brad bird

really enjoyed tomorrowland. the world's fair looked awesome. such great details. same with the vintage sci-fi shop. the message of hope made me sad. i don't feel hopeful. but House M.D. made me feel guilty for reveling in end of the world t.v. and movies. disney guilt trip, man. this almost made me want to see ghost protocol. i just hate whatever MI movies i've seen though. i don't think i've seen that one? always figured they were all woo joints.

plus, tomorrowland was 2+ hours and i didn't even mind. usually i mind these days. even my 10 year old didn't mind.

i don't think i knew that brad bird was such a big part of the simpsons. he may never surpass the iron giant in my eyes but he's still cool.

the iron giant is a total fucking masterpiece. the giant's sacrifice at the end is one of the most moving things i've ever seen in the cinema.

there was a wistful element to Tomorrowland that i enjoyed and it wasn't heavy-handed either. spielberg would have had us drowning in it by the end of this movie. the end of this movie was kinda beautiful in a we are the world kinda way. maybe that's my allergy medication talking though.

Iron Giant a masterpiece/ET. Incredibles and Ratatouille were great. Mission Impossible was solid. This movie was a dull "Escape from Witch Mountain" mess, imo. I was surprised that both of my kids, before I even said a word, basically summed it up the same way I would have. And come on, I didn't mind how heavy handed it was, but it was didactic as all get out. I mean, it literally ends with an army of dreamers sent out into the world to make it a better place!

Also, it's pretty clear what kind of changes were made to placate the corporate overlords, not least the weird start/stop intro. You could smell Disney's fear of no Clooney starpower for 45 minutes, and when he shows up ... still no starpower. Plus, strangely violent - how many cops/people get cold-blooded robo vaporized? Realistically humanoid robots torn asunder? And the (aimless) villain gets horrifically crushed? I was kinda taken aback, tbh.

i didn't think it was a mess really. it moved along pretty clearly. the plot wasn't great though. that's for sure. weirdly generic. i liked it anyway though. the violence didn't really strike me as that horrific or anything. it was PG violence. clooney was pretty muted. i dunno, other than the british girl robot, most of the people in it were generic. speilberg WOULD have made better characters out of them probably. but i still liked it.

i think it made me hopeful that brad bird could make a truly great live-action movie in the future. this wasn't it, but there were enough cool moments/touches that i don't see in a lot of fx-driven movies nowadays. he's a throwback in a lot of ways. he loves the 50's. a la spielberg. just hope he doesn't make some steampunk epic. the eiffel tower scene was pretty steampunky. i just chose to watch this as a fairy tale and didn't worry about it much and was entertained. the eiffel tower rocket was right out of some fantasy kid's book.

yeah my old roommate is a film writer and I think he would give his left nut to have half the career brad bird has.. or both nuts for the whole thing I guess..

Oh, I totally got what Bird was after, from the retro vibe to the old-school live action Disney "Witch Mountain" feel, and he may have been able to pull it off, but the final product felt super-compromised. They didn't even introduce what was at stake until, like, an hour or so in! Possibly more. That's why that rocky opening was there: show the countdown clock and show Clooney, because clearly the subsequent encounter at the cyber shack was supposed to be his introduction. Also, I guess Judy Greer's entire character was cut out, bar one fleeting scene in a home movie? And baddy's motives were super unclear, if they even bothered establishing them, which would be a surprise, given the number of scenes he had just standing there, talking.

Yeah, Tomorrowland was kind of a mess. The Star Wars product placement was obnoxious, Clooney crying over the death of a little girl robot was embarrassing, the plot is constantly explaining itself and even after nearly two hours of doing so, the villain's motivation still didn't make a whole lot of sense. A lot of chaotic action, but only the scene in Clooney's booby-trapped house felt anything like the work of the same filmmaker who made what is possibly the most elegant and inventive action film of the last twenty years. But I still kinda liked it anyway. For all of its heavy-handedness, it is still a Disney film that shits on politicians and (however hypocritically) corporations, and very implicitly, religion as well. And I'll cop to being on board with the totally square earnestness of its message; considered alongside the rote and snarky Jurassic World, it is both revealing and sad that this flopped while JW was a hit.

felt to me a bit like a forced-Goonies or WarGames type movie, but not good

the main girl actress strikes me as a star

cloons in closeups appeared to be wearing eyeliner, maybe mascara also