Viewed November 24, 2006
Oliver & Company is the 27th “Disney Animated Classic” and found Disney at a crossroads. Since the death of Walt, they had released fewer animated features and of arguably decreasing quality. When Michael Eisner took over Disney in 1984, one of the goals set out for his new management team […]
Viewed November 23, 2006
Tina and Frank is a short film made by Oakland filmmaker Erin Gleeson. It follows a young woman named Tina who has befriended an older divorced man named Frank. They have bonded over the odd habit of punching people in the face and much of their time is spent setting […]
Viewed November 22, 2006
Timber finds Donald attempting to steal food from Pierre (a re-named Pete). He gets caught and Pierre puts him to work lumberjacking. From there the wackiness ensues as Donald causes more trouble than gets work done. There’s a lot of to and fro between Donald and Pierre until Donald […]
Viewed November 21, 2006
Election is one of those “dark comedies” that are so popular with film critics (less so with audiences). The fact that it takes a decidedly negative view of just about everyone explains why critics thought highly of this film. But unlike other dark school comedies (like Heathers, for instance), virtually […]
Viewed November 20, 2006
One way to judge the quality of a film is to judge the quality of its remakes. For The Shop Around the Corner, its progeny couldn’t be of higher quality. Its story of two disparate people who fall in love through the mail was first remade in 1949 as In […]
Viewed November 19, 2006
The Parent Trap is the remake of the 1961 Haylie Mills film of the same name. It introduced the world to the talented and not-yet-troubled Lindsay Lohan and helped usher in Disney’s recent live-action family comedy successes.
The setup follows the same basic outline at the original film: twin girls are separated […]
Viewed November 18, 2006
GoldenEye is about as perfect an introduction to a new James Bond actor as anyone could ask for. The last Brosnan Bond that I needed to see, I finally sat down to watch it during the opening week of his successor’s first film, Casino Royale*. (I’m holding off watching that one […]
Viewed November 17, 2006
Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time is the first of two made-for-TV movies that spin off from the Disney Channel Original Series Kim Possible. For those of you not in the know, Kim Possible is about a teenager, Kim (voiced by Christy Carlson Romano), who acts as a sort-of secret agent […]
Viewed November 16, 2006
The Paperhanger’s Helper aka Stick Around is interesting because it is exactly the kind of comedy that Laurel and Hardy would be making history with just a few years later, and yet it doesn’t work here. This is because while Oliver Hardy is present, his sidekick (in a role that would […]
Viewed November 15, 2006
Game On: The Unauthorized History of Video Games aired on CNBC as part of the buildup to the much-hyped launches of the PlayStation3 and Nintendo Wii video game consoles. It split its time about equally between covering the history of the medium and the current state of the industry.
For the first […]
Viewed November 14, 2006
Even if my pig-headed need to see every movie based on a comic book didn’t require it, I still would have watched Man-Thing because of the character’s connection to one of my favorite comic book characters, Howard the Duck. Now, Howard was the star of his own, highly celebrated film back […]
Viewed November 13, 2006
Darna: Ang pagbabalik aka Darna: The Return is an adventure story centering around Philippine super hero Darna and her struggle with her arch-nemesis Valentina.
For those of you unaware of Darna, she was created by Marz Ravelo (under the earlier name of Varga) in 1947 as an answer to the many American […]
Viewed November 12, 2006
Boy, I didn’t care for The Iron Giant. I thought I would, given that it was directed by Brad Bird, who would later direct The Incredibles. But whereas The Incredibles is an intelligent look at what defines individuality in the world, The Iron Giant (which shares some of the same […]
Viewed November 11, 2006
So here’s another one. I’d never seen Highlander before I watched it for the project. I know. I know. It’s an all-time cult classic, so why hadn’t I seen it? To be honest, I missed it the first time around (who didn’t?) and by the time I […]
Viewed November 10, 2006
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie takes the exitable ocean dweller and brings him to the big screen for the first (and, to date, only) time. While much of SpongeBob’s comedy translates well to a larger canvas, there are aspects that just don’t come up to snuff.
The plot is no more or less […]
Viewed November 9, 2006
One Week is a classic Buster Keaton short that finds him and his new bride (Sybil Seely) given a build-it-yourself house as a wedding gift. When Buster’s rival changes the numbers on some of the boxes, Buster’s efforts prove to be more comical than effective.
This short is a prime example of […]
Viewed November 8, 2006
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter would probably qualify as the strangest western I’ve ever seen if I hadn’t already seen Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (made the same year by the same production team). These were the last two films directed by William Beaudine, whose career stretched back to 1915. […]
Viewed November 7, 2006
Mater and the Ghostlight is a cute little short that is included on the Cars DVD and features a new adventure for Mater, Lightning McQueen and the gang from Radiator Springs. It’s not Pixar’s best DVD exclusive short (that would remain, IMHO, Mike’s New Car), but it’s still a good one.
