Ntuple Indemnity

It has been a sparse week for updates to this website, and not for lack of material. Perhaps it is time to catch up, as leaving a blog for dead or comatose is unhealthy in its own way.

Just the other day, my English professor spoke about the writing process in the context of a paper that was due in his class. His prescription for serious writers, and a sound one that is too often ignored for practical reasons, is to take the same approach to the craft as would a concert musician; you can’t expect to practice it less than two or three hours a day, every day, and expect to score well on your ARCT Performer’s – not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.

And it is on that note that I want to introduce one of the selections I watched in the Ottawa International Animation Festival presentation Monday night, Sonya Kravtsova’s “A Musical Shop.” This 12-minute short, done in cut-outs, took the prize in the Films Made for Children category. In it are two grasshoppers who run a music shop. The story concerns a mother fly and her twin boys who come into the shop one day looking for just the right instrument. One of the grasshoppers plays a joyful spring melody on a violin and all around him, flowers bloom and all the world comes to life. But the mother fly buys the violin with the expectation that her children can play it just as well; when they wreak havoc on their surroundings at a concert the next day (flowers wilt and so on and so forth), she blames the instrument and demands another.

Internet animation was very well represented this year, and the fact that they now have several prizes dedicated to it speaks to an acceptance of that mode of delivery. Seeing some of these Flash animations projected – from a DVD source, of course, not 35mm prints or anything fancy like that – provides them with a towering scale that absorbs you. Everybody on the continent has seen “This Land,” of course, but how about a political satire of an entirely more subversive nature, Sergey Aniskov’s “Candy Venery”? And then there’s “The Shining in 30 Seconds, Re-enacted by Bunnies” – an entry representing an entire series of similar Flash toons by Jennifer Shiman.

It was a pleasure to watch one of the best opening credit sequences in recent years on the big screen again, which won in the Station Identification / Title Sequence category – I speak of none other than the chase in a shadowy labyrinth of names at the beginning of Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. The recipient of the Cartoon Public Prize, “The Crab’s Revolution” (“La revolution des crabes”) a 2D monochrome computer animation about a certain species of crabs that can only walk in one direction, was a delightful absurdity. The Music Video winner was for Prudence’s “À tort ou à raison,” sung by faces that appear in tic-tac-toe circles on a table stained with spilt red wine. It’s a good song to begin with, but you know how difficult Francophone albums are to come by.

My favourite piece in the mix, though, is without a doubt “Saddam and Osama,” a television special by David Wachtenheim and Robert Marianetti that everybody should seek out in hopes of experiencing. It is a Saturday morning cartoon spoof made for the “Abu Dhabi Network for Kids” whose titular characters evade the evil oncoming American forces with their super transformative powers. At one point it is interrupted by a commercial for the perennial children’s toy of the region, rocks. (Collect them all.) As one of the characters says – in Arabic, subtitled – it’s infidel-icious.

No mention of this year’s festival winners would be complete without some discussion of Canadian Maya expert Chris Landreth’s Grand Prix-winning short film “Ryan.” A 14-minute, 3D-rendered documentary about Landreth’s own encounter with animation legend Ryan Larkin, who has since become a panhandler on the streets of Montreal, “Ryan” is something really special. Far from merely resorting to a photorealistic emulation of the characters’ real selves, the film develops an entirely new style of expression that Landreth calls psychorealism – where a persona’s emotional state of mind is physically manifested on his exterior. So Ryan, a fragile artist who has descended from Oscar nominee to gentleman beggar, appears as a precarious frame of a man that reflects that fragility.

You really have to see it to know what in the hey I’m talking about.

In the meantime, as far as animated shorts go, I’m really looking forward to seeing “Boundin’.” Nominated for an Animated Short Oscar last year, this will be the opener that will precede The Incredibles when it opens in two weeks (alongside, I might add, the teaser trailer to Revenge of the Sith). As a fan of everything Aardman I should also get a hold of some Creature Comforts DVDs, should they be available in Region 1 (which I doubt). The episode “Cats or Dogs?” was another prize-winner in Ottawa, and I miss seeing it already.

