Best Animated Short - 1990

This going backwards thing certainly makes for some interesting dynamics. We're now at the first year of the 1990s, which happens to be our last year in this decade. After that we'll be going into the 1980s and 1970s and so on. The 1990s were certainly a meaningful decade for me. It was the decade where I spent most of my formative years, since I was going on five when the decade started and going on 15 when it ended. I've thought about doing some sort of a retrospective write-up of the 1990s where I'd rank each year by how good it was, along with some special memories. But I've been too lazy to get it started, and I'm sure nobody would want to read it. So I'll just be reviewing the Oscar nominated animated shorts instead.

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The Official Trailer for "Wreck-It Ralph"

It's finally here. The trailer for Walt Disney Animation Studios' Wreck-It Ralph, and I must say... This looks amazing. I've been anticipating this film for a while, and have had high hopes for it. Now, we finally have a very good trailer that's going to be playing before Brave, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted and Rock of Ages. I was afraid that Disney marketing would make us wait for a while for this one. It also has a little introduction by the voice of Wreck-It Ralph, John C. Reilly.



Everything looks great. The animation (though some of it looks a bit... unfinished maybe?), the art direction and the look of the different video game environments. We also get to see what the arcade looks like (somewhat), and tons of references to classic video games are sprinkled throughout in addition to the hilarious cameos. Most of the jokes here work, unlike most trailers for animated films. It also shows some of the cast, which is odd coming from a trailer for a Disney animated film.

This trailer shows that Wreck-It Ralph will be one of Disney's more "fun" films, but with a lot of heart and good writing, with wit to top it off. The idea of video game characters only doing what they do because it's their job does sound silly, but I have a feeling this film will approach that in an Aladdin-esque manner. It looks like an irreverent comedy, but with ambition. It reminds me of that film plus The Emperor's New Groove. This means that it'll be a sort of fun treat before Walt Disney Animation Studios' next feature, Frozen, which I am hoping is a more serious endeavor like one of Walt Disney's films.

What didn't work was the song they used, and some of it was a bit clunky in terms of editing. Overall, this is a wholly satisfying trailer. It's funny, it shows a lot of action and it gives you a good idea of what it's about. Not to mention, it bombards you with a ton of video game references. The villains' anonymous meeting (Bad-Anon) was one of the highlights of this trailer. It seems like the film is going to be a love letter to gamers and fans of classic video games. This looks like another home run for Walt Disney Animation Studios. Here's hoping the marketing takes off from there.

What are your thoughts on the trailer? Are you anticipating this film? Or not? What did you like about the trailer and what didn't you like? Sound off!

"Wreck-It Ralph" Stills

Tomorrow, the official trailer to Walt Disney Animation Studios' Wreck-It Ralph will make its debut, but as a treat of sorts before we get that trailer, four images from the film have been revealed today on USA Today. What do I think? These stills look wonderful...

Here we have the power strip in the arcade where all the games are connected. The interior of the power strip, to the video game characters, is much like Grand Central Station where characters can travel to different video games via portals. It's a very cool concept. The architecture of the inside (in the still below) is very clever, such as the portal entrances being the other sides of electrical outlet sockets. There are so many cool little details here.

In this still, we see Ralph himself trying to be a good guy. Here, he gives Pac-Man cherries to Q*Bert and the enemies in that game. This still is hilarious, because these characters are out of job due to their game being unplugged. Also, you can see tons of characters in the background, some of which are famous video game characters. Also, look at some of the headings above the portals, you can see Pac-Man, BurgerTime and others. Ralph's full design is shown here for the first time, and it's nice. It's blocky and simplistic, given the fact that he's from an 8-bit game. He looks a lot like Donkey Kong, since the original game most likely served as the inspiration for the game he comes from. (Fix-It Felix, Jr.)

This still shows Hero's Duty, the alien shooter game that Ralph gets into. The animation style resembles most of today's video games. The design of Sgt. Calhoun (voiced by Jane Lynch) is a more realistic-looking character. She lacks the caricature of a Pixar or Disney character, and I believe that's intentional given most of today's games try to be photo-real. The USA Today article gave us a bit of this character's background, in that her husband was eaten at the altar on her wedding day! The look of the game, as seen in the early concept art, is very dark and sci-fi-esque, a mix of Tron, first-person shooters and most of today's games. The use of a HUD for this still was a nice effect, too.

The last still shows the candy-coated world of Sugar Rush, and Vanellope von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman), who looks more like a character you'd see in a Disney animated film. The still doesn't show much of the video game she lives in, but it looks very colorful.

