Jonathan Poritsky

Review: Wall•E

Wall-E

In the past I have driz­zled praise all over Pixar, specif­i­cally the fantasy-realist films that Brad Bird has made with them. There are many rea­sons to heap lau­rels on the Disney-owned ani­ma­tion stu­dio: its inno­va­tion in the field of com­puter ani­ma­tion before such a thing even existed, its cre­ative use of all avail­able tools at any given point in their his­tory, its abil­ity to cap­ti­vate the minds and pocket books of chil­dren and adults alike. “Wall•E”, how­ever, is some­thing dif­fer­ent, some­thing more than any of us thought these imag­i­neers were capa­ble of.
Read on…

Top 10 Films of 2007 (that I’ve seen)

Another year has flown by, far too fast I might add. So in the great tra­di­tion of the new year, I too will toss my hat in and break the year down to a list. What fol­lows is a list that I thought very lit­tle about before writ­ing. They are in some sort of order, but in truth, it makes no dif­fer­ent. By read­ing my lengthy blurbs, you’ll notice that direc­tion and impact make up a huge per­cent­age of my grad­ing cri­te­ria. 2007 is one of the best years in the his­tory of the movie busi­ness, and the audi­ences get to ben­e­fit from that cash­flow. That means there’s more money for bet­ter films to come along, but also more demand for fran­chise crap. When you look at my list, you’ll see some of those fran­chise bits can be amaz­ing. Enough pre­am­ble, enjoy and leave com­ments with your thoughts. Happy New Year. Read on…

Review: Beowulf

Don’t be an idiot. Go see Beowulf. See it on the biggest flip­pin’ 3D screen you can find. For those of you for­tu­nate enough to live in the cen­ter of the uni­verse, that means the Lowes IMAX at 68th and Broadway.

You have to see this move in the the­ater. It’s that simple.

Robert Zemeckis, a grad­u­ate of the Steven Spielberg School of Showmanship, has put together a rather entic­ing rea­son NOT to wait for the DVD. In the end, that’s all that this film amounts to, but still, that’s quite a feat. It has the thrills for both the action/fantasy fan and the cinéaste try­ing to fol­low mod­ern pro­gres­sions in film­mak­ing. This is the film of the future, but we’re not quite there yet. The tech­nol­ogy is in its infancy, and it is excit­ing to see the pos­si­bil­i­ties of it, even if the intended effect falls flat on its face right now.

As for story, writ­ers Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman have put together a solid, if fool­ish, script. They’re a good match: Mr. Gaiman being a mod­ern rep­re­sen­ta­tive of fan­tasy intel­lec­tu­al­ism, him­self turn­ing into the 21st Century J.R.R. Tolkien; and Mr. Avary hav­ing become Hollywood’s goto man for pulpy comic-booky sto­ries, specif­i­cally in the realm of video game adap­ta­tions. The nar­ra­tive is tight enough, and the tone matches with car­toon­ish form of the film rather nicely. In another director’s hands, per­haps pure gold could have been spun out. Read on…

What is Animation, Zemeckis?

Outside, the writ­ers’ strike rages on. Going into its sec­ond day, it has now become clear that the bat­tle between the WGA and the AMPTP is unques­tion­ably an uphill one. And I can­not write about film with­out men­tion­ing it. But now that I’ve done that, let’s put our think­ing caps on.

As many of you may know, Robert Zemeckis has been on a mis­sion for most of his film career. A stu­dent of Spielberg’s (read P.T. Barnum’s) school of larger-than-life-cinema thought, Mr. Zemeckis has made a point of uti­liz­ing cut­ting edge tech­nol­ogy in nearly all of his films. In this sense, among oth­ers, he has left a pro­lific foot­print in the annals of film history.

His Back to the Future series pushed our imag­i­na­tions to a new limit, while his Who Framed Roger Rabbit? changed the pos­si­bil­i­ties of live actors mixed with ani­mated char­ac­ters. (Remember that last film, it’ll be impor­tant shortly.) Toning down the kid in him, he earned an Oscar for his American opus, Forrest Gump, the first film to take advan­tage of the more real­is­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy. When you sit and think about it, the scope of his con­tri­bu­tions is far-reaching. Read on…

