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Reviews:Shrek 123

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-see dept.
From the earliest screens I've seen from Shrek, I've been anticipating this film. Besides the unique computer animation that brings this film to life, it features Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, John Lithgow, and Cameron Diaz (See A Life Less Ordinary for a cool Diaz flick). But can it live up to the month long advertising blitz that has been oozing from every flat surface for the last month? Or will it just be a big pile of crap. Well I was there opening night, and you can read my review, complete with minimal spoilers and bad jokes.
First things first, I'm a Disney Junkey. I like cheesy kids movies. Tarzan. Aladdin. Toy Story. Fantasia. Jungle Book. I think that children's stories have the potential to be the best of all worlds. "Adult" movies like to get bogged down by being deep and philisophical. Children's stories can get by with a thin plot, and happy gags. Throw in amazing visuals and a few musical numbers, and you've got the formula for almost every animated movie America has given us since Walt coughed up Snow White. So keep all of this in mind as I tell you why I like this movie.

Shrek is to Fairy Tales what Who Framed Roger Rabbit is to Cartoons. Mike Meyers is Shrek, the grumpy ogre who is deep down, a good guy. Eddie Murphy is the wise cracking sidekick: in this film, a donkey (not to be confused with the wise cracking insect he voiced in Mulan). The world is laden with fairy tale lore: From Cinderella to Snow White. From Peter Pan to Robin Hood. From Goldilocks to the Three Bears. They're all here for random visual gags in this messed up world.

Of course we need a Villian: John Lithgow is the would-be King who needs only a Princess to achieve his goal of the perfect kingdom. Of course, his perfect kingdom is a warped disneyland style castle (complete with velvet rope waiting lines at the front door). Oh, have I mentioned that he's ridiculously short? He finds the Magic Mirror (totally visually snagged from Disney's Snow White) and uses it to find his princess. And Shrek is gonna go get it, in exchange for the rights to keep all those obnoxious fairy tale bastards out of his beloved swamp.

So of course there's a dragon, and a valiant rescue of the princess. There's banter between our Ogre hero, and his sidekick. There's love shared between the beautiful princess and the hideous ogre. But how can they be together when they aren't even the same species?!

So thats the plot. Its cheesy, and you've heard it before, but there's no need to let that bother you. You're really seeing this movie for the ride, and what a ride it is. Jokes are packed fairly tightly, and with a good range of target audience. Of course there are the obligatory fart jokes, to say nothing of referring to the Donkey by his 3-letter name which is going to get laughs out of all the 9 year olds who heard a dirty word. But there's other stuff too: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Matrix, and many more are given parody sequences. Of course the classic Disney movies are also given their fair shakes: the Princess nicely sings to the birds just like Snow White, but with slightly different (and truly warped) end results.

So here's the thing: the jokes are evenly spaced and vary in nature. And the best of them are absolutely awesome. The 9-year-old-boy jokes are there, but I can overlook them (ok, I laughed at a few of them). But I got a lot of good laughs out of it.

And finally, what sort of review of the latest computer animated flick is complete without a discussion of what it looks like: In short, it looks damn fine, but it was a fairly incremental step in terms of rendering and animation.

Much of the animation is really good. As with every CGI flick so far, the humans aren't quite right yet. The Princess is the best of the human characters, and she's usually pretty dead on accurate: but she always looks animated. Occasionally she breaks through at looks alive, but usually she's just almost but not quite. Don't get me wrong: convincingly animating a human in CGI is a task that so far has never been done on film to my liking. Thats why all the successful human's have been the more cartoony (Geri from Geri's game might be the best). The facial stuff is a step ahead of body language. It's just so close.

The animation on the other characters is more varied. Shrek is awesome. Convincingly animated: he has mass, he shows emotion, he moves just like you'd expect. The Donkey works most of the time, but animating a quadroped is a little harder and sometimes he just doesn't move quite right. Our antagonist is extremely well handled: the face is awesome and totally on the money, although he does move just a little awkward. The Dragon is awesome- she's handled amazingly and whoever animated her deserves mega props too: when she's bad she's so bad, and the way they handle her through the rest of the story is great.

This is nitpicking I know, and understand that I'm super picky about this stuff. Nobody has got it perfect yet, and Shrek has got as close as anyone. We'll see what Final Fantasy can do when it comes out.

The overall look of the film is quite different from what we've seen so far. They obviously have tried to capture the look of a fairy tale. Toy Story sorta revels in the fact that its computer animation. Bug's Life really feels gigantic. Antz felt more stripped down, and I feel like Shrek follows somewhat in Antz footsteps. They use a lot of matte paintings which tends to have a different feel to most of the other CG flicks we've seen which are fully 3D. Its certainly not every shot, but its obvious that they aimed for a "Look" with this film, but I felt like that look was in many ways accomplished by giving the film a claustrophobic feel. There's a lot of shots that feel flat. They look like they were shot on a sound stage. Thats partially the lighting, and partially the matte work, but mostly it seemed to me that its because they wanted things to look like those paintings that you see of fairy tale worlds.

They make up for it in other ways tho: the details in many scenes is simply extraordinary: the sheen on the princess's hair. The countless blades of grass blowing independantly in the breeze, getting bent by the donkey passing through them, the leaves in the trees. The landscape is absolutely gorgeous with a stunning level of detail. Its obvious that many of these shots were a labor of love.

