missmediajunkie

Now this is how you do a reboot. You take a much-beloved, nostalgic property with a lot of room for improvement, keep the things that people love, toss the things that didn't work, put in the money to give the production values a big upgrade, and have creators at the helm who love and understand he original, but who also have the know-how to put together something modern viewers will enjoy. All the boxes have been ticked for the new Cartoon Network version of "Thundercats," which brings back Lion-O, Tygra, Cheetara, Panthro, and all your other favorites back in new anime incarnations.

Before you recoil at the thought of moe and mecha invading the "Thundercats" universe, let me set the scene. The new "Thundercats" places young Lion-O (Will Freidle) as prince and heir to the throne of the quasi-feudal kingdom of Thundera, home of the Thundercats. Instead of being a child in an adult body, he's a typical adolescent, distracted by tales of mythological technology and occasionally going out in disguise and getting into fights with ruffians. His adopted older brother Tygra (Matthew Mercer) is more level-headed and more capable, but a bit of a jerk to his younger brother.

However, there's not much time to squabble because the kingdom is soon under attack by the forces of the evil Mumm-Ra (Robin Atkin Downes) and his army of lizards. King Claudus (Lenny Kenney, the original Lion-O) puts up a good fight, but in the end Thundera is lost. And so, Lion-O is left to take up the Sword of Omens and lead a scrappy band of the remaining Thundercats on a long journey to regain his kingdom. Other regulars include the sleekly sexy Cheetara (Emmanuelle Chriqui), mischeivous street kids WilyKat (Eamon Pirruccello) and WilyKit (Madeleine Hall), avuncular Panthro (Kevin Michael Richardson), wizardly Jaga (Corey Burton), and Snarf (Satomi Kohrogi), a tubby sidekick/pet who doesn't speak in this version. Mumm-Ra's recurring underlings include the turncoat Grune (Clancy Brown) and a lizard heavy named Slithe (Dee Bradley Baker).

Visually, the new series looks like a mid-90s epic fantasy anime, and specifically Shoji Kowamori's "Vision of Escaflowne," with its lush environments, mix of low and high technology, and anthropomorphized cat characters. The designs feature interesting details, the animation is fluid, and the direction is top notch. I don't think it compares to the higher-end productions that have come out of Japan in recent years, but it's still a considerable leap in quality from the 80s version. Moreover, "Thundercats" follows the pattern of a typical anime action series, with an ongoing narrative that switches between plot-heavy and self contained episodes. And to my surprise, there actually turns out to be quite a bit of plot - much of it drawn directly from the older series. However the treatment of the material has been a bit more serious and a bit more in depth, though plenty of humor and cheesy moments keep things light. It wouldn't be "Thundercats" without the cheesiness after all.

The reaction to the show has been almost uniformly positive, and especially among the older fans who grew up with the original "Thundercats." My own memories are pretty hazy, but the show's creators have definitely been using the established "Thundercats" mythology to give the new series more texture and history. It has its own attitude and its own ideas, but there's also a comforting sense that the people in charge love and cherish the source materal. New viewers don't need to know anything about the older incarnation to enjoy it, but those who are familiar with the original show will find cameos of minor characters and other references in abundance. Online discussions of the current episodes frequently bring up old enemies or storylines that fans would like to see return in the new series. That's a vote of confidence if I ever saw one.

At the same time the creators have been doing a fantastic job with original characters. The stand-alone episodes have been my favorites so far, with Lion-O encountering a colony of plant people and getting himself caught up in an extended "Usagi Yojimbo" homage. The new "Thundercats" isn't just updating Third Earth and Thundera, but expanding them. There are intriguing new layers, like the suggestion that the dominance of the Thundercats over the other anthropomorphic animal races may have been the result of past injustices. Nothing too dark or weighty, but it's opening more terrain for the 'Cats to explore.

I like the show's ambition and the approach it's taken so far, so I'm rooting for its success. I'd be much happier with the recent surge in reboots if more of them were like this.
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Sometimes being a media junkie can get a little overwhelming. I know I'm lucky to have the free time to indulge in watching movies and television at all, and that I have access to so much content, but lately my "To Watch" list has been getting out of hand. Here's a sampling:

- I'm currently about two weeks behind on "The Daily Show." I usually watch the shows online the next morning before I go to work, or I catch up on multiple episodes over the weekend. However, lately the morbid hijinks of the would-be Republican presidential candidates has been depressing, so I put them off for a couple of days, and the backlog built up, and now I'm seriously considering just skipping all the ones I missed and moving on.

- A few months ago I saw ads announcing that a new season of "Project Runway" had started on Lifetime, and I made the mental note to seek it out. And then I turn around and find news articles popping up about the upcoming finale. Already?! It turns out that season nine is currently about two thirds of the way through, so I still have time to catch up if I want to. It used to be that I never missed a season of "Project Runway" or "Top Chef," and now I have no idea how long it's been since I watched either. What year was Mondo on "Runway"?

