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I still really like Antz. Such a mean, weird, perverted little movie. But it stars a pederast so I’m perfectly (un)comfortable being alone in that and never recommending anyone see/revisit it. Hell, I’ll actively dissuade them.
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Oct 9, 2018 02:52
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Okay, then go see Smallfoot, which heavily features fuckin Common, I mean really what bolder progressive casting choice could a person make exactly I guess the existence of one douchy white guy in a film completely depresses the significance of any black person also cast. haha crazy.
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Oct 9, 2018 06:04
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I judge this film by the wokeness of its whites only 
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Oct 9, 2018 06:06
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Pick are you okay Like, by Pick standards are you okay
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Oct 9, 2018 06:18
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at this point I'm almost scared to see Smallfoot, is it like, contagious?
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Oct 9, 2018 07:31
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At this point, Smallfoot is a rent on Google Play at best for me. The constant "go see it" posts usually just turn me away.
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Oct 9, 2018 07:36
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i mean i am perfectly willing to believe Smallfoot is good, that's not why I'm asking if Pick is okay that was just a really bizarre response to what K. Waste posted, on, like, several levels
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Oct 9, 2018 07:51
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:I'm willing to go to bat for All Dogs Go to Heaven. I've got your back. Bluth Crew 4 Life.
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Oct 9, 2018 12:48
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Timeless Appeal posted:The first thing that took me aback the first time I watched All Dogs Go to Heaven as an adult was that it's a period piece and takes place in New Orleans. Yeah definitely, and similar with American Tail being set in New York... I mean, that's way more obvious, but I just mean looking at the individual scenes and knowing what they're supposed to be. As a kid, the backgrounds felt way more abstract and it was just totally this other world that the characters were inhabiting. And now it's like "oh, that's what that is." Although what strikes me most about All Dogs as an adult is how distinctly low-budget it feels at times. It still has some strong visuals, but it feels oddly "small" in a way, and the musical numbers especially feel really unpolished. And then the other thing is that Charlie is one of the least sympathetic protagonists ever. He's kind of terrible until the very last minute where he does a good thing. American Tail is definitely more solid, although you have to deal with a lot of cultural stereotypes, undeniably. I'm probably more charitable to it than I should be; I figure they were trying to do a story about immigration and it wasn't really mean-spirited. But, that's definitely there.
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Oct 9, 2018 13:32
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ConfusedUs posted:The thing I remember most about All Dogs Go to Heaven is that the scene where Charlie goes to hell scared the poo poo out of me as a kid. Oh, yes. It's odd; when I was younger, I really liked The Land Before Time and An American Tail while not really liking All Dogs, finding it too... scary? Adult? Boring? I can't really put my finger on why I didn't like it anymore, but now that I'm older, I might actually think All Dogs might actually be one of my favorite animated movies (yes, the alligator bit and all), while Land Before Time and Tail are... uneven, even if I do still have a fondness for them. Land before Time, in particular, feels particularly lacking, especially since I've read about what Bluth really wanted to do and wish I could see that movie instead... and as has been mentioned, you can really, really see where the studio took the butcher knife. One of the reasons is that All Dogs has teeth; the scary bits are meant to be scary, and Charlie is a genuinely jagged, complicated protagonist for a kids movie. He's not a "jerk with a heart of gold," he's actually really a complete jerk who is punished multiple times for his jerkiness in really dark, horrifying ways. Rewatching An American Tail, it's... OK from the perspective of Fievel's journey to get back home, and like that other person said, in every Don Bluth joint, there is at least a couple of moments of really good animation, but you see all of these moments that could have been so much better with a little teeth. For example, they show how immigrants to America were given anglicized names (Fievel= Filly et al) but that's... all they do. They don't comment on it at all, nor do any of the New World elements (crooked sweatshop owners, glad-handing Tammany politicians, street toughs, political agitators) get examined much further than just another obstacle for Fievel to get over- gotta get back to them cats, after all. And the result is a pretty interesting picaresque to watch once for being famous, and then probably not again. And because it's also been brought up: I saw Antz. This is all I remember from it- Woody Allen as an ant goes to therapy, has a dance number, almost gets crushed by a quarter, and then somehow brings down a fascist.
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Oct 9, 2018 13:57
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ThermoPhysical posted:At this point, Smallfoot is a rent on Google Play at best for me. The constant "go see it" posts usually just turn me away. Teen contrarianism! That takes me back.
