Cars Review - Part 1
Jun. 10th, 2006 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinThis review will be a two-parter, as I saw the movie Friday afternoon courtesy of the good folks at Piñata Party Central and will be seeing it Saturday night with the crowd from my sister’s school. Two different days, two different crowds, quite possibly two different reviews. But only one first impression. Be warned: this review is nowhere near objective and is at times personal enough to be extremely boring.
I have to say right off the bat that I was not terribly excited to see this movie. I don’t drive, I’ve never experienced the Great American Love Affair With Cars, I don’t care for racing (‘Who among us does not love Nascar?’ said John Kerry – well, me, for one) and I have no nostalgia for Route 66. All it had going for it was that it was done by Pixar, who are almost universally reliable. I wasn’t expecting much when I sat down in the theatre. I wasn’t expecting anything bad, I just wasn’t expecting anything at all. So it took me by surprise when the first sequence actually interested me – I’m still not sure why, but it was sprinkled with that magic Pixar dust that makes you forget you’re watching animate cars and just skips straight to the story. If they could bottle this Insto-Presto Suspension of Disbelief Powder they’d make a killing. Normally I’d be worried at this circumventing of sanity and detachment, but I go to movies with the intent of enjoying myself, so I’ll accept any trick they play on me that achieves this. It was also full of things that made it clear this movie was done by people who really cared about their work and put a lot of effort into it, people who really loved what they were doing, which won me over more than anything else. I work at a TV animation studio, I know we have deadlines and quotas and budgetary restraints and therefore nowhere near the kind of artistic luxury that those lucky Feature people have. I know that the majority of people I work with care about their work and put in as much attention to quality as they can, but corners have to be cut and deadlines met, so work only has to be good enough, not as good as possible, nor can it be laboured over in pursuit of improvement. Cars, oddly enough, rekindled my desire to work on features, a desire which I thought had been successfully stamped out by recent history and burnout, so I can’t hold too much against it in the long view.
I have to say, though, that this was my least favourite Pixar movie. In a way that’s like saying Almond Joy is my least favourite chocolate bar, because despite its relative value it’s still a chocolate bar and way better than, say, raisins – but the fact remains it’s at the bottom of my personal ranking of Pixar movies. It still had a better story and better character development than most animated movies I’ve seen recently (not that I’ve seen all that many) and even most of the live-action ones. That said, this was the first one in which I could start to see the bones of a formula starting to show: Hero’s hitherto hunky-dory life suddenly changes, enter cast of adorably eccentric characters, Hero changes in small but significant ways, Hero achieves something he didn’t know he needed to when his quest began... Okay, that fits lots of movies and books (even Going Postal) but the thing is that the plot and characters seemed a bit more transparent in this one.
Visually – once you get past the whole ‘everybody’s a car’ thing – it was quite nice. Pixar has a way of lighting things that gives such a sense of atmosphere and space ... luckily they didn’t also convey temperature, otherwise I would have disliked Radiator Springs as much as I dislike I-15 from San Bernardino to St George. But the scenery and the realistic attention to environments reminded me of nearly every summer vacation of my youth – little things, like the way rows of crops strobe past or the strata in hills bisected by the freeway, and big things like the feel of an offramp in the midnight desert or the sunset lighting up distant cumulonimbus over scrubland. These rang true, and it was amazing to see them depicted so truly by someone else.* Also amazing was how somehow – probably Pixar dust again – the desert never got boring. When you spend fifteen years of your life touring various deserts every summer, they get old fast, but I kept finding new things to look at and think ‘ooh, that’s nice.’ Nostalgia, maybe?
Characters ... well, they were serviceable. (Har har.) I never really liked any of them. Lightning and Sally and Doc, well, they had their parts to play, and were sympathetic in that way main characters are, and the supporting cast was all ... very ... supportive, but ... meh. Maybe there just weren’t any that resonated with me. Not much chemistry between them, either.
The story, as I mentioned, was good. Not personally involving, but enough to keep me interested in what was going on, and considering it was about cars, that was an achievement.** There were some very nice sequences, my favourite of which was probably Tipping Tractors ... it was oddly hilarious, but mostly it was a piece of self-contained storytelling that I never ever would be able to do myself, so there was a healthy helping of awe along with the laughs. As a whole, though, even where it wasn’t formulaic it was often predictable, so while it was well-constructed it wasn’t exactly dazzling or really all that satisfying, for me. I like to have my emotions jerked around by a story, but when I can tell what’s going to happen it just doesn’t have the same effect.