Speaking of Aardman, does anyone know what happened to The Curse of the Wererabbit?

This is the Main Street Electrical Parade.

This is the rain on that parade.

This whole thing reminds me of the old hackneyed quote, “You can’t fire me, I quit.” The benefit to all is that in two years, Michael Eisner will be out of Disney’s top seat. Unfortunately, it will be on his terms. Now, I for one could care less about Disney’s hotel business, their handling of ABC or opening Disneylands all over this planet and a few others to come, but what I am interested in is the effect this will have on what defines the Magic Kingdom at its core, feature animation.

By the time Eisner is gone, two or three of WDFA’s first all-CG features will be out of the pipeline, and if they turn out well, he may be riding his way out of his tenure on a wave of success. But the last thing these films need is more micromanagement and mismarketing, and if Eisner plans to step up his involvement in his last two years at the company, this could be a problem. The CG projects are already a double-edged sword by themselves, because as much as one would like these films to bust the blocks, it could very well justify the death knell of traditional animation at the Mouse House in the eyes of the suits.

Interestingly, 2006 is when Pixar’s first movie outside of their Disney contract, Ratatouille, is targeted for release – and it has yet to find a distributor. A distribution deal with Disney may well be possible, and Eisner’s successor – be it his hand-picked recommendation Robert Iger or not – will be off to a rocking start.

For now, let’s sit back and see what Roy and Stanley are going to do about all this.

Ain’t-It-Cool News has a lot of production art from the post-Chicken Little Walt Disney Feature Animation pipeline – American Dog, A Day With Wilbur Robinson and Rapunzel Unbraided. I heard about these upcoming projects two weeks ago by way of a recent article on one of my daily stops, Jim Hill Media, which was highly critical of the new WDFA policy that prohibits animators from working on a production until it had an approved screenplay, contrary to how animation actually works.

American Dog is from Chris Sanders of the delightful but perhaps slightly overrated Lilo & Stitch, and the preliminary art boasts a charming, edgy aesthetic. Of course, what makes animation great is not the individual frames but how they connect to one another to tell a visual story, so let’s cross our fingers that it all comes together. A Day With Wilbur Robinson, slated for 2006, is an adaptation of William Joyce’s children’s book of the same title, which I have never read, but have heard is fantastic. The story reel, the animation equivalent of the storyboarding and pre-visualization that goes into live-action, is reportedly phenomenal.

The art for 2007’s Rapunzel Unbraided is enchantingly beautiful, but the content itself is a big question mark; I know very little about the film at this stage, but it looks like Disney is trying to pull it closer to the Shrek end of the spectrum like they once tried with the never-made Frog Prince. To which I say, go ahead and make it satirical (The Princess Bride, anyone?) but please, for the love of Mickey Mouse, don’t try to make it all hip and contemporary. PDI’s approach is already showing signs of overstaying its welcome; no need to imitate it further. The Disney reputation was built on timelessness, not the cheap temporal appeal that has reduced many a feature from great to good. Case in point: regardless of whether or not you like the music of Phil Collins, he has absolutely no place in Brother Bear, and I am quite serious when I say that his inclusion takes away from the movie.

I really do hope Disney digs itself out of its hole with these three projects. Hopefully they are as daring and creative as they look, and escape the executive-level mismanagement that has led the Disney brand down a path of decay. Unfortunately, scoring box-office hits with these upcoming features will have the side effect of further convincing Michael Eisner and his cronies that traditional animation is dead, and we may have a long wait ahead of us until Disney returns to its roots.

