I think I underrepresented how much of this thread that I read, but I went back and read more and re-read other stuff, just to get a better idea of what's going on.
Post 58 by Takyris was awesome, especially the last paragraph:
It's okay to like Amelie and not There's Something About Mary. It's okay to like There's Something About Mary and not Amelie. It's okay to like both. It's okay to like neither. But it's obvious to most people that they come from different countries, and carry different cultural assumptions with them. And that difference is a valid reason to like or dislike either of them. It's subjective as heck, but it's valid.
I'm all over that.
Post 60, Chain Lightning mentions how the Iron Giant and The Incredibles are made somehow differently than other American animation. Aren't they both Brad Bird films? What's he do that's so different? Am I a bad person for still liking both of Brad Bird's features (and the two Simpson's episodes he directed?) despite my personal political misgivings about his first feature?
In response to Mojo1701 and Thanee:
Originally Posted by Thanee
Dunno, when I think of animation these days, I immediately think of Shrek, Nemo or Incredibles. I don't think there is any japanese anime, which can even get close to such coolness.
And Simpsons and Futurama? That's a class of its own, well ahead of all that anime stuff.
Bye
Thanee
[Mojo1701]
Heh, you said it.
So the fact that the executive producer of 2/3rds of those movies (Nemo and Incredibles) and the director of 3 earlier Pixar features and lots of earlier shorts is quite possibly the world's 2nd biggest Miyazaki fans, the fact that Lasseter routinely has his animators watch Miyazaki flicks and that the creative team behind Lilo and Stitch wathced hella-myazaki, especially Porco Rosso; Miyazaki and his work being awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, the best animated feature Oscar, and will be receivign the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award at the Venice International Film Festival this August - this is all - lip service? Intellectual Snobbery? Maybe - just maybe - there's some coolness going on in Japan...
(Note - the preceding paragraph uses the tone of indignation for effect only and does not accurately portray the writer's beliefs nor what the writer feels Thanee and Mojo were actually trying to say.)
Shrek (and Shrek 2), Nemo, and the Incredibles top the IMDB list I mentioned in my last post along with Disney greats, Studio Ghibli films, a few other Japanese productions by studio Mad House and Production IG and others, and the more independant Western animations like the stop-action greats Chicken Run and Wallace and Grommit and the French Les Triplettes de Belleville (which I really freakin' want to see!).
Mah. This post is really disjointed.
To WizarDru about Bluth: Okay, so I really don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to Bluth. Maybe if I said "Had financial reality allowed Bluth more creative freedom," it would be vague and truthful enough to belong in this discussion, but I was really just channeling the indignation of a friend without doing any research (which I've started to rectify).
...and on the validity of the IMDB: At least they keep the scheme they use for weighting their averages secret, and the list rankings are based only on the votes of people who vote on the IMDB a LOT. There's at least some value to numbers and rankings that's greater than tyrrany by fans or random numbers.
...and on Lilo: You really know how to Cramp a man's (feigned) optimism with "facts" and "figures"
. On an interesting note - the cost you cite for Lilo and Stich is 4 times as expensive as Princess Monoke. Anyone know where we can get a cel count on both films so we can see how close to the mark Chain Lightning's accusations of inefficiency are? I guess subtracting marketing costs and other non-production stuff would probably be beneficial, too.
So, the central questions -- that's only been touched on briefly and tangentially in posts like #102 by reanjr:
There's many productions I would like to see like this, but the truth of the matter is, they would be economic disasters even at their lowered cost. Animated films lose something (unless we're talking top-notch CG like Shreck or something like Gollum) of the "actor"'s personalities. I just don't think you can get an American audience to come back to an animated show again and again.
(for those of you who don't remember) -- are these:
Why would a creator want to make animation that doesn't pretend to be live-action (as so much coputer-generated animation is used today)?
Why would an audience want to see animation instead of live-action?
Part of the answer -and I have no idea how big or small this part is- comes straight from Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics," chapter 2. The fewer details you have in a depiction of a face, the more people will relate to that face and character. A photograph of an actor is obviously not you, but two dots and a curved line
is recognizable as a face to just anyone the world over -
and it's easier to 'fill-in the blanks' of that face with yourself. The same is true for anything that can be depicted on film. Not only are you conveying information in a different way, but you can convey different kinds of information using drawings or even cartoons than you can with photos or photo-realism.
What that all means is a matter of theory and personal preference. Reanjr doesn't think cerain kinds of things will work as well in animation as it would in live-action. I happen to think that the possibilities for both media have barely been realized and that his is a premature judgement. Neither of us have any proof, and I kind of like things that way.
