Film Review: How To Train Your Dragon

Dreamworks. The company that has always had to compete with PIXAR. Most of the time, these guys get a bad cred. You can blame that on duds like Spirit, Shrek The Third and Madagascar 2. But with films like Shrek 1 & 2, Over The Hedge and Kung Fu Panda, these guys show they can do great cinema. They just need to get talented people to work on their films. This one has Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois in the director's chair. These guys worked on the classic Lilo & Stitch. So is it any wonder this is the best dreamWorks adventure yet?

Hiccup (Jay Bruchel) is a small viking on the island of Berk. While his friends are always battling dragons, he's working with Gobber (Craig Ferguson) as a blacksmith. However, he catches the rarest of all dragons: a Night Fury. But when he see's it for the first time, he just CAN'T kill the little critter he dubs Toothless. And thus, a classic film friendship is born.

Let's face it. This story has been told time after time again. But...this one just seems fresher, perhaps because this is the first pet that, y'know, kills people! Toothless, however, comes off more cute than ferocious. In fact, he has some of the best expressions that I've seen in animation in a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. He and Hiccup do make good buddies.



The voices in the film are really well, Jonah Hill and Craig Ferguson being stnad-outs. Gerard Butler also does well as Hiccup's father. Jay is alright as Hiccup, much better than I thought he would be thanks to those pesky TV commercials. Toothless, thank goodness, has no voice actor. That's probably for the best as he does perfectly fine here silent.

The animation also does well here. The background are beautiful and the dragons look really good too. This film just gets everything right, fromt pacing to action to animation. A highly reccomended ride in 3D or 2D!!



Rating: 9.0 out of 10 or A

SYS

Shrek 4 & MegaMind Screened

Two of Dreamworks 2010 releases had never-before seen footage screened yesterday. The following is the description for Shrek 4:

Screened for an eager audience was, straight through, the first thirty minutes of the new film in 3D, which opens with storybook narration, recounting Shrek's previous adventures. We're then taken to a "carriage park" (imagine a redneck trailer park, but with fairytale witches and vampires living out of their carriages) as the King and Queen of Far, Far Away reluctantly drive through to a meeting with Rumpelstiltskin (and his surprisingly sinister-looking pet, a sharp-toothed duck named Fifi). There, the diminutive creature (voiced by Dreamworks Animation production artist Wal Dohrn) tries to get them to sign a contract, trading their kingdom to have Fiona's curse lifted. Just as they are about to sign, someone barges in and tells them that the curse has been lifted, as per the events of the first "Shrek" film.

We cut back to the storybook with the narrator, now revealed to be Rumpelstiltskin himself, sitting in a bookstore, furiously talking about how Shrek ruined his chances at ruling Far, Far Away.

Shrek, meanwhile, is living an idyllic life with Fiona and his kids. Donkey drops by with his own dragon/donkey offspring and every day a tour bus passes and tourists happily photograph the formerly terrifying ogre. Quickly, this builds to a montage, revealing that, as happy as Shrek is, the monotony is getting to him. He finally reveals to Fiona that he wishes he could have just a single day of being a monster again.

Setting himself up in a false carriage accident, Rumpelstiltskin tricks Shrek into stopping to help him in the middle of the woods. Pretending to be grateful, he tells Shrek that, if he's willing to give up a single past day of his, he can magically arrange a day for him to be a real ogre again. Suggesting that it could be a day when he was a baby that he won't even remember, Rumpelstiltskin convinces Shrek and he signs a lengthy contract.

Suddenly coming to in the woods, Shrek spots "WANTED" posters with his face and, to his delight, realizes that his wish has come true: he can terrorize the village again. In a musical montage, he does just that, happily causing havoc and chasing townspeople (all set to The Carpenters' "Top of the World").

Later, though, Shrek spots another poster, this one with Fiona's face. Realizing something is wrong, he returns to the town and realizes things aren't as he planned; Ogres are being rounded up and imprisoned in the castle by the new ruler, Rumpelstiltskin. Shrek himself is captured and brought in by two witches, in a carriage pulled by Donkey (who, in this reality, never met Shrek).

On the way into town, there's a great appearance by Gingerbread man who, in the alternate timeline, is a Roman-style gladiator, fighting animal crackers in a miniature stadium.

At the palace, Shrek comes before Rumpelstiltskin in a sort of witch-filled nightclub. The villain reveals that the day that was taken from Shrek was the day he was born and, as such, he never really existed. When the 24 hours are up, Shrek will vanish forever.

