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Smurfs 2011 Ok, for some reason a lot of people are giving this film a hard time, and I think I know why. There's no violence. They sing their "La la Happy tune" many times. There's no real cursing. It's a great family movie all around. THAT'S the reason this movie is getting a lot of flack for no reason at all. The Smurfs more than plenty of times acknowledge their roots and history, and even their cartoon stories (Smurfette explains where she came from!) The 'chamber pot' part was actually pretty funny. The only part I thought was "overdone", was the Guitar Hero section. And we get a glimpse of the retail action towards the old action figures when they used to be sold in Hallmark stores... though this is in FAO Schwarts. (Yeah, they took a page out of the old -& bad- live action HeMan movie, but for Smurfs... it WORKS) The movie was "cute", it was definitely very "smurfy", and for the Smurfs, that's a good thing. The voice acting fits the characters perfectly. Gargamel could not have been portratyed any better by any other actor. Azrael was purring with personality! (The cat was my favorite from the old cartoon also). Heck we even get a glimpse of the nearby kingdom near the Smurf village! That's where PeeWee and William came from. Lots of little nods to many different things from the cartoons you'll notice throughout the film. It almost allows for a possible sequel. Come on we want the "Lone Smurf" back! The Princess and the Frog This movie takes the movie back to Disney's roots for back to hand-drawn animation, which is done very well. Every character is brimming with personality. You'll learn to love every character they created in this movie. I didn't find anything wrong with this movie at ALL. If there was ANY stereotyping at all, it was in good taste! It really brings the love of family and the success of hard work (and taking pride in your work), ...as the main morals of the story. It is very interesting with a neat twist. I won't spoil it, but imagine mixing Shrek with The Little Mermaid, and you have this wonderful movie. The music (all jazz) is great, but just not... memorable as the music from previous animated features like Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, or heck even Song of the South. Maybe if TP&tF is received well, might release Song of the South on DVD now...(sigh) doubt it. UP Up is a little odd, definitely some Ghibli influence, but good. The first 15 minutes of the movie will have you in tears, it does start on a somber note, but it explains EVERYTHING in relation to the old man, Carl, has gone through, and how determined he his to finding the secret falls in Venuzeula. Though the explorer from the beginning has to be nearly 40 years OLDER (eh, maybe 15) than even Carl is once he become an older man... but eh, it's just a movie, enjoy it! And it does come down to enjoying the SIMPLE pleasures in life in the end! Though there are a few little intense action scenes, and the dogs go from funny to scary then funny again, there are VERY few characters, so young kids should easily be able to follow along. Bri sure followed it easy enough and is already making an "My Adventure Book" at Gram Gram's already! "So long, boys! thpppt!". By the way, that hilarious moment is NOT in the finished movie... too bad it was changed. Max & Ruby Something about this show I don't like. All the kids Bri's age love it. It has talking rabbits and is just too cutesy for me. The thing that irks me, is for a while Brianna was mimicking Max. Max is the younger brother. He rarely talks. When he does it's with one word sentences. He acts shifty and clever. Yeah, he normally helps his big sister to think 'outside the box' to solve her problems, but it's like he solves almost ALL her problems. He's the silent problem, one-word baby-talking, know-it-all. It's arrogance at its core and it's being taught to very young kids. At least Brianna doesn't act like Max anymore (that happened really last year), but her class still watches the show. I try not to let her watch it at home. Just try watching some of the shows geared for the very young they nearly demeen your kids' intelligence. They are so overly cutesy you'll want to gag yourself, if you're over six. But some of the cartoons geared for the very young...are not all good for them (even if it screams EDUCATIONAL!). Believe it or not, I make sure Bri gets a dose of fun cartoons that do NOT have educational value to them. Like Tom & Jerry, OLD Looney Tunes, Scooby Do, even Transformers. That's what cartoons should be all about, just fun for the whole family to watch. Not talking backpacks, or learning Spanish, or saving Whales that somehow get stuck under a sunked ship from over 80 years ago...just HOW did a whale get stuck under an already sunken ship anyway? Just good plain fun. Cartoons have evolved into baby-sitting, child rearing, educational mush in my opinion, and yeah, maybe that's not saying enough,... which goes to show who and what is 'teaching' our kids... cause it ain't the parents trying to live in log houses and of the land anymore teaching kids the common sense of life...