- The new fall season just started, which means I should be out there gobbling up pilots and reporting back on what's good and what isn't and what may need a few more episodes to render a verdict. I haven't watched a single premiere so far. Not one. Fortunately most of the shows that have made their debuts so far haven't been getting very good reviews, which assuages some of the guilt. However, I need a replacement for "Law & Order: SVU," and I need to figure out if it's going to be "Prime Suspect," "Person of Interest," or something else. After those two, "Pan Am," and "Terra Nova," I think I'm in the clear until the fairy tale stuff lands in late October.

- And of course, all my regular shows are coming back. "Big Bang Theory" and "Community" are both on at the same time tonight, as usual. I just realized I missed the season premiere of "Criminal Minds," which reversed course and brought back AJ Cook and Paget Brewster after the spinoff crashed and burned. And "Nikita" starts again tomorrow. And "Mythbusters" is back next week. And Charlyne Yi is on "House" this year! I love her! And the season premiere has House incarcerated, which feels a little too much like that premiere they did with him in the mental hospital, but whatever. I have to see how they're going to write off Cuddy. I guess I should at least watch the premiere of "Law & Order: SVU" too, to see what happens to Stabler.

- Meanwhile, I'm still trying to keep up with a few summer series like "Breaking Bad" and "Doctor Who." They've both been really strong this year. Writeups are forthcoming.

- Gee that new "Thundercats" reboot looks good. And "Young Justice" is back. And I really need to check out that new "Batman" cartoon, "The Brave and the Bold." Wait, what do you mean it just ended after three seasons on Cartoon Network?! This may be the year I finally stop watching cartoons since they keep getting pushed farther and farther back in the mental queue. Don't even get me started on the anime. Five years ago I was among the most hardcore otaku you ever met, and now I have no idea what's popular anymore. What's "Tiger & Bunny" about? And when did I last watch "South Park"? I used to love that show.

- Oh boy. "60 Minutes" is coming back soon too. And I'm so far behind on "Frontline," I don't even - gah.

- September is traditionally a slow month for movies. The blockbuster season is over but the awards contenders haven't started campaigning to the masses yet. However, there are more than a few films still in theaters that I'm debating over whether I want to see now or if I can wait for DVD. I might sneak off to a matinee of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" in the near future. And my Netflix queue is still full of titles from earlier in the year and I'm picking through the last few stragglers from last year. I think once I get through this batch of September releases, that'll be it for 2010 and I can finally put that Top 10 list out. This is about the same time that I did it last year, so I guess I'm still on schedule?

Okay, so what's my game plan? Usually I watch a movie a day, but with the influx of new TV programming I think I might take a break after this month of Netflix expires and I get the Top 10 list out, and I'll just play catch-up on the TV side for a week or two. There are going to be a couple of series I don't see myself keeping up with regularly anymore, like "Hawaii Five-0," and as much as I like my news and information shows, I'll probably end up picking and choosing among episodes based on what they're covering. Consequently, you'll probably be seeing a lot of blogging about TV shows for a little while until I regain my media equilibrium.

Whew.
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It's Labor Day, and the 2011 summer movie season is over. I didn't get out to theaters nearly as much as I wanted to, and I wound up skipping a lot of the bigger franchise films like "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Cars 2" in favor of smaller films like "Midnight in Paris." I'm not sure if I should be writing a wrap-up post like this since I only saw about a dozen films this summer in total, and not a single comedy or horror film. However, perceptions are everything and I've been keeping up with the box office reports and Monday morning quarterbacking, so I've got a good sense of which films have been considered hits and which are flops. Overall, this has certainly been a better year than 2010 for summer movies, but there have also been some notable misfires and interesting wrinkles. Let's take a look at this year by its biggest trends. One quick note - I'm not covering the superhero films in this post, but I wrote up an entire blog entry about them over here.

The Sequels - The great big franchises certainly made money, but there's been a distinct sense of diminishing returns with the majority of them. "Transformers," "Cars," "Kung-Fu Panda," "X-Men," "The Hangover," "Spy Kids," and "Final Destination" all turned in new installments that didn't do as well as the previous ones. Three that broke the trend were "Fast Five," "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes," and the final "Harry Potter" film, which were all among the better liked and better reviewed films of the summer. I was pleasantly surprised by "X-Men: First Class" and knew "Transformers 3" was inevitable, but there were several weeks where all the reviewers seemed to lament over totally unnecessary sequels like "Pirates 4" and "Cars 2." It became a running joke that "The Hangover Part II" was exactly the same as the first one.

Falling Stars - Who would have thought fifteen years ago that Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts wouldn't be able to drive "Larry Crowne" to the top of the box office charts? Or that Jim Carrey would flop so badly with "Mr. Popper's Penguins"? You might argue that both films were widely panned, but that wouldn't have stopped a movie star with any real clout back in the day. Even more significant than the drop in movie star fortunes has been the inability of directors like J.J. Abrams and Jon Favreau to turn "Super 8" and "Cowboys & Aliens" into blockbusters based on their names alone, even with Steven Spielberg lending producer credits to both. "Super 8," is a decent film, and has made a healthy profit, but it's not nearly as big as many were hoping it would be. "Cowboys & Aliens," sadly, was a waste of everyone's time.

