Last movie you watched?

[jekylljuice]

Personally I've never been a huge fan of Don Bluth. While he occasionally touched upon some fairly dark and interesting ideas, it seems to me that he could never quite escape from his origins as a Disney animator, and more often than not he wanted it both ways. I think as a result his films often came out horribly messy and confused, like they'd been overstretched in both directions. The cute stuff had a tendency to be insufferably so, and the darker material gave his films a dreary, sometimes even quite morbid tone that never really managed to be entrancing. For me it just never gelled, and there's something about his work that I find unappealling. But again, that's just me. The best thing to come out of Don Bluth's repertoire, in my opinion, was "Journey to the Past" from Anastasia. It's quite a nice little song.

The last film I watched was the distinctly dreary Alien 3. In the past I've often joked that I refuse to watch any films in the Alien series after Aliens, because Jonesy the cat (the real star of the original film, and that's no joke) isn't in them, though really it's the bad word of mouth that's been detering me up until now. I can't say I regret finally biting the bullet and watching the third installment, but I didn't really like it either. In theory, I quite like the idea of a movie saga in which each individual film is helmed by a different director, each juxtaposing their own unique directing styles into the franchise, but it's easy to see why so many viewers became disenchanted with the series by Alien 3. A couple of slickly-directed set-pieces don't quite make up for the fact that this is a lot of gritty darkness with very little substance or originality. I'm certainly not in much of a hurry right now to watch Alien Ressurection.

[Invader Bloo]

Don't watch AR. Horrible movie, I'm never going to watch A3. They kill off Newt, Hicks, Bishop & Ripley? Nice slap in the face to Cameron & the wonderful 'Aliens'.

[Mr. Marshmallow]

You made some very excellent and dead on points with Bluth there Jekyll. But I think the fact he actually took the chance to include dark elements in his films he DID escape his Disney "past life" if you will. Nearly all of his films involved something very serious or something very dark that toons normally don't have.

All Dogs go to Heaven easily is the biggest one dealing death, angels, demons and going to Heaven AND Hell (in both movies I might add). Bluth's animation work though I felt was flawless like with Rock-a-doodle. As I said the movie was pretty silly, but the animation on even the smallest detail was amazing.

They had these toad bodyguards for the rooster character Chanteclaire (no clue how to spell his name), and they had warts and tiny hairs and wrinkles on their skin I mean it was just a great art job. Bluth's films aside from the silly ones though had some of most original story lines then most Disney films.

I mean Titan A.E., All dogs go to Heaven, even An American Tail taking the whole subject of immigration and putting a toon perspective on it I thought was a genius and very original idea. "Fievel Goes West" by the way was my favorite Bluth film, even though I didn't care too much for the first one.

Also the last movie I watched was Mystery Men...

I was really upset when this movie didn't get a sequel because it so easily could have worked, and I thought this was a great and comical interpretation of super heroes. The costumes, the city, even the restaurants, it all had this unique look to it and I LOVED Greg Kinnear and Hank Azaira in here best.

Most people dislike Ben Stiller movies but I enjoy his work, I don't love it as much recently but I still like to watch him and this is one of my favorite roles of his.

[AerostarMonk]

I've still never seen Alien 3. But I plan to. It's David Fincher's first film. However it seems to be a tradition that the last 2 Alien films were directed by such great directors but were mediocre films at best. Though Alien Resurrection is infinitely more watchable than Alien VS Predator. If only to see the proto-Serenity crew that Joss Wheon created for the movie.