The acting is solid across the board. Cameron Diaz gives a good performance (again, watch A Life Less Ordinary to see her in a really good flick). Lithgow is excellent as always (but I actually really dig him: while I don't like 3rd Rock all that much, he manages to really shine). Eddie Murphy plays Eddie Murphy, what do you want? Mike Meyers actually manages to break a bit out of his persona and Act a bit. Should Austin Powers 3 not make him a billionaire, I'd love to see him do voice work- he has a real knack for a variety of characterizations. He makes me super envious since being a voice for a cartoon character is one of my lifelong dreams, and he does it really well. Sometimes Shrek slips a bit of Mike Meyers into himself, but for the most part he stands on his own- especially impressive considering it looks like they snarfed a lot of Meyers reference footage for the animators. Same goes for lithgow. They really got the look of the actors into these characters. Very cool.

So in summary, it's a funny film. Although it's a bit short, thats not surprising: kids have no attention span anyway. The jokes vary, but the best of the jokes are truly sick and twisted. References litter the landscape, and most of them are awesome. Visually the film breaks some new ground, but mostly manages to achieve a unique look. And dammit we're just talking about 70 minutes of fun. Enjoy it. I sure did.
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Reviews:Shrek

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  • Re:Length of movies (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If they had used Windows 2000 Advanced Server, they could have released the movie last year.

    Of course, they would have lost some time when the Chinese hackers broke in and inserted a thirty minute "ode to the death of American hegemonism".

  • ... that Ogres were from Glasgow.

    Meyers used his stock Glaswegian accent, trotted out for "So I Married an Axe Murderer" and for Fat Bastard in "The Spy Who Shagged Me", for Shrek.

    Fortunately it worked for Shrek.

  • Oh come on now... you can never get enough Dances With Wolves, The Postman, and Waterworld! I think I'll line them all up next weekend for a star studded extravaganza of Kevin Costner snore flicks. :-) Now, Field of Dreams was good but he probably didn't have a hand in that.

  • few thoughts (Score:3)

    by Nate Fox ( 1271 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @05:44AM (#211976)
    I went with a few guys cause we wanted to see the CG. For those of you with a life: take a date! A KILLER date movie, one you dont have to worry about being a bit uncomfortable when the obligitory sex scene hits in the typical grown up film. It seriously drew out the helpless (err, hopeless) romantic in me. It truly plays on looking past the exterior and seeing the person within. Quite good.

    Other thoughts: anyone see the dragon's "lair/castle" and think "this would make a really cool Quake level"? maybe it was just me...

    -----
    If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
  • A lot of studios are looking at this.
    We are looking to replace all our desktops with Linux boxes over the next year as people roll out of our current production. We all ready have some in house to start using now.
    We switched fron IRIX ro Linux for final renders during the last year and except in a few places, all of our last three videos were rendered Linux only. This will continue on in to the production of our movie, Jonah.

    So, Linux is starting to take over, it just is so new to the animation industry that it took some time.

  • Digital projection in San Francisco (Score:5)

    by ciurana ( 2603 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @10:20AM (#211978) Homepage Journal

    Greetings!

    For those of you who live in San Francisco or close by in the Bay Area, Shreck is playing in full digital projection format at the AMC 1000 Van Ness theatres. I saw it there last night. Watching the film so clearly was awesome.

    Cheers!

    E
  • I saw on one of those promo things on Tv that the makers of the movie were told that the CGI rendering of the piece of fluff^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprincess was too close to real and so they degraded it to a point that showed it was CGI. Obviously in some parts they didn't do the degrade as rigirously as in others.
  • This was one of the most creative, hilarious, and simply _fun_ movies I have seen in a long time (perhaps ever). Taco wasn't lying when he said the jokes were packed tightly together. Your brain is busy processing what just happened before they slam another gag on you. (Like what happened when the princess was singing to the bird, and what they ate for breakfast.)

    Taco was a little tougher on the animation than I was. The human CG wasn't perfect, but it was excellently done, and the lively performances from Meyers and Murphy quickly made me forget that it was all fake. That and the scenery, environment (foot steps pressing into the grass is a good example), and amazing lighting made the movie visually compelling.

    I'd recommend this movie to anyone. I laughed more than I can ever remember laughing in the last 10 years. If you want to have fun, see it!

    Jason

  • I still think the first few seasons of DuckTales were *superbly* animated, especially for a series, with rich tones and well detailed backgrounds. They got cheap at the end.

    Just wanted to point out that many of the best-animated DuckTales episodes (and all of the early ones) were animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha [tms-e.co.jp]. Tokyo Movie has a long and distinguished history in TV animation. You may have also seen their animation in their recent productions Monster Rancher or Cybersix, or in their classic work on The Mysterious Cities of Gold or Lupin III. They did the awesome collapsing brick floor seen in DuckTales' opening, the quality of which came as quite a pleasant surprise to the Disney TV Animation production team!

  • It opened last night here in the states. It's showing at pretty much every theatre near me.
  • the newfies practically *are* Scots.

    More than just "practically" - I daresay that there are Newfoundlanders that have more Scottish blood in them than some Scotsmen.

    Sorry, what was the topic again? ;)

  • Re:Length of movies (Score:3)

    by RayChuang ( 10181 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @06:20AM (#211984)
    First, go complain to the MPAA, not the RIAA. :-)

    Secondly, remember computer-animated movies take a LONG to render. I think Shrek required over a year of computer rendering time with multiple computers to get 70+ minutes of computer animation at 24 frames per second. After all, movies like the two Toy Story movies, Antz, and A Bug's Life aren't much longer than Shrek is now.

