Pixar Playlist #6 - The Incredibles

Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the Pixar Playlist

The Incredibles represented a unique challenge for Pixar, as the first film that had leads that were all human, and an entirely human set of background characters, requiring new techniques for animating clothing, muscle and hair but this film presented unique challenges in animating fire, water, air, steam, explosives and dust. It had quadruple the number of the locations of other Pixar films and at the time had the longest run-time. Topping all that off, the writer and director of this film, Brad Bird was pretty new to the CGI game. His previous film was The Iron Giant, which did utilise CG, but not to this extent.

With all that in mind, it’s amazing this film ended on a $92m budget, $2m less than the much less innovative and shorter Finding Nemo. The film went onto making $633m at the box office and continues Pixar’s streak of critical hits with a 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating. But where does it rank on the Pixar Playlist, let's take a look

Praise4Media #60 - Rampage

Video Game Adaptations are rarely good. You can get films which are super unfaithful and stupid as hell, like the Super Mario Bros. Movie or you could get ones that are faithful, but are equally as underwhelming, like the Ratchet and Clank movie turned out to be. And most of them are financial failures. One that broke that mould, before Detective Pikachu came along was Rampage

Yes, we’re back with The Rock on a video game movie… I’ve never played Rampage… Sorry? But a quick Wikipedia summary tells me you play as a monster and your objective is to destroy the city. OK, a movie would never play out like that, but that’s a fun enough premise to run with, basically a monster movie.

The film made $430m on its $120m budget, although with an additional $140m spent on marketing, it’s unclear whether this actually broke a profit or not. Directing this is Brad Peyton, who’s worked with The Rock before on San Andreas and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. On the writing team we have Ryan Engle, who’s helped write Non-Stop, Carlton Cuse who co-wrote San Andreas, Adam Sztykial, who co-wrote Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, poor guy and Ryan J Condal, who co-wrote Hercules, another film featuring the Rock.

The film had a mixed critical reception, it has a 51% Rotten Tomatoes rating, with an average 5.27/10, but audiences seemed kinder, giving it a 73% rating with an average 4.05/5. So, who’s right in this non-debate? Let’s take a look.

Netflix Retrospective - Luke Cage Season 2 Episodes 11-13 review

It’s December, so here are the final 3 episodes of season 2 of Luke Cage, and of Luke Cage in general, spoilers to follow (obviously)

Adaptation Month - Mary Poppins

We conclude adaptation month with a film that’s loved by everyone, except the writer of the book. Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins is a children’s book released in 1934 and written by P L Travers, a film adaptation was released by Disney in 1964, with a screenplay by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, both of whom had previously worked with Disney, in particular in their animation department and had written Son of Flubber. The Sherman Brothers also deserve some credit for the songs in this movie, which they had written.

PL Travers objected to the use of musical numbers and animation, but Disney overruled here, so it’s not hard to see why she was sour on the project. But does it do justice to the book’s story? No, I’m not going to even pretend that it does, so here’s my thoughts on the book just as a book.

The Book

Mary Poppins is a children’s story, it’s filled with a sense of magic and weirdness that kids are likely to be drawn to but lacks any real nuance or narrative, or really much in terms of character for adults to enjoy reading on their own.

The Film

This film does have its problems, in particular in regards to the ending, but I think they did a marvellous job. Considering the technology that made this film possible was very new around this, the animation/live action integration is impressive. The songs are fantastic and the film provides wonder for kids whilst also providing the depth and narrative the book oh so desperately needed to appeal to adults.

Please note, I am only looking at the first Mary Poppins Book, if ideas are taken from its sequels, that’s great but I haven’t read those, so I’m judging this purely as an adaptation of the book it’s named after.

Adaptation Month - 5 Feet Apart

I am not a medical expert, and I’m not gonna rattle off statistics about Cystic Fibrosis. I do recommend checking out cysticfibrosis.org.uk if you’re in the UK or equivalent charities if you live elsewhere.

OK, I’m cheating a bit on this one, but in my defence, I only just worked that out. 5 Feet Apart the book was released in November 2018, with the film being released in March 2019 in the UK. Rachael Lippincott handled the novelisation of a screenplay written by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis. Because of this being a novelisation tying into the film, it’s already pretty guaranteed to be a very loyal adaptation but sometimes changes happen that affect the film, but not the novel, will this be the case here? Before we get into it, here are some thoughts on the book and film as individual entities.

The Book

Rachel Lippincott utilises a dual-perspective narrative, with the two leads taking alternate chapters like in Allegiant. It works better here because our leads have more distinct personalities and individual conflicts outside of the one driving the main narrative. It’s well enough written but suffers from the same limitations the plot of the film has

The Film

From a filmmaking perspective, I see why this film was made. Setting it during a hospital stay (and what a lovely hospital, expensive I’d bet) means the film takes place in a relatively small number of locations, and without any major Hollywood actors, it kept the budget down. The characters are likeable in their own ways and I enjoy their performances. The story is little on the dull side, sadly, it could’ve done with some meatier subplots. With regards to the portrayal of CF, I find it hard to believe they’d even allow 6ft if they were high risk like these guys.

On the subject of the film, wtf were they thinking with that Instagram marketing campaign! They asked for stories of long-distance relationships and tried to equate it to living with Cystic Fibrosis, that’s all kinds of offensive and shame on them for doing that.