It's the Not-Even-Remotely-Annual Summer Animated Trailer Post!

A lot, an awful lot, of trailers for upcoming animated, kind-of-animated, and "how the blazes are we even defining what an animated film is anyway"-ted feature films have premiered lately, so let's all take a look at them!  Boy I hope you like sequels, franchise movies, remakes...



And here's a damn good example of how long it's been since I did one of these blogs: "Incredibles 2" comes out TONIGHT!?  Like, that's soon!  Really soon!  Oh my God, please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck...!!!

Weirdly, I feel like I haven't seen any excitement for this.  It's almost as if we can't even believe an "Incredibles" sequel is actually happening after Brad Bird denied he wanted to make one for all these years.



Boy I hope "Ralph Breaks the Internet" ends up being better than this teaser suggests.  I'm not the first to point this out but the Internet looks like a hellscape of Brands (I mean, it IS, but it'd be nice if they depicted it as anything else), and I'm having a hard time defending the "We are Disney, look upon our I.P.s and despair" scene.  Still, I can't wait to see that Princess scene in context and at least they're acknowledging that the Muppets exist.

Anyway, speaking of Disney, Brands, and Hell:



It's "Hook".  But, like, a Winnie the Pooh version.  Just what the world needed.  Though I like how most of Disney Twitter (TM) is using this as a teaching moment:

For those of you riding the nostalgia wave on the CHRISTOPHER ROBIN trailer, here’s a friendly reminder that Disney did a terrific new animated Winnie the Pooh movie in 2011 that made exactly $12 because they released it the same day as DEATHLY HALLOWS 2. pic.twitter.com/51waBnx6PZ

— David Daut (@DavidMDaut) March 6, 2018

Note: prepare yourself for a lot of people not understanding what hyperbole is in that thread.



I know a sequel to "Mary Poppins" is a thing that is happening, but why?  I can’t shake the feeling that "Sequel to Mary Poppins" is something that either would’ve been a Disney Sunday movie in the 80’s or would’ve happened somewhere between "102 Dalmatians" and "Chicken Little".

But good on them for remembering those crazy neighbors with the ship house.



Guys.  I am so God-damn tired.

Honestly.  I really can't wait until Disney gets this "Remake everything in live-action (for a given definition of live-action)" thing out of their system.  Hell, this might be more annoying than the era of DTV sequels...

Okay, enough bleakness:



Okay, maybe a little bleakness.  I'm conditioned to immediately dislike any new take on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", doubly so if it gives Grinch a sad backstory to explain why he hates Christmas.  It's a damn sight cuter than the 2000 version at least, though that's a heck of a low bar to clear.



I like "How to Train Your Dragon 2" more than most but it really does feel like a part two and part three crammed together.  That doesn't leave much for part three to resolve, but I feel optimistic.  At least we're going to get more and hopefully even weirder monster designs.



I've been waiting for an official, actual "LEGO Movie 2" for a long time it feels.  All the theatrical LEGO movies have been very good, IMO, and I can't wait to be unexpectedly weepy by the end of this one too.



And here we have the one upcoming (like, not premiering in a few hours) animated film I'm most excited about.  Look at this; look how cool and creative this looks!  More unabashedly trippy CGI please!

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Art of the Day!

Hey, you know what very conspicuously did NOT get a trailer recently?

My Summer of Sequels - "Pooh's Grand Adventure" (1997)

And so we launch into My Summer of Sequels and my gosh I hope I do not end up regretting this.  But, man, if today's movie sets the tone for the project than this is going to be a very long ride. 

A bit of background before we begin.  Disney started making direct-to-video (henceforth DTV) sequels to it's beloved animated films in 1994 with "The Return of Jafar".  Now something that may surprise people today is that most fans actually did not have much of a problem with this first sequel, as it was essentially setup for the well-liked "Aladdin" animated series.  "Return of Jafar" was soon followed by "Aladdin and the King of Thieves", which many still consider to be the best DTV Disney sequel of them all.  (Sadly, neither of these films are readily available through Netflix.)