    Besides, two-hour plus live action movies ain't cheap nowadays, either. For a epic or action film, the budget can easily run over US$100 million.
  • Agreed. The movement of the characters, especially while they were running, was wrong enough to be distracting.

    That isn't to say to anyone truly has it right yet. My son didn't notice, but like CmdrTaco, I am a nitpick.

    Send lawyers, guns and money. The shit has hit the fan.
  • Movies that include kids of single-digit age as one of their primary target audiences rarely last more than 90 minutes. Sadly, this category necessarily includes almost every Hollywood animated feature. You can blame Disney for that.
  • I know it's hard to tell the difference.
  • What I enjoyed most about Shreck was the little things. Footprints. Leaves suspended in air during the Matrix scene. The obvious allusions to Disney movies. (Snow White sure looks familiar, doesn't she?) Waving blades of grass. And of course the prince, although his name always sounded vaguely obscene to me. I dunno... if I mull it over for a while, I'm sure it'll come to me.
  • According to an "Industry Standard" article I read on the movie, they actually had to scrap the original human animations because they were too life-like. They didn't fit in with the rest of the animated world. DreamWorks had to completely rework the people in this film to be a little less realistic. So, keep that in mind when complaining about the animation.
  • I saw Shrek last night too and I couldn't help but think, "Boy! The PlayStation3 is gonna be so cool!"
    --
  • According to MovieFone [moviefone.com], the running time is 89 minutes, not 70. But that was still a lovely rant. :-)
  • I'd like to see people on Slashdot actually review something that wasn't great. Every single review that I have read ends up being a positive one. What's the point of reading these if you can guess the outcome? I for one am through. It's like you all are trying to start getting free stuff, and this is how to do it.
  • Recent Film.

    Incredible acting.

    Classic story. (Shakespeare's Titanicus Adronicus)

    Loooooong.

    But Worth it.

  • Uh, Eddie murphy played a dragon sidekick in Mulan. Yes, a bit stick-like, but still a dragon.

    -Sean
  • This movie is just a 70-minute seminar for children to teach them the "evils" of the White Man

    If anything, this film is anti-black-- Eddie Murphy, the only black actor in the film(well, in the main cast-- as far as I know), plays a subservient talking ass!
  • You gotta admit, if you walked in on the movie, he looked like a goddamned bug. :)

    Yes, Dragon, in fact, that's part of the dialogue "Dragon!" And he screwed up with the family ancestors and he tries to make up for it by guiding/helping Mulan.

    Evil empire or not, I like Disney and I used to watch the Disney channel everyday. I still think the first few seasons of DuckTales were *superbly* animated, especially for a series, with rich tones and well detailed backgrounds. They got cheap at the end. Same goes for Pooh.

    And when the hell did Annette get old?

    ::sigh::

  • Nope, 2001 was fairly dull. What 30minutes of strange light effects does not a good movie make
  • The accent was pseudo Scottish. He makes a more valiant attempt - and a crueller one - in the role of the father in "So I Married an Axe Murderer."

    Imagine the following with a Scottish accent: "Would ya look at the size of that kid's head! It's the size of a planetoid and it has it's own weather system! Looks like an orange on a toothpick!" and "I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts! Aye, now that was offsides, now wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight, on his huge pillow."
  • At last! Another (presumably) adult person who really enjoyed DuckTales! My favorite story was the week-long "City of Gold" one, and yes, while they were aware that they were doing TV animation on a shoestring budget, the animators did take pride in their work.

    And not only is Annette old, she's got a degenerative nerve disease. There is no God.

  • If you want a totally imprenetrable accent, then the worst I've heard is the "Geordie" accent from Northeast England. That's where I lived from age 14 before I moved to the States, and there were locals that I could only *assume* were talking English!
  • Somewhat true, but Myer's Scottish accent is now the accepted one. Kind of like Dana Carvey's Bush Sr. - it was so over the top stylized that it really sounded nothing like him, but was what you expected nonetheless.

    Incidently Myers is Canadian not American, so he may have a bit of Scot in him anyway - the newfies practically *are* Scots.
  • Hard to see how it's an MPAA (hardly RIAA!) scheme. How many movies are sold out - they hardly need to create more seats turnover with shorter movies, plus I don't think the average moviegoer thinks "I havn't met my 300 minute movie quota this month - I'd better see another".

    It's really about attention span and box office receipts. The 3hr epics usually don't do too well because it's hard to keep the attention of an MTV-ized audience for that long. The Director may want all sort of additional shots in there, but the studio is more likely to insist that he cut it to a more reasonable length.
  • Just saw it last night and I have to agree that it was a great flick.

    I also agree that the human animation is soooo close, but just not quite all the way yet. Just normal movements were good, but sometimes in the high action scenes the fluidity lost it's smoothness.
  • Americans don't know what it's like to try and distinguish a culture amongst similar speech patterns.

    Its not like America is one monolithic culture, you know. There are countless speech patterns in the numerous regions around the country. A few of the distinctive accents are:
    Bostonian, New England, New York, Southern (including Alabaman, Georgian), Cajun, Mid-Western (the 'neutral' accent), and we shouldn't forget 'Valley Speak' and Ebonics.

    In fact, after living in Florida for a few years now, I've noticed a speech pattern distinctive to Miamians.

    ---

  • What was the median, as a matter of interest? I think that'd be a slightly fairer measure.

  • Secondly, remember computer-animated movies take a LONG to render.

    Pixar can re-render one of their films in about a month. Is that a long time?

