradise Falls, South America, something they planned and always wanted to do but life would constantly get in the way. Sadly, Ellie dies before they can go. Planning to follow through on his promise to go down to Paradise Falls, and not wanting to move into a retirement home, Carl ties several thousands of balloons to his house and plans to fly there. Inadvertently, he has a stowaway in the form of Russell, a boy scout who is on a hunt for his helping the elderly badge. Can Carl fulfill his promise to Ellie to get to Paradise Falls, and is there more to Charles Muntz than he’s letting on?
When Up was announced in the later half of the 2000s, I admit I was a bit hesitant to see this movie. I saw WALL-E without any real problem, but when we were getting this movie and seeing all the accolades it got, I started to worry that Pixar was getting too big. I was okay with seeing an occasional misfire from Disney as they had done so in the past but it seemed like Pixar was setting the bar so high for themselves that even they wouldn’t be able to touch it. I felt like that would be like if you were to get an A+ on every single school subject; even just getting something like a B grade would not seem okay.
At the same time, there were some insiders that were afraid that because of its subject matter, this movie would likely have been a disappointment at the box-office. They were afraid kids wouldn’t want to see it because it doesn’t truly lend itself to things like toys and Happy Meal promotions.
But the movie would strike back at that and would go become the second highest grossing Pixar film behind Finding Nemo at the time. Not only that, but it would be the first time since Beauty and the Beast back in 1991 that an animated movie would get a nomination for Best Picture. But how did it accomplish this? Time for me to give my thoughts on the movie.
The movie’s story is it begins in the 1930s as Carl Fredricksen is aspiring to be like his hero, pilot Charles Muntz. From there he develops a friendship with a neighborhood girl named Ellie who he later turns into a marriage. From there, the movie goes into its strongest sequence. Without speaking a word of dialogue, Carl and Ellie go through the joys and sorrows of martial life and it strikes all the right chords as people would know exactly what this sort of life is like. This sequence would cause people to break down crying as they would find this life relatable and know that despite all the aspirations made, compromises forced otherwise. As a post-retirement gift, Carl planned to surprise Ellie in that they would finally get to go to Paradise Falls, but she would not live to see it and dies soon after. This sets Carl up on a personal quest for redemption as he would want to get their house to Paradise Falls. Pixar was definitely at their peak with this.
I do know that some kids may not fully relate to Carl’s story, and some of what goes on may go over their heads. I remember shortly after said sequence occurred, my niece wanted to know why Ellie just seemed to have disappeared. Clearly this movie is working on two levels, and it’s an example of why Pixar was lightyears ahead of everyone else in animation during the 2000s. They were placing story and character development first and creating a sense of adventure while everyone else was making jokes about popular trends, casting A-list stars in high-concept roles and fart jokes. That’s not to say that Up is 100% ageless as they do have a few themes of a broken family and a GPS reference, but it’s not trapped to the 2000s.
There is a bit of a plot hole though, as it seems the characters’ ages don’t truly add up; I will admit I was a bit surprised to have Carl and Ellie as grade-school kids while Charles Muntz was an adult man; if Carl was supposed to later be 78 wouldn’t that have meant Charles would be over 100?
The main bulk of the story though, is between an odd couple friendship made between Carl and Asian boy scout Russell. Despite being so different, they create a great chemistry and are very believable. In spite having a lot of tropes that you might expect from this brand of story, the team at Pixar was very successful in creating an unlikely friendship between this elderly man and an elementary school-age boy.
Now to tell you about the animation? Being that it’s a Pixar movie, they don’t disappoint. The movie uses very believable animation to convey exact character movement as there is a big difference between how Carl or Charles would walk as opposed to Russell, the dogs or Kevin the snipe. There is a ton of detail too, ranging from the inside of Carl and Ellie’s house, to the South American forest, to the inside of Charles Muntz’s dirigible, with so much contrast in mood lighting; there are bright moments to suggest joy and dark moments to suggest gloom. By this point, you’d expect Pixar would deliver top tier animation and they do so amazingly well.