Animation was, of course, brilliant. Those Pixar people sure know how to give themselves a challenge ... I mean, cars have even less acting potential than fish. At least fish have fins they can gesture with and can turn their head from side to side, and can move their whole body around for expression. I wasn’t crazy about the big windshield eyes at first, but then I realised that squishing both pupils to one side was a handy way to cheat a head-turn; you can’t do that with headlight-eyes. Some of the little things they did with wheels and things, too, were very nice touches. I know very little about CG but what I’ve gleaned from working on CG shows makes me really wonder how they rigged those cars to do all that they did.
Stay for the credits! There’s a bit of funny stuff (the Ratzenberger series is particularly amusing) but there’s also the Joe Ranft memorial ... it may not be as magnificent as he deserves but it’s probably the most they could expect an audience to sit through when 98.5% of them probably have no clue who he is. And he was killed in a car crash. What is that? Ironic? Twisted? Literary? Whatever else it may be, it’s cruel.
Well, there we go, part 1 complete ...
*It was actually a similar experience to watching Spirit, though possibly better in a way because they didn’t hurtle from Bryce Canyon to Yellowstone in five minutes on horseback and thus immediately discredit the movie in my annoyingly realistic mind.
**If it had been about tall ships, now...
I have to say right off the bat that I was not terribly excited to see this movie. I don’t drive, I’ve never experienced the Great American Love Affair With Cars, I don’t care for racing (‘Who among us does not love Nascar?’ said John Kerry – well, me, for one) and I have no nostalgia for Route 66. All it had going for it was that it was done by Pixar, who are almost universally reliable. I wasn’t expecting much when I sat down in the theatre. I wasn’t expecting anything bad, I just wasn’t expecting anything at all. So it took me by surprise when the first sequence actually interested me – I’m still not sure why, but it was sprinkled with that magic Pixar dust that makes you forget you’re watching animate cars and just skips straight to the story. If they could bottle this Insto-Presto Suspension of Disbelief Powder they’d make a killing. Normally I’d be worried at this circumventing of sanity and detachment, but I go to movies with the intent of enjoying myself, so I’ll accept any trick they play on me that achieves this. It was also full of things that made it clear this movie was done by people who really cared about their work and put a lot of effort into it, people who really loved what they were doing, which won me over more than anything else. I work at a TV animation studio, I know we have deadlines and quotas and budgetary restraints and therefore nowhere near the kind of artistic luxury that those lucky Feature people have. I know that the majority of people I work with care about their work and put in as much attention to quality as they can, but corners have to be cut and deadlines met, so work only has to be good enough, not as good as possible, nor can it be laboured over in pursuit of improvement. Cars, oddly enough, rekindled my desire to work on features, a desire which I thought had been successfully stamped out by recent history and burnout, so I can’t hold too much against it in the long view.
I have to say, though, that this was my least favourite Pixar movie. In a way that’s like saying Almond Joy is my least favourite chocolate bar, because despite its relative value it’s still a chocolate bar and way better than, say, raisins – but the fact remains it’s at the bottom of my personal ranking of Pixar movies. It still had a better story and better character development than most animated movies I’ve seen recently (not that I’ve seen all that many) and even most of the live-action ones. That said, this was the first one in which I could start to see the bones of a formula starting to show: Hero’s hitherto hunky-dory life suddenly changes, enter cast of adorably eccentric characters, Hero changes in small but significant ways, Hero achieves something he didn’t know he needed to when his quest began... Okay, that fits lots of movies and books (even Going Postal) but the thing is that the plot and characters seemed a bit more transparent in this one.
Visually – once you get past the whole ‘everybody’s a car’ thing – it was quite nice. Pixar has a way of lighting things that gives such a sense of atmosphere and space ... luckily they didn’t also convey temperature, otherwise I would have disliked Radiator Springs as much as I dislike I-15 from San Bernardino to St George. But the scenery and the realistic attention to environments reminded me of nearly every summer vacation of my youth – little things, like the way rows of crops strobe past or the strata in hills bisected by the freeway, and big things like the feel of an offramp in the midnight desert or the sunset lighting up distant cumulonimbus over scrubland. These rang true, and it was amazing to see them depicted so truly by someone else.* Also amazing was how somehow – probably Pixar dust again – the desert never got boring. When you spend fifteen years of your life touring various deserts every summer, they get old fast, but I kept finding new things to look at and think ‘ooh, that’s nice.’ Nostalgia, maybe?
