Cartoon Review: Lost and Found

Lost and Found

Lost and Found (2008/ Dir. Philip Hunt/ Entertainment One and Studio Aka)
Here is the short version of this review: Go buy this, it’s excellent.

Movie Review: The Black Cauldron

The Black Cauldron (1985/ Disney/ Dir. Ted Berman & Richard Rich)

The Black Cauldron made basically no splash when it came out, much to Disney's dismay. Also, to the dismay of people like me, who sort of wish Disney had kept up with what it was doing. If you remember, the early 80s were a period of interesting experimentation for Disney. Granted, most those experiments were box office flops, but they were at least interesting and some of them were even good. This is an example of one of those experiments that was actually sort of good. Not great, I didn't say great, but it is good and it contains things you rarely saw at the time.

Cartoon Review: The Snowman

The Snowman (1982/ TVC London/ Dir. Dianne Jackson)

This is a cartoon for which I have no nostalgia. I only saw it for the first time last year and was so exhausted that I fell asleep during part of it. If I can offer an untainted perspective on any holiday movie, this HAS to be it. I only bought it because it has a tremendous reputation. The fact that it came on a DVD with The Nuttiest Nutcracker had nothing to do with it. I still haven't watched that second feature, mainly because I watched the trailer. But we're talking about something that I've been told by English and Canadians is the height of their VEWPRF season. So I bought it and watched it, and now I shall write my review of that movie. How did I think it help up? You'll have to wait and see...

Cartoon Review: The Smurfs Christmas Special

The Smurfs Christmas Special (1982/ Hanna-Barbera/ Dir. Gerald Baldwin)

It wasn't supposed to be like this. My first holiday special review in two years... it was supposed to be a momentous occasion. It should have been filled with joy, and laughter, not this. I said some time ago that I was sort of done with reviews that only amounted to complaints. I mean... look, The Avengers happened and we're liking things because we like them again, not because we hate them and want to imagine we're superior to them. I want you to know, I started this with the purest of intentions. Sadly The Smurfs Christmas Special did not hold up.

There is no way to properly summarize this, no way to discuss it on its merits, or play on the themes. Mostly, because I have no idea what happened. The best I can hope for is a synopsis, going down the line point by point. Maybe, together, we can reach and understanding. Just remember the mantra "I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks!"

Movie Review: Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park (1993/Universal/Dir. Steven Spielberg)

I decided to re-read the book before watching the movie, which might be considered a mistake by some people. I know people who would have said I should have skipped one or the other of my experiences, but I had my reasons. I wanted to be able to compare the two products, movie and book and see what the differences were. My thoughts can be condensed, and then expanded upon. Jurassic Park: The Book is kind of a dumb diatribe against science, written by a profoundly stupid man. Jurassic Park: The Movie is a fun movie with a few weak spots. I’ll expand on those two statements, but that’s the gist of my feelings.

Movie Review: The Tale of Despereaux

The Tale of Despereaux (2008/ Universal/ Rob Stevenhagen & Sam Fell)

Let’s get the first things out of the way first. I cannot recommend this movie, because it’s not a good movie. That’s just for starters, but we can get that out of the way right now. The reason we’re talking about it though, and the reason I’m reviewing it, is that it could have been a good movie. There is a good movie hiding in this film, however the movie keeps getting in its own way and prevents it from being good. The book it’s based on was a Newberry Award winner (which should make you worry right there) and the movie wants to be worthy of that to the extent that it keeps trying way too hard to be worthy and can’t manage to be good. It’s a shame because on the technical side, the movie is very good in many places. The style and visual flair of the movie is wonderful, but the movie itself is so pretentious and overly serious that you can’t really enjoy watching it. Instead of a point by point review, let’s talk about a few of the problems…

The Greats: Fantasy

I fantasize about a world where I can get an intern to write intros for me.
I’m trying to cast a wide net with these selections, but this week I failed. Most of these were made within a few years of each other. I put it down to the fact that my formative years coincided quite nicely with a renaissance in fantasy filmmaking. A couple of obvious things like The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of The Lost Ark aren’t here because they’ve already been addressed in last week’s entry.

