2nd Animation Hall of Fame

Meet the Robinsons (Stephen J. Anderson, 2007)
Imdb

Date Watched: 7/20/19
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The Second Animation Hall of Fame, nominated by Funny Face
Rewatch: Yes

This is a really sweet, eccentric, and funny film about letting go of the injustices of the past and... keep moving forward. It's sort of like Back to the Future meets The Jetsons and it often delves pretty far into the absurd, but it maintains a certain whimsical charm that has stuck with me since its initial release.

The character designs and the animation, while not quite on par with the likes of Pixar (who released Ratatouille in the same year), are still of impressive quality and the Sci-Fi adventure story is fun and engaging. And that's really where the film's strength is: It's fun. It has a message but it's not preachy or heavy on the substance. Its purpose is to entertain and to make you smile and, for me, it succeeds admirably.

+

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As MV said, we definitely are able to get a copy easily from the library. Looking forward to watching it!

Wizards (Ralph Bakshi, 1977)
Imdb

Date Watched: 7/20/19
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The Second Animation Hall of Fame, nominated by Siddon
Rewatch: No

I don't like Ralph Baskhi. His artwork and animation style are ugly and unappealing and the subjects of his films are equally so. His characters are also often grotesque and off-putting. The women in particular look either like something from a nightmare or something from a pubescent boy's masturbatory fantasies. There is no in-between. This was true of Fritz the Cat and Coonskin and it is true of Wizards.

Add this to the heavy fantasy and frequent narration and still images, and you have me disengaged from the start with no hope of pulling me in. Perhaps if I was someone who partook in, uh, certain substances I might've been able to enjoy this, but I'm not and I hated every minute of it.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Pre-30s movies aren't always the most accessible, they're not always the most relatable or entertaining. But they can tell us so much about the times then that I think these movies, especially The Adventures of Prince Achmed, are practically textbooks on both filma nd history. The Adventures of Prince Achmed is animated in a unique and brilliant way that I have not really seen since then. It is highly influential, one of the earliest great films from a female director, and is important in the film canon. That said, I'm not sure how much I really enjoyed this film. If it was made today... well, it couldn't be. I recently saw Toy Story 4 in theaters and right before came a bunch of absolute junk trailers for animated kids movies. Angry Birds 2, Trolls 2, Some Fox Movie. Certainly The Adventures of Prince Achmed is more enjoyable even than those movies, without needing to see them. So it somewhat disappointing to see animation turning from an obviously noble art that it once was in the 1920s and 30s to kids money-making machines. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of amazing animated movies today, but most of them completely miss the mark of high quality. The Adventures of Prince Achmed brought me back to a refreshing time when animation was just getting started and was a medium treated with utmost passion and love by its creators.

Enjoyablity factor... well, that's what my rating is for. For 1926, not bad at all.

Actually the link does work. Hashtag just used it and said it worked fine. If anybody needs a link message me.

Meet the Robinsons

Lewis: Why is your dog wearing glasses?
Grandpa Bud: Oh, because his insurance won't pay for contacts.

For openers, I do concur on the reviews so far, this IS a fun movie.
For some time I had been on the fence on this film on whether I'd watch it or not. It seemed to be a 50-50 shot; could be really good, could be not so much.
So, when I did see this about a year ago, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Didn't become an instant favorite but it is definitely a very fun movie with a wonderful message, it's bright, crazy characters and a well-rounded story that makes you smile. So, suffice to say, I was pretty happy to see it nominated to give me a revisit since I've been wanting just that recently. YAY

The pacing of this is well done and we move along quite nicely as things unfold and especially takes off when we visit the future and the Robinson clan, themselves.
And I must say, I really loved the Bowler Hat Guy. He reminded me of the magician from Frosty the Snowman.

Both of which are great bumbling villains that I find endearing.

I also love the final title card at the very end. VERY nice, that.

Finally, one particular gag I seriously got a kick out of was this:


So, a fun and a wonderful start for me to this HoF that truly gets me to:

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What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

The Adventures of Prince Achmed



While technically not the first animated movie, it is regarded often as so, since the others have been considered lost. It was cool to see the craft of the film, and even cooler than it was actually directed by a female Lotte Reiniger. I really could tell that a lot of time was put into her making the scenes. I also was quite a big fan of the colorful backdrops that were used in the film and how it changed between red, green, and blue among a few others I believe.

But realistically, animation has come a long way, and so this does feel quite dated obviously. I think it's biggest struggle is the lack of assembling any care or concern for any of the characters that were involved, which yes could have been a difficult thing to do but at the same time it was only 11 years later Snow White came out and that is a movie that was pretty successful to do that, so it could have possibly been done.

And yes it was a silent films but even films like The Gold Rush and Sunrise had me invested in the characters so again it could have been done. I can respect it's craft but it's not technically a movie that I really enjoyed.

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Looks like I'm all caught up now, so it's time for first impressions. I'm actually surprised that I've seen so many of the nominations.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed - I've seen parts of this, but not the entire thing. I've been meaning to watch it for awhile so now that it's nominated I'll finally get around to it. It's certainly very pretty, especially considering it's age.

