For my money, McCracken's best directorial work is the feature-length "Destination: Imagination" episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Beautiful designs on a terrific, rule-bending canvas. (I'm perhaps biased, in that I think Foster's is a better show than Powerpuff Girls. But still.)
the Powerpuff dynamic lends itself far better to short bursts than on a broader canvas.
That's pretty common for animated TV in general; small-screen animation tends to be more open to risk and experimentation than mainstream cinema. SpongeBob and Teen Titans Go are more tonally tailored to 11-minute shorts than 90-minute films (though the films they've spawned were still pretty good).
Yo, rugman! Haven't seen you in a few millennia. Give me some tassel
Post by guttersnipe on Feb 28, 2020 16:23:30 GMT -8
For comparison's sake I've just been looking through the TSPDT Top 250 Directors list and the filmmakers who are best-known or only work in the field of shorts are Anger, Vigo, Melies and Brakhage, whereas prominent documentarians have about a dozen representatives (Herzog, Marker, Lanzmann, Varda, Errol Morris, Wiseman, Mekas, etc). Now, in all fairness, the list is compiled as a reflection of their 1,000 Films list, which itself is heavily weighted in favour of fiction features. But nevertheless I doubt most top directors lists will reflect music videos, commercials or television at all (presumably these are the "low arts"), whereas I personally couldn't possibly countenance their exclusion.
Last Edit: Feb 28, 2020 16:25:07 GMT -8 by guttersnipe
So I was a little bored lately (isn't everyone?) and decided to spin off my earlier "Best Animated Films of the Decade" list by making a similar one for the 2000s. (Wasn't sure if it was worthy of its own thread, so I decided to just continue this one - hope Guttersnipe doesn't mind.)
As with the previous list, the individual films are grouped by ten, and only the Top 10 are ranked. I'm also focusing only on theatrically-released films (which disqualifies Disney DTV releases like Cinderella III and Lion King 1 1/2 - both of which are still quite good!). I also tried not to let nostalgia cloud my biases, although it may have had some influence.
Without further preamble, here are my Top 50 animated films released between 2000 and 2009:
50-41:
9 Disney's A Christmas Carol Home on the Range Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius Meet the Robinsons The Polar Express The Powerpuff Girls Movie Robots The Secret of Kells Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
40-31:
Cars Flushed Away Hoodwinked! Horton Hears a Who! Howl's Moving Castle Monster House Rugrats in Paris: The Movie The Tigger Movie Treasure Planet The Wild Thornberrys Movie
30-21:
Corpse Bride The Emperor's New Groove Fantasia 2000* Happy Feet Millennium Actress Ratatouille Shrek Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Surf's Up
20-11:
Bolt Chicken Run Ice Age Monsters Inc. Persepolis The Princess and the Frog The Simpsons Movie Teacher's Pet The Triplets of Belleville Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Top 10:
10. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 9. Wall-E 8. Fantastic Mr. Fox 7. Spirited Away 6. Kung Fu Panda 5. The Incredibles 4. Lilo and Stitch 3. Finding Nemo 2. Coraline 1. Up
*Technically had its premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1999, but didn't go into wide-release till (as the title suggests) 2000, so I consider it a film of the Aughts.
(Wasn't sure if it was worthy of its own thread, so I decided to just continue this one - hope Guttersnipe doesn't mind.)
Absolutely fine; I've belonged to several fora over the years and never understood the big deal about threadnomancy - I think it grabs more attention and looks far better than a surfeit of short-lived topics.
Great to see Monster House there, though personally I'd have put it much higher ("Oh, you like the steel of my blade? It's so cold").
Monster House is a very weird film, but it's one of the better kid-oriented horror flicks I've seen and certainly one of the more imaginative. The motion-capture animation always struck me as a little distracting (similar to the Zemeckis films that use it) - never understood why they thought that mode of animation would go anywhere.
You might also notice that my Top 10 is heavily weighted toward the end of the decade. That's partly because there were some great animated films made in '08 and '09, of course, but I think it's also because it was around that time that I was beginning to really appreciate the medium as an art form.
Yo, rugman! Haven't seen you in a few millennia. Give me some tassel
So I was a little bored lately (isn't everyone?) and decided to spin off my earlier "Best Animated Films of the Decade" list by making a similar one for the 2000s. (Wasn't sure if it was worthy of its own thread, so I decided to just continue this one - hope Guttersnipe doesn't mind.)
