THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: Blue Kitty on 06 Apr 2009, 17:45
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(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3472/3398960470_05527c04b1_b.jpg)
So which one do you like, Pixar or Dreamworks?
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While I am aware that insanely talented at dedicated people work at both places, I kind of view the difference between Pixar and Dreamworks sort of like "Entertainment" and "Entertainment That Is Also Art."
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The Iron Giant is better than all of them.
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No way, Titan A.E. is the best
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Rock-a-Doodle, Bitches. *Shot*
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The Iron Giant is better than all of them.
Directed by Brad Bird, who also wrote and directed The Incredibles, a Pixar film.
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No matter how much quirky racial humor Dream Works can incorporate into their one hour spectacles, they can't top this.
(http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/2529/nemoz.jpg) (http://img518.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nemoz.jpg)
:~)
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The Iron Giant is better than all of them.
Directed by Brad Bird, who also wrote and directed The Incredibles, a Pixar film.
The Iron Giant is better than every Pixar film.
When that giant says "superman" man, it gets me every time.
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No way I can choose. Wall-E on the one side. Kung-Fu Panda on the other ... and that was just in 2008.
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I'm not a fan of most CGI movies. Most of them are pretty shitawful. Wall-E and maybe like two others are an exception.
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The Iron Giant is better than all of them.
Directed by Brad Bird, who also wrote and directed The Incredibles, a Pixar film.
Who was also one of the key directors/animators in the early (i.e. good) seasons of the Simpsons. In other words, Brad Bird kind of rocks.
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I can't get over how RJ looks in the opening picture. He looks like he'll turn on you at any second and bite your arm off.
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I'm not a fan of most CGI movies. Most of them are pretty shitawful. Wall-E and maybe like two others are an exception.
Thats a pretty wide brush you are using there huh?
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I'm not a fan of most CGI movies. Most of them are pretty shitawful. Wall-E and maybe like two others are an exception.
Thats a pretty wide brush you are using there huh?
he's pretty much right though
The Iron Giant is better than every Pixar film.
so wrong i almost can't believe it
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he's pretty much right though
Is he?
With the exception of Cars and maybe A Bug's Life, every single film Pixar has made have been beautiful, poignant, wonderful, awe-inspiring, sad, funny, unpretentious examples of great film-making from the top down. Those other two, along with a disproportionate amount of CGI films made by other studios have at least been enjoyable, intelligent, emotionally genuine and generally solid. At the very least your average CGI film has been wildly effective amongst the target audience- I think people sometimes forget this?- kids. The only real stinkers, in my opinion, have been the two Shrek sequels, Madagascar 2 and Shark Tale.
In other words, the CGI animation studios have a far, far, far better strike rate than the major movie studios in general. What standard are you holding them to?
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As great as these two film studios are, neither of them can lay claim, what I consider, the best CGI movie to date, which is instead done by some tiny film company you've never heard of for warnerbrothers:
(http://quincylawrence.com/movieimages/mov_happyfeet_top.jpg)
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Fuck that shit to hell.
I'm sorry, but tap dancing penguins just piss me off, and turning it into a musical only made me angrier.
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Happy Feet
Then you sir haven't seen the majesty that is:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6a/Surfs_upmp.jpg)
Best surfing penguin movie bar none. I dare you to find a better surfing penguin movie.
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I don't care about studios, or what's artistic - the Madagascar Penguins fucking rawk!
"That's got to be the 2nd biggest slingshot I've ever seen... ...but it'll have to do."
(http://artlung.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/madagascar-penguins.jpg)
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Fucking Happy Feet is awesome. Also, I noticed that Cars is not in that Pixar guy's description list. This is a good thing.
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The Iron Giant is better than every Pixar film.
so wrong i almost can't believe it
Like Galileo and Darwin before me, I stand for truth in the face of cultural orthodoxy.
In the future the textbooks shall see me victorious.
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Happy Feet
Then you sir haven't seen the majesty that is:
SURFS UP
Best surfing penguin movie bar none. I dare you to find a better surfing penguin movie.
The joke is there aren't any other penguin surfing movies
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With the exception of Cars and maybe A Bug's Life, every single film Pixar has made have been beautiful, poignant, wonderful, awe-inspiring, sad, funny, unpretentious examples of great film-making from the top down.
I thought both of Brad Bird's movies were a bit pretentious, but that's just me.
