Showing posts with label Animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Animation. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Alice's Egg Plant (1925)

The Alice series were early Walt Disney live action / animation hybrids. 


Alice (Anne Shirley) and Julius the cat are the owners of an egg factory. Unfortunately, the hens are a bit lazy so Julius has to keep them hard at it. Then a new hen arrives, Little Red Henski from Moscow who is going to try and bring communism to the egg plant!

An unexpectedly political little film, we were only a few years into the Russian Revolution. Whether kids would get it though is a good question.



Thursday, August 24, 2023

The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976)

The Gaulish comic hero reaches the big screen, with good effect, by Toutatis!

Julius Caesar's Roman legions have conquered Gaul, well all except a small village which is holding out against the might of Rome thanks to a magic potion created by their druid. This allows the villagers, especially our heroes Asterix and Obelix to defeat Roman attacks time and time again thanks to the super strength granted by the magic potion.

Caesar tires of the Gauls, whom some Romans call gods, and challenges them to twelve tasks a la Hercules. If Asterix and Obelix can complete all of the tasks then Caesar will surrender, if they fail then the villagers will become Rome's slaves...

This is a fun adaptation of the indomitable Gauls which stays true to the storyline on the whole and is very entertaining. An inventive story, i especially liked the bureaucratic task. Voice actors in the English version include Sean Barrett and Michael Kilgarriff and they do an excellent job. 

Thursday, June 29, 2023

Alice Gets Stung (1925)

Another early Walt Disney animation / live action hybrid.


After an innovative if perhaps slightly overlong chase between a cat and a rabbit, Alice (Virginia Davis) appears on the scene to help Julius the cat get the rabbit which has continually outsmarted him. Alice also tries to hunt bears and ends up getting trapped in a barrel with a beehive (hence this short feature's name)...

So, a short animation feature mostly involving animal hijinks and dancing, with Alice appearing and interacting with the characters. It is quite clever and inventive, just not that funny maybe because the storyline is ultimately somewhat cruel. 




Friday, May 5, 2023

Alice the Whaler (1927)

Another of Walt Disney's early Alice animation / live action hybrids.

Alice (Lois Hardwick) is dancing aboard a ship with a crew of animals. The chef is a cat, for example, with a mouse as his sous chef tasked with peeling the potatoes! To be honest there isn't much plot in this film, it mostly consists of animals dancing and the occasional hijinks. The mouse plays the biggest role and isn't a very sympathetic character.

Ultimately there isn't a great deal to this short film and it isn't really that good. The Alice series of films was running out of steam but fear not, Mickey Mouse was about to make his screen debut for Disney and that changed everything.

Friday, March 17, 2023

Alice's Day at Sea (1924)

One of the earliest Walt Disney films, this is a comedy short which mixes live action and animation.

Alice (Virginia Davis) and woken up by Peggy the dog and heads off to the seashore. When she is there she hears a story of an old shipwreck and then dreams of visiting a mysterious world under the seas including an underwater zoo!

Although not the first to be made this was the first Alice film to be released and is a fun little thing with it's mix of styles. There isn't much to it but it has a bit of charm. It is probably most notable for historical reasons though. 

Friday, December 30, 2022

Attack of the Super Monsters (1982)

These arn't just any old monsters, these are super monsters!

Evil Lord Tyrannos leads the Dinosaurs back to the surface of the Earth, having been living deep underground in secret all these years. He unleashes his monsters and waves of terrestrial mammals mutated by his evil powers on Earth to destroy mankind. He starts with a wave of red dogs. The only thing that can save humanity is, of course, four teenagers! Two of which have the Gemini power which means they merge using cyber power to become a super flying machine with drills.

You might have guessed by now that this is Japanese. The monsters are played by guys in rubber suits, destroyed cardboard buildings. The rest of the footage is anime and it can be a bit jarring at times switching between the two.

This film is made up of four episodes of a TV series (Dinosaur War Izenborg), each episode following the same formula so we get quite a bit of repetition. It is great fun though doesn't make a lot of sense, Tyrannos sounds terrific, though he it does seem like he needs something for his sore throat.

Monday, January 22, 2018

The Transformers: the movie (1986)

The Transformers: the movie was an animated feature to help sell the toys... i mean tell the remarkable story of the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons...

The film is notable for some of the actors who lent their voices to the characters, especially Orson Welles who voiced Unicron. Amazingly this was the great man's last role. Other stars who you can hear in this film are Leonard Nimoy, Casey Kasem and Eric Idle. Not many films can boast that kind of line-up!

The story itself is decent enough with nothing too innovative. The film flows well though your attention may wander after a while, what works as an half hour long TV episode does not necessarily translate into an hour and a half long movie. A problem with the film, i feel, is that it was too much like the TV series...

Visually however it is still a treat and the soundtrack... well if you like late 80s US heavy metal then you'll love it. Otherwise you may want to bring ear plugs. Personally i love it and own the OST too.

Overall its a decent enough animated film. Maybe it didn't work as a movie that well but it certainly was light years ahead of the endless CGI-fests that are the Transformers movie experiences today.