Posts tagged "Alan Tudyk"

Frozen

Frozen

Frozen
2013
Story by Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, and Shane Morris
Screenplay by Jennifer Lee
Directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee
Frozen
Disney’s take on the Snow Queen tale is an overall positive experience, but I hesitate to praise Frozen as a new classic. Despite some very good twists and themes that throw some classic Disney Princess tropes on their ears, the good parts don’t transform an overall uneven story into something great. Instead, we have something that is pretty good, just not amaze-tastic.

Frozen‘s strength is in its story of sisterly love. As children, Elsa accidentally injures Anna with her snow powers, causing Anna to have part of her memories erased. Ever since, the girls grow up separate, with Elsa hiding away due to her powers, taught to fear and suppress them. Anna is forever wondering why her sister hides away, and no one bothers to just tell her what happened. After the deaths of their parents (this IS a Disney movie!), Elsa comes of age to be coronated as queen, which will be the first time the palace has been open in years.
Frozen
Anna’s elation at having actual people to interact with causes her to act almost drunk with gittiness, and it helps that one of the first things she does is bump into a handsome foreign prince, Hans. Elsa’s increasingly solemn demeanor (a manifestations of her duties and her worries that her powers will be exposed in front of all the visitors) drives Anna closer to Hans, to where they become engaged that night. Elsa realizes this is crazy, and doesn’t want to give her blessing at such a quick relationship, nor have a giant wedding where more people will be around to possibly expose her powers. This leads to an argument that leads to Elsa accidentally blasting parts of the palace with her ice powers. The powers go out of control, Elsa runs for the mountains, and accidentally freezes the whole town as she flees.

Anna (Kristen Bell) – Anna goes after her sister, desperate to mend their rift, and also to help save the town, which now has a complete ice over in summer. She’s unprepared for such a harsh journey, but is motivated by her surviving memories of fun and love of her sister.
Elsa (Idina Menzel) – The newly crowned queen of Arendelle is happier being alone in the mountains, free to use her power and free from accidentally harming anyone with it.
Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) – A mountain man who runs an ice business, and lives a solitary life with his reindeer, Sven. He’s hired by Anna to take her up the mountain to the source of the cold. Their relationship starts as the typical antagonistic people from two worlds who grow together as they travel on a journey thing. Kristoff was an orphan, but was adopted by trolls (coincidentally, when he saw the young Anna be healed by trolls)
Sven (Himself) – Reindeer owned by Kristoff. Sven loves carrots and pushing Kristoff to do things. Sven does not talk, but Kristoff often has conversations to himself where he provides a voice for Sven.
Hans (Santino Fontana) – A foreign prince visiting the town for the coronation, he befriends Anna due to their shared experiences of having older siblings ignore them. He and Anna have a whirlwind romance that ends with them engaged on the day they meet. Hans is put in charge of the town after Elsa flees and Anna leaves to go find her. He does his best to take care of the frozen city, and leads an expedition to find the Queen and save Anna.
Olaf (Josh Gad) – A snowman created inadvertently by Elsa when she’s playing with her powers, Olaf resembles the snowmen built by Elsa and Anna as children. He attaches himself to Anna and her party, and is excited about everything. Olaf’s greatest wish is to experience summer, blissfully unaware as to what happens to snowmen in summer.

Frozen
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Posted by Tars Tarkas - December 2, 2013 at 11:53 am

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Wreck-It Ralph (Review)

Wreck-It Ralph


2012
Written by Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee
Additional Story Material by John C. Reilly
Directed by Rich Moore

Nostalgia is really hot right now. So are movies that have good stories. Disney combins the two to bring us Wreck-It Ralph, and the video game movie world will never be the same. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but Wreck-It Ralph is still a great flick. Beneath the Pac-Man ghosts, first person shooters, and sitdown racers is a tale of finding your place in the world, becoming a better person while still accepting yourself for who you are, and working for a better life.

There will be spoilers, so if you hate spoilers, get the heck out of this review!

Wreck-It Ralph is the first Disney animated film I’ve been excited about for years, except maybe Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue. It’s a video game world featuring characters you grew up with playing in minor roles. But they’re just flavoring for the real story. Before Wreck-It Ralph is an awesome short called Paperman, which is a cute love story and a neat meld of 2D influence in CG animation.

Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) – The villain of the Donkey Kong-styled arcade machine Fix-It Felix, Jr., a machine that has been active for 30 years at the local arcade. Ralph’s job is to destroy the building, when the player fixes using Fix-It Felix, Jr. Over the decades, Ralph has become increasingly depressed and angry at his lot in life. An anniversary and a confrontation with the other denizens of his game cause him to act out, in essence have a midlife crisis and go looking for respect. And for that he needs a medal like the one Fix-It Felix wins every day.
Fix-It Felix, Jr. (Jack McBrayer) – Titular hero of Fix-It Felix, Jr., possessing a magic hammer that fixes anything with a simple whack. But it can’t fix Ralph’s hurt feelings, and Felix is forced to go after the game-jumping Ralph to prevent his own game from being unplugged.
Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun (Jane Lynch) – Tough as nails squad leader from the FPS Hero’s Duty. Joins in the hunt for Ralph when he inadvertently brings a Cy-Bug from Hero’s Duty to the racing game Sugar Rush. Is programmed with the most tragic back story ever.
Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) – Racer in the sitdown racing game Sugar Rush. Is a pariah in the game because she’s a glitch, which means she often de-rezes or jumps around within the game. Glitches cannot leave the game, if it is shut off she will die. None of the other citizens of Sugar Rush are fond of her due to her glitch status.
King Candy (Alan Tudyk) – Ruler of Sugar Rush who controls the racing to determine which racers are available that day, and also enforces the anti-glitch mentality. Has a dark secret.


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Posted by Tars Tarkas - November 5, 2012 at 2:17 am

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Prepare to get your Lincoln on this year…

Yes, folks, there are at least three (3) Lincoln movies coming your way in 2012, and two of them involve Lincoln fighting various monsters in history mashup genre bending tales of what if history. Or just dumb stories about Lincoln killing things. Either way, the movies are coming, and you’ll just have to deal with them!

First up is Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel. Seth Grahame-Smith is the guy who started those awful mashup books that mix public domain stories with werewolves and zombies and crap. Soon everyone rushed to make a cheap buck, and now the bookstore shelves are littered with this garbage, making it harder to find novels about space babes kicking butt. I mean, harder to find William Shakespeare books. Yeah, that’s it! So Lincoln had a secret journal where he killed vampires, and vampires caused the Civil War and are responsible for slavery! Timur Bekmambetov directs, and Benjamin Walker, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rufus Sewell, Jimmi Simpson, Dominic Cooper, and Alan Tudyk star.

Not to be outdone, the Asylum has their own Lincoln killing things movie: Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies!

Just check out this poster:
Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies

And also there’s a boring true life biography of Lincoln coming out, called Lincoln. Steven Spielberg directs it and Daniel Day-Lewis is Lincoln. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jared Harris, Tommy Lee Jones, Jackie Earle Haley, James Spader, and Sally Field also star. It will probably be good and get Oscar noms. If you’re into that sort of stuff.

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Posted by Tars Tarkas - January 6, 2012 at 4:39 pm

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