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I'm sorry, but tap dancing penguins just piss me off, and turning it into a musical only made me angrier.
Because we all hate music here at QC, right guys!
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TBH, it's pretty damn rare that I enjoy a musical.
Like, I can't think of one that I like, come to think of it.
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You obviously haven't seen the Evil Dead musical.
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Or the Dayman musical from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
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With the exception of Cars and maybe A Bug's Life, every single film Pixar has made have been beautiful, poignant, wonderful, awe-inspiring, sad, funny, unpretentious examples of great film-making from the top down. Those other two, along with a disproportionate amount of CGI films made by other studios have at least been enjoyable, intelligent, emotionally genuine and generally solid. At the very least your average CGI film has been wildly effective amongst the target audience- I think people sometimes forget this?- kids. The only real stinkers, in my opinion, have been the two Shrek sequels, Madagascar 2 and Shark Tale.
In other words, the CGI animation studios have a far, far, far better strike rate than the major movie studios in general. What standard are you holding them to?
I'm holding them to the standard of good movies. Feel free to watch all the Happily Never Afters and Space Chimps and Chicken Littles and Shark Tales you like, however.
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I don't understand the original post's cartoon :[
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Anna it is a comparison / contrast. The implication is that Pixar comes up with novel and unique premises for their movies, whereas Dreamworks uses a rote formula again and again.
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As with all movie genres there are the good ones and there are the ones that slowly deteriorate your very soul with each watching.
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As with all movie genres there are the good ones and there are the ones that slowly deteriorate your very soul with each watching.
And then there's Disney, which never bothered to pretend to be original.
http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2009/04/07
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At the end of the day, we are talking about animated childrens movies.
Unfortunately something like Sleeping Beauty or Spirited Away will absolutely shit all over any CGI film ever made. I do not blame this on the medium of CGI per se, pretty much every animated childrens film to come out of Hollywood in the last ten years has been pretty shit. Disney for some reason just walked off a fucking cliff with Tarzan and has never made anything decent since.
That Disney video is interesting. Note how it seems to be mostly dancing. I think this is because they rotoscoped the dancing. Also the massive similiarities between Jungle Book and Robin Hood don't surprise me. They already recycled baloo; weren't there some sort of straightened economic circumstances? The Sleeping Beauty/Beauty and the Beast thing seems more like a homage to me also, considering that none of those other examples really seem to come out of anything other than a certain ten year period.
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Maybe if Wall-E was only half an hour long.
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I don't know, man, Wall-E was really good. Most of the classic Disney movies are children's versions of fairy tales (which did get kind of gruesome), Wall-E was at least it's own thing, and didn't have pointless musical numbers. Not that they were bad songs, but they almost never contributed to the story. 'Cinderelly' was seriously irritating, anyways.
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Wall-E was goddamn fantastic if you ask me. Put that hand-in-hand with Toy Story and I think Pixar wins hands down. That's not even bringing into question their stellar track record.
Kung Fu Panda was good, though.
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I agree with Khar here; Wall-E was pretty alright but I'm not in a rush to crown it for anything. I would also argue that the Wall-E & Eve flying through space didn't further the plot any more than Lady and the Tramp Bella Notte musical number, but I don't hear people calling for either scene to be cut; execution counts for a lot. Besides, pointing out that not every Disney film wasn't stellar hits me as dirty pool here considering the amount of projects and different crews we're talking about here.
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Disney can do whatever they like just as long as, on occassion, they give us something amazing like Hercules. That movie was and is awesome.
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Hello mr head. what's that? you want to go meet mr desk. Ok.
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Why the head desk dude?
Personally, I think that the Iron Giant is a great movie, certainly a damn sight better than a good few of disneys early "classics" (I'm looking at you 101 dalmations) but WALL-E and The Incredibles were great, easily matching it if not outdoing it.
I also think a good deal too much emphasis is placed on "classic" films from our childhoods, especially disney movies. The studio did produce a great deal of intellgent, funny material but we must remember that the first time we saw the damn things we were about 5 and excited by everything.
Personally I found that I didn't like quite a few disney movies, but hey what do I know.
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I would also argue that the Wall-E & Eve flying through space didn't further the plot any more than Lady and the Tramp Bella Notte musical number, but I don't hear people calling for either scene to be cut; execution counts for a lot.
But both of those scenes both show that the protagonists' love for the other character is no longer unrequited. It's not necessarily all of the music numbers. Some of them fit really well. Others just kinda draw attention to the fact that they don't fit very well at all.
