The Sword in the Stone is the last Disney Animated Feature to be released during Walt’s lifetime. Although The Jungle Book would still have a strong influence from Disney, he did not see it to completion (no doubt adding to the causes of the four year interim between the films, the longest since […]
Song of the South is a 1964 Walt Disney production that has never seen the light of day on home video in the United States due to issues of political correctness. Is the film broad and offensive in its treatment of black Americans? Not particularly. The problem seems to come down to […]
Having watched the previous Superman cinematic outings one at a time, I decided to watch the entirety of Christopher Reeve’s output in the character in one go. Including both versions of the second film, this runs to five: Superman, Superman II, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest […]
For Ratatouille, I present my first (and possibly last) one of those “podcasts” the kids are always talking about these days. Apologies for the sometime wonky audio and the fact that I had a sore throat the day we recorded.
Okay, here’s where I may be bending the rules a bit. While I intended to only include theatrical films, I am willing to stretch the point for films that were intended for theatrical release only, for one reason or another, didn’t get one. One such case is the infamous 1994 film The Fantastic […]
Night at the Museum was a surprise hit late in 2006. Many had marked the box office race as completely settled, when out of the blue, Museum had not only a strong opening, but incredible legs. It’s always a question whether phenomenon like this deserve such success, but in this case, it certainly […]
I get a lot of flack from certain quarters for my fandom of the Fantastic Four film series (on display in my review of the first film). Perhaps I’m more forgiving because I love the original comics so much. But whatever the reason, I also really enjoyed the sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of […]
As I stated in my original review, Mulan is a strong entry from Disney animation at a time when they were really blowing hot and cold. The story still has a lot of the formulaic problems that marked Disney films of the day, but it is at least executed very well, with good songs, […]
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is the theatrical debut of the popular character better known for his Nickelodeon television series. It established the basic premise and characters, essentially making it like a longer episode of the show. (It was, in fact, produced as a way of forming a fanbase for the later show.)
We meet […]
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, while not a faithful adaptation of the books on which it is based, captures the essence of those books and translates it to the big screen with flair.
It’s impossible to discuss Unfortunate Events without pointing out that, as mentioned, it doesn’t really follow the books. It takes […]
As I think I’ve mentioned before, there are several different ways to bring a television series to the big screen. The two most common ones are to extend the original series (Star Trek, The Munsters) and to “re-imagine” the series (Mission: Impossible, Lost in Space). Other types include the recreation (The Beverly Hillbillies, […]
It’s hard to really get across how disappointed I was with Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There are among my favorite books of all time. (No, really.) Any production has a high bar to clear as far as I’m […]
Okay, so I watched The Wild again, hoping that I could find more to enjoy in the film than I did when I first saw it last year. Unfortunately, time and a different envirnment (my living room) have not changed my opinion much. If anything, I liked it even less the second time […]
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is the last of Disney’s classic “package” films. It, obviously, features two stories: Ichabod Crane’s from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Mr. Toad’s from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. The connection between the two is the stated desire to show one […]
Robots, like many other borderline films, does improve with multiple viewings. The problems with the film that I previously mentioned are still in full effect, but a lack of anticipation means that there is no chance of being let down like the first time.
I still can’t help but think that there was more potential […]
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the last of Disney’s “package” films (if you don’t count Fantasia 2000, which I don’t). But, unlike the package films of the 1940s, which consisted of individual stories that were often later split up as shorts, the segments in Winnie the Pooh were pre-existing shorts, created […]
Dick Tracy is Warren Beatty’s big-screen adaptation of Chester Gould’s famous comic strip character. Coming only a year after Batman, it is easy to see why it was kind of overshadowed by that much higher profile film. But despite some similarities (composer Danny Elfman, for instance), they are very different projects with very […]
The suits over at Disney must have been feeling pretty good about themselves when they released Aladdin. They had just come off the enormously successful Beauty and the Beast (the only animated film ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture) and seemed to be on a roll. With much of the […]
Meet the Robinsons is the second film in what was meant to be Walt Disney Feature Animation’s new direction: CGI. After the monumental failure of Treasure Planet and the less than thrilling performance of Home on the Range, Disney was no longer going to produce traditionally animated films, instead they would produce “CGI” films, […]
The Lion King is the perfect culmination of all that had been ocurring at Disney Animation since the renaissance begun with The Little Mermaid. With each project, the visuals had become more lush and the stories had become more universal and more widely appealing. But it took the masterstroke (conceived by lyricist Tim […]
The Little Mermaid is another film that I could go on about for days if given the opportunity. The main thing that sets it apart from the Disney animated films that preceded it was the focus on music. This is not surprising, as lyricist Howard Ashman also served as a producer on the […]
If Snow White is the film that made Disney studios, Dumbo is the one that saved them. You see, after the success of Snow White, Walt Disney set his sights a bit higher than just making entertainment. He made Fantasia. It was an enormously expensive undertaking that proved financially disastrous. Now, […]
“The one that started it all and still the fairest of them all!” read the ad copy for the DVD release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And, frankly, it’s hard to argue with that statement. Sure, there have been a lot of technical and artistic advances since 1937, but Walt Disney […]
In the history of Walt Disney Feature Animation, there has only ever been one film to get a true sequel (that is, a narrative film followed by another narrative film). The Rescuers was a surprisingly successful, quirky, little adventure film. Years later, straight-to-video sequels would be the order of the day, but the […]
Willow was George Lucas’ first “epic” creation since the Star Wars saga and, I feel, suffered undeserved negativity because of the comparison. That, and th accusation that it is just warmed-over Tolkien meant that it was not highly thought of for many years after its creation (a situation that has somewhat reversed itself in […]
When I previously reviewed Chicken Little last year, I covered many of the shortcomings in this 2005 Disney CGI animated film. It lacks cohesion, gets way too caught up in pop culture jokes and has far too much music for its own good.