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Oct 9, 2018 14:46
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resurgam40 posted:Oh, yes. It's odd; when I was younger, I really liked The Land Before Time and An American Tail while not really liking All Dogs, finding it too... scary? Adult? Boring? I can't really put my finger on why I didn't like it anymore, but now that I'm older, I might actually think All Dogs might actually be one of my favorite animated movies (yes, the alligator bit and all), while Land Before Time and Tail are... uneven, even if I do still have a fondness for them. Land before Time, in particular, feels particularly lacking, especially since I've read about what Bluth really wanted to do and wish I could see that movie instead... and as has been mentioned, you can really, really see where the studio took the butcher knife. I remember the termite war scene, that was hosed up. Was that a Starship Troopers riff?
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Oct 9, 2018 16:32
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Antz has Stallone's most heroic scene in any film when he literally carries the whole colony on his shoulders so they don't drown.
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Oct 9, 2018 16:58
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I remember the termite war scene, that was hosed up. Was that a Starship Troopers riff? I imagine that was meant to be more visceral than they were able to do at the time - you know, I feel like they probably wanted to show the ants melting like the Wicked Witch when the termites sprayed them with acid, instead of groaning slightly and staggering about a bit with gunge on them like celebrity guests on Noel's House Party.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:03
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Wheat Loaf posted:I imagine that was meant to be more visceral than they were able to do at the time - you know, I feel like they probably wanted to show the ants melting like the Wicked Witch when the termites sprayed them with acid, instead of groaning slightly and staggering about a bit with gunge on them like celebrity guests on Noel's House Party. To be honest, the former sounds cartoony while the latter could be played for more horror, plenty of the gutsier war movies have soldiers staggering around from undetermined injuries in disturbing fashion.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:11
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Makes me wonder, if there's anything from those early CGI features that really makes you think, "Look how far they've come," what would be the biggest ones? I think for me, it's the human characters in the original Toy Story.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:21
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Antz and A bug's Life.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:22
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Wheat Loaf posted:I imagine that was meant to be more visceral than they were able to do at the time - you know, I feel like they probably wanted to show the ants melting like the Wicked Witch when the termites sprayed them with acid, instead of groaning slightly and staggering about a bit with gunge on them like celebrity guests on Noel's House Party. Wow, I don't remember that part at all. And oh look, it's on Netflix, and it's a slow day at work... OK, let's see if it holds up.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:39
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The scene in question is isolated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnULSmNbCuo
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Oct 9, 2018 17:42
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resurgam40 posted:Rewatching An American Tail, it's... OK from the perspective of Fievel's journey to get back home, and like that other person said, in every Don Bluth joint, there is at least a couple of moments of really good animation, but you see all of these moments that could have been so much better with a little teeth. For example, they show how immigrants to America were given anglicized names (Fievel= Filly et al) but that's... all they do. They don't comment on it at all, nor do any of the New World elements (crooked sweatshop owners, glad-handing Tammany politicians, street toughs, political agitators) get examined much further than just another obstacle for Fievel to get over- gotta get back to them cats, after all. And the result is a pretty interesting picaresque to watch once for being famous, and then probably not again. There's a seque, I think it's called Fievel Goes West, wherein there is a bit more commentary. I remember this one bit where the cat antagonist goes "Of course we'll eat them [the mice], but first we'll exploit their labor". paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 9, 2018 17:44
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Hah, I always assumed that someone was doing a Woody Allen impression for that character cause I didn't think he would actually star in an animated kids film.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:45
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paradoxGentleman posted:There's a seque, I think it's called Fievel Goes West, wherein there is a bit more commentary. I remember this one bit where the cat antagonist goes "Of course we'll eat them [the mice], but first we'll exploit their labor". There's a truism that sequels to Don Bluth movies are terrible, and aside from the really loving cringe-worthy scenes with the native mice, while lighter in tone I still think Fievel Goes West is actually pretty good, and builds on the theme that those in power will trick and exploit the ones who don't (it's even in the first with the smaller cat disguising himself as a mouse to trick mice into working in sweatshops, and the Boss Tweed-esque mayor putting a dead mouse's name as for voting for him).
