Movie Weekend

I've had what one would deem, a movie weekend. It all started Friday night with Disney's Tarzan, leaping into Saturday with the Jimmy Stewart-classic Harvey, followed by Happy Feet (a charming animated musical that is oft-overlooked), and culminating in The Godfather: Part 2. Just today I've watched Martin Scorsese's The Aviator and plan on watching at least one more film, and I'm leaning heavily towards Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, a film I haven't watched in some time, but it is actually one of my favorites. Top all of this off with the fact that in my spare time I have been working on a feature length screenplay titled One-Thousand Words, and you have one cinematic weekend.

This weekend is the start of my Spring Break, and I figured a few lazy days never hurt anyone, and I got to looking at my DVD collection and realized I owned a fair few DVDs that I had either never seen the film, or that I had seen the film but never watched the DVD version of it. I've had a good mix of films unseen and films seen, and I think that this movie weekend has been a resounding success. Now I just have to cap it off, and I think Spirited Away might do the trick, though I am considering The Full Monty. What to do? Regardless, I've had a great weekend just relaxing and kicking it, which is good, seeing as how starting in just about five days I'll be busy for the next two to three weeks straight with the film I'm making for my film class titled Heaven's Touch, so I might as well pack in as much lazy frivolity as I can, cause it's about to become a madhouse.

Movie Review: The Princess and the Frog

Disney's latest hand-drawn animated musical, The Princess and the Frog, is a charming film that, while never reaches the dazzling heights of Disney's greats, is still a film well worth your time.

The film is a loose interpretation of the classic "Frog Prince" fairy tale, where a prince who is turned into a frog, must be kissed by a princess to be turned back into a human, only problem is, our heroine, Tiana, isn't a genuine princess, just dressed like one at a Mardi Gras masquerade ball. The film takes place in what looks to be 1920's New Orleans, and that is where the film gets all of its vibe in terms of its music and its story. The villain being an evil Voodoo Witch Doctor who transformed the prince of a far-off land, Prince Naveen into a frog. Of course, things only get more complicated when Naveen finds Tiana, thinking she is a princess when she's not, and so by kissing her she transforms into a frog too and they must travel the dangerous bayous of Louisiana to try and reverse the evil Witch Doctor's spell.

The film is very lively once it finds its rhythm, only problem is, it takes nearly the first 20 minutes to really find that rhythm. The first 20 minutes holds at least one song every five minutes, and these songs just come on sporadically and do not feel organic to the story, which ultimately makes the entire first act of the film feel extremely choppy, jumping from scene-to-scene. As well, the beginning of the film feels as if Disney was trying to pull out all of the stops and prove to you that they still had that magic touch, so they figured that they'd throw as much musical action at you within the very start of the film, and while some of the songs were good, they just ultimately didn't serve the story. Now, when Tiana is transformed into a frog by kissing Naveen, it is then that the film becomes its own.

Once frog Tiana and frog Naveen are trying to cross the bayou together, it's here that the film becomes something unlike any other animated Disney musical, while still falling into the canon. Tiana and Naveen grow closer upon their journey, whilst befriending a trumpet playing alligator, Louis, and a Cajun firefly, named Ray. What makes everything from this point on so intriguing is that it is a breath of fresh air for the rest of the film, because no other Disney film has transformed the two main characters, especially a prince into a small animal and have the actual meat and romance occur in those amphibian forms. There are a great many puns, some really fun songs, and an amazing dance between the two frogs across lilypads and through under the water of the swamps.

The music by Randy Newman was very pleasing to the ears, but none of it was really all that memorable, though it still served the story well with its jazzy-tones, evoking New Orleans in genuine splendor, and the animation, was typical Disney animation. While it is not as beautifully animated as Sleeping Beauty, it is such a joy to see Disney back in the hand-drawn realm, and I hope this is the first of many more.

Ultimately The Princess and the Frog is an enjoyable time at the movies. While the villain wasn't all that memorable (though his shadow minions were wickedly cool) and it kind of felt, especially at the beginning, that Disney was trying too hard to make you like it, the romance was well-told, there was some very entertaining music, and it results in a very charming hand-drawn movie musical from the House of Mouse that while is not their best, is far from their worst.

I give Disney's The Princess and the Frog a B!

Tron Returns and Krasinski as Captain America?

So first thing's first, Marvel is really grasping at straws if John Krasinski (Jim from The Office) is the front runner to play Captain America in The First Avenger: Captain America. John Krasinski is nowhere near buff enough or chiseled enough in his features to portray the Captain. While he'd be a good Steve Rogers before he is injected with the super soldier formula, he's gotta be able to fill out that suit, and those muscles just aren't there. While Krasinski is a fine actor, I just can't buy him as Captain America. I'm appreciative cause it's inspired casting, but not good casting, though it's still not official, but at the moment it is looking more and more like he'll nab the role.

