If John Lasseter and David Levinthal were hanging out together, downing bottles of wine in Belgium, they too might have come up with the crazy awesome film, A Town Called Panic. It came out last year, and my husband only just told me of its existence. He watched it with Olive last week, reading her every subtitle, and I watched it with Olive today as she told me everything that was going to happen (now that he heard the film once, she no longer required subtitle translation.)
A Town Called Panic stars Cowboy, Indian, and Horse. Cowboy and Indian have forgotten Horse’s birthday, and they decide to build him a barbecue leading to events that destroy their collective home. That’s about all I want to tell you so that the movie will be full of delightful surprises. If this trailer makes you happy, chances are the movie will, too.*
*Unless you object to toys nearly getting into a bar fight, minor swearing in the subtitles, excitable farmers, and horse romance.
If I remember correctly, the marketing of the movie Despicable Me has been going on for the past eight years. The first trailer I remember seeing for it was of an obnoxious American family visiting the pyramids, and I thought, “Well, that looks terrible.”
The next one I saw featured Gru trying to break into the lair of his nemesis, Vector. And then one with a freeze ray and a coffee shop. Still didn’t quite pique my interest.
Then these yellow guys started popping up, and Olive grew determined to see it. I grew worried. It usually doesn’t bode well for the movie’s quality when it’s marketed so many different ways.
Finally I caved when I saw a trailer featuring three very cute little girls. And, in fact, these little girls are a big part of why I ended up really liking the movie. Despicable Me follows the classic story arc of cute little urchins softening the heart of a grouchy, unlikely father figure. The orphans are from mean Miss Hattie’s Home for Girls, and they’re each totally likable without falling into orphan caricature. (Huh, and all three of them are girls. Are you listening, Pixar?) The scenes with Gru and the girls are heartwarming and entertaining, and the little yellow minions are quite cute, too. The only character that I wasn’t sold on was the nemesis, Vector. Many of his jokes fell flat, though there was lots of good heat-seeking missile action and good villain inventions.
I’ve read that the early success of Despicable Me has taken Hollywood by surprise, and they’re now scrambling to put together a sequel. Somehow I find that totally obnoxious, that they only bank on the surefire hits.
And, in my personal war on 3D, we had quite a time trying to see this movie over the weekend. When the A train totally thwarted our attempt to get down to Battery Park City, my new tried and true theater for forgoing the 3D glasses, we hopped a cab to Union Square where, unfortunately, all of the non-3D shows were sold out. All of our other usually haunts only had 3D. We ended up seeing the movie in the ancient Coliseum theater on 181st Street.
“Mommy, what are all of those black lines on the movie?”
“Uhm, I think they’re scratches on the movie, sweetie.”
I think the world doesn’t need another review talking about how good Toy Story is. Let’s face it, saying anything bad about a Pixar movie is tantamount to not liking the Beatles. And Pixar, I’M STILL MAD AT YOU!
What, did you think I’d stop being mad with that awesome introductory sequence with explosions and a flying pig spaceship?
Or sweet little Bonnie?
Or making me sob (twice)?
Or Buzz in Spanish?
Or Ken’s wardrobe?
Or dinosaurs that text message?
Or giving Barbie the smartest, funniest lines in the movie?
Today my sweet little girl turns 5, marking the year she’ll be off to Kindergarten. Last year I started a new tradition, interviewing her about her favorite things on her birthday. Though she still likes some of last year’s favorites, it’s interesting to see what’s changed.
Favorite TV Show?
“Superfriends because it’s funny and all the monsters look weird.”
“Dinosaur Train because there’s a new game and that game is really fun. The one where you get to learn about dinosaurs, it doesn’t only have dinosaurs. It has frogs, turtles, and birds (because birds ARE dinosaurs). One of them has a dinosaur footprint pattern and I like making patterns.”
“Bat girl because she is the toy I like to play with and the games I play with her are really funny.”
