Happy New Year from the Cinemascapist!

As Nenge Mboko (aka Eddie Murphy in Trading Places) would say:

"Merry New Year!"

I wish everyone a very Happy and Safe New Year's Eve!

My resolution for 2013 is to post more on the Cinemascapist blog. I will start with a new one on New Year's Day.

May everyone have a joyous and prosperous 2013!

Disney Acquiring Lucas, is this "Twice Upon a Time"?

Last week Disney announced they are buying up Lucasfilm and all other Lucas owned properties (ILM, LucasArts,Skywalker Sound, THX, etc...) There was a lot of excitement over the announcement of new Star Wars movies and the possibility of more Indiana Jones movies. There are a few other Lucasfilms out there like the American Graffiti films; the Ron Howard directed fantasy, Willow; the Francis Ford Coppola directed bio-film, Tucker: A Man and his Dream; the 80's bomb Howard the Duck, based off the Marvel Comic that Disney also owns; Radioland Murders, a comic murder mystery center around a radio serial...

The one I'm interested in is the cut-out animated film, Twice Upon a Time. Released theatrically in 1983, the story is about two unlikely heroes, one a silent tall figure and the other, a dog like shape-shifter (who coincidentally looks a little like Finn on Adventure time) who are sent on a journey by a fairy to stop an evil man who has stopped time and wants to give the world only nightmares. It's a zany film with some great voice talent, like Lorenzo Music (animated Garfield), Paul Frees (Rocky and Bullwinkle and Disney's The Haunted Mansion), and Hamilton Camp (Gizmoduck) among others.

Twice Upon a Time was only released on vhs a few times, once in the 1980's and again in the early 1990's (also released on Laserdisc). According to Wikipedia, it was once shown on Cartoon Network in the late 1990's, but that had been it's last known television broadcast. I have always been an animation fan and I had heard of this movie in a brief statement in Leonard Maltin's "Of Mice and Magic". Maltin states that in the 1980's Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were moving into the animation game. "Lucas was the first of the two to actually produce an animated feature, but TWICE UPON A TIME (1983), a hip, offbeat film using cut-out animation (called Lumage) and directed by John Korty, didn't generate much interest in its first theatrical bookings, and quickly disappeared."

Based on this statement, I was on a mission to find it and luckily found it on VHS at one of our local video stores. I loved the movie. I thought it was funny and it looked different than any other animated film I had seen. Plus, it was much more adult than any kids animated feature I had seen at that time and it may be one of the first animated films to use pop culture references, like Lucas' own Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, not to mention the Muppet Show, which of course was created by Jim Henson, who later collaborated with Lucas on Labyrinth.

Ibor is one of the villains sidekicks and he has TV for a face. Often showing popculture clips. 

It's difficult to see in this image, but he has Miss Piggy on his "face".

Some folks that worked on the film are now associated with a few Disney and/or Disney-Pixar classic, like Henry Selick, director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, who was a Sequence director on Twice Upon a Time. Harley Jessup was the art director and who has since gone on to being a visionary at Pixar since their first film, Toy Story. Bruce Heller is one of the top special effects animators in the business, having worked on Hunchback of Notre Dame, Atlantis and Treasure Planet. The film was directed by John Korty who would later direct the Return of the Jedi spin-off TV movie, The Ewok Adventure.

This would be a great time for Disney to take advantage of releasing this film on DVD or Blu-Ray for the cult following it has already gained, for the animation fans who have never had a chance to see it, and for those who just want to see a visually different looking film with funny and interesting characters.

Argo

Argo: B+

I've always loved movies about making movies. The Player and The Muppet Movie are two of my favorite movies of all time, which making movies is a major story point in both films, yet that's not what these movies are really about. The Player is actually a thriller about a movie studio executive and The Muppet Movie is a road comedy/musical about characters who "want to be rich and famous". Argo is also a movie that's not just about making a movie, in fact, it's about making a fake movie to save hostages in Iran and the amazing thing is, it's all TRUE!

