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Sir Lemming posted:It's just the usual "whoa this kids' cartoon is actually really DARK!" hyperbole. It's interesting to learn what was behind that sequence though, since at the very least it's somewhat out-of-place. See, that's the thing: "Pink Elephants" is not tonally and aesthetically anomalous even within Dumbo, and every classic Disney film either had at least one or several sequences where the symbolic order of the film erodes into something bizarre or horrifying. Even as far back as Snow White, you have eyes bugging out of the forest and trees with gnarled fangs as she flees into the darkness and begins to lose hope. You're right that the contrast between East Coast and West Coast schools of animation is fascinating in and of itself, but as you say, it's couched in a hyperbole that seems to stem more from the authentic surprise by individuals when a 'kids movie' isn't just astoundingly mediocre garbage and is actually viscerally compelling. Whether intended or not, there's this implicit notion that, because "Pink Elephants" is bizarre, that means there's something wrong. Daddy Disney was dealing with other poo poo so some East Coast animators snuck in and got out of hand, 'kids movies' aren't supposed to be aesthetically nuanced or psychologically assertive, your eyes are just supposed to glaze over and watch the cute aminals. I almost want to blame Pixar, because it seems like, even if it's only at an anecdotal level, the only kind of strong or visceral emotions that are treated as implicitly consistent with mainstream animation is tear-jerking sentiment. Meanwhile, some folks are going back to Dumbo and need to figure out 'what went wrong in my brain watching this,' even though the body of short animated work Disney produced before and contemporaneous with the film is more than enough to resolve the issue. There is no contradiction, Dumbo was always a whimsical cartoon with, like, minstrel numbers and poo poo.
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Jan 23, 2018 22:49
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K. Waste posted:I almost want to blame Pixar, because it seems like, even if it's only at an anecdotal level, the only kind of strong or visceral emotions that are treated as implicitly consistent with mainstream animation is tear-jerking sentiment. But it's nice to have clarity that the black background and "shark eyes" are actually just racially charged, minstrel number.
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Jan 23, 2018 23:26
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thelaughingman posted:Boss Baby is good enough for an Oscar nomination. Friend of mine is super pissed because Lego Batman didn't get a nod...and they completely snubbed Wonder Woman but let Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (which is a weaker movie in every way) get nominated.
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Jan 24, 2018 01:27
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So I watched the new Trolls cartoon series on Netflix and I liked it. It has a style and humor that's very similar to Fraggle Rock: very colorful, friendly, and chill and just a little bit surreal and weird. Not life changing, but great for kids and adults looking for something mellow to watch while doing laundry or at the gym. All of the troll side characters remain pretty annoying/bland/one-dimensional though, with the exception of Smidge. Now, even if you watched the Trolls movie you most likely don't remember Smidge so let me remind you who she was: Remember the little yellow troll who said "Ohmygod" in a deep voice? Probably not, but that was her. Her entire existence revolved around a joke that wasn't very funny, typical background character stuff. The TV show, however, actually gives her some decent characterization, and the most interesting part about that is you can tell it wasn't something that was planned but rather a thing that happened organically in the writers room. See, the main characters and primary comedy duo of the show are Poppy and Branch. However, in certain episodes Poppy can't be paired up with Branch because the plot revolves around her keeping a secret from him. In these situations, to avoid having Poppy spend 11 minutes just talking to herself, the writings decide to pair her up with a sidekick and that sidekick is Smidge. Her personality just sort of grows naturally from there: Why is Poppy trusting Smidge to help her instead of one of her other idiot friends? Because Smidge isn't an idiot, she's actually pretty intelligent. If she's so intelligent why does she go along with Poppy's crazy plans? Because she's incredibly loyal to Poppy, to the point that it's super over the top. Is being loyal to Poppy the only thing she's over the top about? Oh no, she's super intense about everything she does, that's just the kind of troll she is. And there you go, Smidge is now a character with a personality that goes beyond having a stupid catchphrase! It's a shame the writers couldn't flesh out the other background trolls the same way they did Smidge, but then they only had 12 episodes (each of which is only 11 minutes long) to work with and they're not miracle workers.