Women and Kids - "Bridesmaids" and "Bad Teacher" made women in comedy hot commodities. Meanwhile, softer romantic-comedies like "Something Borrowed," "Friends with Benefits" and "Crazy, Stupid, Love" did moderately well despite staying under the radar. The biggest hit driven by female audiences, though, may well end up being "The Help," one of those August surprises that's just kept going and going. After four weeks of release, it's predicted to be at the top of the box office again for Labor Day, and has left a trail of high-profile busts like "Fright Night," "Conan," and "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" in its wake. Meanwhile, never count out a kid-friendly animated film. After a spring season dominated by "Rio" and "Hop," we shouldn't have been surprised when "The Smurfs," despite awful reviews, drew hordes of kids into the theaters.

The Encroaching Art House - The best films I saw this summer were limited releases, namely "The Tree of Life" and "Midnight in Paris." I've also generated a "to watch" list of other art house as long as my arm, titles that I wish I could have swapped out with some of the mainstream releases: "The Guard," "Attack the Block," "The Devil's Double," "Another Earth," "Beginners," "The Whistleblower" and lots of documentaries. What struck me about so many of the art house films is that we're seeing more genre and mainstream-friendly entries. The line between the studio and indie content is getting blurrier, especially when you look at the glut of cheap studio pictures dumped in theaters during the late August weeks.

Overall, I think this has been a summer of reduced expectations and less risk taking. The studios have been staunchly sticking to the reboots and sequels in greater numbers than ever before. I wrote off many of these before I saw them, but to their credit, many wound up surprising me. At the same time, several films with original premises that I was anticipating, like Jon Favreau's "Cowboys & Aliens," turned out to be terrible. Old standbys like PIXAR proved to be fallible. There's was really no way to predict what was going to work and connect with audiences and what wouldn't. If nothing else, it was an exciting summer and one that got me to reevaluate some long-held assumptions.

Next year may be one for the ages with "The Dark Knight Rises," "The Avengers," "Brave," the "Alien" prequel "Prometheus," and many more. But first, dust off the pretentious cineaste hats. It's festival season again, and the awards races are just around the corner.
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Another day, another round of drama over the summer box office. Yesterday Hollywood was holding its breath as "The Smurfs" and "Cowboys & Aliens" were neck and neck in box office receipts for the weekend, both bringing in an estimated $35 million. The final Monday numbers revealed that "Cowboys" edged ahead by about $1 million, but it's not much of a victory considering that the $36.4 million total is well under all the estimates for what the picture should have made. "Cowboys & Aliens" had multiple big-name actors, was directed by Jon Favreau, and had a slew of well-known producers and writers attached. That doesn't mean it wasn't a crummy film, which it was, but it should have been easier to sell than "The Smurfs," which had even worse reviews and was one of those CGI revamps of classic cartoon characters that everyone over the age of eighteen hates with a passion, right?

If there's one lesson, one mantra that any movie-loving box-office watcher needs to learn in order to stay sane, it's this: more often than not, you are not the target audience. Why do horrible, awful films constantly make so much money? Usually, because they have found a way to appeal to a specific audience that wants to see a certain type of movie. In this case, it's little kids with no prior experience with "The Smurfs," and their not-too-picky parents. "The Smurfs" was made for the youngest segment of the audience, and in the absence of any other prominent movie aimed at this age group available right now, it's the obvious choice for families. "Cars 2" is almost gone from theaters, the last "Harry Potter" is too dark and scary for anyone under ten, and Disney ran a terrible ad campaign for "Winnie the Pooh" that positioned it as a nostalgic throwback instead of a fun children's movie. "The Smurfs," on the other hand, had a lot of visibility and everything about it reads as safe, hamless, brightly-colored, and cute. If it keeps the tots occupied for eighty minutes, who cares who directed it?

Movie geeks may despair, but let's be honest here. There have always been films made for children, and most of them have been terrible. We dragged our parents to lousy children's films in the past just as the kids of today are dragging us to "The Smurfs" and "Alvin and the Chipmunks." Nostalgia may make the old days seem better, but outside the wondrous realms of Disney and Steven Spielberg, there was a lot of drivel out there. Those old "Smurf" and "Chipmunks" cartoons, which were among the earliest bits of television programming I can remember, are practically unwatchable today. And of course they are. They were made for kids with undeveloped noggins, just like the new ones are. Kids like loud, obvious humor, repetitive stories, broad characters, and a lot of chaotic excitement. We did too, when we were that age. So I don't begrudge "The Smurfs" its success, even though I think it's remarkably lazy for Hollywood to keep recycling older characters like this. On the other hand, there have been a few bright spots in the 80s revival - some kids' properties like "My Little Pony," and "Thundercats" came back better than the originals.

"Cowboys & Aliens," for all the big names involved, actually alienated the young male audience it was targeting. According to the LA Times, the viewers that turned out for the film were predominantly older. There have been various theories as to why this happened, such as younger audiences being turned off by high ticket prices, the unfamiliar Western elements, or that they actually listed to reviewers for once (yeah right). Whatever the reason, by missing its target audience, "Cowboys" was left high and dry. The marketing campaign hadn't bothered trying to attract women or kids who might have helped to boost the film's numbers, a tactical error made too often when the studios forget that young male viewers are often as much a niche as anyone else. This isn't the first time this year that the young adult demographic has proven to be unreliable, and some have suggested that it might be indicative of a more monumental shift in the makeup of theatergoing audiences.

