Burning Questions: When Will America Get Animation For Adults?

Day of the Dead comes with Lively ColorMichael C. here. Eyebrows were raised when Pixar recently announced their slate of upcoming films. After two projects we already knew about – a dinosaur focused film now titled “The Good Dinosaur” (May 30th, 2014) and the film that takes place inside the mind – there was a new project, intriguingly described as Untitled Pixar Movie About Dia De Los Muertos.

The idea of the full resources of Pixar set to work on an animated film about the Mexican Day of the Dead is enough to get any film lover’s expectations soaring. Obviously, there is no promise the film will be any more artistically daring than the spooky yet family-friendly likes of Henry Sellick’s Coraline. But for now it is reason enough to hope we will soon have an affirmative answer to the question animation lovers have asked for decades:

When will mainstream American cinema finally accept adult animation?

I will not subject you to another rendition of that familiar tune about the rest of the world not holding our country’s prejudices about cartoons being just for kids. Suffice it to say the end of American animation’s extended adolescence is long overdue. 

Disney appeared poised to take the plunge back in the Nineties. I am still stunned anything as mature as the tortured Catholicism of Hunchback’s “Hellfire” sequence found its way into a film with Happy Meal tie-ins. More after the jump

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A Look at Pixar's Forgotten Treasure

Amir here. With Brave’s release on the horizon and Nathaniel writing a lot more about animated films lately, I’ve been thinking about Pixa. Let's talk about a film not many people talk about these days. Counter programming!

If the collection of Pixar films were a large family, A Bug’s Life would be that one child whom everyone always seems to forget. He just never comes up in conversation. It’s not that he’s in any way less than the other children. Quite the contrary, he’s interesting and handsome and courteous, but of all the sisters and brothers and cousins, he’s the one who sits in a corner in Christmas gatherings; he’s happy on his own and nobody bothers him either. That’s A Bug’s Life, essentially.  It’s a story as well told as any other Pixar film; its characters are as memorable as anything else they’ve created; it’s exciting, colourful, intelligent and mature. But ask around and see how many people cite it as their favourite Pixar.  

I’m not sure what happened in the time between the critical and box office success of the film at the time of its release and today, but something prevented A Bug’s Life from becoming a cultural phenomenon like the rest of the studio’s oeuvre. Is it because this film is more about pure entertainment than the grand ideas discussed in WALL-E and Toy Story 3? Say, more of a kids cartoon than an animated film for adults? Is it because Bugs’ greatest asset – its magnificent visuals – were trumped by Pixar’s return to nature in Finding Nemo and the rapid advances in technology that have so significantly improved the look of CGI animations? Or is it because they followed this up with Toy Story 2, part of a trilogy that still dominates the Pixar conversation?

Irrespective of those arguments, A Bug’s Life is as entertaining today as it was when I first watched it. Revisiting it this week, I found it to be one of Pixar’s most unhinged moments: imaginative in bringing an impossibly distant world to life but also adding an extra-saucy dimension to its anthropomorphic characters, richly detailed and attentive to landscape and the insects without sacrificing the vibrancy of the atmosphere and the journey. Everything about it just comes together perfectly, from the cinema’s only German caterpillar to the consistently zappy humour to the exhilarating frenzy of the finale, from the endearingly clumsy anti-hero in Flik to his monstrous arch-rival Hopper (voiced by Kevin Spacey whose immense talent for voice acting was utilized to carry a film more than a decade later in Moon).

The fact that A Bug’s Life doesn’t feature on the “Best of Pixar” lists frequently is more a product of the consistently high quality of the studio’s output than any shortcoming on the film’s behalf. So if you haven’t seen it in a while, pop it back in the DVD player. It’ll be a fun ride.

April Foolish Predictions: Best Picture

Every year in the first week of April we try to mentally project ourselves forward several months. This is not easy to do due to the pesky problem of films being so much different on screen than they are "on paper". Drama is Oscar's favorite category and the year has already produced two hit dramas in The Grey and The Hunger Games, one a surprise the other a bonafide phenomenon but they're both essentially genre movies so that's one strike against them. And they'll be old news when voting occurs. Strike two.

We're projecting forward anyway.

The Oscar race doesn't actually begin until summer's end anyway when media and pundit types (guilty!) get all respective about 'the year thus far'. At that point box office and critical heat will hopefully combine for one or two of the blockbusters or sleepers and give us our first real contenders. Fans who never forgave the Academy for leaving The Dark Knight out of the 2008 Best Picture field will surely hope that the magic strikes again for The Dark Knight Rises but I personally can't see it happening. It would have to surpass that film, I think, and even if it does it won't have the unrepeatable tragic connections that elevated the reception of the earlier film. Since I'm doubtful that that could possibly happen and don't particularly think Oscar should feel guilty about that omission (I'm much more pissed that WALL•E missed the list that year) I'd rather dream about an Oscar bid for a certain wild-haired princess. Can Pixar regain their "do no wrong" magic with Brave or did that era run out of gas [*cough Cars 2*] or will Merida strike a bullseye? Sorry to mix metaphors but archery is so hot this year (see also: The Avengers and The Hunger Games).

Late year curiousity and prediction battles after the jump

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Review: "JOHN CARTER"

This review was originally published in my film column at Towleroad.

Let's begin with a man and his dog. First, the dog. Woola is an unsightly creature but oddly endearing. He's the size of a pony but he looks more like a lizard or a toad albeit one with six visible legs and hundreds of sharp teeth. He reads all dog though -- a mutant pug. His assignment and then devotion is to guard the human prisoner John Carter (Taylor Kitsch).

John Carter of Virginia has been magically transported to Barsoom (aka Mars)  and the green martians who discover him don't know what to make of him though they love his mad jumping skill. Mars' gravity makes John Carter the Earthling a superman, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. When John Carter tries to escape his prison early in the film, he finds it impossible to elude Woola whose multiple legs carry him across the Martian desert in super sonic zig-zag fashion, clouds of dust trailing behind him like a Road Runner cartoon. The adorable mutant pug always appears wherever bouncy John Carter is about to land. Neither man nor beast are moving in a circular fashion but they're not getting anywhere. Eventually they'll be right back where they started.

Points of origin are important. Home, and our journeys to and from it, are at the heart of John Carter's multi-limbed adventure.

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"Don't you dare loose another arrow..."

I forbid it!"

Psssst. How great is the new Brave trailer? I wish all movies were confident enough to lead with an early scene instead of the traditional 'here are all the story beats' trailer. It was just the thing I needed this week to get me excited about moving on to 2012 once we wrap up with Oscar and Oscar post mortem this week.

Will this be a Pixar bullseye at the 85th Oscars on February...?

                               No, Nathaniel, No. I forbid it. No Oscar 2012/13 talk until April Fool's Day!