The Animated Karate Kid

There is a brand new teaser for Kung Fu Panda. Click on the link above to check it out.

Visually it looks good, the story seems funny, however, I can't seem to get Karate Kid out of my mind.

Bee Movie

Now, I haven't seen Bee Movie yet on the big screen. However, I have seen plenty of clips from it off the internet. Is it me or are the DreamWorks animated films looking worse and worse? (Link above provides clips from the film)

I'm not talking story or animation. The animation looks decent enough and I can't really speak for the story since I haven't seen it yet. However, the character designs, modeling, and texturing of the humans are UGLY. The bees are not much better, but at least acceptable. Not only are the people ugly, but the clothing deformations are horrible. Take a look at Bee Movie when it opens in a few days and pay attention, then come back and let me know what you think. What the hell?

Am I over reacting? Maybe so. But, even with Over The Hedge's humans looking pretty bad, this is a step backwards over at DWA. Pixar is visually blowing DWA out of the water while even the low budget shops are surpassing them too. I've always pulled for them, but I may be jumping ship here.

What gives?

Ollie the Otter

Remember that film/company I brought up many moons ago? You know, the one in Marin County (outside San Francisco) making an animated film called "Ollie the Otter"?

Well, I love to tell you "I told you so", but I told you so!

It looks like it has died. This probably happened quite a while ago, but I'm just now finding out about it after a visit to their webpage. Of course I could totally be wrong. But come on.

Critter Pix seems to be advertising a new film in pre-production called "Spy Guy". They go on to say:

Other movies we plan to make, besides SPY GUY 2 & 3, are Ollie the Otter, and Hollywood Vermin.

What happened here? They're already planning Spy Guy 1, 2, and 3, but the film they started with (Ollie) is now the fourth film? Something fishy happened here.

Surf's Up

Since I just read that Surf's Up is the number one DVD out there right now, I guess this is a good time to post something about it.

First things first, this movie is 1000 times better than that sham of a film called Happy Feet!

Now that that is out of the way... While I may of had some problems accepting an animated mockumentary, it was enjoyable overall. The character designs (especially Big Z and Tank) were nice, the story was fun, and the animation was really good.

I was pretty impressed by the technique they used to motion capture the camera. It really gave it an authentic documentary feel. Well, as authentic as an animated documentary can be. It may of been a little over the top at times, but for the most part worked well. Finally a good use for motion capture!

Putting the real life surfers in the movie as voices was a stupid idea. These guys, except for maybe Sal (?) were horrible. Dry and boring. It put too much reality in the film and drug it down every time they spoke. I also thought that the John Heder chicken character was annoying. A lot of his lines felt really forced.

After watching the making-of, I noticed that the actors recorded their lines with some of the other actors at the same time. The improvising really came through and I thought that gave the dialogue a nice flow.

I'm still not sure what is happening over at SPA now. This movie did pretty poorly and I've heard rumors that they have dropped the idea of doing future CG films. Yet someone else told me they were still in development for a project or two. I guess time will tell. I'm still a fan of SPA first two attempts. However, I thought the story on Open Season was much more fun.

Thundercats

Did this TV cartoon series really deserve an animated feature film version? Evidently someone thought so! According to Variety, Warner Brothers is making a CG version of this classic (hah).

My questions is, will this be done at WB or farmed out to another studio? My guess is that it will be farmed out. If anyone has any insights, please share via the comments.

This movie will be directed by someone who comes from the video game world. His name is Jerry O Flaherty. The article says that he was an art director on some of their games. Wow, score one for this guy. How he got himself into that role, I don't know. But kudos for that move.

I've got to believe this will be a pretty decent sized budget film. Let's hope we hear more over the next weeks/months.

TMNT

I rented TMNT the other day and finally got a chance to view it. Much to my surprise, it wasn't that bad. The story didn't really hold me, but visually and animation wise, I thought it was pretty well done for a medium sized budget production.

Since I'm usually a bitter person with nothing but bad things to say on this blog, I better come up with something terrible. How about, the rat character design was ugly? Or maybe that some of the deformation on the characters were down right disgusting? Additionally, some of the animation was a little stiff. But probably most important, it sucks that they are outsourcing the work to other countries to get it done?

Even that has a bright side, at least they are doing the pre-production/development of their next movie in Los Angeles before shipping out the production elsewhere. Still a shame that any of it is being farmed out to begin with.

All in all, it wasn't that bad given the budget.

Wow

I can't believe July was my last post. Time really flies. I'll avoid dispensing with the excuses and just say that my interest in keeping up this blog has diminished.

After I'm done with work, all I want to do relax and spend time with the family and then go to bed. I'm drained.

On top of that, even after months of not saying anything, I have no clue what to even write about.

After saying all of that, I'm going to try my best to post something sometime before Saturday. Don't hold your breath. But, I'm going to try!!!