But, as often happens, it has grown on me since then and […]
Don’t Drink the Water is a film based on Woody Allen’s Broadway play of the same name. The action takes place in a US Embassy deep in the throes of the Cold War. The Hollander family, Walter (Jackie Gleason), Marion (Estelle Parsons) and daughter Susan (Joan Delaney) find themselves in the middle of […]
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is my favorite film by director Terry Gilliam. In it, I feel that his growth as a filmmaker since his work on Monty Python and the Holy Grail finally came to fruition. After essentially making three films with the same focus and worldview (Jabberwocky, Time Bandits and Brazil), […]
Treasure Planet should have been a big, fat success story for Walt Disney. It’s based on one of the best adventure stories of all time, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, it has incredible visuals and it features a strong voice cast. But, in the end, it was all for naught as the film […]
On subsequent viewings, Nacho Libre comes off a lot better than it did on its first. Perhaps it was familiarity with the material, but I found myself constantly looking forward to particular moments, always a sign that a film is finding its way into my heart.
I still feel there was a lot of comedy […]
Given how much I love The Nightmare Before Christmas and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I really expected to enjoy James and the Giant Peach a lot more than I did. The problem with Roald Dahl (author of the original book) is that he had a very dark view of life and it’s […]
I’ve never been a big fan of Disney’s Peter Pan. I don’t know what it is about the film, but I always viewed it with detachment. My recent viewing has done little to change this impression. Maybe it’s the story itself that leaves me a bit cold, I don’t know. Still, […]
Okay, if you were reading this blog last year, you know that my favorite film for 2006 was Cars. I gave it a glowing review, saw it six times in the theater, awarded it just about every award I could possibly think of, bought it on DVD twice on Day 1 and have more […]
In the 1940s, as World War II forced Walt Disney to shift his focus to the war effort, he began to produce “package films”, features that consisted of two or more linked stories. Fantasia falls under this category, although that was from intent, rather than necessity. Others include Make Mine Music […]
I previously reviewed Fantastic Four for thelogbook.com (the review can be read here), so I won’t go into great detail, but I will say that I still really like this movie. It’s certainly not among the greats of the comic-book-to-big-screen field, but I think it’s a fun, entertaining movie.
Particularly, I like the interaction […]
What made the classic Muppet films stand out is that, like the Muppet Show before them, they didn’t treat them as a puppet show. These were regular, normal comedies that just happened to have puppets in many of the major roles. This is never better represented than in the best of all Muppet […]
Despite the love I felt at the time for Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc., I was not at all enthused by the early previews that I saw for The Incredibles. Much of that early ad campaign (including the first teaser trailer) did not look promising, focusing on the comedy of a fat super-hero. […]
Hercules is an interesting entry in the Walt Disney Feature Animation canon. Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker (previously of The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin) and with music by Alan Menken, it reunited much of the creative team behind two of the greatest films in Disney’s “Renaissance”. After […]
Finding Nemo is the high water mark for Pixar as far as box office is concerned. Among recent animated films (post-The Lion King), only Shrek 2 has sold more tickets. And it certainly deserved all the acclaim it received, it’s an almost perfect film.
Really, a film about fish starring Albert Brooks. Just […]
Really, I don’t know what I was thinking. I had been seeing Andy Kaufman on SNL and had watched Man on the Moon, so I guess I wanted to see a bit more of him. Or maybe I was curious as to whether it was really as bad a film as I remembered. […]
Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 are two of Disney’s more interesting releases. Originally envisioned by Walt Disney as an “event” (one that you would dress up for, as if going to a real concert), Fantasia was a financial disaster for the company, almost bringing them to ruin.
And it wasn’t all that warmly received critically, either. […]
Until Cars, Monsters, Inc. was my favorite Pixar film. Oh, I made a lot of noise about Toy Story 2, but deep down, I always knew that it was Mike and Sully that I’d rather watch.
