Tag: Disney

Life, Animated was recently nominated for an Oscar, and one of those films that was relatively easy to watch so I jumped right on it.

I knew it involved Disney in some way, I did not know the focus was on a specific individual, Owen Suskind. Based on a book written by his dad, Ron Suskind, it tells of Owen’s story growing up and his struggles.

You see, Owen was autistic. And around 2-3 years old he started to become very reserved. He didn’t talk as much as he used to, he had no real way to communicate with others. This was also at a time when autism was less understood and they assumed something terrible had taken over him.

But they noticed something. Owen loved Disney movies, he would watch them all the time, it was the only thing that made him seemingly happy. He would rewind certain scenes over and over again. And one time, while watching The Little Mermaid, during the Ursula song Poor, Unfortunate Souls, he eventually repeated a phrase “Just The Voice” and was the first sign of hope in a long long time.

They found out that he could learn the lines from the films and would use them in a correct context. And the first real conversation he had with his father is when he found an Iago puppet and talked to him from below his bed, using his best bird voice. And Owen was able to talk to Iago unlike his parents, including direct lines from the films as well.

This is pretty high up there on most parents lists of things they are willing to do for their kids.

The beginning of the documentary started out very powerful and put me in tears, twice. That is those fears coming to the forefront of my mind, given my own child is still under 2 years old and I worry about things like autism. The struggles the family went through and what Owen went through are powerful and probably similar to thousands of families across the world.

His backstory was shown intermittently with scenes of Owen growing up, about to graduate from a program before getting to live on his own in a condo. About finding a girlfriend, about getting a job, and about running his own Disney fan club and connecting with people all over the world. Hell, his story is so inspirational he was able to give speeches and meet some famous Disney voice actors.

But after the intro, my interest began to wane. I don’t think the documentary knew how to end. It just continued to show his life and doing things and then, yep, movie.

Owen has a powerful story, and listening to his parents talk about it is worth the price of admission. But the ending lacks the same luster and peters off until it just decides to end.

For whatever reason, I know a lot of people who were upset when Disney bought Marvel Studios. They thought it was the end of the good stuff. They thought only bad could come. They said the same thing when they bought Lucasfilm.

I, however, was excited. They weren’t going to mess around with a good thing too much, they didn’t want to spend billions to not make billions more back! But I was even more excited about the potential of a full on, super good CGI Marvel/Disney flick. Yeah. Something with the cutting edge in technology, giving me full on super hero battles, with flash colors and everything the comics promised, and really that live action movies still can’t fully give. So when I found out it was Big Hero 6? Well, I obviously had to look up what the hell that was.

Big Hero 6 is a much smaller property that has a small following. It is most well known for having, at times, Sunfire and Silver Samurai from X-Men in it, but we know that Fox has those rights, so they had to work around it. Disney also wanted to be able to tell a new story and not feel super tied down to any mythos, so messing with a smaller property would work well with that. And hey, if they didn’t have the Big Hero 6 leader in it, they’d probably have to change a lot anyways.

And thus, this animated movie exists, presumably nothing like the (old) comics, and I knowing nothing about it couldn’t have been happier.

Yay surprises and happiness and sunshine flowers!

This story is about Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) and his trouble with ladies. That’s not true, he doesn’t have troubles, he just doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about ANYTHING really, outside of robots and robot fighting. You see, Hiro is only 14, but he already graduated high school. Bright kid. Has a bright older brother too, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), but he is in college doing boring stuff. Hiro just wants to illegally bot fight and make money that way.

But once he finds out that Tadashi is actually in a really fucking cool robotics program, with really cool people? Yeah, that is when he thinks college might be a good thing, and not just living at home with his Aunt (Maya Rudolph) in San Fransokyo (which you should be able to figure out what two cities were combined for this).

Well, Hiro is able to design super sexy nanobot technology to get himself admission to the school! But when disaster strikes and he loses his invention, he is sad again. Not even his new college friends can help: Go Go Tomago (Jamie Chung), Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez), Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.) and Fred (T.J. Miller).

But when he finds out his invention was stolen and is being used for nefarious purposes, well, he cannot just sit idly by. He has to fight back. And he has to use Baymax (Scott Adsit), the soft robot helper and turn him into a fighting machine! And maybe he can fight back too. And his friends. Yes… Maybe they can be…super heroes.

Also featuring James Cromwell as Professor Robert Callaghan and Alan Tudyk as the seedy business man Alistair Krei.

Shake that sexy butt.

Color? Yes. Fantastic animation? Yes yes. Likeable characters? Yesx3. A plot about science and why knowledge is good and how science can change the world? Hells to the yes.

Watching Big Hero 6, the best way to describe it was having a blast. This Disney film is notable for not having a lot of songs, which might be their goal. They went Tangled, then Wreck-It Ralph, then Frozen, and now Big Hero 6. A lot more “macho” themed movie, if you go by outdated gender stereotypes, so there is no room for silly songs. Just action, humor, and sexy sexy graphics.

