Wow…just…wow. As great and ground-breaking as “Toy Story” was, it was nothing compared to Pixar’s best film “Toy Story 2”. It’s on my all-time Top Ten films. It could be thought of as a “kid’s movie”, but the actual story is about Woody facing an existential dilemma - a short life being loved, or live forever without love. Joan Cusack’s performance as Jesse was a brilliant piece of acting, and I can’t even think of her telling Woody “…just go…” without goosebumps rising on my arms.
If you think of that rotoscoping hack Backshi as the pinnacle of hand-drawn animation, I’d say you seriously need to see a LOT more animation.
The Incredibles was not made for kids, any more than the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons were. Sure, kids could watch and enjoy them, but they were made for adults. The entire “A” and “B” plots of The Incredibles are much too adult for kids to really appreciate. The “C” plot was for the kids.
I think that may be the key to Pixar’s success. They make animated movies for adults.
eta: Bakshi is a hack.
Fine, you can say Bakshi is a hack (American Pop had its flaws but I think it was still ingenious) and I can say that Pixar sucks lizard cock. And everyone and their mother can come in here and tell me that they think Pixar is the best thing in the universe and that Bakshi is a hack, and it’s not going to make me change my mind at all, and I don’t expect any of you to change yours either.
Anyway there are two animated movies I actually like more than American Pop: The Plague Dogs and All Dogs Go To Heaven (by Don Bluth.) Those would be my top 3 animated movies. ATGTH is way way more interesting, more deep, more surreal, more trippy, and looks cooler than anything Pixar could ever make in a billion years.
Word. Bakshi may have had some creative ideas, but technically his work was not all that. R. Crumb so hated Backshi’s film treatment of Fritz the Cat he killed the character off.
Yuck…I hate that style. Not my thing. Others might like it, I can’t speak for them. I like movies where all the characters are dogs, not just movies that have dogs in them.
Also I don’t understand why Bakshi is a hack? If you don’t like him, you don’t like him, but to call him a hack implies that he has no creativity or interesting ideas. What Bakshi did is he pioneered animation in America as an adult medium, not just something for little kids. I think that’s an important thing. I love his animation style and the way it looks, but even if you don’t, you have to admit that conceptually he was an innovator. He pushed the envelope.
My opinion that Backshi is a hack has nothing to do with screenwriting, directing or any element of his style other than the fact that he would film live action and freaking trace over it. It’s traced live action, not animation. By contrast, every second of Pixar character’s movement is an artistic decision by the director and animator. They happen to use Pixar’s mEnv software interface to control the motion rather than a pencil (though a pencil is indeed used for every Pixar storyboard) but it is much more honest animation than Hackshi’s tracing.
Madagascar was generally pretty dull, too. It did have its moments, but as a whole it wasn’t too strong.
Most of the non-Pixar new animated movies are poor. I thought “Ice Age” was a peice of shit, although I know a lot of people liked it. “Over the Hedge” was dull and pointless. Shrek was great but not Pixar great, Shrek II was flawed, and Shrek III was a waste of my time and money.
Actually, Windsor McCay pioneered animation in America as an adult medium with his work “The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend” back in 1906. Others might point to the abstract animation of Oskar Fischinger, or the “visual harmony” of John Whitney, Sr. as people who pushed the envelope of animation.
My disdain for Bakshi is not due to any unfamiliarity with his work, but with being familiar with the work of many more talented animators.
Meh. Not commenting on Bakshi one way or another, but I don’t give a shit about the “honesty” of the animation; if it looks good, it looks good, and if rotoscoping is the tool which was used to achieve that effect, then more power to it.
Fine, you can say it over and over again. Pixar sucks donkey dick. They rely on the same formula, they don’t even TRY anymore. Toy Story was a great movie, then they got lazy and started turning out the same slick overproduced shit over and over again and everyone goes all apeshit over how supposedly awesome it is. When Pixar does anything as inspired and clever as:
American Pop - a piece on the history of American rock and roll music as seen through the eyes of four generations of a Jewish immigrant family
or,
Coonskin, “about an African American rabbit, fox, and bear who rise to the top of the organized crime racket in Harlem, encountering corrupt law enforcement, con artists and the Mafia.”
then maybe I’ll stop thinking of them as a bunch of schlockmeisters. Come on, if you don’t like his style, fine, but that doesn’t make him a hack. American Pop and Coonskin has a hell of a lot more of an interesting premise than a movie with talking cars, a bunch of stunt casted voice actors and Larry the Completely Unfunny Cable Asshole.
Not to mention Wladyslaw Starewicz, the Fleischer brothers, the Hubleys, Norman McLaren, and Jan Svankmajer, all of whom broke a lot more artistic and content-related boundaries.
See, and I’d argue that TS2 is a big step down. There are some undoubtedly lovely moments (and an amazing Randy Newman song), but falling back on narrative cliches (the evil collector as antagonist) and the endless array of self-consciously cutesy meta-references (“I Am Your Father”? Really? :rolleyes: ) make this an oh-so-typical sequel and seriously in the middle of the Pixar pack. I don’t agree with everything Argent Towers is saying, but that the first TS remains the pinnacle of Pixar’s achievements, I think he’s spot-on there.
Bakshi is a hack. He was, however, influenced by his time and an influence on his time.
Disney also made some films not geared toward children - and its a shame that the Disney studios/Dali collaboration ended up non-productive.
As to Pixar, it only makes a few films, they have good writers and good animators. I wouldn’t have expected to care about a fish, or give a damn about a race car movie - Pixar made movies about fish and race cars that made me care about fish and race cars.
Personally, I’m thrilled about the influence of anime and non-Western narrative structures - i.e. Spirited Away - as people learn non-Western narrative structures, artists should get a lot more freedom while still being able to be commercially successful.