Ben Affleck has surprised a lot of critics and movie-goers alike over the last few years as he's taken the roles of writer/director. Gone Baby Gone and The Town are both fine movies, but I think they're really good movies, nothing spectacular. Maybe that's why they've only been nominated for supporting actor roles at the Academy Awards. I think it's more shocking that Ben Affleck, who has had success as an actor, has suddenly taken up the role of writing and directing and the movies are surprisingly good! Yes, Affleck did co-write Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon AND won the Oscar for writing, but I wonder if they won that Oscar for the same reasons I just mentioned.... actors that are suddenly writing and the movie is good!

Argo is no different. Affleck has left the pen behind for Argo, and instead has taken the lead role (like in The Town) and is directing a cast of great actors, most of them known for their television work. Affleck does some clever tricks and storytelling in this film. The movie starts off with the 1970's Warner Bros. logo, and it instantly lets you know when this movie takes place. It also gives us a back story of how the Iran hostage crisis started, cleverly using storyboards. This brought a smile to me, for I work in the animation industry and love looking at storyboards. It's a great way to bring us into Iran and get the movie started. As the audience, you're thrown into the intense nature of what is happening there.

The movie now becomes a "How do we get them out of there", something that can be seen on television on shows like Criminal Minds or NCIS. Nothing spectacular, but it does have it's interesting moments. The movie takes a left turn and almost becomes farce, when it is decided by Affleck and his supervisor, Bryan Cranston, to make it look like they're Canadian filmmakers making a fake sci-fi movie (ala Star Wars) in Iran to get the hostages out. Affleck does a fine job of giving us a glimpse of how films are made in Hollywood and how it's more publicity than fine storytelling that can get a film made. Alan Arkin and John Goodman have very funny roles as the money (Arkin) and the name (Goodman) behind the picture.

The last third or the movie is quite intense and I believe this is what most people are responding too when they are giving the A+ Cinemascores. Other than that, Affleck's acting is nothing spectacular, they did some great casting on the actual hostages as they showed the pictures of the actors next to photos of the hostages so you can see how much they look alike, and I wouldn't be surprised if Arkin gets another supporting actor nomination for this film, simply because he practically steals the show with one line. Affleck even got President Jimmy Carter to narrate a bit over the ending credits on his account of what we just saw in the movie, to give the movie a clear sense of truth.

Argo is a very entertaining movie with a few great lines, an inside look into Hollywood, and a suspenseful ending that will keep you from breathing until the credits run. It's definitely worth the price of admission and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot about it during Oscar season.

Frankenweenie

Over the last two weeks, I saw two films at the theater, Frankenweenie and Argo. I enjoyed both films and would recommend both movies to film lovers. I started to write this post reviewing both movies, but feel that it's better to write them in separate posts.

Frankenweenie: B+

I've been a fan of Tim Burton since I saw Pee Wee's Big Adventure at the drive-in with my family when the movie first came out. Ok, I didn't know who Tim Burton was, but I loved the movie. Next up was Beetlejuice at the theater, again loved Beetlejuice and I'm sure the advertisements at the time said "From the director of Pee Wee's Big Adventure", which is probably why I saw the movie. The movie was weird and different, and even though Pee Wee's Big Adventure had a few truly weird moments in it (Large Marge, his dream sequences, etc), Beetlejuice was almost completely filled with these weird moments. Something that I learned to accredit to Tim Burton. So over the years, I learned to appreciate Mr. Burton's films more, especially when his popularity skyrocketed with Batman and Batman Returns. I would pick up issues of Starlog and Comics Scene magazines from the local comic book store and I'm sure it was during that Batman craze when I learned who Tim Burton really was. He had a vision for dark, yet reserved characters. The characters tended to mirror Burton himself. So much so, that the character Edward Scissorhands, resembles Tim Burton in his style of hair and black clothing.

(cover of one of my Comics Scene issues)

Then The Nightmare Before Christmas came out....

