Sunday, July 29, 2007

Comic-Con '07: Toon Up

The latest crop of animation ranges from the "wow" to the "whatever":

- The new teaser for Blue Sky's Horton Hears a Who starts out impressive ... until the elephant opens his mouth and out comes Jim Carrey. And it just goes further downhill once you hear the Who, and it's Steve Carell. I swear, what happened to the good old days when the most famous person in an animated film was Thurl Ravenscroft? And aren't Dr. Seuss characters supposed to speak in rhyme?

- I'm still not sold on this whole mo-cap thing. Tell me, what is the point of making animation so photo-realistic, as in the Beowulf trailer, instead of just doing it in live action?

- In the paw steps of Garfield and Underdog comes Alvin and the Chipmunks ... and they don't look much better.

- The Weinsteins are trying to get their feet wet in animation with Igor, a computer animated comedy that sounds like warmed-over Shrek leftovers. And, yes, it will have a star-studded cast (sigh), including the recently added Eddie Izzard, replacing Jeremy Piven as a mad scientist.

- And the film that will likely be more entertaining then these other four combined, Pixar's WALL·E, was presented at Comic-Con by its director, Andrew Stanton (who won the Oscar for Finding Nemo). Hopes are high for this one, and from what has been said about it, it looks to be another winner. Plus, the title character doesn't speak like a famous person.

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