Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 3rd, 2011
In this day and age, we take computer animation for granted. Pixar, Futuarama? We have seen it a million times. What about if I told you that over 15 years ago, there was a cartoon that was the first of its kind to be one hundred percent computer animation? Well, you might dismiss it or figure it was not much to look at. You would be wrong. Let us take a look at history boys n girls and discover the wonder that can only be known as Reboot.
Bob is a Guardian. He works for the Mainframe safeguarding the vital data and sprites (people and animals) that inhabit his sector. His two closest friends are Dot Matrix and Enzo Matrix. Dot runs a local diner called Dot’s Diner and is in on most of the action in the sector. She is also seen as a leader and tends to help out fellow sprites in need. Enzo is her younger brother and idolizes Bob. He also has a dog named Frisket.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 21st, 2011
It's funny how the zeitgeist works, in that it is hardly unusual for two films with very similar high concepts to hit the screens at close to the same time. Dante's Peak and Volcano. Deep Impact and Armageddon. Hell, The Towering Inferno came about as a result of Fox and Warner cooperating in order to avoid making identical films. And this year, two animated features with super-villains as their protagonists: Despicable Me and our current subject: Megamind.
His childhood consistently ruined by the budding Metro Man (Brad Pitt), Megamind (Will Ferrell) becomes the super-villain he feels he was destined to be. But when his latest scheme actually succeeds in destroying Metro Man, he finds life curiously empty, and so sets about creating a new super-hero: Tighten (Jonah Hill). But Tighten, it turns out, is more villain than hero, while Megamind, thanks in no small part to a budding relationship with reporter Roxanne Ritchie (Tina Fey), moves ever closer to hero territory.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 2nd, 2011
"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrariwise what it is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would be, you see?"
To be perfectly honest with you, I have never read either of the two Lewis Carroll books on which this film has been based. Under ordinary circumstances, that would put me at a decided disadvantage in both watching the film and certainly in providing an insightful review of the movie. But these are not ordinary circumstances. The characters and their stories, originally told in both Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There, have become an indelible part of our culture. One need not have read a word to be intimately familiar with Alice and her fanciful friends and rivals from Underland, which Alice herself interprets for us as Wonderland. There have been animated features as well as other live action attempts. The characters have become iconic and have appeared in advertising campaigns and even an episode of Star Trek. The surprise isn't that I feel like I know this story without having read the source material. The real surprise would be if there was anyone out in the civilized world who wasn't familiar with these characters. They were originally oral stories told to a group of sisters, one of which was Alice Little, the inspiration for the tales. They would only end up in book form at the insistence of the young Alice.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 2nd, 2011
When a film is successful enough, it’s a relatively natural assumption today that a sequel will follow. In that sequel we expect more of the same and hopefully something new as well. Unfortunately, there is a disturbing sideline for the animation sequel. Because the actors aren’t really on camera at all, there is the temptation to replace them so that you can do a much cheaper, often direct-to-video sequel. The folks who did Madagascar didn’t go that route, but the folks who did Open Season did. Gone are the likes of Martin Lawrence, Gary Sinise, Ashton Kutcher, and Debra Messing. These voices are replaced by Matthew W. Taylor, Diedrich Bader and Kirk Baily.The result is a decidedly inferior film that was relegated to the Wal-Mart bins instead of the box office.
Boog is upset because no one wants to join him for guy's trip. Even Elliott has backed out of the annual camping trip. So he sets off on his own. He sees a sign for a circus that is coming to town and decides to check it out. There he runs into a circus bear Doug, who is looking to get out of the circus and live with the animals in the woods as the king of the forest. When Boog encounters Doug, he gets conned into switching places with the bear. Of course, both discover the grass really isn't always greener on the other side.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 27th, 2011
As most fans of this site know, I’m the resident video game expert on the site. Which means? I play lots of video games. So by default, whenever something video game related comes to this site, it goes to me. Good, bad or indifferent. Many video games these days do the cross-promotion thing whether it would be books, movies or even games before the actual game. One of these I received recently was Dead Space: Aftermath on Blu-ray to promote the launch of Dead Space 2.
Space. We enter to see the USG O’Bannon come into view. Suddenly we see a bunch of dead bodies all around the ship. Something is very wrong. Soon, the scene shifts to inside the ship where there is a rescue crew investigating for life signs. They find four blips on their equipment and then the engine starts up without warning. The crew rushes and finds the four life beings.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 15th, 2011
Johnathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was never meant to be a children's tale. It is one of the most corrosive satires in the English language, one that has lost none of its brilliant venom over the passage of centuries. But endless bowdlerizations have given its first two sections (the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingag) the reputation for being children's classics. Obviously, references to people being “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth” are usually left out. At any rate, said bowdlerizations inevitably resulted in various anodyne film adaptations. And so, as Jack Black galumphs across the screen to box office disaster, here is a collection of animated takes on Swift's work.
