Easter Special: White Rabbits and March Hares

Rabbits have proved to be a popular theme for this blog, so in lieu of better ideas, why not return to the well this easter? A White Rabbit is a driving force throughout Lewis Carroll's classic satirist fairy tale Alice In Wonderland. Carroll's story has prevailed so long since it offers something in equal measures to children and adults. In addition to rabbits there are bounds of other memorable characters and contents from nonsensical wordplay to studies of varying states of madness throughout the story (as well as it's sequel Alice's Adventures Through The Looking Glass). With such a bountiful subject matter, filmmakers through decades have been able to pick 'n mix contents for adaptations as they have chosen.

With Alice, colorful surprises are plenty, not unlike with what you get from easter eggs. But like easter eggs and their toys, the qualities vary from delicious treats and delightful wonders to saccharine yucks and grade-C toy-making. I'll take a look at three live action adaptations of Carroll's story, varying in quality. Happy Easter!

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (UK, 1972)
Director: William Sterling

This British adaptation seems to be a work against the Americanization of Carroll's story. It emphasizes the language, puns and jokes in a very British manner. The movie rolls out famous comedians in minor cameos, and does songs a plenty. Yet, it doesn't offer much more of anything than its American counter parts, say Disney's animated adaptation, already have.

Besides a few chills down your spine, at least.

Alice (Fiona Futterton) is played by a full-grown woman here, trying to pass off as a young child. The girl falls asleep on a picnic (with Lewis Carroll himself, played by Michael Jayston) and she dreams of chasing the white rabbit down its hole to a magical land of talking animals and living playing cards and such. Meeting various occupants of Wonderland, she eventually finds herself in the court of the King and Queen of Hearts (Dennis Price and Flora Robson).

The animals are presented here with actors in (quite creepy) fur suits and make up. The film plays up the whimsy and glorifies the oddness, yet comes off as boring. The songs are dull, the staging bad, the acting, particularly by Futterton atrocious. Spike Milligan and Michael Hordern make the biggest fools of themselves, running around in stupid griffin and turtle suits, goofing around just because. The joyless film comes off as a heartless and disposable adaptation. Off with its head!

★

Alice (a.k.a. Něco z Alenky), (Czechoslovakia/Switzerland/UK/BRD, 1988)
Director: Jan Švankmajer

"This is a story for children - perhaps", exclaims the narration at the beginning of this half-animated classic. Indeed, while kids can enjoy is, they have little need for a film such as this, since most of their daily entertainment is filled with unnatural wonders anyway. This is more pointed at adults who have lost their imagination and a sense of wonder with their mundane lives.

The first feature film by the legendary Czech stop motion animator Jan Švankmajer dismisses the set-up of treating Lewis Carroll's story like a fairy tale. His animation re-imagines the story to take place in a mundane environment. Characters and situations are ordinary household objects or toys, brought to life by a child's imagination. It has a dreamy logic to it, wherein anything can happen.

Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová) sees a stuffed white rabbit rise up from its display case and run away. She follows the critter to a writing desk drawer. She consumes cookies she finds that make her grow, as well as drinking ink makes her shrink. Soon, she will have to defend her actions against enraged animals. Stuffed socks and stockings make for caterpillars, cardboard cut-outs for playing card soldiers and royalty. Many animals presented are a blend of taxidermy subjects, bones and toys.

While the young Kohoutová is quite sweet in her role, Švankmajer isn't one to play up too much of cuteness. His characters can pull ugly faces, act intimidatingly or petty and are generally more of a menace, yet not in a scary way. Their carefully done movements are different for every character, and the animation is incomplete enough to give an otherworldly impression. Therein lies the director's biggest charm. The film is edgy enough to be exciting without flashy colors or changing scenery. The movie doesn't show too much, and lets the viewer fill out the blanks with his or her own imagination.

Strange, charming, endlessly surprising and joyful, this is the best Alice In Wonderland adaptation by quite a wide margin.

★★★★★

Alice in Wonderland (USA, 2010)
Director: Tim Burton

Burton's blockbusting belly-landing is a Socratic ideal of everything that is wrong with Hollywood today. It's a flashy re-imagining of a popular story, with more emphasis done on appearances than on story, character development or any contents. Colorful, CGI work (also in 3D) hides the hollowness of it all, and the story is so hallow, it brutalizes Carroll's ideas to a cheap Lord of the Rings knock-off. Marketability is the king here, off with their heads to any artistic endeavors.

The film passes itself as a sort-of sequel to Carroll's events. Alice (Mia Wasikowska) has grown to be 19, and is to be married. Yet she has other ideas and runs off. Encountering the White Rabbit, she follows it down the rabbit hole again, down to Underland (which is what Wonderland is called in this piece of shit).

Meeting her old acquaintances, Alice learns that she is a Chosen One, a legendary hero that will defeat the reign of the tyrant Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and her man-eating Jabberwocky. Writing this synopsis down, I still can't believe how much this sounds like a committee had written this in order to cash in on the most profitable trends going on at Hollywood.

Burton, always one for more visual approach than a coherent storyteller, of course revels in this. The re-imaginings of famous characters from the story have jumped straight out of his drawings. And they do resemble a junior high school student's margin drawings. But they are marketable, so whatever.

