The Animated Feature Contenders: Moomins on the Riviera

Tim here. Every December, Tim's Toons preps for the upcoming Oscar nominations in January by looking at some of the smaller and more easily overlooked films that have thrown their hat in the ring for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. It's a slim list of 16 titles this year, which means that if even one of them fails to meet the eligibility requirements (they don't all appear to have had their qualifying theatrical run yet), we wouldn’t have a year with five nominees. Something to think about as you all work on your nomination predictions.

Let’s turn now to one of those films that almost certainly won't make the cut no matter how many nominees end up happening, through absolutely no fault of its own. Moomins on the Riviera is a slight, charming, and deeply silly comedy adapting an iconic Finnish comic strip and children’s book series, quite obscure in America, about a family of trolls that look rather like hippopotamuses with no mouths. The film itself is a French-Finnish co-production, and it feels like both of those nationalities are in play; the music and coloring feel significantly gallic, the story and designs have a definite Nordic tang (director Xavier Picard and co-director Hanna Hemilä are from the two respective countries, uncoincidentally).

The story, meanwhile, taken from Swedish-speaking Finn Tove Jansson's comics, is pure uncut childish frivolity (the Best Animated Feature category as a whole is distinctly juvenile this year). The Moomins – Moomin (Russell Tovey in the English dub), Moominmamma (Trace Ann Oberman), Moominpappa (Nathaniel Parker), and Moomin’s girlfriend Snorkmaiden (Stephanie Winiecki) – have an extraordinarily low-key run-in with some pirates, after which they rescue the tiny, bratty human girl Little My (Ruth Gibson). With one sea adventure having gone well, the gang agrees to another, and in no time at all they're battling storms and taking a tiny sailboat across the ocean to the Riviera. There, they have run-ins with haughty celebrities, snooty hotel staff, daffy artists and oblivious art collectors, and generally move with gentle, deliberate slowness through one of the kindest fish-out-of-water comedies I have ever seen.

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Relax with "Youth" This Weekend

Chris here. I don't about you, but I could use some rest and relaxation after a long week. How about some zen inspiration from Paolo Sorrentino's Youth, opening today in limited release.

Take some time this weekend to pamper yourself. Spa-in-the-Alps style.

Get in touch with your imagination. Cinema always helps.

Brave the winter chill with a friend! Explore new experiences!

Be a sexy, sweaty Paul Dano. You've earned it.

And Above All Else: Stay fabulous, dammit!

Youth opens today in select cities. Have a splendid weekend!

Pt 1. Oscar Editorials to Make the Blood Boil: on Category Fraud

'I'm not SUPPORTING you. I don't even like you!'I'm not in the habit, as some online pundits are, of dissing articles written by other people but two articles just published enraged me. ...I exaggerate. They made my skin crawl from their indifference and hypocrisy. Let's get the indifference out of our system first.

Variety's "Long and Honorable History of Category Fraud" - Tim Gray
Gray immediately pisses the reasonable Oscar-lover off with the way he begins this defense of Category Fraud, a topic birthed and coined right here at The Film Experience years ago since nobody else was willing to get riled up about it and make it a cause. He introduces the topic in the the context of real world problems with life & death consequences as a way to insure that any complaints about the topic are, in the grand scheme of things, entirely irrelevant. Yes, it's true, Tim. Category Fraud does not lead to car accidents (unless Nathaniel is enraged and driving) and it doesn't threaten the world's natural resources. But this is a cheap argument. Imagine the rage you'd conjure in the reader if you used this same tactic when speaking about the lack of diversity in casting and directing jobs in Hollywood. The same is, in fact, true. Nobody will die and it won't cause starvation or droughts if people of color don't get acting jobs and women aren't considered for directing big budget Hollywood movies. But that is absolutely no reason to not care about these problems!

Every topic will seem small when placed against death and disaster. By this logic the Oscars aren't worth talking about either! But that does not mean that the topics are unimportant within their own "ecosystems." That's Gray's choice of word so let's use it. [More...]

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Women's Pictures - Dee Rees's Pariah

Anne Marie returns after a brief break...

Over the course of this year, the purpose of our weekly "Women's Pictures" has been to explore the vast variety of female filmmakers. We've seen that women are not only present and working, but also highly diverse in their genre, style, and subject matter. Gender has often been a factor, but it has rarely been a focus. For the last month of the year, we're going to be watching films by two directors for whom gender, sexuality, and race are their focus: Dee Rees, and Celine Sciamma. Though both filmmakers have comparatively small filmographies, they have already established themselves as new, strong voices in contemporary cinema.

Dee Rees's 2011 film Pariah, based on the short of the same name, is an empathetic examination of a person usually invisible in cinema: the young black lesbian.

more...

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14 Days Until That Galaxy Far Far Away

I have successfully avoided much information about (Episode VII) Star Wars: The Force Awakens in an effort to preserve a pre-internet style excitement for the new film. No, scratch that. I've done so in an effort to generate excitement since I felt none. Unlike the rest of the internet I remember all too painfully how godawful the last three movies were. *shudder* As for the new film, I've only seen the first trailer and only know character names because no matter how hard you try to say "pure" and go in cold, information will be absorbed from the 24 hour news cycle.

But truth: the nostalgia is finally getting to me and I'm officially excited. It must be all the appearances of Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford in my news feeds even if the articles go unclicked to stay pure.

That caption to the left "The 'Star Wars' Kids" -LOL!

If you've been reading The Film Experience for a long time you'll know that The Empire Strikes Back (1980) was a formative experience as a kid. By the time Return of the Jedi (1983) came out, half of my bedroom was covered with magazine collages of ewoks, Jabba the Hut, Yoda, Darth, Luke and Han. Princess Leia in her gold bikini dominated, duh! The actressexuality came fast and early before I even knew what it was. 

On a scale of 1-100 how excited are you to have the Force awakened?