#sad there isn't a theatrical release here

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Kind of an add-on, but I've been observing the response to the INSIDE OUT 2 teaser.

I haven't seen this kind of response to an upcoming Pixar movie in a while. Where it seems like the film/toonsphere on the internet is united in anticipating a Pixar movie... Because ELEMENTAL, LIGHTYEAR, and TURNING RED got all kinds of jeers from various (and largely toxic) swamps of the internet. But it seems like there's no complaint about INSIDE OUT 2...

Anxiety seems to be the film's Grogu. People are already falling in love with the character and especially her funky design. I see praise for a female Pixar character that isn't all perfect-looking or overtly "feminized", a man's idea of what a female character looks like vs. a funkier-looking male character. I think Anxiety's design, and what we saw in TURNING RED and such kinda steer us away from Lasseter's very "boys' club" Pixar, or as one person on twitter once put it, "For dads, by dads".

Also, a lot of us suffer from anxiety, myself included, so for a lot of people this character will be super (forgive me for using this word) relatable. First film was basic primal emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Fear... And in this film we have a literal mental illness with Anxiety.

This film will singlehandedly cure Disney's animation box office blues. WISH is also apparently tracking very well and will likely outgross ELEMENTAL domestically and maybe soar above it worldwide, too. It costs around the same amount, so $500m should be the floor here. ELEMENTAL just barely missed that, but Disney top brass considered it a success while the praise lauded its leggy run as a "comeback story".

INSIDE OUT was massive back in 2015, and made some incredible numbers for an original movie not based on any pre-existing IP. Performed similarly to the likes of FINDING NEMO and THE INCREDIBLES, made well over $800m at the worldwide box office. With the 9-year wait and the astounding amount of trailer views? Easy billion right here. Perhaps Disney and Pixar knew what was on hand, and probably delayed ELIO - previously set to open this coming March - all the way to summer 2025 for that reason. (That, and - supposedly - to have some time to fix its story troubles. Post-strike, they can get the voice cast back now. Again, if that's all true.)

While box office is largely silly, it'll be cool to see a Pixar film not "flop" again. ELEMENTAL barely checked out, so INSIDE OUT 2 will be their first bona fide smash hit since... TOY STORY 4 all the way back in 2019. A sequel, no less. Hey, remember how the surprise appearance of Forky in the TOY STORY 4 teaser had the internet a-blazin' for a brief bit? Anxiety gives that kind of energy. Maybe a good secret weapon is a neurotic, jumpy character? (Thinking back to it, that TOY STORY 4 teaser is *brilliant*.) It's why people tend to talk about panic attack scenes a lot. I think the generations from millennials (mine) on down are more upfront about their mental health struggles, and the lot of us love to see it represented in some way or another.

From the teaser, I can't quite say much about Anxiety other than love that incredible design. I wonder if its portrayal will, in some way or another, really hit me hard.

As for later Disney-released theatrical animation, I'm going to be curious to see how they go about original stuff. ELIO would've given us an idea of that if it had come out in March 2024 as initially planned, but now post-WISH, we'll have to wait 'til Disney Animation's presumably-original movie comes out in November 2024. It'd be a little disheartening to see only a bunch of sequels (this, TOY STORY 5, ZOOTOPIA 2, and FROZEN III) do well while the originals have trouble.

Worth noting that the biggest animated movies domestically are largely franchise favorites or adaptations of beloved properties. Illumination's SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE reigns supreme with over $570m followed by SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE and MINIONS Deux, both of which made over $360m respectively... And then well behind that is PUSS IN BOOTS Dos with $185m, and then SING 2 above $160m. ELEMENTAL is the biggest original so far with $154m. Worldwide's a different beast, as ELEMENTAL outdid PUSS IN BOOTS 2 in overall global gross, for example.

But WISH doing good (with, say, $180m+ domestic and $600m+ worldwide) followed by INSIDE OUT 2 easily breaking the big billion will make for a nice upward trajectory for Disney-released theatrical animation... So that would make WDAS #63 the interesting one to follow. Does that repeat WISH's success? Does WISH's box office inform WDAS films going forward? We shall see.

[adarkrainbow]

Not quite this, but it reminds me of this one TV movie of the 80s, Alain Ferrari's "La Barbe bleue" (Bluebeard), which was very famous when it was released but then got quite lost... Hopefully someone recorded it on VHS and put it on Youtube eight years ago, so I could watch it. Maybe the INA archives will post it one day, who knows?

