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| Brave; New Pixar movie | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 24 2011, 12:25 AM (2,612 Views) | |
| Backroads | Jul 14 2012, 06:14 PM Post #41 |
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Proclaimer of Book Wisdom
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So I saw the movie last week--and while I think it was pretty darn good, it was rather disappointing for a Pixar film. |
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| Alkanphel | Jul 14 2012, 09:36 PM Post #42 |
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Gronckle
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I actually loved this film. I left the theater feeling elated. It got tons better when I realized that Merida was not the hero of the story. She was just our protagonist. The Hero of this story was Elenor the mom. Every plot relevant important action was the direct result of her actions not Merida. Merida was just the catalyst to the story. |
| In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice. | |
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| Delanie | Jul 17 2012, 11:28 AM Post #43 |
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Night Fury
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We're seeing it tonight. I'm excited. |
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| Erazer | Jul 28 2012, 07:30 PM Post #44 |
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Night Fury
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I just saw Brave, at an openair cinema. As you could imagine, there would be no better place watching the short film "La luna" than a clear evening at the lakeside... but I digress. It wasn't perfect, but I'm glad to say that I really liked the movie. Above all, the animation was gorgeous and the score was great. It might even get an oscar nomination for the latter. I have to admit though that I like the first half far better than the second one. Most of all: the comedy. I was really surprised how much I liked it at first. The laugh frequency during the tribes' visit was almost overwhelming. There was a lot of great comedic timing, and I even liked the triplets, something I surely didn't expect. Making them silent characters was a good decision. However, in the second half, some of the comedy was simply overdone. A good example of that is when the triplets get the key from the handmaiden. We get an entire, unnecessary scene dedicated to that. It's not really funny, at least not as much as it could have been. It doesn't add much, even disturbs the drama and tension of the situation, and it's absurd how easily they could have left that out... but it has to be there. 'cause the kids like it. This may sound like a side note, but it's just an example of things that make me roll my eyes in Pixar films. I also thought that the slapstick with the bear was a tad overboard at times. But if could have been worse, at least the character development of both Merida and Elenor was convincing. The overall writing was good, though I agree that the whole "ancient kingdom" and magic parts felt pretty thrown in and not really dealt with enough. In the end, I'm glad I saw it. It's definitely one of the better movies of 2012, though probably not one of the best. |
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| Night Fury | Jul 28 2012, 07:53 PM Post #45 |
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Oddly enough, I think I preferred the humour in the second half. I preferred the second half of the movie overall; I felt that everything seemed to flow better. Maybe it's partly because I'd seen a lot of the earlier scenes in the trailers, but the laughs just weren't coming for me. I didn't laugh much at the beginning of HTTYD either though. |
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| CrazyTrace | Jul 30 2012, 07:00 PM Post #46 |
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Night Fury
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I finally saw it. I overall liked it. A beautifully rendered movie and a touching story. And yes, a killer score. My favorite part was the presentation of these two women. Meridah is the "strong female" as we now like them to be--athletic, tough, kicking-arse. But Elenor was just as strong in her own way. A woman who is able to silence a room of wild and grown men in such subtle ways? That's awesome. I like how they learn to appreciate and emulate each other's version of the "strong female character". |
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| Delanie | Aug 8 2012, 07:37 PM Post #47 |
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Night Fury
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I'm going to be honest... I didn't really care for it. I found it slow. |
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| Anhedral | Sep 21 2012, 02:07 PM Post #48 |
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Night Fury
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I finally got a chance to see "Brave" last night, in 3D no less, at Shetland's amazing new arts venue Mareel. First-run films normally get to Shetland sooner than this, but the opening of Mareel was delayed, so the whole schedule got put back. On the whole I really liked the film. I dreaded that it would be completely twee, full of the vomit-inducing "Celtic twilight" nonsense we see so much of here. Instead we get a strong character-driven plot (so good to see two strong female protagonists in a Disney film) coupled with a realistic evocation of a time when our species still had deep physical and spiritual connections to the natural world. Disney did a good job both with the natural environments and with the cultural aspects. Sure its a bit of a mish-mash, but it's a pretty convincing one, and there's just so much care lavished on each scene that you can forgive most of the things that are a bit "off" and just revel in the beauty of it all. First of all, it's very good to see a landscape that's mainly wooded, as Scotland would have been back then. Ironically the woodlands have come back in recent years, but mainly with monocultures of planted, non-native Sitka Spruce that bear no resemblance to their native precursors. There is now so much of this conifer in Scotland that it's hard to make a traditional film here without including big chunks of it. Kudos to the makers of Brave for sticking to believable natural environments. The main tree in the film is Scots pine, which places the setting somewhere in central or eastern Scotland - however this clashes with the more general mountain / island / seascape setting, which just oozes NW Scotland all over but where the trees would have been oak, rowan and birch. The more intimate woodland scenes are extremely well done with the textures of the foliage and ground flora, and dripping with rain a lot of the time. The few remaining West coast oakwoods really are this damp and claustrophobic - they are magical places where smell and hearing are as important as touch and sight. The film captures this feeling of "sensory overload" very well indeed. Well done Pixar! Will o' the wisps have a prominent place in