As with the previous list, the individual films are grouped by ten, and only the Top 10 are ranked. I'm also focusing only on theatrically-released films (which disqualifies Disney DTV releases like Cinderella III and Lion King 1 1/2 - both of which are still quite good!). I also tried not to let nostalgia cloud my biases, although it may have had some influence.
Without further preamble, here are my Top 50 animated films released between 2000 and 2009:
50-41:
9 Disney's A Christmas Carol Home on the Range Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius Meet the Robinsons The Polar Express The Powerpuff Girls Movie Robots The Secret of Kells Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
40-31:
Cars Flushed Away Hoodwinked! Horton Hears a Who! Howl's Moving Castle Monster House Rugrats in Paris: The Movie The Tigger Movie Treasure Planet The Wild Thornberrys Movie
30-21:
Corpse Bride The Emperor's New Groove Fantasia 2000* Happy Feet Millennium Actress Ratatouille Shrek Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Surf's Up
20-11:
Bolt Chicken Run Ice Age Monsters Inc. Persepolis The Princess and the Frog The Simpsons Movie Teacher's Pet The Triplets of Belleville Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Top 10:
10. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 9. Wall-E 8. Fantastic Mr. Fox 7. Spirited Away 6. Kung Fu Panda 5. The Incredibles 4. Lilo and Stitch 3. Finding Nemo 2. Coraline 1. Up
*Technically had its premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1999, but didn't go into wide-release till (as the title suggests) 2000, so I consider it a film of the Aughts.
Wow, that's a pretty damn great list. I can't say that I disagree with anything in the Top 10....except for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs being 15 spots above Ratatouille. But yeah, I basically love every movie in the top 10. I am an Up stan as well.
“We've barely begun, and already this is the worst, unmitigated disaster of my career.” —Captain Rip Hunter.
Post by guttersnipe on Apr 27, 2020 3:58:13 GMT -8
Oh yeah, I forgot to say that I found The Lion King 1 1⁄2 surprisingly excellent, especially given the usual quality of the Disney straight-to-video sequels (Lilo & Stitch in particular yielded some massively disappointing follow-ups, all thin ideas and weak animation).
Wow, that's a pretty damn great list. I can't say that I disagree with anything in the Top 10....except for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs being 15 spots above Ratatouille. But yeah, I basically love every movie in the top 10. I am an Up stan as well.
I adore Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and have watched it multiple times since its premiere. It's a terrifically written and well-structured film that really teed up Lord and Miller for their later - and even better - work on Lego Movie and Spider-Verse (not to mention the Jump Street films). I still don't fully love Ratatouille, though I've warmed to it more over the years.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say that I found The Lion King 1 1⁄2 surprisingly excellent, especially given the usual quality of the Disney straight-to-video sequels (Lilo & Stitch in particular yielded some massively disappointing follow-ups, all thin ideas and weak animation).
I liked the Lilo & Stitch sequels (and TV series) in my youth, but looking back, they're rather disposable, with gimmicky plots and weak animation. And boy, does the Lilo/Nani relationship get the short shrift. But occasionally, the sequels do strike gold, like that Lion King spinoff or the Cinderella time-travel movie (which is much better than the description sounds).
Yo, rugman! Haven't seen you in a few millennia. Give me some tassel
Post by guttersnipe on Apr 30, 2020 12:58:24 GMT -8
So I figured I'd have a crack at this too, formatted in the same manner because individual ranking is tedious work. Eighty because I went overboard as usual:
80-71: Batman: Gotham Knight Brother Bear 2 Futurama: Bender's Game Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder Ice Age Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem 9 Origin: Spirits of the Past Renaissance Shrek 2
70-61: Cars Futurama: Bender's Big Score Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Hey Arnold! The Movie Piglet's Big Movie The Place Promised in Our Early Days The Tigger Movie Treasure Planet Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3
60-51: Finding Nemo Kronk's New Groove Metropolis Osmosis Jones Persepolis The Powerpuff Girls Movie The Road to El Dorado The Sky Crawlers Vexille The Wild Thornberrys Movie
50-41: Atlantis: The Lost Empire Chicken Run The Emperor's New Groove Ghost in the Shell 2 – Innocence Howl's Moving Castle The Lion King 1½ The Princess and the Frog Summer Wars Tokyo Godfathers Wave Twisters
40-31: Beowulf Bolt Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Corpse Bride Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs Monsters vs Aliens Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea Princess Ratatouille The Secret of Kells
30-21: The Animatrix Dead Leaves Enchanted 5 Centimeters per Second: A Chain of 9 Short Stories About Their Distances Genius Party Beyond The Haunted World of El Superbeasto Mary and Max. Paprika The Tales of the Magic Clock A Town Called Panic
20-11: Blood: The Last Vampire Coraline The Girl Who Leapt Through Time The Incredibles Kung Fu Panda Monster House Shrek The Simpsons Movie Waking Life Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Top 10: 10. Genius Party 9. Lilo & Stitch 8. Spirited Away 7. Monsters, Inc. 6. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie 5. WALL·E 4. Up 3. Millennium Actress 2. Mind Game 1. A Scanner Darkly
Incidentally, I'm not 100% sure on what IMDb considers animation; I checked on things like Speed Racer and Sin City which aren't included despite their all-CGI backgrounds. But films with rotoscoping (Linklater's, for example) are, so I figured maybe the line is drawn when it fully maps human beings or creatures (see "live-action" Disney), which is only partial in the case of, say, Avatar, but, this isn't true of Cats. Enchanted is included because whole sections are animated and they at times collide with the real world a la Roger Rabbit, but Kill Bill vol. 1 apparently doesn't count even though it contains an unmistakably "pure" cel sequence. Anyway, I just adhered to whatever the 'Db considered animation and left it at that.