Does this mean fewer films like "Cowboys & Aliens" aimed at the teens and twenty-somethings? Will fewer young men going to the movies result in fewer films made for them? Possibly, but what's certain is that studios are going to be more careful about how it spends money on fillms for this audience in the future. "Cowboys" cost around $160 million, and while there are no official numbers for "The Smurfs," similar films usually cost about half as much. Animated family features have proven to have much better returns than geek-flavored action movies lately, especially overseas. Heck, adult-oriented prestige pics did better business last year, and nobody's supposed to go see those anymore. Hollywood might not be culturally inclined to change its ways, but financially they can't ignore the trends. Targeting the traditional summer movie crowd of young men only doesn't work anymore.

So get used to hearing those words, fanboys: you are not the target audience, and you may be even less so in the future.
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I don't think I need to tell anyone that "Cars 2" opens today, and that anticipation for it has not been high among the over-twelve set. The reviews have come in and they're bad. They're not remarkably bad compared to some of the other animated stinkers we've seen over the years, but they're awful for a PIXAR movie. On the RottenTomatoes review aggregation site, "Cars 2" is currently at 37% positive reviews. Before this, PIXAR's lowest-rated showing was the first "Cars" movie, that pulled in 74% positive reviews five years ago. And it seems that everyone else in the media can't stop talking about it - after eleven massively successful, well-received animated films, PIXAR has its first dud.

Scoffers may point out that the dismal response may be due to reviewers holding PIXAR to a much higher standard than films from Dreamworks, Blue Sky, and the other CGI animation studios. Surely this isn't fair. There's no reason why a commercial studio like PIXAR shouldn't capitalize on its sterling brand name and churn out an occasional mediocre sequel for easy money, without incurring so much scorn. The trouble is, of course, that sterling brand name only exists because PIXAR has built its identity around its reputation for quality. We expect "Kung Fu Panda 2" and "Puss in Boots" ("Shrek 5," let's be honest) from Dreamworks, which has always billed itself as more cynical and profit-driven. PIXAR is supposed to be special, the animation studio that holds itself to that much higher standard. They're supposed to aim for more Oscars, not bigger paydays.

Sadly, there's every indication that "Cars 2" exists primarily because the "Cars" franchise generates billions in merchandising profits, far outstripping many of the other recent PIXAR films like "Up" and "WALL-E." The original "Cars" is regarded as one of the studio's weaker films, a passion project of director John Lasseter's that appealed mostly to the younger crowd. Most critics gave it a pass because you could tell it was a well-intentioned film, even if it wasn't a masterpiece, but certainly few were clamoring for a sequel. Moreover, it's long been part of the PIXAR narrative that they don't make sequels unless they have a rock-solid story for one. It's another way they distinguish themselves from the competition. Before "Cars 2" the only PIXAR sequels were "Toy Story 2" and "Toy Story 3," critical darlings that are often ranked among the best animated films ever made.

Now we have "Cars 2," and the narrative falls apart. I haven't seen the film myself, but I trust a lot of the reviewers who have come away from it disappointed, and I think it's safe to say that "Cars 2" isn't up to the usual PIXAR standard either in conception or execution. Even more worrying is what lies in the future for the studio. 2013 will bring a direct-to-video "Cars" universe spinoff called "Planes," being billed as something of a training project for a PIXAR satellite studio. Then comes a "Monsters Inc" prequel titled "Monsters University." There will be a new PIXAR original next summer, "Brave," which is already seeing some early marketing rollout. However, it's hard to ignore that PIXAR's output from 2010 to 2013 is going to end up being sequel, sequel, original movie, spinoff/sequel, and prequel. This may be a signal that the decisionmaking at PIXAR has taken a more finance-minded turn. Or to use the general parlance, they've sold out.

What happened? What is going on? PIXAR movies always do so well at the box office, surely they're not in any dire financial straits, are they? Well, the short answer is that the animation studio itself is fine. But there is the little matter of Disney, which acquired PIXAR back in 2006, which is why all the logos now say "Disney PIXAR" instead of just "PIXAR." Disney is a very different company from PIXAR, and financially they haven't been doing as well. I don't want to say that Disney is meddling with PIXAR, but the new partnership is probably a major reason why PIXAR has suddenly embraced franchises, which are less risky, easier to market, and present so many more opportunities for merchandising - where the bulk of the money for children's films usually comes from. PIXAR fans may have been perfectly happy with "Ratatouille," "WALL-E," and "Up," but Wall Street was aghast that the characters from these films were less kid-friendly, and thus couldn't be plastered on everything from soda bottles to underpants.

