When Tim Burton was shopping around his idea for THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, animation was not considered a viable product for the big screen, at least not outside kiddie flicks. Even with the success of his dark and moody Batman franchise, even with the quirky but wildly romantic EDWARD SCISSORHANDS under his belt, and BEETLEJUICE,… Read More »
FINDING NEMO
After seeing FINDING NEMO, you just gotta ask yourself, is Pixar capable of making a bad film? Or even a mediocre one? Whether a serendipitous confluence of talent or a sign that there is some divine being at work in our world, either way, the answer, I think, must be no. There is a touch… Read More »
FINDING NEMO DVD
There are many reasons to purchase a DVD. The best is that its film that you want to see on a regular basis and the other best, work with me here, is that the bonus features do more than just pad out the empty space on the disc. FINDING NEMO more than qualifies on both… Read More »
SHARK TALE
Its not fair that the comparisons between SHARK TALE and FINDING NEMO are inevitable. Few films could weather being held to that high standard and not found wanting in some respects, and so it is with Dreamworks latest foray into the world of animation. Its not that SHARK TALE is a bad film, its not.… Read More »
CHICKEN LITTLE
CHICKEN LITTLE begins with a narrator struggling to come up with a way to get things started. This, we are told, is not your usual sort of animated kid’s film, and so none of the usual openings, say leafing through a storybook, will do. And the wonderful part of that is that it doesn’t begin… Read More »
FLUSHED AWAY
FLUSHED AWAY is the rude title of a sometimes rude film, but one that unswervingly hews to an ebullient sense of whimsy. Whimsy is its birthright, this being first-ever CGI Aardman effort, they of Wallace and Grommit fame. Fear not, it uses special software to deliberately include the sorts of imperfections that are inherent in… Read More »
MEET THE ROBINSONS — DVD
MEET THE ROBINSONS is a whiz-bang terrific flight of fancy that is a paean to both the creative impulse that drives inventors, and the boundless optimism that keeps them going in the face of long odds and the skepticism of their less imaginative fellow creatures. Thinking so far outside the box that its very existence… Read More »
PARANORMAN
Laika Studios latest animated film, PARANORMAN, is a story with heart, soul, and a killer funny bone. The humor ranges from the broad to the subtle, and even ventures into that most dangerous of territories, the poignant, and it does so with a sure hand, backed up with an astounding feat of animation. Norman (Kodi… Read More »
Brett Morgen and the CHICAGO 10
The Yippies at the 1968 Democratic Convention gave themselves body and soul to protesting the injustice. The same can be said of Brett Morgen’s determination to make his documentary about the riots and the trial that resulted from them more than just a look back at an interesting moment in American history. When I spoke to him on February 21, 2008, the relevance of those… Read More »
Marjane Satrapi Creates PERSEPOLIS
When I talked with Marjane Satrapi on December 12, 2007, the national news was full of the latest example of gun violence in the United States. Before getting down to talking about PERSEPOLIS, based on her autobiographical graphic novel of the same name, she asked me why the pundits were talking about the shooter’s psychology… Read More »