Posts for 'Family movie' Category

Disney has used mythology, historical characters, fairy tales and fables as the foundation for some amazing animated films. But, curiously for such an American icon, its also drawn on the diverse world of English literature for some of its most successful projects.


Alice In Wonderland (1951)

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland became the first animated Disney feature to use classic English literature as a bedrock. In the Disney version, elements from both the original Alice adventure and the sequel Through The Looking-Glass were combined to give a strong flavour of the Carroll's perversely warped universe.

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For nearly a decade the   Shrek   franchise is the figurehead for the unimaginative animated entertainment. Compared to Pixar, a company that seems the genre to reinvent each time it delivers another award-winning CG marvel, stand-up lite humor and constant pop culture shout-outs of tired tent pole DreamWorks’ seems to represent the antithesis originality and creativity. The good news about  Shrek: The Final Chapter  (formerly known as Shrek  After Forever ) is that for once, the creators of this series cracking try something new and fresh. The bad news is that the above attempt at innovation is still shrouded in the same old hackneyed humor.

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Canyon Lake families will be pleased to know that a favorite summer tradition is back! Taking advantage of warm evenings and a lovely setting overlooking the Lake, Friday night Movie Nights at Holiday Harbor are beginning tonight and will continue twice a month through August. Families are invited to bring their own blankets, chairs and snacks.

Tonight’s show, which begins at 8 p.m., will be “Avatar,” an epic science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, and Stephen Lang. The film is set in 2154, when humans are mining a precious mineral called unobtanium on Pandora, a lush moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system. The film’s title refers to the genetically engineered Na’vi-human hybrid bodies used by a team of researchers to interact with the natives of Pandora.

Reel People Ron and Leigh Martel gave “Avatar” a rating of A- and A respectively, saying, “’Avatar’ is 161 minutes and rated PG-13 for intense battle sequences, sensuality, language and smoking. Cameron’s meticulous illustrations display exotic plants, bizarre animals, mutant transformers and a lab even more intricate than Doppler 7000. With such spectacular cinematography, see this movie, if only to visit the dazzling Pandora.”

Paramount Pictures is using high-pressure tactics against theaters to book DreamWorks Animation's upcoming big-budget 3-D film, "How to Train Your Dragon" onto scarce 3-D screens around the country, according to industry executives.

"Dragon," opening March 26, will be going head to head against the swords-and-sandal 3-D picture "Clash of the Titans," from Warner Bros., which opens a week later, and Disney's 3-D "Alice in Wonderland," still drawing audiences and expected to remain in theaters for several more weeks.

Paramount Pictures is telling theaters that if they don't show the upcoming DreamWorks-produced "Dragon," on a 3-D screen, then it will withhold from the theater a 2-D version of the movie to play instead, according to four theater industry executives.

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It appeared to be a match made in heaven; unfortunately, things never came together properly while making what could have been a tremendous achievement. The cinema gods decided to take one of the all-time great Disney movies that is known for its obscurity and have the two kings of weird remake the project.

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have built their careers on making movies that show people things they either weren't expecting or haven't ever seen before. Speaking literally, this movie shows you plenty of things you didn't see coming. The visuals are jaw dropping on a level that competes with "Avatar," but it's not the presentation of the film that makes the movie fall short.

The movie loses its charm any time Mia Wasikowska, who plays Alice, is on screen. When your main character is the weakest link in a film, you're in trouble. She just wreaks of mediocrity. She lacks the quirk that a movie like this requires.

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Speaking of horror, director Garry Marshall's latest atrocity, "Valentine's Day," might be described as a Repression-Era Special an econo-pak of Hollywood second- and third-stringers, a couple of genuine stars (Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts), and a couple of annoying movie kids brought together by a poverty of ideas and a director whose only apparent instruction to his cast was "Act like the people in TV commercials." With enough sticky sweetness to make your teeth ache, "Valentine's Day" deploys every rom-com cliché, minus the com—there's isn't a laugh in the movie, unless you count a fleeting sequence featuring comedian Larry Miller, who's also probably the least prominent member of the cast (which includes Bradley Cooper, Emma Roberts, Jessica Alba, Patrick Dempsey, Shirley MacLaine, Hector Elizondo, Queen Latifah and George Lopez).If that lineup wasn't frightening enough, Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner are the ostensible leads, she a schoolteacher blissfully unaware that her boyfriend (Mr. Dempsey) is married; he a flower-shop owner who has just proposed, bedside, to his girlfriend (Ms. Alba), who apparently has someone do her hair while she sleeps. The foreshadowings are like billboards: When a movie woman looks thoughtful rather than delirious at the sight of an engagement ring, things don't bode well for the match. Neither does an affiancing that arrives so early in the story. As each character negotiates his/her own rocky road to romance, each of the interlocking episodes inflicts its own particular kind of pain on the viewer, who will wonder how any of this happened. So might the performers, who will have a few questions for the gods, and their agents: Taylor Swift, the multiple-Grammy-winning singer, is nothing short of mortifying as a ditzy high-school student in love with another Taylor ("Twilight's" Mr. Lautner). Jamie Foxx continues his post-"Ray" slide into self-parody. Topher Grace makes the world safe for innocuous ingénues. Director Marshall, grand poobah of the puerile and pandering, creates a shameless movie world for which no actor had to travel too far from home in Beverly Hills/Brentwood, no one seemed to have worked more than a day to complete his or her abbreviated role, and where Jessica Biel can't get a date. Right. Red, the hue that dominates this movie's palette, is the color associated with both Valentine's Day and the devil. And there's something vaguely satanic about "Valentine's Day."