On a lighter note, Disney has finally released the trailer for Tron Legacy, the sequel to the 1980's cult classic. I saw this trailer in 3-D before Alice in Wonderland last Friday, and it was five times better than the film I actually paid money to see. This film looks awesome. Light cycles and everything. The 3-D in the trailer didn't seem obtrusive, and I loved how stylized everything was. It looks so original for a studio production. Plus, I loved seeing Jeff Bridges return for this sequel, and I especially love how they used CG to make Bridges look younger, like he did in the '80s. Really awesome geek-out movie, I can't wait! Check it out:

Oscar Watch: Post-Show Blues

The sadness is starting to kick in. Another 365 days till we get to do it all over again. The Oscars have come and gone, and now I'm in the mourning period till about September and Oscar season starts to pick up steam once more. Regardless, it was a fun season, though towards the end there it became pretty predictable, even if you were one of those weirdos buying into the potential for surprise due to the preferential voting system (like me). The great thing is, I now know how this new method of Oscar voting works, so I can maybe repeat my record year I had with the 2009 Oscars, getting almost everything right save for Sound and Sean Penn (I went for Mickey Rourke). The 2010 Oscars, I went 14 for 21, which isn't bad, but is a big drop-off from the high I experienced last year (not to mention, Slumdog was my favorite film of '08, so I couldn't help but be ecstatic). Though looking back at this years Oscars, there were still, some definite surprises.

The biggest surprise of all was Geoffrey Fletcher upsetting the Up in the Air scribes in Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious. No one saw that coming, and if you say you did, you're lying through your teeth, cause Up in the Air was believed to be a lock. As a matter of fact, Up in the Air got zilch Sunday night, where as Precious walked away with that and Best Supporting Actress. The Hurt Locker was the definite dominant force, winning 6 out of 9 awards, but I am real surprised it beat out Avatar for the Sound categories, and it managed to pull out Original Screenplay, which it now looks as if Pixar will have to wait a little longer to finally get recognition for their screenwriting. Avatar only managed to secure three awards, and all three, aside from Cinematography, I agreed with.

Please, someone tell me how Avatar can win Cinematography? And don't tell me that the craft is still the same, having to add lighting and whatnot to the image inside the computer, cause if you're gonna use that lame excuse, then something like Up should have gotten nominated for cinematography. It's still an image. Okay, rant over, back to the post.

As for the actual show part last night, I thought it was a bit bland compared to year's past, but I found it to be an improvement over last year's show which seemed to have kind of lost the glitz and glamor that I love about the Oscars. This year, the glitz and glamor did return, and Neal Patrick Harris delivered a real showstopper to open the night, but after that, the cogs just kind of kept running their course. Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin didn't do all that much, aside from a very funny opening speech. They mostly just introduced the presenters, and that's it; it really felt as if they had less to do than the Oscar host usually does. I will say, it made me miss Ellen Degeneres, the best Oscar host ever.

One reason I felt the show was a touch bland was that there was not any real interruption to break up the constant string of awards. Now you watch the Oscars for the awards, that's a given, but I always found it nice in years past when they had the nominees for Best Original Song perform in between awards to keep things from getting stale. I really missed that last night, I think it could have really livened up the evening. Though, they did finally do something special with the Best Original Score category, which is something I had been hoping they'd do for some time now. I loved the dance troupe dancing to the five nominees' themes. It was fascinating and the definite highlight of the night for me. I really hope this process is repeated every year from now on, or at least something similar.

Actually, the most grinding part of the ceremony for me was one of the better parts of last year's show, having five fellow actors come out and talk about the five actors nominated for Best Actor and Actress. In a way, the novelty kind of wore off this year I guess, cause it just kind of droned on, not to mention the slate of presenters was nowhere near as impressive as the slate they had for these awards last year. Though, I felt the presenters as a whole did a good job the entire night, in particular Ben Stiller dressed as a Nav'i, and I thought all of the acceptance speeches were very good, in particular Jeff Bridges (save for the awkward speech given for Documentary Short).

As a whole it was a night filled with laughs, a few surprises here and there, but it wasn't the best Oscar telecast I'd ever seen, but it's definitely not the worst. So now history has been made, a woman has finally won for Best Director, and it is time to start looking forward into a new decade of Oscar. That is what I'm going to be doing over the next two weeks. Two more weekly editions of Oscar Watch and then I'll take a break and check back in at the start of the Summer to see how next year's Oscars are shaping up.

Next week I'm going to do a special Oscar Watch talking about what I want out of Oscar in this coming decade, changes and whatnot, so stay tuned. Then the following week, I will assemble, the best I can, a Best Picture ballot for next years Oscars from films that are getting a ton of buzz in the industry and could be big contenders come next awards season. Till next week!

I Am Iron Man!

I loved the first Iron Man film, and I'm not gonna lie and say I don't find sequels dicey business typically (I've been burned so many times by sequels to films I loved), but Iron Man 2 looks like it's shaping up to be one of those great movie sequels.

The latest trailer for Iron Man 2 hit the net last night after it premiered on Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel (which I found an odd place to premiere it). Anyways, the trailer was awesome. Packed with action, thrills, and some well-timed jokes. So far this year I have not been wowed by a single film, and perhaps this might be the first to take that honor. It is definitely the first film of this year that I feel I just have to see. Regardless, it looks like a marvelous time at the movies. Check out the trailer below: