Mahayodha Ram: Epic of epic proportions

Never thought an Indian animation movie can actually look this good.

Goodbye Shrek !

Loosely based upon a story by children’s author William Steig (Sylvester and the Magic Pebble), Shrek is a satiric fairy-tale love story which has been genuinely funny and entertaining since its inception. Having watched all the previous three movies of this franchise multiple times, I must admit I was quite looking forward to the final chapter and hoping that the beloved ogre leaves us on a high note. And he does. Heartfelt and hilarious, this sequel is inspired heavily from Capra’s “Its a Wonderful Life”.

The film starts brilliantly by showing a montage of Shrek’s life replete with three squalling and rambunctious li’l ogres, a loving wife Fiona and a great friend Donkey. In short, a perfect but boring life. And of course Shrek hates it like any other man going through a mid-life crisis! The images are then shown in rapid succession where every passing day is worse than the previous day, until one day Shrek finally throws a royal fit on one of the kid’s birthday and wishes aloud that things could go back to what they were before he had ever met Fiona! As they say, you never know how good things are until they are gone!

Enter the sleazy snarky villain Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn), the famous trickster from Brothers Grimm fairy tales. The vengeful devil with ridiculous spiky red hair and predatory eyes convinces the naive ogre to sign away any one day of his childhood. In return, Shrek gets to live one day of his life the way he would have liked; a life of no responsibilites, a life where he can make mud angels till the cows came home, a life where the villagers are still scared of his mighty roar! And, of course the evil guy chooses the day Shrek was born. What follows then is life in an alternate universe where Rumpelstiltskin is the ruler of the kingdom and witches rule the roost! Shrek has never met Fiona and his friends Donkey and Puss don’t recognize him. But of course, there is a way to fix all things! Shrek discovers that a “true love’s kiss” is the only way to undo the contract, but can he do it by the end of the day?

This story is by far the most interesting of all. It doesn’t rely on gimmicks and pop culture references throughout like the first one. The wit and the humor is quite fast-paced. The characters are very engaging and the voices are as sharp and funny as ever. Shrek (Mike Myers) as always is the endearing slob that we all have grown to love and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) is the warrior ogre-princess who is a tough nut to crack. She doesn’t wait to be rescued in this one, she rescues herself, quite a nice change from the usual !! Both of them bring immense warmth to their characters. Donkey (Eddy Murphy) is still as howlarious and cheeky as ever, and Puss (Antonio Bendares) is a pampered house cat now who is too fat to fit in his boots! He still uses his big sad eyes expression eliciting a major awwww in the theater !!

I’m not sure if the 3D animation really added to the overall experience of the movie. For the most part, I found the glasses annoying and would have preferred watching the sharper, crisper colors without the 3D effect.

After having gone horribly wrong with Shrek The Third, the makers went back to telling a simple story with its heart in the right place. And they score with this one. If this really is the final chapter of this terrific franchise, I for one am quite sad to bid goodbye to beloved ogre!

Goodbye Shrek !

Loosely based upon a story by children’s author William Steig (Sylvester and the Magic Pebble), Shrek is a satiric fairy-tale love story which has been genuinely funny and entertaining since its inception. Having watched all the previous three movies of this franchise multiple times, I must admit I was quite looking forward to the final chapter and hoping that the beloved ogre leaves us on a high note. And he does. Heartfelt and hilarious, this sequel is inspired heavily from Capra’s “Its a Wonderful Life”.

The film starts brilliantly by showing a montage of Shrek’s life replete with three squalling and rambunctious li’l ogres, a loving wife Fiona and a great friend Donkey. In short, a perfect but boring life. And of course Shrek hates it like any other man going through a mid-life crisis! The images are then shown in rapid succession where every passing day is worse than the previous day, until one day Shrek finally throws a royal fit on one of the kid’s birthday and wishes aloud that things could go back to what they were before he had ever met Fiona! As they say, you never know how good things are until they are gone!

Enter the sleazy snarky villain Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn), the famous trickster from Brothers Grimm fairy tales. The vengeful devil with ridiculous spiky red hair and predatory eyes convinces the naive ogre to sign away any one day of his childhood. In return, Shrek gets to live one day of his life the way he would have liked; a life of no responsibilites, a life where he can make mud angels till the cows came home, a life where the villagers are still scared of his mighty roar! And, of course the evil guy chooses the day Shrek was born. What follows then is life in an alternate universe where Rumpelstiltskin is the ruler of the kingdom and witches rule the roost! Shrek has never met Fiona and his friends Donkey and Puss don’t recognize him. But of course, there is a way to fix all things! Shrek discovers that a “true love’s kiss” is the only way to undo the contract, but can he do it by the end of the day?

This story is by far the most interesting of all. It doesn’t rely on gimmicks and pop culture references throughout like the first one. The wit and the humor is quite fast-paced. The characters are very engaging and the voices are as sharp and funny as ever. Shrek (Mike Myers) as always is the endearing slob that we all have grown to love and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) is the warrior ogre-princess who is a tough nut to crack. She doesn’t wait to be rescued in this one, she rescues herself, quite a nice change from the usual !! Both of them bring immense warmth to their characters. Donkey (Eddy Murphy) is still as howlarious and cheeky as ever, and Puss (Antonio Bendares) is a pampered house cat now who is too fat to fit in his boots! He still uses his big sad eyes expression eliciting a major awwww in the theater !!

