My daughter is really into the Disney Princesses right now. Princess shoes, Princess play castle, Princess diapers, Princess dolls. When we got the play castle, she ran upstairs, grabbed a diaper and gleefully found which princess matched it. I — nerd that I am — was very proud that she could do image matching. But was when the Princess thing really began.

She’s also starting to get into TV now, which is a little scary. I know she likes it but I’m trying hard to limit it. This is difficult on weekends when neither of us has the energy to play with her all day and the temptation to use the Electronic Babysitter is strong. But we’ve mostly limited it to stuff like Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer (which she was exposed to through friends, not us). Lately, she’s also gotten into Bugs Bunny. So the natural extension is the Disney movies.

Unfortunately, Disney’s oddball DVD policy prevents us from buying Cinderella, Abby’s favorite. But we did pick up Sleeping Beauty, her second favorite. Thanks to the Stomach Flu from Hell, we’ve watched it a dozen times in the last few days.

The movie is actually very good. In fact, I worry it’s a little intense for a 2.5 year old. It has decent characters, especially the delightfully evil villainess. The scene in which Sleeping Beauty is drawn to the spindle is also very well done (it always provokes Abby, who has watched it raptly every time, to say, ‘No, Sleepy Huey! Stop!’)

But I watching a scene of Maleficent’s demons. It is very similar to the “Night on Bald Mountain” scene from Fantasia — probably one of the most incredible pieces of animation in film history. That remind me of this video, which accuses Disney of ripping itself off.

A multi-billion dollar corporation that gets zillions from kids and is brutal in defending its copyrights needs no defense from me. But artistically, I will defend:

1) No one imagined that future generations would break these movies down from home videos.

2) This sort of thing is overlooked when it’s not a company that evokes hatred in certain quarters. George Lucas, in particular, loves to homage other movies, including his own. The Star Trek films and series have repeatedly reused F/X footage — notably the Klingon Bird-of-Prey explosion from ST6.

3) The original animations were based on filming live actors, an expensive process to recreate for a medium that was not terribly profitable. If you got it right the first time, why screw it up the second time?

Anyway, I’m looking forward to recovering more of my childhood through Abby. Although I think I might hold off on Watership Down until she’s old enough to handle it. 38 should be good.

Update: In other weird Disney criticism, I just remember this paragraph from Roger Ebert’s review of Snow White (which is the first movie I remember seeing in a theater):

Richard Schickel’s 1968 book The Disney Version points out Disney’s inspiration in providing his heroes and supporting characters with different centers of gravity. A heroine like Snow White will stand upright and tall. But all of the comic characters will make movements centered on and emanating from their posteriors. Rump-butting is commonplace in Disney films, and characters often fall on their behinds and spin around. Schickel; attributed this to some kind of Disney anal fixation, but I think Disney did it because it works: It makes the comic characters rounder, lower, softer, bouncier and funnier, and the personalities of all seven Dwarfs are built from the seat up.

Ebert has kids so I’m sure he can also appreciate that kids find butts and butt-related actions to be really really funny.

There’s a video out there — a long annoying video — that is a full bore attack on the Star Wars prequels. Even having slogged through most of it, I stand by what I previously said (and Robert’s insightful comment). I think the movies are decent to almost great. That they are not as good as the original trilogy doesn’t bother me; I didn’t expect them to be. A lot more works than doesn’t. And much of the anger is generational — i.e., most intense among those who grew up on the first trilogy.

I was actually mulling over making my own video response to the critique. But I can’t imagine where I’d get the time.

I will add one thing to my previous post: the prequel trilogy was a losing proposition from the start. Prequels, in general, do not do well. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single on that really worked except for the prequel half of The Godfather. Reboots sometimes work, but prequels rarely do.

The reason is not because prequel makers are idiots but because they are faced with not one but two impossible tacks. First, they have to match the quality of a film that was so good it merited a prequel. Even a small regression to the mean is inevitable. It’s just not easy to make two magnum opi.