The film does have a good cast, even if Burton doesn't bother directing them that much. Alan Rickman as The Caterpillar and Stephen Fry as Chesire Cat in particular are so great choices for their roles, one has to wonder why anyone else didn't get the idea before. Michael Gough has his final film role as the voice of the Dodo. Crispin Glover in all his craziness is a perfect fit for the Knave of Hearts. Pity all these character actors are interchangeable within the story. The only minor character whose role is emphasized within the story (for better or for worse) is of course Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter. Who, in the name of shallow quirkiness is named, obnoxiously and pointlessly, Tarrant Hightopp.

Ughhh.

Depp has grown to be such a major star, he gets to do pretty much whatever he wants on the set. So, here he goofs around as if there was no one directing him at all. His horrible Scottish accent comes on and off at points. Much of made of him having to become a warrior in the dire times, since Undeland needs it. Depp's final dance sequence is so dreadful, I'd like to wipe that memory out of my mind entirely.

There are a few amusing enough jokes within all of this. But as a whole it's loud, obnoxious and altogether indifferent. And inexplicably, this marketing ploy worked like a charm. The movie made over a billion dollars profit for its parent company Disney. O tempora, O mores.

★ 1/2

Stop! Motion Time!

As readers might know already, I'm a big animation buff. When the Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature were announced, however, I realized that I had missed a lot of the year's crop, which is particularly a shame since the nominees include three stop motion pictures. That sort of animation is generally way more fun than CGI animation, since puppets tend to have more personality than ultra-slick computer models. Two of these stop-motioners have a spoooky horror theme, and one is just about your basic looting, plundering and causing a ruckus.

If you're curious about what I thought of Brave and Wreck-It-Ralph, you can read my reviews by clicking their titles in this sentence.

Frankenweenie
Director: Tim Burton

Tim Burton's latest film could be seen as an attempt to please his old fans, who have grown incresingly disappointed with his recent body of work. This attempt concerns updating his beloved short film he made in the 1980's to a feature film animation. The original Frankenweenie is pretty much perfect as such, and Burton tends to fall in the pitfalls of stretching the story in an artificial manner in this longer version. Still, at many points it does feel to have the creative energy and gentle satire on suburban America that Burton's good films in the 80's and 90's had. The heart of Frankenweenie, a story of love and friendship, has also remained intact.

Young Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) is a clear Mary Sue of Burton's youth, a creative boy that has few friends, and prefers staying indoors to film monster movies or do scientific experiments to going out to play. His best friend is the family dog Sparky, who is a curious mutt, and always ready for an adventure with his owner. Victor is eager to participate in the school's science fair, inspired by the new eccentric teacher Mr. Rzykruski (Martin Landau). Victor's dad (Martin Short) agrees, on the condition that Victor tries out sports, particularly baseball. On the day of Victor's game, Sparky escapes to follow his master to the field. When he runs out to catch the ball flying out to the street, the dog has a fatal run-in with a car.

The broken Victor finds a new chance to bring his friend back to life, when he learns that electricity has a way of making dead tissue twitch. But his successful experiment rises interest in his science fair rivals, all who want to try it out on their pets long gone. The climax has Burton gleefully ripping off various monster movie clichés with glee, as the creatures wreck havok. The film turns from Edward Scissorhands -type outcast drama into more of a Mars Attacks! type of mischief-making comedy. Balancing these two approaches isn't always consistent.

Fortunately, Burton mellows out by the final scene, which is as charming as it was in the original film. The puppetry is magnificent, with the animals being super-cute and the humans emotive and like Burton's drawings having popped to life. As a contrast to Burton's previous animated features, there are no memorable, eye-popping song sequences, but the story wouldn't need any anyway. The old school -style slow, black-and-white storytelling works in this film's case, but it also drove audiences away from theatres. Kids these days. As it is, it's a nice little film reminding that Burton still carries some of that creative energy that raised him to the top of Hollywood in the first place. Let's hope he can still utilize it in his live action films as well.

★★★

Pirates! A Band of Misfits (a.k.a. The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists)
Director: Peter Lord

The latest feature from Aardman studios blends stop motion wax dolls and CGI backgrounds in a visual style that's epic and finely detailed and hand-crafted at the same time. It's got a silly sense of humor mixing non-sequiturs and the unexpected with good, tested british wit in the fashion of Monty Python. It's got chase scenes and exotic locales and The Clash and The Pogues on the soundtrack. Yet as a whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) has declared a war against piracy, with plenty of the most notorious outlaws having already been captured. But there are still eager sea-farers out there. One such a motley crew is the band of misfits led by The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant). They are a bit too nice to be plundering scallywags, but love the pirate lifestyle. With their antics, The Pirate Captain figures they could finally win the Pirate of the Year Award, given to the captain with the biggest booty. But seizing ships and stealing treasures doesn't seem to be his strongest skill.

Baby-talking to pets is.

When the crew runs into the young scientist Charles Darwin (David Tennant), they get informed that The Captain's parrot Polly is in fact the only remaining Dodo in the world. The prize for bringing such a zoological treasure to London would be huge. But the only problem is that London is Victoria's stronghold, and the pirates need to disguise themselves to not be caught.

