Trolls Review: So Happy It Hurts

Trolls was the Family Gala film at the 2016 London Film Festival and was released in UK cinemas in October. Surprisingly, it's not as bad as it sounds. Read my full Trolls review at Starburst Magazine here. Here's the synopsis:

Justin Timberlake’s Branch is the only Troll with an understandable sense of unease that dreaded monsters the Bergens are desperate to find the eye-poppingly bright community of trolls living blissfully carefree in the woods. Twenty years earlier, the Trolls escaped the clutches of the Bergens, who are such a bunch of miserable creatures that they can only find happiness when they eat the multicoloured-haired Trolls. Branch warns his fellow trolls not to have parties full of loud singing and glittery fireworks, but will the irrepressible Princess Poppy and the other trolls listen?

No, they bloody won't, the annoying little buggers. No wonder Branch is miserable and hiding in a hole in the ground. So when the Bergen head chef finds the trolls and carries some off to Bergen town to turn into tasty treats, Poppy must enlist Branch to help her in rescuing her friends so that they don't miss out on anymore scheduled hug times, singing, dancing, and lest we forget... scrapbooking.

Read more of my Trolls review at Starburst Magazine.

Here's the trailer:

Zootropolis Review

Zootropolis is going up against Metropolis this weekend. Are these bunnies nuts or what? Despite a name change from the American title Zootopia, the film has already racked up huge dollar at the box office elsewhere ($200 million in the US alone), so maybe Batman V Superman V Zootropolis isn't such a bad idea after all. It might be going up against DC's finest, but it's got the Easter holidays on the way to keep kiddies entertained. Here's a snippet of my review:

It's a brave move to make a kids film where there is a montage of the do-gooder main character dishing out 200 parking tickets. Zootropolis could have done without this scene, but impressively it manages to make its leading bunny likeable, no matter how many other Zootropolis-dwelling animals’ days she ruins by slapping them with a fine. 
 

Judy Hops (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the bunny tasked with parking duty, after she works her fluffy little tail off to get out of her small town, get herself through police academy and finally live her dream of tackling crime in the big city of Zootropolis. Judy is a dreamer, determined to leave her carrot-farming folks behind and be the first ever bunny police officer. But life in the city isn't quite how Judy imagined it would be, and she is forced to team up with streetwise hustler fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), to unravel the mystery of some missing mammals.

Read the rest of my Zootropolis review at Starburst Magazine.

Here's the trailer:

Big Hero 6 Review

San Fransokyo teen Hiro uses his technical wizardry to hustle his way to winning in illegal robot fighting matches. His brother Tadashi recognises Hiro’s genius for robot building and encourages him to take up a place at the ‘geek school’ for tech whizzes where Tadashi has built huggable big nurse ‘bot Baymax. When a tragedy befalls Hiro’s family, he must band together with Baymax and other allies from the school to take on a mysterious masked figure who is using Hiro’s microbot invention for his own nefarious purposes.

This Marvel-Disney mash-up looked insufferable from the brightly coloured and barely coherent trailer so it is a pleasure to report that Big Hero 6 is a surprisingly heartfelt and exciting family movie. Baymax might look designed to simply sell a shed load of merchandise, but he is actually the film’s true wild card. While the rest of the characters pass by in a blur of colourful enthusiasm, but will linger as long in the memory as the flavour of bubblegum lasts, Baymax really is a keeper. It is amazing how much the big ‘bot manages to swipe your heart away, even if many of the best moments are half swiped and rejigged  from the poignant moments between the young John Connor and his robot pal, the T-800 in Terminator 2.

Nevertheless, it may not be hugely original but Big Hero 6 is the most exciting animated action film since The Incredibles. When Hiro and his team face off against the villain, the stakes are high, but more importantly the idea of revenge makes Hiro himself into the most riveting character on screen. There are huge set-pieces, some decent laughs, but the best thing about Big Hero 6 is the ultimate question of whether Hiro will really be a hero or if his thirst for revenge will get the better of him.

Most impressive is the fact that Big Hero 6 balances its origin story perfectly with the introduction of its super-villain. There might be some awkward exposition to begin with, but its snappy enough that the story pieces together like a well constructed robot with a heart as big as Baymax’s. 

Watch the trailer:

More recent reviews:

Inherent Vice 

The Imitation Game

Birdman

A Most Violent Year

Wild

Whiplash

Testament of Youth

The Theory of Everything

Into the Woods

American Sniper

Minions Trailer Guarantees Toy Sales

Little yellow bastards. The Minions from Despicable Me 1 and 2 have taken the world by storm so it was inevitable they would be given their very own spin-off film. They spout gibberish, they look cute and they are about to become the biggest selling toy at Christmas no doubt and that will be at least six months before this film even comes out.

I'm sorry but I'm fairly unmoved by the Minions. Much of the trailer seems to brush through a quick history of the minions from dinosaur days to almost present day New York. They are always looking for their very own despicable master to serve which has taken them through T-Rex to Dracula and will eventually lead them to Gru.

