“That is not a fish. PLEASE tell me that is not a fish.” Not counting the gasp she let out when she saw the box, those were the first words my four-year-old daughter said while we watched IMAX: Under the Sea, and that pretty much set the tone for 40 minutes of stunningly rich, beautifully filmed aquatic exploration. These days, it seems like just about every major movie lands on IMAX screens, but once upon a time, they were the near-exclusive domain of short nature documentaries — which means that even though it might look like a trifle next to Clash of the Titans (or whatever big-budget action movie is playing at your local IMAX theater), Under the Sea is really more of a gentle throwback. Director Howard Hall has plenty of experience working underwater
Read More »Even if you aren’t the kind of person who tends to get caught up in hype, you have to admit that last year’s Princess and the Frog made for a pretty killer story. The studio that invented longform animation, then abandoned it for CGI, returning to its classic roots…led by the guy who directed Toy Story and helped start sounding traditional animation’s death knell in the first place? What could be more perfect? Well, in Disney’s eyes, the movie’s eventual $264 million worldwide gross could have been a little bigger — and as far as most critics were concerned, The Princess and the Frog was a solid, albeit disappointingly slight, effort that didn’t quite live up to its advance billing. (Not that anything could have, but whatever.) For a studio that spends an inordinate amount
Read More »How do you make the Blu-ray release of one of the best movies of the year even bigger? Bundle it with a disc and a half worth of bonus features, plus a DVD, plus a digital copy of the film. Oh and if you’re Pixar, you do it on the same day you bring one of your earlier smash hits to Blu-ray — and attach just as much extra content to that release, too. Since debuting with Toy Story in 1995, Pixar has defied expectations by not only cranking out smash hits while helping pioneer a brand new type of animation, but by opening up new vistas in the stuff that really matters — like, you know, storytelling. They’ve shown us what happens to our toys when we’re out of the room, peeked into the
Read More »It may have taken Disney more than 50 years to give Peter Pan’s spunky sidekick her own feature, but now that they’ve kicked off the Tinker Bell film franchise, they’re through fooling around: Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure arrives only a year after 2008′s Tinker Bell, and comes complete with the kind of top-shelf voice cast (including a cameo from Anjelica Huston) and big-budget extras (including a score performed by an 82-piece symphony) that used to be synonymous with Disney. Direct-to-video animated films get a bum rap, and that’s due in large part to the crap that Disney released in the ’90s; between Tinker Bell and its sequel, however, the studio seems to be making a real effort to turn all that around. The official synopsis of the film is as follows: The tale
Read More »Synopsis: A poor little boy wins a ticket to visit the inside of a mysterious and magical chocolate factory. When he experiences the wonders inside the factory, the boy discovers that the entire visit is a test of his character. A movie about a wild-eyed reclusive madman who sends the entire world into a candy-scrabbling frenzy as part of an elaborate mindfuck culminating in the transfer of his candy empire to a child, 1971′s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is one of the odder “children’s” movies ever made, and one whose survival as a cult favorite was largely dependent on Gene Wilder’s tremendous work in the title role, as well as the movie’s natural appeal to the type of weirdos who grow up to be film directors (see: Burton, Tim). Willy Wonka wasn’t terribly
Read More »If you’ve been looking for an excuse to make the jump from DVD to Blu-ray, look no further. Matter of fact, thanks to Disney’s brilliant strategy of bundling DVDs with their Blu-ray releases, you don’t even have to own a Blu-ray player to take advantage of the new face lift the studio has given its 1937 classic — but if you do have one, make sure you put a pillow under your mouth the first time you watch the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Diamond Edition transfer, because your jaw is going to drop. There have been a fair number of catalog Blu-ray reissues at this point, and consumers have had to resign themselves to the fact that not all hi-def upgrades were created equal — when you’re dealing with source material from more
Read More »Boasting wonderfully silly storylines, a maddeningly addictive theme song, and distinctive stop-motion clay animation in the CGI era, Aardman Animation’s Wallace and Gromit have gone to the moon, won Academy Awards, and even gotten their own full-length motion picture — but they’ve never gone to Blu-ray until now. Timed to coincide with the DVD release of the new Wallace & Gromit short A Matter of Loaf and Death, the expansive Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection brings the doltish inventor and his sharp-witted canine companion to hi-def for the first time — and does it in style, packing in tons of bonus material, including audio commentary and behind-the-scenes featurettes for each of the four W&G short films: 1989′s A Grand Day Out, 1993′s The Wrong Trousers, 1995′s A Close Shave, and the aforementioned Loaf, released
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