Second, prequels are, by definition, narratively confined. We know where it’s going to end, so drama and surprise are out. More importantly, the plot ceases to flow from the characters. The characters become slaves to the plot. This is one of the biggest problems with the Star Wars prequels — characters like Padme have to serve more as walking plot devices than actual characters.

As a writer myself, I have often envisioned the end of the story only to find the characters marching it off in a different direction. With prequels, that freedom is lost.

Still, I enjoy Episode I-III for what they are. They do a reasonable job, although not as a good a job as they could. And I’ve never really understood how someone could be so enraged by them as to do things like make an annoying and deliberately obtuse 70-minute video.

It just occurred to me that I never went back over the 2007 or 2008 movies, like I did with 2006. Part of this is that between daughter, move and work, Sue and I are watching far fewer movies than we used to.

But part of it, I think, is that I deliberately spaced on 2007, since it wasn’t exactly a horrid year for movies, but it wasn’t a good year and it was a depressing year. The top ten movies with 25,000 votes on IMDB were No Country For Old Men, Sicko, the Bourne Ultimatum, Ratatouille, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, the Man From Earth, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Hot Fuzz and American Gangster. No Country for Old Men was well made but I find Comac McCarthy’s ugly view of humanity off-putting. Sicko, as fiction, was probably OK. As a “documentary”, it was a sick joke, as I frequently blogged. Into the Wild was quite good as was There Will Be Blood and Diving Bell. But again, all three were downer movies.

There are still a couple of films I want to see from 2007. But it’s significant than I look back at 2007, the only movies I have on DVD are The Simpsons and Potter 5 (both of which were “fan” purchases). If I had unlimited funds, I might buy several other films. But there were no films, none, that made me say You Must Buy This. If I had to list my favorite movies of 2007, they would probably be, in no particular order, with my IMDB rating listed:

No Country For Old Men: 8
There Will Be Blood: 8
Hot Fuzz: 7
Atonement: 8
Lust, Caution: 8
The Great Debaters: 7
Knocked Up: 7
Harry Potter 5: 8
Charlie Wilson’s War: 8
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly : 8
Into the Wild: 8

with the caveat that I have yet to see 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days or Sweeney Todd. Lots of depressing titles in that list. None of them rated the 9 or 10 that usually indicated greatness. And I don’t see that I would raise any of them after further reflection.

Anyway, the main reason I’m writing this is that I recently had a burst of movie watching to catch up on 2008 (yes, I know, it’s almost 2010 — you try watching movies with a 2-year-old). But looking back, I now think that 2008 was an exceptional year for movies

The top ten IMDB movies of 2008 were The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Slumdog Millionaire, Gran Torino, The Wrestler, In Bruges, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Let the Right One In, Iron Man and Changeling. I have seen all except Torino and Right One. I have the top three on blu-ray. All eight of the ones I have seen are very good and better than almost anything I saw in 2007.

Going further down the list reveals things like Frost/Nixon, Doubt and Pineapple Express — all good movies. Hell even fluff like Definitely, Maybe and Vicky Christian Barcelona wasn’t too bad. When a Ryan Reynolds movie doesn’t completely suck, it must be a good year.

In fact, what stimulated this post was a recent buying/renting spree that reminded me of just how good 2008 was.

Here are my top movies of 2008. All are rated at least an 8, except Dark Knight, which I rated a 9.

The Dark Knight – I blogged about this before.

WALL-E – Pixar has yet to make a bad movie. Spectacular on blu-ray.

Slumdog Millionaire – Wonderfully directed and acted. Even my uncle liked it. Also spectacular on blu-ray. IMDB rating: 8.

The Wrestler – A downer movie, but one worth watching just for Mickey Rourke’s exceptional performance.

Frost/Nixon – I was on the edge of my seat for this one. A movie carried by its actors. I would have rated it higher except that Ron Howard performed his usual historical revisionism.

Doubt – Another acting tour de force. Watching Hoffman and Streep go at it is like watching two prize-fighters go into the 15th round.

Still need to see: Gran Torino, The Reader, Burn After Reading, Defiance, Valkyrie, Milk.

