It’s been seventeen years since the first animated feature was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It was Beauty and the Beast, one of the enduring Disney classics, but it lost to the dark horse candidate The Silence of the Lambs.
Yes, The Silence of the Lambs was great. Yes, it’s a culturally significant film. But why can’t Disney get any love?
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Toy Story was one of the few movies I saw in the theater as a kid. I was skittish and shy, easily frightened by loud noises, skeletons, and death. But Toy Story seemed safe, so Mom dragged my reluctant self down to the Regal Cinema for a good time.
I was instantly hooked. I went home and started drawing pictures of the characters, the surest sign of devotion my thirteen-year-old mind could conceive of. When the sequel finally came around four years later, I was less excited about the whole thing, but was still taken in by the charming story and appealing characters.
The first massively successful CGI-animated Disney feature, Toy Story helped to make Pixar the production giant it is today. And, more than that, it’s just a really great film, and its legacy is carried on in Toy Story 2. And now, finally, we have news of the long-awaited Toy Story 3.
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Call it the most cynical form of flattery, but we may well have a new trend on our hands. Apparently, Magnolia Pictures, the studio behind the movie The Signal, put out a special webisode in advance of the upcoming release. Now, just in case you’re concerned about spoilering, don’t be—no part of the webisode can be found in the actual movie itself except of course for the basic concept—random frequency signal drives people cuckoo bananas.
But this is a fairly cool concept, in its way—they’re actually making entire new storylines for movies about to be released and putting them online to spark interest in the primary title. Think about that…what if the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, for example, comes with a special nightmare from Freddy a couple weeks before it hits screens? A little appetizer, if you will, before the main course. Kind of a cool idea, I’d say…and I hope one that catches on. This is one idea I’d love to see Hollywood copy insanely.
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The Wachowski brothers burst onto the scene in the late nineties with The Matrix and its sequels, which, for better or for worse, helped usher us into the new century. Whatever their flaws and whatever gender Larry/Lana is espousing this week, they sure are a pop culture sensation. And, as you’ve no doubt heard, their latest effort is a live action version of the animé classic Speed Racer.
I’ve got to hand it to them in the casting department. Emile Hirsh of The Girl Next Door probably looks more like an animé character than any other living human being – except perhaps for Christina Ricci, who plays his girlfriend. The rest of the cast is filled with interesting names like John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, and Richard Roundtree.
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Despite the WGA strike controversy that interrupted our favorite mockumentaries and medical mystery dramadies this year, the 80th Annual Academy Awards lumbered forward as planned. Stars and starlets, in their Versace best, devoted the entire day to pre-parties and pre-pre-parties and assaulting Jennifer Garner on camera.
But unless you’re Gary Busey, the Oscars aren’t a particularly interesting affair. To the trained eye, it begins to resemble the reading of a will. People gather, socializing reluctantly, pretending to be polite, and then wait with baited breath to find out what they’ve won.
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