Despite my lack of love for the minions, it all looks pretty funny in an oh-so-cute and charming way. More importantly, Michael Keaton, Jon Hamm, Sandra Bullock and Steve Coogan have all signed on for quick and easy pay cheques so here's hoping there is something more for the cynical old farts like me.

Here's the trailer:



Are you sold?

More trailers from I Love That Film

King of graffiti stop motion animation Blu returns

Blu is a graffiti artist who creates the most amazing, epic, landscape transforming stop motion animations you will likely ever see. If you have any interest in animation then check out one of his latest videos below:



This one is called Big Bang Big Boom and it is just incredible. His work before this has always been a bit magical but this takes his art to the next level. There is so much going on in this 10 minutes of animation and it feels as though Blu has painted an entire city and taken the viewer on a journey through evolution.

He paints on everything and there is so much interaction between his 2D paintings and the £D everyday world, that this is beyond anything Blu has achieved before. It also tells more of a story and does not suffer from the same sense of repetition as some of his other work.

Standout scenes are the beach full of litter and the part towards the end that shows the evolution of weaponry right through to the fatalistic finale.

If you skipped watching the video but are still here reading my pointless words, then go and click play right now. This is an incredible piece of moving art that has to be seen to be believed. Then once you've watched it once, start it again and appreciate the enormous effort and countless hours that must have gone in to creating this mammoth production.

Big Bang Big Boom is experimental, political and nothing short of mind blowing. I think Blu created this in 2010 but I've only just seen it and decided it had to be shared. Blu also has a website where you can buy a DVD collection of his work so if you like this, then go check out some more.

Epic Trailer and The Art of Epic Book Review

Some tunes are just made for trailers. They sound epic enough to market any grandiose piece of blockbusting entertainment. Guardian at the Gates is one of those tunes and features very briefly at the start of the trailer for the new animated film from Blue Sky Studios, Epic. This is the studio that brought us Ice Age and Rio but don't hold any of that against them, Epic looks like their most ambitious and... yes... epic films to date.

Starring a wonderful voice cast including Christoph Waltz on villain duties and Colin Farrell and Josh Hutcherson as the heroes but also the likes of Steve Tyler and Beyonce on supporting vocals, it could be an animated adventure that will appeal to all ages.

It's all about a bunch of tree dwelling little people. No not dwarves but really really little people that live in the leaves and talk to slugs and ride hummingbirds and stuff. It could be a tree hugging epic on the scale of Avatar and no doubt that was a little bit of the reason for using the epic sounding Guardian at the Gates which I last heard used in the Avater trailer. As soon as I heard it, it certainly brought back memories of my agonising wait to see that film and the countless times I watched the trailer in preparation.

Anyway the main reason I'm talking about Epic is that as part of my continuing writing for Starburst magazine, I managed to pick up a copy of The Art of Epic, one of those gorgeous, big coffee table books that features loads of pictures including stills from the film, storyboards and rough sketches. Here is my review of The Art of Epic. Check out the trailer for Epic below:



What do you think? Epic or epic fail?

Animated Music Videos

Another popular style of music video is using animation techniques Some use cartoon animation, some use stop motion animation and others use digital animation. Sometimes the artist is represented performing in animated form and other times there is a narrative featured using animation.

My students and I are looking at different style of music videos and we have already looked at a couple of different music genres, and as-live or in concert music videos so far.

Animated music videos can often be very eye-catching and allow the impossible to be achieved. Cartoon animation can range from the simplistic child-like drawings of the music video for Nizlopi’s JCB song to the anime style of Linkin Park’s Breaking The Habit. If the artist is performing in animated style, then lip synching can still be included. In the case of the Linkin Park music video, this was achieved by filming the band’s performance and then rotoscoping it. This is where animators use the real footage as the basis for their animation. Take on Me famously mixed live action with cartoon animation.

Stop motion animated music videos are still very popular despite the increase of digital animation. They allow very imaginative ideas to be brought to life. Stop motion is the process of taking many still images and putting them together to create the impression of a moving image. It can make lip synching difficult but many stop motion music videos have achieved it. Plan B’s video for No Good took seven days to shoot on a stills camera and is particularly creative for its use of lip synching.  This ‘was achieved by Levi shooting Plan B performing the track on a DV camera, then output the footage at 12 frames per second and printed a book of all 2,800 frames, which became their lip-synch bible. “Every frame we shot we showed him the relevant page of the book and he mimicked the shape of his mouth on that page for the shot,” says Daniel.’’’ (www.britishcouncil.org/antenna_uk_transcript_english.doc)

Other examples include Oren Levi and Her Morning Elegance, early example Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel and Coldplay’s Strawberry Swing.

Plan B - "No Good" by czapizzle

Finally digital animation is the most recent form of animation to be used in music videos. It is the same principal as other forms of animation with fluid motion being created frame by frame but now on computers. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers use digital animation for their video for Californication to make it look like a video game.

As always there are many more examples out there and I would be very grateful if anyone could point me in the direction of any better examples of animated videos and perhaps I can add them to this post.

More in this series on the styles, conventions and techniques of music videos:

• Surrealist music videos
• Narrative music videos
• music genres
• as live/in concert
• Parody music videos 
• Homage music videos