Okay, it's late and I have things I need to be doing aside from this, but I won't be able to sleep tonight until I get this off my chest. It seems the upcoming Pixar film Brave (formerly known as The Bear and the Bow) will no longer be directed by Brenda Chapman as she has left the studio. For anyone who missed my commentary on the discussion around the lack of leading females in Pixar films, Brave was kind of a big deal, not just because it marked the studio's first female lead but also because it would mark its first female director as well. And just like in live-action, female directors in animated features is a rare thing. In fact, Chapman is America's first female animated feature director with The Prince of Egypt. She hasn't directed another movie since then, and I'm having a hard time coming up with another female animated feature director outside Nina Paley (who was totally independent and not part of a big studio). So now, it's being directed by Mark Andrews who co-directed the Pixar short One Man Band, but beyond that I don't have much info on him.
No one's saying why Chapman was replaced yet, and honestly, it could be for legitimate reasons. Directors and people in all sorts of positions get replaced in films all the time, so what makes this such a big deal? Precisely because there are so few women directors out there, especially in feature-length animation. Especially because it's at a studio with the prestige and clout that Pixar has. The reason this studio gets singled out for this sort of scrutiny is because they make good films, period, and people pay attention to them. Why does anyone care if Pixar has a female lead or a female director? Because it matters what they do. Because they set a standard in the industry that matters not just in animation but in live-action film as well. Up was the only animated film aside from Beauty and the Beast to break into the Best Feature category at the Oscars, and before that there was questioning amongst critics as to why Ratatouille hadn't made that leap as well. John Lasseter has stated that Pixar is a director-driven studio and that telling a good story and artistic vision come before anything else there, so it's especially troubling that its first female director left before her project was even finished. Said project is now to be finished by someone else, who is male. This isn't surprising, seeing as how female directors are so hard to come by, but it begs the question yet again: when are women going to be able to tell our own stories? When will this not be a big deal? When will we stop having to put "female" in front of "director" to clarify that it is a woman directing a movie?
I'm far from the only one asking these questions, too. The Animation Guild Blog posted about this in June with Where the Girls Aren't; Film.com recently asked In What Year Will Female Directors Make Up Half the Workforce?; and Women and Hollywood reported on the Zero Progress Made on Gender Disparity in Films Targeted at Kids. I'm sure there are others out there as well, but the point is, as much as gender shouldn't matter in terms of replacing a director on a project, frankly, it does. Not only does the director guide the cohesiveness and vision of the entire film, but in a project like this, where much of the creation of the project was helmed by the director, the loss of a rare female vision for a female-centered story is sad, disappointing, and for someone like me who hopes to break into both directing and animation, it's discouraging and frustrating. Mark Andrews may be more suited to helm this project than Chapman was, and he may do a fine job and help produce a good film with a good female lead. But it won't cease to be troubling that Chapman is one of the few women successfully blazing this trail in American animation, and that her leaving a project is causing such a stir specifically because she's a woman. Yeah, gender shouldn't matter, but it does. When half the population of the human race is considered "other" and "token" and under-represented in such a huge way, the loss of one in a position like that matters.
Okay, so the blogosphere is probably alight with people yammering on about the Oscar noms from this morning, and while I certainly have my opinions (as my previous post makes no secret of), the fact is, I've hardly seen any of the movies up for the major awards this year. Some of it is due to a lack of enough interest, some is due to a lack of money, and some is due to a lack of time and/or availability (there's only one movie theater left where I live and their selection can be very skimpy when it comes to independent movies and certain subjects-- let's just say they didn't carry Brokeback Mountain, Milk, and likely will not carry A Single Man). To be fair, I still haven't seen any of the nominees for Best Picture from last year either, despite a Netflix subscription and two movie rental places at my disposal.
Getting back on topic, so while I can run around screaming that I want so-and-so to win such-and-such for whatever reason, the fact is, I've only seen Inglourious Basterds and Up for the Best Picture category, and Julie & Julia for the actresses and actors' awards. I feel a bit underqualified to be talking about these categories as a result. Instead, I'm going to be talking about my favorite category anyway, and the one from which I've seen the most nominees: the Best Animated Feature category.