I'm not saying Disney films are inherently worse than Pixar. I just think that a lot of them are on par with the good Disney films. I do not think Wall-E or Beauty and the Beast should've won Best Picture, but in my opinion they are both equally excellent.
Josef: Watch some of them again. They hold up surprisingly well. Nothing post-Tarzan, though.
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I watched Hunchback a few days back and discovered to my delight that I had been wrong about it being scary, in fact it was awesome.
I know they hold up well, I just don't think that they should be over-estimated in their importance.
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Why the head desk dude?
Hercules. That movie was and is awesome.
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And then there's Disney, which never bothered to pretend to be original.
http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2009/04/07
That video inspired me to spend this afternoon watching The Jungle Book and Robin Hood.
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Don't know if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but Disney is doing another old school animated movie and it might be okay (http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/princessandthefrog/). It's called The Princess and the Frog, and is directed by the same guy that directed The Great Mouse Detective, Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and ummm....Treasure Planet. So it has potential, is what I'm saying.
Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_and_the_Frog)
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That video inspired me to spend this afternoon watching The Jungle Book and Robin Hood.
I need to watch The Jungle Book again and the Hunchback.
I also will agree that Wall-E was vastly over rated. It was cute. It was quaint. It was hardly the be all and end all of all cgi movies, and hardly fantastic.
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Mixing it up with Pixar was like the smartest move Disney's made in ages. Their 2D films were just getting horrendous, save for Hercules and Basil of Baker Street (Great Mouse Detective?)
I think Toy Story will always be my favourite of them all though. It had it all, and the second one had Kelsey Grammer
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Khar is completely right though. The Pixar films can unfortunately not stand up in the slightest to truly amazing feats of animation, although the one that might even come slightly closer to reaching them (while still falling short) is Wall-E. My favorite animated films are Mulan, Hunchback, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, and I can't think of any CGi movie that even comes close to those.
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The Thief and The Cobbler is where it's at, y'all. The workprint version, anyways.
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Has anyone seen Kiki's Delivery Service? That movie was excellent.
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Can I just head off all the Miyazaki worship with the fact that Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was without a doubt the peak of his career?
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No, you can't, mostly because it wasn't. Miyazaki didn't peak in the '80s so much as he plateaued; trying to figure out whether My Neighbor Totoro or Kiki's Delivery Service is the better children's movie is little more than an exercise in inconclusive hairsplitting. Ghibli hit a high level and camped out there for quite a while and I don't really expect anything but excellence out of them.
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seconded!
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While My Neighbor Totoro is probably his best children's movie (haven't seen KDS in too long to remember), Nausicaa manages, in my opinion, to just be a great movie, period. A rich story (more of a plot than any of his other movies), his fullest exploration of "nature vs. civilization" as a theme, a cast of well-developed characters. Most of Miyazaki's movies specialize in nostalgic reverie and imaginative settings - which are great, and what he manages to achieve is excellent - but Nausicaa builds on top of that to get at something with a much broader and deeper impact.
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Miyazaki,
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Their 2D films were just getting horrendous, save for Hercules and Basil of Baker Street (Great Mouse Detective?)
I'm not sure if you've just got your chronology wrong or something, but between producing Basil the Great Mouse Detective in 1986 and Hercules in 1997, Disneys output of 2D animation includes, among others, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, neither of which, with any amount of wrangling or taking of contrary positions, could honestly be described as 'horrendous'.
Why Disney films have got so bad I'm not sure. I personally think it relates to the softening of the villains. Ironically, Disney films worked much better when the villains were just satanically evil for no apparent reason, and hardly at all funny. If you're going to create a fairy tale world full of talking animals you can't just have the villain doing slapstick routines with his henchmen. There's no dramatic tension. You can't set up a clear hero/villain dynamic (possessed by most Disney films) and then have both of them be idiots. I don't know whether Disney think that having real villains would traumatise children (I don't remember shitting myself when I was six and saw Maleficent or Chernobog. It is only a fucking cartoon after all) or whether they're cleverly injecting believability and moral greyness into the stories. The actual way to do that would of course not to have any real villains (see Princess Mononoke). Even the better Disney villains of recent years, such as Scar, were buffoons. It's hard to even condemn a lot of the early Disney films as being particularly sugar-coated (and they almost all were when compared to the originals) when you look at what they're coming up with these days.