I instantly fell in love with the movie. The look, the unique storyline, and the music (yes I do like some musicals) all made the movie completely enjoyable to me. It was the first completely stop-motion animated feature film I had ever seen. At this time, I already knew I wanted to be an animator, specifically a Disney animator, and through the articles (so annoying pre-internet you had to find magazines or go to the library to research people!)  I had read about Tim Burton working as a Disney animation artist early in his career. This made me appreciate the director even more! 

In the Cinefantastique magazine above, I had read how this wasn't Burton's first stop-motion project and that he had created a stop-motion short called Vincent. Burton had also directed another live-action short called Frankenweenie at the studio, which ultimately got him fired from Disney because of it's PG rating and dark nature. Well I wanted to see these films desperately! I wouldn't be able to see Vincent until the DVD release of The Nightmare Before Christmas in 2000. Frankenweenie on the other hand, I was able to rent on VHS from our local library. I loved the short. It was dark, sweet, and funny. Yet it didn't feel like there was enough time to develop the characters in that story. 

At this point in his career, Tim Burton made films that were personal to him (especially Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood). I think that's one of the many reasons why I enjoyed them.

After Ed Wood though, it felt like the movies became less and less personal. There were glimmers of something he felt strongly about with Big Fish, Sweeney Todd and The Corpse Bride, but with films like Planet of the Apes and Alice in Wonderland, it seemed that Burton was more making films simply to make money. Which is fine, because that's what the studios want, but I think the fans of Burton, want to see a movie that shows the inner thoughts of Burton. 

Frankenweenie, the feature film, finally feels like he's returning to do just that. At first the film seems like it's almost a stop-motion shot for shot remake of the short, but with a much bigger budget. Burton used his original short as a jumping off point to not only develop the characters a bit more, which he wasn't able to do in the original short, but to also take the story into a different direction, which is a pleasant surprise for those of us who had already seen the short. Credit definitely has to go to John August, Burton's screenwriter on Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride, for writing interesting characters, especially Mr. Rzykruski (pronounced Rice-Kriski) who is Victor (the main character's) mentor. He has some really great lines. 

The film is completely black and white, which I don't feel has ever been done for an animated feature film. It's a vision Burton had for the original short, and Disney trusted him to keep the feature film that way. The movie looks great and you never once question, "Am I going to see any color?" 

The animation is of course top notch and the characters are designed with that Burton look that many people know and love. Credit has to also go to Rick Heinrichs, Burton's close friend who has been production designer on many of Burton's films, going all the way back to the original Frankenweenie short that he also co-produced! 

I saw the film in 3D as well and it looked great! I've seen a handful of 3D movies in the theaters over the years and most of them have let me down, because I don't see the dimension at all that they promise. For the first time since How to Train Your Dragon, I could see the 3D dimensions and it felt like I was in the room as they were filming the stop-motion puppets. 

I really had a great time watching this movie, especially the things that happen near the end, but I don't want to give that away, because I encourage you to see it. 

I did find some story problems with the movie. A major one being that Victor's dad feels that his son is too different and he encourages Victor to play sports like the other kids. So Victor plays baseball, which ultimately gets our story in motion (a bit of a spoiler, so I won't ruin it), but ultimately I feel Victor would now hate his father for pushing him into doing something he really didn't want to in the first place and now something terrible has happened. There is never that moment of animosity between Victor and his father, which is a shame, because it's definitely something that could've been explored. Other story problems were minor and it happens later in the film, again I don't want to spoil anything, but they can be overlooked. 

Frankenweenie is a pleasant return for Burton to create movies that are personal to him again. Hopefully he'll continue to do so. 

Plastic Man movie circa 1989

When I was younger, I collected a lot of comic books. My favorites were Transformers, Fanatastic Four and Plastic Man. The reasons why I loved Fantastic Four and Plastic Man was that they had characters who could stretch and/or change into things. I also loved Elongated Man, but he only had a one-off issue starring him, but the rest of the time you'd have to find him in Flash comics or Justice League America and Europe.