Anyway, the whole point of this TV movie is that it isn't the actual story of Bluebeard we see but a recreation. The opening scene has Bluebeard's last wife, now a widow, look on stage at a theatrical display recreating her story - which then gets mingled with her own memory in this sort of strange half-theatrical style the TV movie develops. The narration explains that she regularly has the Bluebeard tragedy be played before her in the manor, it's just something she does apparently.

The character's evolution throughout the story is actually one where the girl (Blanche) falls in love with Bluebeard after faking loving him just to get his money - there isn't just "one" forbidden room, there's actually a set of magical, hidden rooms more-or-less forbidden, and by exploring them Blanche explores the deepest memories, secrets and sorrows of Bluebeard, which makes her sympathize, empathize and ultimately love this sinister and strange lord... To the point even when she learns he is a murderer she goes in a "I can fix him" mode - because here Bluebeard indeed could have been "fixed", because his systematic murder of wives is a mix of an old fairy's prophecy, the aftermaths of a tyrannical and mentally abusive mother, and all sorts of bad experiences and influences that led him to become the monster he is today. Unfortunately for poor Blanche, while Bluebeard had sincerely fallen in love with her before, as she herself falls in love with him he gets convinced that she is just pretending and playing fake (in a classical dramatic irony) - doesn't help that he is encouraged into murdering her by one of the "bad influences" I evoked above, his male servant who clearly has some sort of toxic homoromanticism going on with his master and is very much into sullying the reputation of Bluebeard's wives and encouraging his master to murder them one after another so that they could be just the two of them, alone together.

All in all this results in the fairytale unfolding as it does by Perrault's story, but Blanche is left sad and bitter about it, because she was sincerely in love with Bluebeard and was that close to making him abandon his murderous ways. As a result, when we return to the "present", we understand why she keeps putting on display her story on stage for her to see, again and again - she just misses him.

Finally we reach the ending scene - which is where the post above ties. As she dies, Blanche demands to be buried right next to Bluebeard, so the two could be together in death. And as they are buried, the two start talking from beyond the grave. (it's a recurring thing with this TV movie, the dead wives for examples speak - or rather keep bickering with each other, and when Bluebeard tries to murder Blanche she pulls the card of how she will have a lot of laugh joining the dead wives' conversation to constantly mock their murderer) They are actually very happy to see each other, free of all the negative influences, bad memories and other toxic contexts they had forced them to slay each other - and Blanche confesses with a slight giggle that after her husband died, she didn't just inherit his castle, riches and name, but also some of his habits: she had some "fun" with other lovers and husbands. But Bluebeard just forgives her, and the two laugh lovingly in their grave remembering their past kills...

This TV movie was a whole thing.

Could you retell Bluebeard, but with the genders of everyone swapped?

I'm not sure if this is meant as a request to do it, or as a question about if it could be done, but I think I can answer both with: I think it's possible, but I don't think it'd be very fun

The main cast of Perrault's Bluebeard consists of:

Bluebeard, who has married and murdered several women, presumably all because they are curious enough to sneak into his murder room after he forbade them to

The unlucky bride, who becomes his last wife and is nearly killed for her curiosity

Her older sister, who unlike her sister did not fall for Bluebeard but tries to accompany and help her

Their two brothers, who come to rescue her and kill Bluebeard

It's true that they all have pretty archetypal masculine and feminine roles, but for me subverting this wouldn't be enough to make the story more interesting. While the aesthetic of this story is very strong, the only truly good part of it in my personal opinion, is the ending:

Bluebeard had no heirs, and so his wife became mistress of all his estate. She made use of one part of it to marry her sister Anne to a young gentleman who had loved her a long while; another part to buy captains' commissions for her brothers, and the rest to marry herself to a very worthy gentleman, who made her forget the ill time she had passed with Bluebeard.

I think changing Bluebeard into a woman and the terrified spouse into a man would probably weaken that last part, leaving me very little of the story to root for.

What could be fun is to give the whole thing a Gothic Romance flavour. With a beautiful, cursed lady in a dark, foreboding castle, and an intrepid, wide eyed suitor wandering the halls with a candle, always mere moments away from discovering the horrors hidden behind the locked door... But that's not really my genre and I'm not sure I'd do it justice ^^;

If I were to pick a Bluebeard-type story to retell, I'd probably choose the Italian "How the Devil Married Three Sisters", because that one has a cunning heroine who saves her sisters and thoroughly humiliates the Devil!