First off, I have to eat my words from the other day: Up is indeed nominated for Best Picture. I am thrilled to see a second animated film make it to that category finally (the only other one was Beauty and the Beast in 1991), and I think it deserves to be there as much as anything else this year. So a big tip of my hat to the Academy for recognizing that it's not only a good animated movie but a good movie, period. Having said that, it won't win. I'm pretty sure Avatar's going to be taking that prize (why that isn't listed in the Animated Feature category is a little beyond me, but you can't win them all, I guess), and if it doesn't, one of the other live-action ones will. But it's okay, because it's also nominated for Best Animated Feature. (Has that ever happened before? I know the animation category is pretty new, and all, but I'm not sure I've seen even the Golden Globes double-book one movie for two different Best Feature awards like that.) So Up will win Best Animated feature, no real shocker there, and it is deserving. What's both frustrating and gratifying is that there are actually five movies in this category this year, and several of them are very good in their own right and I'd love to see them win, too. It's great to see more worthy contenders here at last, and there's even a diversity of media, too! In fact, I think for the first time ever, Up is the only CGI movie nominated, with two stop-motion films (Coraline and The Fantastic Mister Fox) and two traditional films (The Princess and the Frog and The Secret of Kells), making for a nice display of the variety and diversity that animation can offer as a medium. I will say I'm surprised Miyazaki's Ponyo didn't make the cut. Seems like there could have been room for it somewhere in there.
While I know what movie will likely win, I'd still like to give my impressions of the other nominees, too, because I think they're very deserving of attention as well. Each one is unique and imaginative and skillfully made.
Clearly the frontrunner to take this one, since Pixar nearly always wins and it's also up for Best Feature. It totally deserves every award, ticket sale, and word of praise it's received. It's a lighthearted adventure, a nostalgic story, a tearjerker, a comedy, and a buddy movie all at once, and yet it never feels constrained by any of those categories, either. It literally is all of them at the same time, never moving jerkily from one idea to the next, and it's all wrapped up in this warm-heartedness that permeates every aspect of it. It manages to convey a lifetime in ten minutes and have it mean something to the people watching it, so we understand Carl's attachment to things like a mailbox and a painted wooden bird. The lesson he learns is one that the audience learns with him, instead of watching from a superior vantage point, already knowing the answer and just waiting for him to get there. It's a lesson a lot of us have a hard time accepting, and maybe afterward still don't want to accept. It challenges us there without ever feeling like it's condescending to us. Someone remarked that it felt more like a Miyazaki movie than any other Pixar movie had managed to do so far, and I agree there. That envelopment in a sense of nostalgia and sentiment that never seem cloying, that ability to literally create a world from nothing that still feels like it has life in it, the gentleness and the heartfelt desire to really create something of quality and emotion and meaning is all there, as it is in every Miyazaki film I've seen. I may complain about Pixar winning this category every year, but it's only because I think they deserve either better competition here, or to be competing for Best Picture. They deserve it.
I've blogged about this one before, but time hasn't lessened how much I like this movie. Henry Selick has a way of capturing an atmosphere and almost indefinable charm that I find lacking in a lot of other stop-motion (Wallace and Gromit being a big exception), and he really deserves a lot more recognition than he gets. Most people still think Tim Burton directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it gets tiresome correcting them all the time. Of course, I'm also partial to this movie because it's based on a book by Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors since I was sixteen. Some things were changed for the film (like the existence of a major supporting character), but it's part of the process of adaptation from one medium to another, and I thought it was very well-handled and done with a lot of respect to the source material. One of the most distinguishing aspects of Selick's design style that I'm very fond of is little physical irregularities, like a mouth being lopsided. It makes the characters more interesting to look at without being distracting, and it adds a quirky charm to everything that I really love. I also love that he wasn't afraid to keep it creepy. My favorite movies when I was a kid were the ones with creepy or even outright scary moments in them, like The Dark Crystal (which I think I've seen in English once, since the only friend of mine who had it in my childhood had it taped off TV from Costa Rica-- I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I loved it anyway), The Neverending Story, and Return to Oz, which also features some of my favorite pieces of claymation animation. (Honorable mention goes to The Adventures of Mark Twain-- even though I didn't see it until I was much older, parts of it unnerved the hell out of me and it probably would have fit right in on that list.) I was personally glad to see a return to the kids movie with some teeth, since it always gave me the impression as a kid that something really was at stake in these stories, and what these characters were doing mattered. It made the triumph at the end mean more because they had something very threateningly real to overcome. That's very much the case with this movie, and I have to give a lot of credit to Terri Hatcher for her performance as both Coraline's mother and the Other Mother-- such subtle things she did with her voice that gave the animators a lot of room to get the acting just right to hit that balance of honey-sweet overlaying something terrible. I also love that all the women in this movie have a witchiness about them-- real witch, not "w-to-rhyme-with-b" witch. There are so many subtle touches in it, and I'm a sucker for detail, and I felt it was a wonderful adaptation of an equally wonderful children's book. Growing up, this one would have been an absolute favorite for me, the adventure/coming of age story I'd always wanted without having to superimpose myself on a boy to get it.
