Channel Frederator Blog

Ever since the release of “Toy Story” back in 1995, movie audiences seem to have been in love with all things Pixar. This goes for many animation fans as well, sometimes to the point of fanaticism. Is this a healthy thing? In this post, I’ll be asking some questions that challenge that fanaticism, and I hope that Pixar fans will try to provide some answers in the comments section.

When Dreamworks released “Shark Tale”, many people implied that Dreamworks was trying to follow in the footsteps of Pixar’s “Finding Nemo”. They are both films that are primarily based underwater. The similarities end there for me. When Pixar released “WALL-E” this year, no one seemed to remember either Blue Sky’s “Robots” from 2005, nor the design of Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit” (another robot who becomes self aware and gains a personality). Granted, the Pixar films were stronger films in both cases, but the similarities are there [Read more…]

This past Wednesday I attended a panel discussion entitled, Cross Cultural Traffic: Toying with Brands, Borders and Bootlegs.

It was hosted by The Korea Society and was a lively talk on and about Korean Toys, their origins, how they interrelate with Japanese, American, and their own Korean Pop Cultures.

The panel consisted of Eric Nakamura (publisher of Giant Robot Magazine), Joshua Bernard (editor of CollectionDX.com), and The Korea Society’s Seho Kim (creative director).

I think Eric summed it up best on his GR blog:

“The robots and such brought out a generation of creatives. Imagine a filmmaker like Joon Ho Bong, who made the Host. Did he watch monster films as a kid? Did he play with toys? Of course he must have. The geeks who collected toys are now in power at creative places, and look at what they’ve brought forward? A new world of creative minds.”

Of course, I eagerly took down notes and snapped a few pics. Enjoy!

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Mother’s Day is tomorrow, Sunday, May 11th here in the United States. I thought I’d do a post that shows off two examples of great animated Moms.

In “Dumbo”, Mrs. Jumbo (we never see Mr Jumbo) gets put into solitary confinement for defending her son at the circus (and destroying the circus tent in the process). Dumbo is sad because of his mother’s situation, so Timothy the Mouse takes him to see her. It’s a very powerful sequence, even without the music, but the soundtrack really drives home the mood of the piece.

That’s not the best Mom in animation though. That accolade would have to go to Elastic Girl/Mrs Incredible/Helen Parr from “The Incredibles”. Have a look at this sequence:

The set up of Helen Parr going from normal Mom stuff (like talking with Dash and Violet, and then dealing with the baby sitter on phone) to crisis management is very well [Read more…]