Plastic Man was by far my favorite. He is/was cocky, yet funny and he rarely fought supernatural beings, he would often fight real criminals like the early Batmans. I loved the Saturday Morning cartoon series even, yet his character was drastically different than the comics (where was Woozy Winks???).

I always loved movies, but combine that with my love for comic books, I had to pick up issues of Starlog and/or Comics Scene magazines when I saw them at the local book store or Comic book store. They would have article upon articles about movies and tv shows being made based off of comics. Keep in mind this was during the Batman craze, so every studio talked about releasing the next movie based off of a comic book, but it was rare to see it (Punisher was terrible and flopped and Roger Corman's Fantastic Four was a joke).

I was recently rifling through my Comics Scenes and I saw articles about wanting to make an Iron Man movie, 18 years before it was actually made and another article about director Joe Dante being discussed to direct a Plastic Man movie! I remember as a kid thinking that this movie would be AMAZING!!! I love Joe Dante movies, Gremlins and Gremlins 2 are so great for many different reasons. Innerspace is funny and charming (my brothers and I still quote that movie "Ever see the Outlaw Yosee Vale? Vhat a flick!") Explorers made me want to go to outer space with my friends. And even the Burbs was weird but fun. So combine Joe Dante and my favorite comic book character, that would've been a young Cinemascapist's dream come true. Alas it never happened, but you can read the article here:

Is Kevin Smith our generation's Orson Welles?

Being a fan of film, I always found it fun to connect stars of Hollywood's past with today's stars. For example, I have felt that George Clooney is the modern day Cary Grant, and in turn I guess that'd make Steven Soderbergh today's Alfred Hitchcock, because like Grant and Hitch, the two of them collaborated on multiple films. There's also today's Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks, and in turn that would make Ron Howard today's Alfred Hitchcock, because he and Hanks worked together multiple times like Stewart and Hitch... well that doesn't quite work, but I think you get my meaning.
The other day my wife and I were watching the SyFy reality show, Face-Off (which if you haven't seen and enjoy knowing how movie monster magic is made, it's a really great show). On Face-Off, writer-director-smodcaster Kevin Smith was brought in as a celebrity judge, because of his knowledge of superheroes. At that moment I thought, "Is Kevin Smith our generation's Orson Welles?"

To show you how I got to this conclusion, I guess I have to give both of them a bit of history. Orson Welles was a stage actor turned radio personality that directed what is arguably the go-to film representing masterpiece cinema, Citizen Kane. Released in 1941, Citizen Kane is a black and white film that was co-written by Welles and Herman Mankiewicz. Welles directed the film and starred in it with other actors from his Mercury Theater players. The movie today is seen as a masterpiece in storytelling and cinematography. At the time though, it was a box office flop and it took years before it became the beloved and often spoofed film it is today. After Kane, Welles directed the Magnificent Ambersons. Upon completion, RKO Pictures, the studio that released Kane and Ambersons, felt Magnificent Ambersons was too long and they weren't happy with the downer of an ending. Welles was out of the country when he was notified that the studio would like to make changes. He didn't want to both with it, so the studio made the changes themselves without Welles' approval. To this day, the general public has yet to see Welles' original cut of the film and they probably never will. Welles continued to make films, but sometimes they were never finished or no one cared to see them. He had acted in the film The Third Man, with his Mercury Theater co-star, Joseph Cotten. The film had critical success, but nothing for Orson Welles, who was found as being difficult on the set. In 1958, Welles directed himself as a supporting actor to Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh in Touch of Evil. Welles gained weight, supposedly for the role, playing a corrupt Police detective. Again, the film was recut after Welles finished it without his approval. He wrote a memo to the executives saying how he would have cut the film and decades later, Universal studio unearthed the film and recut it to Welles' specifications in the memo. Welles continued directing, but nothing ever got the acclaim as Citizen Kane. Instead, Welles acted more, did voice acting for movie trailers and commercials and became a television personality and talk shows like the Tonight Show and the Dean Martin Comedy Hour. His second to last feature film credit was as the voice of Unicron in the classic animated film Transformers the Movie. 

