Movie Review: Rise of the Guardians

When I initially heard about this project I wasn't that interested in when it was announced, heard a bit more about it and was interested, once it came out I noticed that people were only talking about the art/how dreamy the characters were (which, while not necessarily a bad sign, isn't usually a good sign about the art), and then decided to see it with a friend once I was done with finals. So here I am now, my friend and I were actually the only ones in the theater when we saw this so we were free to snark all we wanted (which turned out to be a good thing since there was a lot of snarking....)


Rise of the Guardians

Summary: Santa Claus (North), the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman are the four guardians of childhood but with the Boogeyman (Pitch) growing stronger and stronger the mysterious Man in the Moon tells them that there is now a fifth guardian, Jack Frost. Jack is as confused as the rest of them, he doesn't remember his past and nobody believes in him so nobody can see him, how in the world is he supposed to help save it?

The Good: There was a lot of decent to amusing humor in this film (while it felt like it was a little much at times it didn't feel nearly as forced as say the humor in Brave did) and it was a new and interesting take on characters like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. The film looked great, more on the later, and if we're calling it a Christmas movie (I'm not sure since it's actually set right around Easter) it's one of the best Christmas movies I've seen, normally I can't stand that little genre. The plot, while not complicated, did have some good bones to it, but it was buried under a lot of not so good stuff....    

The Bad: I saw some people say that if you see this movie you see it for the art not the plot, that I think was the understatement because holey moley, my friend and I were convinced that this movie went through multiple directors because of how all over the place it is (which isn't the case so I'm more confused). The action scenes, while cool looking (I've seen some people call it the kiddie version of The Avengers) go on way too long, some of them probably could have been cut altogether, and the final battle really didn't make that much sense. Afterwards I went online to compare the movie to the original books it was based on (which it turns out are set 200 years earlier) and man I wish they had kept some of the stuff about the characters in there, they had some rather interesting backstories. And speaking of characters, Jack Frost is as flat a main character you can get. I hardly know what his personality is like (other than "mischievous" and really he barely does anything like that), no wonder he's confused about being made a guardian, I'm confused too. Confused sums up my feelings on this whole movie, how in the world was this supposed to work as a cohesive story with so little exposition (either told or shown)?

The Audio: Sooo, my friend and were I debating who had the worse accent, North or the Easter Bunny, and it turns out that Hugh Jackman (an actual Australian) voices the Easter Bunny so I guess my friend won (Alec Baldwin apparently can't do a very good Russian accent, if I didn't know he was supposed to be Russian I wouldn't have been able to guess). Jack sounds much too old but oddly enough I got used to his voice rather fast, Pitch's voice seemed a bit off though (Tooth for the record sounded just fine from the get go). Didn't really pay attention to the soundtrack that much, I was too distracted by the pretty.

The Visuals: Yes this movie looks really great, apparently Dreamworks had to come up with new software for all of the sand special effects (which I think they even released as freeware in hopes that the rest of the industry will use it as well) and honestly the only time I thought it looked weird was North's beard. Specifically, it didn't look like it was growing out of his chin but rather pasted on, and out of an hour and a half long movie that's my only compliant which is rather fantastic.


In the end I give this movie 2.5 stars out of 5 and don't plan on seeing it again (unless it's a fancut where they cut down all the action scenes, god know how short the movie will be at that point then). So, I'm in a bit of an awkward position since the rest of the internet seems to adore this film and it's no secret that it hasn't made nearly the money Dreamworks was banking on and at this point the planned sequels may easily fall through (see, cutting down those action scenes would have helped in multiple ways!). I'm seeing a lot of people saying to see it anyway because of the potential in the film but did I see potential? Potential is what I see in a webcomic where there's one author-artist who may or may not have a critique partner who is fumbling along learning how to write, edit, and illustrated at the same time. But when you have a project with tons of people involved, enough people that no one person has to do all these things and where there are people to say "no this isn't quite right, let's rethink this" then I don't want to see potential, I want to see the actual thing. And I didn't really see potential here, I saw a very confused movie which doesn't quite work and, well, I can't really recommend it, sorry folks. 