"Pooh's Grand Adventure" was the third-ever Disney DTV sequel, and still few people had a problem with it (in principle, but we will get to that when we get to that).  It was "Beauty and the Beast: the Enchanted Christmas" that started to sour everyone on the concept.  At the time, many people considered "Beauty and the Beast" to be the overall finest animated feature Disney had ever created, and to make an obvious cash-grab Christmas movie that takes place *during* the original, happily retconning a great deal of it to hell and back, cheapened both the film and, in many ways, the very Disney name itself.  (I will not be covering "BATBEC" as that's not something I want to suffer through again.)

And then "Cinderella 2" came along in 2002 and Disney fans were basically done with DTV sequels for good.

This brings us back to the lecture at hand: "Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin".  I think fewer people had a problem with this movie for many of the same reasons last year's "Winnie the Pooh" had a disappointing box office: over the years, Disney has done a spectacular job of Pooh oversaturation.  For as long as the character Winnie the Pooh has been around, Disney has been producing animation, toys, books, and whatever for well over HALF that time.  And so this particular DTV sequel felt, at the time, less like a cheapening of the character and everything we love about him, and more like another drop in the bucket.

That said, "Pooh's Grand Adventure" might just be the most deeply upsetting and inappropriate thing Disney has ever done with Winnie the Pooh and the residents of the Hundred Acre Wood since "Too Smart For Strangers".  (By an astoundingly wide margin, to be sure, but still.)

"Grand Adventure" isn't entirely sure whether it wishes to be a direct sequel to "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" or a finale of sorts to "The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh".  It's much much closer in tone and overall look to the Saturday morning series, "New Adventures", which had its share of surprisingly dark episodes.  Those dark episodes were pretty short, though, while "Grand Adventure" is so very long.  Yeah, the running time is listed at only an hour and a few minutes, but the pace is excruciatingly slow.  The bewildering songs that seem to be included only as an obligation rather then to keep the plot going do not help.

The plot seems like a test run for last year's "Winnie the Pooh" theatrical film (Pooh et al misinterpret a note left by Christopher Robin and set out to find him) and, oddly, "Toy Story 3".  Like "TS3", you've got a gang of toys struggling to reunite with their master in a story with sometimes surprising darkness and depth.  The thing is, the "Toy Story" series is generally pitched towards older kids, and it earned that darker deeper tone over the course of three feature-length films.  Winnie the Pooh is, when all is said and done, a character created for very young children.  The tone is kept exceedingly light and "safe"; cheerful songs assure us if the characters appear to be in danger and any monsters are exaggerated and silly.  (Case in point: the DVD of "Pooh's Grand Adventure" contains the short "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day" among the extras and... man, that's not even fair!)

By contrast, "Grand Adventure" takes the perils and sadness of its story very seriously, and it is damned jarring.  (Take a drink whenever the particularly discordant term "Skullosaurus" is uttered.  Just, what?)   These are all going to sound like I am making them up, but I promise you I am not.  Before the gang finally meets up with Christopher Robin again...

* Piglet is carried high into the sky by cute little butterflies and nearly falls to his doom.

* Tigger is trapped on a flimsy bridge and the whole gang falls down an impossibly deep chasm trying to rescue him.

* Pooh wanders off alone in the middle of the night and sings a song about how lost he is without Christopher Robin and it's utterly heartbreaking.

* Everyone gets lost in a huge perilous cave and they each suffer their own tedious ordeals before finally running into each other again.

* During that time, Pooh is trapped in a very small room all alone for what feels like forever(!) and is damn near ready to spend the rest of his life stuck down there(!?) with only the memory of Christopher Robin to keep him company(!?!)

* And this happens:



Gaze upon it in despair.

Take as long as you like because it's really everything you need to know about this movie.  Just, the longer you stare at it, the more it'll start freaking you out.

During an overlong and utterly mystifying sequence that is far stranger than I could possibly describe, Pooh stays... like that... for what feels like several minutes.

At least it was long enough for me to realize that somebody had to storyboard this sequence and that some poor animators had to draw him like that for a while because at no moment did anyone point out, in so many words, WTF.

Might as well mention (I want to wrap this up because my gosh, these are an awful lot of words about a direct-to-video Winnie the Pooh movie) that the DVD format does not do this film any favors and I figure the same will be true for most of the upcoming DTV sequels as well.  The animation mistakes are far more obvious now, and there are some moments that are downright sloppy; jumpy foreground shrubs and whatnot.  Given that the next sequel coming up had to satisfy a theatrical audience, one can only hope it'll at least look better.

