Should you manage to see Wreck-It Ralph blind and with no knowledge of its source of origination, you might be inclined to credit the film to Pixar. And while that wouldn’t be an unreasonable guess, you’d be wrong. Ralph has all the bearings of Pixar at its finest, yet Rich Moore’s first feature length effort comes to us from none other than the Mouse House itself. Arriving six months after the release of Brave, Ralph gives weight to the theory that both animation studios are just blurring together more and more in the wake of Pixar’s acquisition by Disney in 2006. If that strikes anyone as a bad sign for creativity, then the news that Wreck-It Ralph happens to…
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G-S-T Review…A Late Quartet
If A Late Quartet, the second feature by Yaron Zilberman and his first film since his 2004 documentary Watermarks, proves anything, it’s that good performances can elevate average movies. To say that Zilberman’s cast saves his picture would be somewhat generous, though. They only distract us from its inadequacies, which are numerous, though perhaps this is a harsher judgment than the film really deserves. A Late Quartet is harmless, airy fluff, small-scale prestige cinema that smartly gathers together a group of very gifted actors in the service of exploring life lessons filtered through the overarching motif of Beethoven’s Opus 131 String Quartet (in C-sharp minor); it’s also painfully undercooked to…
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G-S-T Review…The Sessions
Life deals many of us some pretty crappy hands. The trick to dealing with much of it, as they say, is to have a good attitude. In the case of journalist Mark O’Brien, life handed him a spectacularly bum hand in the form of childhood polio. But you wouldn’t know it to talk to him as his positive outlook far outweighs both the iron lung he sleeps in and the paralyzing affect the disease had on him physically. After an 18 year absence from feature films director Ben Lewin takes the helm for The Sessions; a tender story that retells the time in O’Brien’s life when he researched/wrote one of his most provocative stories. The film doesn’t dance around sensitive…
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Exclusive: Interview…Disney Animator & ‘Paperman’ Director John Kahrs
Editor’s Note: This interview was held following the animated short film sequence back in September at the 2102 Fantastic Fest. We held on to this to coincide with its screening ahead of Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph which opens Friday November 2nd. Part passion project, part experiment, Disney animator John Kahrs‘ short film Paperman is a wonderful combination of traditional 2D animation and CG. This hybrid style (achieved by creating CG animatics and then laying 2D drawings over those polygons) yields something that has the look of traditional hand drawn animation but moves with the fluidly of CG. Sounds simple but apparently it’s a lot of work. However, looking at the end result, it has the potential to be a…
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"The Halloween Monster Mash" Is Over!!
Well friends, “The Halloween Monster Mash” has come to a close. Over the past 4 weeks it’s been a knock down drag-out grudge match to crown the baddest horror monster. The match-ups have yielded some expected advances but also a few upsets here and there. But it’s all in anticipation and appreciation of Halloween so I hope you had some fun. Anyway it was a pretty tremendous turnout so thanks to the many visitors and all those who cast their votes. So without further ado I present the winner of GoSeeTalk’s Halloween Monster Mash… That’s right scare fiends and gore hounds: proving that he’s really the stuff that nightmares are made of, Pinhead, the unholy leader…
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I've Got A Good Feeling About This: Disney Buys LucasFilm, Expect Ep. VII In 2015
There was a prophecy that one would come and bring balance to the Force…and it’s the Mouse House?? Yup, this is straight from the source and you’re not dreaming. Disney has really bought Lucasfilm. Wow, still having trouble believing what I’m writing. To the tune of 4 billion dollars Disney, as well as Kathleen Kennedy, will now be in creative control of the characters from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Here’s the statement from Lucas: “For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see ‘Star Wars’ passed from one generation to the next. It’s now time for me to pass ‘Star Wars’ on…
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We Don't Need to Be Friends: Stoker International Poster and Promo Clip
In the last month, we’ve seen the release of two different trailers for South Korean maestro Chan-wook Park‘s newest film, Stoker, and while three’s a crowd the newest preview footage for the production is too good not to share. Grant that I’m a massive admirer of Park’s work, and as far as I’m concerned just about anything released in the service of promoting his work is worth getting excited about; also grant that I’m capable of being objective, and so when I say that this is a pretty great video, I mean it with every ounce of sincerity I can muster given my clear bias. Have a look: Admittedly, some of…
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Rice Paper and Bone Claws: 'The Wolverine' Teaser Poster
Sticking with my usual policy of honesty, I’m going to come right and say that there’s very little that could get me interested in Fox’s pending The Wolverine. Like many, I don’t much care for where the franchise has gone since the excellent second film (which is even to say that I didn’t enjoy First Class quite as much as others did, though I still liked it), and the only announcement that had my curiosity piqued came in 2011 when Darren Aronofsky flirted with the project before walking away. If you want to level an argument that my lack of familiarity with the source material, which has been described to me as…
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G-S-T Quick 5 – Super Easy Last-Minute Halloween Ideas
Halloween is almost upon us, and as Ferris Bueller once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Well, the same goes for Halloween. So if you’ve been too busy to work on your costume, don’t worry. Here are 5 quick and easy Halloween costumes for people short on time, and on a budget. The goal here is to use what you’ve got in your closet and keep from spending any money. You don’t even have to buy a prop t-shirt like the header image above (although it is pretty sweet). Depending on the items at your disposal, you…
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G-S-T Review…Cloud Atlas
Following Cloud Atlas, viewers will invariably find themselves armed with a variety of useful adjectives to describe the film in a single word: grand, towering, epic, inspiring, heartbreaking, heartwarming, hodgepodge. But in adapting David Mitchell’s 2004 novel of the same name, siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer have created a singular, unique work that majestically shrugs off attempts at quick, careless classification. Cloud Atlas is a cinematic medley of narratives connected together through time and space, driven by a sense of enterprise and purpose, and defined by its advocacy of basic, simple morality and human compassion; fitting the film into traditional categories would not be unlike forcing a square…