Movie Review: Wreck-It-Ralph

First off really fast, my blogging schedule. I'm going to try and get a review up every day this week with the Tuesday and Thursday reviews being the books I should've covered last week. After that I'll go back to the special five-a-week schedule (regular four posts+an extra book one on Wednesday so I can cover everything I've seen/read this year before midnight, January 1st), now to see if I can actually pull that off with exam week....

Got a chance to see this over the Thanksgiving break with some friends and I went in cautiously optimistic that I would like it. I was amused at how Disney was making a more Pixar-esque film (in terms of plot and art) and how Pixar had made what was literally a Disney Princess movie this year, an interesting switch but after seeing Brave I was already convinced that Disney got the better end of this deal.


Wreck-It-Ralph

Summary: Ralph is the villain of the video game Wreck-It-Ralph where he destroys an apartment building until the games hero, Fix-It-Felix Jr swoops in to save the day and Ralph is thrown off the building. After 30 years of this he's rather tired with his position and wants to be accepted (not feared) by the other characters in the game and when one casually says that if Ralph had a medal they'd accept him he's off playing through other games for a medal. But of course it's not that simple, crossing games is allowed but frowned upon and if he's gone for too long his own game might get canned and then everything will be ruined for good!

The Good: Wow, there were more references and puns in here than you could shake two sticks at, I'm sure once the movie comes out on DVD/BR that plenty of people are going to be going frame through frame in some scenes to see all the easter eggs. The story wasn't especially inventive but it worked fine, Ralph was sympathetic enough to be likable and the humor worked well, from the self-referential bits to the situational humor I enjoyed it a lot. Also, I'm getting dangerously close to a spoiler so that's all I'll say, I'll admit I didn't watch a lot of trailers so I might have just missed this but the PR people did a really good job keeping a bit detail from the climax from leaking out and (while it was foreshadowed well enough that I wasn't surprised, the way a good story should be) it's been a while since I didn't have a really good guess how the movie would go when I started watching it and I enjoyed that.  

The Bad: I was a bit unhappy with the climax since I thought I knew what was going to happen and then the movie did something different which I thought was much more predictable and boring*. I found it a little odd that the theme of the movie seemed to be "accept yourself and you'll be happier" (considering that Ralph had a good reason to be unhappy in the beginning) but I guess I'll give Disney the benefit of the doubt there?

The Audio: Not much to say music wise here, I had heard Owl City's credit theme before the movie but thought it worked a lot better with the movie than on it's own oddly enough and didn't really pay attention to the rest of the soundtrack. As for the acting, I feel like I'm going to get in trouble for this but I didn't like Vanellope's voice. It wasn't badly acted, the opposite actually, but her tone was really grating for me and I wish it had been just a bit different so it was more bearable. Didn't have any real opinions on anyone else, all of the acting was just fine, I simply have a lower tolerance for high pitched, squeaky female characters than most cartoon fans it seems.

The Visuals: I liked how they translated Ralph's 8-bit world into a more fleshed out 3D world yet still gave it a similar visual style (like the characters' jerky ways of moving around). Everything in this movie looked great actually, I already talked about the truckloads of easter eggs that were dumped in which I think helps sum up how this movie looked, it was super detailed and well thought out design-wise (at the very least) and I would catch this movie again with friends just for a chance to see what I missed the first time around.


Oh and some quick thoughts on the Paperman short before the movie (since I saw a lot of people saying they liked it more than the movie itself): eeeeeeeh. It's a romance and a romance in less than 10 minutes, there's a limit to what you can do there and (as an un-romantic person, comparatively speaking) that means there's a limit to how much I'll be amused by it. I do really like the art style they used, it was a combination of 2D and 3D which looked a bit rough in places but overall was rathe nice and I wouldn't mind seeing more shorts (or a feature film) in that style, just not a romance please.

In any case, as I said, I'd see the movie again to look at it but otherwise I think I'm good. Don't have a burning desire to rewatch it/buy it, although I will recommend it to people who haven't seen it yet and like animated movies, I'm just not as passionate over it as I am over other things. Hmm, now that I think about it, I wonder what movies Disney is putting out next year, the Monster's Inc prequel (which good lord came out when I was in elementary school) and I wonder if there's anything else....


