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Oscars
1. HOORAY DANISH POET! I LOVE YOU, DANISH POET! I am SO happy it won best short. So, so, so, SO happy. It follows the typical Oscar guideline of The Ugliest Short Wins, and while it was hardly ugly, it was the least glossy and beautiful of the nominees. Despite this I was afraid that 'No Time For Nuts' would take home the statuette. For once I've actually seen three of the five nominees and I'm so glad 'The Danish Poet' won because it was my favourite by far. I hope it gets some sort of wider release now because everyone ought to get the chance to see it.
2. I haven't seen Happy Feet (I know! I'm sorry! I'll catch it on DVD!) but I'm glad Cars didn't win. From all accounts, Happy Feet is a very good movie, and Pixar needs a bit of a hubris check in my opinion.
3. Al Gore is starting to look a lot like Jeffrey Jones. I did a side-by-side comparison for a visual aide. I don't know what this means, necessarily, but it was a little weird. They started out looking completely different but as Gore ages he's filling out in exactly the same way and is starting to get the same bulgey eyes...
4. Even more weird was George Lucas. Did he not look like some sort of puppet? My theory is that he uses his beard to show where his jawline should be, but he's lost track of where that is and the hem has migrated upwards. I know this is a very shallow and judgemental paragraph but it was just so distracting.
Anyway, that was fun. And I got to catch up on all the commercials I've been missing by not having television. Unfortunately none of them really stood out, which makes me miss TV even less.
2. I haven't seen Happy Feet (I know! I'm sorry! I'll catch it on DVD!) but I'm glad Cars didn't win. From all accounts, Happy Feet is a very good movie, and Pixar needs a bit of a hubris check in my opinion.
3. Al Gore is starting to look a lot like Jeffrey Jones. I did a side-by-side comparison for a visual aide. I don't know what this means, necessarily, but it was a little weird. They started out looking completely different but as Gore ages he's filling out in exactly the same way and is starting to get the same bulgey eyes...
4. Even more weird was George Lucas. Did he not look like some sort of puppet? My theory is that he uses his beard to show where his jawline should be, but he's lost track of where that is and the hem has migrated upwards. I know this is a very shallow and judgemental paragraph but it was just so distracting.
Anyway, that was fun. And I got to catch up on all the commercials I've been missing by not having television. Unfortunately none of them really stood out, which makes me miss TV even less.
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Pan's Labyrinth should've won best foreign film, though.
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Cars was certainly not the best Pixar film (compared to the Toy Stories, Incredibles, ect), but does live up to Pixar's reputation for technical and artistic excellence.
A plus for Happy Feet is it's characters are actually attractive looking, rather than grotesque, 'wacky' charicatures of animals. You can tell what type of penguin or seal any given character is.
Cars has a plus in that the story is much tighter, but a minus in that the story is very cliched, and done a billion times before.
Happy Feet's story is all over the board, and switches from wacky to serious. It suffers from (yet another) frenetic Robin Williams voice performance. If I never see another cartoon with him playing a wacky, frantic character it will be too soon. It also has too many pointless musical numbers.
On the other hand, it's refreshing to have an upset at the awards, and maybe this will spur Pixar into more daring plots.
But I won't count on it.
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I missed the Academy Awards myself, but I was pleased "Happy Feet" got Best Animated feature. I agree with the above comment that Disney, Dreamworks, Pixar need some competition from other animation studios (Animal Logic from Australia, in this case).
I hope you catch the movie. The animation really pushes the bar up. It is so realistic in parts that I almost thought I was watching a documentary, and the animators did an amazing job of making it easy to make it easy to identify the various characters while still keeping them looking realistic- penguins have to be very hard to animate in that way. The voices were great, the songs were great. I liked the switch between heavy and light tones in the plot; it showed the studio was willing to take a risk and not be like all the other animated movies. In a way, "Happy Feet" had more in common with "Watership Down" than "Madagascar." It was promoted like a lighthearted kids' film in the USA, so I think that irritated many parents who did not expect the environmental message and lighthearted sexual jokes (even though the movie was rated PG).
I look forward to reading your comments on the film.
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I really loved Cars, but I think that part of that is because I love Route 66 and the idea of fixing up old towns has always appealed to me. I don't think it was Pixar's best movie at all, but I liked it and the story was cute, if overused. Happy Feet didn't look that appealing to me, but now I have a good reason to see it.
Mr. Lucas did sook somehow strange.
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Saw The Danish Poet this weekend, actually, at a screening at my school. It wasn't as pretty as, say, Little Matchgirl (which I wouldn't have minded taking the Oscar, but oh well), but it was fun to watch and had some great understated humor. Not undeserved at all there.
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Yesyes yes :) The Danish Poet made me so happy
I'm so glad it won <333