    Besides, computer time is cheap. What's more expensive is people time. Remember that a feature length animation takes two or three years to animate. Shaving off a few minutes here and there really does save a significant amount of salary.

  • That's including credits, right? If so, that's what I'd expect. About 100 minutes (or 3600 feet).

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ...or Sean Connery.
  • Ralph Bakshi's Wizards [imdb.com] (1977) was about 81-86 minutes. F.W. Murnau's classic vampire film Nosferatu [imdb.com] (1922) was only 75 minutes, as was the Bela Lugosi Dracula [imdb.com] of 1931. The Maltese Falcon [imdb.com] (1941) was 99 minutes (slightly past your ninety-minute cutoff, but still short. Casablanca [imdb.com] (1942) at 102 minutes hardly requires more than a single evening, and Frank Capra's It Happened One Night [imdb.com] (1934) at 105 minutes leaves plenty of the evening free after watching. There are certainly others that are shorter, these are just the classics I remembered as being pretty short offhand. And recently, you could have seen Soderbergh's Traffic and von Trier's Dancer in the Dark at close to three hours apiece. Going back not too far, there's Mel Gibson's Braveheart, Kenneth Brannagh's uncut Hamlet at nearly four hours (anyone who wants to can look them up on IMDB [imdb.com] if they're interested). Don't get me wrong, I loved the nearly four hours of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, nine hours of Shoah, and the twelve hours of Berlin Alexanderplatz, but this is more a matter of selective perception - you're forgetting the older short films as well as the newer long films.
  • Petty and appropriate but lost on any American. It woks far better with Canadians and actually it's worse if you ask New Zealanders if they're Aussie.


    Americans don't know what it's like to try and distinguish a culture amongst similar speech patterns. Most Americans know nothing about any other English speaking country and figure they'll be part of the states eventually.


    (no offence to Americans reading this, these conclusions are from speaking to Americans during my visits and are all politically incorrect generalities.)

  • Well first I tend to find Scottish and irish completely different and I never need the subtitles. However I do know that hollywood has never got the subtleties of the Canadian accent right, nor been able to really distinguish the difference east to west.
  • I did a statistics project this semester where I took a simple random sample of all the nationally distributed movies between 1990 and 1997 (mainstream and independent). I found the sample mean for film running time to be about 108 minutes and estimated the real mean to be between 104 and 109 minutes by constructing a 95% confidence interval.

    If you assume that my data gathering methods were sound (trust me, they were, but ask me if you want to know more) then your statement seems to be way off mark.
  • The sample median was 105 minutes.
  • We had to get all the data by hand and this was just for a class - hence the sample.

  • Er...So I Married an Axe Murderer?

    ;)

  • You need to watch Mulan again (Score:3)

    by Nutcase ( 86887 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @06:05AM (#212018) Homepage Journal
    Eddie Murphy did NOT play an insect in Mulan. He played a protecting spirit in the form of a small dragon.

    IIRC, he was kicked out of the spirit group for having done something stupid, but since he manages to help Mulan, he is let back in, and takes a place of pride in the house again.

    It was sorta a big plot thread.
  • And dammit we're just talking about 70 minutes of fun

    What the hell is it with movies in the last decade or so? I don't recall any movies before about 1990 that were less than 90 minutes long, some older film were epics which had to be viewed over more than 1 evening. Now it seems rare to find a movie over 90 minutes long, and that seems to consist mainly of visual effects and inane taglines.

    This is obviously a plot by the RIAA to squeeze more money out of the cinemas. One or two extra sessions per day amounts to many millions of dollars in their pockets. When I pay my 12$ or so I expect to be entertained for a while by a good story, not fed a few tidbits of action and left wondering where the sequel is going to be tacked on to the half-baked plot.

    I realise the quality of a movie is not necessarily proportional to its length, but there is a reason movies are a bit longer than TV show episodes. They're meant to have a bit more depth and meaning, and be a self-contained story. This doesn't necessarily apply to shreck as its a kids movie, but I would think most parent would appreciate a movie holding their young ones interest for a bit longer.

    As for the advances in computer animation, I'm sorry Taco but I just don't give a shit. Think of animated movies I have seen I quickly realise that the quality of their animation mattered very little. The three most important components of a movie are premise, people and plot. Get these right and no-one will even talk about how realistic the movie is.

    Well, now that this has turned into the common rant about the movie industry, I guess I should say that there are many recent movies which I thought where really great. Invariably these were not hyped at the box office, weren't popular and weren't made by major hollywood studios. Many of them weren't even shown at cinemas in my area, I had to track them down on video or wait for a TV station to show them. So to all those people who agree with what I've written above, please ignore the blithering of the advertisements and entertainment shows, find some good movie reviews (in Oz I recommend SBS's The Movie Show [sbs.com.au]) and I'm sure you can find something to watch that is worthwhile.

  • Two varying reviews (Score:3)

    by upstateguy ( 90019 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @06:00AM (#212020)
    If you want to read the antipodes of reviews on "Shrek", they are best presented by the New Yorker [newyorker.com] (which, I admit, they tend to rip every movie a new hole, but that's what I find so endearing about them).

    Honestly, I find Mike Myers pretty annoying in that he's too scared to use his own voice in *anything* and is still stuck in that improv schtick.

    And the other, by Roger Ebert [suntimes.com] who gave it 4 stars.

    I'll wait for the video.