The thing is that Monsters, Inc. gets almost everything right. The cast is perfect, the story is engaging, […]
I hadn’t seen Cinderella, Disney’s 12th Animated Feature, in several years, but was inspired to watch it because of the impending release of Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, which was getting strong reviews. I’ve still yet to see Cinderella III (I’ll apend my thoughts here when I do), but after watching the original […]
Okay, so I should have seen A Bug’s Life after Toy Story, since my intention had always been to watch the Pixar films in order. But, much like the Disney Animated Feature canon, that plan didn’t last long. Since I sort the film by series, I watched Toy Story 2 without even thinking […]
The Princess Bride is one of those rare cases where I had read a not-terribly-popular book before seeing the movie. Of course, I was suckered into reading it by the exciting copy on the back. (At that time, I was reading *a lot* and it took something extra for a book by an […]
Toy Story 2 is one of those rare occasions when the sequel outdoes the original. While Toy Story is a wonderful film, but its biggest draw is the (then) unique style of animation used. By Toy Story 2, it would take more than CGI visuals to grab an audience. It does this […]
Much like Star Wars, it’s hard to remember how radical Jurassic Park was when it came out. Sure, there had been CGI effects before, dating all the way back to 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes. But the scale (hah!) of what Industrial Light and Magic did with the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park changed the […]
Ah, Toy Story. Although they had done several shorts and dozens of memorable TV commercials (Listerine bottles swinging on vines and dancing gummi Life Savers ring a bell?), it was with this, the first computer animated feature film, that Pixar Animation Studios made its name and reputation. Prior to Toy Story, precious few […]
After delving deeply into the Superman mythos last year, I was in the mood to revisit one of the lesser known corners with 1984’s Supergirl. First of all, it has a lot of problems. The story is a bit nonsensical and the character of Lara/Linda/Supergirl isn’t properly fleshed out. (Is she an […]
Next up, was The Emperor’s New Groove, which I reviewed fully last year. It had been my intent to watch the Disney Feature Animation canon in chronological order, but this one came on TV and I couldn’t help but watch it. Since getting into the whole “Emperor’s” universe, I’ve learned a lot about […]
Film #001 - Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Film #002 - Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Film #003 - Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Film #004 - Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
Film #005 - Star Wars: Episode V - The […]
Viewed December 28, 2006
The Road Home begins with a young man named Changyu (Hao Zheng) learning of the recent death of his father. When he returns to his village, he finds that his mother wishes to have his father’s body carried home by the men of the village (an old custom), despite the difficulties […]
Viewed December 25, 2006
This version of The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe was made for the BBC in the late 1980s as part of a series dramatizing C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. The series was then edited into three TV movies, beginning with this one.
I suppose there’s no point in trying not […]
Viewed December 24, 2006
The sleeper hit of late 2004, The Polar Express was the latest example of director Robert Zemeckis’ fascination with computer imagry (following the toon/human work in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the history-melding in Forrest Gump). Here, he usues motion capture technology to record the movements of his actors (mostly Tom […]
Viewed December 19, 2006
Pokémon Heroes is the 2003 entry in the annual Pokémon film series (and the last to be released theatrically in the US). Like the TV series, it follows the adventures of Pokémon trainers Ash Ketchum, Misty and Brock as they learn about the world of Pokémon. This time, they come […]
Viewed December 18, 2006
Herbie Fully Loaded picks up the story of the Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of its own last seen on the big screen in 1980’s Herbie Goes Bananas. (There was also a 1997 TV remake/sequel of the original film, The Love Bug, that is not necessarily in continuity.)
Fully Loaded […]
Viewed December 17, 2006
No Time for Nuts is a 3D animated short included on the DVD release of Ice Age: The Meltdown which, like Gone Nutty before it, stars the “sabre-tooth squirrel” Scrat. This one involves Scrat coming across a time machine and travelling all through time in chase of his constantly-on-the-move one remaining […]
Viewed December 12, 2006
The Road to El Dorado is another one of those films I have no excuse for not having seen. After all, I’ve owned the soundtrack since it came out, since the songs are performed by Elton John with lyrics by Tim Rice (of whom I’m a big fan). In fact, […]
Viewed December 11, 2006
The Year Without a Santa Claus is a remake of the classic 1974 Rankin-Bass production that details the events when Santa decides to give up the gift-giving, feeling he’s unappreciated by the world. Now, the smartest thing the producers of this movie did was not release it to theaters as they […]
Viewed December 10, 2006
The Santa Clause 2 improves on the original film by sticking more closely to a festive mood, but gets somewhat muddled with too many plotlines.
The main focus of the film is Santa Claus (aka Scott Calvin, played by Tim Allen) and his search for a wife, as required by contract (the “Mrs. […]