Thanks to Roger Ebert’s Twitter feed, I recently read a terrific article in which writers and filmmakers discuss their most memorable moviegoing experiences. Now this isn’t the same thing as writers and filmmakers discussing their favorite movies. Sometimes the key factor is a great movie, but other times it’s the audience, the theater itself, or some personal realization the viewer comes to while watching the film. Not all of the experiences are positive and in one case, the movie in question was truly awful. It was a fascinating read and it got me thinking about what my most memorable moviegoing experience was.
I was saddened to hear of the death of animator Pres Romanillos on July 17. An extremely talented artist – some of his work can be seen on his art blog, Romanillos worked on numerous animated films for Disney and Dreamworks. Most recently, he worked on Prince Naveen in The Princess and the Frog. He had been battling leukemia and the cancer ultimately took his life at the unfairly young age of 47.
Cartoon Brew’s obituary for Romanillos includes a number of links to tributes and remembrances by his friends and family. My heart is with them during this sad time.
I wanted to see Waking Sleeping Beauty from the moment I heard about it. A documentary about the revival of Disney animation in the 80s and 90s directed and narrated by the producer of several of the films from that time sounded right up my alley. I had hoped to go out to New York to see it, but the timing never worked out. So I was very happy to discover that the film was coming to my home state, specifically one town over from where I live.
Animator Blu has come up with a very unique form of animation. I’ve seen it called “stop-motion wall painting,” “wallimation,” and various other terms. In the case of “Bing Bang Big Boom,” Blu’s latest video, I kind of like the term “urban animation,” since the whole city environment is Blu’s canvas. This is yet another technique where creating a new frame destroys the previous one and a single mistake can ruin hours worth of work. I love how seemingly effortlessly the animation moves between surfaces and dimensions and the basic premise provides enough of a story to keep viewers engaged. The amount of time this must of taken to both plan and create the actual and obtain permission to paint on the various buildings and sidewalks, is staggering.
With so much animation defined as either hand-drawn or computer, it’s always wonderful to see a piece like this that reminds us how much more the medium can be.
My friend and fellow writer Nick Nadel has written a review of the obscure British film When the Wind Blows. I’ve never seen the film and it has yet to recieve a DVD release in the U.S., so I was interested to learn about this grim tale of an elderly couple faced with the aftermath of a nuclear bomb attack. Nick gives a good overview of the movie’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as it’s place in the pantheon of horribly depressing animated movies.
I don’t think I would have been excited for The Last Airbender, the live-action film version of the animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender, even if I didn’t have serious concerns about the casting. I lost interest in M. Night Shyamalan‘s films after The Village. The initial teaser trailer didn’t get me excited and didn’t convey what made this concept special and different from any other martial arts movie out there. (My husband came up with the simultaneously brilliant and obvious idea that a live-action remake of the TV series opening should have been the teaser trailer.) On top of that, I just didn’t see the point. Avatar: The Last Airbender was already an amazing TV series. I didn’t – and still don’t – see what a live-action movie based on the TV series and covering the exact same material as the TV series in a much shorter time frame than the TV series could gope to accomplish. At best, it could have been a very faithful live-action reproduction of the TV show’s first season, something I have little interest in seeing. The point seems almost moot now, since the vast majority of critics have concluded that the movie is not very good.
But, as you almost certainly know by now, there is a casting controversy, centered around the fact that most of the main characters in a film based on a show steeped in Asian culture are played by Caucasian actors. It’s this fact that has dropped my attitude towards the film from “maybe I’ll rent it or watch it on cable” to “not interested at all.” I find this decision off-putting, disrespectful to the source material, and blatantly racist. Shyamalan, Paramount Pictures, and the film’s other defenders have been twisting themselves into knots trying to argue that this isn’t a whitewash. That if you take into account the secondary and background characters, the casting is actually quite diverse. That the show was set in a fantasy world where neither Europe nor Asia exist. That we live in a post-racial society and should be open to “colorblind casting” – a weaselly little term supposedly meaning that the film’s casting took only the skill of the actors into account and not the ethnicity or skin tone of the character in the source material, but that I have only heard applied to projects where – through some amazing coincidence – the “best actors for the job” all turn out to be White when the original characters were not. None of these arguments speak louder to me than do screenshots of Katara and Sokka – members of the Inuit-like Southern Water Tribe – compared with their live-action counterparts or Paramount’s own casting call for young actors to play Aang, specifying that they are looking for kids who are “Caucasian or any other ethnicity”.
