The House Next Door

I'm delighted to read your glowing review of ICE AGE 2, Matt. Of all the big 3D animation houses, Blue Sky seems to have the edge on cartoony slapstick (nevermind the disappointing mess that was ROBOTS). My boys, wife and me are pretty excited to go and see The Meltdown for ourselves this weekend. First time in the cinema for our youngest--not a bad way to start, I guess.

As much as I liked Brick, I already fear the overwhelmingly positive reaction that college students are going to have to it. I enjoyed it enough to be absolutely frightened by the inevitable 'overpraising.'

As for Armond, I hardly see how it is really similar to many Tarantino films. Tarantino often paid homage to the "ganster" films of the French New Wave (which, of course, paid homage to the American gangster film). Brick was more of a "Maltese Falcon" (complete with Lukas Haas' falcons often pervading the mise-en-scene), or something by Raymond Chandler, than anything else.

As for the vernacular of the film -- I thought it was a clever melange of high school jargon and noir shtick.

I can understand the novelty wearing on a few, but Armond seems to be pretty off (and he hardly even mentions the film in his review).

I haven't seen BRICK yet, so I can't offer my own opinion. I'm intrigued but skeptical. It sounds like it walks the same hardboiled detective-meets-high-school-melodrama path as VERONICA MARS, a series I like quite a bit in spite of its various commercial TV format compromises.

Matt, mentioning this movie (which I expect to be amusing but not classic) in the same sentence as "What's Opera, Doc" raises my expectations. Perhaps I should drag my niece and nephew to it, as pennance for taking them to The Polar Express. Wait, you loved that too...If this backfires, you're going to have to rescue me!

I was wondering about Brick, and whether I should see it or wait for DVD. The trailer made it look like Saved by the Bell: The Blood Simple Years. As Nick M. mentions, it has the feel of something college kids would drool over, using it as a way to show how "cool and hip" they supposedly are. (Sorry, Nick, I'm a grumpy old grad student having to deal with some of the dumbest undergraduates in history. I refuse to believe I was this clueless and stupid in undergrad.)

I saw She's The Man 21 years ago, when it was called Just One of the Guys. That movie featured one of my favorite lines about a certain fixture of male anatomy.

Well, Odie, in my praise for POLAR EXPRESS I made sure to let people know that mine was an anomalous reaction, and that the movie was so dark, dense and analytical that it probably owed more to 2001 than to most kidflicks. But ICE AGE 2 is a whole different ball of snow -- a chain reaction slaptick movie that deals in some very serious themes, but does so in a lighthearted, easily graspable way that will provoke good conversations between parents and kids. Non-parents should see it, too, preferably late at night and after a couple of nips of the substance of your choice. It's definitely got a Chuck Jones/Frank Tashlin/Spielberg-in-THE TEMPLE OF DOOM quality, just one damned thing after another. As a bonus, almost every frame is dynamically composed and flat-out fun to look at. When I watch movies I compulsively take notes and draw storyboards (so I can accurately describe particular shots in my reviews). After about half an hour I stopped drawing storyboards because there were simply too many marvelous images and I didn't want to miss any of them. I'll be seeing this one again with my eight year old daughter, who adored it and has been running around humming the melody of that Aram Khachaturian piece ever since.

Armond hardly mentions Brick because he didn't see much of it. He walked out fairly early.

MZS: ...a chain reaction slaptick movie that deals in some very serious themes, but does so in a lighthearted, easily graspable way

Sounds great! I hope it handles the extinction theme better than that Disney movie Dinosaurs. I recall in my review that I said the filmmakers had never heard of Darwin, and that Dinosaurs "features Della Reese as the Oh Child, I'm soooo tired-osaurus."

MZS: Non-parents should see it, too, preferably late at night and after a couple of nips of the substance of your choice.

I usually go to these cartoons by myself because, as aforementioned, my niece and nephew refuse to see anything with me anymore (thanks, Polar Express). I love cartoons, and Chuck Jones, whom I got to meet in Astoria some years back, is my favorite animation director.

I'm surprised how many people are at these showings without kids. Whether they're drunk I'm not sure. On your recommendation, I can't wait to see Ice Age 2.

I'm sorry Matt, but I cannot get past the visual aspects of Blue Sky's animation. Their character and environment designs are simply repulsive, their color schemes are boring--they may have generous budgets but they exhibit the worst, most plasticine aspects of soulless computer animation.

I have a hard time believing their story and characters are much better. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised but the overall state of American feature animation right now is pathetic. The Pixar/Disney merger may or may not help, we can only wait and see.