Hmm. Your guess is as good as mine on this one. 5-year-olds are weird.
Favorite Movie?
“Shrek because it’s funny and Shrek makes candles out of ear wax. I like all the Shreks, but I like Shrek 4 the best. My other favorite is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs because of the spaghetti tornado and the talking monkey.”
OK, I may have prompted her here after she answered Shrek, which is our most recent movie adventure. But it’s Cloudy that’s been watched no fewer than 50 times this year, with no end in sight.
Favorite Book?
“Shrek because the princess is so ugly!”
I can’t argue with this one.
Favorite Music?
“Recess Monkey because I like the space elevator one because it has a little talky part at the beginning and it’s funny.”
The Final Funktier is played every night before going to bed. Funny, they were her favorite band last year, too.
Favorite App?
“The dinosaur game because I like making puzzles and it’s match-up puzzle dinosaurs.”
She’d talking about a great little sliding puzzle called DinoMixer.
Favorite Museum?
“The helicopter museum because I like the color green and the helicopter in it is big and green. And it has a carousel with funny creatures in it, and I like watching the creatures go around.”
MOMA takes this category the second year in a row (named the “Helicopter Museum” for the helicopter hanging in the lobby). The carousel Olive’s talking about was part of this year’s mega show, the Tim Burton exhibit.
Favorite video game?
“Mario. I like the racing one because I sometimes win.”
She’s slowly entering into the world of Mario, with Mario Kart and Super Mario. Hooray!
I can’t wait to see what the next year brings! Happy Birthday, Olive!
We enjoy Shrek in this house. Well, maybe not Shrek the Third so much as the first two. So, the girl and I headed out for a show of Shrek Forever After. I searched to find a theater that was NOT showing it in 3D, to no avail. My choices appeared to be 3D and IMAX. I promised the girl so we went anyway. As we nestled into the theater, my wallet was $37 lighter. One adult. One child. One small popcorn. THIRTY. SEVEN. DOLLARS.
I started getting cranky, watching all of the trailers for the movies I’ll soon be shelling out 37 more dollars for (Megamind does look awesome, though). Most of the movies looked like the 3D would be a distraction not an addition (like How to Train Your Dragon), and I was sure that the Shrek we were about to see would be the same. I was not in a good place to like this movie.
And yet. Right off the bat, the animation drew me in, certainly the best of all of the Shreks. The textures were amazing, particularly on Shrek and Donkey, and their facial expressions have become so much more complex. And yes, though I’m reluctant to admit it, from the moment a horse-drawn carriage rides out over the audience, I was taken with the 3D.
Also, the writing was good. The movie is an unoriginal story lifted directly from It’s a Wonderful Life, but I often found myself and Olive laughing out loud, with lines I’ll enjoy repeating out of context: “My donkey fell down your waffle hole” and “Wolfy, bring my my angry wig!” There was also good gag use of music to amuse the parents, particularly The Beastie Boys’ Sure Shot, and some of my TV favs provided new voices, including Jon Hamm and Jane Lynch.
We had a good time. Now the key question as I write this is was it 37-dollars-worth of a good time? If I had plunked down a twenty, I’d recommend it without reservations. If you’re going with more than two people, though, you’ll cross the fifty dollar mark. For a movie. Somehow, that seems unimaginable to me. But I love going to the movies, and I love sharing that with Olive. In that regard, $37 is a small price to pay for an entertaining afternoon with my charming first born. Maybe I’ll stop being crabby now.
If you’ll allow me a Shrek tangent, Olive recently got an amazing gift. It’sThe One and Only Shrek!, a compilation of six William Steig stories. The book has taken over bedtime, as Olive asks to cycle through the stories. It includes classics like Brave Irene and Doctor De Soto, and yes, Shrek. As my husband rightly pointed out after reading through the original story a few times is that it would make a great movie. We want to see that movie: the grouchy ogre who eats lightning bolts and can shoot lasers from his eyes. That would be awesome.