This was just a really great both super hero movie and animated family film. That is a hard one to pull off. A lot of great humor and it has a lot of similarities (based on my research) with the comics, but unique enough to make it its own thing. The only issue with it being in the animated field and a Disney flick, is I know that if we are going to get it a sequel, we have at least a four year wait. Can’t have one of these guys every two years, as it will make them compete with themselves for Best Animated Picture, and they don’t want that.

And can we get another shout out to science? Yay science! Some of the tech was inspired by real life advances too, making this futuristic tale also a bit modern.

It is too close to Halloween now, but I expect fully by next year that we will see a lot of Hiro and Baymax duos out and about. Not more than Elsa, but a fair number still.

Only took me, forever, but now I have seen The Princess and the Frog! Hooray! I can’t believe it took me this long either, because I tend to love movies that have controversy.

For those too lazy to click that wiki link, tPatF had a lot of changes before it became the movie it is now. It was considered offensive, that she start out as a chambermaid, instead of a waitress. It was apparently bad that her name was Maddy. It was also horrible for them to call it The Frog Princess. Pretty much all PR crap. Apparently with some small changes, everyone was fine with it, especially since they hired Oprah Winfrey to be a consultant.

To quote an altered South Park line: “Oprah Winfrey is NOT the Empress of black people!”

But anyways, on to the movie. I will note I had no idea the major plot point that occurred…pretty early in the movie (Once Tiana finds the frog) would happen. All the quick TV spots failed to mention that. Definitely changed the movie for me, so won’t spoil that here. I only liked a few of the songs (The evil dudes was good, as was the song in the abandoned building about the restaurant) but after those early ones, they all went pretty downhill for me. Lyrics just seemed bad, not to mention didn’t care for the characters who later came in.

The evil dude reminded me of Jafar in a less smart, more crazy, kind of way. His demise, also kind of similar. The shadow dwellers or whatever were definitely scary too.

I hated the beginning, when they were young kids. I was hoping so much that it wouldn’t last long, as I was not interested in seeing a story of 9 year olds. Luckily, it was quick. Similarly, Charlotte, the rich girl. When she grew up, her face still looked way too much like her younger self, so to me it just seemed like a tall baby the whole movie. An accidental creepy addition, or is there a moral with that story?

DIE BABY FACE WOMAN, DIE!

Only other big name to have any real lines was John Goodman. Terrence Howard’s character was barely in the movie.

Overall! Just okay. Disappointed with the majority of songs (I am not a Jazz hater, just lyrically), and the weird direction the plot went. Didn’t really enjoy that as I was hoping. Damn animal movies.

There is no plot in this movie. No real plot. But because African Cats is narrated by Samuel L. Mother Fucking Jackson, there is a basic story. Unfortunately, this movie is rated G, so it is fun for everyone, and not just fun for me. Seriously. Think of all the great quotes that could have been in the movie.

“I’m sick of all these mother fucking cats, on these mother fucking plains.

My documentary reviews are always shorter. This tells of a lion pride, a rival lion pride with many male lions, and a single mom cheetah. We go through the lives of the baby cheetahs to their adulthood, and how they fend off attackers. For the first lion pride, there is a lame male lion, an old female lion, and their young cub. The evil lion pride wants to kill everyone. Or sex up the lionesses. Something like that.

The camera work and high definitionness is just so amazing though. I watched it on Blu-Ray, and it was sooooo pretty. Seriously. How the heck did they get those cameras so close to the cats? Are they automatic robot cameras? I really just don’t get it.

It is a short movie too. And family appropriate. And pretty. So check it out. You will be all, “Awwwwww”

At blockbuster there are tiny strips of paper to show what is coming soon, with the title and release date on them. The one for prom must have been prented incorrectly, because the background was dark, and I could only barely make out the words PROM on it, definitely not the word disney. So I assumed it would be a horror movie. It was pretty creepy. But then there was a colorful poster, with a big group of diverse kids all dressed up and no blood. And the word DISNEY. My mistake!

I definitely thought this movie would be bad based off the company and idea, but it ended up being a much more pleasant and enjoyable story than I could imagine. It also has tons of recognizable faces in it. Hank and the Rehab Dude from Breaking Bad. The main chick was in Scream 4 (She plays the “dumb blonde with big tits”(Scream 4 quote)) who dies at the beginning. There is also the ginger gay kid from Shameless. But finally, my personal favorite, THE DUDE WHO GLOWS from Sky High. Now he is all grown up and super tall. Black hair too, not gold.

Most useless super power ever? Maybe to you. But I lost my keys and it is dark.

This movie starts 3~ weeks before your typical movie prom aka best night of high school…in film. It has quite a few storylines outside of the main one which is largely predictable. Unfortunately it shows a lot of crazy/dramatic gestures from males in this high school asking females to prom. I am afraid for future generations, in case this movie becomes popular enough to fill girl’s heads with even more unreasonable expectations about a dance.

I thought most of the storylines were fine / cute / good, but the one I liked the most was with THE DUDE WHO GLOWS from Sky High (man sky high rocks). Maybe because its a been there, done that type story for me.

Movie has some stereotypes and cliches, but thankfully there is enough “different” people that you could probably find someone to relate too. Wont buy, but I did enjoy the one watch I had.