There are few things the movie industry needs more than a kick in the pants to remind studio execs that 3D computer animation does not a better film make. Or, considering the success of the outstandingly funny Chicken Run and next year’s anticipated hit The Wallace & Gromit Movie: Curse of the Wererabbit, 2D traditional film does not equal a bomb. So maybe the dollar figures say, “Yes it does,” but that is an oversimplification. What we really need are distributors who recognize a great film when they see one and know how to promote it properly, unlike how Warner Brothers completely dropped the ball with The Iron Giant, which will hopefully see a revival as its upcoming DVD re-release rides the hype around The Incredibles. We don’t need people releasing Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki’s seminal masterpiece and the biggest box-office hit in Japanese history, dubbed over in English when foreign films have demonstrated a record of doing better when released properly – that is to say, subtitled. We don’t need more grounds for marketing conspiracy theories like the ones surrounding Home on the Range.

SaveDisney.com‘s feature, “Killing Traditional Animation”, says it better than I do.

While on the subject of Disney films, I want to say a few words about a book that mentions some of them in passing: Dan Brown’s mega-hit novel The Da Vinci Code.

Normally I don’t review the novels I read, and there are a number of reasons for this. Foremost is that if I afforded each and every one of them the analysis I wish I could, I would never get through my extensive reading list. Then there’s the matter of personal pride, in the sense that I do not wish to reveal the full extent of how much I haven’t read. Following that is the fact that I spend most of my time reading established classics instead of current releases, and in most cases have nothing to add to the volume of discourse that already exists around them.

Once in a blue moon, though, I get a little curious about just what it is that has propped up authors like this Dan Brown fellow into the #1 slot of The New York Times for such an extended period of time. Besides, it is always good to get an indication of what it is that the public is consuming at large.

So my question is this: is it just The Da Vinci Code, or is the prose in all contemporary pop literature so juvenile?

I’m not saying Da Vinci is bad – far from it. The plotting is tight, the puzzles are clever, the premises are a conglomeration of outlandish but intriguing theories that run contrary to all conventional wisdom, and are proud of it. It’s just badly written. The two protagonists that carry us through the mystery, symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu, are not characters so much as they are physical manifestations of their respective -ologies. At times, we see every tired prosaic cliché worthy of a loud and sonorous groan – among them, childhood flashbacks and italicized internal monologue up the wazoo. It’s like the entire thing was written with the prospective movie rights in mind, because if anything, The Da Vinci Code feels like a detailed screenplay treatment.

The apologists undoubtedly say, well, plot-driven thrillers don’t need characters, tone and style, or thematic resonance, and only the most pretentiously snobby Ulysses-wielding literati would presume to demand such literary luxuries. Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald and Ian Fleming beg to differ. To name a few.

Full marks for plot construction, though – well, aside from an obvious villain with a concealed identity and a few puzzles that should not have posed our heroes as much trouble as they did. I won’t deny that this is a book that kept me turning the pages to find out what happens next. It’s easy to see why The Da Vinci Code has attracted so much discourse: whether by accident or design, Brown often diverges into passages where he dumps a lot of detailed information geared towards supporting his ideas about revisionism in theological history, and presents them with a non-fictional authority that sends people straight to their search engines in an attempt to separate what is real from what is not.

The downside is that when you do this in front of people who know their stuff, they see right through some of the more frivolous contortions of truth. I’m not referring to the theological debates about the Council of Nicea and the deification of Jesus Christ, but the small things, the details that make the book seem really clever in the eyes of a layman. Observe how in one instance, Brown claims that the Romans referred to the wonders of anagrams as ars magna, the Great Art. Nice try, Mr. Brown. Ars magna is a clever anagram of “anagrams”, but the English word itself was derived from the Greek word anagrammatismos, which lacks the same connection. Such a claim is like saying the Eastwoods dubbed their son Clint deliberately because they could rearrange his name to spell “Old West Action”.