Ok, ok, so after that history you're probably saying to yourself "yeah, so how is he like Kevin Smith?" Kevin Smith directed a small independent comedy, Clerks, in 1994. It may not be considered a masterpiece like Welles' Citizen Kane, but it did change the way of independent movie making. Suddenly film students wanted to make movies about people dealing with their everyday life, talking about pop culture. From the mid-90's to early 2000's there's a slew of these films. One reason is because there were so many people that wanted to make them and the other reason is because they were so inexpensive, the movie studios were willing to pay for them. If the returns weren't at the box office, the studios would get their money back in video rentals/sales. Clerks also was the beginning of the View Askewniverse. Like Welles, Smith would use a cast of actors over and over again, but he would also write characters, like Jay and Silent Bob, to make appearances in many of the films. After Clerks, Kevin Smith was asked to direct a film at Universal Studios. Mallrats was made and released in 1995 and Smith was given a budget of $6,000,000, 25 times the budget he had for Clerks. Mallrats was released with not much acclaim and poor critical reception. The film only made $2,000,000 at the box office, a million less than what Clerks had made. Smith decided to go back to making smaller films at Miramax, the studio that released Clerks. While Mallrats was finally finding an audience on video and becoming a cult favorite, Smith directed the film Chasing Amy with a budget of $250,000, roughly the same amount he made Clerks for. Chasing Amy was a huge financial and critical success. With Miramax's money and blessing, Smith continued making films that meant something to him. Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back both were financial successes... and then came Bennifer... er, I mean Jersey Girl. Smith hired his favorite star, Ben Affleck, the play the role of a widower dealing with being a single dad. He also hired Jennifer Lopez, whom Affleck was dating, to play the role of Affleck's dead wife. This film came right after the Affleck/Lopez disaster Gigli and also the press talking about the couple non-stop. The film ended up being a dud (even though in my honest opinion, I find it entertaining and probably Smith's most mature film to date). Smith took this flop to heart, and never really made another personal film again. Clerks 2 came next, which was modestly successful, and then Zack and Miri Make a Porno, again modestly successful. In between all of these directing ventures, Smith was acting more and not just as Silent Bob. He started doing voice overs and even acting in the fourth installment of Die Hard. Ultimately he was playing a version of himself, but it was a very entertaining part. Smith next directed Willis in Cop Out (originally having the much better title A Couple of Dicks before the MPAA said nay nay). This was the first film that Smith directed, but did not write and I think Smith expected this to be finally his big break into a major studio production. The movie was a modest critical and financial success, and I don't think that was good enough for Mr. Smith. His next film was a much smaller thriller, Red State, which never made it's modest budget back. At this point, Smith said he was retiring from directing and focus on his podcast empire that he created with his longtime producing partner, Scott Mosier. The podcasts have become quite a success and have even started producing original content for Hulu. What's interesting about the podcasts, is that Kevin Smith is almost working in reverse from Orson Welles. Welles started as a theater and radio actor before moving onto film. While Kevin Smith started in film and is now working in podcasts, which in essence is a version of radio. Kevin Smith is also becoming more of a personality on the web and on TV. Judging on a reality show and even having a recurring bit on the Tonight Show. Now I'm just hoping that Kevin Smith makes a War of the World type podcast that puts the nation into a tizzy and one day to see Smith starring on Broadway as MacBeth... someday.... someday....

(This post was really long winded, I feel like I will have a bit more focus next time.)

Stop-Motion

Last week I saw two stop-motion animated movies. One was in theaters and the other was new on DVD. ParaNorman, currently in theaters, was an enjoyable movie, but it wasn't totally what I expected, which isn't a bad thing. I chose to saw in 3D, and it doesn't need to be seen in 3D considering you can only notice the effect in the beginning titles and end titles. That bugged me, but really I should know better by now for every time there's a new movie released in 3D, I think that this time it'll look amazing and I'm let down. For me the most effective (besides theme park attractions) have been Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon.