[queen-of-obsessing]

Answering the post about song recommendations similar to 4th of july:

VERY tough to answer btw, I haven't listened to a song that hits so hard while also being so quiet and captures grief so perfectly but I will try to do my best

Gajendra by Willow

Song inspired by the hindu tale of Gajendra Moksha, it's about surrendering yourself to the universe in hard times

Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap

This song is mostly her voice and a vocoder so it gives this very sobering feeling of emptiness, it became a meme in 2014 but it's actually very sad T. T it's vaguely about a broken home/family

A Tale of Outer Suburbia (release) by Hands like Houses

This is an Acoustic version of the song, the lyrics are very powerful, I think its inspired by a children's book and it's about not seeing home in the place you're supposed to call home and the despair that comes with not being satisfied with the way your life is going, This song is not similar at all to 4th of july cause it's the opposite of of acceptance lol sorry but it hits very hard too

Fin by Anberlin (full version)

This song isn't quiet but a song about a good ol' crisis of faith always shakes me to the core, it's very long btw haha

Can't go back by The Crane Wives

This is also a song about acceptance! And is indie folk like a lot of Sufjan's songs, it's not quiet acceptance of death like 4th of july but coming to terms with your mistakes and with something you lost, all the while kicking and screaming, I love this one

Cyn - I'll still have me

Breakup song but with the theme of acceptance and self love! I also love the video

One more light- Linkin Park

Also a quiet song about death, but hopeful, hits even harder with Chester's suicide in mind

Ghosting by Mother Mother

Accepting somebody doesn't want you /need you in their life and you've been clinging to them far too long

Euthanasia by Will Wood

He wrote this song about his pet rats he had to put down, Will Wood has very eccentric and theatrical songs, most of his stuff is weird but in a good way

These are all I could think of for now but honestly nothing will top 4th of july, most of the songs here are very cathartic so it doesn't leave you with that contrast 4th of july offers but hope you'll like them!

_____________________________________

I'm assuming you've also listened to Casimir Pulaski Day from our banjo sadboi Sufjan but that song also slaps me in the face everytime 😭

OH MY GOSH thank you for this!!! i'll give them all a listen :)

[sweetescapeartist]

Is the Manga even being considered canon when even the movie just takes notice of the anime? I have the feeling sometimes the manga is OOC

Well, here's the sad truth... Both are considered "canon."

However...!

The good news is that there is the anime continuity & the manga continuity.

Toriyama has said that the Broly movie is the next story of the anime series. And Toriyama said that the manga will have "story developments different from the TV show and the movie."

The 2018 interview with Toriyama

Also, in DBS: Broly, Ribrianne & Kefla are shown when Goku speaks about the strong opponents he faced in the ToP. Goku never fought them in the manga. That was only in the anime continuity.

It's been said multiple times as well that DBS: Super Hero is a sequal to the Broly movie. Meaning the movies have been in the DBS anime continuity.

And even more evidence from Akio Iyoku, the head of the "Dragon Ball Room" reveals that the manga & anime are indeed seperate continuities.

Recent info of Akio Iyoku confirming that the anime & manga are 2 seperate continuities.

Translated on twitter by @Cipher_DB

The anime and manga have had 2 different continuities even before we get to DBS: Broly, DBS: Super Hero, or the manga's Galactic Prisoner arc & Granolah The Survivor arc.

The way god ki works is different. (Anime explains that not letting your ki spill out is how to use god ki & it is accompanied by a godly aura. Manga DOES NOT explain god ki at all. Then it says that not letting the aura of SSB is the result of the godly energy spilling out. Keeping that aura inside is how to master SSB in the manga continuity. Very different. {which doesn't make sense because an aura isn't ki leaking out.})

The anime has SSBKK while the manga has Mastered SSB.

Battles in DBS are different for the anime & manga.

The eliminations in the Tournament of Power are very different in each continuity.

The strength of characters are completely different in the T.o.P. (examples being how anime Krillin is far stronger than in the manga, Kale is far more overpowered in the manga, Golden Freeza is weaker in the manga, Anilaza was extremely weak in the manga, Jiren had a different personality in the manga, ect.)

How UI was achieved & how it works differs between anime & manga continuities.