Characters ... well, they were serviceable. (Har har.) I never really liked any of them. Lightning and Sally and Doc, well, they had their parts to play, and were sympathetic in that way main characters are, and the supporting cast was all ... very ... supportive, but ... meh. Maybe there just weren’t any that resonated with me. Not much chemistry between them, either.
The story, as I mentioned, was good. Not personally involving, but enough to keep me interested in what was going on, and considering it was about cars, that was an achievement.** There were some very nice sequences, my favourite of which was probably Tipping Tractors ... it was oddly hilarious, but mostly it was a piece of self-contained storytelling that I never ever would be able to do myself, so there was a healthy helping of awe along with the laughs. As a whole, though, even where it wasn’t formulaic it was often predictable, so while it was well-constructed it wasn’t exactly dazzling or really all that satisfying, for me. I like to have my emotions jerked around by a story, but when I can tell what’s going to happen it just doesn’t have the same effect.
Animation was, of course, brilliant. Those Pixar people sure know how to give themselves a challenge ... I mean, cars have even less acting potential than fish. At least fish have fins they can gesture with and can turn their head from side to side, and can move their whole body around for expression. I wasn’t crazy about the big windshield eyes at first, but then I realised that squishing both pupils to one side was a handy way to cheat a head-turn; you can’t do that with headlight-eyes. Some of the little things they did with wheels and things, too, were very nice touches. I know very little about CG but what I’ve gleaned from working on CG shows makes me really wonder how they rigged those cars to do all that they did.
Stay for the credits! There’s a bit of funny stuff (the Ratzenberger series is particularly amusing) but there’s also the Joe Ranft memorial ... it may not be as magnificent as he deserves but it’s probably the most they could expect an audience to sit through when 98.5% of them probably have no clue who he is. And he was killed in a car crash. What is that? Ironic? Twisted? Literary? Whatever else it may be, it’s cruel.
Well, there we go, part 1 complete ...
*It was actually a similar experience to watching Spirit, though possibly better in a way because they didn’t hurtle from Bryce Canyon to Yellowstone in five minutes on horseback and thus immediately discredit the movie in my annoyingly realistic mind.
**If it had been about tall ships, now...
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 04:34 am (UTC)The thing is, if a film does well with girls and women, it does well - at least in this country, where women are well above 50% of the population. If movies like "Hidalgo" and "Dreamer" are poorly attended, then not many females showed up (probably not a lot of guys, either). But "chick flicks" and films aimed sqarely at young girls can be blockbusters even if ONLY the target audience shows up (look at "the Princess Diaries", or in large part, "Titanic" - my audience was about 90% pre-teen female). To me, that says that either Hollywood simply isn't trying to provide enough quality content for women, and/or the good films that are getting made aren't being marketed aggresively enough. I have heard that "Hidalgo" was pretty good and I'm sorry I didn't catch it while it was still in the theater. "Dreamer" looked pretty cheesy, but who knows? I really can't believe somebody would remake "The Last Unicorn" - I mean, stuff that can play in a cartoon might seem pretty silly. But I might be provd completely wrong here! I guess I think that young women deserve more choices thanthat, you know?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 02:58 pm (UTC)Thanks for the education. I am not as up on movie statistics as you since you are closer to that industry than I. It is good to hear that women can still make an impact on a movie. I think your theories are good that quality movies are not being made for women and that there are good films that are not being marketed well enough. I can think of some really excellent films that never got the coverage they should have had e.g. "Frequency," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," and the like.
You should see "Hidalgo" if you can. It is loads of fun in the spirit of the old adventure movies. It has its flaws, but I liked it anyway. The music, alone, is worth the view- there is some lovely stuff with combining Middle Eastern and Native American music, plus some nice vocals in Arabic. The cinemetography of the landscapes was stunning,too- both for the Arabic Peninsula/Iraq and the South Dakota settings.
I did see "Dreamer." It was nothing to write the bishop about but nice to see a film that was not cynical, plus having a believable girl lead and a movie about a mare was unusual, too.