The glut of cute, witty, anachronistic talking-animal pictures coming our way will result in a major sugar shock/crash in the viewing public. These studios thought they could plug into a formula and spend some cash and viola, animated hit...they are in for some very rude awakenings.

ICE AGE 2 has the virtue of being 'first' in this round, and so it will perform well. But this is not gonna be pretty.

Well, obviously we disagree. I think Blue Sky pushes the plasticine aspects of computer animation about as far as it can go, and they do it with vigor and wit. There are some amazing sequences in this movie, and I found parts of it quite touching, particularly anything having to do with Ray Romano's melancholy mammoth character. But obviously audiences will be the final judge.

I agree with you that a lot of feature animation is repetitive and soulless, not to mention disposable, and even the stuff that shows some wit doesn't really cohere (ROBOTS, for example, which had real promise but managed to cute itself to death). ICE AGE is definitely a flick aimed at very young kids, but it's got some substance as well. It's more 1950s Warner Bros./MGM than Disney, but with a bit of Disney sentimentality.

http://tinyurl.com/bux6c

OPEN SEASON (trailer link above) will probably be no good as a film (another of the talking animal pictures I complained about earlier), but in my opinion, the aesthetic they take toward making computer animation look 'organic' is much more successful.

I saw "Brick." I suppose I admired it more than I liked it. In the end, it's fairly flawed but also pretty amusing and clever.

Praise for "She's the Man"? Jesus. How odd.

Dave H: I guess my point of disagreement is that computer animation should look "organic," or that this is what the ICE AGE animators are going for. It's not POLAR EXPRESS or FINAL FANTASY, where the idea is to make the world (and the people in it) look somehow "real." I don't think Blue Sky's images are supposed to look any more real than a Road Runner cartoon. Both the characters and the landscapes are so stylized they look as if they were roughed out with a Sharpie, inked, then converted to 3-D. Seems to me it's a conscious aesthetic choice that works, although it surely won't please everyone. I don't think they're trying to make it look real and failing.

md'a said: "Armond hardly mentions Brick because he didn't see much of it. He walked out fairly early."

Well, that doesn't seem...ethical. Although, it is Armond White -- so I suppose I should not be shocked after all.

At least now I can feel comforted by believing that he actually skipped the "She's the Man" screening and simply wrote an article pushing an agenda through a "review" of the film.

If possible, I'd like to stay away from speculating on critics' motives and work habits. He might have left early for personal reasons and caught the rest at a second screening. In any event, he's my friend and we share a film section, so excuse me if I stay out of this.

Matt,

We may have a semantic misunderstanding. I am not calling 'organic' that which aspires to 'photorealism.'

Animation's strength, as Pixar has very successfully discovered, is in abstraction, not 'realism.'

The worse examples of computer animation, Blue Sky's output (the amount I have seen) included, fail to exploit this and therefore end up paradoxically looking artificial.

The best 2-D animation bent physical rules and made a convincing reality of that which is impossible--but too much animation today is only interested in detailing and rendering things to death, and those films end up lacking expressiveness.

I also am very much against the tired, hackneyed verbosity of today's animation (at least in America). A recent NYTIMES article by Charles Solomon explained the problem quite eloquently. Unfortunately the article is no longer generally available...

odie said: "I was wondering about Brick, and whether I should see it or wait for DVD. The trailer made it look like Saved by the Bell: The Blood Simple Years. As Nick M. mentions, it has the feel of something college kids would drool over, using it as a way to show how "cool and hip" they supposedly are. (Sorry, Nick, I'm a grumpy old grad student having to deal with some of the dumbest undergraduates in history. I refuse to believe I was this clueless and stupid in undergrad.)"

No need to apologize, I'm a crotchety young undergrad who has to deal with dumb undergrads, also. You think you'd have a minimum of such stupidity in the "illustrious" college town of Boston/Cambridge -- but nope, they're still there.

This is exactly what I fear though. It does have a self-important "hip and cool" style, but it is not taken for granted (as opposed to say, the numbingly narcisstic Garden State). Brick knows what it is, and it may not transcend its boundaries, but it does what it knows very, very well. I would recommend seeing it in the theaters, simply because it has an atmosphere that should be taken advantage of in a theater (plus, it's a good time). If you do go to the theaters -- go its opening weekend or its last weekend. If you go opening weekend you will avoid the second-wave after WOM has spread to the pseduo-bohemian hipsters in the area. The last weekend it plays should also be safe because those fickle kids will have already deemed it "not as cool" and they will move onto some sequel of Garden State which is playing at the adjacent screen (with more seats) at the arthouse.