While a lot of pieces in this one are at the right places, and it is funny and amusing enough, there's something vital missing in this film. As of now, it's amusing enough, if a fairly forgettable caper. It's a bit hard to grasp what's wrong with it. Perhaps the movie tries too hard to please all audiences. While the script is smart, it also lacks some sort of edginess all the best comedies have.

I also think that the personalities of the various pirates in the crew could have been played with a lot more. It's probably a joke stemming from the original children's book this is based on, to name all the characters in such a functionalist manner (i.e. "The Pirate with a Scarf", "The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate" or "The Pirate who likes Sunsets and Kittens"). But in the long run playing them all just for gags takes away from the audience's involvement in their escapades. It's a bad sign if no one gives a damn if they are going to cope or not. Also, the chase scenes aren't as elaborate as in, say, Wallace & Gromit, now just featuring too many characters screaming and spazzing out instead of rolling along, unexpectedly but with the determination of a speed train.

★★★

ParaNorman
Directors: Chris Butler, Sam Fell

I was wary of this children's horror fable beforehand, simply because it features zombies as the central horrors. I used to love zombies until they became the most overplayed and tiresome thing in popular culture and having them featured in a kid's movie was just another low in their road to irrelevance. But gladly, the central zombies here weren't either Romero-like man eaters or even fast-running video game monsters. These are good old-fashioned magic zombies, undead pilgrims rising from their graves due to a curse.

So the film features the outcast 10-year-old Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who can see the dead. His parents and older sister won't believe him and other kids at school make fun of him. One day, Norman meets Mr. Prenderghast (John Goodman), a hobo that claims he's his uncle, and that he has a ritual which protects the town of Blithe Hollow from an ancient curse. When the ritual fails and Prenderghast dies, it's up to Norman to save the village from an old evil going back to the times of the pilgrims. But Norman will learn that the best way to destroy wickedness is goodness and being nice.

The film has a nice array of characters, and the zombies in particular with their slacked jaws are suitably spooky-looking. The cast is filled with your basic small-town archetypes, with the more notable characters coming from the realm of the dead. However, the film somewhat lacks in suspense and athmosphere-creating. Anyone actually thinking this is better-crafted than Brave must be out of their mind. Even 10 seconds of a set up scene of that film's misty moors of Scotland is more exciting than this whole film.

This is by no means a bad movie, but it's Monster House meets The Frighteners stich is a bit worn-out. I do appreciate the early shout-out to Troll 2, though.

★★1/2

New Disney

 
Being a fan of animation does have its darker days. Recently, I realized that I hadn't seen any of the films produced by the Disney Animated Classics series in years. That branch had some new life breathed into its rotting corpse when Disney purchased Pixar, and subsequently gave John Lasseter the helm of the animation studio back in 2006. He, if anyone should be the man up to the task. So let's take a look at how Uncle Walt's legacy is being kept alive today.

Wreck-It-Ralph (2012)
Director: Rich Moore

Disney panders to fans of old-school video games with this epic tale that takes place in various old arcade games. While the film's marketing and opening scenes offer mouth-watering cameos from classic game characters and tropes, sadly the film is quite not the Roger Rabbit of video games. When it works, it's super effective! When not, well, it's princess is another castle.

Wreck-It-Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) is the Donkey Kong-alike villain in the 30-year-old arcade classic Fix-It-Felix Jr. The game is housed in a huge arcade that houses everyone's favorite games from all decades and has a steady influx of young customers every day (did I mention that this is clearly a fantasy movie?). While the gamers play their games, the characters in the game act accordingly. Yet when the arcade is closed, they can go and mingle at each other's worlds just so they are back home at work in the morning.

Ralph is tired of his part in life. He wrecks a building day in, day out, while Felix Jr. (Zach McBrayer) comes and fixes his damage and gets an award for it. Ralph is then dropped face down to the mud and t the end of the day, has to go and live in a dump. So, one day Ralph leaves his home game and ventures to other games for awards and glory. But this puts the entire Fix-It-Felix Jr. game system and its occupants in jeopardy, so Felix has to go fetch the big guy back.

 For all the video games in the world, the film's opening seems like it's filled with opportunities on where to go next. The awe of seeing game grand central and plenty of blink-and-you'll-miss-it geeky in-jokes make the opening pure bliss. All game worlds and characters are not licensed. The FPS space marine parody world is about as funny and accurate as it should be. Jane Lynch as a tough-as-nails female soldier, who has a tragic past, is one of the best characters in the film.

Unfortunately, about halfway through the film gets stuck in a single video game world. It probably won't be spoiling too much if I reveal that it's one of those cutesy 90's mini carting games, this one set in a candy land. So geeky jokes turn into candy jokes which wear out their welcome way too quickly. Ralph's trophy works as a deus ex machina, which I suppose is another tribute to classic gaming. Gaining it requires Ralph to (among other things) build a race cart, save the world and learn the power of friendship.

With the racing world, the plot goes to auto-pilot and starts to resemble other Disney movies way too closely. The whole latter part of the movie seems like unnecessary pandering to girl audiences. There's a secret princess and a tacked-on romance that are way too textbook Disney, and certainly don't serve the whole. Alan Tudyk's (Wash!) delightfully bonkers main villain does get a few scenes to shine, but he can't salvage the movie crumbling beneath him.