Going into ParaNorman, all I knew of the film was based on the advertising which looked like good-natured fun, wonderful character design, and the studio producing it. For those of you that don't know, ParaNorman was produced by one of the few fully stop-motion animation studios, Laika. Laika is currently best known for producing Coraline in 2009, which was a creepy film with not very likable characters, but still felt like a fun film. Before Laika was Laika, they were Will Vinton studios, best known for the California Raisins advertisements. When Will Vinton was fired from his own studio, the majority shareholder of the company handed the reigns to his son, who was an animator at the studio, Travis Knight (Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike is his dad). In my last post, I had stated that there are few movie studios making original family films. Pixar has been quite successful at making original stories, but are now making more and more sequels off of their original stories. Dreamworks has been making original stories and sequels interspersed with ones based off of books (Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon), but soon that may change. First Dreamworks is making a feature film based off of Sherman and Peabody, characters that were featured in Jay Ward's Rocky and Bullwinkle series. Recently Dreamworks acquired Casper the Friendly Ghost, He-Man, Baby Huey, Felix the Cat and a slew of other animated characters.

It's easy for movie studios today to take a known property, like an old TV series, a remake or reboot, and/or sequels to old movies, and make a movie to sell to a new audience. Laika is based off stories that are maybe not that well-known, like Coraline, or creating movies that are original, like ParaNorman.

Like I said earlier, I was expecting a light-hearted film, much in the way The Goonies and Monster Squad felt like to me when I was a kid. ParaNorman starts off with a goofy take on a zombie film, it's quite funny and you think this is the film you're in for. Quickly we are introduced to Norman, who is watching the zombie movie on TV while his Grandma sits behind him. We quickly learn that Grandma is a ghost and Norman has the gift of speaking to the undead. His parents find him weird. His sister finds him weird. The entire town finds him weird. He's an outcast and because of that, Norman is bullied. Suddenly the movie doesn't feel so light-hearted. Norman's mom tells him that people bully out of fear, because they fear what they don't know. It's an interesting moral, one that I don't think has been featured in a film before and one that is definitely important today. ParaNorman has moments of fun sprinkled throughout, but it also appears very violent for a family film. This is the second animated film in two years that I can think of, where a pistol has been pointed directly at a child's face. The first was Rango and this one it's a police officer pointing it at Norman. This bothers me that the filmmakers think it's ok to have a gun pointed at a child. I wish they would rethink how to make this effective. I'm not saying remove guns entirely, I just think there's a better way to stage it.

I liked ParaNorman, but I didn't love it. As you can tell, I'm mostly talking about Norman, bullying, violence and that's what I took away from the film. It's a movie featuring zombies and ghosts, yet I didn't feel that connected to those aspects of the movie, which is funny considering the movie is called ParaNorman. I wanted to see that fun monster movie for kids, but that isn't exactly what this film is.

The other stop-motion movie I saw was The Pirates! Band of Misfits. Produced by Aardman Animation and released by Sony Pictures, The Pirates is based off of the book "The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists". Aardman has produced short films, commercials, tv series, and feature films for decades, but they're probably best known for Wallace and Gromit. Aardman has a long history with US animation studios, which I was about to write about here, but I may save that for another post.

The story of The Pirates! centers on a not so impressive group of pirates who love ham. The pirates all want to be taken seriously in their "profession", especially the Pirate Captain, voiced by Hugh Grant. That is his name, the Pirate Captain. In fact all of the pirates on the ship, don't seem to have any names, so we don't really get to know them. The movie starts off interesting enough. the Pirate Captain wants to be taken seriously, and to do so, he wants to win the Pirate of the Year award. When he goes to apply for the award, he quickly sees that he's a laughing stock by other pirates. He's about to give up, when his crew, seeing that the Pirate Captain is down, convince him into plundering and pillaging to win the award. There's a quick montage of them failing miserably and then they find themselves on Charles Darwin's ship. This is where the film takes a left turn. The Pirate Captain has a "parrot" that is in fact the last living Dodo and Charles Darwin convinces the Pirate Captain to use the Dodo to win the Scientist award for discovering the bird.

