So, Annika and I have a new favorite show.
You can keep Lost and Galactica and 24 and Arrested Development and Scrubs; give us more of The Upside Down Show.
This Austrailian co-production of the Sesame Workshop just started running on Noggin a couple weeks ago, but we were sucked in by the teaser clips last month.
The show is the brainchild of Austrailian comic team, Umbilical Brothers and I would describe it as a combination of Pee Wee's Playhouse, The Ernie Kovacs Show, Sifl and Ollie and Joel Hodgson's TV Wheel special. It's wacky and zany and uses lots of in-camera effects instead of digital effects. Shane and David combine physical/visual comedy with puns and wordplay. Oh, and no talking down to kids, either. Like Pee Wee and TMBG, these guys began as performers for adult audiences who realized that it would be fun to do something..."you know, for kids!"
During the opening of the show, Shane and David hand an invisible remote control to kids through the TV screen. Throughout the show they ask kids to help by pressing certain buttons. You know: play, rewind, pause, stumble, dark, upside down, and humungous. Just set it to record on your DVR, or remember to watch it when you're home sick.
Did I mention it also has a puppet name Puppet...and schmuzzies. Schmuzzies!
Now, can you please press the "play" button on your remote?
I did not have terribly high hopes for Monster House. It's one of those movies like Shrek and Superman and Curious George, that came thorugh the ILM Art Department long ago, but didn't seem like they would ever get made. In around 2000, Brian O'Connell and a few other artists at ILM did some great concept art for an ILM bid to do the effects work on what was at that point a live-action film. Long-time ILM visual effects supervisor Eric Brevig was slated to direct.
Frankly, at the time, a movie about kids discovering that a house in their neighborhood was alive and demonic seemed kind of lame. Brian (and Derek and Benton?) did some nice art of the house becoming anthropomorphic, and I could almost see it working. But in my mind it ws still kind of like Fright Night or Salem's Lot with just the evil house, and no vampire inside. Making a house come to life and grin menacingly while still being a believable house would be technically doable by ILM, but conceptually it didn't seem to mesh. Wouldn't anyone else hear or see a freakin' house come to life?
I think Garfield is a good example of what I feared would happen to a live-action Monster House. "Why is this one cat a cartoon character? Why is no one (including a veterenarian) noting the anatomical differences between this cat and all other cats and animals?" That discontinuity between styles would similarly pull you out of the movie (assuming you were ever pulled into the movie).
But, someone at Sony/Columbia or Amblin or ImageMovers made an excellent call and decided to proceed with the film as a digital feature, unifying its look and taking some of the pressure of reality off of the story. While it does have some faults, what resulted is a highly enjoyable movie.
Monster House not only takes place in the 80's, but is firmly rooted there cinematically. The combination of filmmakers who grew up with the horror comedies of the time with the oversight of executive producers Zemekis and Spielberg make this an unusual period picture. It feels like Gremlins, and Explorers, and The Gate, E.T. and the aforementioned Fright Night. I want to avoid adding Goonies and The Burbs to that list because those movies didn't quite work for me, but there is definitely a connection to those films as well. Monster House is a classic, Reagan-Era, smart kids in trouble with the supernatural/extraterrestrial, movie with the distance of two decades. For Generation-X, the 80's were a simpler, more innocent time. The 80's are our 50's.
I'll discuss the "performance capture" aspect of Monster House in detail in the post-review, but I feel compelled to at least let you know before you see it that it works. Some folks might be put off from this movie because they had a bad experience watching the "zombie kids" in Polar Express, which used a similar technique. The difference is that Monster House is stylized, whereas Polar Express was striving (and missed) a sort of magical realism. Captuing the motion of real actors and blending that with "hand" animation works in this movie. It's not perfect, but it's not distracting or creepy. We're at the very beginning of a new medium and Monster House uses it very well to tell a story that would not have worked as live action.
...we'll talk more in the post-review after you see the movie (or decide you never will).
So, I'm in LA for the Visual Effects Society's annual Festival of Visual Effects. Last night I was driving back to my hotel and contemplating where to grab dinner on the way home (there are some restaurants in LA). I missed a turn and was on Culver Blvd. a bit longer than planned and saw...Trader Joe's!
I did a u-turn and went shopping for dinner. It was 100% nostalgia fest: Thin Pizzas from the refrigerated section with Taziki. This was an old lunch standby for me at ILM. I love Savannah, but TJ's is something I really miss from California. I have been going there since 1987. I remember the old "laneless" store layouts. I remember when they actually rang the bells at checkout.
I didn't feel homesick for the West Coast until I stepped into TJ's...but I did kinda feel like I was cheating on Publix.