Movie Review: Twilight Zone: The Movie

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983 Warner Bros. Dir. John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante & George Miller)

Hey! An anthology without AIP, Vincent Price or Stephen King’s writing! It’s not even based or inspired by EC comics! Woo! Something different. This time it’s the movie based on the Twilight Zone TV show, which probably was only made after everyone saw how well Creepshow did. Far as I can tell, Steven Spielberg & John Landis put this joint together with Frank Marshall as the Executive Producer. Sort of like how after Tales from the Darkside did so well, Spielberg made Amazing Stories. That’s not to say that this is bad or anything, just saying that it’s a copycat production made after Romero proved that it could be done. I will say however that this sort of a crystallization of these directors in that time period. Everything you want to know about Landis, Spielberg, Dante and Miller in the early 1980s, you can learn by watching this movie. They pretty much bring all their early 80s tropes with them to this production. Is that good? Is it bad? We’ll have to see…

Movie Review: Alice in Wonderland (1933 Version)

Alice in Wonderland (1933 Paramount Dir. Norman McLeod)

Why did Tim Burton feel he needed to make a dark version of Alice in Wonderland? A nightmare-educing version was made in 1933, and remains as horrifying as ever. Even in its cut down 77-minute version, it can scare an entire orphanage for months of sleepless nights and it wasn’t even trying. It’s just that the make-up is pretty creepy. I’m in my thirties, I’m not particularly squeamish and just the opening credit sequence is creeping me the hell out. I’ll explain about the open credits. See, Paramount wanted to exploit the fact that Lewis Carroll’s 100th birthday had caused a resurgence of interest in the Alice stories. This movie is based on one of the many stage plays going around at that time. In order to pull the studio out of a jam, they put all their biggest stars in the movie. However, the make-up jobs were so over the top that almost none of these big name actors could be recognized. The movie was sort of a massive, amazing, epic, almost studio ending… flop. Yeah, it crashed, burned, and took out a small village. Mae West had to shake her money maker like she’d never shook before in order to save the studio after this thing. A lot of people claimed the failure was that the actors couldn’t be recognized, I say it’s because the make-up creeped out strong men and scared weak and feeble women. Anyway, that’s a long enough opening paragraph, let’s dive in and see what we’ve got shall we?

Movie Review: Graffiti Bridge

Movie Review: Graffiti Bridge

Abandon all hope…

Graffiti Bridge (1990 Warner Bros Dir. Prince)

Fancy's Fun Facts: Technically, this is the end of a trilogy. We began with Purple Rain, continued with Under the Cherry Moon and now we are complete with this.

In 1990, everything started going wrong with Prince. The magic that had charmed him through the 80’s had worn off and he started a long and protracted decline. Between the name thing, the very public feud with Warner Brothers and the fact that the music really wasn’t kickin’ like it used to, the 90’s were a seriously hard time to be a Prince fan. While some may claim that the Batman album is where it all started to go wrong, or that Lovesexy was the signal that we were going down a different path, my own signal was Graffiti Bridge. Depending on who you listen to you’ll get different reasons but the fact is that Prince had a change of heart during the whole Black Album debacle. He trashed an album that was only days away from release and produced Lovesexy as a replacement. It’s at this time that the music and the man went through something of a spiritual shift. While Prince had always had a spiritual side to his music, it started to really shine during this period. Prince also started to resemble a hippy in many ways. He started talking about love and peace and spirituality and all that jazz quite a bit during this period, and it more or less culminated with this movie. Oh this movie…

Before we begin though, I’d like to personally endorse Bombay Sapphire Gin. I’m not sponsored by them*, but I couldn’t have gotten through this movie without their fine product.

TV Review: Alice In Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland (1985 Irwin Allen Productions Dir. Harry Harris)

Movie Review: Dick Tracy

Dick Tracy (1990 Touchstone Pictures Dir. Warren Beatty)

Movie Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Another short one today, signs we’re running out of archive material. When the archive runs out, we’ll be going to once or twice a month.

Check it out! It’s the title page!

Movie Review: Young Einstein

Young Einstein (1988 Warner Bros. Dir. Yahoo Serious)

Movie Review: Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain

Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983 Golden Harvest Dir. Tsui Hark)

Movie Review: The Rocketeer

The Rocketeer (1991 Walt Disney Pictures Dir. Joe Johnston)

Movie Review: Strings

Strings (2004 Bald Film, Dir. Anders Ronnow Klarlund)

Movie Review: Hercules and the Captive Women

Hercules and the Captive Women (1961 Dir. Vittorio Cottafavi) Episode 12 of Season 4 which was shown on September 12th, 1992

Movie Review: Hercules Unchained

Hercules Unchained (1959 Dir. Pietro Francisci) MST3K Episode 7 Season 4, August 1st, 1992.

Movie Review: The Crow

The Crow (1994 Dimension Films Dir. Alex Proyas)