i want an easter egg!

Much fun was had at this morning's Easter Egg hunt.

rise of the guardians and the rise of william joyce

We saw Rise of the Guardians over the holiday weekend. It was beautifully animated, more than a little frenetic, but intriguing. The kid loved it. I enjoyed most of it. Like the equally super-charged The Avengers, I find fight scenes in movies to always be a little too fast-paced and blurry and a little too long in length. I was going to say in animated as well as live-action movies, but lets face it, with so much CGI these days most fight scenes in the movies are 90% computer animated anyway.

Jack Frost just wants to have fun

The story is a standard good vs. evil battle. The very not-nice Pitch (Jude Law), or the Boogeyman, as most have come to call him, is tired of being shunned and ignored and is plotting to turn every human's, and especially children's, dreams into nightmares. The Guardians are a group of beings whose express mission is to protect children. Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), The Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), and The Sandman have come together to decide how to deal with Pitch when the Man in the Moon chooses a new Guardian, Jack Frost (Chris Pine). Jack is not only reluctant to join the crew, but is unsure of who he is and his real purpose. Maybe The Guardians aren't so different from those other super heroes, The Avengers, after all.

Kids will connect to the lonely Jack and love the other Guardians, especially boisterous Santa, his goofy elves, and the guys who apparently do the real work at the North Pole, the Yeti. Parents and guardians will like the slightly darker tone of the story and its imagery. Santa has "Naughty" tattooed on one forearm and "Nice" on the other. The Easter Bunny lives in a warren with monolithic sculptural eggs. The Tooth Fairy is unnaturally knowledgeable about Jack's and everyone's flossing habits. The voice actors for the most part have a lot of fun with their characters and their enthusiasm carries through to the audience. Pine does a nice job as Jack. Baldwin sports a Russian accent for his boisterous Santa. Hugh Jackman gets most of the laughs with his down-under kangaroo — I mean bunny. Jude Law is appropriately menacing as Pitch. Isla Fisher is fine as the Tooth Fairy, but her voice isn't very remarkable or memorable — it's not likely that the audience would recognize her the way they might have if the character was voiced by someone with a more distinctive voice like Reese Witherspoon.

The all-embracing Santa and his sidekicks, the Yeti

After watching Rise of the Guardians I was interested enough to find out a little bit more about it and its author, William Joyce. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I am already familiar with quite a bit of Joyce's work, and am now eager to see and read more. He is the co-director of the lovely animated and Oscar-winning short, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. He is one of the founders of Louisiana-based Moonbot Studios, which produced Lessmore. He has also written several books which have been adapted into films, including Meet the Robinsons and Robots. The upcoming Epic (which we are really looking forward to seeing) is based on his book The Leaf Men.

Coincidentally I had picked up the first book this summer in the Guardians series at a library book sale, Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King. The kid and I had not gotten around to reading it yet. After seeing Rise of the Guardians I zipped through it in two afternoons, deciding to read it first before handing it over to my daughter. We'll probably end up reading it together. It shares some similarities with the film, as Pitch is still the main villain, but it is more of an origin story for Santa Claus, or the bandit Nicholas St. North as he was once known. There are hints of everything from The Wizard of Oz to Harry Potter in the book, but kids should enjoy it and its heroine, Katherine, a young girl who joins Nicholas and the wizard Ombric on an adventure. Joyce has followed it up with E. Aster Bunnymund and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth's Core! which also looks like a lot of fun.

The Easter Bunny can be tough when he wants to be

I'm happy to be getting to see more work from Joyce and his partners in crime (in the case of Rise of the Guardians, Guillermo del Toro). And I like how he talks and thinks about projects:

The idea of developing a feature, as just a feature, seems kind of limiting. You could develop it as a book, and develop it as an app, and get its — see how it’s working, and see if the designs are appealing. And get it out there, get a sense of people’s response to it, and not just stay cloaked behind a veil of secrecy. Back in the day, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, a lot of those — and Chaplin — they would take their ideas, and take them on the stage first. They’d go and play, evolve those ideas, see how the audience responded to what they were working on, and get a sense of how the story, ideas, the gags and things would work, before they go into production on a film. We’re finding the equivalent of that, you know, now with apps and other technologies. It’s kind of exciting.

DreamWorks's animated films just keep geting better and better looking, and Rise of the Guardians takes viewers through environments that are visual knock-outs. It's a fun movie, if a bit frenetically paced. There are likely to be a sequel or two. Hopefully the filmmakers will slow things down enough for the audience to take in all the pretty pictures.

Sources:

A113 Animation, "Interview: William Joyce, Moonbot Studios Co-Founder and Co-Director of Morris Lessmore"

easter egg hunt

We went to the Flagler Museum's annual Easter Egg Hunt again this year. The easter Bunny was also in attendance,

Waiting for the hunt to begin, bubbles were blown.

Once the hunt began it was joyful mayhem.

The intrepid egg hunter with her bounty harvest.