  • And he plays one of the blind mice (not a big part, but fwiw?)
  • Since the princess is played by Cameron Diaz, I think that the kung fu thing is a reference to Charlie's Angels. Some of the effects were similar

    ---

  • I can't believe how people are gushing over this movie. Dull animation, no story, unispired performances by the voice talent. It had a few cute moments, but even the matinee price made me feel as if I'd wasted my money. Go see A Knight's Tale instead.
  • Titanicus Andronicus? Is that where the Titus drowns Chiron and Demetrius and steals their mother's jeweled pendant?
  • Why do we expect CG characters to look lifelike? We don't expect cartoon characters to look exactly like normal people? Because they're cartoons, so why do we expect CG characters to look 'real'? Why can't we just say 'okay, it's a CG character, it's not going to look real' and accept the fact that it never will? The movement in cartoons isn't quite right either, but we want CG to be right. Why do we have such high expectations for CG, but not for cartoons? The two are basically the same media, they're attempting to draw (or model/render) a complex physical object, and unless they are going to spends tons of time to paint a portrait of their character, it's not going to look exactly right. It would take even more time to make them move right, so why do we expect them to?
  • spolers






    The movie started out promising, and got me rolling more then a few times, but everything between the time the princess' secret is revealed to the end was utterly contrived and painful for me to watch. I was hoping for a somewhat original plot, but it turned out that the fact the protagonist is an ogre was just a gimmick. "Prince Charming" is a typical villian, Shrek is a very typical hero, and simply changing his physical appearance doesn't help much. The abundance of cliches in the last act almost ruined it completely for me.

    The most annoying part was the Princess taking on "love's true form" as an ogre at the end. Besides being completely predictable, this destroyed any intention the movie may have had of being unique. The main crisis was all about Shrek and Fiona being too different for each other, and the ending was a cop-out reconciliation - "the two were the same after all, so it all works out!" - so much for love overcoming adversity (and, not to be too PC, avoiding any unpleasant racial differences).

    All that said, I'm sure the kids who haven't seen variations on this plot a zillion times already will love the movie, and in fact there were enough chuckles and all-out gut-busters that I enjoyed it too (not to mention the jaw-dropping CGI). Given a choice though, I would have waited for rental.

    -mati

  • Your belief is a common one among Americans. It's usually shattered rudely once an American lives in Canada for a while. Ironically enough, it's usually because a Canadian assumes the American is Canadian and just starts ripping up Americans to the American's face.

  • So it's wrong for Americans to generalize the cultures of other nations, but it's perfectly okay for the rest of the globe to take pot-shots at us whenever they get the chance?

    For Americans, a lot of it is ignorance. For the rest of the world, it seems to be out of obsessive jealousy and hatred. I would rather be ignorant than be a bigot.

  • Lately I have noticed more movies are tacking on additional scenes or commentaries in the credits. This especially seems to be the case in comedies. I figured that of all movies Shrek would have done so. So I sat through all the credits and was surprised to see that there was nothing. Did anyone else wait for non existant scenes in the credits?
  • I agree that the "loves true form" theme was a bit old... However I thought that the amount of parody injected into the movie more than made up for the overused ending.
  • As an American, the jab would be lost on me, simply because the culture of Canada (at least, the English-speaking part of it) is damn near identical to the culture of the US. We watch each other's TV shows, listen to each other's musicians, use the same word for our main unit of money, and have not had a serious political dispute since the old days of "54-40 or fight". Three of America's four "major-league" sports leagues (NBA, NHL, MLB & NFL) include Canadian cities.

    Ahem.

    Even though I'm a US citizen, I would dare say that your statement is made without any real understanding of Canada. Try listening to the CBC for a while, and you'll start to understand some of the differences. Most "Americans" (a term I've always hated) seem to think that just because someone watches American TV that they are "just like us."

  • this isn't much of a spoiler. but dont read anymore if you dont wanna know anything more about the movie. the thing that bothered me in this movie was the kung fu scene... it was funny, but... it consisted entirely of rip offs of the final blow from so many kung fu movies we've known over the years. there's nothing wrong with this, it's just that i think the obligatory kung fu scene is turning into just that- obligatory. still, the fixing the hair in mid-matrix rotate makes up for my complaint.
  • ...a British person doing an American accent? They make us all sound like rednecks. Not that I don't find Michael Palin doing a US-American accent amusing.
  • According to The Tech of Shrek on Tech TV, the princess initially looked too human, so she looked out of place in the fantasy setting. So, they simplified the animation to make her look more 'cartoony'.

  • http://www.cinema.com/trailers/item.phtml?ID=5025
  • I agree with Taco that the graphics, textures, etc. were truly impressive. Things have certainly come a long way towards looking more realistic and at times even approach looking lifelike (the intro sequence for instance). But I thought the character animation itself was rather poor. The movements are quite choppy and blocky. Not nearly as good as TS2, for example. In that regard I was a little disappointed, since I figure that getting the textures to look right just takes time, but the animation and character movements is where the true "art" comes in and I was disappointed to see that they skimped on it.
  • He never actually said it WAS a Disney movie. He just said he liked Disney movies to illustrate a point. Disney is what a lot of people associate with animation targeted at kids, which is why, if you're trying to make the point that you like that sort of animation, saying that you're a Disney junkie gets that across.
  • I'm glad you're a 'Disney Junky', but this isn't a Disney movie.