 
Director Rich Moore comes from the Simpsons, and it shows. The balance between funny stuff and relationship stuff is done well enough, even if either side is underwritten at times. And at least the script tries hard enough to fill its quota of jokes at every given time. For the first 15 minutes alone, the film is recommendable for any fan of old-school gaming. All-in-all this is one of those rare movies that don't quite meet their expectations, yet you would gladly watch a sequel with the same characters. Let's hope they'll finally go to Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat world in that one.

★★★

Tangled (2010)
Directors: Nathan Greno, Byron Howard

The modern way of conceiving Disney animation seems to be to take a classic fairy tale and to give it a thoroughly post-modern, comical, cutesy twist. Case in point is this piece of work that attempts to update the story of Rapunzel for new audiences. The Princess Bride is a clear inspiration in the tale of dashing rogues and lost royalty. For what I've heard, this was quite successful at the box office as well.

The witch Gothel (voiced by Donna Murphy) discovers a magical fire flower at the woods. She uses it to help nurse the king's ill newborn daughter back to health, which also grants the baby long hair that has magic abilities. But the greedy old witch doesn't return the child, but to takes her into her tower and raises her as her own. The magic granted by the hair also restores the crone's youthful looks and beauty.

When Rapunzel (Mandy Moore), the missing princess, is 18, she is somewhat a shut-in in a tall tower. Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) is a notorious thief who figures that the locked up, super-high tower must have something valuable worth stealing. Once he scales the tower, he's taken captive by Rapunzel. She makes a deal with the thief for him to work as a guide for her in the outside world so she can see all the wonders it has in store for her in one day. But when Gothel realized her step-daughter is missing, she calls an all-out initiative to capture her before Rapunzel realizes the truth about her lineage.

This film has plenty of ingredients that would make for a good fairy tale movie. The computer animation blends the classic Disney style and more modern stylization quite comfortably together. The movie has a solid, classic story line with the usual parts of princess, evil stepmother, dashing rogue and animal friend filled out quite easily. Some cutesy barbarian warriors are also featured, although their joke does feel kind of old already, since it's been done in other animations before.

The film also has a scene-stealing sidekick, with the sarcastic-looking and tempered Maximus the horse. For once they didn't give the animal the voice of a famous motormouth comedian, but left his comedy silent, him being kind of like Gromit's grumpy cousin. But while many of the ingredients do work, there are plenty of stumbles along the way. Much of the story is brought forward by musical scenes, and they are, in a word, horrendous. They sound like parodies of typical Disney tunes, but done with people with no talent for scoring musicals. As with Wreck-It-Ralph, this one also gets more and more familiar as it passes, hitting every one of your basic Disney princess story etaps along the way. A valiant effort, then, but not quite cigar.

★★ 1/2

The Princess and The Frog (2009)
Directors: Ron Clements, John Musker

So far, the last traditionally hand-drawn effort from Disney is this New Orleans-set fairy tale. It fares a lot better than Tangled into breathing new life into page-long classic fairy tales, but suffers somewhat from the same problems, although less noticeably.

Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni Rose) is a feisty waitress, wishing hard upon a star to be someday able to own a restaurant. She has no time for romance, even though her best friend fawns over the dashing Prince Naveen of Maldonia (Bruno Campos), who has come for a state visit (read: to party at Mardi Gras). Unfortunately, a wicked voodoo priest Dr. Facilier (Keith David) has plotted a foul plot against the prince, and casts a spell that turns his manservant in the prince's image, and the royalty himself as a frog.

Naveen knows his fairy tales and that he must find a princess that would kiss him back to being human. He finds Tiana, dressed as a princess for the Mardi Gras festivities and convinces her to kiss him. Tiana does so in the condition of getting a loan for her new restaurant. But since she's not an actual princess, the spell backfires and turns her into a frog as well. The pair must escape the wrath of Facilier and his army of Shadow Demons into the swamp and find the help of the mystical voodoo lady called Mama Odie.

The hand-drawn animation is a marvel to behold, developing the style of films like Aladdin and The Little Mermaid confidently into the 21st century. Painted backgrounds look astonishing, the characters vivid and expression-filled. Randy Newman's jazzy dixieland score works quite well and the songs have that Lion King quality of while not exactly advancing the plot that much, they don't at least stop it altogether, either.

The film's cast is mostly likable. The main couple have enough quirks to be called personalities. Dr. Facilier is a worthy Disney villain, conceived to be the love child between lively old-schoolers Captain Hook and Cruella De Vil, but having a lot of voodoo god (and Bond villain) Baron Samedi thrown into the mix as well. While the villain controls fearsome powers, he is at core a coward, and both these sides are featured as well. Louis the jazz alligator and Mama Odie are good characters as well, but a cast so well always has to have a weak link.

I hate you, please die.

In this case it is the buck-toothed cajun hillbilly firefly, Ray. I could die happy if I never have to witness another hillbilly joke in a cartoon ever again. The fly is constantly making butt jokes, acting disgustingly and never, ever, shutting the hell up. Jim Cummings is a wonderful voice actor, but this time he really worn out his welcome. It's strange how the film so well managed to avoid any racial stereotyping in its black main characters, yet threw them all together for this sorry excuse for a joke. The screen time that such a disgusting insect has in the film is also baffling. He has little relevance to the plot, bringing everything screechingly down whenever he's featured. Without him, the film would be a lot better. Now, he's just a Jar Jar Binks thrown into Disney Animation's New Hope.