Happy Easter!

easter without ann

I was thinking about my cousin Ann the other day while I was at the mega-store picking up some groceries. Are grocery stores the next thing to disappear as it becomes easier to pick things up like bread and juice, etc. while at Target or Walmart? Anyway, in the supermarket section there were all of these vegetable balloons. No Disney or other overly-marketed characters. Vegetables. It made me smile and think of Ann. As an herbalist and endless proponent of the wonders of vegetables she would have been thrilled, and I'm sure, bought them all on the spot (whether they were for sale or not — I suspect their purpose was decorative).

But being Easter week, I was already thinking about Ann.

Last Easter, Ann's last Easter, we spent it together, as we usually did. I suggested that Ann, who was also one of my daughter's godmothers, take her to church with her, if she felt up to it. Ann's cancer had spread and she was in the last stages of her illness. She was in constant pain, but she was thrilled to be able to share this experience with her godchild. She even provided a suitable Easter bonnet.

I'm not much of a participant in organized religion, but I do create my own rites and rituals. I believe in a higher power and celebrate the major Christian holidays (I was raised Episcopalian), but most of my deepest religious feelings have occurred contemplating art, both European and ancient, or visiting churches, cathedrals or other amazing historical architecture like the Pyramids.

As an adult, Easter was a holiday I always shared with Ann. Pre-mommyhood, the two of us would do some ritual/renewal sort of thing (after she got back from church), like visit a garden or some other similarly beautiful spot and then have a big Easter lunch at a local Greek restaurant. We loved the blood-red eggs and the breaking plates and the sense of celebration. Once my daughter was born we still continued going to the restaurant, but also dyed eggs together and enjoyed watching my daughter try to find where the Easter Bunny had hidden them. And we probably ate a bit more chocolate, too.

I feel that Ann is still a part of my life, but I can't pretend that without her here Easter just isn't the same. My daughter is still young enough to enjoy things like Easter Egg hunts and the Easter Bunny. The Ten Commandments will still run every year on television and I'll probably watch part (or most) of it. I know that today is a day when most are thinking about everlasting life and resurrection. But for me, the all-too-human reality of a life lost, and how daily life must shift and change to accomodate that sadness, a sadness that never really leaves you — that's what I'm thinking about on this Easter.

i wanna easta egg, i wanna easta egg, i wanna easta egg!

We went to the easter egg hunt on the Flagler Museum front lawn this morning. Looks like the Easter Bunny sent Bugs down here to stand in for him. Or else he took a wrong turn at Albuquerque ...

It was utter mayhem when they let the kids loose to get eggs, but fun to watch.

There were some nice give-aways and even some downtime to blow bubbles.

Happy Easter!

Bugs Bunny in Easter Yeggs

hop

Article first published as Movie Review: Hop (2011) on Blogcritics.



Hop is cute. It's the most expected, yet most accurate word to describe it. It's not the best animation in the world, not as intricate or interesting as Rango, although the detailed hair on the fuzzy bunny and feathery down on the chicks is really good. It's visibly much better to look at than the animation in soon-to-be-released Rio, which was previewed. But neither the kid nor I seemed interested in seeing that one, while an adult seated behind us was inexplicably laughing at every lame joke in the two-minute trailer. Oh well. But back to Hop.

The movie has some wonderful actors, in body and in voice. James Marsden, who can pretty much do anything — musical (Hairspray, Enchanted), rom-com (27 Dresses), action (X Men 1,2,3), thriller (The Box), farce (Death at a Funeral) — was appealing as the aimless son of an ambitious father who once caught a glimpse of the Easter Bunny when he was young and for whom nothing has seemed as exciting since. I want to say that the guy should work more, but his resume shows his versatility and steady stream of work, so maybe not being the biggest star out there is suiting him just fine.

Hank Azaria, who does the voice of fuzzy chick and arch villain Carlos and his dance-happy sidekick Phil has a blast and gets many of the best one-liners. Gary Cole, who is a master of the slow burn and switcheroo plays Marsden's disappointed dad. In the parallel animated roles Hugh Laurie is the Easter Bunny who can't understand why his son would rather play drums than inherit the color- and candy-saturated family business, and Russell Brand is his son, E.B.

Brand is beyond hot right now, with Arthur hot on the tail of Hop, opening next week. Hop's humor is frequently sarcastic. In fact, many of the jokes may sail over kiddies heads, but they'll get the attitude, which is not too far from another famous bunny, Bugs. Brand is very good as the voice of E.B. His obnoxious yet sometimes sweet-at-times persona comes through.


Hop is basically an Odd Couple coming-of-age comedy. It's predictable, but kids like predictable. It's also got the Hoff (David Hasselhoff), which is perplexing, but somehow O.K. When I asked my daughter after we left the theater if she liked the movie, she echoed the Hoff in his scene after hearing E.B. play on the drums, "I didn't like it, I loved it." Not a surprise, as she really liked Alvin and the Chipmunks, by the same director, Tim Hill. I found that movie annoying and this one amusing. I think it's due to better casting. And also that the bunnies don't speak in electronic falsetto.