|
Post by Captain Monkeypants on Jan 11, 2008 12:57:29 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by moviedave on Jan 11, 2008 22:15:05 GMT -5
I'll buy it.
|
|
|
Post by Captain Monkeypants on Jan 14, 2008 9:43:55 GMT -5
Same here!
|
|
|
Post by gamedave on Jan 19, 2008 19:17:01 GMT -5
Ok, just watched the DragonLance movie. It was...the DragonLance movie. I'm going from memory of a book I read a looong time ago, but it seems like pretty much a direct, scene-for-scene, almost word-for-word adaptation of "Dragons of Autumn Twilight", the first book in the series. That's the good news. That's pretty much the only good news.
The animation style is a little odd. Most of the movie is traditional cell animation - the style reminded me a lot of the old "Heavy Metal" animated movie, except cheaper, and more poorly done. It's jerky in the action scenes, has a rather jarring static painted backgrounds in a couple of scenes (that is, there are a couple of scenes which use brief cuts with no animation at all - just shots of people standing around frozen - and no, they weren't frozen by magic, just a limited budget), the action often doesn't quite synch up to the dialogue. It's not really horrible, but it's at about the level of the average TV cartoon - not even as well done as Justice League.
The wierdest thing was the decision to, for some reason, use CGI to animate the dragons and draconians. It does really make them stand out, and almost works for the dragons, but it just looks silly when cell-animated characters interact with the CGI draconians.
The voice work was disappointing. They use several "name" actors (Kiefer Sutherland, Lucy Lawless, Michael Rosenbaum, Michelle Trachtenburg) and a couple of veteran, accomplished voice actors (Phil LaMarr, Frank Tatasciore). The voice acting, for the most part, is passable, but nothing spectacular. I think the voice direction is largely at fault. There are several lines that fall flat because of inflection and pacing. A good voice director would have retaken those lines a few times to get the pacing and inflection down, which would have really sold the dialogue.
More and more, I'm struck by just how good Justice League/JLU, etc. really were. They had talented writers and voice actors, but also an obviously very talented voice director, who was able to get the most out of them. Go, Andrea Romano!
As for the DVD itself, it's bare bones. Previews for "Iron Man" (the live-action movie), "Beowulf", "Stardust" (a fairly good movie, one that covers much of the same ground as "The Princess Bride", but just not quite as well), "Transformers", and "Cashern" (an interesting-but-bizarre looking Japanese live-action/CGI action movie); "Original Test Animation", showing some b&w sketch animations of a few scenes; and "Initial Character Design", showing concept and design pictures of the major characters. I almost wish I hadn't actually watched that last, since the pictures were actually really well done, and just showed how cheap the animation was in contrast.
Sadly enough, might still just be the best D&D movie to date.
|
|
|
Post by Captain Monkeypants on Jan 22, 2008 11:01:05 GMT -5
DRAGONS MUST BE CGI dave, sheesh, everyone knows that.
I was just happy that it was entertaining, and the story was good (never read the books). that said, once you get past the animation, it was easily enjoyable. I dunno, i watched a lot of shitty cartoons growing up, so it was easy to get past the animation, it was a joke, but hey it was enjoyable. They are supposed to have the entire series coming out.
|
|