Suddenly the film is less about pirating and more about if the Pirate Captain should give up his beloved bird. It may be because I was watching it at home, but I started to lose interest in the story. Like many of Dreamworks animated movies, this film has a lot of pop culture references. Many aren't funny, and instead you're rolling your eyes while watching them. Also, I think because many of the main characters don't have interesting names (or no names at all), you really don't connect with them. They just become, pirate.
The movie was ok, but I think I was hoping for something more.

What I did notice in this film and in ParaNorman as well, is the attention to detail. One of the best things about stop-motion animated films is that almost everything on screen is tangible. Everything is hand made, sculpted, sewn, puppetted. In the early Aardman Animated films, you could see fingerprints on the characters left by the animators pressing the characters into place (In Flushed Away, Aardman even put fingerprints on the CGI characters). In the climatic kitchen scene in The Pirates, the ovens, vents, tiles, windows, even the tiny spatulas and kitchenware all had to be created by hand. It's quite impressive. In ParaNorman, the wood houses, the cars, the trees... it feels like you're watching your childhood toys come to life in a cinematic way. This year alone, there'll be three full-length stop-motion animated features being released by major studios. Next up will be Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, and based on the trailers, it looks like it will be a lot of fun.... but then again, don't always trust the advertising.

Oogieloves?!?

About two months ago my wife and I went to see the Disney/Pixar movie Brave. Since its a "family" film, it seems obvious they would play trailers before the movie for other family movies. There was the Ice Age 4 trailer, Hotel Transylvania, Frankenweenie, Wreck-It Ralph, and of course OogieLoves.... Wait? What? OogieLoves? I had two initial thoughts: first, it must be based off of a popular children's show I never heard of. So popular that they could get somewhat recognizable stars to be in it. I mean c'mon it's got Chazz Palminteri and Christopher Lloyd in it! My second thought was that they have to be the ugliest live-action animatronic characters since Garbage Pail Kids the movie. Like a combination of Teletubbies and the Garbage Pail Kids:

I kind of wrote it off that I just wasn't aware of kids shows as much as I thought I was.

Over these past two months, I kept seeing more and more of these ugly characters on tv advertisements, posters, and on large city buses. I had to find out where they came from. I finally googled it and lo and behold I find out that it isn't a series at all! The OogieLoves aren't even a toy property or a series of children's books!

According to Wikipedia (I know not the best reference source) :
The film was produced and written by Kenn Viselman, who was behind the American localization of the British children's series Teletubbies and Thomas & Friends. Viselman claims that he and Teletubbies creator Anne Wood had multiple disputes with each other, because Wood refused to let Viselman pursue a film adaptation of the show, but when he went to a showing of the Tyler Perry film Madea Goes to Jail, he saw how people in the audience would shout out advice to the characters on screen. This lead him to the idea of creating a children's film in the vein of Teletubbies with the interactive aspect, allowing the children to sing, dance, and respond to the characters on screen.

So I was somewhat right about the Teletubbies look, but in my opinion it looks like a three year old's interpretation of what the Teletubbies look like. And who would ever think that a Tyler Perry movie would inspire someone to make an interactive children's film?! Also the film is budgeted at $12 million. That's not a large amount for a feature film, but even Wes Anderson, an established feature film director, was only given $16 million for his latest film, Moonrise Kingdom, a film starring major box office stars Bruce Willis, Bill Murray and Edward Norton. And based on how much advertising I've seen for the OogieLoves, I'm sure the studio is spending many more millions just on promoting the movie.