The Last Unicorn- it is another of those fantasy movies that was planned after the success of the Lord of the Rings. I think it has potential, though. Peter S. Beagle, the author of the book, is involved in the screenplay (as he was in the Rankin Bass cartoon). The movie is supposed to follow the book even more closely than the cartoon, and therefore have more of the adult themes in the book (which was not for kids). The cartoon was great, but I think the movie will catch those scenes that did not make it into the cartoon. A lot of the success will lie in how good the CGI will be for the unicorn and other creatures and whether it is too cheesy or not. We shall have to see.
And, yes, I always think young women deserve better choices in films than they get right now. I would love to see some of Robin McKinley's stories (The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown) make it to the screen. These were 1980s English fantasy novels that had strong female and male lead characters as equals.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-18 09:41 am (UTC)Well, perhaps there's a way to keep The Last Unicorn from seeming like little more than another kitchy valentine to the 80's - good CGI models and animation could certainly help. I just think it's really much easier to do talking animals in traditional animation, because the whole medium is so stylized, magical things seem more possible - whereas in CGI, realistic animals who talk tend to look cheesy and/or funny (it's not impossible to pull off, just harder than a lot of people think). I haven't read the other books you mentioned, but I'm sure they're worthy of translation to the screen!
More on The last Unicorn (maybe none of it is news to you, but...)
Date: 2006-08-02 03:34 am (UTC)Re: More on The last Unicorn (maybe none of it is news to you, but...)
Date: 2006-08-03 01:23 am (UTC)Actually, it is news to me, so I appreciate the update. And I have drooled all over the floor that you got to listen to a session with Peter S. Beagle. And that you got to go to ComicCon. Someday I will be able to get there...
That is so horrible (and so typical) to hear how Mr. Beagle lost the video rights. It is so sad that the people who create such great ideas wind up being victimized by the less ethical of the entertainment industry who almost seem like parasites to me... they suck the creativity out of the people who really have it and then are the ones who make all of the money off of the creative ones' ideas.
I am glad Mr. Beagle is involved in the movie process. He was so involved in the animated version, too. I am sorry they are involved in so many legal hurdles. It seems so sad because there is so much about his book that would delight a new generation to be worth making into a movie. I admit I read the book a few years before it became a movie, and I dreamed about how it would look as an animated film. My mental version was much more grittier and adult than the Rankin Bass film (but I still found that version was very, very good), and I hope the new movie will show the more gritty, adult aspects of the novel (which was not a kid's book, though I think most kids would still like it. I was just twelve when I read the book and fell in love with it).
Yes, Christopher Lee is a big fan of the book, and he was the voice of King Haggard in the Rankin Bass film. I had kind of thought from the website of the film that he had signed on board but maybe he has not yet. I hope he was. He really was an ideal Haggard voice since he captured the tragic hero aspect that Haggard has- he is a villain, but he is a complex one. He does the evil he does because he craves peace and goodness but does not know how to obtain it, so he kidnaps the unicorns because their beauty brings him peace but not eternal peace. He has no sense of faith or trust, so he can never trully be happy, and he tries to find solace in "owning" happiness (capturing unicorns). I think Mr. Beagle in a way symbolized how materialism and power leads to depression here, and Haggard in a way is like many corrupt, materialistic businessmen who have lost all joy and ability to enjoy life in their quest for power and wealth. Boy, am I waxing philosophical!
Well, if Mr. Lee is not on board, I hope he does join the cast. He really would make a beautiful Haggard- a nice sense of darkness but yet sorrow. So far from what I have seen they have some interesting cast members. I am a bit skeptical of Mia Farrow as Molly because I picture Molly as being somewhat younger than Mia is (I always envisioned Molly as being a late thirsty something lady - that age when a woman starts looking back on her life and wondering what if... in our society, a woman is "old" when she is 25 and so we ladies have the nasty experience of learning that by the time we are old to have confidence in ourselves, the crass real world has already passed us by as being too old and is now focusing on the next big 14 year old dating some 80 year old movie actor- you get my drift- women don't really have a chance and suddenly they are too old and have lost their innocence and joy of life (both sexual and even more so mental), kind of like Molly. But Mia is a great actress and could bring something nice to that role.
Ah, well, thanks for the info! I will continue to look forward to the movie. And nice to hear they are maybe going to re-release the Rankin Bass version. That one does deserve to have a chance, and I kind of hope it has a timeless popularity, kind of like "The Wizard of Oz" or my all time favorite film "Metropolis."