    It's by DreamWorks and part of its purpose is to make fun at Disney movies. Jeffrey Katzenberg would go out of his way to make Eisner or anyone else at Disney look bad or make fun of them.
  • next up in animation history... Final Fantasy. The animation looks thrilling, but the story might be a little too mcuh for most people. With Shrek, aiming for a young crowd was a safe bet, but with FF, it seems it's going after that 15 to 35 yr age demographic. Good idea or not? Heck if I know, but some of the graphics in that are truly ahead of their time.
  • Linux was only used for rendering. The initial modeling, effects, and final compositing of the rendered material was done on SGI Octane workstations running IRIX. Audio was done on a Windows NT Protools setup.
  • I always get a kick outta the "LINUX DID IT ALL" articles, when in fact Linux was only used for rendering. Titanic, for example, comes to mind... a Linux-based render farm was setup to render several chucks of the background and other big pieces. The modeling was done on SGI's IRIX, and the effects and mixing of the rendered material with the film was done with SGI IRIX as well (via an Inferno setup). However, the Linux crowd might be happy to know that Pixar is in the process of replacing their SGI Octane2 workstations with Linux-based PCs for pretty much everything. They're still going to be using Sun Ultra Enterprise servers for rendering, though (go figure).
  • I took my younger brother to see Shrek last night (opening night, of course) and be both enjoyed it immensely. He's young enough to still laugh at the "9-year-old" jokes, but he's also old enough to laugh at the parodies (I especially like the Matrix parody and that sequence). I laughed through practically the whole movie because Meyers and Murphy just make a great team.

    With everyone talking about the CGI (Awesome!) and everything it's hard to focus on anything else, but I thought the soundtrack deserves a mention, too. Ranging from Smashmouth (which fits in well) to The Monkees, I think it's also one of the best soundtracks for a movie I've seen in awhile. This does well for appeasing both the younger audience who likes the rock/pop sound to the older generations who enjoy some of the older sounds. This will be the first movie that I'll actually buy the soundtrack for instead of just talking about it.

    And Then...
  • Have you seen the movie? In the movie he does stink and dispise all things nice and is happy being alone.

    And Then...

  • Thank you CMDR TACO!! (Score:5)

    by vandelais ( 164490 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @05:16AM (#212044)
    for not going to see the film with John Katz. That's all. Award Karma accordingly.

  • It will be even cooler when "Shrekken" is released.
  • As for "knowing nothing" about other countries... The thing is, we don't need to... at least not in the way somebody from, say, Germany needs to. We are a huge country bordered by nothing but two allies and two Oceans

    Otro gringo pendejo...
    Beating your neighboor into submission and stealing half of its territory doesnt make it your ally...

    But don't worry, we are slowly and silently reconquering our borders... More people speak Spanish than English in much of California already.

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    C'mon, flame me!

  • Anonymous Coward wrote:
    YOU ARE A MOTHER FUCKER

    Jon Katz, stop posting AC! Face criticism like a man, goddammit!

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    C'mon, flame me!

  • If an animated character looks too human, your ability to empathize with it is limited, because you don't see enough of yourself in it.
    However, if the character has slightly-too-large eyes and simple face features (read: cartoony) then it becomes what is known as "an icon", a face without a defined personality. The character becomes "anyone", allowing you to see more of yourself in the character, therefore increasing empathy for him/her.

    This psychological effect is used by most cartoonists and animators (wherever they know it or not), specially japanese manga and anime artists, who exploit it drawing simple strokes for main characters (iconizing them and making us feel attached to them), and creating more complex features for antagonists and secondary characters.

    For an example, in Evangelion, Shinji Ikari looks like almost every brown-haired 14 year old kid in the world, while Gendou Ikari (his father) is drawn with much more detail, therefore making us sympathize with the boy and alienate from the father at a gut level.
    (the fact that Gendou Ikari is the worst father in the history of anime warrants another discussion)

    For more reference read:
    Understanding Comics [amazon.com] by Scott McCloud. A great explanation of how comics and animation "work" and...

    The Hero with a Thousand Faces [amazon.com] by the late Joseph Campbell, who explains why a great character in a story moves us and inspires us. This was George Lucas's pillowbook when he was creating the first Star Wars trilogy (pity that he decided to only follow his ego for the new one)

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    C'mon, flame me!

  • Taco is right, the animation is impressive. Facial animation is awesome, body a little less so. Arm movements just don't seem right in the humans, a little jerky.

    However, IMHO the dragon SUCKS. It looks like they used a clay model as the basis, and didn't bother adding some of the subtle movements or change skin texture from the texture of the clay.

  • So how did the mean vary by year?

    And why a sample? The set of movies released in a year is relatively small

  • Compare it to say, Dragon Heart, or the opening dragon in Interplay's AD&D games.

    Or just look at a croc or Komodo
  • I realise the quality of a movie is not necessarily proportional to its length, but there is a reason movies are a bit longer than TV show episodes. They're meant to have a bit more depth and meaning, and be a self-contained story.

    Or the studios are thinking ahead. 70 Minute movie + 50 minutes commercials = 2 hour TV show.

    (And FYI, Shrek is 89 minutes, not 70)

  • Been there. It's pretty much the same. (I live in Minnesota, BTW, so I'm around plenty o' Canadians.)
  • I would go even further and say that a Canadian from English-speaking parts of Canada would probably feel much more at home in Wisconsin or Michigan than in Quebec... Just as somebody from Ohio or Montana would find Canada a lot more familiar than Athens, GA.
  • As an American, the jab would be lost on me, simply because the culture of Canada (at least, the English-speaking part of it) is damn near identical to the culture of the US. We watch each other's TV shows, listen to each other's musicians, use the same word for our main unit of money, and have not had a serious political dispute since the old days of "54-40 or fight". Three of America's four "major-league" sports leagues (NBA, NHL, MLB & NFL) include Canadian cities.

