Gotta love summer movies. After months of scrabbling to find something worth seeing that doesn't entail scouring the art house releases (and the necessary schlep to LA to find an art house theatre), suddenly there's enough out that I'm scrambling to catch them all. Not that everything I'm seeing is great, but they're certainly more appealing than, say RV, or Scary Movie 4 or Failure to Launch (just to pick a few Spring gems).
This actually started out as a ridiculously long post, but I soon realized that, at the rate I'm going, I'd never actually finish the damn thing. So I'm going to break it into bite sized bits, starting here:
Over the Hedge. The seemingly obligate digital animated feature for May was surprisingly amusing. And, being a sucker for a good sight gag or running joke, there was plenty there to be had (the boomerang bit, for instance, got me every time).
There's something about digital animation that seems to have struck a cord with the guys making the movies. Maybe Pixar has just set the bar so high that everyone's forced to work extra hard to try and hit it. I'm not saying that these pics aren't formulaic (some moreso than others). But there's a wit and awareness that their audience isn't limited to the kiddie seats that makes them much more enjoyable than the put-out-to-pasture traditional features that rigidly followed the Disney playbook.
What I find baffling about this is there's no reason "traditional" 2D animation can't do the same thing. I don't think it's JUST the pretty shiny graphics that are pulling people in. (Although hearing one of the KROQ DJs constantly refer to 3D as the "better looking" choice earlier this week does makes me wonder.) But I'd argue that Lilo & Stitch, from 2003, was just as entertaining, witty and aware as anything from Pixar or any of the other digital studios, and it was all 2D. The medium shouldn't have any impact on the message here… storytelling is storytelling, no matter how many dimensions you use.
But, I digress (and what a lengthy digression it was). On to more new movies.
This actually started out as a ridiculously long post, but I soon realized that, at the rate I'm going, I'd never actually finish the damn thing. So I'm going to break it into bite sized bits, starting here:
Over the Hedge. The seemingly obligate digital animated feature for May was surprisingly amusing. And, being a sucker for a good sight gag or running joke, there was plenty there to be had (the boomerang bit, for instance, got me every time).
There's something about digital animation that seems to have struck a cord with the guys making the movies. Maybe Pixar has just set the bar so high that everyone's forced to work extra hard to try and hit it. I'm not saying that these pics aren't formulaic (some moreso than others). But there's a wit and awareness that their audience isn't limited to the kiddie seats that makes them much more enjoyable than the put-out-to-pasture traditional features that rigidly followed the Disney playbook.
What I find baffling about this is there's no reason "traditional" 2D animation can't do the same thing. I don't think it's JUST the pretty shiny graphics that are pulling people in. (Although hearing one of the KROQ DJs constantly refer to 3D as the "better looking" choice earlier this week does makes me wonder.) But I'd argue that Lilo & Stitch, from 2003, was just as entertaining, witty and aware as anything from Pixar or any of the other digital studios, and it was all 2D. The medium shouldn't have any impact on the message here… storytelling is storytelling, no matter how many dimensions you use.
But, I digress (and what a lengthy digression it was). On to more new movies.
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