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Sketch of the Day!

Thinking of Pooh inevitably makes me think of college, since my dorm basically adopted him as our spirit guide power animal. Here's an old sketch of campus:

"You'd be surprised there's so much to be done..." - Thoughts on "Winnie the Pooh" (2011)

Movie # 64: "Winnie the Pooh" (2011)

"Winnie the Pooh" is adorable and sweet and, miraculously, completely and utterly unironic, unsarcastic, and unhip (ie, it's not the bad sort of hip; more on this in a bit). It features terrific character animation by such Disney legends as Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg, and Mark Henn and some cute songs by Zooey Deschanel and -heh- one of the songwriting minds behind "Avenue Q" and "The Book of Mormon". The animation is digital (using the ToonBoom software) but beautifully simulates the look of the beloved "Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" from back in the late 70's and the use of straight-up CGI is kept to the very barest minimum.

And "Winnie the Pooh" is also very definitely for young children (and their attendant adults of course). And it is short. Really, REALLY short. Like, barely qualifying as a theatrical-length film short. Like, were it not for the prologue and opening credits, it'd just make it to one hour short. That short.

Now, as we have seen, short animated films are not a bad thing, especially because they tend to be tight as heck and leave little room to screw things up. So every minute in "Winnie the Pooh" is dedicated to fun character moments and furthering the refreshingly basic plot (Pooh is hungry, he and the gang get caught up in searching for Eeyore's tail, a note left by Christopher Robin gets misinterpreted and this sparks another adventure, etc.)

And I probably don't even have to explain why an animated film for children that does not include any instances whatsoever of gross-out humor, sexual innuendos, cute animals singing catchy songs with horribly inappropriate lyrics, cute animals begging to eat at Chain Restaurant You Must Beg Your Parents To Take You To After The Movie, coprophagy, or Happy Madison alumnae is a freaking Godsend. (Side Note: You used to not have to worry about these things so much but we live in strange times.)

If there is anything negative I have to say about "Winnie the Pooh" it is that it is not *quite* as good as "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh". (In particular, the Backson song ain't got nothin' on the Hephalumps and Woozles number.) It more closely recalls a particularly lavish episode of the Saturday morning cartoon. It is however much closer to the original Disney Pooh shorts and anthology film, and the way the characters get to play with the text again is wonderful.

There is also a fantastic gag involving Owl, Piglet, and a pit trap that is way too fun to spoil here and appears as though it was written just for kids who think the way I did at that age (and still do, of course).

For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Picture of the Day!

I hope everyone had a lovely Halloween. In lieu of a drawing, I bring you this lovely autumn market scene:

A Long-Overdue Animated Trailer Post

It's been a while since we looked at trailers for upcoming animated (or not) films together, hasn't it? Fortunately, there's a huge crop out in the wake of ComiCon and they include some unusual films indeed. And questionable book-to-film title changes. Lots of them.



First off, "Winnie the Pooh", a very unexpected and pleasant surprise in this overall dreadful summer, is in theaters now. This is worth mentioning because it was released on the same weekend as, and has been a teeny tiny bit overshadowed by, another movie based on a beloved British children's book.

By the way, great jarb there Disney.



Here, just to get it out of the way, is the full trailer for "Happy Feet 2: Farewell to the Flesh". You are probably already aware that I disliked the original "Happy Feet", and while I figured the sequel might improve things (this is the same George Miller who gave us the awesomely bizarre "Babe: Pig in the City"), this here trailer is... discouraging. Actually, there are several things I could say about it but I will instead say this: At about the twenty second mark, I figured the makers of this film are, in fact, f**king with us.



I love how this cute teaser for Aardman's "Arthur Christmas" openly acknowledges right from the start that it's hard to get excited about a Christmas movie in high summer. I also like how this reminds me a little of the late, lamented "Cranium Command" show at EPCOT.



One of the overlooked treasures of the young adult novel section at your local library is illustrator Brian Selznick's Caldecot winning semi-graphic novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The film, directed by no less than Martin Scorsese, comes our way in November. The trailer is a bit heavy on the slapstick (and the love-it-or-hate-it stylings of 30 Seconds to Mars Frozen Embryos), but everything else looks gorgeous.