Anime 17 tried to sacrifice himself against Jiren, then later teamed up with Goku & Freeza to defeat Jiren. Meanwhile, manga 17 pretended to die & hid under rocks, then only came out at the very end of the tournament.

Toyotaro makes fun of Goku constantly and even calls him a bad dad like the dumb memes do.

Anime continuity had an epic battle of UI Goku vs Jiren and an epic team-up with 17 Freeza & Goku vs Jiren. Manga continuity had a short basic battle of UI Goku vs Jiren & an extremely anticlimactic finale.

Also, the manga often has characters extremely OOC almost all the time. I think saying "sometimes" is being too nice lol. Toyotaro writes Goku, 18, Krillin, Yamcha, Vegeta, Gohan, Tenshinhan, Piccolo, & others OOC. Its like Toyotaro watched the early DBZ English dub, DBZ Abridged, & read memes to get an understanding of the characters.

[franki-lew-yo]

I really hate 2d purists. No, not 2d animation. Not 2d animators.

2d purists.

The sad thing is it’s gotten to the point that I really cringe hearing any pro-2D sentiment at all. I hate the arguments I agree with because how often they're misused and weaponized by idiots.

Let me make my stance here clear - 2d is NOT appreciated and 3d is used for everything! The layman Karen-mom who doesn’t have an artistic bone in her body looks at stupidsmooth 3D Grubhub ads and assumes quality cause it “looks more real” (aka ‘rendered’). I know as much is true because I literally have a member of my family who told my sister and I that she thinks 3d is better (and also that she “tolerated THOSE movies for us kids”. Touching words. My sister was taking an animation course by the way). Combined that with the studios either using 2D for cheap stuff or finding good 2d animation too “costly”, I get it and I’m not even any animator. I'm just a worm an illustrator.

but holy HELL -

There’s a backlash from the artistic community that's it's own kind of insufferable and deserve to be addressed.

“(insert2Danimatedfilm) is better BECAUSE it's 2D!”

followed by: "Animation is a visual medium and the quality of the art affects how much the story means !!!!”  

Yes. Totally. Animation is a visual medium and the look and style is important. Sadly, people use this excuse to really obnoxious ends, insisting that design being pretty is '' everything ''. When you treat a movie more as a special effects demo I get why you talk about the artistry at hand; but I’m sorry, visuals are not the only thing important and it’s why I’m also getting sick of the sameElsafacesyndrome rants too! There’s this attitude that's reads as "but it LOOKS better fromaproductionimage/teasertrailerwhichapparentlyisindicativeof all themovieactuallyis so it MUST BE better".

-“3D should only be used to make things look realistic!”

I think I know the logic this criticism is made in response to, and that’s the Sony + Illumination films which look just as good in 2D as they do in three dimensions. I know it feels like people are twisting this medium to try and make it like a classic cartoon when by all means people can and would love a classic cartoon being a classic cartoon. That I get- From the unsung 2D animator’s perspective, that’s more than valid !

But it’s a huuuuuuge slap in the face to 3d in saying it should only be used for "realistic animation" because

1: It’s not like realistic animation could age badly or look uncanny in the next few years. It's almost like technology is constantly improving, which I guess 2d animation never did and it was always the same technique and quality as every film that came after it.

2: The industry does treat 3d as a magic-moneymaker for this reason. Just listen to these people call the 2019 LION KING “live action” as if they’re embarrassed to call it animation. It IS animation! It would be impressive if you acknowledged that what it is, but like the CATS, you basically are treating it as just a neato tool to better your live action and not it's own artform - which it is!

3: By this “three-deeonly gud when real liek in da toystories” non-logic I guess 2d should ONLY be for flowyflowy SPACE JAM cartoons and maybe some Disney*. Just that though. You can’t do anything more with 2d. It’s never supposed to be realistic I guess. Good thing Richard Williams only did 'toons' and just toons that’s why we need 3d in the world I guess.

Wait no - that’s stupid.

"I HAVE to see the “Land Before Time 14″ when it comes out! I mean it’s a 2D animated film!"

Lost in the aether that is Youtube comment chains removed from kid's videos is a stream of this very VERY stupid argument supporting the buying of the 14th LAND BEFORE TIME film because it’s supporting 2D. My sister and I can be found on that chain arguing against this stupidity. All you have is my word, but trust me: it really did happen.

I’m sorry but...no.

Unless you have a friend or a family member who worked on these movies there’s no reason to see this and ESPECIALLY no reason to insist it’s a win for the 2D community if you buy up this crap - and I'm not judging if you do like it, but come on! LAND BEFORE TIME 14 isn't where your money should go if you really like this medium.

