This afternoon I finally bit the bullet and went out to the theater to see Disney's latest animated film, Frozen. I knew a lot of my friends (many of whom do not have children, it should be pointed out) really loved this movie, and at the time of this writing it has just received a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. Rumors are swirling that it will be headed to Broadway soon, although that isn't so much a benchmark of a quality film as it is a somewhat expected pattern from Disney. I had seen … [Read more...] about Is It Time to Ask for More from Animation?
drama
Who Doesn’t Love A Good Magic Trick?
There's a reason I call this blog "Exploring the Magic of Movies", and I suppose it has more to do with how I watch movies than the movies themselves, at least these days. In the early days of cinema, moving pictures truly looked like some kind of wizardry, and if you saw Martin Scorsese's Hugo a couple of years ago, you might have noticed the bit where audience members watching one of the first movies got up out of their seats and ran away in terror at the shot of an oncoming train. [youtube … [Read more...] about Who Doesn’t Love A Good Magic Trick?
An Epiphany About Bambi’s Mother (and Other Notable Deaths by Disney)
I think I've finally answered that nagging question that runs through my brain from time to time, namely: why is it that so many Disney characters have dead family members? If these are fairy tales created for children, why is there so darned much death? I suppose the first and most obvious answer to the question would be that Disney based his movies on fairy tales, which themselves were at times quite dark and had plenty of death in them, but it's not as though those stories were followed … [Read more...] about An Epiphany About Bambi’s Mother (and Other Notable Deaths by Disney)
Miss The Raven? Nevermore!
Months ago, I was lamenting the fact that I had somehow missed John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe in The Raven, due to its seemingly short stay in the theaters. This past weekend, I finally remedied that. If you've read my blog before, you may remember that in lieu of the latest Cusack film, I spent some time watching another Poe-centric film, The Black Cat. The feel of that movie was, I think, what viewers were hoping to see in The Raven, although sadly, that's not what we got at all. The Black … [Read more...] about Miss The Raven? Nevermore!
The Illusionist, Revisited
I spent a good portion of yesterday going through and cleaning up old and forgotten blogs, removing what I no longer wanted to keep, and reposting items I felt were worth keeping. Among the old posts was my review of one of my favorite movies, Christopher Nolan's The Prestige. At the end of that review, I made mention that my next planned viewing was The Illusionist, a film starring Ed Norton, which was also released at around the same time as The Prestige. I don't remember it getting nearly as … [Read more...] about The Illusionist, Revisited
Rise of the Intelligent Movies
Okay, it's been a few months since I last stopped by here to write. Anybody who follows me even a little bit knows that this is standard procedure. It's not that I haven't seen more movies worth writing about--far from it. Life just seems to have its own way of taking over your time. Kids go back to school, work picks up, I do stupid things like start writing a novel (well, okay, more like a novella, but whatever), and on and on. This morning during my usual social media rounds I read two … [Read more...] about Rise of the Intelligent Movies