A second trailer for "Tintin" was trotted around the internet recently and... disappeared mysteriously. Hopefully, this French trailer will stick around for a while. Is it me or does it look like they're still suspiciously reluctant to show the characters' faces?



So... here's "Puss in Boots". After this is over, can we be done with "Shrek" and everything associated with same? Please? I'll be good!



And now for our most far-flung movies. Although the film doesn't hit theaters until March, Aardman has dropped the trailer for "Pirates!" already. You may have heard that they are no longer affiliated with Dreamworks. You may have also heard that Nick Park and company have been wanting to make a pirate movie since at least "Flushed Away" (which originally involved -yes- pi-rats and wound up a bit of a mess instead). I'm getting a distinct "Look at what we can do NOW" vibe from this trailer.



Finally -FINALLY!- we've got our first look at PIXAR's "John Carter" (which anyone reading a blog like mine probably already knows is, in fact, "A Princess of Mars". And yes, that is on my summer reading list.) Obviously most of the "big" effects aren't done yet, so this looks a little generic.

And Fridge Logic: Why not use "Kings and Queens" here instead?



And speaking of PIXAR, here's the teaser for "Brave". Seeing as one of PIXAR's hallmarks is the fact that they like to research their asses off, I am giddy with excitement over this one.



As far as series, and me being giddy with excitement, hey there, "Legend of Korra" trailer!



And just because I can, here's a very special find. A teaser trailer for a film that never saw the light of day. Originally, "Siegfried" was to be a full-length animated feature, but the funding was cut. The story was eventually made into a graphic novel, but the trailer, with a look somewhat similar to early period Don Bluth films, shows us we missed out on something amazing.

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Sketch of the Day!



I said recently I hadn't drawn enough dragons. Came up with this turtle-dragon.

Where the Wild Silly Old Bears Are

Well, here (via the wonderful /Film as usual) is the new trailer for Disney's "Winnie the Pooh", arriving in theaters this coming summer:



Now, this is an excellent trailer (though the editing is a little wonky at times). It has so far gained lots and lots of positive comments, which bodes well for Disney animation. And while the film is being released in a rather crowded market, it could be considered good counter-programing (unless A. A. Milne ever wrote an extended scene I am unaware of where every third character is violently killed).

That said, for some reason, this trailer felt... familiar...

EDIT: Well, that didn't take long now, did it?



OK, turns out that this trailer remix is kinda old, but even funnier now. And just for fun (and also because this post is a bit on the short side), here's one of my favorite trailer remixes ever: Christopher Nolan's "Dumb and Dumber" (it works out better than you'd expect because you tend to forget how damn dark "D&D" could get):



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Art of the Day! More goopy plein air goodness!

Captain Eeyore and The Weirdest Disney Thing

"Captain Eeyore"... might just be one of the greatest things I have ever seen.
Never intended for the eyes of people who are not Disney Cast Member Cyborgs, this little slice of happy was created to be the highlight of a cast party. It's since become a cult favorite that has recently gained some new fans thanks to the wonderful Walt Dated World website posting it on Facebook as a tribute to Michael Jackson. It may be the best tribute I've seen so far:


It's a little bit funnier if you know the back-story (here care of Jim Hill Media), particularly the horror stories centered around that walking design flaw better known as the original Pooh costume. (Anyone in the suit was completely unable to use their arms as, unlike in the film, you are not allowed to break character for anything. Think about that for a minute.)
If you're the impatient type, skip to Part Three, which parodies most of the "Captain EO" scenes you actually remember and has Eeyore dancing.

Now, a while back, I was finding and posting several other weird Disney film and television clips from my past that I'd found online. I was hoping to eventually build to the weirdest Disney cartoon I remember seeing but it slipped my mind. Well, now is the time. Now is the best time! Now is the best time of your...
...Uh, anyway.
The weirdest Disney thing (of which I am currently aware at least) is a cartoon called "Plutopia":



Actually, I will make one comment about this cartoon, and it is specifically directed at all the "Oh noes, think of the children" types out there. I saw this cartoon a lot as a little kid. And even back then it freaked me out a little, but I was unable to put into words exactly why. (Until I watched it again in college and realized that Pluto is fantasizing about being overfed by a sadomasochistic cat.) So dark and/or adult things in cartoons will not scar a child for life or anything because it will probably go right over their head. Usually.
Also, the "bone well" is creepy if you think about it.