My decision not to see this movie was greatly influenced by an essay on the subject by talented comics creator and fan of Avatar: The Last AirbenderDerek Kirk Kim. It’s an excellent blend of point-by-point answer to all of the defenses of the film’s casting as well as a personal response to the issues it raises. Since then, I’ve read other pieces on the issue, including “FacePainting” – which puts the controversy into historical context and includes a lot of pictures comparing the animated characters to their live-action counterparts, and this comic on the subject by Gene Luen Yang.
So where do you stand? Has the casting controversy sapped your desire to see the film too? Are you still going to check it out, despite your qualms about the changes made? Have you seen it already? Could you care less about the race of the actors? Whatever your opinion, and whether you agree or disagree with mine, I want to hear it.
No, not me. It’s The Ink and Pixel Club’s first birthday! Yes it’s been a whole years of stories about animation, from ink to pixels to every other style. I’m going to celebrate by considering what I want to do with the site over the next year. In the meantime, here are some fun facts about the site and the date:
The Ink and Pixel Club started out as a LiveJournal blog. It changed over to a WordPress site in March of this year. The LiveJournal site still exists, but only contains links to the latest articles.
Including this one, there are currently 85 posts on The Ink and Pixel Club.
Currently. the five most popular articles on The Ink and Pixel Club are:
Mickey Mouse will celebrate his 82nd birthday on November 18 of this year. Bugs Bunny turns 60 on July 27 (not counting a few earlier cartoons starring rabbits similar to Bugs). Tom and Jerry celebrated their shared 60th birthday on February 10.
The Ink and Pixel Club would not be possible without you, dear reader, so give yourself a hand!
Comments, well-wishes, and suggestions for the future are all greatly appreciated.
The following article discusses a new film currently in theaters. While I will try avoid revealing too much of the movie’s plot, there are going to be some spoilers. If you would prefer to avoid spoilers, see the movie first, then read the article. Otherwise, you’ve been warned.
I knew I wanted to see Toy Story 3 from the moment I knew there was going to be a Toy Story 3. (More accurately, from the moment I knew there was going to be a Pixar-helmed Toy Story 3. The eventually scrapped sequel that Disney’s now defunct Circle 7 Animation was less of a sure thing.) After all, this film would be the third in a series that included the first of Pixar’s animated features and one of my favorite movies of all time. So as the film’s debut grew nearer, I tried to learn as little about it as possible. I did see a trailer or two and ran into a couple of details here and there – some inadvertently. But I stayed away from books, news segments, “making of” information, and reviews. Even with this lack of new information, my expectations for the film were high, so high that my one fear was that no movie – no matter how good – could possibly live up to them.
Leaving the theater on Friday, I was not disappointed.
I’m sure you know by now that there is a new ThunderCats TV series in production. What’s surprising about this news is not that a new ThunderCats series is being made, but that it took this long for the show to be revisited. Nostalgia for all things 80s has been in full swing for at least the past decade. While ThunderCats may not have been the biggest phenomenon of its time, people still remember it, it does have a following, and the original series has been released on DVD. A new ThunderCats series could be really fun, if the creators understand what worked about the original.
I’ve been a Gorillaz fan since their debut album, as much for their videos as their music. So imagine my delight when I learned that “On Melancholy Hill,” the second video from their latest album Plastic Beach, was available on iTunes today.
Yes, I’ll pay a buck for a video that may well be available for free at a later date. I’m that excited.
I have yet to be disappointed by a Gorillaz video and “On Melancholy Hill” is no exception. This high seas adventure venturns the characters to their hand-drawn roots and sets them in a computer animated environment. If you’ve enjoyed past Gorillaz videos, you’re sure to like this one. If you’ve never checked out the animated band before, now is a good time to start.
Check out all the previous Gorillaz videos and a trailer for “On Melancholy Hill” on their YouTube page.
