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.