What’s so infuriating about this argument is you can tell it’s made by nonanimators. Real animators will tell you to support their movies cause they want some respect for their artform which is why there’s such a push from the PRINCESS AND THE FROGcrowd that you SEE and LOVE every 2d thing out there, regardless of how good it is because any recognition for it is k i n d o f what they're after!

Kiddy sequel schlock isn’t even in the same ballpark as KLAUS or WOLFWALKERS; these films DID have very limited theatrical runs (Klaus so it could be nominated; Wolfwalkers in places where theaters opened up after Covid) and should have been supported because they were labors of love made by people who love animation.

As other people have already pointed out, one of the reasons for the lack of interest in 2000sera2D animation is that the only films released alongside critical+financial 3D hits were cheaper 2D films that either coincided with daytime tv shows or should have been just direct-to-video. It’s not to say art couldn’t come out of these flicks, but dayum if it wasn’t abused as much as the texture software that era's CG used... Point being, should the world ever go back to normal: If you hear about an out-of-town showing an acclaimed 2D animated film, make time to trek out and see THAT!

Don’t give your money to see yet another made-for-tv movie on the big screen because all that tells the studio is: “yeah 2d IS cheap and only good for cheap stuff let’s just keep it cheap. Only 3d is important 8D 8D 8D !!!"

“I don’t understand how it works. So it sucks.”

This text is from an ANIMATOR btw.

“I don’t understand how it works” and “it’s just some computer rendering” is the exact same wave of logic the people who prefer cgi use.

The plebian Karen I mentioned earlier? She understands the basics of 2D animation as much as you did from one of those cruddy flash classes you took in middle-school. She 'understands' the basics cuz she watched how it was made on the DVD features or maybe back on the WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY. To her, the illusion is broken and she’s not impressed by 'just some drawings on paper'. You, an animator, know the process is more complicated and is intrigued by knowing how it’s made - not bored or disinterested -

Neither you nor Aunt Karen have really good cg-animation software at your house and unless you ARE a 3D animator you probably DON’T know all the ins-and-outs of how these movies are modeled, rendered, and animated.

Aunt Karen is bedazzled by them cause she doesn’t know how it works and the technical aspect makes her brain hurt so it might as well be magic and she can feel like a cool kid sharing Minion-memes. Aunt Karen is the nonartistic type who just wants to feel safe. You're not. You want to feel challenged.

I get it: you’re pissed off cause you’re in a field no one, including Aunt Karen, appreciates; told to work in cg which it's an artform you didn’t devote your life to and told to learn it cause THIS style sells! 3D is everywhere and is starting to look like 'garbage' even if you don’t animate 3D models yourself you just KNOW, I guess. Besides, you know all there is to know about 2d!! You know all there is to possibly know about this artform and have to fight this 'war' against "r e a l" animation! And I mean even when 3d software is there to use, it's not like you can actually make anything worth while in it, especially not anything that transcends the medium. Right Worthikids?

TL;DR: This argument is basically just " BWAAAAH I’M NOT GONNA USE IT I HAVE STANDARDS (a chip on my shoulder cuz art should be what I deem it to be) "

“PRINCESS AND THE FROG is-”

There’s a reason I can’t say I truly like PRINCESS AND THE FROG even though it's not even a bad movie! Like, stop reading this and watch PATF if you haven't it's good. It's my 'FROZEN', in that; I see a lot of potential in it I just think it needs some serious rewriting and that bugs me. Always have felt that way, tbh.

I dislike this movie because the response from the animation community seems to be it was perfect and the Academy was just Pixar-crazy with UP ((ftr, the Academy IS Pixar’s bitch and I personally advocate a sequel be made to WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY about Mike Eisner’s sabotage of the 2D department at Disney which is still in place now!- but that’s a story for another day)). I’m sorry but UP was just a better story. So was CORALINE. So was FANTASTIC MR. FOX. Honest to god it feels like poor PATF is brought up as just a talking point and never for it's own worth as a labor of love - which it was! I'd like to honestly know: had PRINCESS AND THE FROG come out now and been cg if it would have even half the defenders for it because now it doesn't "look" like how a Disney movie "should" look...