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Oh bollocks. Somehow The Little Mermaid/Beauty and the Beast (I hesitate putting Lion King in there, merely out of personal opinion) completely skipped my mind. Forgot the Great Mouse Detective was done so damn early
Oh well, idiocy proved
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While My Neighbor Totoro is probably his best children's movie (haven't seen KDS in too long to remember), Nausicaa manages, in my opinion, to just be a great movie, period. A rich story (more of a plot than any of his other movies), his fullest exploration of "nature vs. civilization" as a theme, a cast of well-developed characters. Most of Miyazaki's movies specialize in nostalgic reverie and imaginative settings - which are great, and what he manages to achieve is excellent - but Nausicaa builds on top of that to get at something with a much broader and deeper impact.
Yeah, see, I guess I've never seen how environmental themes are supposed to have a broader and deeper impact than stories that focus more on relationships and a sense of wonder; I guess all those Captain Planet episodes didn't take, because I just don't give a shit. It's also one of the reasons I found Wall-E kind of boring; out of the whole movie, there were two semi-memorable characters; the rest were just fat identical caricatures used to hammer home the movie's platform. I can appreciate subtext and all, it just rarely moves me.
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Wait, what do you mean Nausicaa has more of a plot than any of his other movies?
I hate to be a one pipe organ here but PRINCESSMONONOKE
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Ironically, Disney films worked much better when the villains were just satanically evil for no apparent reason, and hardly at all funny.
Yeah, it's entirely possible for a character to be entertaining but to rob the movie of overall power. For example, of all the Disney films, Pinnochio probably freaked my me and my siblings out the most when we were little due to the simple fact that Monstro the whale is never presented as anything but a raw force of nature that does its level best to destroy the characters at the end of the film. Hell, even Stromboli comes across mostly as creepy and manipulative rather than just outright buffoonish; maybe he's an unbelievable caricature, but he's so obviously unpleasant that he kinda made my skin crawl. Maybe Stromboli wasn't some kind of villainous mastermind, but he wasn't funny and he didn't make me laugh. The end result is a movie universe that feels like bad things could happen in it even if everything does end up turning out OK at the end. I can't say I ever felt the same way about a character like Hades.
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Why the head desk dude?
Personally, I think that the Iron Giant is a great movie, certainly a damn sight better than a good few of disneys early "classics" (I'm looking at you 101 dalmations)
What. Your opinion is so wrong. 101 Dalmations will forever be one of my favorite movies ever. There are only two children's movies I will ever own for myself. One is 101 Dalmations, the other is Milo and Otis.
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Yeah, see, I guess I've never seen how environmental themes are supposed to have a broader and deeper impact than stories that focus more on relationships and a sense of wonder; I guess all those Captain Planet episodes didn't take, because I just don't give a shit. It's also one of the reasons I found Wall-E kind of boring; out of the whole movie, there were two semi-memorable characters; the rest were just fat identical caricatures used to hammer home the movie's platform. I can appreciate subtext and all, it just rarely moves me.
All I'm saying is that it's a theme that consistently shows up in his movies, and I think that one movie uses it more effectively than the others. Actually, that's not all I'm saying; there was more there too, don'tcha know.
Princess Mononoke was probably more plot-driven than, say, Spirited Away - but I'd say that Nausicaa was more complex. PM moved faster, while Nausicaa filled itself out better.
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Has anyone seen Fantasia?
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Hell yeah
That had the devil in it and everything.
Now that's a badass villain
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Disney did right with Fantasia. The sequel is excellent too.
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Considering Disney's catalogue of sequels, I was very surprised and happy at 2000
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Here is a list of Disney movies. Striked out are the ones I didn't see. Bold are the ones I really liked.
1. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs
2. Pinocchio
3. Fantasia
4. Dumbo
5. Bambi
6. Saludos Amigos
7. The Three Caballeros
8. Make Mine Music
9. Fun And Fancy Free
10. Melody Time
11. The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr. Toad
12. Cinderella
13. Alice In Wonderland
14. Peter Pan
15. Lady And The Tramp
16. Sleeping Beauty
17. 101 Dalmatians
18. The Sword In The Stone
19. The Jungle Book
20. The Aristocats
21. Robin Hood
22. The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh
23. The Rescuers
24. The Fox And The Hound
25. The Black Cauldron
26. The Great Mouse Detective
27. Oliver & Company
28. The Little Mermaid
29. The Rescuers Down Under
30. Beauty And The Beast
31. Aladdin
32. The Lion King
33. Pocahontas
34. The Hunchback Of Notre Dame
35. Hercules
36. Mulan
37. Tarzan
38. Fantasia/2000
39. The Emperor's New Groove
40. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
41. Lilo And Stitch
42. Treasure Planet
43. Brother Bear
44. Home On The Range
That is my opinion of Disney movies. The ones that are not bold - I either don't like them or don't really remember them enough. I can easily say my favorites are Sword in the Stone, Lion King, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Fantasia. I mean, I really like a lot of Disney movies. But some are really bad.
But when it comes to Pixar vs. Dreamworks, Dreamworks doesn't hold a candle to Pixar when it comes to animation. And most of my favorites of those have come from Dreamworks.
Don Bluth made some damn good films and so did Miyazaki. I know people have mentioned them, but they are worth mentioning again.
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Damn, did you just write that whole list out? In order?
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I copied and pasted in order!
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Hercules and Lilo & Stitch aren't bolded, I think you're missing out on a lot.
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Oh man Lilo and Stitch was bad.
And that tv show they made after. Even worse.
My little sister was really into it for a while.
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Lilo and Stitch has some really annoying parts and a few "comedic" characters it could have done without, but the struggling family stuff is surprisingly heavy for a Disney movie and overall I'd recommend it over a lot of the slop that gets crapped out for kids.
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Give me a break, I was nine when I saw it.
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Oh man Lilo and Stitch was bad.
And that tv show they made after. Even worse.
My little sister was really into it for a while.
I loved Lilo and Stitch, so much so I even bought it on DVD. But yeah, the show was freaking terrible. Japan got a hold of it and made this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfnZBdeR8N0)
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Those 60 seconds were great. Better than the film
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They messed Lilo up though.
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I can't believe people here don't like Hercules especially since this is a music-laden forum.
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I'm not seeing a connection. You realise we don't like all music ever made, right?
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Yeah, sure, okay, but this is good music. Now, I realise that that is a very personal conviction but I figured there'd be more like-minded people here ...
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Theres also the fact that many people seemingly denounced these movies because they were musicals.
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Hades didn't have a song. What was that about
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Goddamn I remember loving the fuck out of Hercules.
It's kind of depressing having that as an introduction to an awesome myth and then finding out that Herc was a bit of a dick, really.
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I remember loving Hercules, but hating the fuck out of the song Go the Distance. I would hear that fucking song every where I went.
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Man I thought Hercules was great, even if they decided to re-write mythology. Whatever it's Disney and they did a surprisingly good job of it.
My only question is this: Is the fact that that movie is never re-aired or talked about or dealt with commercially in any way really due to the "pagan"/mature nature of the subject matter? I thought I heard a rumor of that long ago, and it sadly makes sense, but I've never had confirmation.
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http://www.megavideo.com/?v=VUN52OKY
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Goddamn I remember loving the fuck out of Hercules.
It's kind of depressing having that as an introduction to an awesome myth and then finding out that Herc was a bit of a dick, really.
I hate to disappoint, but that's kind of the rule. Bronze Age male == massive, unlovable asshole.
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It all makes a lot more sense when you remember that at the time these guys probably didn't think of it as spreading epic tales so much as passing along the bronze-age equivalent of Bill Brasky stories.
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Hades didn't have a song. What was that about
I recently learned that in the original Aladdin script Jafar had more songs than he did in the final cut.
What's up with that?
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More songs for villains and less "I'll make my dream come true" songs
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Hades didn't have a song. What was that about
I recently learned that in the original Aladdin script Jafar had more songs than he did in the final cut.
What's up with that?
(http://blog.danshamptons.com/entertainment/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/seidafafdsfnfeld.jpg)
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Yeah, sure, okay, but this is good music. Now, I realise that that is a very personal conviction but I figured there'd be more like-minded people here ...
I don't even remember there BEING musical numbers in Hercules, so that shows you just how much of an impact it had on me.
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Were you taken with the love stroy to that extend?
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All I remember from Hercules is Hades, the titans and the Orpheus on steroids type bit at the end. Probably been around ten years since I saw it, because it is a pretty flat and unmagical film when you get right down to it.
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As a student of Ancient Greek and Latin I have been made to watch Hercules one time too many.....