My hope is that PIXAR's current case of sequelitis is only temporary until John Lasseter can help get Disney's own animation divisions back on their feet, and they can start churning out the safer, more product-oriented properties, and PIXAR can go back to being the PIXAR we know and love. Sadly, it's awfully hard to put the genie back in the bottle, and all that easy merchandising money is going to be difficult to say no to. The more realistic outcome is that PIXAR is going to be much more sequel-friendly from this point out, like all the other studios, but it'll still hopefully be able to make its more artistically ambitious, less commercial films too. At worst, they'd become another Dreamworks, which wouldn't be such a bad thing. Dreamworks has made some wonderful films recently. If "Cars 2" turns out to be just an uncharacteristic bump in the road, there's no reason why the PIXAR brand couldn't still stand for first-rate, quality animation.

But I can't shake the sense that we've hit a turning point. I don't know if PIXAR - and the PIXAR name - are ever going to be quite the same again.
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There's been some controversy around "The Illusionist," which is an animated film based on an unproduced script written by the late, great French comedic icon, Jacques Tati. Some of his heirs have been screaming bloody murder about underhanded tactics used to wrest the rights of the script away from the family, and about how the filmmakers have warped and tarnished Tati's legacy by misrepresenting his intentions. Thus "The Illusionist," according to them, is irrevocably tainted and must be condemned. I have no idea whether there is any merit to the claims or not, but I can say that the film does not deserve to be maligned in this fashion. Despite the use of the script, a recognizable caricature of Tati in the lead role, and many Tati-esque visual gags, this is not Tati's film at all. Jacques Tati would never be so broadly melodramatic or earnestly sentimental. He would have included more comedy, more satire, more mockery. This is an homage to Tati, and thus the great director's influence only goes so far. At its heart, the film is the work of animator Sylvain Chomet, and it's brilliant.

The story is set in the late 1950s, and follows a small-time illusionist, Tatischeff, who travels from town to town playing various engagements. He is a master of his craft, but magic acts are going out of style, and he plays to smaller and smaller audiences. By luck, he's invited to a remote island community that is somewhat behind the times, and enjoys a brief period of renewed success. This is where he meets Alice, a young girl who believes that Tatischeff's magic is real, and follows him when he leaves the island. Tatischeff is fond of the girl, though they don't speak the same language, and have some difficulties communicating. He takes her with him to Edinburgh, Scotland, and buys her gifts of clothes and shoes he can't really afford, while pretending that he's better off than he really is. He still regularly performs at a tiny venue, but is also forced to take on a series of menial jobs to supplement his income. Alice keeps house for him in their tiny hotel room, and becomes friendly with other performers who are their neighbors - a clown, a trio acrobats, and a ventriloquist. Sadly, their happiness can't last.

"The Illusionist" runs a brief eighty minutes, and contains very little dialogue of any importance, like all of Chomet's and Tati's films. Instead, the story makes full use of the animated medium in its storytelling, from the nostalgically rendered European landscapes, to the human characters who are all deftly caricatured to some degree, to a few of Tati's famous visual puns. Animation of this caliber is rare, and it's those subtle things like the way Alice takes her first steps in high heels or the way Tatischeff spars with his troublesome rabbit, that set Chomet apart from his contemporaries. The style of the production is reminiscent of Disney features of the 1960s, like "101 Dalmatians," where the color palettes were more muted and the animators' drawings were xeroxed directly on to the animation cels, so the lines had a rougher, more immediate quality. But those films never had nearly the delicacy of mood or the depth of emotion that "The Illusionist" presents. The story has many gentle laughs, but its tone is frequently melancholy and the ending may leave you in tears.

It would be so easy to dismiss this film as slight, as a gimmicky throwback to an older style of animated film, or a piece of ephemera riding the coattails of Tati's masterpieces. Instead, I thought of "Make Way for Tomorrow," and "Umberto D," and all those other classic films about older, struggling men and women, who discover that the times have passed them by and rendered them irrelevant. And though I hate it when reviews use this line, I can't imagine a cartoon that is more emphatically not for children. There's no objectionable content, but I doubt anyone under the age of twelve would be able to handle the slow pace and moody themes. But oh, what an extra dimension of poignancy Chomet acheives by using traditional animation, itself a struggling artform in the age of CGI, to illustrate the tale of a master showman who must come to terms with the fact that he no longer has an audience.

In the end Tatischeff the Illusionist is not Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati's hero and alter ego. Tatischeff is older, wiser, and a great deal more vulnerable. Sometimes he seems more like an aging Chaplin than Tati. Moreover, while Hulot fought the encroachment of the modern world, poked fun at it, and illuminated its most ridiculous contradictions for us, Tatischeff must ultimately concede defeat, and does so gracefully. And perhaps that's why he won me over so entirely, and why I don't think I've ever wished harder for a happy ending for any fictional character, though I knew his story had to conclude the way it did. I may adore Jacques Tati, but "The Illusionist" didn't disappoint me for not being a Tati film, as advertised. Instead, I'm glad that we have Sylvain Chomet, and got to meet his version of the Illusionist.
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Hollywood is currently celebrating the performance of "Fast Five," which had the year's biggest opening weekend box office take with an estimated $83.6 million. It's been a slow year so far, with no big hits on the level of last year's "Avatar" or "Alice in Wonderland," but the success of "Fast Five" may signal that we're in for a stronger summer. What's really interesting about "Fast Five," though, is that it made $35 million dollars in various markets overseas before it opened in the US on Friday, and the international total has since gone up to over $80 million. "Thor" is already up to over $90 million in international box office, and the US will actually be one of the last countries where it will open in theaters, on May 6th. Major Hollywood films opening overseas before or even roughly simultaneously to their premieres in the U.S. used to be very rare. However, for various reasons, we may see more release patterns like this in the future.