★★★

HIFF 2012: Animated Dreams

 
We're back with another post about this years Love & Anarchy festival. This time, I focus on the animated movies shown at the festival. As animations go, this year really wasn't among the strongest, since there were precious few titles screened. And from those, even Ghibli's newest didn't really work for me. But there was one absolute jewel among a bunch of average movies, which always makes it all worth it.

From Up On Poppy Hill (Kokuriko-zaka kara, Japan)
Director: Goro Miyazaki

Annually, Love & Anarchy presents Studio Ghibli's animations, new and old. This year's effort is from Hayao Miyazaki's son Goro, who previously directed the ho-hum adaptation of Tales From The Earthsea. But where that movie got lost along its overly complex plotting, it seems that Goro has learned from his past mistakes and is keeping things simpler this time around. His new film represents Ghibli's often-forgotten string of more down-to-earth teenage romance movies. And it's loosely based on Papa Miyazaki's own youth experiences, with the father of Goro and all of Ghibli having scripted the piece. The film takes place in the early 60's.

Umi is a teenaged girl living with her family in a beautiful garden villa on Tokyo seaside. Every morning she raises a flag to the sea to salute the passing ships. Her reasons are to greet her father who was lost at sea during the Korean war, but the message is noticed by an orphan boy called Shun, who lives and works in a ship. He sends a flirtatious poem for Umi to the local newspaper. However, the teens have never met, until their school is facing some renovations due to the upcoming Olympic games. These include the demolition of the old club house of the students. Both Shun and Umi rise up to protest against these plans. And at the same time they begin to fall for each other. But the history of their families has a secret, which may destroy the prospects of a blossoming romance altogether.

The story of two kids from different backgrounds coming together using a common cause as an excuse is nothing new. The old Ghibli charm makes it a hell of a lot more charming, but it is still lacking in the magic and originality so often attached to the studio's work. What's worse is the creepy undertones that the center romance has, which don't feel suitable to a movie aimed at kids and teenagers. But the hand-drawn animation and painted backgrounds are once again beautiful and the film has plenty of silly memorable minor characters to keep it barely afloat. Goro has at least learned to have a better rhythm in his storytelling, even though this is still patchy.

★★ 1/2

A Letter to Momo (Momo e no tegami, Japan)
Director: Hiroyuki Okiura

While Ghibli may have failed to make a Ghibli-quality movie, a former Ghibli employee succeeded in it just fine. Ghibli. Hiroyuki Okiura's first feature animation is one of those animated films where the mundane worries and troubles of a pre- to early-teens girl faces a vivid and magical fantasy world. Story-wise this is familiar stuff. But it still works quite well due to the final touches being so charming.

14-year-old Momo and her mother move to a suburban island near Tokyo. It is the island Momo's mother grew up in, and she has to rely on relatives and friends since she can't afford the rents of the big city any more. Momo is saddened by the recent death of her father, which is made worse by the fact that she had a fight with him soon before that. She is clutching on to the father's final letter that only has "Dear Momo" written on it. She also fears loneliness, since she finds it hard to make new friends. Since Momo's mother goes to work on a boat every day, Momo has to spend a lot of time home alone.

Momo is also scared of her new house and comes to believe it to be haunted. She discovers that three paranormal goblins have moved in with them, the always hungry Iwa, the shy but big-mouthed Kawa and the small, odd and soft-speaking Mame. She is the only person that is able to see these creatures. The goblins cause a lot of trouble with their ravenous appetite, yet they also have a mysterious mission to carry from the afterlife. Unsurprisingly, these three characters steal the movie and run with it. But best animations always have good use for comic sidekicks, and these Three Undead Stooges are really what sweetens the whole cake here.

As in many best family animes, the craft is in the small details. The old house creaks and is seemingly full of mystery. Water surrounds the house and feels isolating at times but becomes more inviting towards the end. The film knowingly does things very traditionally as it stars goblins straight out of old Japanese folklore. The film uses some animation help from computers, particularly in one big money shot towards the end, but it relies much on hand-drawn lines as well. Several scenes of the film feel a bit tacked on. Sometimes this doesn't matter (like in the superbly rapid wild boar chase), but it could at least have one less ending to avoid The Lord of the Rings syndrome.

★★★

Le tableau (France/Belgium)
Director: Jean-François Laguionie

Possibly the most innovative animation from this year's program, this is a new film from a true animation auteur. Laguione is a somewhat obscure French artist who often takes years to perfect his vision. This is his first film since 2004. And it concerns the inhabitants of a painting.

In an unfinished painting, the occupants aren't living as equals. The fully-painted Alldunns live in a luxurious castle, throw parties and frown on Halfies, the people who weren't quite finished and still have unpainted body parts or clothes. The Halfies have to live in a forest, but even they have it better than Sketchies, the people who were left as mere sketches and are persecuted and hunted by Alldunns. The Halfie girl Lola is an adventurous sort, and wants to venture far into the desert, where no painting has gone before. At the same time a forbidden love causes Lola's best friend Claire and her Alldunn lover Roma decide to run away together. But they are discovered and soon separated. Running for their lives, Lola, Roma and a Sketchie sentenced to death join together. The trio ventures beyond their limits and go to search for the artist of their painting. Lola hopes the artist could finish painting everyone so they all could live in harmony.