Oh, and reading Armond's review a subsequent time, I am sure that I am completely vexed by his reaction.

Mike D'a, did he walk out after the first 15 minutes?

Dave: Heard and understood. See the movie if you get a chance and we'll pick up this discussion again. You're not the first person to lodge these complaints, and in many cases I think they are justified, but not here. There are a fair number of pop culture references that will become dated very soon (and I noted this in my review) but the bulk of the film is well-structured, and it's not just characters talking; in fact, the action sequences are terrific, and some of the quieter sequences are expressive without words (particularly a flashback to the female mammoth's traumatic childhood, which dissolves between two views of a clearing, one bare and the other covered with snow).

MZS said: "If possible, I'd like to stay away from speculating on critics' motives and work habits. He might have left early for personal reasons and caught the rest at a second screening. In any event, he's my friend and we share a film section, so excuse me if I stay out of this."

Sorry, I did not mean to bluntly incriminate. I actually enjoy Armond and his quirky opinions on occasion (Hence why the "it is Armond White, after all" was not meant to be snarky, but could easily have been misinterpreted that way). It is just his completely random opinions with a lack of legitimate evidence which bother me sometimes.

Nick M: You think you'd have a minimum of such stupidity in the "illustrious" college town of Boston/Cambridge -- but nope, they're still there.

Ha. I'm on campus now, actually, which is unusual because class starts at 5:30. It was either get my research done or go see a movie. I chose research in the stuffy, hot as hell library. Meanwhile, our pals, the undergrads are outside, the girls basking in the sun, and the guys playing frisbee and running around in their flip-flops, making me question why anyone would have a foot fetish. If you read about a serial toe-stomper on a campus in New Jersey, it's probably me. But I digress.

In NYC, I have a lot of other movies (art and otherwise, starting with The Devil et al) that I need to get to before I consider Brick, so it's DVD or discount theater for me, unless I get really bored.

As for Garden State, I guess you have to be from NJ to really get that movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and saw a lot of people I know in its characters. I'm a tad too old and established for its message, however.

Armond is Armond, and you have to give him his due: His out-of-left-field analyses and opinions are ballsy and exciting. He's fearless, and I like that. If I were as established a film critic as I am a computer programmer (19 years and counting...), I might be like Armond, but with my own twisted sense of opinion. Don't tell him!

I might have to see Ice Age 2 on the strength of your review alone. I am wondering, did you write about Ice Age, the original? Can you link to that review if you did or talk a bit about your feelings about it if you did not? Heading all the way out to the local multiplex alone (no one I know will accompany me to this, I'm sure) is no small undertaking, so I'll have to thoroughly consider this...

My review of the original ICE AGE -- which I liked, but with more caveats than the sequel -- is here. Take it with a grain of salt. I've been reading reviews of the sequel today, and not only am I one of the few newspaper critics who liked it, I appear to be the only one who saw anything happening in the filmmaking. So either they're all wrong or I am. Sorry you have to pay ten bucks to find out.

Hey Matt, I finally just read your wonderful NYP review of Ice Age 2. I'll be watching for it. I tend to enjoy all of these computer animated movies, even the more disposable ones, to one degree or another. They're usually a sure bet for my money, and I think the people at Pixar are pretty much gods.

There was one line early on, though, that made me scratch my head a little. Not to make a big deal of it, but you wrote "I did not expect a feature that can stand toe-to-toe with the best of early Pixar." Not sure how to read that. Was it a): but it wouldn't stand toe-to-toe with later, even better Pixar, or b): it stands toe-to-toe with early Pixar, which is the best Pixar, or c): something else? As a longtime reader, I'm favoring a), because I could swear in your reviews of Finding Nemo and The Incredibles that Pixar was growing ever higher in your estimation. Anyway, I know you're a very busy man, so this is really no biggie at all. Just curious.

That line perhaps supposed too much familiarity with my reviews of Pixar movies. In my INCREDIBLES review, I said if Pixar is the Beatles of animation, this movie was their SGT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS' CLUB BAND -- implication being that this was the revolution point, the high water mark, but also that there'd been a steady growth in ambition and sophistication since the beginining.

So take it as a qualified compliment. I'm saying no, it's not as good as, say, THE INCREDIBLES or TOY STORY 2 or FINDING NEMO, but yeah, I'd probably put it up against the original TOY STORY or A BUG'S LIFE. If not design-wise, then in every other department, including action choreography, editing, relatable/amusing characters and so forth.

thanks, that's kind of what I was figuring, but I forgot about that Sgt Pepper analogy.

Hmm... I think that I will try to work this into the rotation...