FilmRoar

Well written, acted and animated, Ice Age (2002) is entertaining for adults and kids alike. All of the voice talent did a superb job in acting out the lines for their characters, special kudos go out to John Leguizamo for his hilarious interpretation of Sid the Sloth. While the movie relies on some potty humor the writing and the jokes are generally top quality and made to appeal to most any audience.

I was highly impressed with the art direction and quality that Blue Sky Studios (best known for the short movie Bunny (1998)) gave to the characters. Putting fur on a CG character as once considered project suicide because of the difficulty and computational cost of rendering hair. Blue Sky not only modeled interesting to look at and expressive fur characters but they did what a good animation house knows how to do; they put CHARACTER into the characters. Each creature encountered in Ice Age has a well-defined and interesting personality. The primary characters deliver superb performances, showing a solid range of emotion through their mouths, eyes and facial features. The world they live in is lush and rich with color and texture. I enjoyed the consistent and beautiful art design present throughout the feature.

Kudos go out to the writers of Ice Age for a funny movie, to the voice talent for amusing characters, to the animators for top notch character animation and to the technical directors and crew at Blue Sky for pulling this movie off. You should see Ice Age when you have a chance. I am willing to bet you will be very entertained.

A beautiful trailer for the Korean animated movie Wonderful Days (2003) has appeared on the movie’s English site. It is hard to tell what to expect from the story, but the visual style of the film seems to raise the animation bar.

movieXplosion.com has posted a transcript of the conversation between Niobe and the Oracle from the Enter The Matrix video game. The conversation does not answer any questions really but it does add fuel to the Matrix theory discussion.

Transcript from “Enter The Matrix” video game, Niobe and the Oracle conversation:
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On May 21st I posted a quote from a Reuters article explaining why the Tank Character did not appear in the Matrix sequels:
http://www.geekroar.com/film/archives/000249.php

I followed it up with a copy of the transcript of the discussion between Neo and the Architect from Matrix Reloaded:
http://www.geekroar.com/film/archives/000250.php

And then with a link to insight into the Matrix Story line provided by Dark Horizons:
http://www.geekroar.com/film/archives/000256.php

I was hoping people would find the articles useful as I did in understanding the story line being revealed in the trilogy and was hoping people would be inclined to post their own thoughts and theories. I was quite unprepared for the actual results:
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The Next Superhero

There is a saying in Hollywood “why waste time coming up with an original idea when you can steal someone else’s”. Well, maybe there isn’t such a saying, but there should be. Hollywood operates on the principle of pack mentality. If one studio works on a movie about a giant meteor that is about to wipe out humanity when it hits the earth, then every studio needs a giant meteor movie. If one studio starts to work on an animated movie about ants then their competition needs an animated ant movie. If one studio looks like it will be making money on a dad and son switch places movie then the studio across town needs to start it’s own dad and son switch places flick.

This originality-is-risky mentality can be a blessing as well as a curse. After a streak of failed super-hero movies (Captain America (1991), Punisher, The (1989), Judge Dredd (1995), Howard the Duck (1986)), Hollywood decided to try again.
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Looking through the logs on my web server I can see that the two most popular google web searches hitting my site are by far “matrix reloaded theory” and “matrix reloaded discussion”. If you landed here looking for information on what ‘really’ happened in Reloaded I suggest you start by reading the Matrix Reloaded Architect Transcript, posted yesterday. If you want some better dirt and are not afraid of spoilers then go ahead and aim your browsers at last Monday’s Dark Horizons. Garth posted some tasty scoop on the new movies based on video from the video game. I have refused to read the spoiler-laden report in a (futile?) hope of keeping some sense of surprise and suspense coming into the third movie, but you don’t mind spoilers that may have what you are looking for.
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Just when I was getting ready to start disliking Tom Cruise again for the atrocious Eyes Wide Shut (1999) he had to go redeem himself on the excellent film Minority Report (2002). Of course I don’t think you can either thank or blame the star too much for either film since the first was the victim of sub-standard directing and the latter the product of great writing, but I do have to hand it to Cruise for doing a great job as Detective John Anderton in this adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel (see Film Roar: Movies that are better than the books for earlier discussion about P. K. Dick adaptations).
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