*since this involves the climax of the movie, SPOILERS. Basically I thought the way they would clear out all the bugs would be to have Vanellope cross the finish line which would reset the game, fix everyone's memories, and kill all the bug easily. I can understand why they instead made Ralph have an (almost)heroic sacrifice, he's the hero of the movie after all, but instead of having a girl save her own world they had an outside guy come in and do it, hopefully that phrasing explains why I was miffed that the movie took a much more boring way out. 

TV Series Review: The Legend of Korra

I have decided to start my end of spring/beginning of summer reviews a week earlier than planned since once again I looked at my list of shows and realized at this rate I'm not going to finish up until August (as it is I might have to start reviewing two shows a week, we shall see) and since I finished up Korra about 12 hours before I finished Fate/Zero 2 it's up first! Obviously I haven't had a chance yet to get along with my re-watch of the first show but given that the second season is still in production (so I'm not expecting it before fall 2013 to be completely honest) it'll give me something to do during the break.

The Legend of Korra

 Summary: 70 years after the end of the first series and 17 years after the death of Aang, the new Avatar Korra has masted water, earth, and fire bending and is eager to start her airbending training (despite the fact that she is the complete opposite of spirituality from Aang and as a result has never been able to airbend). But Tenzin, Aang's son and the only airbending master in the world, has other matters on his plate since he is also in charge of governing a new nation, Republic City (formed from the oldest Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom whose cultures had become so entwined it was decided that it was better to let them continue to co-exist than separate), where anti-bender sentiments are on the rise. Korra decides that she will go to him then and gets entangled in pro-bending, romance, and politics.

The Good: I will admit that Korra isn't a terribly original character if you were to genderflip her, she's rather similar to a lot of shonen protagonists, but I still do love the concept of having a late teenaged, female, not-white, protagonist of a show, not in a school setting, who is, well, brash and young for lack of a better phrase. I do believe Korra grows in the show, not tons but certainly some, but more than that I do hope her presence of tv (combined with stuff like The Hunger Games and Brave) show off that yes, people will watch action shows with a female lead. I do like a lot of the characters on this show regardless, Asami in particular (I do like how she and Korra were female characters but more nucanced than "one is a girly-girl and the other is a tomboy") but also some of the older cast including Tenzin and Lin Bei Fong. I also loved the setting, partially because (as I have made it clear before) I love the 1920s as a setting and technology was always a part of the original show from very early on so I didn't find it jarring. Finally I was amazed at just how political a kids show got to be (yes people, this is rated Y7 or youth, seven year olds, Nick is clearly crazy) and those episodes were my favorite ones of the show. 

The Bad: One big thing that the internet has been practically screaming about for the past few days, yes this show had some serious pacing issues which were most apparent in it's finale. Given how well the original show was paced I cannot believe that the creators weren't aware of the problems here (which I know I know, doesn't make it better) and, based on some information from interviews, I do wonder who made the final call that the show should be 12 episodes instead of 20, Nick or the creators. Again the finale had the most trouble here, it also created some problems with the romantic subplot I wasn't as happy about (although I have no trouble with that subplot as a whole) and I desperately hope that the second season ties up some of the loose ends here otherwise I will be unhappy with it. The show simply had too many things it tried to include (hence my thoughts that it was the decision of Nick, not of Bryke, to make the show only 12 episodes) yet I cannot figure out a way to cut anything major in order to help with the pacing.

The Audio: The Track Team returns in to continue composing for the show and, while I don't think they quite suceeded with the premise of "if jazz was invented by the Chinese" the tracks were gorgeous regardless. There are some more jazzy pieces in this series and there are plenty that make full use of the more traditional instruments that serenaded the original show and really hope that the music gets a full release this time around. As for the voice acting, I didn't like some of the voices oddly enough (Older!Aang and Older!Toph sounded off to me and Dante Basco's character sounded at least five years younger than they looked) but overall I liked the main cast and thought they did a good job throughout.

The Visuals: While there were several shows airing this season that had some great looking fight sequences, such as Fate/Zero 2 and Accel World, they often had so many effects and fast cuts that the fights themselves were almost hidden from the viewer and at times it was hard to tell how good looking everything was. Korra never had this problem and was able to show off it's amazing choreography to the fullest and even when the characters weren't fighting there was a great amount of detail in the backgrounds. I do wonder if Nick plans to release this show on BR (given that the original show was released on DVD I do believe there is at least a DVD release planned down the line), although I'm not 100% sure that the visuals are enough to make me choose a BR over a DVD.

