Archive
REVIEW: An American Tail
Directed by: Don Bluth
Produced by: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, John Pomeroy; Steven Spielberg (executive producer)
Written by: Judy Freudberg, Tony Geiss (screenplay), David Kirschner, Judy Freudberg, Tony Geiss (story)
Edited by: Dan Molina
Production Design by: Don Bluth
Music by: James Horner
Starring: Phillip Glasser, John Finnegan, Pat Musick, Cathianne Blore, Nehemiah Persoff, Amy Green, Dom DeLuise, Christopher Plummer, Neil Ross, Madeline Kahn, Erica Yohn
Year: 1986
I got pretty excited recently when I discovered that this movie was coming out on Blu-Ray. This was a childhood favorite of mine, and I grew up pretty much singing a few the songs featured in the film along with Disney songs that have since proven to be far more enduring and are likely far more recognizable today – even if Community did that awesome reference to “Somewhere Out There” in that one episode. However, I only ever owned the movie on VHS, never upgrading to the DVD, and it got to the point where I decided I’d hold out for a hopeful Blu-Ray release. The patience paid off. Sure, it was a barebones disc, containing a sing-along and a theatrical trailer and little else, beyond an almost superfluous digital copy, but I finally owned An American Tail, once again, now in glorious HD!
It’d been a while since I’d seen the film when it finally arrived in my mailbox. I believe it was once part of the Netflix streaming catalog, as I had actually watched it once a few years ago, but even before that, it’d also been an even longer amount of time since I had seen this Don Bluth-directed classic, so I still had my nostalgia goggles on when I popped the disc in to my PlayStation and settled in. Read more…
THEATRICAL REVIEW: The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ)
Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki
Produced by: Toshio Suzuki
Written by: Hayao Miyazaki
Edited by: Takeshi Seyama
Cinematography by: Atsushi Okui
Music by: Joe Hisaishi
Starring: (Japanese) Hideaki Anno, Miori Takimoto, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Masahiko Nishimura, Steve Alpert, Morio Kazama, Keiko Takeshita, Mirai Shida, Jun Kunimura, Shinobu Otake, Nomura Mansai; (English Disney dub) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Martin Short, Werner Herzog, William H. Macy, Darren Criss, Mae Whitman, Mandy Patinkin, Jennifer Grey, Stanley Tucci, Elijah Wood, Ronan Farrow, Zach Callison
Based on the manga Kaze Tachinu by Hayao Miyazaki, the novel The Wind Has Risen by Tatsuo Hori, and inspired by a true story
Year: 2013, 2014 (US)
Review is based on the Disney/Touchstone English dub.
Touted as the last film to be directed by legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki, The Wind Rises understandably will carry a lot of weight with fans of the director, Studio Ghibli, and animation in general, with the film even being nominated recently in the Academy Awards’ Best Animated Feature category. The director has, since the 70s, made a name for himself as a whimsical filmmaker with a fine attention to detail, both visually in the work his crew puts out and within the worlds and personalities of the characters he portrays in his films, which rarely feel anything like the stereotypical animé Western audiences are more familiar with, and yet also so distinctly different from Western animation from any era. Understandably, he’s going to be missed, and while Studio Ghibli has plenty of talent to build off of and directors who have proven to be more than capable of creating films in the same mold as the elder Miyazaki, it’s unlikely that we’ll be seeing the like of his work ever again (so long as he’s actually serious about staying retired). Read more…
THEATRICAL REVIEW: The LEGO Movie
Directed by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Produced by: Dan Lin, Roy Lee
Written by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller (screenplay)
Edited by: David Burrows, Chris McKay
Cinematography by: Pablo Plaisted
Music by: Mark Mothersbaugh
Starring: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman
Year: 2014
I actually saw this movie weeks ago. Like… I couldn’t stand the wait and saw it the opening weekend, in fact. I was just so freaking excited for the movie, and it was going to be my first post-“2013 IN REVIEW” review, and – well, it still is, but not nearly as early as I intended. (Hey, life gets in the way. I’ve been working more from home, getting more tired at work, and then my sister had the audacity of getting married, which required some clothing search. ANYWAY…) Read more…
The Viewer's Commentary 