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| | Disney/Burton's Alice in Wonderland. After hearing all the negative reviews, I completely enjoyed this movie to it's fullest extent! Of course I enjoyed Burton's Sleepy Hollow, Beetlejuice and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory very much also so I really like his style. Alice was no exception! The plot, no... isn't very deep, but there are 2 or 3 different plots going on during the whole movie, so in case you're wondering... YES there IS a plot! The effects are really good, though some parts did seem a bit rushed. Stayne and the White Queen are good additions to the original cast (I'll admit I've never read the original story(s)...so they could come from the books). There aren't many 'ha ha' moments, but all the characters are there from the Disney movie plus some. Great start, and a decent ending (yet predictable). It's a great movie to sit back an enjoy the ride. I took Brianna to see it, and there are some intense moments, and the movie is dark from beginning to end. The only 2 "things" you see killed are CGI creations... I didn't point out to Bri the floating heads in the Red Queen's moat... maybe another time. Great movie, great detail, and very clever! Not to be missed: 8.8/10 When games made you use your head (no football sequels or mainstream FPS shooting games here, just TEXT) : GO SOUTH : USE KEY UNLOCK GATE Video games and arcade game have come along way since 1978. While many politicians and a few teenagers try to use the entertainable media for their own uses, let's take a quick look at where it all came from. First of all my brother and I had the ye 'ol Atari computers. Rodney would create game look-a-likes, and I'd check if they worked, or check for errors. If was fun, it was simple. The programming was a lot different compared to the plethora of various game engines they use today for creating games. We had the whole shooting match. The Atari 400, 800, a 1300, the cassette drive, a floppy drive, a printer, and a couples of different keyboards (one was homemade). Games were much easier to come by back then, whether they were store bought, mail ordered, or even (cough) copied from a neighbor. There was everything on those machines when it came to games, Donkey Kong, Congo Bongo, Pac Man, Mountain King, the popular arcades games for the time. Then there were the other games. Games that had no graphics. They were all TEXT games, just like what you're reading. It was all print! San Fransico 1906?, GhostTown, Sorceror, Zork, were all just the tip of mountains of text games many created by Infocom (or Infrocom) and other companies. Let's take a look at this long lost genre of gaming. First of all, it was all done in Basic programming (pretty much). You also had to type in what you wanted your 'person' to do. Everything typed or read on the screen what you would see or do or feel. It was truly up to the individual imagination to really crack these games. They really brought you into the game itself like reading a novel and becoming part of the novel (the main character) you were reading. In SanFransico 1906, I never made it past about 3 or 4 commands entered, (you have to make it to a safe position, I guess) before the first earthquake happened...and I died. GhostTown was probably the easier of the 4 games I've mentioned. I actually FINISHED that one! All it was, you entered the commands after you start on one end of town, to go find certain items to create a bomb, place it by the safe, splice the telegraph lines to the bank's telegraph, but wired to a make shift bomb made of materials you find in the vacant town. The game ended when you went to the telegraph shack outside of town across the ravine and hit the telegraph mechanizism, thus exploding the vault open. The game was based in the 1800s. The town DID have ghosts. In the bar, the piano played itself, or if you failed to enter the jail, you saw text to something similar to: YOU TRY TO PICK THE LOCK ON THE JAILHOUSE. HEAR A GHOST WHISPERING ,"CONTRADICTION..." You really had to use your grey matter to figure these out. These text games from over 20 years ago, were the percurssor to games like Myst, 7th Guest, 11th hour, D, and even Resident Evil (though I wouldn't consider any of the R.E. games past the 1st one as part of that genre anymore). So, in Ghosttown I finally was able to open the old vault in a deserted town full of ghosts. There was no graphical interpretation for me SEE anything. Does that make me likely to try anything of this caliber in today's time. I don't think so! Does traversing through 'book' worlds and trying to defeat the evil brothers in Myst make me any more 'evil' than people on trial? Very doubtful. Trivia: the Zork