Review: The Simpsons Movie

<IMG src=“http://pages.sbcglobal.net/bluealbino/SYP/images/bart-skate.gif” align=left>So here’s the skinny kids: shut the hell up! I’m tired of hear­ing it’s going to suck and the epony­mous “I’ll see it on DVD”. Go to the the­ater for good­ness sake! You’ve been watch­ing The Simpsons on TV for nearly 2 decades now, why sim­ply watch it again on the small screen when you’ve been given this gift, this dif­fer­ent and spe­cial oppor­tu­nity to watch the show with hun­dreds of other peo­ple on a giant screen!?<BR><BR>Will you be dis­ap­pointed? Of course. These are not the Simpsons of the early 90s, nor the rest of that won­drous decade. Homer’s dumber and less sym­pa­thetic than ever, Bart’s with­out an emo­tional curve any­more and not pulling off the neigh­bor­hood bad­boy, and the plot twists and turns at dizzy­ing paces between attempted polit­i­cal rants and gay jokes (never les­bian jokes). But that’s what The Simpsons are in 2007. It’s been an odd ride for the show over the years, but noth­ing can stay the same after 17 years (even Law & Order got sex­ier of late). In an alter­nate uni­verse, I won­der if any of us would be any hap­pier if the Simpsons had con­tin­ued down the same staid path.<BR><BR>This doesn’t mean I didn’t like the movie, which feels a lot more like 3 episodes. I had a hand­ful of decent laughs, and like I said, it was a real treat to see the yel­low fam­ily finally up on the big screen in glo­ri­ous 35mm. It looks like the ani­ma­tors had some trou­ble get­ting used to print­ing their col­ors back to film again, but after a bit you get used to the slight color shift from the small screen ver­sion. And as tends to hap­pen with any hand drawn 2D skein that goes to the­aters in the com­puter age, the ani­ma­tors have a ball with all the tools at their dis­posal try­ing to make it more cin­e­matic: often to the detri­ment of the expe­ri­ence. Take a look at the Rugrats Movie for a reference.<BR><BR>Vector based 2D ani­ma­tion run­ning through 3D cam­era soft­ware always causes con­fus­ing things to hap­pen. The cam­era will dolly in and the char­ac­ter out­lines will become exag­ger­ated, or they’ll lose detail as you move past them closely. For large sweep­ing move­ments you feel quite out of place. What’s so odd is that one can in fact acheive the same effects with hand drawn ani­ma­tion, and Fox would cough up the scratch for such an endeavor. But for some rea­son they choose to go the quick­est and cheap­est route. I don’t know enough about Matt Groening to go point­ing fin­gers, but in many ways I wish he had the heart of Mike Judge, that great defender of ani­mated arts.<BR><BR>As for the plot…Just like the show, part of the rea­son the emo­tional curves don’t develop is because the plot is so improb­a­ble. Back in the olden days of the show, the con­flicts were real and the actions were, shall we say, “car­toon­ish”. Take “Bart the Genius”. The con­flict is that Bart can’t keep up in his new school because he lied on an IQ test. The action is he mixes the wrong chem­i­cals in sci­ence and turns him­self green. the film’s plot, I kid you not, is that the fam­ily must save Springfield from destruc­tion after a dome has been placed around the town by the EPA after homer dumps a silo of pig crap in Lake Springfield. The ani­ma­tors don’t even give us a chance to believe this improb­a­ble plot­line, as the dome doesn’t seem to make a real cir­cle if you con­sider where in Sprinfield it inter­sects (The Simpsons back­yard is the edge of Springfield?)<BR><BR>The diehard Simpsons have been wait­ing a long time for this, but we know that it’s a show for a dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tion now. Many of us had hoped the film would be a rebirth, but knew that it would have to stick to the show’s cur­rent for­mula. The good news is that all of Springfield makes it into the film. Still, it’s hard to resist the allure of the film. I mean, it is The Simpsons, prob­a­bly the sec­ond great­est export the US has next to com­put­ers. Look, there was always going to be a Simpsons movie. Would you rather it be now or in 30 years when it’s lost its sig­ni­cance completely.<BR><BR>The poten­tial is clear even when the film falls short. So you writ­ers out there work­ing on spec scripts, maybe, just maybe the show’ll be on long enough for you to join the long list of writ­ers. The gaunt­let is laid down between Law & Order and The Simpsons to see who will become the longest run­ning TV show in his­tory (Gunsmoke’s 1 with 20 years, but Simpsons is 1 Sitcom). I’d say Bart’s prob­a­bly got more lead in his pen­cil than E.A.D.A. Jack McCoy. only time will tell.