As I continued researching The OogieLoves movie, I come to find out that there is no major studio behind the movie. Kenn Viselman created a studio to make the film and he (or a team of people he hired) are distributing it as well. It's rare that you see that with movies today, but considering most major studios only bank on recognizable properties for "family" movies to put into theaters. We have already seen The Smurfs, Yogi Bear, Marvel and DC superheroes, Dr. Seuss characters and coming soon Alf, Popeye and Woody Woodpecker. There is only one studio that comes to mind who produces original family films and that is Pixar, and even they are making sequels to their own properties. So I do have to give Mr. Viselman credit, he had a dream to make an interactive family film and probably pitched it to every studio in town, only to be told "no". He thought he had a great idea though, so he made it happen. I guess we'll find out next weekend if he did have a great idea or not.

And if he is right, I'm going to be coming to him with plenty of ideas and what I think to be more competent character designs, to get my own children's movie made. Sure I may not be able to get Cloris Leachman and Toni Braxton, but maybe I could get Charlotte Rae and Brandy to star.

My first post: RIP Tony Scott

Hello all and welcome to my first blog post as The Cinemascapist. I love movies. I love the idea of watching a movie and just being immersed into a film. Escaping into another world, another time, another place.... Hence why I decided to call this blog Cinemascapist.

It's because of my wife that this blog came to be. Besides watching movies, I love to read about their histories, the trivia, and the business itself. I often am giving my two cents about movies to her, after which she often says "you missed your calling as a studio executive" or "Maybe you should write a blog about movie stuff". Since I believe she may be right that i have in fact missed my calling, a blog seems like the perfect place to write down my thoughts of all things movies. Over time I may make a video blog and or podcast to accompany these sentiments, but for now it'll simply be in written blog form.

My wife had given me the blog idea months ago and I had even started creating the blog itself weeks ago, but today seemed like as good a day as any to start the blog after hearing the passing of director/producer Tony Scott.

It's sad to hear of his shocking passing. I know I had enjoyed films that he directed and the ones he produced with his brother, Ridley Scott, over the years, but it wasn't until I looked at imdb.com after hearing of his death just how many I've enjoyed. The first film I saw of his that he directed was Top Gun. I was 11, and I went to the theater (I believe the Star Winchester or the AMC Hampton) to see it with my friend, Roger Hurst. We were ready for a high flying action film, but what we got was a slow-paced romantic drama with some cool aerial stunts throughout. It wasn't until years later that I appreciated the film a bit more, but still it's not my favorite Tony Scott film. I'd have to say my favorite of his goes to Crimson Tide. I know many will say theirs is True Romance, but truth be told, I haven't seen that movie in roughly 20 years and can't say I remember much about it besides that awesome seen between Hopper and Walken. It's definitely one I need to revisit. I would like to say that Beat the Devil is my favorite Tony Scott directed film, but it's really a glorified BMW commercial that was made for the web. There's definitely many other Tony Scott movies I enjoyed, but I have to say the one that sticks with me is Crimson Tide. It's a suspenseful film almost completely taking place on a submarine, much like The Hunt For Red October and Das Boot (from what I hear, because I've never seen that film). I was working at the Star Rochester Hills theater when the movie came out. As an employee of the theater we always got to see the movie late on Thursday the day before it opened. I had seen it that night in May of 1995 and I had enjoyed it so much, I treated my parents to see the film later that weekend. There are many things that still leave an impression on me: Gene Hackman's "Go Bama" speech out in the pouring rain; Denzel breaking up a fight between two sailors on which artists' interpretation of Silver Surfer was better (a scene supposedly written by Quentin Tarantino);  Hackman's not-so-blanketed racist analogy of lipponzoner horses; the use of the term Defcon over and over; the tension you could feel between Hackman and Denzel throughout the film; and finally thinking how much Viggo Mortensen looked and sounded like Kirk Douglas (something my dad also thought). In fact this was the first movie I had seen Viggo in.

It's an engaging film, like most of Tony Scott's films. You are entertained by not only the acting and writing, but also the look and the feeling that you too are on that submarine with them in tight quarters. Credit that most definitely has to go to Tony Scott. I think of his movies as being exactly what I want movies to be, escapism. Thank you for making such entertaining movies Mr. Scott.