The fine folks at Dreamworks have done an excellent job marketing How to Train Your Dragon. The trailer was ubiquitous last fall, and every movie theater we’ve been in lately has been covered in dragons. Olive couldn’t wait to go see it.
The vikings have been at war with the dragons, and young vikings are expected to train to become dragon-killers themselves. No one expected Hiccup, son of the brutal viking Stoick to become much of anything, though, as he always had a way of messing things up. Determined to fit in with his viking clan, he uses a catapult-like contraption and downs a Night Fury, the most feared dragon that no one’s ever actually seen. When Hiccup finds the downed dragon in the forest, he knows that killing the dragon would make him a star among his clan. And yet, he can’t do it. A bond forms instead, and Hiccup realizes his natural talent of dragon training. The movie centers on Hiccup and his uphill battle to change the vikings’ thinking about the dragons to stop the age old battle between vikings and dragons. All of the death is unnecessary.
The script is great, and so are the performances by all the actors. Jay Baruchel, that kid from Tropic Thunder, does a marvelous job as Hiccup, a truly likable character from start to finish. We also get some kick-ass girl vikings, most notably Astrid (America Ferrara). She’s a fierce dragon-killer in training, so Hiccup knows that to have her on his side would be powerful. And he’s right.
I’m sorry to say that I haven’t read the novel by Cressida Cowell on which this movie is based, so I can’t speak to how different the adaptation is. The book is going on the reading list, though. What I’m about to say next is slightly spoilerish, so skip ahead if you like. The only thing that I didn’t love about the story is that, though the central message is that communication with the dragons can avoid all of the killing, one particular death becomes necessary for the viking/dragon harmony to exist. That seems unfortunate from a storytelling perspective.
Though the dragons can be very cute, especially the Night Fury, this movie will scare the little ones. Olive (now almost 5) is pretty fearless in movies, but she had her hands over her eyes for parts of it. There were some dragons battles that had some kids wailing and others leaving the theater. You can get a sense of the battles from the trailer, but add volume and some scary contexts and 3D fireballs.
Speaking of the 3D, it added to nothing except the admission price ($35 for me and my kid to see a movie!!) I hate this new trend of everything in 3D, but the 3D trailers show no end in sight. Surely Shrek #4 and Despicable Me aren’t going to be enhanced with the addition of 3D. The only trailer that looked vaguely interesting in 3D was Legion of the Guardians, based on the books, The Guardians of Ga’Hoole. Plus, to hear that the new Harry Potter movies are going to be in 3D makes me want to chuck my 3D glasses at some studio execs. Please. Make. It. Stop.
Forgive my long break, but I’ve been off enjoying the holidays, eating cookies, and playing in the snow. During the holiday break, though, I’ve been thinking about what has stood out for me in 2009 in the world of kids’ media, and I’m ready to declare 2009 the Year of the Kid Movie. My favorite films of the year (except for Inglorious Basterds, perhaps) have been movies targeting children. Fortunately for me, this coincided with the year Olive got excited about going to movies. Movies are better when I have Olive to share them with.
While Where the Wild Things Arewas certainly the most hyped, and while it was lovely, it wasn’t made for kids. Up is sure to top most critics’ lists for the year, and while I did like it my reservations about it keep it from being beloved in our house. Also, with the growling 3-D dogs, it was the only movie I took Olive to this year where we had to leave the theater.
To pick my favorite movie of the year would require a cage match between Coraline, Ponyo, and Fantastic Mr. Fox. The first two have awesome girl characters so often missing from kids’ movies. Wes Anderson is one of my favorite directors, and with Fantastic Mr. Fox he’s back at the top of his game, finding a perfect home in the medium of stop motion animation. All have excellent writing, and to say that these movies are all visually masterful would be an understatement. [Links will take you to my reviews.]