So I figured I'd have a crack at this too, formatted in the same manner because individual ranking is tedious work. Eighty because I went overboard as usual:
80-71: Batman: Gotham Knight Brother Bear 2 Futurama: Bender's Game Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder Ice Age Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem 9 Origin: Spirits of the Past Renaissance Shrek 2
70-61: Cars Futurama: Bender's Big Score Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Hey Arnold! The Movie Piglet's Big Movie The Place Promised in Our Early Days The Tigger Movie Treasure Planet Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3
60-51: Finding Nemo Kronk's New Groove Metropolis Osmosis Jones Persepolis The Powerpuff Girls Movie The Road to El Dorado The Sky Crawlers Vexille The Wild Thornberrys Movie
50-41: Atlantis: The Lost Empire Chicken Run The Emperor's New Groove Ghost in the Shell 2 – Innocence Howl's Moving Castle The Lion King 1½ The Princess and the Frog Summer Wars Tokyo Godfathers Wave Twisters
40-31: Beowulf Bolt Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Corpse Bride Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs Monsters vs Aliens Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea Princess Ratatouille The Secret of Kells
30-21: The Animatrix Dead Leaves Enchanted 5 Centimeters per Second: A Chain of 9 Short Stories About Their Distances Genius Party Beyond The Haunted World of El Superbeasto Mary and Max. Paprika The Tales of the Magic Clock A Town Called Panic
20-11: Blood: The Last Vampire Coraline The Girl Who Leapt Through Time The Incredibles Kung Fu Panda Monster House Shrek The Simpsons Movie Waking Life Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Top 10: 10. Genius Party 9. Lilo & Stitch 8. Spirited Away 7. Monsters, Inc. 6. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie 5. WALL·E 4. Up 3. Millennium Actress 2. Mind Game 1. A Scanner Darkly
Incidentally, I'm not 100% sure on what IMDb considers animation; I checked on things like Speed Racer and Sin City which aren't included despite their all-CGI backgrounds. But films with rotoscoping (Linklater's, for example) are, so I figured maybe the line is drawn when it fully maps human beings or creatures (see "live-action" Disney), which is only partial in the case of, say, Avatar, but, this isn't true of Cats. Enchanted is included because whole sections are animated and they at times collide with the real world a la Roger Rabbit, but Kill Bill vol. 1 apparently doesn't count even though it contains an unmistakably "pure" cel sequence. Anyway, I just adhered to whatever the 'Db considered animation and left it at that.
Your lack of ParaNorman disturbs me. But that's two animation aficionados who also acknowledge that Up is a masterpiece!
“We've barely begun, and already this is the worst, unmitigated disaster of my career.” —Captain Rip Hunter.
30-21: The Animatrix Dead Leaves Enchanted 5 Centimeters per Second: A Chain of 9 Short Stories About Their Distances Genius Party Beyond The Haunted World of El Superbeasto Mary and Max. Paprika The Tales of the Magic Clock A Town Called Panic
Wow, I've seen only one entry in this section of the list, and it's a film that's 90% live-action.
Though you do raise a good question about what is considered an animated film. I think Enchanted doesn't have enough animation to qualify, while something like Osmosis Jones (which is over two-thirds cartoon) probably does. (Ironically, Osmosis Jones would probably have made my list if not for the unfunny live-action scenes, which really drag down the superior animated ones.)
