Things are slowly getting back to normal around here. I’m preparing a schedule for the week of October 30, and will post it this coming Sunday. If I’m really lucky, I may even find time to see some movies.
Two movies that I did manage to see recently were Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (parenting does have its responsibilities–and its pleasures). How strange and delightful that we have two stop motion animation features in wide release simultaneously. In this day of computer animation, when conventional Hollywood wisdom states that traditional cell (drawn) animation is dead, who would have expected such a resurgence of stop motion?
If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, stop motion animation involves manipulating actual, physical models. You move the model a tiny bit, shoot one frame of film, move it a little more, shoot another, and so on. It takes years to shoot a feature that way.
Hollywood has seldom used stop motion as the primary medium for an entire film. Cell animation features were popular from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937 until very recently, but stop motion was used primarily for special effects in otherwise live action movies. Okay, the animation was King Kong’s primary attraction, but animator Willis O’Brien’s giant ape shared the screen with a real, flesh-and-blood Fay Wray.
When Jurassic Park skipped stop motion entirely for computers, it looked as if the old ways were over (dinosaurs had always been a stop motion specialty). But here we have them–two new Hollywood movies done entirely with stop motion animation (okay, not entirely; there’s some CGI in both of them, but not much). It just goes to show: The newest technique isn’t always the best.
For what it’s worth, I liked both movies, but liked Wallace and Gromit a whole lot more. If you can judge a comedy purely on how much laughter it pulls out of you, it’s a great comedy.
And speaking of things pulled out of me, here are some recommendations and noteworthy films for the coming week:
Recommended: Grizzly Man, 4 Star, ongoing. Werner Herzog’s fascinating nature documentary (well, more of an anti-nature documentary) about Timothy Treadwell, a failed actor and untrained naturalist who lived peacefully with Alaska’s grizzly bears for 13 summers until one of them ate him. You don’t learn much about bears here except “Keep your distance,– but you learn a lot about Treadwell, who comes off as manic, enthusiastic, charismatic, delusional, and paranoid.
Recommended: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Presidio, ongoing; Balboa, opening Friday. An eccentric inventor, his long-suffering dog, snooty aristocrats, cute bunnies, and whole lot of clay make up the funniest movie of the year. I vote for putting this G-rated, claymation extravaganza on a double-bill with Monty Python and the Holy Grail; two hilarious British comedies with killer rabbits.
Recommended: Singin’ in the Rain, Stanford, Friday through Sunday. In 1952, the late twenties was a fond memory of an innocent time, and nostalgia was a large part of Singin’ in the Rain’s appeal. The nostalgia is now gone, and we can clearly see this movie for what it is: the greatest musical ever filmed, and perhaps the best work of pure escapist entertainment to come out of Hollywood. Just don’t take its story–about the talkie revolution–seriously as film history.
Recommended: March of the Penguins, 4 Star, opening Friday. Yes, emperor penguins are very cute and extremely funny, Luc Jacquet offers plenty of footage to make you laugh and sigh, but he goes beyond that, showing the tremendous hardships these birds endure to raise their young. No living creatures are as adorable as penguin chicks, and Morgan Freeman is the best celebrity narrator since Orson Welles.
Noteworthy: Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, Act 1 & 2, Friday and Saturday, midnight. I couldn’t let this one by after talking so much about stop motion animation. One of the few features done in this format before CGI hit it big–and made by the same folks as Corpse Bride. I saw this movie when it was new, and liked it, but not enough so that I can wholeheartedly recommend it on the strength of a 14-year-old memory.
Recommended: Bride of Frankenstein, Castro, Wednesday and Thursday. “Sequels are always inferior to the original,– they say. And I respond “Go see Bride of Frankenstein.– Karloff’s tragic monster is an innocent yet angry child, trapped in a huge and frightening body. Ernest Thesiger chews the scenery as a high-camp mad scientist who makes Doc Frankenstein look tame by comparison. And Elsa Lanchester sports filmdom’s most famous hairdo. On a double-bill with Frankenstein, the still-pretty-good original that Bride surpasses.
Bayflicks 