Now, you probably would like me to tell you about the characters, and there’s a lot you could say as they seem extremely complex; I’ll try to give you at least some idea. The main hero, Carl Fredricksen, is a cranky old man who wants to fulfill a promise made to his late wife that he would fly their house down to Paradise Falls as a life-long aspiration. He displays a wide-array of emotions the weight you feel about him being divided on fulfilling his promise to Ellie and give Russell the claim he would need for his badge. His partner, Russell, is a boy scout who at first seems like a nuisance to Carl but is more aid that he lets on, his has a thirst for adventure and a wide range of knowledge about various subjects that would likely make him the character that kids would be likely to gravitate towards. While Carl originally used a snipe to get Russell to leave him alone, it turns out to be real in the form of giant exotic bird. The snipe is what Russell names Kevin before learning it’s a female. Dug the dog is one of Charles’s dogs that has a collar which translates his lines of what a dog might be thinking. Clearly some imagination had to been used and there’s no denying their feral nature will prove ageless. The movie’s villain is Charles Muntz, a pilot who Carl originally idolized and has a long, detailed history of accomplishments, but are such accomplishments exaggerated? In truth, he’s out hunting for a snipe and his obsession led him to make some morally questionable choices. He has an army of dogs that like Doug all wear translating collars; amongst them is his dogs Alpha, Beta and Gamma who are loyal foot soldiers as you might expect dogs to be. Like I said, I don’t know if I’m doing the characters complete justice in these summaries as there’s probably a lot more that we don’t know about.
Pixar may have eventually surrendered being the perfect studio, but we can safely say this movie is one of their absolute best. Up is still relevant, with lots of heart and great animation and characters that everyone will deeply care about. There was no denying this movie was Pixar at their peak, everyone of any age will enjoy it. In fact, it made me want to do some traveling myself. Up is one movie that everyone should consider owning.
Up (2009)
TreyVore rates it: A
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 25, 2022 22:00:12 GMT -5
Not entirely sure if I am really looking forward to more of Moana, though.
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 23, 2022 21:50:19 GMT -5
I am too babclayman. I was really happy that it won Best Animated Feature and am eagerly anticipating the next movie, it should be amazing. |
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 22, 2022 1:15:47 GMT -5
We can take solace in knowing that Sony Pictures Animation intended this to be the final movie in the franchise.
Besides, their more recent movies have proved they can do much better, with movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Mitchells vs. the Machines and Vivo all proving they can do solid animated movies.
This is like they just chose to put Hotel Transylvania to rest.
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 21, 2022 21:26:42 GMT -5
d**n, that sucks.
RIP to both Meatloaf and Louie Anderson.
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 20, 2022 23:29:04 GMT -5
Good to hear more from Zootopia, I definitely want more.
I was looking for info from a Random Fact that Belchic posted and I found this: surviving footage of the scrapped turkey Redfeather from their 1995 movie Pocahontas!
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 17, 2022 23:24:31 GMT -5
Sadly yes, The very known voice for Dexter in Dexters Laboratory! :/ Plus the original voice of Gosalyn Mallard on Darkwing Duck and Bunnie Rabbot on Sonic SatAM.  |
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 15, 2022 0:10:22 GMT -5
Random Fact #4416:
In Transformers: the Movie, you are probably aware of how kids were very sad and upset over the death of Optimus Prime. There was even a story of a boy who was so traumatized by it that he would stay in his room and refused to eat.
Early in Season 3 of the series, the episode "Dark Awakening" was aired early, which featured the movie-introduced Autobots taking refuge in the Autobot Mausoleum which is the final resting place of the many Autobots who died in the movie. This episode has Optimus Prime return, as part of a Quintesson trap. As a final act to ensure his friends survive, Optimus sacrifices himself. The final image of the episode has Optimus's bust over space, while Rodimus's voice says, "So long, Prime."
The backlash over this controversial decision caused Hasbro to want to correct this mistake. When this episode was rerun later in the season, while still having the same imagery, it featured a new voice-over from Victor Caroli as he says:
"But is really the end of Optimus Prime? Find out in tomorrow's exciting episode, "The Return of Optimus Prime"!"
However, Takara, the company that owns the rights to Transformers in Japan, didn't see this eye-to-eye and for the Headmasters series, which was supposed to retcon Season 4 out of existence, killed him off again in the first three episodes.
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 13, 2022 22:07:33 GMT -5
Not bad.
I'll just point that Christine Cavanaugh is dead though.
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Post by Trey_Vore on Jan 12, 2022 1:29:33 GMT -5
Random Fact #4415:
Mr. T was at one time a bodyguard for celebrities like Michael Jackson and Muhammed Ali before he became famous.
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