Okay, I have to admit, this is the only one in this category I haven't watched yet. I wasn't sure what to think of it judging from the one or two very short promos I ever saw for it, but I did hear from friends that it was a lot better than they'd been expecting, and was even downright good. It never came anywhere close to me, but it'll be on my Netflix queue as soon as it's available. On a side note, I really wish George Clooney would do more voicework, he's got what they call "a voice with character" in spades, and he has a great range of emotive capabilities to draw from. I think the medium would suit him nicely.
The Princess and the Frog (Pretty long, since I never got around to writing an actual review for it before.)
Disney finally returns to the media that launched the mega-conglomerate in the first place. I could not believe the short-sighted stupidity at play when they closed down their traditional animation studios after 2004's Home on the Range. I was ecstatic when I heard they were (finally!) reopening them after the merger with Pixar and Lasseter finally brought a little common sense back to the creative decisions. (Really, assuming that tepid ticket sales on the traditional animation movies with the booming sales for Pixar movies meant that traditional animation was dead as an art form is asinine-- evidently no one paused to consider that it was the stories that were lackluster, not the medium itself.) The directors in charge for this movie were Ron Clements and John Musker, the directing team behind The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and Treasure Planet, which I felt was a pretty wise choice, as well as a symbolic one, given that Mermaid kicked off Disney's '90s renaissance and saved it from going under. The end result was pretty fine, a return to the traditional fairy tale stories that the company is known for, with some really beautiful animation (almost show-off beautiful in places) and the sort of charming, plucky, independent heroine that Ron n' John love to showcase. Bonus feature that the prince was also charismatic, charming, and cocky (an actual personality, something lacking in Mermaid's prince-- or most of Disney's classics, for that matter), and they both felt like a lot of work had gone into their development as individual characters, not just their designs. You could tell that they really wanted to get this one right, and in a lot of ways they did. The beginning was wonderful, the villain was incredible, the animation was absolutely lovely (and in places spooky), and it featured Jim Cummings doing his wonderful Cajun accent, which I'd only heard once before in a direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movie.
I loved that the heroine wanted a career, and I love that she didn't have to choose between it and her romance-- even if the romance part was incredibly rushed and sort of came out of nowhere and smacked me upside the head with its randomness 2/3 of the way through the movie. That really was the biggest beef I had with this one, was I did not buy the suddenness of the romance at all. It jerked me completely out of the movie and I found thoughts like "really? you've known her for a day!" to be very distracting for much of this part. I would have been totally fine if they'd implied more of a passing of time at the end, or if they hadn't set up such a constrained time limit for the action to take place in initially, or if there was some attempt to show that they had spent more than a day together before falling in love. But it was literally a day. And this wasn't one of the love at first sight relationships, either, it was one they were clearly supposed to grow into, so that just made it even more jarring.
The middle in general is a problem, since it seems to dissolve into random comedic relief elements for the sake of waking the kids up and filling space until the end. There's also a character here who seems to serve no real point to the story whatsoever (aside from padding things out and giving the leads something to do for the middle part) and while I get that she was supposed to be the representation of the "proper" form of voodoo in contrast to the villain's misuse of it for personal gain, I felt like giving her a gospel song and lots of Christian church imagery sort of undermined that idea. Oh, and there are some issues with astronomy at one or two points (the Evening Star is the planet Venus, not an actual star, for instance, and there's something that happens later on that sort of made my head explode a little) but it wasn't anything so major that I lost any sleep over it.
It does come back together at the end again, and there's a really wonderful dynamic between Tiana and the female supporting character whose name I have forgotten (but who may have been my favorite character next to the villain just because she was hilarious), as well as the prince, once we get past that really awkward phase in the middle and I was able to pretend they'd had more time to get to know each other. And yeah, there are subtle mentions of racism, and a contrast drawn between the means Tiana's family lives in and the means her friend, the rich, white debutante lives in. It's subtle enough to keep any nagging feelings of guilt at bay, and some things may be unrealistic for the time frame this is set in, but it doesn't try to sweep these problems under the rug, either. So, in summary, yeah, the movie has some flaws, but honestly, they didn't keep me from enjoying myself a great deal, and overall I was pretty pleased with it as a return to good ol' hand-drawn animation. It's probably the most flawed of the films in this category, but I think it does still deserve to be in here, and it's worth seeing.