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Danny DeVito played a satyr, and James Woods played The God Of The Underworld. Yes Please.
Also, I hate to nitpick a post from far back in the thread, but...
TBH, it's pretty damn rare that I enjoy a musical.
Like, I can't think of one that I like, come to think of it.
Rocky Horror Picture Show.
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I don't like Rocky Horror Picture Show.
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Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle and Princes Mononoke have CGI sequences in them, in fact... Princess Mononoke opens with a 3D monster :-p (check it under production at the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_mononoke).
The fact that you can't differentiate between hand painted and cgi, doesn't make it less cgi. (and by cgi i don't even mean digital painting, i mean that the maggots that come out of the monster are 3D, but rendered with a really nice cel shader)
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It doesn't really change the fact that for the most part they are 2d productions headed up by men whose practical experience lay in 2d animation. Really though, the format and tools used to produce art are really beside the point.
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(http://www.wecollect2.com/Rescuers_Down_Under.jpg)
'nuff said....
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Down Under is great, probably not in my top five, but maybe ten.
Surprised no one has brought up mickey mousing. I think that alone proves Eisenstein right.
Fantasia also rules if just for the Night on Bald Mountain portion, even if the the Pastoral Symphony is a personal favorite.
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the Rite of Spring, fool.
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Wow that just reminded me, does anyone remember An American Tail? I love the two first movies when I was little, especially since I, myself was a russian child moving to the United States at the time.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d2/AnAmericanTailPoster.jpg)
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Don Bluth would knock it out of the park each time back in those days. Between 1982 and 1989 he was basically unstoppable. Let's review...
The Secret of Nimh
An American Tail
The Land Before Time
All Dogs Go To Heaven
I don't think he ever really got it back after that, though Anastasia came close.
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Clearly Bluth does his best work when anthropomorphised cartoon animals are a large part of the production.
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The implication, before I deleted it, was that everything Don Bluth did between 1989 and 1997 sucked.
Rock-a-doodle?
Thumbelina?
Troll in Central Park?
Pebble and the Penguin?
You couldn't pay me to sit through any of those again.
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My aunt produced An American Tail oh yeahhh
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You got a problem with Rock-A-Doodle?
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You got a problem with Rock-A-Doodle?
Jumpin' JeHOsephat!
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I generally dislike anything that is derivative of a classic fairytale and to a lesser extent, musicals.
This includes quite a few Disney animated films! I find more original stories or historical derivatives much more interesting. Some of my friends still at uni are still friggin' glued to the classics and all the pastiche singing. I ask them why and they all go goo goo gaa gaa like my 8-year-old nephew does. It's a little disturbing.
Some of the latest Pixar films, though, have been top notch. I'm looking forward to seeing Up, which looks a little more meaningful like the more recent original stories.
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From a filmic and technicl standpoint those old Disney films are absolutely amazing. Snow White was the first movie to have a prerecorded soundtrack and does many interesting tricks that aren't used anymore, but if you're going for story I understand the disappointment. (Disney actually only did three fairy tales while Walt was alive)
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Khar is completely right though. The Pixar films can unfortunately not stand up in the slightest to truly amazing feats of animation, although the one that might even come slightly closer to reaching them (while still falling short) is Wall-E. My favorite animated films are Mulan, Hunchback, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, and I can't think of any CGi movie that even comes close to those.
Mulan? Seriously? Rampant Asian stereotypes are your thing? It was nearly unwatchable.
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Mulan was awesome. Likeable characters, nice dialogue, sense of humour, beautiful animation, great score. I don't think it's full of asian stereotypes as much as it is full of disney stereotypes who happen to be asian in this particular movie. The exact same characters show up in just about every disney movie with a new name and face. Make them into fish and set it under the sea, it's no longer an asian stereotype. If a movie is set in asia, it's gonna have some aspects of asian culture in there somewhere. While depicting Chinese people in China eating rice and wearing Chinese clothing could technically be considered stereotyping, I don't really think that things like this should be held against a movie. The movie would probably have been better if all the characters were wearing Levi 501s and eating hot dogs I guess, while talking in a wide variety of worldly accents.