Gulliver's Travels: (76 mins.) This 1939 effort is the main attraction here, the second feature-length animated film ever made. It limits itself to Gulliver's journey to Lilliput, where, in this version, he must bring about the end of a war between Lilliput and Blefuscu so that bland princess and prince of the respective nations can marry. The Fleischer brothers are best remembered for Betty Boop and their excellent Superman cartoons. Gulliver's Travels, on the other hand, is far from their best work. The animation is fluid, though the backgrounds are lifeless and still, a far cry from what Disney had just done with Snow White. The pace is slack, meandering along through rather tired slapstick. The cartoonish Lilliputians are charming enough, but the more realistic characters are expressionless waxworks, or, in the case of the rotoscoped Gulliver, dip alarmingly toward the uncanny valley. The piece is a historical curiosity, but is no classic. Still, it's much, much better than...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by BABY on January 14th, 2011
Baby here. Yeah, I'm the German shepherd/chow mix that runs security here at Upcomingdiscs. I also get called upon to help out with the dog movie reviews from time to time. Now, somebody needs to get themselves a good book on proper mammal identification around here. You see, Alpha And Omega is about wolves. I'm a dog. That spells D O G. Look at it this way. That's God spelled backwards, and that's no coincidence. If you doubt me, just let me get a couple of seconds with one of the delivery guys. Now wolves are a whole different animal. I know there are nut jobs out there who say that dogs did something called evolving from wolves, but those same guys call you humans a bunch of monkeys. Get my point? And that spells F A N G. Dogs are these nice furry buddies who sleep in your bed on cold nights and eat tissues on your nightstand when you're not lookin'. Okay, so I get in a little trouble for that last thing. Wolves are wild animals who don't really do any of those cute snuggly things. If you spell wolf backwards you just get flow, which reminds me of something else I get into trouble for. And that spells B A D. Now Gino says I have to pull my weight around here and write a wolf movie review. Well, I'll show him who's boss. I won't do it, and that's final.
(ed. note: We've had a long talk with Baby and after threatening to take her ball away, I think we've come to an understanding.)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 3rd, 2011
"Luke Skywalker has returned to his home planet of Tatooine in order... But, you know this story..."
Know this story, you do. It's the opening of the third, or actually the 6th in sequence, but it is the 3rd one made, unless you count... Never mind. This is the prologue to Return Of The Jedi. Not so long ago in this Galaxy, Family Guy took a shot across the bow of those Imperial Cruisers with its extremely funny and on the spot spoof of the first Star Wars film, or actually the 4th chapter.... Star Wars: A New Hope. It was only a matter of time before Seth MacFarlane would steer his own ship back into George Lucas's universe a third time. With equal parts faithful adaptation and off-the-wall detours, he's done it again, delivering another very funny tour into the dark side.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 3rd, 2011
Futurama was the brainchild of Simpson veterans Matt Groening and David X Cohen. With the growing popularity of their iconic cartoon, it was no surprise that Fox would tap the team to bring another show to the network. When Futurama premiered in 1999, it was a combination of The Jetsons and The Simpsons. That would be ironic for those of us who think the Simpsons theme is a direct knock off of The Jetsons. It was 1000 years in the future, and the joke was that no matter how much things changed, they hadn’t really changed at all. The space-age series would use many of the writing and art team from The Simpsons. That meant the character designs, at least the humans, would look exactly like the people in the other show. The writing would include that same subtle wit that implanted tons of references for the adults who were watching. The show never seemed to click with the kids, but it was not really meant to. The subject matter was considerably more adult in nature, and there really weren’t any cuddly characters. All of this likely led to Fox’s decision to cancel the show after four years. It wasn’t a quick and painless demise, either. The show suffered through months of purgatory. It was on, then off again. The final episodes were moved around and often rescheduled. In the end it was an uphill battle, and Futurama lost.
But the cancellation was not to be permanent. The show found new legs on cable and finally with a handful of home video movies. Interest was once again high, and Futurama was back from the grave. Now the episodes can also continue on home video. Here you'll find a collection of 13 episodes on 2 discs.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 8th, 2010
I grew up on the Peanuts creations of Charles M. Schulz. Most of us have, in some way or another. His newspaper comic strip is one of the longest running and most successful strips of all time. The work has been translated into every language currently spoken on the planet. The images of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest of the Peanuts gang have appeared on just about any kind of product imaginable. Our pop culture contains too many references to the strip to mention briefly. For me, it was the television specials starting in the mid 1960’s that brought the gang into my life. The classics are running annually, still after nearly 50 years. A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are the most mentioned and certainly beloved by generations of children and adults. I thought I never missed an airing.
A Charlie Brown Christmas
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