I'm probably one of the very few people on this side of the Atlantic to have been able to see this one yet, and I was both very surprised and very happy to see it nominated. First-off, it's really, really beautiful. Astonishingly beautiful. Very reminiscent of a little-known masterpiece of traditional animation called The Thief and the Cobbler, by animation legend Richard Williams. It's done in that same 2 1/2-dimension style that's reminiscent of medieval art, and it draws inspiration from the Book of Kells and traditional Celtic artwork as well. There's a mix of magic and faeries and the old nature-worshipping religions of the British Isles and the Christian religion that was trying to stake its claim there as well. I never felt like it was disrespectful of either one and seemed to be leaning more towards the idea of mutual cohabitation and respect, which I always appreciate. There are definitely ideas under the surface here, and it never felt like it was pandering exclusively to a young crowd, nor did it feel like it was trying to exclude them. There are also interesting changes in perspective, between the way a young Brendan sees the events happening around him, and the way the adults do, and there's a wonderful sense of trust on the part of the filmmakers to allow audience members of all ages to consider both without pandering to either. There are some tense moments, and a few that I was really shocked to see in a film with such a fun and colorful design. There are more of those creepy/scary moments towards the end that I would have been afraid of but secretly loved as a kid, and again, it serves to add some real weight to the story and create a sense that something important is at stake. It's a stunningly beautiful film that probes some ideas that most kids movies don't like to, and there is a surprising intensity to some of the later scenes that not all kids are going to be comfortable with. But I like that the filmmakers took some risks, and I'm really happy to see it get recognized. I hope that means we get a DVD release soon.
Well, that's it for that category. I have to say, I'm really pleased with the diversity and quality of the selections this year, and I really, really hope it's a trend that continues.
...And ne'er the twain shall meet. Or so a bunch of people on the internet would have us believe.
I wasn't sure about posting this right out of the starting gate, but honestly, this one hit me close to home. I'm hoping to go into animation in the next few years, and regardless of my success in that endeavor, it's still my favorite storytelling medium. I never outgrew my love of watching drawings run around on a screen and have adventures, even though I went through a phase when I was around 12 where I tried to convince myself that I had. There is just something in me that craves it, that delights in seeing it in its many forms. So when I saw some of the responses posted to Linda Holmes's (I thought) very polite and respectful desire to see Pixar deliver a movie with a female leading character (that isn't a princess, since there's already loads of those), I was, to put it mildly, shocked and dismayed.
In retrospect, I suppose it was naive of me to think that because I'm fully aware of the fact that girls like adventure stories just as much as boys, are just as capable of being interesting and enjoyable, and like seeing people they are inspired by and can identify with up on the big screen, that most people had come to the same assumption I did. Thank you, internet, for pulling me back down to planet Earth and reminding me that there are still a lot of people out there who have trouble with the foreign concept that women are, in fact, people.
Over at Cartoon Brew, a blog all about animation that I used to really enjoy perusing but have recently lost my taste for, there was a particularly high volume of outrage at the idea Ms. Holmes posited. In their brief article, entitled "Dear Pixar, How About a Chick Flick...?", responses ranged from supportive, to neutral, to downright hostile. One poster responded to someone's comment about not understanding what was wrong with wanting to see a story about a girl and the things that happened to her instead of a boy and the things that happened to him with, "The lady in front of her in line got the pair of shoes SHE wanted at Payless. The girl in the cubicle next to hers keeps laughing on the phone all day and getting on her nerves. She starves herself all weekend and yet gains 2 pounds! All exciting and true topics to be sure (courtesy of my wife) but I can’t say as I’d like to see them animated with 3-D characters." Another poster had this to say: "Everybody has an agenda. I’m sorry if this delightful movie didn’t service yours. Perhaps we should petition President Obama to oversee the animation industry, and appoint a Gender Equity Czar to implement “representational justice” on the silver screen. I nominate Barney Frank for the position." But far and away the most common sentiment I saw expressed there (and on other sites as well), was essentially this: "The real reason behind Pixar having never released a film focusing on a female character is because all of their films thus far have been directed by males." That sentiment is further encapsulated by this from another poster: "As is said above, you can’t pay most men and boys to go to movie about a girl. While I respect the drive for equality and am willing to stand up and be counted when it comes to supporters of both equal opportunity and equal wages, I am among those who could not be payed to go see a movie about a female unless it had an incredibly compelling story and was superbly done." There were even a small number of more hostile people who saw the letter as a declaration of female superiority and an effort to exclude the male population from movie viewing.