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Jan 24, 2018 01:59
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I love Poppy and Branch. They're great. But I can't watch the Trolls cartoon. It's just weird. It needs to look needle-felted. It's not right.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:31
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K. Waste posted:The disconnect for me is that I always found this sequence strange but not horrific, at least in the manner that an anecdotal bunch seem to have. I do find the East Coast-West Coast dichotomy interesting, but I think it's self-evident that nothing in the "Pink Elephants" number is nearly as terrifying as the sorts of Hellish poo poo the West Coast cats cooked up. Stuff like Saludos Amigos is actually more like a refreshing detour from the abject horror of Pinocchio or Bambi or what-have-you. When I was a kid I was absolutely terrified of Pink Elephants on Parade and the Heffalumps and Woozles song, but I feel like that's more of an S From Hell-style "undeveloped child brain can't handle unnatural bright colors and loud noises" thing than any deeper darkness at play.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:38
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thelaughingman posted:Boss Baby is good enough for an Oscar nomination.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:42
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I think they only just recently got licenses. Trust me, if they had theatrical showings in America, I'd have seen them. A Silent Voice got snubbed though. Your Name doesn't count because they specifically had showings in 2016 to get it on last year's ticket. And failed.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:45
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Waffleman_ posted:I think they only just recently got licenses. Trust me, if they had theatrical showings in America, I'd have seen them. I really want to see the Night is Short. Do you know if the book is good?
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Jan 24, 2018 03:22
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I'm not sure, but I adore Tatami Galaxy so I'm assuming it's good!
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Jan 24, 2018 03:23
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Waffleman_ posted:I'm not sure, but I adore Tatami Galaxy so I'm assuming it's good! Lu Over the Wall is about a sixth grade boy falling in love with a magic toddler. It's as creepy as it sounds. Just because a person makes one great thing doesn't mean everything else they make is flawless (animation is still fantastic though).
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Jan 24, 2018 03:32
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I was talking about Night is Short, actually. It's based on a book by the same author as Tatami Galaxy and is technically in the same universe.
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Jan 24, 2018 03:40
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Waffleman_ posted:I was talking about Night is Short, actually. It's based on a book by the same author as Tatami Galaxy and is technically in the same universe. Ah, my bad. I thought you were talking about the other movie that the director made that came out last year.
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Jan 24, 2018 03:43
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Guy Mann posted:When I was a kid I was absolutely terrified of Pink Elephants on Parade and the Heffalumps and Woozles song, but I feel like that's more of an S From Hell-style "undeveloped child brain can't handle unnatural bright colors and loud noises" thing than any deeper darkness at play. For me, that more unnatural terror was the pound sequence in Lady and the Tramp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L7Nuuo25_U&t=49s Like, of all the Disney classics, this was the one that I just couldn't watch as a kid. The overarching light-heartedness of the film didn't matter, always lurking around the corner was the threat of this emotional disturbance - like, "Oh, no, the poor doggies..." Just to clear it up, not just to you specifically, I get that I can come off as very dismissive at times, I am absolutely not saying that there's nothing potentially horrific about the stuff in Dumbo (or your very aesthetically similar example in The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh). I just mean it seems like that stuff was not only really common in classic Disney films, but it was also kind of exactly what defines them as compelling works of popular art. Even outside of Disney, the notion that 'kids movies' won't feature moments like "Pink Elephants" and would instead be uniform, inoffensive fantasies that avoid emotionally disturbing an impressionable young audience was very gradual. As late as the '70s and '80s you still had veritably psychedelic stuff in places where you would never suspect them, everywhere from Snoopy Come Home to frickin' Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, to say nothing of the even more harrowing stuff you'd see produced in the U.K., Australia, and Japan. Furthermore, this shift in how we come to think about the role of animation wasn't without its discontents, with Don Bluth being the most obvious example of someone whose films were already, in a sense, attempting to recreate the emotional gravity of classic Disney films; and whose work actually got increasingly surreal even as they made less money. The shift in perception was certainly, as far as I'm concerned, formalized by the Disney Renaissance and then solidified by Pixar. By this point, the 'psychedelic' potential of kids movies was rendered pretty much aesthetically irrelevant. Remaining narratively simple, the films nonetheless become more dramatically and aesthetically realist. The transgressive potential of animation becomes replaced by the security of formal consistency. The point of Beauty and the Beast or A Bug's Life becomes the epic scope of fantasy, rather than the fantasy itself suggesting a new state of consciousness, one both seductive and terrifying, suggested by the outlandish possibilities of a plastic medium. But before that, the killing stroke seems to have been dealt in the realm of television, where serialized cartoons could not only be produced more cheaply, but could also be more effectively exploited to sew the seeds of merchandizing.