The growth of the global box office and piracy concerns have pushed the studios to decrease the delay between release dates in different markets. The US is still the most lucrative market for filmgoing in the world, but for many films the domestic box office now makes up a smaller percentage of the overall gross receipts than it used to. 67% of the billion dollar "Alice and Wonderland" box office came from foreign audiences. Several of the holiday season's underperformers, like "Gulliver's Travels" and "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," were hits overseas, with a whopping 80% of "Gulliver's" gross coming from outside the US. There are even some rumors that we'll be getting a fourth "Narnia" film, based on the foreign performance of "Dawn Treader," which was triple its domestic take. More and more often, we hear studio executives defending their expensive domestic flops with impressive foreign box office numbers.

This may signal a further shift in the focus of Hollywood moviemaking towards the tastes of the global market. For years, we've been seeing studios favor more action and fantasy films that are easier sells overseas, though dramas like "The Black Swan" and "The King's Speech" have also made the bulk of their profits in foreign markets. Recently Dreamworks Animation announced that they would move away from their more satirical films, like "Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Megamind," because that brand of humor doesn't translate so well in other countries. Should we be worried that American comedies are going to take a hit? Probably not, since most comedies cost far less than big CGI-heavy action extravaganzas, and they're usually profitable no matter what the foreign markets do. Ditto the romance and horror films that generate less interest overseas. However, animation, action, fantasy, and science-fiction films will continue to get more attention and see their budgets expand.

I doubt the earlier foreign premiere dates will have much impact on most US audiences, who rarely pay attention to what's going on in the film world outside Hollywood, but I can see some additional benefits for the studios to this approach. They can test out and refine their ad campaigns in other markets, and build up buzz from early successes. "Fast Five" came out on top in a head to head with "Thor" in Australia over Easter weekend, which generated a lot of press and a lot of attention. Being at the end of a big film's release schedule might also be helpful to pickier American moviegoers, because we might get to hear some actual audience reaction along with all the hype. Early reviews for "Fast Five" and "Thor" were pretty strong, but the real test will be what happens when a film garners tepid or negative responses in other countries. Traditionally the different international film markets don't have much impact on each other, but in the age of the internet that's no longer a certainty.

In the end, the biggest impact may be on the entertainment reporters and number crunchers, who are always looking for something new to write about, and love being the first to declare a new film a hit or a flop. "Rio" did especially well in Russia and China the week before it premiered in the US, leading to early prognostications that it would be a hit here as well. It was, but not to nearly the extent that it was in the rest of the world. To date, "Rio" has made about $100 million domestic, and about $250 million foreign. But still, those foreign numbers might be what get "Rio" a sequel, where titles with similar domestic numbers like "Hop" and "Rango" probably won't. "Hop," that cuddly Easter bunny film, notably tanked in most other countries because, of course, most of the rest of the world doesn't celebrate Easter.
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In the past few days we've gotten several headlines proclaiming that China is banning depictions of time travel movies and television. The truth is a little more complicated. One of China's media monitoring agencies is issuing new guidelines for the portrayal of time travel in Chinese-produced media, in response to the rising popularity of a certain genre of fantasy television program where modern-day people go back in time. Time travel isn't being banned outright, but the guidelines will probably lead to a lot of hand-wringing and self-censorship. The stated reasoning here is that the historical inaccuracy of these programs is a cause for concern, but many aren't buying it. This is a totally idiotic decision, of course, so I'm just going to spend the rest of this post talking about my favorite time travel movies. And no, I haven't seen "Source Code" yet.

"La Jetée" (1962) - In English, "The Pier." This 28-minute French short by experimental filmmaker Chris Marker is one of the best time travel stories ever put to film. It's almost entirely composed of black-and-white still photographs, and tells the story of a man from a post-apocalyptic future who is sent back to the present day, to witness a moment of tragedy that has haunted him since childhood. The images in "La Jetée" are so simple, but incredibly indelible and resonant. It spawned a quasi-remake, Terry Gilliam's "Twelve Monkeys" (1995) with Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt, that's also worth a watch.

"Scrooge" (1970) - This is my favorite live-action version of "A Christmas Carol," the boisterous musical with Albert Finney as Scrooge and Alec Guinness as Marley. (I confess it still comes in second to "Mickey's Christmas Carol" for me.) I can never seem to get through a holiday season without this movie, especially the big finale ending musical sequence. I include it here because the story of Ebenezer Scrooge is the perfect example of time travel as pure fantasy, as a concept that existed in fiction across many different cultures long before it became associated with science-fiction.