Anyhow, looking over the remaining 70 films (of which I've seen about 45), it's an impressive list. I mean, it kind of hurts to see Monsters vs. Aliens ahead of Finding Nemo, Persepolis, et al., but there's a wonderful variety of great films to compensate. And yeah, granting entry to non-theatrical films does open the field up quite a bit. (I didn't love the Futurama films - the show always worked better in 22-minute bites - but they're above-average by adult animation standards.)
I take it you didn't care for Fantastic Mr. Fox? I know Wes Anderson's not your favorite director, but I was surprised to see it absent from a Top 80.
Yo, rugman! Haven't seen you in a few millennia. Give me some tassel
Your lack of ParaNorman disturbs me. But that's two animation aficionados who also acknowledge that Up is a masterpiece!
ParaNorman came out in 2012, so it wouldn't be eligible for a 2000s list. But if you go back to the first page of this thread, Snipe gave it a mention.
Yo, rugman! Haven't seen you in a few millennia. Give me some tassel
As much as I like Up!, I think I'd probably rank it higher if it were a 40-minute short. A fair amount of the standard animal hijinks on the island do nothing for me. That opening montage is brilliant, though.
I'd also have Mary & Max somewhere on a Top-30 list. It's rather despondent in nature, but pretty original.
ETA: Heh. Just noticed Snipe DOES have M&M in his third tier.
Last Edit: Apr 30, 2020 17:01:09 GMT -8 by ThirdMan
I've got the wit of the staircase with atomic clock precision.
Your lack of ParaNorman disturbs me. But that's two animation aficionados who also acknowledge that Up is a masterpiece!
ParaNorman came out in 2012, so it wouldn't be eligible for a 2000s list. But if you go back to the first page of this thread, Snipe gave it a mention.
Oh, yeah. For some reason I thought we were doing 21st century, not 2000s. Even though you wrote otherwise just yesterday. My brain is fried right now.
“We've barely begun, and already this is the worst, unmitigated disaster of my career.” —Captain Rip Hunter.
I mean, it kind of hurts to see Monsters vs. Aliens ahead of Finding Nemo, Persepolis, et al., but there's a wonderful variety of great films to compensate.
I take it you didn't care for Fantastic Mr. Fox? I know Wes Anderson's not your favorite director, but I was surprised to see it absent from a Top 80.
I just found Monsters vs Aliens hilarious ("Don't think of this as a prison. Think of it as a hotel you never leave because it's locked from the outside"), though that might be because I've got a real soft spot for parodies of 50s sci-fi and horror. I even managed to charm a friend with it who was always a bit apprehensive about "kids' films".
Whereas Nemo never quite struck me right - Nemo himself disappears so early on that I don't feel the drama is really earned, and I don't fathom the logic of getting Albert Brooks in (possibly the funniest voice actor ever) and then outsourcing the comedy to Ellen DeGeneres and smirk-at-best stuff like the stoner turtles and "Mine!" seagulls, which felt to me like the sort of thing I'd expect from some of the lazier DreamWorks titles of the same era. Also, and I'm aware it's unavoidable, but there's so much water it means there's little to look at around the characters.
Persepolis has a great deal to recommend it, but I was slightly worn down by the listlessness of the dramatic structure - every scene seems geared to emphasise a personal hope or desire smacking into some form of oppression, to the point where it feels like a series of vignettes that could occur in almost any order, like My Neighbours the Yamadas, where that made more sense given its origin as a Peanuts-style strip.
And I am actually very big on Wes Anderson, but he's so idiosyncractic that Fantastic Mr. Fox felt like an odd fit of two warring sensibilities, not dissimilar to the same year's Where the Wild Things Are. I watched it in the cinema and remember there being a kind of weird energy in the room, like people weren't quite sure what to find funny or even what age group it was aimed at, if any. Basically I appreciated the characteristic cross-sections and not so much the characters.
And I only just realised that Waltz with Bashir is totally missing from my film log for some reason - imagine that's in the 31-40 bracket. I could almost guarantee that you'd enjoy A Town Called Panic, by the way - you could probably use it to convey the definition of whimsy to somebody just learning English. It's probably the best film in which a cowboy and Indian accidentally order fifty million bricks before they're stolen by sea monsters, leading to an adventure that prevents a horse getting on with his piano lessons.
Anyone else keep seeing adverts to donate for Ramadan??
Last Edit: May 1, 2020 0:58:28 GMT -8 by guttersnipe