It's probably not a very big spoiler to tell that the trio finds new painting which to visit. The resulting film has no clear parallels, but reminds a little a classic Looney Tunes short where Daffy Duck visited various paintings and their inhabitants as well. The film utilized various different painting styles and thus each painting does seem like its own world. A war painting's world is grim and aggressive, a painting featuring the Venice festival is vast with surprises lurking behind every corner, and the artist's self-portrait has grown grumpier with years passing, alongside its creator.

If this was all achieved with beautiful hand-drawn animation, I would love it to bits. But budget limitation (I guess) mandate that this is mostly a computer animation, using Flash to create movements. It undermines the diversity of different styles and the message of the value of the art quite a bit.

In the end, the artist figures his most successful works should have a life of their own. He's not an angry god, but a gentle father, allowing his works to sort everything out by themselves. It's an exciting animation with plenty of creativity, but it also would've needed a bit more of a personal touch to its animation as well.

★★★

Pablo (USA)
Director: Richard Goldgewicht

This documentary about the legendary movie title credit auteur Pablo Ferro isn't actually an animation as such, but it does feature lengthy animated sequences. It's entirely reasonable that a movie about someone who does a lot of drawing for a living would be animated. Sadly, the film seems to be more surface than heart or information.

Ferro is best known for his typography used in credits. The films which include his signature style include Dr. Strangelove, Stop Making Sense and Men In Black. But Ferro wasn't limited to just lettering, he is a cracking visual artist to boot. He did the entire title sequences for such films as Psycho, Bullitt and The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!. He also did some ground-breaking commercials, such as the pre-music-video fast-cut trailers for Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange.

You might remember him from this.

The documentary, narrated by Jeff Bridges, goes through the life of the Cuban-born visualist, which has seen a lot of hedonism and bohemian vices, but also poverty, divorce and being left unrecognized for his work. His friendship with director Hal Ashby is in a central role, yet there are a few amusing anecdotes about Stanley Kubrick as well. In modern day setting, Ferro is suffering from achy joints and is recommended a sauna bath.

Even though Ferro has done so many iconic movie titles, the film just glosses over them quickly to tell about another party Ferro was having or a girl he once picked up. This decadence is shown to be kind of cute (due to it mostly being in animation). For a serious film fan, the fact that they don't go deeper into how Ferro got his groundbreaking ideas, or even how he created them, is a serious flaw. Big Hollywood names are brought to sing his praises, yet it never really dealt with, how much Ferro's work changed the face of movie titles or commercials.

Fortunately, Ferro is presented as laid-back and easy-going as they come. One wouldn't dare to nit-pick the movie while watching because his company is so enjoyable. Only afterwards does one realize that after watching the film, one didn't really learn much about title sequences after all.

★★

Wrinkles (Arrugas, Spain)
Director: Ignacio Ferreras

Remember the one really good animation I mentioned in the opening paragraph? I referred to this one. As one can guess from the title, this Spanish gem deals about growing old. But at the same time it also has a warm, melancholic look at human lives, dignity, and the value of memories. So it's a kind of a sibling piece to Michael Haneke's magnificent Amour. But it has two key differences. First, Wrinkles deals with an institution and how it suffocates little people, a little in the vein of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Second, it places much higher value to friendship, pulling together through hard last years, and doing whatever one can to make life better for people trapped in a corner with no easy way out. All in all, it's not cold and analytical in the way Haneke tends to be but warm and compassionate.

Emilio is a former banker, living with his grown up son and his family. But Emilio is getting more and more absent-minded and at times thinks he's still working at the bank.After having enough of this,  Emilio's son decides to put him in a retirement home. There, Emilio is horrified to learn that many of the inhabitants are demented to the pint of madness, reliving their old days without any idea of what goes on in the outside world.

He befriends his roommate, the Argentinian Miguel, who is one of the few people in the home who has kept his mind together. But Miguel isn't above cheating some of the inhabitants and staff of the house to gain items to sell, or some money to gain. Nevertheless, Miguel gives advice on how to avoid being put to the upper floor hospital department, where the most vegetable-stated seniors are put to. But Emilio's mind starts to crumble and he also starts to lose his own possessions, of which he suspects his new friend.

The film is based on a comic book and its style resembles the stark lines and panel framing of one. The animation is still gracefully done, since with animation it's easier to mix the real world and the version of the past many old people go through in their heads. Mist is a notable element of the film and is featured in many key scenes and transitions. As a symbol, it could be taken to mean various things. One action/chase scene is also fitted to the film, which it could've also done without.

The film makes one ponder about how we treat the elderly, who are seen more or less as a nuisance, in our societies. It forces the viewer to put him- or herself in the position of not realizing what is happening around him. It's a stark message, but the animated style helps to get it across without being melodramatic or pushing the issue. It is also a buddy film, with the best pair of buddies I've seen in a while, going even back before Pixar started out. But most importantly, it works as a metaphor of being between a rock and a hard place in life. Happiness is found not through rebelling against the inevitable, but concentrating on the important things in life. This helps one go on.