This is also where the Disney connection comes in. Brown has obviously been reading a lot about the surreptitious symbols and malicious metaphors in Walt Disney’s secret destructive agenda, or something to that effect – without much regard for who does what in the development of an animated feature. He claims how Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty is concealed under the name “Rose” as an extension of Disney’s purported agenda to spread the truth about the Holy Grail and goddess worship that lies at the centre of the novel – neglecting to mention, of course, that the name is taken directly from Briar-Rose, Sleeping Beauty’s name in the original text of the Grimm fairy tale. Then he leaps forward to make a connection to the modern era of The Little Mermaid, over which Walt had no direct say, being dead and all. Sometimes it is hard to tell if Brown is intentionally mistaking memetics for conspiracies.

In spite of these misgivings, I do think The Da Vinci Code is worth a read, if only to catch up on the controversial things it has to say. But this may be a case where the movie, currently attached to Ron Howard, may very easily eclipse the book.

On the subject of bestselling literature: J.K. Rowling delivered a reading of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in Edinburgh this weekend, and followed it with a question-and-answer session about a number of things, The Half-Blood Prince among them. The book itself is halfway to completion, and Rowling draws attention to some unanswered questions to consider. Very interesting indeed:

There are two questions that I have never been asked but that I should have been asked, if you know what I mean. If you want to speculate on anything, you should speculate on these two things, which will point you in the right direction.

The first question that I have never been asked – it has probably been asked in a chatroom but no one has ever asked me – is, “Why didn’t Voldemort die?” Not, “Why did Harry live?” but, “Why didn’t Voldemort die?” The killing curse rebounded, so he should have died. Why didn’t he? At the end of Goblet of Fire he says that one or more of the steps that he took enabled him to survive. You should be wondering what he did to make sure that he did not die – I will put it that way. I don’t think that it is guessable. It may be – someone could guess it – but you should be asking yourself that question, particularly now that you know about the prophecy. I’d better stop there or I will really incriminate myself.

The other question that I am surprised no one has asked me since Phoenix came out – I thought that people would – is why Dumbledore did not kill or try to kill Voldemort in the scene in the ministry. I know that I am giving a lot away to people who have not read the book. Although Dumbledore gives a kind of reason to Voldemort, it is not the real reason. When I mentioned that question to my husband – I told Neil that I was going to mention it to you – he said that it was because Voldemort knows that there are two more books to come. As you can see, we are on the same literary wavelength. [Laughter]. That is not the answer; Dumbledore knows something slightly more profound than that. If you want to wonder about anything, I would advise you to concentrate on those two questions. That might take you a little bit further.

Now there’s an author of bestselling literature who knows a thing or two about presenting elaborate mysteries under the cloak of witty wordplay and a dramatis personae worth volumes of character analysis.

Perhaps it is fitting that the hundredth post on this weblog concerns what is only the second film to date to have opened above $100 million domestically in its first weekend, Shrek 2. This film is an interesting one to critique for a number of reasons, one being that Andrew Adamson’s next directorial project is the biggest blip on the 2005 radar not entitled Star Wars Episode III, The Goblet of Fire or Cars: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. Okay, so maybe I made that last part up, but one can only dream.

Another reason why Shrek 2 is notable is because it is a model fence-sitter when it comes to a diagnosis of acute sequel-itis, a movie that falls short of its predecessor in many respects but does not fail to deliver a fresh experience in its own right and do what good sequels are supposed to do, which is to reveal an understanding of the first film that nobody knew needed revealing, and enhance the canon of the franchise in question on the whole. If there are any comparisons to be made here, it is not to the zenith of sequels (The Empire Strikes Back), the forgettable and pointless rehashes (Men In Black II), or even the disputed territory in between (The Matrix Reloaded), but to the other big parody sequel in recent memory, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Now here’s a critical quotation they should put in the ads that pretty much sums up what an audience can expect: “Shrek 2 is the Spy Who Shagged Me of animation!” Even ignoring the Mike Myers factor, the approach is similar: satisfying the reason why audiences demand sequels in the first place by giving them more of what they saw in the first: more of the same type of humour, but with send-ups that were left out of the original or simply could not be done at the time; for an idea of the latter case, the references to The Lord of the Rings and Spider-Man. Given that Shrek planted itself firmly as the definitive cinematic representation of the “fractured fairy-tale” subgenre, the territory of Jon Scieszka children’s books, this is hardly a bad thing.

