Apr 3
The Batman film series started by Tim Burton swings in a different direction with Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever. According to reports, Warner Bros. was annoyed that Batman Returns was “too scary” and thusly alienated a potential goldmine of a target audience by sending kids screaming from the theatres in droves. The idea was to bring the demographic back in theatres – and what better way to carry out the feat than homoeroticism and nauseating colour schemes.
When the minds of Wes Craven and Eddie Murphy meet, some strange shit happens. This is Vampire in Brooklyn, a horror-comedy that is light on both elements. It’s not a good movie, but it can be fun if you’re drunk off your ass.
Rumble in the Bronx is a frenetic, chaotic, entertaining martial arts film from director Stanley Tong. Of course, it’s a Jackie Chan vehicle that, despite the title, was filmed in Vancouver. It had a relatively successful North American release, drawing Chan into the mainstream in the West and generating a fanbase that persists to this day. It is still considered one of his biggest box office draws to date.
Oct 14
Ah, the history-making Toy Story. The movie that started the CGI feature film trend is still one of the best of the genre. Directed by John Lasseter, Toy Story earned a pile of money when it was released and still is one of the most well-known animated features ever made. Distributed by Disney and created by Pixar, this 1995 motion picture is a dazzling look at what can happen when innovation is put to good use.
Toy Story came out of Lasseter’s Oscar-winning short film Tin Toy. Disney and Pixar signed a deal to produce three films out of the characters from the short and the series recently concluded with this year’s Toy Story 3. The original picture in the series sets up the characters and many of the themes for the two other films, of course, and it ends up as one of the finest Disney-associated films released in years.
Sep 8
Yoshifumi Kondō’s Whisper of the Heart is a beautiful and loving tale of art and youth. Released in Japan in 1995, the film didn’t find its way to an American release until 2006. Based on the manga series If You Listen Closely by Aoi Hîragi, Whisper of the Heart was the first Japanese film to use Dolby Digital sound and remains a classic in the Studio Ghibli pantheon.
It also stands as a bit of a sad testimony to Yoshifumi Kondō. He was expected to be one of Ghibli’s top directors alongside Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, but he died of a brain aneurysm in 1998. Luckily Whisper of the Heart remains to showcase the work of the talented director and animator, illustrating exactly why he was thought of so highly by his peers and why he was considered to be among the future of the industry.
