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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Princess and the Frog - offensive?/Up reviews out
Disney/Pixar’s latest movies, Up and The Princess and the Frog, are both making waves around the web, but of a very different sort.
The first reviews for Up are coming in, and not surprisingly, they’re raves. Todd McCarthy of Variety says “Depending on what you think of Cars, Pixar makes it either 9 and a half out of 10 or 10 for 10 with Up, a captivating odd-couple adventure that becomes funnier and more exciting as it flies along.
Later on in the review, he makes an interesting point about this being Pixar’s first 3-D picture. Though he likes the 3D effects, McCarthy thinks seeing it “flat” may be the better way to go.
“Although the cliffhanger effects are augmented by 3-D projection, never do (director Pete) Docter (Monsters, Inc.) and co-director Bob Peterson shove anything in the viewer’s face just because of its 3-D potential. In fact, the film’s overall loveliness presents a conceivable argument in favor of seeing it in 2-D: Even with the strongest possible projector bulbs, the 3-D glasses reduce the image’s brightness by 20%. At the very least, the incentive for seeing Up in 3-D would seem less powerful than it is for other films.”
Roger Ebert (also not a fan of 3D) offers his “unofficial observations” on his blog.
Even more interesting is the reaction to The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s first hand-drawn movie since 2004’s disappointing Home on the Range. Here’s the trailer.
And here’s the poster too (click to enlarge)
Now - I’m going to stay out of this for the moment because people may accuse me of a pro-Disney bent - a bent I hereby acknowledge. So let me ask - do YOU find anything offensive in that trailer?
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Today’s DVDs: Liam Neeson or vampires?
There’s not much new on the DVD shelves this week, although one title in particular is bound to sell and rent well.
That would be Taken, a solid little potboiler about a father (Liam Neeson) who wreaks havoc on his daughter’s kidnappers. I wasn’t quite as enamored of it as some people were; I thought it was the equivalent of a throwaway paperback you’d read on the beach. Like so many action films these days, this movie is a bit too frenzied for its own good, but Neeson’s performance gives the story much-needed gravity - a gravity that, given recent events, seems rather poignant now. GRADE: B
Passengers: One would think a thriller starring Anne Hathaway would get a decent release, but this movie, in which she plays an airline therapist who gets involved with the survivor of a plane crash (Patrick WIlson), never gained altitude. One can only surmise it didn’t deliver as expected.
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans: As far as second-tier sequels minus their original leads go, I hear this one is actually not bad. Not that the standards are particularly high or anything. Still, it’s gotta look funny for this to appear on Michael Sheen’s resume right after Frost/Nixon.
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