Re: More on The last Unicorn (maybe none of it is news to you, but...)
Date: 2006-08-05 07:36 am (UTC)I am embarrased to admit I haven't seen "Metropolis" yet - I know it's a classic, I think I actually have it on tape...it's just the time, you know?
Re: More on The last Unicorn (maybe none of it is news to you, but...)
Date: 2006-08-08 02:17 am (UTC)I sure hope Mr. Lee gets to do the Haggard part. He deserves it, and he really does have the voice and presence for it. I see him always as ageless and ideal for the role.
It is interesting your comments on fair turnabout (e.g. having movie roles where older women have younger lovers.) I like the idea myself since I find it more comfortable sometimes than seeing movies where 75 year old men get girlfriends of 16 years old. I know in the original story it was implied that Shemendrick (misspelled, I think) was actually much older than he looked (a fact that worked against him as a wizard) so he and Molly might have been of a similar age mentally. In my mind I always saw them as being 40 somethings. Well, as I said before, Mia is a great actress and if she goes with the role, she can bring a lot of coolness to it.
Your comment on intellectual maturity did crack me up. Yes there seems to be a view that most young Hollywood guys would be happy with a 14 year old girl as their mate. What depresses me about that, though, is it lowers the bar on women actors. Now, it seems, women actors pretty much have to be able accomplish a career before they are 25 years old or it is over for them. (And, ideally, if they can hit the big time before they are 20 years old that is best because they are already now starting to become too old by 20 years old). Guys can continue to act into their 80s and 90s. Plus, being an American, I have to comment that being an American woman works against you, too. So many of the ideal Hollywood beauties today are not from the USA but from Australia, South Africa, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Scotland, England, Wales, Mexico, France, Canada, etc.
I hope you watch Metropolis, especiallkly the Moroder (1984) and Kino (2001) versions. Both are quality nd really give respect to the film. I can see from viewings that so much of modern sci fi and fantasy films owe a lot to Metropolis. Plus the special effects are still incredible by today's standards (they did some pretty cool things with animation, especially in the intratext titles that came between scenes to show the dialogue of characters in this silent film- the titles animated in a way beyound its time). And scenes like when Death and the Seven Sins come to life were done with human actors, not CGI (and, if facts are true, all played by one woman actor in the masks of Death and the Seven Sins) but it is just gorgeous to view.
Well, nuff said. I have to get back to cooking dinner. Thanks for the reply and the fun conversation!
a ray of hope
Date: 2006-08-08 09:27 pm (UTC)Helena Bonham Carter -40
Famke Janssen-40
Diane Lane-41
Linda Evangelista-41
Brooke Shields-41
Sarah Jessica Parker-41
The cast of "Sex and the City"(all 40+)
The cast of "Desperate Houswives" (all 40+)
Elizabeth Hurley - 41
Sandra Bullock - 42
Elle Macpherson - 43
Helen Hunt - 43 (was 36 when "Mad About You" was cancelled)
Michelle Pfeifer - 44
Emma Thompson - 47
Jamie Lee Curtis - 48 (36 in "True Lies")
Madonna - 48
Angela Bassett - (8 days shy of 48)
Geena Davis - 50
Rene Russo - 52
Jean Smart - 55
Kathy Bates - 56
Jessica Lange - 56
Sigourney Weaver - 57 (50 in "Galaxy Quest"!)
Sissy Spaseck - 57
Meryl Streep - 57
Susan Sarandon - 59
Glen Close - 59
Sally Field - 60
Diane Keaton - 60
Brenda Blethyn - 60
Cher - 60 (still saying "farewell")
Pricilla Pressley-61 (was in the last "naked gun" movie at 49)
Tina Turner - 67 (46 in "Mad Max")
Jane Fonda - 69
Mary Tyler Moore - 70
Shirley Maclane - 72
Maggie Smith - 72
Katherine Hepburn (worked nearly tll the end of her life)
Jessica Tandy (")
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.showbiz.gossip/browse_thread/thread/d68409d2f9b2fd48/f2d61737a684f4a7%23f2d61737a684f4a7
It's also notable that 36(if I counted right) of the women listed above are American citizens!
Speaking of Metropolis met a guy who has plaster casts of the masks you mentioned - Forrie J. Ackerman. Ever heard of him? Metropolis is his favorite movei of all time - his house is cramed full of memorabilia from that movie.