There were also some nice surprises this year. As I mentioned in my last post, Disney gave this staunch princess opponent a princess movie to like with The Princess and the Frog. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is laugh-out-loud funny, and Astro Boy delivered just the right amount of robot action for kids.
Older kids got a few treats, too, with the latest awesomeness in the Harry Potter series, and the film adaptation of Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart. Though I didn’t see it, my niece tells me that the second Night at the Museum installment is lots of fun. And I’m sad to say I have not yet seen 9, despite loving the animation in the trailer each time I see it.
Here’s hoping that 2010 keeps this momentum going. It already has promise. In 2010 we’ll see film adaptations of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Ramona and Beezus, and, of course, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Olive’s already talking about seeing How to Train Your Dragon, and I’m guessing all of us will flock to see Toy Story 3. We have Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland to look forward to, a new Shrek, and Tron: Legacy at the end of the year (though we’re sure to hear about it from fanboys and girls all year long). Oh, and mommy has Iron Man 2 to look forward to.
If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know that I’m not predisposed to like a Disney princess movie. In fact, quite the opposite. But yesterday I puckered up and kissed that frog. It was the right opportunity – Olive and I have seen everything else, and we’re with my niece who is predisposed to like all things Disney princess.
There’s a weird aftertaste after my frog kiss because … I liked the movie. I’m not only talking about the stunning animation, but boy was that New Orleans scenery gorgeous. And the music was pretty fab, too. No, I liked the characters. And the story.
For those who haven’t seen it yet, Tiana is not a princess. She’s a waitress with big dreams of opening her own restaurant. She isn’t content to wish upon stars because she knows her dream will only come with hard work. She kisses the frog, the womanizing Prince Naveen (turned into a frog by the voodoo Doctor Facilier), not because of the promise of Princessdom but because he can help her get her restaurant. Strange that the trailers for the movie totally skip over everything I liked about the movie, making it look like every other Disney movie.
That fateful kiss, though, turns Tiana into a frog because she’s not a princess. During their time as frogs, we realize that Tiana and Naveen have a lot to learn from each other. We learn that Naveen, cut off from his parents, has no usable skills and is nothing more than a hollow womanizer. He needs saving much more than our Tiana. She’s not at all interested in him until he shows real change.
There’s lots of goodness as the frogs travel through the bayou with new friends, the trumpet-playing crocodile, Louis, and Ray and his band of fireflies. In their quest to become human once more, Tiana takes no shortcuts. I held off judgement on the movie until I saw how it ended, and I’m pleased to say that it ended exactly as it should have.
A warning for those with little ones: there’s lots of scary voodoo shadows that will spook the easily spooked. Olive was fine, but she’s become quite the fearless movie-goer. And for those who, like me, think that they’ll hate this movie, I say give The Princess and The Frog a try. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
We’re big Wes Anderson fans in this house. Rushmore is one of my top five favorite movies of all time, and I weep every time I watch The Royal Tennenbaums. So, we were particularly excited about the latest book adaptation to make it to the big screen, Fantastic Mr. Fox, a Wes Anderson movie we could go to as a family.
Honestly, Wes Anderson and stop-motion were made for each other, and this is his best movie since Rushmore. As I mentioned in my last post, we read the book to introduce Olive to the story before we went. The main plot of the book is that Mr. Fox stole so much from the three mean farmers, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, that they decided he must be killed. Lots of shooting occurs (including Mr. Fox getting his tail blown off), until the farmers trap the foxes and all of the other underground dwellers underground so they’ll starve to death. Mr. Fox comes up with a plan that saves them all.
The movie has all of this, but it feels like a subplot to the new family drama added in Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach’s adaptation. Mr. Fox is, well, fantastic, and his son Ash is having a hard time living up to his father’s image. It doesn’t help that Ash’s cousin, the naturally gifted Kristofferson, comes to stay and takes even more attention away from Ash. The story becomes less about squab and cider stealing, and more about the family relationships, leading up to an action-packed rescue mission.