"Time After Time" (1979) - This film posits that H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell), who wrote "The Time Machine," not only built himself an actual time machine, but Jack the Ripper (David Warner) got his hands on it and traveled to present day San Francisco, forcing Wells to give chase. McDowell is excellent as Wells, who is a fish out of water in the modern world, of course, but resourceful and smart enough to quickly find his way - and then right into the arms of Mary Steenburgen. I always wondered if Steenburgen being cast in the third "Back to the Future" film might have been a nod to the ending of this one.

"Time Bandits" (1981) - A little boy and band of miscreant dwarves have adventures together, while traveling through time and space with the help of a map stolen from the universe's Supreme Being. They meet historical figures like Napoleon (Ian Holm) and Agamemnon (Sean Connery), tangle with a ogre with a back problem, take a cruise on the Titanic, and have a final showdown with Evil, who is naturally played by David Warner. "Time Bandits" remains one of Terry Gilliam's best films, a gleeful romp through history and mythology, jam-packed full of "Monty Python" humor with some wickedly dark touches.

The "Back to the Future" Trilogy (1985-1990) - Surely you didn't think we were going to get through this list without these movies, did you? Robert Zemeckis' time travel trilogy has aged wonderfully, even though we're fast approaching the date when it will be definitely proven that we will not have hoverboards and Mr. Fusions by 2015. These are such perfect popcorn pictures, full of perfectly timed comedy and action, with two immortal heroes of the 80s at the forefront - Marty McFly and Doc Brown. In the same vein, though not in the same league, are the "Bill and Ted" movies, which are silly and cheesy and still totally excellent, dudes.

"Primer" (2004) - An indie horror film about a pair of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who accidentally invent a time machine and proceed to misuse it. "Primer" was shot on a shoestring budget and has almost no special effects, but generates plenty of tension with a great script and performances. Full of paradoxes and multiple timelines to untangle, some viewers have worked out incredibly elaborate explanations for what we see onscreen. Or you can just sit back and enjoy the escalating madness like I did. Covering similar ground is the Spanish language "Los Cronocrimenes" ("Timecrimes") from 2007, another intense little cautionary tale.

"The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" (2006) - Mamoru Hosoda's anime is a charming, sweet fantasy about a teenage girl named Makoto who discovers she has the ability to make short jaunts into her past. She has a lot of fun with her power at first, but then it starts causing no small amount of trouble. The movie is distinctive for its sunny tone and easygoing atmosphere, which features a lot of humor and sentiment. There are some pretty eye-catching visuals too, especially where time slows down or speeds up.

When I was younger, I went to a school dance with a group of friends and had a great time. It was only later in the evening, as we were all going our separate ways, that my best friend pulled me aside and explained that there had been drama going on all night between two of my other girlfriends who were fighting over the same boy. I'd been totally oblivious that anything like that was happening, and felt sheepish and little embarrassed. Some of the same feelings came up while watching "Waking Sleeping Beauty," a documentary that chronicles the Disney animation renaissance, from the early 80s up to the release of "The Lion King" in 1994.

As I've mentioned before in many of these blog posts, I was a Disney kid. I was exactly the right age at exactly the right time to be utterly swept up in Disney animation's return to glory in the 80s and 90s, and so became something of a life-long Disney obsessive. I'd read some of the literature about what was going on behind the scenes, and knew that the sugar-coated studio version of events was all a front, but most of the negativity involved the public sparring between Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg that went on during 1994. As far as I knew, everything had been going fine up until that point. So it was jarring to see how bumpy that preceding decade really was for the studio, all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into pushing feature animation up to those towering creative highs, and the personal tensions that were apparent between the three men who were so often the public face of Disney during that period - Eisner, Katzenberg, and Roy Disney.

"Waking Sleeping Beauty" was directed by Don Hahn and produced by Peter Schneider, who have credits on many familiar Disney features. The documentary is made up entirely of archival footage, a good mix of the animators' home movies, still photos, marketing material, news footage, and period interviews. Disney fans will also be gratified to see clips from in-progress versions of the films, recording sessions, and dropped musical sequences. Hahn provides much of the narration himself, but also turns the microphone over to many of the other players involved in order to let everybody have their say, even putting some of the unused audio on the commentary track. Because of the notorious lengths that Disney goes to in order to protect its public image and intellectual property, this is the first time that many of these stories have come to light, and there's still a sense of walking on eggshells at certain points. Perhaps the filmmakers were too close to their subject matter, as they do have a tendency to sentimentalize events and the nostalgia is awfully thick. Notably, Hahn only alludes to the larger fallout from Katzenberg's departure and the painful reversal of fortune for Disney animation that would occur over the next ten years.

But at its heart, this is the best look behind the scenes of Disney animation that I've ever seen, and finally helps to humanize many familiar names. It makes so much difference to actually be able to watch video of lyricist Howard Ashman, often described as one of the driving creative forces behind "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Aladdin." He's showered with praise and affection by everyone in the film, but I appreciated the inclusion of some of the not-so-nice incidents too, like Ashman blowing up at "Beauty and the Beast" director Kirk Wise, cheerfully rendered in a series of caricature drawings. The film is also very good at providing important context and little details to many events in the studio's history, such as the failure of "The Black Cauldron" in 1985 being especially bitter because they were trumped at the box office by Nelvana's "Care Bears Movie." And when the animators get kicked off the Disney lot and relocated to Glendale, we're treated to video of them working out their frustrations by re-enacting "Apocalypse Now."