One of the whole festival's best films.

★★★★ 1/2

Three Poor, Lonesome Cowboys

The Helsinki Comics Festival opens today, with it's main theme being Belgian comics. Being a big comic book fan myself, I wanted to do a little something on Belgian comics movies. Since I did Tintin already, it's time to take a look at another character that ranks among the country's most popular: Lucky Luke. Created by cartoonist Morris in 1946, Luke is a western cowboy that can shoot faster than his own shadow and accurate enough to shoot wings off flies. He's accompanied on his adventures by his sarcastic, but loyal horse, Jolly Jumper. Lucky Luke became one of the most beloved strips in the Belgian comic magazine Spirou once the legendary writer René Goscinny took over the writing duties from Morris. He made the series funnier, amped up the western parody to new heights, created imaginative stories that combined real western legends to the myths of them from movies and television, and made the series less violent and more happy-go-lucky. For instance, Morris' own scripts often featured Luke gunning down his antagonist in a final showdown.

Actually, to call Lucky Luke himself popular is a bit of an understatement. Luke is not that special a character, he's a Roy Rogers-type cowbow, mellow, calm, smart and righteous. The real stars of the Lucky Luke comics are the supporting cast Goscinny helped to flesh out. Namely, Luke's main antagonists, The Dalton Brothers. Since Morris had Luke shoot and kill the actual historical Daltons (Frank, Gratton, Bob and Emmet) in an early Luke adventure, Goscinny introduced their cousins, Joe, Jack, William and Averell Dalton. They were not cold-blooded murderers, but rather a quartet of goofy bandits, who managed to always escape from jail despite them being dumber than a bag of hammers. Not surprisingly, almost all of Lucky Luke's silver screen adaptations have featured the Daltons as the villains.

The Ballad of the Daltons (La ballade des Dalton, 1978)
Directors: René Goscinny, Morris

Near the end of his life, René Goscinny founded Studio Idéfix with his two main collaborators, Albert Uderzo and Morris. The idea was to make movie adaptations of their comic books on the terms of the creators. All of them were more or less disappointed in having to compromise their work on previous movies. The first film of the studio, Asterix Conquers Rome, is easily the best big screen adaptation of the beloved Gaul warrior. Unfortunately, Goscinny died even before the studio's second film could premiere. It of course starred Lucky Luke, or rather, the Dalton Brothers.

In the form of a country ballad sung at a saloon, the story tells the legend of the Daltons attempting to gain an inheritance. Uncle Henry Dalton has been hanged and in his last will has left everything to his four bandit nephews. But there is one catch. Joe, Jack, William and Averell have to murder all members of the jury that convicted Henry to get his loot. Since Lucky Luke is seen to be honest enough, he's chosen to be the observer that the Daltons really succeed in killing the right people. Joe is planning on getting his revenge on the cowboy who always sends them to jail after they get the money. But his wit is no match for Lucky Luke's who foils the assassination plans one after another and fakes the deaths of the jury to get the Daltons off the back of innocent people.

The biggest plothole is present right there in the synopsis. Since the Daltons are escaped convicts, why does Luke humor them and takes part in their escapades? He's shown time and time again that he's the faster and more accurate drawer. Why even risk getting innocent people hurt?

As with Asterix Conquers Rome, the spirit and the humor of the comic books has been maintained. But also the film is more or less a pick-and-mix collection of sequences or skits, each framed by the person they are off to kill next. This choice does allow for a multitude of varying scenes that go from a parody of one western cliché to another. There's a haunted mine scene, a rodeo scene, a church scene and even a peyote-addled old-school Hollywood musical that has to be seen to be believed.

But the biggest foil of the film is the same as makes some of the comics a bit uneasy reading nowadays: racism. Classic westerns were not very considerate towards races, and it's reasonable that this aspect should be on display on any parodies thereof. But the outrageous racial stereotypes in Lucky Luke comics go so over the hill that it's hard to take them as mere joke-poking. Indeed, in this film we are shown superbly lazy and stupid Mexicans, and a tiny, buck-toothed, slant-eyed, polite and yellow Chinaman who of course knows karate. At least the treatment of Indians here isn't as bad as in some of the comics.

But warts and all, it's still a real Morris/Goscinny joint, showcasing the talents of both partners. The animation is quite well-done and looks like Morris' drawing style brought to life. The script features laugh-out-loud dialogue and hilarious stupidity from both Averell Dalton and Rin-Tin-Can (or Ran Tan Plan), the prison guard dog. Goscinny is a master of writing a good comedic interchange between a smart, tiny man and a dumb, big guy. The music is also mighty fine and has perhaps the best representation of I'm A Poor Lonesome Cowboy put to film.

★★★ 1/2

Lucky Luke (1991)
Director: Terrence Hill

One of the weirdest and stupidest comic book movie ideas of all time was to give the rights to Lucky Luke to Silvio Berlusconi. The Il Capo of Italian media then turned to idiot-comedy superstar Terence Hill to direct and star in a movie. Hill made two movies and a TV series out of the source material, but it didn't have much of a feel of Lucky Luke in it. No, they felt more like your typical Terence Hill western comedy. The first film (actually shot second since the first one was delayed due to a family tragedy), is actually somewhat faithful to the comic, at least moreso than the TV series. But at its core it's a filmed version of the first proper (non-Turkish) Lucky Luke Film, the animation Daisy Town (1971).