I’m not sure if the 3D animation really added to the overall experience of the movie. For the most part, I found the glasses annoying and would have preferred watching the sharper, crisper colors without the 3D effect.

After having gone horribly wrong with Shrek The Third, the makers went back to telling a simple story with its heart in the right place. And they score with this one. If this really is the final chapter of this terrific franchise, I for one am quite sad to bid goodbye to beloved ogre!

For Animation Fans - The House Of Little Cubes

Part 1



Part 2

For Animation Fans - The House Of Little Cubes

Part 1



Part 2

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Eleven years before Walt Disney came up with its first animated feature film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed was made. The Adventures of Prince Achmed isn’t the first animated feature film made, but it is the oldest surviving animated film. Two other films, The Apostle and Without a Trace by Quirino Cristiani are considered to be lost.

The film uses Silhouette animation technique where the characters and other things appear dark while the background is light in color. The director of the film explains about how she animated her film using this Silhouette technique –

“…The technique of this type of film is very simple. As with cartoon drawings, the silhouette films are photographed movement by movement. But instead of using drawings, silhouette marionettes are used. These marionettes are cut out of black cardboard and thin lead, every limb being cut separately and joined with wire hinges. A study of natural movement is very important, so that the little figures appear to move just as men and women and animals do. But this is not a technical problem. The backgrounds for the characters are cut out with scissors as well, and designed to give a unified style to the whole picture. They are cut from layers of transparent paper.”

- Lotte Reiniger,Sight & Sound (1936).

The Adventures of Prince Achmed isn’t all about the effort put behind the animation and the technicalities. The story of the film is based upon the characters taken from different stories from the collection 1001 Arabian Nights and made into a fascinating tale on how Prince Achmed wins Princess Pari Banau from the evil African magician.

The film was full of imagination both in terms of story as well as the technique behind animation. Taking in different characters from different stories of Arabian Nights and making a good supernatural story with romance in it was a real treat. The film took 3 years to complete because of the animation technique, which required lots of effort to make the simple photographs of cardboard cutouts to appear in motion. The scenes are very much detailed and every movement is shown flawlessly and with lot of clarity. It was a lot more difficult to make the animation in those pre-computer days compared to today where we mostly make the animation digitally (I don’t mean digital animation is easy). It involved taking pictures of every frame of every movement a character or object is making and juxtapose them to make it appear in motion. Given that there are normally 25 frames a second, it means it required 25 different still photographs for every second of the film and putting them together with every photo differing very slightly from the previous one.

Read more from HERE

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Eleven years before Walt Disney came up with its first animated feature film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed was made. The Adventures of Prince Achmed isn’t the first animated feature film made, but it is the oldest surviving animated film. Two other films, The Apostle and Without a Trace by Quirino Cristiani are considered to be lost.

The film uses Silhouette animation technique where the characters and other things appear dark while the background is light in color. The director of the film explains about how she animated her film using this Silhouette technique –

“…The technique of this type of film is very simple. As with cartoon drawings, the silhouette films are photographed movement by movement. But instead of using drawings, silhouette marionettes are used. These marionettes are cut out of black cardboard and thin lead, every limb being cut separately and joined with wire hinges. A study of natural movement is very important, so that the little figures appear to move just as men and women and animals do. But this is not a technical problem. The backgrounds for the characters are cut out with scissors as well, and designed to give a unified style to the whole picture. They are cut from layers of transparent paper.”

- Lotte Reiniger,Sight & Sound (1936).

The Adventures of Prince Achmed isn’t all about the effort put behind the animation and the technicalities. The story of the film is based upon the characters taken from different stories from the collection 1001 Arabian Nights and made into a fascinating tale on how Prince Achmed wins Princess Pari Banau from the evil African magician.

The film was full of imagination both in terms of story as well as the technique behind animation. Taking in different characters from different stories of Arabian Nights and making a good supernatural story with romance in it was a real treat. The film took 3 years to complete because of the animation technique, which required lots of effort to make the simple photographs of cardboard cutouts to appear in motion. The scenes are very much detailed and every movement is shown flawlessly and with lot of clarity. It was a lot more difficult to make the animation in those pre-computer days compared to today where we mostly make the animation digitally (I don’t mean digital animation is easy). It involved taking pictures of every frame of every movement a character or object is making and juxtapose them to make it appear in motion. Given that there are normally 25 frames a second, it means it required 25 different still photographs for every second of the film and putting them together with every photo differing very slightly from the previous one.

Read more from HERE

Shrek 4 Trailer

Read more: http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/12/17/watch-this-first-official-shrek-forever-after-teaser-trailer/#ixzz0a2rv48Lf

Shrek 4 Trailer

Read more: http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/12/17/watch-this-first-official-shrek-forever-after-teaser-trailer/#ixzz0a2rv48Lf