The casting is nothing short of ingenious. Antonio Banderas lends a swashbuckling personality to the hired assassin Puss in Boots that overshadows the returning characters from the first movie. The Fairy Godmother, played by the latter half of French & Saunders, has a few bouncing musical numbers to herself that are among the movie’s more whimsical moments. Even bit parts are spot-on when it comes to the voice work: Joan Rivers as herself? Larry King as the Ugly Stepsister? It’s all here, and it all works.

On a purely visual level, the first Shrek was impressive enough, but by the time the sequel is over, one can tell that this franchise has defined a stylistic palette to call its own. The technical advances are clearly visible in the final render, but feel like a natural and evolutionary extension rather than an overhaul. The human characters look and move more fluidly without shooting straight for realism like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and the designs seem inspired by the Claymation eyes, ears and cheeks of the Aardman variety; think Wallace and Gromit. Shrek 2 is also no slouch when it comes to pulling off what the first did in spades, some of the most radiant and magical transformative sequences committed to film. They are but subtle scenes with flashes of light, yes, but the way they are staged has an atmosphere about it that is quite reassuring when one takes into consideration that the same imaginative aptitude is going to make a stop in Narnia.

Some of the fairy-tale cameos in the first film such as Magic Mirror, the Gingerbread Man and Pinocchio return in the sequel as a cast of second-tier sidekicks, and it is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it makes for the best film spoof in the movie, and I’ll give you a hint: it’s based on something released a full three years before The Matrix but feels at least three times more refreshing than the bullet-time rehash in Shrek‘s Robin Hood fight. However, this ends up feeling very much like a pale imitation of an established Pixar tradition, and these guys don’t match up to Rex, Hamm and Slinky Dog. Ironically, Shrek 2 is at its best when it does what Pixar does, but it defines itself by doing what Pixar doesn’t – in particular, the subtle adult humour of Austin Powers territory.

Substantially, though, the main reason why the sequel falls short of being a classic is that despite its serviceably amusing extension of Shrek‘s wry humour, it misses the boat on something key. The quality of the first movie was not due to its humour, but rather because it explored the entire range from Jar Jar Binks flatulence to something ultimately more sentimental and self-contained, and knew how to switch between the two at a moment’s notice with impeccable timing. Shrek 2 has but a fraction of the heart, and its lack of a deep emotional core reduces it to no more than a lighthearted and fun movie. This may be enough for some fans of the original, but it comes off as a step backwards in comparison.

Part of the reason behind this deficiency may be that the relationship between Shrek and Fiona has little room to develop. We do see a greater exploration of what the first film hinted at about Fiona’s personality, which is that she did harbour expectations of living her adult life as a beautiful princess who lands herself a handsome prince, as opposed to say, an ogre who lands herself another ogre. This is all well and good, and what I earlier referred to as “what good sequels are supposed to do,” but it never legitimately puts their marriage in danger, even when one takes into account the major plot device of Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) trying to steal her away.

The movie ends far too quickly and feels much too short, but that is to its credit, and speaks to the frantic pace of the superbly entertaining last half-hour. The final impression as the credits roll, though, is that while Shrek 2 complements its precursor well and proves to be a lot of fun, it is just that and little else. For an ogre movie, it sure is a lightweight when it comes to actually being emotionally affecting, and that relegates it to being a cotton-candy summer sequel – sweet, but it could have taken a lesson from onions and had a few more layers beneath the surface.