If you like PatF more than the currant Disney lineup because of it's culture, it's music, it's feminism, it's black representation? Awesome. Great. Those things should be appreciated and I never want that taken away from you. But if you seriously think PatF is better just for how it was animated and looks - I lowkey may hate you.

“ALL OF DISNEY’S LATEST MOVIES SHOULD HAVE BEEN 2D! THEY ALL LOOK AWFUL IN 3D!! ALL OF THEM!”

TANGLED, FROZEN, and MOANA? Yeah. Sure. But um, e x c u s e y o u- WRECK IT RALPH sooooo doesn’t work in 2d! It could have used different between the various worlds but it’s about hopping through different video games. I’m also of the opinion that ZOOTOPIA and BIG HERO 6 are fine the way they are. Their 3d is awesome.

The latest fairy tale Disney films are really big on their place alongside the 2D canon esp in marketing. They keep trying to mimic 2D to varying results though I don't think it works as well as the movie's I'd previously mentioned. Me personally, I would love a mix of 3D and 2D technology, like if the backgrounds in FROZEN still got to be 3D but the characters were handdrawn and shaded ala KLAUS ((sweet sigh)). But even then are they truly unwatchable just based on how they're animated to you?

MOANA would have been incredible in 2D but for the record - I don't think it feels out of place in it's style. It reminds me more of a Pixar movie with the heart of a Disney classic which is it's own just as good.

“2D is the oldest form of animation and it’s being replaced.”

Actually, if we’re talking animation in film, stop motion is the earliest form of animation. The stop motion animated THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED and TALE OF THE FOX predate Disney’s SNOW WHITE. And yes: stop-motion IS still a form of animation even if it’s a serious of pictures taken of real life things and not drawings, so don’t you dare come at me with the "but that's not animated"/"Technically it’s LIVE ACTION" crap or I’ll envoke the spirit of Sandman to get you at night.

“Every animated film would look better in 2D! Even PIXAR would look better in 2D!”

Again, Stop Motion.

No, I mean it.

Lemme ask: Would ISLE OF DOGS or FANTASTIC MR. FOX carry any of the same effect if they were generic 90s toons? I know NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS wouldn’t. Christ, don’t even get me started on Svankmajer!

Sometimes the problem is that a movie is envisioned with a specific artform in mind. Pixar started out with toys and bugs for a reason and that’s cuz they were always gonna be a 3d studio and they needed to first overcome the placisity of the models. Over the years they’ve gotten really good at effects and blending unrealistic proportions with real textures (and also not so much- ONWARD and THE GOOD DINOSAUR really needed some different character designs and yeah, I do think would have looked better with a 2d artstyle, but not the ones they had in their films. THE GOOD DINOSAUR needed more realistic-speculative looking dinos and ONWARD needed a grittier HEAVY METAL/BLACK CAULDRON appeal to its designs.) My point being that the problems with these movies aren’t even inherently the animation as much as it is a problem of style. As someone who runs a group speculating different styles and designs for movies and tv shows I’m all for envisioning a 2D ZOOTOPIA or Bluth-inspired FNAF. That’s amazing!

But that’s also the talk of fan artists and nerds and not the professional artists working on visualizing their stories!!

Since I ate, slept, and breathed NIGHTMARE in my youth I’ll use it as an example: All the concept art ever done for TNBC was on paper and 2D was used in the final film. However, even when Tim Burton was thinking of making it just a tv special it was always going to be stop-motion. NIGHTMARE’s puppet cast do work very well in two dimensions, believe me, but the film was made as a love letter to Rankin/Bass and the art form of stop-motion. Skipping to another Henry Selick-helmed project (haha), JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH was also always envisioned as a multimedia film to give it a truly dream-like atmosphere. If you know anything about Henry Selick you’ll know he’s 1) a perfectionist, and 2) loves mixed media and different types of animation and puppetry at once. That’s why he was the perfect pick to direct TNBC at the time, why JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH and CORALINE are so beautiful and why MOONGIRL, his only fully 3d film, doesn’t have the same appeal.

As for what films I couldn’t imagine NOT being 3D? Probably; 9, Padak, Next Gen, Soul, Finding Nemo, the Toy Story films, Wreck-it-Ralph (as previously mentioned), Wall.E, Waltz with Bashir, Robots, Inside Out, Arthur Christmas, The Painting, Happy Feet, Shrek, Enter the Spiderverse, Megamind… just naming a few here.

“I want a traditionally animated film [and by that I mean a 90s-Disney/Don Bluth looking movie] of ‘x'-popular live action/stage thing!”

