Originally Posted By mawnck >>I said Pixar and Disney.<< I know. My point was, style doesn't sell. Remember Hercules, Atlantis, and Home on the Range? All rather distinctive-looking movies from Disney, and all box office disappointments. And don't lets even get started about Speed Racer! >>In many ways I want a Disney or Pixar do another Pink Elephants on Parade, or train sequence from Three Caballeros or Bird, Cricket and Willow Tree.<< Some of the recent Disney (not Pixar) shorts fit the bill. Lorenzo, Little Match Girl, Destino, One By One. All are considerably better than the recent features IMHO. I think PIXAR has also done some very nice stylized set-pieces kind of along those lines (Wall-E and Eve's space dance, Remy's visualizations of food tasting, the newscast montages in Cars), but they're always too darn short, and stay too much in the story to really stand out like the stuff you mentioned. I agree, though - I'd love to see some more graphical envelope-pushing in the movies, besides during the closing credits. But I'm not real sure how you'd do Persepolis in CGI ....... By the way, the aforementioned "Home on the Range" has a really spiffy 2-minute cow-yodeling number that I believe lives up to your examples. And now that the flick is out on DVD, you don't have to endure the rest of the movie to see it. Can't say that I care for Shag's art. He always strikes me as the Sha Na Na of 50's pop art - a slick, sanitized, stereotyped version that just doesn't quite capture the magic of the real thing. How 'bout some NEW stuff? YMMV, of course.
Originally Posted By DlandDug In terms of brilliant stylization, I would happily put The Incredibles up with the best of them. >>Wall*E looks nothing like a cartoon...<< With all due respect to the author, this is the statement that baffles me. What is a "cartoon" supposed to look like? Daffy Duck? Popeye? Fritz the Cat? Bambi? Yellow Submarine? Finding Nemo? The Road to El Dorado? South Park? Jimmy Neutron? Nightmare Before Christmas? Is it hand drawn? Computer animated? Stop motion? Claymation? Or human lips superimposed over static drawings? (It was done in three series, actually: Clutch Cargo, Space Angel, and Captain Fathom.) Wall-E looks nothing like a cartoon? Only, I think, if one has created some sort of definition that specifically excludes Wall-E.
Originally Posted By X-san ***And I thought it was a brilliant choice. The live-action people connected those characters to us. Looking at those people, whether it was the CEO of BNL or the clips from HELLO DOLLY, it seemed almost antiquated. We were looking at ourselves, but we had ceased to exist.*** While I can understand K2M's argument, this was my reaction to it as well. It made the movie seem 10X more brilliant to me (looking back on why I was impressed, I mean), by actually making the extinction of the human race (as we know it) seem so real. I think Redhead and I have very similar reactions to the film. Though I can see why others might not react the same way, or perhaps were too sort of shocked by the live vs. animation and that took them out of the story. For me, it was the opposite, it drew me in even more.
Originally Posted By mawnck Was the old Buy 'n' Large commercial in the first part of the movie live action or animated? Cause if it was animated, we have us a bit of a consistency glitch.
Originally Posted By X-san I can appreciate that, mawnck, but for me it doesn't have to be quite so deep. I just dug the attempt at drawing the line between old and new..if there were a few technical flaws it doesn't bug me that much. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the impact (for me) was really striking. I understand it doesn't work for everyone, though. I love the movie enough to not want to delve into it "frame by frame" as it were...though I appreciate that some people want to (and that speaks to how cool it is, too, in a way...if the movie was garbage we wouldn't even be chatting about such things I would guess). Worked for me. I guess that's all I can really say on that (I can appreciate that it didn't work, continuity wise, for many others though...).
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>The live-action people connected those characters to us. Looking at those people, whether it was the CEO of BNL or the clips from HELLO DOLLY, it seemed almost antiquated. We were looking at ourselves, but we had ceased to exist. The animated future-people become that much more of a stark difference, without having to resort to fat suits, which would have taken you out of the movie more.<< Yeah, it still doesn't work for me. I think the "future" people are very cartoony, and don't look at all like they could possibly come from the same world as the live action stuff. To me, it was the one major flaw in a brilliant movie.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>I just dug the attempt at drawing the line between old and new..<< When I was a kid, my Hot Wheels cars and my Tonka trucks "lived" in two different worlds. I never mixed them, because a Hot Wheels car would look like a RC car in Tonka World, and a Tonka truck would look like Godzilla's RV in Hot Wheel Land. So maybe I'm too literal, or being too much of a color inside the lines type of person on this, but for me there was no real connection between the live action Fred Willard and the animated humans on the Axiom. Took me out of the movie too much. Then again, the other kids in the neighborhood hated me. I couldn't ever just play cowboys and indians without meticulously storyboarding the scenes first. ; )
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA <In many ways I want a Disney or Pixar do another Pink Elephants on Parade, or train sequence from Three Caballeros or Bird, Cricket and Willow Tree.> Yes. I would add the 1952 Disney short 'Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom' which is a wonderfully stylized animated short.
Originally Posted By Dlmusic <<Yes. I would add the 1952 Disney short 'Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom' which is a wonderfully stylized animated short.>> Totally agree. And DlandDug, I do agree that Incredibles is by far the most stylized Pixar film so far, but I still think it skews to realistic for me to call it in the same vein as the other examples I mentioned. I just wish Pixar would release the story reels in their completion. I thought that the Incredibles story reels looked spectacular and I loved the way the art looked.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>Yes. I would add the 1952 Disney short 'Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom' which is a wonderfully stylized animated short.<< Just the other day I finally got around to watching the Tomorrowland treasures set. The brilliant cartoon alien abduction B-movie certainly belongs on the list. It appears Ward Kimball was the one director who could get away with such things.
Originally Posted By DlandDug >>It appears Ward Kimball was the one director who could get away with such things.<< Exactly. He really began shaking up the staid Disney house style in the title song for Saludoa Amigos. So much of it looks quaint today, but it was quite radical for its time...
Originally Posted By Jim Wow, I don't know what surprises me more, that AFA liked PANDA (MADAGASCAR was so bland, I just can't stomach anymore CGI DreamWorks, though now I may have to give them another try), or that he has such harsh thoughts for WALL-E. I actually am on the side of an Academy Award nomination. To me, WALL-E was something unique, different in its approach to storytelling, and very well done. I don't think I'll be in a rush to see it again, but I have been telling people that it's a must-see. Considering I don't go ga-ga over anything CGI, that means a lot. I didn't get the Oscar buzz on RATATOUILLE (which I honestly thought had just strange storytelling--a mass of rats cooking in the kitchen?, the climax belonging to a food critic?). But here, I do get it. For me, the presence of so many hearty laughs and the absense of a comedian in the cast or the normal CGI one-liners reminded me of why animation can be so great.