    The truth is that Americans enjoy making jingoistic jabs at Canadians (and vice versa) simply because we are such old friends that we view it almost the same way as rivalries between states or provences. It's all in good fun. We like Canada, and are really glad to have them as a neighbor rather than, say, Iran or North Korea.

    As for "knowing nothing" about other countries... The thing is, we don't need to... at least not in the way somebody from, say, Germany needs to. We are a huge country bordered by nothing but two allies and two Oceans. Somebody from Des Moines, Iowa would have to travel over a thousand miles to reach the nearest foreign city, and even farther to reach one where English is not spoken.

    It's not that we're isolationist, it's just that we're isolated.

  • I have heard a lot of bad Scottish accents done by non-Scots - actually I think Mike Myers' isn't that bad (eg. Fat Bastard in Austin Powers 2).

    But the worst Scottish accent in a movie has got to be Christopher Lambert's in Highlander: "Zere can be eunly wone!"

    And the worst Scottish accent in a computer game, incidentally, is to be found in Age of Empires 2. Jesus, that one is appalling! I can't understand how that one passed the QA. Does anyone know what I am talking about? It sounds like it was done by some Yank who had never heard the real thing.

  • I recall reading someplace that the producers deliberately made the animated characters less "life like" because it didn't feel right for a fairy tale.

    but god help me find the link now out of all of the random bits I've read over the past month

    ;-)

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • animation technique (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @06:05AM (#212058) Journal
    Of cours, you don't have to be life like to have good entertainment.

    A good example of this is this stick figure fight kungfu link someone sent me:

    http://games.sohu.com/fightgame/fight3.swf

    in this case there is no surface texture, it is all stick figures, but the body motion and all the rest is right.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • Incidentally, download link of Bingo can be found at http://scifi.ign.com/movies/1677.html [ign.com]. Good stuff.
  • I wanted to point out that perhaps the reason that the animation (which did use a lot of matte backdrops) followed in the footsteps of Antz more than Toy Story 2 is because Dreamworks did Antz and Shrek. The next Pixar flick (Monsters, Inc.) will feel more like the Toy Story series.

    The state of the art in CGI is roughly as follows: in Toy Story, everything looked plastic...but that was OK, because all of the characters were supposed to be plastic. This goes not only for the surfaces, but the modeling and motion as well. Antz and Bug's Life improved on these quite a bit; still using the convenient exoskeleton to keep from having to animate much skin, but apart from more detail and more natural scenes (like the tree in Bug's Life), there were still some things lacking: good rendering of hair and fur, good surface textures, and realistic motion on some characters.

    Stewart Little and Dinosaur began to push the state of the art; the creators of Stuart Little had to create not only realistic fur for the lead, but also cloth. In the process, they contributed to the power of Alias|Wavefront's Maya package (some of their hair/cloth code made it into Maya).

    It is getting better, and Shrek illustrates this (as will Monsters, Inc.). Detail is incredible, surface textures are bright and realistic, and motion is getting better (some characters were smooth, others were lacking (a bit like the skipping motions used in Toy Story 2, in both the "When somebody loves you" bit and the airport)). Fur is looking pretty good, and hair is OK (it renders well, but despite how the various Chris Landreth Maya animations, including "The End" and Bingo [sgi.com] have turned out, it doesn't blow in the wind much).

    It is getting better, though. The faces on the humans were incredibly detailed, and there is a tremendous attention to detail, both in character animation and in the scenery. I greatly anticipate the (not-so-distant) future of this style of CGI animation.

    I wish they had listed the software/hardware they used at the end (even just a kudos to SGI or Sun or somebody). It is nice to know what was used.

  • I enjoyed the movie but I agree that the movie felt too short.
  • i just saw the movie a few hours ago with some friends, my wife, and two young daughters. i thought it was mediocre at best. here are some reasons why:

    (1) terrible music selection. it begins with smash mouth's supersaturated "all-star" and ends with a ridiculously overblown wedding number, with several lowlights in between.

    (2) chock full of fart jokes, gross stuff, and other items that appealed to the 9 year old boys in the audience but left those younger and older less than amused.

    (3) eddie murphy is seriously unfunny in what's supposed to be the humorous sidekick role. nearly all of his lines are pointless; any laughs are due to solely the aural properties of his voice. by comparsion, he was freakin' hilarious as moo-shoo in "mulan". don't go just expecting to see a repeat performance the caliber of that role.

    (4) lithgow is terrible as the short bad guy. you never forget it's john lithgow. this is disconcerting because lithgow is a big, boxy old guy and the prince most definitely is not.

    (5) the movie doesn't feel like it actually needs to be a computer-generated cartoon. in this sense, it's no "toy story (2)", "bug's life", or "antz". i kept thinking it could have just as easily been a conventional picture with a bit o' CGI. in other words, it doesn't push the medium artistically.

    it's not all bad, of course. myers and diaz are quite good as shrek and the princess. the insults of the disney franchise are clever, if a bit monotonous after a while. (we get it -- katzenberg's still pissed at eisner.) just go in with low expectations.
  • Eek! I did know that. Yeah one of his grandfathers was Scottish, though his family came from Liverpool, I believe.

    WHenever I'm stateside and get asked if I am Irish, I always reply with "are you Canadian?" Petty, but it seems appropriate...