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Oct 9, 2018 19:13
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So I watched Antz again during work. It's... a movie, all right. Scattered thoughts I jotted down: -who is this for? Woody Allen trying to be both his usual mostly nihilist, "god is dead so what's the point" comedic self and simultaneously the protagonist of a follow-your-dreams children's movie doesn't really work, because the latter is supposed to want things and have a tangible dream they want to follow, and the former... just wants to complain about how how awful everything is. Yeah, that’s… something the kids can relate to, all right… -and all that in addition to a satire about military dictatorships? How is a kid supposed to enjoy this, exactly -In "A taste of things to come" news, we got references to popular culture, some of which is charmingly dated: Star wars reference, magnifying glass as Independence day parody, Allen singing Almost Like Being In Love, which at least isn't loving Smashmouth) -some scenes are hard to parse, like the battlefield scenes: don't know if they're meant to be serious or parodies, and they clash with the rest. clashing is the word of the day, really; Allen is trying to be sympathetic while also engaging in his humor, which is as it has ever been: 75% being a huge creep -I guess I do have to give the animation props- this is the second CGI-animated feature ever, and some of the effects are pretty nice. But you can see the template being set for celebrity driven features that would be followed for years afterward, often to their detriment. Anhd yes, it's the formula that brought us Kung Fu Panda, Shrek, and Megamind, but... it also brought us everything else. -it is really mean at times, but to no real purpose; it doesn't build character or reinforce a theme, or even move the story along. Perhaps that's the byproduct of being motivated by spite; Katzenberg had just formed the company in 1994 and was still talking with Lasseter and Stanton. And he was apparently part of that famous lunch in which the ideas for A Bugs Life and a bunch of other of their ideas... and hey ho whaddya know, in 1996, Dreamworks was working on its very own ant themed movie, which premiered in 1998. Soo.... Did Katz ram this thing through so as to beat A Bugs Life and even his own film (The Prince of Egypt) to theaters?  I didn't like it.
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Oct 9, 2018 23:13
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resurgam40 posted:Soo.... Did Katz ram this thing through so as to beat A Bugs Life and even his own film (The Prince of Egypt) to theaters? Yes - he wanted to get one over on Eisner because Eisner didn't make him president of Disney after Frank Wells died like he thought he'd been promised.
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Oct 9, 2018 23:18
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resurgam40 posted:One of the reasons is that All Dogs has teeth; the scary bits are meant to be scary, and Charlie is a genuinely jagged, complicated protagonist for a kids movie. He's not a "jerk with a heart of gold," he's actually really a complete jerk who is punished multiple times for his jerkiness in really dark, horrifying ways. That is a good way to describe it. A lot of kids media is unnecessarily smoothed over, softened, made inoffensive to reach a perceived level palatability - for adults. A lot of kids can see right through these efforts to pander, and I think that one of Bluth's biggest strengths as an artist (besides some astoundingly good animation) is that he's not afraid to put some trust in his audience. He's willing to challenge his viewers and give them something to chew on and use as a medium for growth. I think that is a rare quality in a lot of animation, particularly those films aimed at younger audiences. LeJackal fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Oct 10, 2018 |
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Oct 10, 2018 00:27
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Pick posted:Okay, then go see Smallfoot, which heavily features fuckin Common, I mean really what bolder progressive casting choice could a person make exactly Pick posted:I judge this film by the wokeness of its whites only Settle down, Pick. Ghost Leviathan posted:I remember the termite war scene, that was hosed up. Was that a Starship Troopers riff? It is explicitly a reference to Starship Troopers and rules. Wheat Loaf posted:I imagine that was meant to be more visceral than they were able to do at the time When I was a kid it was pretty loving unnerving and easily the only animated film that struck me on that kind of visceral level that wasn't a classic Disney film. Like, Pixar movies could give you the weepies, but I cried at everything, even the Wild Thornberrys special about that ape kids' parents dying or whatever, I was a mush-brain. Antz really just loving weirded me out. I grew up, saw it again, and realized why: It's stars Woody Allen and plays like the Farrelly brothers decided to adapt Fantastic Planet.
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Oct 10, 2018 01:08
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I can assure you that kids liked Antz just fine, given I saw Antz as a kid (in school, no less!) and rather enjoyed it. I don't know if it's better than A Bug's Life in the grand scheme of things, except that I remember Antz more readily than I remember A Bug's Life so that probably says all I need to know.
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Oct 10, 2018 01:11
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I think most people remember A Bug's Life much more than Antz.
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Oct 10, 2018 01:15
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I remember Antz a lot more than A Bug's Life because even as a kid I recognized how stock A Bug's Life story was, Seven Samurai but with bugs and the end message of believing in yourself and standing up to bullies. Antz was weird and uneven and gross, even if it was a bit too mean and edgy it was at least memorable and different from the flood of Disney imitators that sprung up in the early 90s. I think a great microcosm of the difference between Antz and A Bug's Life is that in A Bug's Life the ant queen is a cute wrinkly old woman voiced by Phyllis Diller while in Antz the ant queen is voiced by Anne Bancroft and is immobilized by her egg sac and constantly giving birth.
