Sunday, December 2, 2012
Cinema Siren's top picks for 2012.
Last year I offered my top 10 Christmas cartoons for the first time. As an animation art gallery owner of 25 years, and an animation historian, I have studied and enjoyed them for a long time. What an uproar I caused! I got a veritable avalanche of emails about the cartoons I "couldn't possibly overlook." While I stand by all last year's excellent offerings, I do have some amendments this year. Here is the list with some considered additions and subtractions. The cartoons listed below are all classics and are wonderful opportunities for holiday viewing with friends and family. You can enjoy them while chomping down highly caloric peppermint bark, or swilling down highly spiked eggnog! #10. Arthur Christmas - 2011 Such a new movie on…
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Time for a living dead history lesson.
So you say you love zombies. Maybe you routinely use the quote: "They're coming to get you, Barbara," and you've dressed up three years in a row for the local Zombie Walk. And yet… You've never heard of Lucio Fulci, the Italian director who made three of the best zombie movies ever. When I saw the new Angelika Mosaic Theatre featured an onscreen viewing of "The Walking Dead" season premiere, I figured it was time for a living dead history lesson. Welcome to the School of Rot. For the first time in Cinema Siren column history, I asked a zombie expert, my friend Douglas E. Winter, to help pick 10 movies that are perhaps less known by late-coming fans of the undead, yet required viewing for any true zombiephile. Doug is the horror critic and …
Sunday, September 16, 2012
'Finding Nemo 3D' makes a classic new again and Pixar's short 'Partysaurus Rex' brings on the party.
If Cinema Siren had a dime for every time a perfectly down-to-earth average adult said "Finding Nemo" is one of their favorite movies, I might have a yacht as big as Steven Spielberg's. The Siren knows animation. Alter ego Leslie Combemale owns a gallery that has specialized in animation and film art for 19 years. When I say "I know Nemo," I mean I've seen it at least 20 times, and have met and spoken to Pixar animators and directors many times. I remember the way they spoke of "Finding Nemo" in hushed tones in 2003, just before it was released. The artists knew they had something spectacular. It is one of the only times I can ever remember when positive expectation and pride was universal. Many fans and critics believe this wonderful film…
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Delightfully Not for the Norms
This movie is not for the normal, usual, run-of-the mill cartoon movie fan. No. If your kids who are less fans of Mickey Mouse and more fans of Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas, or your tweens prefer Dr. Who to the Whos in Whoville, or if your family decorates more for Halloween than for Christmas, this is your kind of movie. If this sounds like you, you will be able to relate to and feel sympathy for the hero of ParaNorman. He is not like everyone else. He has trouble fitting in. So many of us horror movie lovers, and fans of zombie, vampire and slasher movies, can relate. Until lately, those kinds of interests just weren't cool. But Norman has another thing against him. He sees dead people. Toward the beginning of the story, this…
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Go see 'sweet' indie documentary 'Searching for Sugar Man' instead.
In the 1980s and '90s, there was a select group of bodybuilders or athletes-turned-actors including Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme who starred in action flicks of wildly inconsistent quality. The greatest of these actors was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Moviegoers flocked to see him flex his considerable physical and less-toned acting muscles in classics like Terminator, and shlock like Running Man. The original 1990 release Total Recall was one of his most successful and well-reviewed efforts. Based on Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," it became a cult favorite for its impressive special effects, largely contributed by famed Hollywood FX bad boy Rob Bottin. It was Bottin, for example, who came up …
Friday, February 17, 2012
Celebrating the Secret World
The Secret World of Arrietty, the latest offering from the wildly popular Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli, is being released in the U.S. in partnership with the Disney Company. First released in Japan on July 17, 2010, the North American version makes its debut on February 17. A tiny girl lives with her mother and father. She and her dad "borrow" all they need for their tiny home on the grounds of a sick human boy's grandmother and curious housekeeper. The boy comes to stay and discovers Arrietty, spurring fear and upheaval in the little household, a house that has a strict rule of staying undiscovered by their hosts. The movie is a charming and slow attentive study of a friendship that teaches two budding youths, albeit of …
derisha banks
9:34 am on Sunday, September 16, 2012
I love this movie sooo much, I probably will go see it a couple of times :) more ›