collection was released on the Saturn and Playstation systems just 13 years ago! But they did utilize graphics. Disney's Aladdin "Blog" -Nifty (Mar '09) One of my top 3 the Disney movies! Why they changed the opening song line after 6 or 8 years...I'll never know. "Where they cut off your ear, if they don't like you face, it's barbaric, but, 'hey' it's home!" If they took this line out, they should have completely left out the musical number of the guards chasing down Aladdin for stealing bread, brandishing their swords at him and Abu. Another scene they should have left out, if Disney's is going to be so drastic and silly and remove a part of the original lyrics on principle... they should have taken out the scene where the guard nearly cuts the Princess's hand off. It's all the same principal, which indeed shows us the reality and strictness with law for that era of time. | | Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas This old HBO special holds a special place in my heart. It's hardly "Christmasy" at all. The music is a mix of rock and old American folk music complete with muppets playing a jug band. Bascially it's the Gift of the Magi with muppets. The Jim Henson studios made this before the Muppet Show was worked on! The effects are rudimentary, but were good for the time. You'll see wires and strings from time to time, but don't that deter from the overall experience from the movie. The scale of the set and movie are just great even down to the detail of clothes to help depict which animals are poor, and which are not. Unfortunately once Disney got a hold of it, they've edited a few things out, like where Ma Otter 'tells off' the Fox (when the Fox isn't there). Then the old...badger? remarks, "That's tellin 'em, Alice!" The original also had Kermit hosting it with the Riverbottom gang driving by and heckling him just before it started also. Oh well, the flavor of this movie is still here, but part of it are just a memory... Polar Express: It's Chrsitmas time again, and Brianna is still enamored with this movie. We've had the chance to watch it over and over and over and over again... (sigh). Anyway, while I'll kept my first symbolic review up in the archives, I've taken a different approach to the movie now. The Angel is a key character. He saves Hero Boy's life more than enough throughout the movie. But is he in any danger? Did the trip really take place? Was it all a dream? He is left with one proof, the bell at the very end that his parents can't hear. OK, let's start off what we see from the very beginning of the movie. His house, his sister, his parents, the book he reads about the North Pole, the hubcap, and the shadow, and what was in the book he was reading to confirm of no exsistance at the North Pole all foreshadow the entire movie. Pom Poko Looking for a new Halloween movie to gander? This charming 2 hour animated marvel should thrill anyone. It's animated beautifully from the studio of Studio Ghibli. The whole story is presented as a documentary. Actually the raccoon characters are telling the story as the movie progresses. It's all about the late 1960's during the quick expanding residential front in Japan. The story centers around Tama Hills (did I spell that correctly?). Tamma Hills Forest turns into a poorly residential designed area that slowly makes the raccoons try to survive and look for food. Using their tanoki-like magic they learn to transform into people and things to forage for food in the city. Why is this movie being recommended for Halloween? Well, the raccoons seek the raccoon transformation masters from a distant island who finally come to help them out and stage the finale. It starts with a series of individual haunts with the original raccoons trying to stop the construction from spreading that turns into quite a haunting parade of events with the help of the transformation masters! Gaunta (sp?) starts the raccoons into a frenzy to attack the invading humans. Shokoji helps stem his anger some and helps unites the fraction-divided raccoons. The movie is unlike you'll ever see, and for any raccoon fanatic is a must see! I've seen it available at Best Buy and some online stores. The only bad deal is, since it is a low run DVD of all the Disney/Ghibli films it's still pricey at $25 or 30! **Please note the male raccoons do have, uh well, 'balls' for lack of a better term, but it is just a cartoon and nothing lewd, that's all that's shown. The nude males are done in good taste. It's almost funny looking especially when they run on two feet and fight each other in the opening war sequence. I don't think there's any cursing, but we do see a raccoon get hit by a vehicle. (That's a pretty common site in the state where I live anyway...). This movie will also make you think twice about the many 'WHYs?' of all the continuing residential construction amid destruction of our forests throughout all of our States. Just where do the animals....go? Ask Legacy... | |