Play a word-association game in sets of three and in two moves, someone is bound to mention Krypton’s finest. But as far as superheroics go, it’s only a one-step removal to Brad Bird of The Iron Giant, whose Pixar project, The Incredibles, has a new trailer. As has been the case all year, nothing has come close to unseating it as my most-anticipated film this year – but that’s not to slight some other very major blips on the more immediate summer radar, particularly the month of June, with the quadruple-whammy of (in chronological order) The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Terminal, De-lovely and Spider-Man 2.

Interestingly enough, the trailer to The Incredibles credits it to the same studio that delivered Toy Story, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo; A Bug’s Life is conspicuously absent. Oh, how quickly we forget; pray tell, is it because the insect flick is the one errant statistic in the Pixar streak that did not manage to break $200M domestically, or something far more sinister, like trying to bury the gaffe that all of the ants have four legs?

One wonders how Monsters, Inc. will be treated years down the road, when the “From the makers of…” shortlist fills up even more with the likes of The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille. Like A Bug’s Life, Monsters was a run-of-the-mill Pixar film in the sense that it was merely wonderful, as opposed to a life-changing experience on the order of the two Toy Story films and Finding Nemo. Both drew comparisons to similarly-themed PDI offerings released earlier in the same year, Antz and Shrek, both of them hits in their own right – and case studies alpha and beta of PDI’s and Pixar’s differing philosophies.

PDI seems to go for the immediate returns, capitalizing on popular culture, aiming straight for the hardest laughs – but with the price of what plagues most of the comedy genre this day and age, which is that certain elements get stale by the third or fourth time through. In spite of the initial praise for Antz as an edgy response to a Pixar that was still growing up, its staying power has waned.

As for Shrek, PDI’s crown jewel and by all means an excellent work of pop art, I saw it again last week for the first time in over a year, and with divergent feelings. Much of it is still very good; the castle sequence, the transformation, and the more serious bits still resonate as they always did, and nobody can deny that the animation is lovely to this day, thanks to some exceptional character design. The toilet humour does not fare so well, nor does much of the music, which should have been tackled entirely as an original score from the outset, as the little of the score we hear makes some of the movie’s best scenes what they are. The spoof of The Matrix, once the best of its kind, comes off almost as a hump to get over. One should normally avoid making such comparions, but while Shrek beat out the lighthearted Monsters, Inc. for open laughter and heart at the first viewing, and took home the corresponding Oscar, the latter is easier to watch again.

What Pixar seems to do with every one of its films is establish a sense of lasting power, something that can rarely ever be appraised in the crop of reviews during a given movie’s initial theatrical run. The returns – and here, I mean that in the sense of the degree of entertainment provided – are not of the diminishing sort.

This, of course, leads me to a requisite discussion of the PDI offering formerly known as Sharkslayer, which was perhaps unwisely renamed Shark Tale to avoid confusion with the Calgary Flames. So far, Shark Tale has been pretty low-profile – in fact, there has been little to go on aside from this trailer – but one can expect a promotional blowout to accompany the opening of Shrek 2 later this week. I may end up eating my words as I initially did with Shrek three years ago, since it was a case of a film’s quality far exceeding that of its portrayal in advertising, but Shark Tale – which is not nearly as edgy as originally promised, especially with the modified title – is a film to be sceptical about. It appears to be swimming straight for standard PDI territory with its celebrity voices, hip-comedy tone and more expressionistic design aesthetic, but the Nemo comparisons will be unavoidable. See, it’s already hard enough for any movie to follow an act like Finding Nemo, let alone do everything short of picking a fight with it. The Incredibles already scared Dreamworks into bumping this movie up a month, which will not avoid an animation duel this fall where hopefully, the audience will emerge the ultimate winner.

At some point in my life I want to see Pixar earn history’s second Best Picture nomination for an animated feature, the first being the certainly deserving Beauty and the Beast. It should have been Andrew Stanton and Nemo, but let’s see if Brad Bird can do the trick.