In short, I still love the show but there are certainly problems with it (outside of the finale the biggest problem is that there weren't any downtime episodes to get character development, I think Asami probably had more than Mako and certainly more than Bolin did) but hopefully those next 14 episodes will help. Fingers crossed in any case! 

TV Series Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book One: Water)

So, back in 2005 I had just recently been introduced to Miyazaki and had been seeing a lot of advertisements on Neopets for a new, American cartoon airing on Nickelodeon called Avatar: The Last Airbender. So I sat down to watch it the first night it aired and it was a bit different than I had expected, which was okay, but it hadn't quite grabbed me. The third episode wasn’t what I expected at all, I had been expecting something like Pokemonwhere the villain, Prince Zuko, chases the characters across the world in strange hijinks every week, not genocide and seeing other characters who Zuko went up against who seem like the real villains. So I kept watching and then the mid-season episode, “The Spirit World” happened. By this point I was already enjoying the show and, since this was the age of nigh-nu-programmable VHS players, I had to resort to watching this episode as I babysat a two year old neighbor instead of missing the episode and the bits that I caught blew my mind. The idea that the series would have a clear and concise beginning, middle, and end and that the episodes would not be random ones that could be watched out of order but rather following a cohesive plot was completely new to me and I loved it and that's what kept me coming back for the next three and a half years.

So where does that leave this review? Well, despite being a huge fan of the series I’ve never re-watched it entirely and there are a number of episodes I’ve only seen once so I had planned on re-watching the whole show before The Legend of Korra premiered. However, since Nick only announced the show a month before it’s air date (given their other, scheduling issues in the past, I thought I’d have a few months heads-up) that didn’t happen so now I’m trying to balance it out with everything else I’m watching. So here's the first season of the first show with both my current thoughts on the show and remembering how this seemed to a 13/14 year old with no experience with long form stories being told in anything other than books or magazines and certainly no experience with cartoons actually looking good.   

Avatar: The Last Airbender (book one, water, re-watch)

Summary: In another world there is a very specific kind of magic that allows people to manipulate one of the four elements (water, earth, fire, or air) called bending. Out of all these benders there is only one person who can control all four elements at once, one who is the reincarnation of the planet itself’s spirit (fittingly called The Avatar). But something has gone wrong, one hundred years ago the Fire Nation declared all out war on the rest of the world (the two Water Tribes, the great Earth Kingdom, and on the four Air Nomad temples) and completely wiped out the air nomads, the nation the avatar had recently reincarnated into and the avatar vanished. Things have been bleak ever since, that is until two kids from the Southern Water tribe, siblings Sokka and Katara, discover the avatar encased in an iceberg, named Aang, and set off to train him in the other elements so that he can save the world.

The Good: Re-watching the show I was surprised to see just how sarcastic the characters were all the time (I remembered that Sokka was, it’s in his nickname, but not how snarky Katara and even Aang could be) and the dialogue really felt like something my friends or I would have said in high school which is really hard to pull off. The characters do act rather mature for their age, to the point where it’s odd to see Aang act more like a 12 year old (especially compared to the later seasons), but they never seemed so mature that it jolted me out of the show. In addition to all of that (and as I mentioned earlier, a sturdy central plot) the show never treats it's viewers like idiots which isn't the most common thing for a show aimed at 8-12 year olds, the fact that a show aimed at such a young age group has such a large following in older fans is testament to how strong and engaging the writing, and really the whole show, is.   

The Bad: There are some random episodes in this season (special mention goes to “The Great Divide” which, when I first saw it, didn’t think it was so bad but was cringing when I re-watched it) and has the most “filler” of the three seasons. I don’t mind the “filler” episodes as much, they help establish characters and introduced others that would reappear in larger roles later on, but only about half of the 20 episodes were truly crucial to the overall plot. I did notice on the re-watch though that Zuko is especially slow to grow and develop and I wish he had grown a bit more here (especially considering how the entire show is set over just one year meaning that most of his latter character growth is in the course of just a few months). And I was a bit confused by Iroh, he doesn't undergo character growth like Zuko does but he's portrayed quite differently by the end of the series which again seems like such a huge change I wonder if that was something added in last minute.