These stills show that the film is indeed ambitious, with different looks for the video games. The overall animation is very good, and the character designs? Wonderful. This will be another home run for the Mouse House. I've been looking forward to this film for a while, and these stills are very satisfying. What do you think of the stills? Sound off!

Randy Johnson's 300th Win - 3rd Anniversary

And now for something completely different.

My other interests besides animation is baseball, and one of my favorite things about baseball is keeping track of pitcher wins, even though that has become one of the most useless stats. In addition to following the baseball scores every night, I also make sure to pay attention to the winning and losing pitchers so I can follow their career record, as they make the long and often futile trek to the most glamorous and also most elusive of the pitching milestones: 300 wins. Well today is the 3rd anniversary of the last time any pitcher reached the 300th win milestone, and I had the opportunity to be present and witness baseball history. This would be something nice that any baseball fan would enjoy, but it was extra special for me because I had been a die-hard fan of the 300-win milestone since 2005. I obsessed over the moment for around a year afterwards, collecting as much memorabilia from the milestone as I can (including the crown jewel: a game-used baseball), and watched the game enough times to remember every single play (although never to the point where I recall every pitch.) The furor reached a point where I wrote a massive six-part series on my other blog coinciding with the 6-month and 12-month anniversary. The fascination has died down since then, and I don't feel like writing another 80,000 words anymore. However, on this the third anniversary, I would like to share my posts about the milestone from back in 2009-2010.

Part I: The Introduction
Part II: The Player
Part III: The Set-up
Part IV: The Rainout
Part V: The Game
Part VI: The Aftermath 

Pictures from the big day after the cut.

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A Brighter Future for the Mouse House?

With Alan Horn becoming the Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios in eight days, some changes have already taken place over the last few days at the Mouse House and more should come. Changes for the better, perhaps.

For starters, the Jerry Bruckheimer tentpole, Lone Ranger, has been pushed back to July 3, 2013. Originally slated for release on May 31st, Disney made a wise decision to move it. It'll be opening against Despicable Me 2 and a 3D re-release of Independence Day (which I personally believe wasn't necessary). This is good because May 2013 is packed: Disney's own Iron Man 3, Fox/Blue Sky's Epic, Universal's sixth Fast and the Furious film (does it even have a title?), Warner Bros.' The Hangover Part III and the Star Trek sequel, not to mention all of the June releases that would come right after it.

Lone Ranger is a real risk, ever since Disney green lit the project. Westerns are a hard sell these days, though True Grit did very well (the Oscar buzz probably helped out a lot) and Rango was a moderate success. In order to keep the Western genre going in this day and age of special effects-laden action films, Lone Ranger has to be somewhat of an enjoyable film and Disney needs to market it with confidence. With a $215 million budget, Disney is in a bit of a predicament with this film. It needs to be a breakout hit at this rate. With that, Horn might help the problematic film. They began filming back in March, but we don't know if the film will be good or not. If it's not good, that'll go against Horn's note to Disney when he came on board: "Just make good movies".

The other film that was moved was Marvel's Thor 2, which has been delayed a few times before that. Originally slated for July 26, 2013, it was moved to November 15, 2013 with Phineas and Ferb taking its place. With the breakout success of The Hunger Games, the people at Disney realized that the sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, is heavy competition for Thor 2. The film was moved forward to November 8th, which is the same day DreamWorks' Me and My Shadow is opening. I have a feeling one of them is going to move, and I think it's going to be DreamWorks' film. Why? DreamWorks broke their early November release tradition with Puss in Boots last autumn, changing the release date to late October very late in the game. It was a success, so DreamWorks can do the same with this film in order to avoid the heavy competition, because November 2013 is packed.

Thor 2 is poised to be a smash hit, coming off of The Avengers, but it'll be interesting to see how Iron Man 3 fares next May. It's coming so soon after The Avengers, will people think that's overkill? Or will the excitement generated by The Avengers make them race to see it? Captain America 2 isn't out until April 4, 2014. I have a feeling that under Horn, these films will be satisfying. Marvel seems to imply that they want Iron Man 3 to be Marvel's best film yet. That's a tall order, and right now, it looks like the film is jam-packed. That said, this could turn out to be a great third entry in the series. Also, when do you think we'll get a trailer for this film? Steven Spielberg's Robopocalypse also got moved from 2013's competitive summer to April 25, 2014, where it should kick off the summer season, if Captain America 2 doesn't already do this. Then again, that could move too.

