Oh boy! Something new from Dreamworks!!
I'm coming down with my first cold of the year and feel like my head is caught between the thighs of a morbidly obese animal (suffocating pressure on my head and yet, strangly soft but still unpleasant). So I went to the pictures and saw a preview of Madagascar.
I had a good time. Mostly. Graphically it looks wonderful, which is a first for Dreamworks. But all in all, it's about 80% there. It's another one of those movies where they put all of the gags in the trailer, so by the time you see the movie, well, how many times can you watch an episode of `Friend's' and still find it funny? For me I need a lot of drugs the first time around but you get my drift. (Hmmm, bad example)
Why do studio's do that? Have a look at Pixar's trailers. They hint. They tease. They draw you in. They even produce sequences that aren't in the final movie - example, the first trailer for the Incredibles where Mr Incredible struggles to put on a belt while telling his wife what he wants for dinner.
I liked the penquins and the um, little critters on Madagascar (`lets say hello to the pansies!') There are some nice references to other movies, but...so what? The leads were dull and cliched and it was all kind of stale. There were no suprises, you knew what was going to happen. If this were a Pixar movie it would never see the light of day in it's present form. To Pixar, the story is king. And every Pixar release is testement to that. Sure everything will end happily ever after but the journey there is journey without a map.
How the audience feels after seeing Madagascar.
There's an interesting article in the latest Wired magazine at the moment that's very telling on the differences between Dreamworks and Pixar. Jeffery Katzenburg, the head of Animation at Dreamworks, is the darling of Dreamworks stockholders and they're going to love him more over the next few years. Just like Shrek, there's going to be spin offs from Madagascar. Disney are going to do the same with their Pixar properties. Fair enough, they're in business to make a profit. That's capitalism. But can't they do it with dignity? Don't they have any pride?
I love Pixar movies because I can see the results of their passion to make quality animation that does something different and shows us something wonderful when we invest an hour or two and some cash in something someones made. Dreamworks are going to become, if they're not already, the McDonalds of Animation. Nothing against the people working on these movies - it's the decision makers who either say, `yeah, that'll do, move on,next scene' or who really don't know what a good story is or does. Perhaps the difference is...and I'm happy with this, is that Dreamworks is a factory. Pixar is a studio (in the best sense of the word).
Just a bit off topic, here's something I'd love to see. And you can have this one for free Mr Iger;A Mickey Mouse movie by Pixar. Let them have full creative control to bring him back to life (and Donald Duck and Goofy too of course). Let him be a mischevous little bugger again. That was why he originally became popular wasn't it? Not this tedious little do gooder he's become (like Ned Flanders without the irony).
Hmm, time to stop now, I'm begining to see spots...and spots within spots.
I had a good time. Mostly. Graphically it looks wonderful, which is a first for Dreamworks. But all in all, it's about 80% there. It's another one of those movies where they put all of the gags in the trailer, so by the time you see the movie, well, how many times can you watch an episode of `Friend's' and still find it funny? For me I need a lot of drugs the first time around but you get my drift. (Hmmm, bad example)
Why do studio's do that? Have a look at Pixar's trailers. They hint. They tease. They draw you in. They even produce sequences that aren't in the final movie - example, the first trailer for the Incredibles where Mr Incredible struggles to put on a belt while telling his wife what he wants for dinner.
I liked the penquins and the um, little critters on Madagascar (`lets say hello to the pansies!') There are some nice references to other movies, but...so what? The leads were dull and cliched and it was all kind of stale. There were no suprises, you knew what was going to happen. If this were a Pixar movie it would never see the light of day in it's present form. To Pixar, the story is king. And every Pixar release is testement to that. Sure everything will end happily ever after but the journey there is journey without a map.
How the audience feels after seeing Madagascar.
There's an interesting article in the latest Wired magazine at the moment that's very telling on the differences between Dreamworks and Pixar. Jeffery Katzenburg, the head of Animation at Dreamworks, is the darling of Dreamworks stockholders and they're going to love him more over the next few years. Just like Shrek, there's going to be spin offs from Madagascar. Disney are going to do the same with their Pixar properties. Fair enough, they're in business to make a profit. That's capitalism. But can't they do it with dignity? Don't they have any pride?
I love Pixar movies because I can see the results of their passion to make quality animation that does something different and shows us something wonderful when we invest an hour or two and some cash in something someones made. Dreamworks are going to become, if they're not already, the McDonalds of Animation. Nothing against the people working on these movies - it's the decision makers who either say, `yeah, that'll do, move on,next scene' or who really don't know what a good story is or does. Perhaps the difference is...and I'm happy with this, is that Dreamworks is a factory. Pixar is a studio (in the best sense of the word).
Just a bit off topic, here's something I'd love to see. And you can have this one for free Mr Iger;A Mickey Mouse movie by Pixar. Let them have full creative control to bring him back to life (and Donald Duck and Goofy too of course). Let him be a mischevous little bugger again. That was why he originally became popular wasn't it? Not this tedious little do gooder he's become (like Ned Flanders without the irony).
Hmm, time to stop now, I'm begining to see spots...and spots within spots.