Furious, Shrek breaks free of his chains and grabs an unwitting Donkey, battling witches and escaping from the palace, the clock quickly running out to find a loophole in Rumpelstiltskin's contract

Here is The MegaMind description:

Megamind himself (voiced by Will Ferrell) has a similar origin to Superman; when he was a baby, his planet was destroyed and he was rocketed to Earth. His landing, however, was inside a penitentiary and he grew up a criminal genius.

By Megamind's side is Minion (voice by David Cross), a combination robot/monkey with fish tank for a head and the mind of a talking piranha (presumably constructed by Megamind himself).

Metro City (mispronounced by Megamind as "metrocity", rhyming with "velocity") is championed by Metroman (voiced by Brad Pitt), a muscular superhero with a white Elvis-like costume and Reed Richards-style graying temples.

Metroman's love interest is Roxanne Ritchie (voiced by Tina Fey), a TV news reporter who is Megamind's go-to girl when he needs a damsel in distress. As such, Megamind and Roxanne are extremely familiar with one another and she has become bored by his failed plots to rule the world.

The footage opens with Metroman attending a museum ribbon cutting in his honor. He showboats for the crowd, flying, doing tricks and even juggling a woman's babies, all the rounds of roaring applause.

Megamind, meanwhile, has kidnapped Roxanne and taken him to his secret lair. Tied to a chair, Roxanne is unimpressed with anything Megamind has, including a pit of alligators and an enormous machine gun.

Going on the air, Megamind broadcasts a message to Metroman, telling him off the kidnapping. Roxanne shouts to the hero that she's being held at an abandoned observatory and Metroman rushes to her aid. The tables are turned on Metroman, however, as the observatory is revealed to be a fake. Metroman finds himself inside a large, domed building while Megamind watches from an adjacent base.

Telling Minion to fire his laser, Megamind is horrified to find that it's going to take longer to load the programing than he had thought. Metroman and Megamind exchange some really funny superhero metaphors back and forth ("Justice is a non-corrodible metal!" shouts Metroman at one point). With the laser unable to fire, Megamind thinks he's lost again, until he spots something unusual on his monitor: Metroman is trapped inside the dome. Copper, he reveals, is his secret weakness and Megamind has unwittingly lured him to a building that has sapped his energy. Unable to fly away, Metroman is struck by the laser blast and, apparently, completely destroyed.

The footage ends here, but a few slides were shown of what happens next; Megamind conquers the city, but finds that, without a rival, his life has no meaning. He goes to work creating a new superhero out of Hal Stewart, a cameraman for Roxanne (as voiced by Jonah Hill), creating the alternate superhero identity Titan.

These films sound OK, though I like MegaMind more than Shrek 4.

SYS

Avatar Box Office Part VIII: This One's For No. 4

Avatar has now surpassed Shrek 2's 441.2 million dollars gross. This puts it as the 4th biggest film of all-time in the USA. Not only that, but it's gross now stands at a trmendous 1.3 billion worldwide. Titanic better look out. Avatar is about to beat it.

SYS

Bone Movie Puttering Along

I love the graphic novel Bone. It's funny, yet so epic! And it seems a certain great producer ha it right by descriibng it as: "Shrek meets Lord of the Rings". It seems Bone will become a 2011/2012 film and the director should be announced by Spring. I had been applying for the direction and even had wrote a script for it...but hey! Sounds like htey might have something.

Jus ta suggestion: Get Nathan Lane to voice Phoney Bone. He'd be terrific.

SYS

DVD Review: Shrek The Halls

Shrek and I have a mixed relationship. The first Shrek was brilliant. So was the second. But the third...ugh. What went wrong? That threequel was one of the worst films of 2007. So when a Christmas special was announced, I groaned. And now it's been on the air for 3 years and I have watched and enjoyed all of those times. So what went right?

The story (Shrek wanting a perfect Christmas for his family) is easily relatable and fun to watch. Of course, the secondary characters come through brilliantly, with Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) getting one of the best scenes and the Gingerbread Man telling a Santa horror story really bringing down the house.

Shrek may need some extra fuel to get past 4 installments, but it's hard to deny the whimsy of this film and the kindness it gives. It's no Rudolph or Prep and Landing, but it's still a great Christmas treat.

Rating: 8.3 out of 10 or B+

SYS