The trailer in no way does justice to how cool this jerky style of stop motion looks on the big screen. There’s a fox chase scene in the beginning that took my breath away. There are also wonderful little visual details, some of which were very funny, like the little fox underwear, Ash’s grape juice mustache, Kylie’s spirally dazed eyes, and Mrs. Fox’s paintings of thunderstorms.
And then there’s the fantastic acting. Having heavy hitters George Clooney and Meryl Streep in the starring roles is a treat, and Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman does a superb job as the dejected Ash. Other Anderson regulars Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, and Owen Wilson are good fun, too. The only choice that I thought was strange was giving Bean, the meanest, nastiest farmer, the voice of Dumbledore – Michael Gambon. His voice is like velvet, making Bean more gentlemanly than violent.
For those worried about the violence natural to the story, yes, there are guns and explosions, but the farmers aren’t nearly as menacing as they are in the book, and the stop motion animation gives all of the shooting and fire and explosions a styled look that makes it perfectly fine for little eyes.
This has been an amazing year for children’s movies, and Fantastic Mr. Fox is hovering near the top of my list. There’s been some hubbub this week about which movies will get nominated for the animated film Oscar. If I had my way, that list would look like this:
Are you listening, Academy? I know, I know… you’re probably wondering where Up is. At the end of the day, I enjoyed all of these movies more, and so did Olive. It was beautiful, but my reservations about it keep it off my list. And, I think we can all agree that Where the Wild Things Arewasn’t a children’s movie (it’s not eligible for animated feature, anyhoo).
I feel like Astro Boy has been flying under the radar – it’s been out for a couple weeks and I’ve heard almost nothing about it. (Maybe I’m still coming down from the media blitz surrounding Where the Wild Things Are). Olive showed interest in seeing it when we saw a trailer for Astro Boy before Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (a flying robot boy!!) so I took her to see it today.
We weren’t exactly fan girls going into the movie. I realize the character of Astro Boy has been around for almost 60 years, yet I knew almost nothing about him, so we came to the movie a clean slate. Luckily, the movie did a great job of telling us Astro Boy’s origin story. The story takes place in Metro City, a prime slice of floating land in the sky that has left the “surface” (a post-apolcalyptic earth) behind. Dr. Tenma (voiced by Nicholas Cage) loses his son in a military lab experiment early in the movie, he does what any other grief-stricken father/genius scientist would do: rebuild his lost son as a super robot boy. Sadly for both of them, the facsimile doesn’t compare to the real thing, and Astro Boy (Freddie Highmore) ends up cast out of Metro City, finding himself among the sea of discarded robots below on the surface.
On the surface we meet an awesome group of orphaned kids, headed up by awesome tough-girl Cora (Kristin Bell). Astro Boy starts to feel at home with this ragtag bunch, until the father figure, Hamegg (Nathan Lane), discovers he’s a robot, not a boy.
Metro City has a diabolical villain in the power-hungry President Stone (brilliantly and evilly voiced by Donald Sutherland). He even gets an evil robot transformation, the likes of which have not been seen since the Dude turned into that evil robot at the end of Iron Man. In fact, I kept thinking that this movie is the lovechild of Wall-E and Iron Man. It had more explosions than Olive’s seen before, but she seemed pretty unfazed by the robot violence. It helps that Astro Boy is incredibly likable. What’s terrific about this movie for kids is that while the adults use poor judgement throughout the movie, the kids were the heroes, powerful and full of goodness. My robot-loving girl enjoyed it, and I had a great time, too.
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, a compilation of six William Steig stories. The book has taken over bedtime, as Olive asks to cycle through the stories. It includes classics like Brave Irene and Doctor De Soto, and yes, Shrek. As my husband rightly pointed out after reading through the original story a few times is that it would make a great movie. We want to see that movie: the grouchy ogre who eats lightning bolts and can shoot lasers from his eyes. That would be awesome.