Okay I’m cheating a bit but it’s my blog and so I’m gonna stick this one in because it’s related.

When I see musings about wanting live-action or CGI shiz to be in 2d again a lot of the time this argument actually boils down to " I want this to look like a 90s Didney movie ". Or, if it’s about animals - " I want it to look like a Don Bluth film! "

Like...there ARE other styles of animation out there...you know that right?

Frack, Disney themselves tried different styles throughout the 90s it’s just that the peak of the Disney renaissance films (LITTLE MERMAID, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN, THE LION KING) and the many imitators that followed tended to have the same look to them where only film/animation nerds kept watching into the era that was TARZAN, HERCULES, and ATLANTIS along with the kids. Aunt Karen wasn't singing Part of your World in the carride with you every day.

The Don Bluth argument is especially irritating because...what exact feeling do you WANT from a movie if it looked Bluthish? Each of the four ‘quintessential’ Bluth movies (NIMH, AMERICAN TAIL, LBT, and ALL DOGS) have such a different feel to them that’s complimented by that style; SECRET OF NIMH is a drama about wild animals trying to understand humans; LAND BEFORE TIME is even more squarely about an animal’s perspective as there’s literally no humans around; AMERICAN TAIL uses animals stowing away on the ship to tell a story about refugees; and ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN is ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN.

What the frack are you even asking for with that because I think there’s a certain flavor to the Bluth-styled oeuvre as well as the 90s Disney catalogue that would clash too much stylistically with some films.

Also come on! Like some Bluthian-style 2d would really fix THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS or SCOOB!, bite me.

I think this fixation solely on these two hand drawn styles and nothing else is based on nostalgia goggles, refusing to step outside the norm and discover different films and feelings than Disney and Bluth, and just preference. Goin back to NIGHTMARE there will always be a special place in my heart for Henry Selick’s stop motion, but I couldn’t imagine CHICKEN RUN or ANOMALISA in it's unique style.

Also I’m tired of every time there’s a "lets make an animatic to ‘x’ musical theater song" it’s reliably just Disneyesque or realistic. WHY envision an animated version of the show at all if it doesn’t have A STYLE to it??!?! I’m sorry but 90s-Disney does NOT fit CABARET!

“3D is so CHEAP now! Why can’t they just do 2D again?”

I think - on the cusp of the 2020s and the Grubhub hatedom, there ARE changing times ahead for 3d and 2d. The general public are starting to get tired of the same looking 3d films and wanting some 2d back, but they don’t have the best resources or opinions on animation to know what it is they want. Meanwhile, the animation community + industry is trying to figure out what to do and you have a lot of turmoil between the monopoly that is the industry, the high standards of the artists, and the mixed wants of the animation fanbase deciding what art needs to be.

It’s a tough business. And in the spirit of that tough business - maybe DON’T act like the means of a film’s production is solely your control, that you know best, and know definitively what the artists should have done....cuz you don't. Sorry my fellow criticalfanomanalysist-folks we DON'T and in an age of standom where fans and critics think it's okay to hackle indie animation studios about not getting their pitched cartoon out fast enough - we need to reserve these discussions to our circles and not treat them as gospel.

3d animation and 2d animation have to share this world. Stop acting like they’re either interchangeable in terms of budget, means of production, or artistry or that one has to be superior to the other.

The industry already says one art form is better (spoiler: it’s always live-action), we don’t need anymore of this purist garbage. Just stick to what you like while trying new things on the side. Be critical while also being compassionate. And remember:

[inquisitorhierarch]

Hey guys so I know we’re all waiting for Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Shape of Water movie, but this is a relatively spoilerless review of a film that uses the backdrop of a murder investigation to explore themes of sexuality and gender diversity in Victorian England.

It has a fairly limited theatrical release (none near me, unfortunately) so if you happen to see it playing somewhere near you, it might be a good opportunity to support filmmaking that explores gender and sexuality themes in a historical context, which might hopefully lead someday to the end of people insisting that gender and relationship diversity is “modern” and “invented by millennials.”

On the downside, it does appear to be a very white film, and the review doesn’t bring up the use of the term “golem” and whether it has any context to the Jewish folktale, or whether it was simply appropriated by the Londonites.

I think I’ll try to acquire it on DVD once it’s released, though depending on how they do treat the golem aspect I may end up feeling it’s not worth recommending.