It’s often been said that Jackie Chan movies are a lot like Fred Astaire movies, only with fighting instead of dancing. With Chan’s forays into Hollywood movies, this has been less true, especially as he’s gotten older (he’s nearly 56) and more valuable a commodity — thus making studios less likely to let him take the risks with his personal safety that he’s famous for.

Chan’s latest Hollywood movie, The Spy Next Door, opens tomorrow in the U.S. and a few other places, so we thought the time was ripe for a list of Chan’s other films that kids are likely to enjoy. The plots are thin and generally quite similar, and you’ll may want to mention to your kids (to avoid them becoming copycats) that while, yes, Chan did his own stunts, he got hurt a lot in the process.

Check out our list, and, after the jump, a trailer from The Spy Next Door.

5. Forbidden Kingdom - One of Chan’s more recent Hong Kong martial arts films, and one of the best, co-starring the great Jet Li and Chan’s first film with fight choreographer Woo-ping Yuen in almost twenty years.

4. The Legend of Drunken Master - It’s rated R in the U.S., but most kids over the age of eight could probably handle it: The rating is for violence, but if you don’t want your kids to watch movies with a lot of fighting, you’re reading the wrong list. Drunken Master was an instant classic, and is considered by some to be the best Kung-Fu movie ever made.

3. Rumble in the Bronx - If you’ve ever been there, you’ll find it amazing how little the Bronx looks like the Bronx (the movie was filmed in Vancouver). But you won’t care about that any more than you’ll care about the plot, which is completely predictable. The fight scenes, and many of Chan’s stunts, will just blow you away. (This movie, too is rated R, but the level of violence isn’t high enough that most kids couldn’t handle it.)

2. Shanghai Noon - As an American-made film, this is probably more accessible to English-speaking kids than the Hong Kong-made ones, as there’s only a few subtitles and no terrible dubbing to deal with. Yes, there’s some suggestive humor, but nothing worse than is in most PG-rated movies (Shanghai Noon is rated PG-13, mostly for violence). You may have to explain to your kids why it’s funny that Chan’s character chooses the name “John Wayne,” but most of the jokes are crude and obvious — in other words, perfect for kids. The sequel, Shanghai Knights, is essentially the same.

1. Operation Condor 2: The Armour of the Gods - Ignore the name — this is actually the first Operation Condor movie, though it was imported to the U.S. after its sequel. Made over twenty years ago, this is Jackie Chan at his young best. The plot is completely irrelevant — you could fast-forward through all the non-fight scenes and lose little — but the fight scenes are just brilliant.

Till a little over a year ago, Hollywood films contributed to merely four to five per cent of box office collections across India. But in 2009, business doubled. Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince, Hangover, X-Men Origins – Wolverine, 2012 and Avatar, to name a few have set the cash registers ringing.

In comparison, apna Bollywood is lagging behind with only Raaz – The Mystery Continues, New York, Love Aaj Kal, Wanted, All The Best, Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani, Paa and 3 Idiots getting the thumbs up at the ticket windows.

One reason for the turnaround could be the second season of the Indian Premiere League followed by the multiplex strike earlier this year, informs Vinod Mirani, managing editor, Box Office India, a weekly trade magazine.

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AMONG its vast ambitions, Avatar is partly about colour. It is James Cameron's first movie since Titanic went down 12 years ago, so you can bet he has a lot to say, but the primary directive might be to make a film so beautiful in its use of colour that it restores our faith in movies.

He wants us all to emerge thinking ''I've never seen that before''. He's trying both to invent new technologies and tame them as he goes - avoiding the George Lucas syndrome, where the technology swamped the stories in the later Star Wars movies.

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Took the kids to see Disney’s latest release, "The Princess and the Frog," this weekend and all of us — Dad, Mom, the kindergartner and the toddler — gave it two webbed thumbs up.

The story, of course, is a retelling of the fairy tale in which a prince is turned into a frog and can’t be released from the enchantment until he is kissed by a princess. Disney cranks up the fun factor by setting the story in 1920s New Orleans  watch for references to Packard cars, flapper fashion, Art Deco and, of course, to jazz. (Randy Newman composed the music.) 
   
While the prince is genuine, our heroine, Tiana — who makes history as Disney’s first black princess — is not royalty at all but the daughter of a laborer and a seamstress. She grows into a waitress who cheerfully takes on two jobs to save money toward her dream of opening a restaurant. At a costume ball, she’s mistaken for a princess, a plot twist that becomes key to the ending.

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