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Jan 24, 2018 03:44
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Ah, my bad. I thought you were talking about the other movie that the director made that came out last year. Nah, I still woulda seen it to see that beautiful Yuasa animation on the big screen, but it kinda looks like a low-rent Ponyo.
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Jan 24, 2018 03:44
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Waffleman_ posted:Nah, I still woulda seen it to see that beautiful Yuasa animation on the big screen, but it kinda looks like a low-rent Ponyo. Low-rent Ponyo describes it pretty well, honestly. Like I said Lu Over the Wall has amazing animation, but because of the story and subject matter (pretty much your typical manic pixie dream girl narrative mixed with this: https://youtu.be/0thpEyEwi80) I am 100% okay with it not being nominated for any awards. Haven't see Night is Short, but if it's like Tatami Galaxy it's probably worth checking out.
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Jan 24, 2018 04:05
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Quest For Glory II posted:Did both of Masaaki Yuasa's films not get any showings in 2017 because a rare double snub is hard to do. Nobody knows who Masaaki Yuasa is, and conversely if he did get the attention he deserves they'd have to stop giving him awards so that anyone else could have a chance.
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Jan 24, 2018 04:58
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A few years ago, they interviewed some of the Academy members who had voted for Best Animated, and a lot of them just admitted that they hadn't seen any of the movies and just voted for the Disney thing, with one even dismissing Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea of all things as "some Chinese stuff."
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Jan 24, 2018 05:53
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They really need to have their own separate animation awards. Do they have an animations awards? Do I just not know about it?
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Jan 24, 2018 10:39
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Moon Atari posted:They really need to have their own separate animation awards. Do they have an animations awards? Do I just not know about it? In the US they have the Annie Awards: https://annieawards.org/nominees/ The 2018 Annies will be held in a little over a week! Edit: whooooo, Pickle Rick is nominated for Best General Audience Animated Television/Broadcast Production Snowglobe of Doom fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 11:01
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Thanks, that is actually really cool. I'll check it out.
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Jan 24, 2018 11:03
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K. Waste posted:The shift in perception was certainly, as far as I'm concerned, formalized by the Disney Renaissance and then solidified by Pixar. By this point, the 'psychedelic' potential of kids movies was rendered pretty much aesthetically irrelevant. Remaining narratively simple, the films nonetheless become more dramatically and aesthetically realist. The transgressive potential of animation becomes replaced by the security of formal consistency. The point of Beauty and the Beast or A Bug's Life becomes the epic scope of fantasy, rather than the fantasy itself suggesting a new state of consciousness, one both seductive and terrifying, suggested by the outlandish possibilities of a plastic medium.
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Jan 24, 2018 15:03
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I feel similarly about the otherwise fantastic TV show The Good Place: for a show set in a culturally agnostic afterlife, its visual language is very Middle American. Though, live-action network TV budgets naturally make visual flights of fancy much harder to justify; the CGI giraffes and giant flying shrimp already ate up a lot of their effects budget.
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Jan 24, 2018 15:43
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Neon Noodle posted:This is one of the things that upsets me a lot about the direction the medium is going. There is excessive literalism in the visual language of animated films. For example, the world of Inside Out is excessively "physical"—the areas of Riley's mind are visualized as locations made of literal, tangible "stuff" as opposed to an impressionist dreamscape in which things have less stable substance. Even though there are ideas that are supposed to suggest "fantasy," the visual presentation of them is safe and boring. The expressive emotional range of visual art is just not being used. Not only that, but the most aesthetically expressive scene in Inside Out - the 'Abstract Thought' zone - is explicitly presented as the power planet of a massive theme park. Entering Abstract Thought is fun for a while, but you better get out fast, or else you'll literally destroy yourself. Meanwhile, in Fantasia (1940), Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor is the basis of a ten-minute long sequence that anticipates everyone from Kenneth Anger to Norman Mailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4MQ7GzE6HY
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Jan 24, 2018 15:56
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Waffleman brought up Ponyo a few posts ago, and you couldn't do much better if you wanted a modern animated feature that contrasts with the Pixar style of literalism.
Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 18:28
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Whiz Palace posted:I feel similarly about the otherwise fantastic TV show The Good Place: for a show set in a culturally agnostic afterlife, its visual language is very Middle American. Though, live-action network TV budgets naturally make visual flights of fancy much harder to justify; the CGI giraffes and giant flying shrimp already ate up a lot of their effects budget. Well, considering major spoilers of that show middle america does seem like the appropriate place for hell But yeah, I always want a more surrealist, fluid bent to these kind of things and it just doesn't seem like its ever gonna happen.
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Jan 24, 2018 18:40
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:In the US they have the Annie Awards: https://annieawards.org/nominees/ That was a good episode, but gotta admit I'm actually hoping Bojack Horseman wins for "Stupid Piece of Sh*t"
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Jan 24, 2018 23:44
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Pickle Rick wasn't even close to the best episode this season
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Jan 24, 2018 23:53
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starkebn posted:Pickle Rick wasn't even close to the best episode this season I'm not overly familiar with the Annies. Are they based on animation quality only? Pickle Rick's action scenes were pretty impressive and dynamic.
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Jan 25, 2018 01:06
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Oh gently caress, the best episode of Samurai Jack s5 by a country mile got nominated 
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Jan 25, 2018 03:13
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Samurai Jack holds a special place in my heart, so I was waiting for a good time in life to watch the latest season. I know it's been, what, like a year since they aired, but I just can't force myself to watch them while sad. I think in March I'll be able to shotgun them.
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Jan 25, 2018 04:00
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Samurai Jack holds a special place in my heart, so I was waiting for a good time in life to watch the latest season. I know it's been, what, like a year since they aired, but I just can't force myself to watch them while sad. I think in March I'll be able to shotgun them. You're in for a treat. The overall quality of the season goes up and down, but the first three episodes in particular are masterpieces. starkebn posted:Pickle Rick wasn't even close to the best episode this season Seriously, The Ricklantis Mixup is probably one of the best episodes of the entire series, it's crazy that it wasn't the one nominated. (Though Pickle Rick does have some fantastic fight scenes)
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Jan 25, 2018 05:16
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:In the US they have the Annie Awards: https://annieawards.org/nominees/ today I learned what the Annies are for. Also go BoJack, that was a great episode
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Jan 25, 2018 05:52
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Wittgen posted:I'm not overly familiar with the Annies. Are they based on animation quality only? Pickle Rick's action scenes were pretty impressive and dynamic. It's not really important, I'm sure it's more of a vote for the show overall. That episode probably just has the most buzz about it.
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Jan 25, 2018 06:00
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Acebuckeye13 posted:You're in for a treat. The overall quality of the season goes up and down, but the first three episodes in particular are masterpieces. Ricklantis Mixup got a writing nod, I'm pretty sure Pickle Rick beat it out for animation quality more than anything.
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Jan 25, 2018 07:42
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Oh gently caress, the best episode of Samurai Jack s5 by a country mile got nominated That was the episode that caused me to be so massively disappointed with the rest of the season. Holy gently caress, those were an exceptional 22 minutes.
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Jan 25, 2018 16:49
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Can’t believe I’m saying this but I hope Captain Underpants wins best feature. It was probably the most pleasant surprise of 2017 and it deserves more love. [Opinion subject to change depending on how much I like Coco when I finally get around to seeing it.]
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Jan 25, 2018 21:05
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readingatwork posted:Can’t believe I’m saying this but I hope Captain Underpants wins best feature. It was probably the most pleasant surprise of 2017 and it deserves more love. Coco is the best Pixar film without question and I dont care who has the brain damage to think otherwise.
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Jan 25, 2018 21:40
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ThermoPhysical posted:Friend of mine is super pissed because Lego Batman didn't get a nod...and they completely snubbed Wonder Woman but let Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (which is a weaker movie in every way) get nominated. Wonder Woman's visual effects were awful tho But Ferdinand and Boss Baby getting noms is frustrating, yeah
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Jan 26, 2018 17:45
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readingatwork posted:Can’t believe I’m saying this but I hope Captain Underpants wins best feature. It was probably the most pleasant surprise of 2017 and it deserves more love. Captain Underpants was about halfway to being a great movie, it just couldn't ever have faith in its audience.
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Jan 26, 2018 19:29
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