Hopefully, my 2009 review will be up before 2011. Now that I’m settled into State College, I’m getting a little more movie-watching done.

Western Civilization is finished. Finished.

Now that I have a blu-ray players, I get lots of emails from Amazon about blu-rays discs going on sale. I don’t mind, since occasionally something I’ve had my eye on goes on sale. But it’s just stunning to realize how many many many movies out there that I have zero interest in. Who the hell would want Gothika on DVD, let alone blu-ray?

Quantum of Solace is a decent movie, but there two things that drove me nuts:

1) If you’re going to spend millions of dollars on stunts; if you’re going to put your actors through grueling physical training and rehearsal; if you’re going to pull out the stops for your actions scenes … could you please pull back the camera, hold a shot for more than 0.1 seconds and let the audience see what’s going on? This ADD style of directing is ruining a generation of film-viewers who may grow up never seeing what a well-shot action scene looks like.

2) The movie’s understanding of South American politics is about 20 years out of date. The day when South American governments changed hands “every week” are long long past. Even if we count the Honduras business as a coup, that’s the first this decade.

I’m sorry. I know it’s a been a long time since I saw the movie Peter Pan. But I don’t seem to remember a scene involving Tinkerbell, um, getting it on with Peter.

What impresses about the list of hottest sci-fi heroines is not the hotness but the quality of the characters. Very few screaming helpless women on this list.

Although, some of their top picks are little head-scratching. i have no idea what the hell Saavik is doing at #16 when Faye Valentine is rated so low. And Estella Warren’s somnambulent turn in Planet of the Apes over Erin Gray’s puberty-inducing Wilma? Come on.

I can’t answer for their top ten. I think they got the list upside down. I would rate Max from Dark Angel as #1 as Jessica Alba was practically the only reason to watch that series.

PJ is going to write. My anticipation level just nudged above, “eh”.

I finally found the right intersection of baby sitter, wife and work that allowed me to see The Dark Knight. And I was pleased to find that the hype was for real. The movie is very good. I’m not a huge fan of comic book or superhero movies. I liked but didn’t love the Spiderman and X-Men movies. I wasn’t terribly impressed by Supeman Returns. But I really liked Batman Begins and really liked this one.

Before I get into the specifics (which I’ll put below the fold to avoid spoilers), I must say that this has been the best summer movie season I can recall in some time. WALL-E, Ironman and Dark Knight are all great. Indy 4, for all its silliness, was good. I’m still interested in catching, on DVD, Get Smart, Prince Caspian and Hellboy II.

Compare this to recent years:

2007 – The summer of the brain-dead third parts. None were awful, but the third installments of Spidey, Shrek and Pirates weren’t terribly good. The best movie of the summer was either Ratatouille, one of Pixar’s lesser efforts, Simpsons, which I enjoyed because I’m a fan, or Transformers, which wasn’t really that good.

2006 – More brain-dead sequels. MI3, X3, Pirates 2. I wasn’t that impressed by Superman Returns. The only good movie was Casino Royale.

2005 – Sith and Batman Begins were great. Everything else — Kong, Potter 4, Narina was saved until winter.

2004 – Shrek 2, Spidey 2, the latter being very over-rated. But Potter 3 was good.

And so on. This is the first summer I can remember which produced at least three movies, and probably four, that I want on DVD. Every year, I predict that the movies will be better. This time, I was finally right.

Oh, and I saw the trailer for Quantum of Solace before. Man, am I looking forward to that. It will give me something to do after what will no doubt be a depressing election.

Continue reading The Dark Knight →

A hilarious review of the most ball-shrinking movie of the year.

Well, this is good news:

Guillermo del Toro is directing “The Hobbit” and its sequel, New Line Cinema said. The 43-year-old filmmaker will move to New Zealand for four years to make the films back-to-back with executive producer Peter Jackson.

Del Toro wrote and directed “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which earned six Oscar nominations in 2006 and won three awards. He is also the director of the upcoming sequel “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” whose monsters bear the unmistakable, surreal vision of the Mexican-born filmmaker.

I loved Pan’s Labyrinth.