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Oct 10, 2018 01:44
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I liked Antz more as a kid because the ants were modeled with 6 legs instead of 4. Actually I saw it first, didn't see A Bug's Life until...poo poo I can't remember when, I don't think I saw it in theatres. Regardless, when I did finally see it I was very confused why all the insects did not have 6 legs, besides the grasshoppers, when that was something that Antz got right. I believe that day was when I awakened as one of those moviegoers 
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Oct 10, 2018 01:55
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Guy Mann posted:I think a great microcosm of the difference between Antz and A Bug's Life is that in A Bug's Life the ant queen is a cute wrinkly old woman voiced by Phyllis Diller while in Antz the ant queen is voiced by Anne Bancroft and is immobilized by her egg sac and constantly giving birth. This is a good catch. Lots of animated films have scatological humor, of course, but Antz is just so uniquely revolting. The protagonist literally has a conversation at one point with a decapitated head. The funny thing is that both it and A Bugs Life in many ways follow the same exact plot structure, have the same exact end message, but as you say, even within this strict formula they diverge in such stark ways. A Bugs Life frames the oppressive antagonists as coming from the outside, Antz is about a military coup. A Bugs Life is about a failed inventor who just wants to prove himself, and who is ostracized specifically for failing to contribute. Antz is about a guy who has no remarkable attributes, who is just some miner who happens to be more neurotic than the rest. The film opens in a loving psychoanalyst office, and the shrink literally tells the protagonist that he's insignificant. Unlike A Bugs Life, nobody is working desperately to stave off some specific threat - they are simply working. A Bugs Life opens above ground, with the Disney-esque, sunny lands that the ants inhabit contrasted with their eventual overshadowing by the ruthless grasshoppers. Antz is preoccupied entirely with the below-ground, with the interior, and with no specific external threat frames these characters as remarkably content to just live in the unremarkable brown earth and darkness. Even the external threat of the termites is strictly understood in terms of protecting this soul-crushing arrangement. In A Bugs Life they have fear of being killed by grasshoppers to keep them in line. In Antz, they have booze. A Bugs Life ends with the camera pulling back to observe this Disney paradise, now unsullied by the dreaded external threat. Antz ends in the camera tilting up from the colony to the skyline of New York City, which obviously matches the ant city from the film's beginning. resurgame40 asks a very important question: Who was this movie made for? But the obvious answer is that the film is not made for anybody. It simply was and remains a unique vision that isn't immediately comparable to anything; that is technically 'appropriate' for kids (so sayeth the studio proxy MPAA), but can not be said to be strictly a 'family movie,' much less 'for adults.' It is simply presented, naked, and without pretense.
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Oct 10, 2018 02:30
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Guy Mann posted:I remember Antz a lot more than A Bug's Life because even as a kid I recognized how stock A Bug's Life story was, Seven Samurai but with bugs and the end message of believing in yourself and standing up to bullies. Antz was weird and uneven and gross, even if it was a bit too mean and edgy it was at least memorable and different from the flood of Disney imitators that sprung up in the early 90s. I dunno, I thought the message of 'You vastly outnumber your oppressors, overthrow them and you no longer have to put up with them impoverishing you for their own benefit' was pretty good. And Hopper is a surprisingly good villain as basically a gangster running a protection racket. "First rule of being in charge: everything is your fault."
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Oct 10, 2018 04:20
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Antz is way better than Bee Movie, that's for sure.
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Oct 10, 2018 05:08
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A Bug�s Life rules fight me motherfuckers Edit: Why did apostrophes break
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Oct 10, 2018 05:33
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Macaluso posted:A Bug�s Life rules fight me motherfuckers yeah, I don't know why people are so down on it
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Oct 10, 2018 05:34
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Macaluso posted:
HOLY poo poo it's not just me! I've been asking for days and nobody believes me. Happens in awful.apk and the website.
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Oct 10, 2018 06:05
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It seems completely random whose apostrophes and other special characters break, and whose are just fine.
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Oct 10, 2018 06:16
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Testing: A Bug's Life edit: I think it only happens if you use an apostrophe in your post when you post on mobile (I just post straight to the site via Safari btw, I don't use the app)
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Oct 10, 2018 06:21
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Awful.apk, android 8.0, google keyboard: This movie's ratings. ? ! ; : ' " * @ # < > ™ Seems OK to me.
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Oct 10, 2018 06:27
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I remember liking Antz, but I was firmly in my "ANIMATION IS NOT JUST FOR KIDS WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME" edgelord phase, so there's a huge chance I gave it way too many extra points for having "mature theemz" in it.LeJackal posted:That is a good way to describe it. A lot of kids media is unnecessarily smoothed over, softened, made inoffensive to reach a perceived level palatability - for adults. AA lot of kids can see right through these efforts to pander, and I think that one of Bluth's biggest strengths as an artist (besides some astoundingly good animation) is that he's not afraid to put some trust in his audience. He's willing to challenge his viewers and give them something to chew on and use as a medium for growth. As true as this may be, I think Charlie the dog is unlikable to a fault. Maybe it's just because I'm getting old and have kids and all that, but I'd really prefer that the protagonist of a kids' movie not behave in a nearly irredeemable fashion for 95% of the running time.
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Oct 10, 2018 11:09
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