Now, this really made me stop and think. Why is it that the mere mention of the idea makes so many people uncomfortable, makes them automatically assume that it's part of a PC ploy, or that it's even female superiority rhetoric? I read the same letter they all did and I didn't see any angry accusations of sexism, no war cries, no knashing of teeth, no criticisms of the company's movies, nothing. I saw a respectful letter written to a movie studio that the author obviously respected a great deal, expressing a wish that she (and frankly, many other women) have had, not because of something wrong with their movies, but because of everything they do right. Women are not given leading roles in films very often in Hollywood, and it's not because male writers are fundamentally unable to write women well, nor is it because male viewers are fundamentally unable to connect to a female protagonist, but because somehow the idea that those two things are true have become "common sense". The problem with common sense is that it isn't necessarily built on real truths, but on the popular opinion that something is true. 'But women are so alien and unfathomable' male writers cry, 'how can we do them justice when we don't understand them?' The fact of the matter is, men and women have far more in common than not, but we culturally focus on the differences and blow them out of proportion which leads to this mindset that 'men are from Mars, women are from Venus', when really, we're all from Earth. There are differences, yes, psychological and phsyiological, and the genders do identify more strongly with their own than with the other, but that does not mean it is impossible to do so. If that were the case, then female movie-goers and literature-readers over the vast passage of time would not have enjoyed the vast majority of produced works because they wouldn't be able to identify with the male lead. And yet we have and we continue to do so, as box office returns will tell you. A movie like The Dark Knight doesn't become the biggest movie of the year and one of the highest-grossing of all-time on the sale of tickets to men alone, and that goes the same for any other hit movie.
So what this tells me, is that men who protest so vehemently against the idea of seeing a leading female protagonist in a film are either a.) not impressed with most of the representations of leading women in films, or b.) don't like the idea of surrendering their gender-perspective for an hour and a half. (There's probably more to it, too, but I have no idea what it might be, so give me a heads-up if anyone might know because this stuff fascinates me.) Maybe a lot of the outrage was stemming from the idea that Ms. Holmes had accused Pixar of being sexist, or was demanding that they change how they make movies to fit some personal agenda, but I'm somewhat at a loss to explain how many people came to that conclusion based on her letter. Personally, I can't speak for her, since I don't know what she was thinking when she wrote it, nor will I ever, because I am not her. But I can speak for what I saw when I read it, and what I saw was not anger, but hope. We ladies adapt to a male viewpoint for the duration of most media forms because very often they're made by men for men. And there's nothing wrong with men making movies for themselves, at all. But there is a serious deficiency in the other viewpoint, too, and after a while, we start going, 'well where's my story?'
I think Pixar was chosen for this focal point, not because of any deficiency or a problem with their films, but because they have shown such consistency in storytelling, and in particular their depiction of women, that it creates an excitement amongst viewing women at the possibility of a female lead. 'But most of Disney's leads are female', people say. Actually, most of Disney's leads are male, if you look at the actual story (in Sleeping Beauty, the title character has less screentime than the prince character, and barely any speaking lines at all), and by and large they tend to fit one archetype: the princess. Now, I'm not arguing that there's something wrong with enjoying princesses, I've certainly enjoyed my share of mine, but one has to wonder where all the other types of roles are. Girls can be more than just one thing, just like boys, and yet nearly all of the leading women in U.S. animation are one thing. Yes, there are exceptions like Mulan and Lilo, but they're the ones that prove the rule.
Why, when directors like Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon can achieve such great success with leading women in Japan, a country that is arguably more restrictive toward women, are U.S. directors and studio heads so reluctant to branch outside of that box? Do they not think that little girls will like a female character who isn't a princess? If that's the case, they need to meet more little girls. Just because princesses are popular, doesn't mean that's all they want. Girls will identify with a female on-screen no matter what her 'role' is because she's female, just like boys will identify with a male character because he's male. And I'd bet good money that boys would be able to identify with the story of a girl on an adventure just as much as girls identify with boys on an adventure, so long as the adventure is compelling. But the most important thing it could do for kids of both genders is to say 'girls can be anything, too.' And maybe when kids finally see that message in action instead of being given conflicting messages, society at large will finally start to acknowledge that being a girl isn't anything to be ashamed of, isn't demeaning, isn't alien or unfathomable, and isn't second-best. That's my hope, anyway.
