A Christmas Carol 3D/ dir. Robert Zemeckis/ 2009
A Christmas Carol. You know the story. Ebenezer Scrooge, crotchety old man is visited by 3 ghosts on Christmas Eve and eventually learns the true spirit of Christmas, blah, blah, etc. it’s been told many times over. It has been adapted, spoofed, modernized, retro-ed, turned around, flipped, and some have even attempted sequels. I have some qualms with the story, for example its told in the perspective of a rich, old, bourgeois, white male, and at times it presents a “rich man’s burden” theme. But you know what, I actually enjoy the story. Redemption and spending quality time with friends and family, that’s the Christmas spirit I’m down with. So in my mind, you really can’t screw up the story.
What CAN be screwed up are the elements that go into presenting that story. And as much I enjoyed the excellent animation, the visual effects, the Victorian atmosphere, and the voice performances by Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman, this newest Disney version of A Christmas Carol lacked that one thing that is essential to this classic story… heart… Continue reading
I enjoyed the original Ice Age. The story of a rag tag group trying to reunite a baby with his human parents during the Ice Age was at the very least, entertaining. Plus in 2002, CG animated films were just starting to trickle in, so there was still a little novelty in the CG animated movie. The sequel, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, yeah I watched it, but to be completely honest, I can not recall what the plot of that movie was. All I remember was that Queen Latifah played the female wooly mammoth. So that pretty much explains my experiences with the Ice Age franchise. So when I decided to make Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs 3D (Ice Age 3) my early Sunday morning movie, I really had no expectations. I did hear some comments from animation students and teachers saying that it was “the best of the 3 Ice Age movies,” but my response was “eh, we’ll see…”
It has nearly been a month since the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival ended, and I am now finally reviewing the last animated feature I saw at SIFF this year. And I can’t think of a better movie to end my 2009 SIFF experience.
Out of all the animated features at SIFF, I was most excited to watch Nak. The big reason for my excitement was that Nak was a Thai animated movie, and I was looking forward to seeing some Southeast Asian animated cinema. (Because from my observations, if the animated feature isn’t from China, Korea, or especially Japan, nobody is really taking notice. ) Plus, the guy who produced Nak, Prachya Pinkaew, was the same dude who produced Ong Bak, and Nak featured Thailand’s most famous ghost, 
How does one make a movie an experience? When a movie stops being about story, plot, and characters and the focus is so much about the visuals, the sights and the sounds that we, as an audience, really don’t give a damn about the story.
Art of the Cartoon 