British (not just Scottish) folklore, often with rather sinister associations, so their mysterious appearance in the film will have resonated with older viewers in the UK (and perhaps in other countries too). The role of the lights as guides to the girl is handled with a nice ambiguity... are their intentions good or bad? Are they only visible to those with some innate sympathy with the forest, some connection with it? I loved how the film is set in Autumn, as defined by the salmon run. The lighting of the mountains in the closing sequence was very good - the colours really do get that saturated when the low sun hits the hillsides covered in heather and dead bracken. In fact I liked all of the lighting and mood, including the overall dark tone. The film is at its best when it evokes the brooding melancholy which inhabits a lot of the rural landscapes in North and West Scotland. It reminded me of the books by Gavin Maxwell and the early songs of Dougie MacLean, both of which capture so well the themes of "sense of place" and "belonging to the land" that the film also does well to imply, without shoving it down your throat. There are references to some very specific objects and places that make the film feel rather like a tourist brochure at times (and in fact, Visit Scotland currently have a huge marketing campaign built around the film's release). It can all get a bit irritating, but there's not enough of it to mar the film. The stone circle imitates the very real Callanish stones on Lewis, right down to the profiles of the individual stones, but it reminded me more of a miniature Ring of Brodgar on Orkney. The Pictish symbol stone we see briefly at one point is, I think, modelled on the famous 'Aberlemno 1' stone from the county of Angus. The castle seems to be an amalgam of the castles at Stirling, Edinburgh and Eilean Donan. Date-wise the film seems to be pitched somewhere between 600 and 1,000 AD - after the Irish Scots colonised, but before the Picts were fully assimilated. I liked the Norse references, which point to a date towards the end of this period. I was entranced by the animation of Angus the horse. The film is worth watching for these scenes alone. Beautiful realism... towards the end the girl and the horse scarper away from the castle over a wet bridge, and just for a moment one of the horse's legs slips... this painstaking attention to detail, the respect to the form of the creature you're animating... well, I for one was very impressed by this. The human-bear transformation, and the mother's shocked reaction, was well enough done (if a little too cute for my taste). I wish more had been made of her learning to cope with her shift in form. I wish she could have gradually adopted more bear traits while remaining a human at heart, but it's a difficult balance given the age of the main target audience. Her shift from trying to eat daintily to wolfing down the fish was a complete delight. I liked the transformation in the bear's face as it switched between the human and wild aspects, and also how she changed from bipedal to all-fours stance and back again - very bear-like, and a nice touch. The witch was an excellent character (as was her crow!) but still, I thought her role, and that of the spell, was over-played. Disney missed a crucial point here: in those days, humans saw the separation between their world and that of animals and spirits as thin and porous, so it would be no great step for Elinor to take bear form, no need for the witch or for the cookie - the potential for the change was always within the mother, dictated by her nature. I would like to have seen this theme explored more in the film, perhaps losing some of those silly slapstick episodes with the triplets and the handmaid along the way. And I would have loved to have seen a more interesting ending, perhaps a darker one... the death of Elinor, or the connection between mother and daughter re-formed by Merida changing to bear form... Ah, so not a film for the young ones anymore. Oh well. Having watched HTTYD perhaps more than a few times (cough) I found myself making comparisons automatically. The non-verbal communication in "Brave" was done well, but having Fergus loose a leg early on in the film didn't have anything like the pathos of Hiccup's loss in HTTYD. It didn't help that Fergus's peg leg seems only to be there for comic effect, so you're left wondering if it was tossed in as just another slapstick element (as if the film needed any more of those). But it's easy to be too critical. This is a film in which the tossaway moments are easily forgiven in the beauty of the whole. It could have been ghastly but instead was exciting and touching; to be captivated like this I'll gladly go again. |
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| Erazer | Sep 22 2012, 01:45 PM Post #49 |
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Night Fury
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Nice Review. It sure is very interesting to hear about the scenery from a Scottish point of view! Pixar seems to put a lot of effort into things like this, they constantly impress me with their attention to detail. The animation in "Brave" sure is some of the best and most realistic I've ever seen. Judging from your review, they seem to have studied the Scottish culture quite well, but that doesn't surprise me. I've personally never been to Scotland, but maybe someday I will... They sure do make nice cookies. I didn't know the Will-o'-the-wisps are so related to British culture - nor did I even know how plain weird their name is in the English language (In German, they're just called "Irrlicht"). Interesting to hear though. I guess what depresses me about the film is that it could have been downright amazing, had Pixar taken a few more risks. It all felt a little too conventional to me. I remember when they made the entire first half of Wall-E without any dialogue, and it was brilliant. I miss that in their recent films, they always seem to play it safe lately, with lots and lots of sequels. Not that I'm not hyped up for the upcoming "Monsters University", because I am. |
| How to Train your Dragon - HoppĂpolla | |
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| Dragonese girl | Sep 22 2012, 02:13 PM Post #50 |
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Fledgling
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You know what i think they should take most of the thing out that makes movies thier downfall: TOO MUCH HUMOR really i truly love Brave and the story the only flaw was the overdo with humor in the second part of the movie. HTTYD has humor that balance the movie perfectly and still keeps it's tone. But half of Brave's humor didn't quiet work so well (and I'm also talking about all thought usless butt jokes >:() other than that the movie ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Edited by Dragonese girl, Sep 22 2012, 02:15 PM.
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Master Dragon Trainer know everything about HTTYD both books and movie and TV series I as a Master Dragon Trainer will respect any dragon no matter what | |
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4:45 AM Jul 11