Skip to main content

Posts

Making Room for Classic Movies

Way back in my film school days, I had an interaction with a favorite cousin whom I had not seen in some time. This opportunity to reconnect saw our first interaction since I had been accepted as a film student, and so he asked me what basically everyone asks me right after I tell them I’m studying film, “So, like what’s your favorite movie, then?”      When approached with this question, at least by associates who are not necessarily film buffs, my default response is usually something I know has been on Netflix in the last year. (Though if I had to pick an answer ... maybe Silver Linings Playbook .) I think this time I said James Cameron’s Titanic . He then had a sort of illuminated reaction and followed up with, “I see, so you like … old movies.”  My response to this was something in the vein of, “Well, yes , but NOOOO …”  Steven Spielberg being a 29-year-old on the set of Jaws     In academic circles, t he demarcation between “c...
Recent posts

REVIEW: Snow White

     Here's a story:       When developing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , one of the hardest scenes to nail was the sequence in which the young princess is out in the meadow and she sees a lost bird who has been separated from its family. As she goes to console it, The Huntsman starts toward her, intent to fulfill The Evil Queen's orders to kill the princess and bring back her heart. The animators turned over every stone trying to figure out how to pull off this episode. They went back and forth about how slow he would creep up on her. When would he bring out the knife? When would the shadow fall on her? One of the animators reportedly asked at one point, "But won't she get hurt?"       That was the moment when Walt's team knew they had succeeded at their base directive to create pathos and integrity within the form of animation--to get audiences to care about a cartoon, such that they would worry that this tender-hearted girl wa...

What Does the World Owe Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?

             When I say “first animated feature-film” what comes to mind?             If you’ve been paying attention to any channel of pop culture, and even whether or not you are on board with the Disney mythology, then you know that Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first ever full-length animated film. (Kinda. The Adventures of Prince Achmed made use of paper-puppetry way back in 1926, but that wasn’t quite the trendsetter that “Snow White” was.) You might even know about all the newspapers calling the film “Disney’s folly” or even specific anecdotes like that there somewhere around fifty different proposed names for the seven dwarfs (#justiceforGassy).  DC League of Super-Pets (2022)           But in popular discourse, l ots of people will discuss Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as little more than a necessary icebreake...

REVIEW: The Electric State

     It's out with the 80s and into the 90s for Stranger Things alum Millie Bobby Brown.       In a post-apocalyptic 1990s, Michelle is wilting under the neglectful care of her foster father while brooding over the death of her family, including her genius younger brother. It almost seems like magic when a robotic representation of her brother's favorite cartoon character shows up at her door claiming to be an avatar for her long-lost brother. Her adventure to find him will take her deep into the quarantine zone for the defeated robots and see her teaming up with an ex-soldier and a slew of discarded machines. What starts as a journey to bring her family back ends up taking her to the heart of the conflict that tore her world apart to begin with.      This is a very busy movie, and not necessarily for the wrong reasons. There is, for example, heavy discussion on using robots as a stand-in for historically marginalized groups. I'll have ...