Complaining about stereotypes in fiction is a lot like complaining about it being cloudy when it rains. Yes, it's a stereotype. It's a work of fiction. It's going to have some stereotype in there somewhere, whether it's one that offends you or not. The thing is that people desensitized to some stereotypes and not others. Either every stereotype offends you, or none do. Either way, nobody really has the right not to be offended ever, people these days seem to think they do. Something somewhere IS going to offend you. You and ONLY you. Nobody else will bat an eyelid. Some people might even enjoy it. When that time comes folks, just smile and nod.
Everybody has the right to be offended but nobody has the right not to be. Be offended and deal with it like a tolerant person.
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Mulan was overall pretty alright. At first blush, I could understand why someone may be initially be a bit taken aback by the fact the movie combines an outsider's view of Asian culture with gender politics, but frankly, that kinda thing is unavoidable when you're making an adaptation of a several hundred year old traditional Chinese poem about a young woman stepping into a traditionally male role. At the end of the day, you have to work pretty hard to paint that film as truly regressive; the only real arguments I could see people making is that the Huns don't seem very nice and that it turns up its nose at arranged marriage, a practice that is still fairly common in southern Asia.
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I'm not sure why we're talking about CGI like it's a genre. It's like saying you hate all movies made in color.
Disney's problem has always been that they're formula writers. The reason they haven't made any good animated movies lately is because their formula changed. Now, most of what Disney makes is bad live-action movies with tiny dogs/anthropomorphic animals and sarcastic kids, or terrible shows on the Disney channel with singing sarcastic kids.
I'd also like to say that Iron Giant is beautiful, and the way Brad Bird describes Vin Diesel's voice acting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1-vzNh2d14) is strangely hilarious.
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Bolt was a fucking fantastic movie, it used all the old Disney formulas but was still computer animated.
BOLT!
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Complaining about stereotypes in fiction is a lot like complaining about it being cloudy when it rains. Yes, it's a stereotype. It's a work of fiction. It's going to have some stereotype in there somewhere, whether it's one that offends you or not.
(http://www.citizenarcane.com/files/2005/May/21/cop_with_baton.jpg)
The Fuck
(http://www.insidesocal.com/outinhollywood/,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,franco.jpg)
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Mulan? Seriously? Rampant Asian stereotypes are your thing? It was nearly unwatchable.
To be fair, the Chinese didn't really say anything overtly negative about it once it got released.
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This is actually the first time I've heard criticism about Mulan in regard to the depiction of ancient China. MrBridge, I hope you wouldn't find it rude if I asked what your cultural background was?
Girls on the other hand, I've seen plenty of girls get angry about Mulan because 'in the end she got soft' and 'she says she should have been a man to accomplish things'.
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Bolt was a fucking fantastic movie, it used all the old Disney formulas but was still computer animated.
BOLT!
Agreed. The end was fantastic, I nearly cried.
EDIT: Actually, scratch that. I wouldn't say it was "fucking fantastic" but it was way better than I expected it to be and at least on par with the more middle-of-the-bunch Pixar films which would seem like damning with faint praise if it weren't for (as previously stated) the fact that even the middle-of-the-bunch Pixar films are unbelievably splendiferous.
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Bolt was a fucking fantastic movie, it used all the old Disney formulas but was still computer animated.
BOLT!
I thought it was pretty good as well. But Bolt's essentially half-way a Pixar film. It was in production during the Disney/Pixar merger when Pixar's John Lasseter became Disney's creative officer. Lasseter didn't like the direction the movie was going, and so he changed the script and replaced the director.
I don't know how much of the original Disney production is reflected in the final film, but given the top-level alterations he effected I'd imagine Lasseter's influence was significant.
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..and here's to many more.
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Regardless of that whole list thingy, and all the movies that are bolded, I have to say that there's a lot that aren't. Quite simply, the average standard of a Pixar animated film is higher than an average Disney film. Pixar makes memorable films about 70%-80% of the time. Disney movies, to me, have about a 40%-50% hit rate. (Granted, I'm a guy that's not a big fan of princess movies.)
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Man, necromancy.
Anyway, as I've said before, it's a wildly reductive thing to bring hit-miss ratio into this unless you want to start talking about eras rather than simply taking potshots at every mediocre project ever produced in Disney's 86 years of existence. "Which studio is more consistent?" hits me as a bit of a loaded question when you consider that the animation supervisor for "Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs" and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" died in a car accident 5 years before John Lasseter was even born. Don't go blaming the Aristocats on the poor guy. Remember too that once upon a time industry insiders thought that Snow White was doomed to be a financial disaster. It was every bit as audacious a project as Toy Story.