I urge you to see this film on DVD if possible, for the additional supplemental materials. There's at least a good hour of deleted sequences and full versions of certain clips. An encounter with a young Tim Burton, for instance, is absolutely hysterical when you see the whole thing. If I have any beef with the film it's that I wish we could have seen more of the animators. The only people we follow through those ten years, start to finish, are the executives. The narrative would have been strengthened by following one of the artists - possibly Don Hahn himself - through that time period too. Also for anyone who isn't a Disney nut, it's difficult to keep track of everyone in the film. I honestly wondered a few times if someone had mislaid some captions somewhere.

But these are minor quibbles. "Waking Sleeping Beauty" is a rare, candid look at what was really going on in the Magic Kingdom while the world was falling back in love with Disney. Some of it was magic, but a lot of it was shrewd executive brinksmanship, a changed corporate culture, and a small group of people working very, very hard for a a very long time. It's about time we got to see their side of the story.

Something interesting happened this weekend at the box office. There were four new releases, and they were ranked by the critics from good to bad as follows: "Rango," (88% Rotten Tomatoes score), "The Adjustment Bureau" (69%), "Take Me Home Tonight," (30%) and "Beastly" (21%). Their performance at the box office more or less followed suit, with "Rango" in first at an estimated $38 million in receipts, "Adjustment" in second with $20.9 million, "Beastly" in third with $10.1 million, and "Take Me Home Tonight" bombing quietly with $3.5 million, not even making the top ten. However, then we come to the CinemaScore results, which tell a different story entirely.

CinemaScore is a marketing firm that surveys audience reactions to films on opening weekend, letting viewers grade them on an A to F scale. The studios buy the data, in order to see how their films have been received by various segments of the viewing audience. The general public wasn't privy to the scores in the past, but various industry outlets have started publishing them along with the usual box office reports. This weekend, according to their CinemaScores, the top three films' performances with audiences were flipped from the critical and financial measures. "Beastly" got the highest scores with a B grade, "The Adjustment Bureau" also got a B, but the highly lauded "Rango" only received a C+. For the record, "Take Me Home Tonight" rated a C. A movie is generally considered to expect poor word-of-mouth if it gets less than a B grade, since the mainstream audience is much kinder than the critics.

The Cinemascore data is no real determinant of quality, or even popularity. For one, they're highly misleading, in that they're only surveying those who bought tickets to see these films on opening weekend. The audience for "Beastly" was predominantly made up of teenage girls, who were fans of the young stars, Vanessa Hudgens and Alex Pettyfer. Their demographic gave "Beastly" an A- in contrast to the adult critics who gleefully tore it to shreds. And then there were the audiences for "Rango," which were predominantly families with young children. According to the reviews, they got a weird, unconventional, spaghetti-western homage with several instances of adult humor and language that strained at the bounds of its PG rating. Critics welcomed the movie's daring, but the material may have proved too much for viewers expecting something more in line with the usual Dreamworks or PIXAR fare. Older audiences were particularly hostile, with those over 25 giving "Rango" a flat C grade.

What's really interesting is that the disparity between the box office performances of these films and the CinemaScores shows that there's really no correlation between how much audiences like them and how they perform in the first week. Big opening weekend numbers are driven by marketing campaigns and hype, and the studios putting so much importance on these initial numbers indicates that how well a movie can be made to target a certain audience tends to matter more to the bottom line than the quality of the product. The CinemaScore grade for "Beastly" shows that the CBS Films was right on target, pandering perfectly to that critic-proof audience of teenage girls that loves the "Twilight" movies. An old line from "The Lady Eve" comes to mind – "A girl of sixteen is practically an idiot anyway." And I say this lovingly, as a former sixteen-year-old girl whose favorite film at one point was "Newsies."

"Rango," on the other hand, wasn't a good fit for the family audiences it was aimed at, which may affect its financial performance in the weeks to come. Many big-budget would-be blockbusters take a dive in the rankings in their second weekend, and I expect "Rango" will probably do the same. On the other hand, the marketing campaign did everything right, playing up the involvement of its star, Johnny Depp, and the eye-popping graphics from ILM, so "Rango" is bound to make back its money. The Cinemascore data, along with any bad word-of-mouth it might foretell, will probably encourage Paramount to push for less risky projects in the future. In the end, it's woe to the offbeat, hard-to-categorize movies that can't be pigeonholed into a particular category or easily sold to a certain demographic.

Ultimately CinemaScore tells us less about the movies than it does about the studios and how they sell films to American audiences. Clearly there were people out there who loved and championed "Rango," but according to the studios these were the wrong people, because they weren't the ones the marketing campaigns were targeting and they weren't the ones who came out and bought tickets on opening weekend. Personally, "Rango" has gone to the top of my to-see list precisely because of the reaction its gotten. I like dark and weird and offbeat. And I'll take an animated movie that takes chances, the way "Rango" does, over a by-the-book crowd pleaser like "Gnomeo and Juliet" any day.