The key […]
Viewed November 6, 2006
Donald’s Vacation is a rather uninspired entry in the Donald Duck canon. There’s lots of Donald mucking about in nature, but there is little focus. I got the sense that the guys at Disney just had a bunch of gags lying around and structured this short in order to use […]
Viewed November 5, 2006
One of the biggest hurdles that most Disney straight-to-video sequels have to clear is maintaining the tone of the original film. Some fail spectacularly (The Lion King 2), while others are surprisingly strong (Alladin and the King of Thieves, Bambi II). Of course, some ignore the original tone completely and […]
Viewed November 4, 2006
Okay, this is another one of those circumstances where I really should like a film, but somehow it just doesn’t connect with me. I expected to like Kung Fu Hustle, since it plays into a lot of things I enjoy, yet it somehow missed the mark.
For one thing, it’s not nearly […]
Viewed November 3, 2006
Okay, so what the heck is the big deal about High School Musical? What should have been just a typical Disney Channel Original Movie burst onto the scene as a minor cultural phenomenon. The CD is the best-selling album of the year. The DVD sold like hotcakes (and there’s […]
Viewed November 2, 2006
Right off the bat, I thought it was funny that Disney put the song “Whistle While You Work” into Billposters. It’s obvious that even back then, Walt was interested in synergy and keeping the memory of Snow White alive in people’s minds. Unfortunately, except for that amusing inclusion, Billposters is […]
Viewed November 1, 2006
Well, the day after Halloween must the time to start watching Christmas movies. At least that’s what the Disney Channel seems to have thought when they decided to air The Santa Clause on that day.
The basic premise of The Santa Clause is that a divorced father, Scott Calvin (Tim Allen), […]
Well, that was an interesting month. My attempts to watch a lot of horror films led me to a lot of nonsense, but some fine examples of the genre. My respect for the Universal Monster films increased, as well as my love for the work of Bela Lugosi.
My fandom of Lugosi, quite frankly, […]
Viewed October 31, 2006
Halloween II picks up almost immediately after the conclusion of the original Halloween (1978). (It actually recaps that ending before continuing). Rather than following the more obvious choice of detailing another Halloween night, the action never makes it to the next morning, meaning that the events of both films cover […]
Viewed October 30, 2006
As the month of October drew to a close, I tried to squeeze in as many horror and horror-based films as possible. One of the films I meant to get to was Elvira’s Haunted Hills. I’ve always been a fan of Elvira (real name, Cassandra Peterson), having watched her show […]
Viewed October 29, 2006
The Paleface is a pretty standard entry from Buster Keaton during his pre-feature days. It’s a funny little short about a white man who is taken for a god by a tribe on American Indians on the verge of losing their land to an oil baron.
There are plenty of Buster’s trademark […]
Viewed October 28, 2006
Superman: Brainiac Attacks is a straight-to-video animated movie that carries on stylistically from Superman: The Animated Series while reworking the basic characterizations. In fact, these changes to the characters has caused quite a stir amongst fans of the series, who feel that this movie doesn’t properly follow the precedents set.
Okay, I […]
Viewed October 27, 2006
House of Frankenstein sees the Universal Monster series crawling towards its end. Only House of Dracula reamains and it’s not looking too promising.
Well, HOF has one thing going for it, the return of Boris Karloff to the series. Unfortunately, he’s not playing either the Frankenstein Monster, nor his other major […]
Viewed October 26, 2006
Okay, so a little background information here. Back in 1998, Pixar Animation Studios and rival-in-the-making Dreamworks Animation both debuted films about ants. Disney released Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, of course, but about a month earlier, Dreamworks released Antz.
Inevitably, with two films of such similarities going head-to-head, they end up being […]
Viewed October 25, 2006
Vincent is a short animated film by director Tim Burton, made while he was still a working animator with Disney utilizing the stop-motion techiques he would eventually perfect for The Nightmare Before Christmas.
It tells the story of a young boy named Vincent who is fascinated by Vincent Price and imagines his life […]
Viewed October 24, 2006
Mark of the Vampire is one of two classic films in which Bela Lugosi seemingly returns to the role of Count Dracula, but does not bear that name. (The other, Return of the Vampire, is apparently even closer in feel than this one.)
Mark of the Vampire was directed by Dracula director Tod […]
Viewed October 23, 2006
Donald really starts to hit his stride here, as the animators have obviously begun to really define what works for him and what doesn’t.
Officer Duck is a nifty crime caper short that has Donald disguising himself as a baby to infiltrate the lair of a wanted criminal, Tiny Tom (essentially the eternal […]
Viewed October 22, 2006
Son of Dracula picks up the story of Dracula several years after the events of Dracula’s Daughter. Unlike that earlier film, however, it does little to try and maintain continuity. There is, for instance, no mention of the aforementioned Countess Marya Zaleska. In fact, things are left ambiguous as […]
Viewed October 21, 2006
You know, I don’t know what I expected from Gilda. I mean, I knew it was considered a classic, but I guess I just never really got a sense of what the film was all about. I’m not sure what I expected, but I rather think itwas something much darker […]