Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- The movies are running down, and things are getting quieter for Oscar voters. Our ballots are due next Monday. These are for only the one category – Best Picture. We choose our favorites in order of choice. Then there’ll be a complicated calculation of the votes to come up with the 5 to 10 top pictures. There were only three films to see this past week – all animated.

Tuesday
Winnie the Pooh – I went into this film fully anticipating something excellent. The reviews I’d scanned were positive, and some of my favorite animators were back doing a 2D film for Walt Disney Studios.
I’m confident Walt would not have been happy. I’m also sure that the Nine Old Men would have gone into retirement rather than work on this film. Don’t get me wrong, the graphics are as brilliant as you might expect. The animation is never less than fine and often brilliant. The backgrounds are at least as good as any of the Winnie the Pooh series done by Disney. The voices are surprisingly adept at recapturing and reworking the sounds of the past films.

It’s the story that’s god awful. The writers talk down to the two year olds in the audience and make all of the characters seem challenged, to say the least. They don’t come off as children but all sound and act simple minded and totally unbelievable. (I wonder in retrospect if ANY words are spelled correctly in this film.) The movie was certainly a challenge to sit through at the very long and tedious one hour, eight minute length.

It really got me angry. Is Disney so incapable of writing a workable script for animation? It would seem so. And given the horrible story of Cars 2, John Lasseter has his name and approval on two of the worst written films of the year. It’s a shame. I know these comments will make some of my friends in animation angry, but you have to recognize how poor the material is in this film. A relatively low budget and tight schedule for studio animation is no excuse. It would have been better to have a good script and still pictures. Go back and look again at the wonderful first Winnie the Pooh from Disney. Then look at the Russian Winnie the Pooh by Fyodor Khitruk . Look at any of Norstein’s brilliant stories such as Hedgehog in the Fog. (I could easily name a hundred better films for this age group.)

To say the least, I was disappointed.

The second animated feature that night was scheduled to be The Smurfs, but it was disqualified by the Academy for not having enough animation in it.

Thursday
Kung Fu Panda 2 – This, obviously, is a reworking/sequel to the original film, Kung Fu Panda (1) and an outgrowth of that film which is also, now, a Nickelodeon tv series. Lotsa money here, and the film did well. The primary point of publicity I’ve read for this film is that the director, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, is now the director who’s garnered the highest gross box office of any female. A dubious accomplishment from my vantage point, but it is something to tout, I suppose. The thing is she did a great job as director of the film.

It’s not quite as special as the first film, but it’s sure darned entertaining, and there’s quite a few nicely animated scenes. It’s obvious that they’ve gone to great length to add a lot to the Angelina Jolie character so that they could maximize the voice. (No doubt there was rewriting to do once she took a look at the script.) Dustin Hoffman’s character takes a beating, getting quite a bit less of a part. The film gets a bit too Kung Fu for my taste with more than a few wildly active sequences that you have to tread through, but overall it’s miles above Puss In Boots.

Wrinkles – This is a Spanish animated feature adapted from Paco Roca’s graphic novel. Stylistically, to me, it was very ordinary. Nothing to write home about, and the animation was TV lite – very limited in an H&B way. I can’t remember one good walk cycle in the entire film.

However, the writing was extraordinary. Despite the limited graphics, you really fall for the two lead guys in this show so that you really care about them. The Spanish voice overs were very effective and all of the characters were believably acted. This film should be seen if you get the chance. It’s an intelligent and adult film.

As a matter of fact, this is the opposite of Winnie the Pooh. It has a great script with poor animation whereas WTP has very bad script with nice animation. I prefer Wrinkles and wonder if I can ever make it through Pooh again.

- Only one film left to see, on Tuesday, Mars Needs Moms. Looking forward to it. I do generally like Simon Wells‘ work; he was an “additional story artist” on Kung Fu Panda 2.

- Last week, you’ll remember, I wrote about going to the memorial party for Vince Cafarelli, who passed away in December. Candy Kugel and others at Buzzco teamed to make a video of the event as well as photos taken at the party. It raced through Facebook this week, but I thought I’d post it here for anyone who’s missed it. (I rarely go to Facebook, so I seem to be missing out on a lot of things and assume there must be others like me.) To see the stills alone, they’re also on Facebook with IDs.

I have to say, I’m a bit disappointed with the lack of commentary on Vince’s passing on ASIFA East‘s multiple sites. Their newsletter went out this week – no mention. It took me a bit of searching to find a reposting of this video on their Facebook page. They sent me a dozen notices about their auction to raise money for the organization, but when a member (who’s been a member since its first day) dies, there’s barely a notice. We have to honor some of those who served on the front line and shaped the history of NY animation, instead they’re virtually ignored. There aren’t too many of the originals with us anymore, and I’d like to hear more about them, too. ASIFA East posts plenty of interviews with people who have been in the business for a year or two, yet nothing about the founders of the feast: Ed Smith or Tissa David or Vinnie Bell or Phil Kimmelman or Bill Peckmann or Bill Feigenbaum or some others out there.

By the way, ASIFA Hollywood has already contacted Candy to get information about Vinnie for their Day of Remembrance coming at the end of February.

Forgive me, I’m just ranting, and I shouldn’t be taken seriously. It just doesn’t seem like the ASIFA East I used to know.

Maybe I’ll start interviewing some of those people for this blog. What the hell. Gotta get their thoughts and a bit of their history SOON.

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