An American musical drama by Jim Henson, starring Frank Oz and Dave Goelz.
A young otter and his mother are poor. The boy does odd repair jobs and the mother works in textiles (sewing, knitting, laundry). In preparation for a talent show, they both steal the other's main tools to complete their acts.
Gift of the Magi with puppets and a happy ending. I watched a version which combined the 2 televised versions into a single video, which I was glad to find out when it was explained at the end. Among "folks who can do no wrong", Jim Henson is high on the list. The puppetry and production may seem quaint and antiquated by today's CG standards, but I like them more. The River Bottom Nightmare Band even played proto-metal at the talent show. I don't want to type any more about this because I rate it awesome and you should watch it.
An American Animated comedy adventure directed by Chris Wedge, starring Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks and Robin Williams.
A robot from a small town goes to the big city, hoping to get a job working for a company he has seen on TV. He gets there to find that the company has been taken over by the villain.
I'm pretty sure this is some vapid entertainment. It is entertaining and animated well. Robin Williams was always a great addition to comedy. I think Roger Ebert correctly stated ""Robots delights on a visual level, but the story feels like it came off an assembly line." Tom Waits did the villain's mother's "Underground" song. IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes have scores around 50-60%. I guess I liked it at some point because it's been sitting on my computer for years. I rate it adequate and really wish there was some hidden meaning or symbolism to type about.
Chinese wuxia films directed by Ronny Yu and David Wu, starring Brigitte Lin and Leslie Cheung.
A swordsman from Wu Tang Clan falls in love with a woman raised by wolves who is now working for cult leaders who want to destroy the 8 clans. Because of confusion over conflict between alliances, the wolf girl's hair turns white and she turns evil. The Wu Tang swordsman spends the next 10 years waiting for a blossom on Snow Mountain which will heal the wolf girl. Meanwhile, she has created her own all-female, man-hating cult.
The first film was great and the second was terrible. I blame the change of directors. What I would like to deal with here is the video techniques which made the original unique. By use of heavy back-lighting, the characters separated from the backgrounds in a stark manner. The midgrounds were mostly black, with slightly lighter far backgrounds and even lighter characters. See the image for why I think back-lighting was used. I don't know all the details, but some of the backgrounds looked to be manipulated in a way to produce this set of value contrasts. Motion blur was also used in action scenes. With modern digital editing, it could just be added easily. With older equipment, the film would be run slower to get less frames per second. Dutch angles were also used in some sections. The original had some flying and what I call "long sleeve technique" (long fabric, hair, etc. being cast out to full length as a weapon). Rotten Tomatoes audience score dropped from 75% for the original to 43% for the sequel and I agree.
The original was unique and the plot made me care what happened. The sequel seemed like a mockery of what made the original good. I rate them good and bad.
An American Disney animated musical fantasy directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske, starring Hans Conried.
A flying boy from a story brings a group of children to his island. The island is shared by Peter Pan's group of boys, mermaids, First Nations people and pirates.
I may type lots about subliminal messages, predictive programming and Illuminati symbolism in Disney animations, but that does not mean that I dislike them. In fact, it makes a "harmless children's cartoon" into something interesting. What I see in Peter Pan is repeated throughout the Disney catalog: blatant racism. "What Made the Red Man Red?" is a song whose mere title hints at the racist remarks within. Native Americans/First Nations people spoke a language different from that of colonial Europeans. We took their land and did not learn their language. They saved the colonists from starvation AND learned our language. Who are the stupid savages now? I'm sure that I should mention perpetual boyhood. Peter offers the boys a life free from cares, worries and adulthood, where they can fly. No boy would refuse. However, there is more to life than that, even an ideal one. Just for a modern comparison, mainstream rap is dominated by boy and dog wording, with prefixes like "lil": lil Bow Wow is a prime example. I have yet to fully analyze and decode what this means, but one result is less "men" to be leaders and more "boys" dependent upon others. A quick point I want to bring up is to question whether the absence of white European society and aurthority figures makes a place "other" or foreign, uncivilized? Captain Hook is the closest to Euro-man on the island and even he is a pirate, not part of "normal" society. He is, however, the only authority figure on the island who is obeyed because of employment, fear or responsibility. Pan may lead the boys, but they do not obey him to avoid consequences of not doing so. He is also one of them and tells them to do things that they would have wanted to do anyway. Smee doesn't seem eager to do the things ordered of him. After this academic analysis, I rate Peter Pan adequate. It gave me something to type about, but there are many better Disney films.
An American science fiction directed by James Cameron, starring Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver.
A group of soldiers and scientists from Earth go to another planet, seeking unobtainium (not joking). The indigenous people live directly on top of the mineral deposit, so the humans use fake alien bodies to communicate with them and try to get them to move. One soldier is accepted into their society, goes native and has to save them.
Fern Gully 3! Joking aside for a moment, this is amazingly beautiful and entertaining. I really like it. The plot of a 1992 animated musical with Robin Williams and Tim Curry apparently goes a long way. I didn't even know there was Fern Gully 2 until a moment ago. It's the same deal: foreigner goes native and saves his new group. The name of the mineral makes me laugh every time. I really don't feel the need to write lots about such a well known film. I do, however, rate it best. Watch it! I don't care if you've seen it. Watch it again.
A Mexican crime drama directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Adriana Barraza.
Various people and groups were present at a car accident. Their stories are shown leading up to it and afterward. A young man and his friend were into dog fighting, a model was switching husbands and a poor man has many dogs.
This is one of the movies that I saw a long time ago, have a copy of and never ended up writing about. The plot was complex, but clearly presented. It also made me care what happened next. There were lots of characters, but they were developed and most of them changed. I cared what happened to them as well. Everything sounded fine, but I was reading subtitles most of the duration anyway. They were not so quick and thick as to divert my attention from the video elements. There was a lot of handheld camera, but it looked professional, like Breaking Bad. I really liked this and got into it the first time I saw it, but rewatching after so many years did not pull me in as much. I rate it good. You should probably watch it.
An Italian mondo documentary directed by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, with music by Riz Ortolani.
Scenes of various things happening in Africa in 1964 are shown and explained.
The best parts about this to me are Riz Ortolani's music (knew it sounded like Cannibal Holocaust) and being filmed in Technicolor Techniscope. I did appreciate that it showed a wide variety of material. There was everything from poachers and corpses to white women at the beach in Cape Town. From what I've read, it's all real and not staged. There was stuff that disturbed me and that's pretty gruesome. The zebra scene was not cool. However, the narrator pointed out that the only dangerous animal in Africa is humans. I don't mind seeing human skeletons scattered along a road and being run over by jeeps, but the zebras did not deserve what happened to them. It's difficult to describe something like this. If you're ready to see anything and everything, get ready to read subtitles really quickly because I would recommend it. If you don't want to see nudity, violence and stuff like that, Discovery Channel, National Geographic and Animal Planet skip the grizzly and gruesome details of reality. Africa was not fit for children's programming in the mid-'60s. I rate this awesome just for being so wild and raw.