    Try asking an AUssie if they're from New Zealand if you really want to cause offence!
  • I'm a Newfie, and I'd love to see someone imitate our accent. :P

    I dropped the accent when I moved away a couple of years ago, but I'm still quite fluent in Newfenese. Just for the sake of enlightenment, here are the most common rules of Newfenese:

    1. The accent is a combination of English, Scottish, and Portuguese.
    2. The "th" sound becomes "t"
    3. Pronunciation of the "h" sound is optional; it is accepted practice to add a preceeding "h" sound to words beginning with vowels.
    4. The sound formed by the last letter in a word is usually dropped.
    5. All non-essential syllables are dropped.
    6. If a sound is difficult to produce, it is accepted practice to replace it with a sound that it similar, but easier to produce.
    7. Pronouns: a man is "he", a woman is "she" or "it", a small child is "it", and it is "she".
    8. Grammar and general English rules can be ignored for the most part, as long as what you say is understood.


    Ok, some examples (Newfie version is spelled as it is pronounced):

    English: I am the man who builds the boat.
    Newfie: Ize duh bye ooh bills duh boat.

    English: It's a fine day for sailing, isn't it?
    Newfie: Tis uh fine day fer sailin, iddin it?

    Engrish: All your base are belong to us.
    Newfie: All yer base is belong tus.

    English: How's the weather?
    Newfie: Ows duh wetter?

    English: Young people today have no respect for their elders.
    Newfie: Ye youngsters dedays got no respeck fer oh peepo.

    English: Ok, I'm done ranting.
    Newfie: Ok, Ize done rant in.
  • I believe what he was going for with that statement is that the movie aimed to be fun and entertaining, rather than a serious and deep movie with some really deep and meaningful message to it. While it is good to have movies that are deep and insightful, a lot of movies forget that the reason we're going to the theaters is to be entertained. I've seen movies that are so caught up in themselves in attempts to take the moral high ground or strive for an oscar, that they simply aren't entertaining.

    I think it's important that movies achieve the "fun" or entertaining factor first, then look to be deep and meaningful. There are a good number of movies that have done this very well (see most Robin Williams movies). While I enjoy movies that make me think, my first priority when I plop down that $7 to see a movie is that I come away entertained. And honestly animated films manage this better more consistently than most serious adult films.

  • Well, this this thing has 5 years in development, and has recieved tremendous amounts of prainse. Has all of this raised our expectations too high?

    I guess I'll find out soon...


    --

  • What's wrong with deep movies? (Score:4)

    by Arakyd ( 302801 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @05:43AM (#212076)
    I think that children's stories have the potential to be the best of all worlds. "Adult" movies like to get bogged down by being deep and philisophical. Children's stories can get by with a thin plot, and happy gags.

    Huh? What? Does anyone else think that "thin plot, and happy gags" is the best of both worlds, or has that potential? Thin plot and happy gags may be fun entertainment, but is it anything more? Not to me. What's wrong with deep movies? Do movies have some regulation governing them that say they must be shallow, and not attempt to provoke their audiences to think deeply? Movie making is a communications medium, and an art form, like writing, or painting, or sculpting. Books can have "deep" messages. Paintings can convey philosophical ideas. Why can't movies do the same thing and be applauded, instead of dismissing it as stuff that just "bogs it down." Come on folks, don't be afraid to think so much. Entertainment movies like Shrek are fun. Movies with "deep" or philisophical themes and messages may not be full of lighthearted (or stupid/sick/boring/dumb/sophisticated/good) humor, but that doesn't make them bad.

    Of course there are plenty of movies that try to be philosophical, or deep, and fall on their face. But there are others that succeed, and those are the ones that I consider to be really good. When I look for the best in movies, I look for ones that challenge me, make me think and re-evaluate my paradigms, not ones that try to find some happy medium between humor and trite messages.

  • My tivo taped the hbo first look for shrek the other day, and I was ablt to watch it yesterday. They talked a lot about the look they were aiming for in the movie, which was a fairy tale look. They weren't trying full out to go for the completely real look, so I think what is said in the review about the look and feel is dead on what the creators were looking for. the first look is pretty good, lots of shots of early storyboards and the actors doing their respective voices.

  • Re:Two varying reviews (Score:3)

    by mech9t8 ( 310197 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @05:57PM (#212080)
    Honestly, I find Mike Myers pretty annoying in that he's too scared to use his own voice in *anything* and is still stuck in that improv schtick.

    Actually, I saw in an interview somewhere that he had done the whole movie in his regular voice, and then after the first screening he saw of it (presumeable still fairly early in the creation process) he realized it would work a lot better with the accent, so he did a few scenes, showed them to Spielburg et al and they allowed him to redo all the voice work.

    I imagine the animators weren't exactly thrilled by that. ;)
    --
    Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

  • Re:Hoots mon on the Celtic Fringe... (Score:3)

    by tb3 ( 313150 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @05:15AM (#212082) Homepage
    Mike Myers isn't American he's Canadian, of Scottish ancestry. The scots accent is based on one of his relatives, but overdone for comic effect.
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  • The Limits of CG (Score:5)

    by tb3 ( 313150 ) on Saturday May 19, 2001 @05:18AM (#212083) Homepage
    As with every CGI flick so far, the humans aren't quite right yet.

    According to The Tech of Shrek on Tech TV, the princess initially looked too human, so she looked out of place in the fantasy setting. So, they simplified the animation to make her look more 'cartoony'.
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  • Mushu was a DRAGON, not an insect. geez, just because he was small and animated doesn't make him any less of a dragon than Patrick Stewart's character in Dragon Heart.

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