Narrated by Luke's trusty horse Jolly Jumper (voiced by Roger Miller), the movie tells the story of the frontier town called Daisy Town. On the western frontier, a peace is formed between the settlers and the Indians. Thanks to the Indians withdrawing to their own areas, the new settlers start to build houses to live in. Since on the field grows a single daisy, the newly built town is named Daisy Town. But it doesn't take long before the wholesome, frontier spirit changes into vices, crimes and misdemeanor. Daisy Town becomes a harbor for the most notorious bandits of the west. But luckily the famed cowboy Lucky Luke (Hill) arrives into town, and with his quick drawing gun hand, he frees the town of bandits. But Luke is about to meet his match as the Daltons (Ron Carey, Dominic Barto, Bo Greigh and Fritz Sperberg) ride into town. When the most notorious bandits of the west find out Luke is protecting the town's bank and occupants, Joe Dalton hatches a scheme to get the nearby Indian tribes to attack the town.

The opening does maintain many running gags of the comic book, and the Daltons are quite well realized in this. As mentioned, the biggest problem here is Terence Hill. Rather than a calm, cunning and righteous cowboy, his portrayal of Luke is a bit dumb guy who has chewing matches with chipmunks. Luke is pining for the beautiful saloon lady Lotta Legs (Nancy Morgan), even though his comic counterpart was stoic enough to never get involved with women. That's why Luke's main motivation for redempting Daisy Town is to settle in there himself and raise a family, rather than just to help out of altruism. On top of that, white-haired Hill doesn't look anything like Luke since he also insists of dressing in inexplicably white clothes. There's a joke or two to get a snigger out of this, so it isn't a total waste of time. But Luke would deserve better.

★★

Lucky Luke (2009)
Director: James Huth

Lucky Luke is a bit hard to produce on the big screen today, since it's originally a western pastiche and parody of the era Roy Rogers and such had movie serials. People aren't that familiar with that sort of western imagery and convictions nowadays. What are still remembered are Sergio Leone's incredibly strong body of work, and the aesthetics he and fellow Italian spaghetti western directors created. While Terrence Hill's Lucky Luke had the final showdown in the spirit of spaghetti, it mostly did not go to parody the westerns very deep. This 2009 attempt is a much bigger-scaled attempt to update Luke to the modern tastes of western parodies. It takes it's cue mostly from spaghetti westerns and the modern pop culture movies so much in debt to them. In some aspects it works, but mostly, it doesn't.

It's a good idea not to aim the film merely for young children. It's mostly a PG sort of a film, but doesn't pander to younger audiences like most Luke adaptations tend to do. Bullets and punches aren't used sparingly here. Jean Dujardin for the lead character is also a definite step into the right direction. The charismatic French star has the necessary chin, suit and smarts, and is likeable enough to pull the film forward. But parodying spaghetti westerns also means that the main character can't be an altruistic stranger who comes and goes just to help people. He has to be a victim of a tragedy he will fight to right.

So, here Lucky Luke is given a full name: John Luke. As a child he witnesses his parents getting killed by The Cheater Gang. Years later, Luke has become a legend of the west. He has travelled all across the young United States and helped bring out peace and justice without killing anyone. He is hired no one less than the President (André Oumansky) to help clean out Daisy Town. Luke's shooting skills come in handy, but it's not as easy to clean the town since the ruthless Casino Kingpin Pat Poker calls the shots there. Poker presents Luke his parents' watch, and Luke challenges him to a duel. It seemingly ends by Luke shooting Poker dead. Depressed, Luke escapes Daisy Town to a farm. But he can't keep out of the action for long. Along with fellow legends Calamity Jane (Sylvie Testud), Billy the Kid (Michaël Youn) and Jesse James (Melvil Polpaud) he will ride out to ensure their places in the history books.

Unlike most other Luke adaptations, this one doesn't feature the Daltons. What should be a breath of fresh air (The Brothers got their own, ill-recieved movie in 2004), is instead muddled with appearances from far too many characters from classic Lucky Luke albums. The main antagonist is Pat Poker, with Billy the Kid also in an important role. But in addition, we also get Jesse James, Calamity Jane, Phil Defer, Doctor Doxey, Belle Starr and Dirk Digger (hilariously named Dick Digger here). While the plot focuses on these larger-than-life characters (most of which get way too little screentime), the movie forgets the importance of the living milieu and it's silly occupants that stages so many of Luke's adventures. Daisy Town feels like an amusement park western segment, where no one has actually ever lived, but saloon fights, crooked card games and duels are staged every full hour.

So, it's a carnevalistic film, but at least visually somewhat interesting. The colorful imagery and kinetic cinematography keep things easy to look, as does Dujardin's charisma. But Goscinny's greatest jokes aren't told to a very good effect here, and the end result doesn't feel much at home in the world he and Morris created. I would be far more forgiving for the film if it didn't visually signal so much to that direction.

★★ 1/2

I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, and a long, long way from home...