Haven’t Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe or Gloria the Hippo made it back to their New York enclosures yet? I guess so long as DreamWorks Animation can come up with ways to keep them lost in the great big world they won’t. In Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, the displaced zoo…
Making a genuinely good, original Christmas movie is a difficult task in this day and age. Added to this, after Fred Claus, The Polar Express, The Santa Clause and other such motion pictures, it seems impossible to put another fresh spin on Santa Claus and his North Pole universe. Enter the British animation studio Aardman,…
There’s a lot of hoopla surrounding Martin Scorsese’s latest, Hugo, which is the director’s introduction to family films, and the only one to utilize 3D technology. Not run-of-the-mill praise, I’ve heard phrases like “timeless,” “a masterpiece,” and “one of the best movies about filmmaking ever made,” being thrown about. And because I have no life…
During the mid-fifties American puppeteer Jim Henson, and his muppets, a varied collection of custom marionettes, took the entertainment world by storm. Through the years, the most iconic has been Kermit the Frog, the only “amphibian” to address the Oxford Union, and also the first to receive an honorary doctorate from Southampton College. But although…
In 2006 George Miller, Warren Coleman, Judy Morris, and John Collee brought us “Happy Feet,” which proved that despite being confined to the barren, icy wasteland of Antarctica, penguins can have fun too (usually by singing radio hits). Despite mild controversy over the film’s environmentalist stance and its supposed polar reconstruction of an urban environment…
2005’s low-budget, halfway-charming Hoodwinked! developed into a minor hit despite its humble origins, but does anyone out there honestly remember it? More pertinently, who genuinely wanted to see a sequel? Limping into cinemas almost six years after its predecessor, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil is easily one of the worst animated movies ever made to…
Since the teaser, which was released in June, didn’t delve much into the story of Brave (choosing to instead focus on artistry and mystery), Disney-Pixar has finally released a full theatrical trailer which presents more of the story arc for their latest animated adventure. Denied allowance into the trials of the first borns because she…