That said, Horn is obviously going to make sure that Disney's live action output will be an improvement. No more failed tentpoles or mediocre big budget films. This is Disney's chance to give audiences and critics what summer blockbusters aren't giving them. Horn is aiming to unite the individual studios, as they were divided by Ross' poor management.

Most importantly, how will Horn oversee Walt Disney Animation Studios' projects? Under Rich Ross, Rapunzel became Tangled, and The Snow Queen was retitled Frozen because the attitude was "Young boys don't want to see girly princess movies". Surely bad marketing can't be to blame, right? Perhaps Horn will realize that poor marketing killed The Princess and the Frog, not the fact that young boys were trying to avoid a "girly princess movie". Maybe Frozen will be retitled The Snow Queen, since they have a lot of time to change the title. I think they should. Here's hoping that he also makes sure that the marketing department puts their all into marketing their forthcoming feature film events. They need to bring the "event status" back to Disney's animated features, something that should've happened when Bolt came out in November 2008. Perhaps Wreck-It Ralph could be that film, since Tangled was a smash hit.

The home video division also needs a facelift. Take the Diamond Editions for example, the Blu-ray successors to the Platinum Edition series that Disney launched in 2001 and ended in 2009. The first two titles, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Beauty and the Beast, are great 2-disc sets. Bambi and The Lion King? Only one Blu-ray disc, with most of the bonus materials on the Second Screen app, while not having all of the bonus materials from the previous editions. Other films, like in the past, usually get poor treatment for their home video releases. Hopefully this will all change and we'll get great Blu-ray releases for all of their notable films, animated and live action. Also, hopefully this annoying trend of packaging the not-so-popular Disney animated classics (The Fox and the Hound, Pocahontas) with their horrible direct-to-video sequels will come to an end immediately, because I'm not buying something like The Hunchback of Notre Dame if it's comes with the dreadful direct-to-video sequel whenever that hits Blu-ray.

As for Pixar and Marvel, things should not change much. Pixar still has three original ambitious projects in the works, and Marvel's pipeline is loaded. They'll deliver good films consistently, and that's what Horn is looking for. He also hopes to "keep the waters calm". He has a big mess to clean up, one left by Rich Ross. I have a feeling that he'll wash all of that away during his run. What do you think?

Paperclips: The Look of "Paperman"

In the second "Paperclips" video, director John Kahrs talks about the look of Paperman, which has been getting acclaim all around lately. I'm certainly looking forward to it.

It's a beautiful-looking short film already, and it's very stylish. It's nice to see Walt Disney Animation Studios experimenting with different styles of animation in the hand-drawn realm. With short films like this, hopefully this experimentation will find itself in their feature films.

Paperman will be attached to Walt Disney Animation Studios' upcoming film, Wreck-It Ralph. November 2nd. That'll be a double-bill to remember. Are you looking forward to this short? Sound off!

Blue Sky's "Leaf Men" Retitled, Cast Announced

Yesterday, 20th Century Fox has announced (along with an upcoming slate that includes an untitled X-Men sequel and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) that Blue Sky's upcoming animated film Leaf Men has been re-titled. It is now called Epic. Seriously... That is a dreadful title change. It says nothing of the story, and plus, Leaf Men was a much more interesting title. This is more insulting than Disney's recent title changes. Leaf Men was a great title, plus it was the title of the book.

It seems like animated films based on books by William Joyce seem to get pretty disappointing title changes. A Day with Wilbur Robinson was retitled Meet the Robinsons. The Guardians of Childhood? We get the generic-sounding Rise of the Guardians for the film adaptation. What gives? Anyways, I personally think Epic is just a horrible title change for this film, but it may work in the long run. Still, Leaf Men sounded better and it was more interesting.

The cast was also unveiled. The film stars Beyonce, Steven Tyler (seriously, is he going to play a rock and roll wasp or something?), Colin Farrell, Johnny Knoxville, Aziz Ansari, Pitbull and Josh Hutcherson, among others. I can't say what I think of the cast, since there's no trailer for this film yet, but it seems like a DreamWorks-y star-studded cast. I haven't read the book, but it seems like they are going the typical "it has to be a comedy" route with this. That said, I can't say until I see a trailer. The plot synopsis, which involves a teenage girl finding herself in the world where the film takes place, as she joins the bugs and creatures to fight evil, is still interesting nonetheless.

Epic opens on May 24th. We should be getting a trailer for the film soon.

What are your thoughts on this title change? Do you like it? Or do you think it's an awful change? Are you still looking forward to the film? Sound off!