Category — Film

The first movie I’m watching in my time machine that takes me back to the year 2000 is the classic, Next Friday. Next Friday was top of the box office charts for two weeks in January 2000. Release on January 12, 2000, Next Friday grossed $57, 328, 603. Although it ended up being 45th on the yearly box office report…right behind Snow Day.

Remember, I’m choosing the movies that we collectively chose in the year 2000. Don’t blame me for our bad choices ten years ago. Here’s your preview…

Here’s  one of the wonderful shorts that me and my main man Phil Hays work on. This was awarded as one of the “Best of A/V Swap 2009.” Enjoy!

As football season has already began to draw to a close, I have been pondering what my writing project shall be. The main purpose of this blog is to keep me in the practice of writing. Football was an easy choice because it would keep me posting at least once a week. Now that football season is coming to a close, hopefully not sooner than later for Texans fans, I need to find something to keep me in the practice of posting regularly. If not this blog could turn into me writing about my own life and short stories that are hit-or-miss once every three months.

I’m pleased to announce that I will dedicate at least the next six months to reviewing the box office hits of the year 2000. That’s right, I will go back in time to ten years ago and watch the movies we loved…or at least paid money to see. What became of the actors and directors? Did the movie reflect the time? Is the movie still relevant, and so on. It should be fun. Or at least interesting. I’m giving it it’s own category for easy reference, it’s under Films in the new subcategory In The Year 2000.

Recently I went to go see Disney’s return to the two-dimensional world, The Princess Frog. Now there’s really no excuse for a grown man seeing a cartoon so I would like to thank Alex for going with me so I didn’t look like complete child. First and foremost, before I rip this movie for what I didn’t like, I would like to say: go see this movie. Go take your kids to see this movie. If you don’t have children go borrow one or take your girlfriend so you have an excuse. Every kid’s flick that is produced today is computer animated and in 3D. The only way we can stop this madness is supporting the different, which in this case is old-school 2D cartoons.

Watching The Princess Frog was refreshing. It was almost like going into a time capsule and going to the movie theatre as a kid. Almost. This movie is criticized mainly for being just a shadow of what 2D greatness Disney used to offer. Of course this movie is going to fall short of Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. It’s almost not fair to try an compare Disney’s first 2D, musical outing in years to those amazing films.

Princess Frog offers lovable supporting characters, lavish musical numbers, the idea of true love and the beauty of New Orleans. I think the main critique I have for this film is that it seems like they sacrificed character development for getting the movie under a certain time. I felt like the main character Titana and the villain, the Shadow Man, were under developed. Especially the Shadowman, I felt like there was so much promise for this villain but nothings ever really explained about him. He has a evil shadow that has a mind of it’s own that’s really never addressed. I think Disney might have thought an audience wouldn’t pay much attention to a 2D film and opted to move the story as quick as possible.

There also has been talks of it being too scary or even possibly evil because of the use of voodoo. This, in my opinion, is over sensitivity. In every Disney movie there are villains that use magic, which I believe when evil is referred to as witchcraft. From Snow White’s evil witch with her poison apple all the way to Hercules’ Hades…who is the mythology form of the devil. I thought this movie was not too scary for most children, but then again the last children’s movie I watched was the horribly frightening Christmas Carol.

At the end of the day this movie is not going to be remembered as one of the greatest Disney movies of all time, but it could be the beginning of a revival in good, quality Disney cartoons. All you have to do is support it.

As some of you twitterheads and facebook peeps know, I took some kids from school on a field trip to see Disney’s A Christmas Carol last week. This version of Christmas Carol is directed by Robert Zemeckis, the madman that brought us Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump and Castaway. As of late he’s been known as the madman that brought us The Polar Express and Beowulf. It’s almost as if since 2000 Zemeckis has decided that he is the one that is going to usher in a new age of film-making. These slightly creepy realistically animated movies seem to be the only thing that Zemeckis is interested in now.

I think the majority of us will admit that it’s strange to watch a movie in ‘Zemeckiscope’, a term that I give Timmy Wood credit for. One of my friends claimed that watching a Zemeckis cartoon is like watching corpse puppets. They look like humans but there’s something eerily non-living about them. Sometimes I feel like I’m watching cloned actors. Every now and then there is something really strange about the eyes of the cartoons, I honestly believe that I can peer into the character and see that it has no soul. I think that it’s off putting for the majority of viewers because the animation is so good and at times you feel as if you’re watching a real movie not a cartoon. In other words, these meat puppets be scary at times.

As a quick disclaimer, I think that Zemeckis is a forerunner and if he’s lucky he’ll master this niche of film making. Or unfortunately, he’ll be the other type of forerunner. The one that is misunderstood and thought of as a fool. The guy that takes a beating for introducing something too early for popular consumption. He’ll either be a mad-genuis or a martyr, only time will tell.

Now on top of all of this, I was with a group of children. You know, what the group of people we would assume would be the target audience for Disney’s A Christmas Carol. I don’t know when Disney started making movies for adults because this movie is NOT for children. I repeat do not take children to this movie. They will cry.

I thought the movie was decent. Jim Carrey was pretty good and deserves some credit for his work in this animated film. Gary Oldman found another way to make himself unrecognizable. Oldman might actually deserve an award for acting in a cartoon. The performances were pretty good but in the end my main problem with the movie was the same I had with the animated characters: they both lacked soul. It was hard to really get emotionally involved in this movie and in the end you should feel the change of Scrooge not just see it. I thought it was a solid attempt and decent but not memorable unless you want to see obese animated Carey Elwes…