The Audio: As I’ve said time and time again, I often don't pay much attention to the music in a show but I have been doing so more and more with each year. Even before I re-watched this show I could clearly remember specific bits of music when I watched this show in it’s original 2005 run, that’s pretty special music. I still adore the music used and it really does add to the scenes, I remember seeing “The Southern Air Temple” and being suspicious why there was such triumphant music being played during Zuko’s parts (I didn’t know the term anti-hero back then but the music tipped me off that Zuko was more than a bad guy, without it I never would have picked up on that). 

The Visuals: Re-watching this on Netflix has reminded me that this show didn’t have the largest budget when it started but they made good use of it. There is some rather conspicuous CGI on various fire nation vehicles (I remember seeing the tanks as the kid and being confused why they looked a bit different from everything else but couldn’t figure out why) but the numerous battle scenes look amazing every time. The choreography in this show is great, since the show aired I’ve seen some clips and demonstrations martial art styles and whenever I see one that was used in the show (Tai Chi*, Northern Style Shaolin, etc) I can immediately see where the inspiration came from and a few times I’ve been able to look at a clip and tell what style it was, the show managed to capture the martial arts just that well. I was surprised on the re-watch to see just how “cartoony” the characters and their facial expressions sometimes got, one thing I had liked about the show was how it seemed less cartoony than anything else on Nickelodeon/Cartoon Network/Disney/Kids WB but after seeing literally hundreds of other comics and cartoons since my take on that has changed a bit. It’s not a bad thing, just not a thing I had been expecting to discover.

So, when I find the time next (I'm currently watching 11 different anime series among other things) I'll continue on with book two and continue my re-watch. Actually, I've got another Avatar related review later in the week as well.....

*not technically a martial art but oh well

TV Series Review: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Yes yes, after seeing a lot of my friends on facebook say that this was actually a pretty cute show and I had already seen other people say it was really well written for a kid's show for a toy line. Besides, I really needed something cute to balance out everything I've been watching (Deadman Wonderland and Torchwood: Children of Earth in the same day? Sure, why not!) and this is an adorable show.


My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Summary: Twilight Sparkle is the student of Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria, and a rather reclusive little unicorn who would rather read a book than actually go out and make friends. But for the sake of the world she needs to go out, make friends, and learn that you have to rely on other people at least some of the time.

The Good: The show really is well-written for a kids show and, as silly as it can be, it always feels like an intelligent kind of silly, not one where everything is dumbed down for the audience. The main cast is well-rounded and the show shows that it's okay to be a girly-girl, a tomboyish girl or anything in between (which sounds a lot like the cheesy "you can be anyone you want to be" statement but the show let's the characters show this so it doesn't come off as forced at all). Each pony had a lot of screen time, none of them are in every episode but none of them are absent from more than a couple of episodes at the time, and the show also develops a some of the side cast and has a lot of reoccurring background characters. It's a character based show with fun and relatable characters that I probably would have liked as a little kid.  
 

The Bad: It seems a bit odd that the first two episodes are a big, grand adventure about saving the world and the rest of the show is about more mundane, everyday problems (such as being jealous or keeping secrets). It's all done well but it is a bit of a mood-whiplash, it would be nice to see the cast have one or two more adventures like the opening episodes.

The Art: As probably a good portion of the internet already knows, this show was flash animated (as opposed to traditional animation), I personally can't really see a difference in the animation but then again I normally can't. The character designs are simple and very cute with all the bright colors and clean lines without any noticeable quality slips. The backgrounds also look good and the "special effects" are fine as well, it's a good looking show as well as a well-written one. 


 The Music: There was an awful lot of singing in this show, surprisingly enough, and a number of the songs are really catchy (Rarity's song about sewing almost feels like it would fit on Project Runway). Funny enough, while a lot of the ponies have the same voice actresses a lot of them also have different voice actresses for the singing bits. Seems odd that they would go to the trouble for casting two people for a lot of parts but the singing voices are pretty good matches for the regular ones.

So yes, I really did like this show (it's not like I have time to watch anything "ironically") and I can't wait for the second season. I do wish that it was streaming somewhere legally (or at the very least not showing just on a cable channel I don't get)  and hope that it is on hulu by the time the second season rolls around.