Sword in the Stone - I loved this when I was a kid. I don't think I rewatched it during the Animated Film Tournament, so it's definitely due for another viewing. Hopefully it's still one of my favourite Disney films.

Wizards - I saw this when I was fairly young, probably around the same time I first saw the Heavy Metal films and Fire and Ice, but unlike those three, I've only ever seen Wizards that one time. Will be interesting to see how I feel about it now.

The Wind in the Willows - We watched this in school when I was young, and unfortunately I remember hating it. It's probably one of the reasons why I refuse to watch any stop-motion films unless absolutely necessary. I'll try to keep an open mind when I rewatch it though.

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie - I saw this film when it was new without having seen the series and it was easy enough to follow. I've only seen the original Japanese version, and I've still never seen the series, but I've actually met one of the English voice actors (Steve Blum) and the ADR director for the anime. I typically stay away from dubs, but I'll give it a go at Ed's request.

Spirited Away - I correctly guessed that this was nominated, so I actually rewatched it before I left. I have a few sentences written already as well, but I'm starting to feel the jet lag so I might not get it finished today.

Meet the Robinsons - I haven't seen this one.

Ernest and Celestine - I watched this for the Animated Film Tournament and didn't actually hate it. I recall thinking it was quite good, though not my usual cup of tea.

Your Name - My review for this is already written, and will follow shortly.

Tower - This is the only nomination I've never heard of before.

If anyone was curious, the other film I considered nominating was Angel's Egg, which I thought was visually impressive but also incredibly boring, so I decided to go with my room mate's recommendation of Your Name, which I had been meaning to watch for awhile but never got around to until now. There are multiple copies of that film in this house, including a really nice collector's edition.

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Wizards

I ended up disliking this one a fair amount by the end. At the beginning however it looked very promising. Post-apocalyptic environment, epic backstory, and a clearly wide imagination of the animators and director. However, as the story went on, it became a slog of un-funny humor, ugly animation, bad voice acting, and a metaphor that of course is important but was not handled well. I hated the "lost footage" that was used, it's a cop-out when films do that to make their themes clear. It still would have been very obvious what Bakshi was trying to say without needing that live action part. The characters are also pretty bland and boring. But... there were some chilling and thrilling moments, and a great villain. So not completely bad.

Already at 14/80 reviews in only 4.5 days in! Nice work all!

LOL now THAT is a Hip Cat!

I did like the extra year sentence for sure!

Wizards
(Ralph Bakshi, 1977)

Watched this a few days ago and have been thinking about it. While I did enjoy the message and conflict of nature and technology, I didn't find the characters to be very compelling in the voices, personality or how they were drawn. Also, didn't feel Elinore or Weehawk were vital to the story and wish there would have been more attention given to Peace. I did like the backgrounds of nature/Montagar with the looser lines and sketchy quality contrasted with Scortch.

After watching Wizards, I did look up Trickle Dickle Down, one of Bakshi's shorts, which I enjoyed because it got the point across in two minutes, which made me think I would have enjoyed Wizards if it had also been more edited and succinct.

The Sword in the Stone (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1963)
Imdb

Date Watched: 7/23/19
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The 2nd Animation Hall of Fame, nominated by rauldc14
Rewatch: Yes

Oh yay, more fantasy. More wizards.
Well at least this one looks good.

That's really about the most praise I can give it, though. It's pretty. Not impressively so, mind you, but it's pretty. Everything else is pretty much a laundry list of things that annoy me. Let's start with the songs. There weren't a lot of them, but they were really annoying. Especially Mim's overly long and irritating number. Right up there with the stupid songs was the magical gibberish/spells that Merlin and Mim were casting.

Then there's the characters. Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with bumbling idiots in film. As seen in things like Meet the Robinsons and The Emporer's New Groove, such characters can be really endearing and even the most memorable. But when you populate the entire thing with bumbling idiots, it just doesn't work for me. You got to have at least one smart person to balance it. I facepalmed every time Merlin worked his magic on Arthur, every pointless transformation after pointless transformation - and near death experience after near death experience. Seriously? I'm supposed to believe that guy - who keeps almost getting this kid killed - is the greatest wizard? Yeah, no. The only character I gave even the slightest damn about was the female squirrel that became infatuated with Arthur.

I actually started this movie last night but shut it off about halfway through because I got so annoyed with it. I'll rate it the same as Wind in the Willows, if only because I can't decide which was more irritating.

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You forgot to mention Archimedes! He rules!

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Last year I nominated Akira and the major complaint was that it was to hard to follow. Cowboy Bebop was easy to follow...follow all of those sweet sweet references. Did I find any of the characters engaging..nope, could I tell you anything about the plot...nope did I turn my brain off and just soak up the music and visuals...yup.


The opening the film is straight out of Pulp Fiction, you could even call it a pulp fictionesque use of Pulp Fiction. I mean the cinematic references in this film was off the wall, I think I saw Speed, Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Matrix, Die Hard, Batman, Lethal Weapon it just went on and on.


The film didn't really work on a narrative level I don't watch Cowboy Bebop so I was definitely lost but the scenes were just so well rendered and soundtrack was so seamlessly blended in.