[Invader Bloo]

No way. AvP is way better than AR.
Mainly because of Predator, which I prefer a zillion times above Alien. (Both species & series)

[Zeitgheist]

I enjoy Don Bluth's movies too, it's just that sometimes they feel as if he didn't know where he was going with them. Like The Land Before Time, it's a great movie that you grew up with (though very slow, each scene is memorable) but it's his shortest movie ever. Why? Someone thought the scenes with the T-Rex were WAY too scary, so they had to cut out like a whole whoopin' 20 minutes of material

I think it wasn't until Titan A.E and Anastacia that it felt as though he had an idea of what audience he wanted to reach out to, but, those were not his best movies. I will still always favor those that had messages and myseries such as An American Tail, Ferngully, All Dogs Go to Heaven and ESPECIALLY my favorite Don Bluth movie The Secret of NIMH

[Mr. Marshmallow]

Originally Posted by Zeitgheist

I will still always favor those that had messages and myseries such as An American Tail, Ferngully, All Dogs Go to Heaven and ESPECIALLY my favorite Don Bluth movie The Secret of NIMH

I liked Ferngully, but I felt it was a bit too one sided in its perspective. Obviously, the theme is protecting the environment and cutting down trees is bad and all. However I felt the movie seriously went a bit too far totally degrading the human race and everything involved or connected to them.

Now I'm not condoning the fact deforestation is a terrible thing but everything in this movie just basically said: HUMANS SUCK! Every human character in here is associated with negative aspirations and personality traits, everything that is related to them makes things noisy, ugly, and just makes the world a crappier place.

The fairies world of course is beautiful and godforbid they can't have ANY evil existing in their world, it has to come from man. Mankind has done some lousy things to Mother Nature but frankly, I'm getting tired of seeing humanity be the center of all that is evil and blaming us for everything we do.

Hexxus was a tremendously cool villain and I thought Batty was a riot but I felt this movie's music seriously lacked anything specials (sans the dream song by Sheena Easton) and the whole "humans bad, fairies good" angle was apparent in almost every scene. Zack got treated like crap and it became a running joke no matter what part of the movie it reached.

Sorry if this sounds like I hate the movie, I don't, I just can't stand it when a movie goes out of its way to paint an ugly message about something or something and doesn't bother presenting the other side of the argument. Michael Moore's documentaries are a prime example of this, and I kinda feel Ferngully did it too.

Their message was a very positive one, but I felt it could have still been effective without human stomping 101. Btw since were still on Bluth films, I want to say I prefer Charlie Sheen to Charlie's voice in Dogs/heaven 2 rather then Burt Renolyds in the original. I just think it fit better.

[Zeitgheist]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marshmallow

Btw since were still on Bluth films, I want to say I prefer Charlie Sheen to Charlie's voice in Dogs/heaven 2 rather then Burt Renolyds in the original. I just think it fit better.

I love it when follow-ups change the voices... into something BETTER. Not many a case, sadly. But I thought J.P Manoux did a (and DOES, it's not over yet) FANTASTIC job as Kuzco in the tv-series The Emperor's New School rather than David Spade from the movies. J.P just made Kuzco a lot funnier and quirkier :3

[jekylljuice]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marshmallow

You made some very excellent and dead on points with Bluth there Jekyll. But I think the fact he actually took the chance to include dark elements in his films he DID escape his Disney "past life" if you will. Nearly all of his films involved something very serious or something very dark that toons normally don't have.

I mean Titan A.E., All dogs go to Heaven, even An American Tail taking the whole subject of immigration and putting a toon perspective on it I thought was a genius and very original idea. "Fievel Goes West" by the way was my favorite Bluth film, even though I didn't care too much for the first one.

Thank you.

I've always felt that An American Tail might have worked marginally better if they hadn't insisted on making it a musical. It's kind of hard to explain, but it didn't seem like the songs really fit all that smoothly into the narrative, and the transition from regular narrative into most musical numbers struck me as somewhat forced and jarring in that film. I don't remember too much about the sequel, but if I recall correctly it did at least contain a rather slick tribute to the theme from "Rawhide".

Also, I think that the way in which the cats and the mice are each portrayed within the original film are pretty good examples of the highly polarised nature of Mr. Bluth's work...the mice were generally a little too cutesy and twee for my tastes, while the cats were frequently depicted as so scary and monstrous that for much of the time they ceased to even look like cats. For me it's not a happy mixture.

Incidentally, was Ferngully: the Last Rainforest even a Don Bluth film? I thought it was made by 20th Century Fox in the early 90s, before Bluth joined their ranks.

[Nathander]

Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn

Ingenius, ingenius horror film. Incredibly violent and bizarre, but great fun film.