More linkage for a Spring day.
Green Froggy, per Home Media Magazine, came in #2 against Twilight: New Moon:
... Walt Disney Studios’ The Princess and the Frog, rode its $104.3 million box office gross to a No. 2 debut on both sales charts. Nielsen research shows that 17% of the weekend sales tally for New Moon came from the Blu-ray Disc, while Princess generated 22% of its first-week sales from Blu-ray. ...
Forbes magazine tells which voice actors are hot in feature animation (like we didn't know?):
... When a studio can combine a popular lead vocal actor with a rich box office, a sequel can't be far behind. ... Jack Black is preparing to bring the thunder once again with a sequel to DreamWorks Animation's 2008 film Kung Fu Panda. Black also starred in the less successful 2004 film Shark Tale, which also featured Will Smith. Black's films have earned an average $500 million at the worldwide box office and he was featured in an average 2,000 press clippings around his movies....
Market Watch expounds on DreamWorks Animation's marketing partnership:
... The dragon's share, or 95% of [How to Train Your Dragon's] merchandise, will be exclusive to Wal-Mart, not just the crimson cookies. And Katzenberg considers this type of pact essential as DreamWorks faces an increasingly competitive future in animated features.
"Having these kinds of retail partnerships is part of our future," the movie studio chief (DWA 44.00, +1.59, +3.75%) told MarketWatch. "You have to be innovative today. You have to find new ways to do business. To us this is a unique opportunity."...
Dean DeBlois (co-director of How to Train Your Dragon) is one of those "work from home" kind of animation employees.
"The Pacific Northwest is definitely my preferred place to work from," said DeBlois ... "We share the same time zone. I can hop on a plane and be there in two hours. It actually works out really well."
Cinema Blend compares DreamWorks Animation's output to Pixar's ... and comes down in favor or DWA:
... When you enter Pixar world, you enter a world of smoothness, of class, of originality that's been polished to a sheen. DreamWorks is a much shaggier operation, which explains why many of their films have been outright disasters, but also how they create some of the weirdest, and funniest, films out there. ...
The Daily Telegraph informs us that The Simpsons influence on the Mother Tongue has been profound:
Homer Simpson's catchphrase "D'oh!" has been voted the greatest contribution made by the famous yellow cartoon family to the English language.
It came top in a survey of international linguists marking 20 years of The Simpsons, the world’s longest-running sitcom.
"D'oh!" beat other much loved words and phrases from the programme including "eat my shorts", "don't have a cow" and “craptacular”.
The exclamation has already been officially recognised and was added to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary ...
Newsweek questions the depth of humor of Adult Television cartoons:
The ‘South Park’ Death Knell? ...Why topical, weekly humor shows must adapt, or face the wrath of the channel-change button.
To deflate pomposity is the raison d'être of the modern nighttime cartoon. All the heavyweights—The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, not to mention the Adult Swim universe—revel in zealously ridiculing athletes, politicians, and pop icons, or anyone who can be treated like a piñata without inviting a lawsuit.
But there's often a disconnect between the large game and the satirical cartoon's ability to accurately target it ....
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13 comments:
Of the three, SP is still the closest that approximates actual satirical humor. (As opposed to now harmless Simpsons episodes that try to apologize for most of their 90's episodes, and FG episodes that could be medically studied for Life With ADD.)
Problem is, the creators have been at it too long: The rush to get satire out while the headlines are still in the papers has reduced the show to a mechanical fill-in-the-blanks formula--Pick one from Column A: Today's headline, Column B: Annoying trend, Column C: Recent-movie parody.
(Try the formula yourself, and see which plots you come up with!...They won't be far off.)
It used to be fresh to hear an occasional un-PC word that the news wasn't saying--But like most atheist comics, the rush to "protect our easily-deluded people from their own folly" eventually gives up and shrugs them off, and now just tries to shock with current-obituary-headline jokes like any junior-high Internet troll.
"Dead DeBlois"? Let's hope that's a typo.
"Atheist comics?" What?
Not to go off on hot-button topics, but it's no secret where Stone/Parker and Matt Groening stand on belief issues, which attracted them to "edgy" comedy in the first place.
The pitfall, however, is that their terror of people being "fooled" tends to lead to a general phobic, and almost bigoted fear of a mindless public they see in the CNN headlines every night, and that it must be all those anonymous right-wing Bible Belt red-staters under Bush who were the ones sending the country to rack and ruin.
As a result, the humor tends to become more and more disgruntled that it can't "snap" the public back to its senses singlehandedly, and eventually isolates itself into solo bitterness as wiseguy Shock Gadfly-At-Large.
Much of SP's satire of public post-9/11 terrorist-panic (such as the "Imagination-Land" storyline) occasionally made some good points about our almost wanting to cling to our own boogey-fears of Iraqi bombers under the bed and what that strips away from our own rational outlook...But when it comes out of an overall dismissal of an unseen public in general, the satire becomes less pointed and more of just the creators' own skewed public tantrums.
Maybe its because making fun of the religious isnt funny anymore.
Kind of like the rule where its not funny or polite to call a retard a retard.
"Dead DeBlois"? Let's hope that's a typo
Now corrected.
Astro Boy debuted on the DVD sales top 10 too! Yeeesssss!!!!
And while that's a slam at Posters Who Shall Not Be Named, have to admit, Astro Boy was surprisingly pretty good for an indie feature, for not coming out of the Big Three:
Like a certain OTHER persecuted box-office disappointment selling quite nicely on home video, had a little more character appeal and intelligence than expected, and losing Imagi seemed like we lost a few other quality cult pop-icon projects that could have been.
Oh well, there's still always the rental.
"Maybe its because making fun of the religious isnt funny anymore."
Oh yes it is. No "imaginary person in the guy" or people who choose to fool themselves into believing it is going to scare ME into not making fun of such an offensive, ignorant belief!!
That is the new way, work from home or the state you wish to live in and do it long distance. Dean is doing what more and more people are doing in the industry. Even better if you can avoid living in a highly taxed state.
The actual target of SP-style satire is pretension, self importance and pomposity, no matter what the source.
If it's politicians, they are the subject. If it's the church, or any other institution, then they become the targets. That's how it works. Everyone and everything is fair game. If you are honest, objective and secure, then you won't be offended. You'll just laugh. If you are offended, maybe a little self examination is in order. Don't blame the satirist.
"Green Froggy, per Home Media Magazine, came in #2 against Twilight: New Moon."
I looked at the link from Home Media Magazine . It doesn't list how much money the films made from DVD/BluRay sales, but rather lists an Index share. What does that mean in terms of dollars ? PATF had 64.97 Index for week ending 3/21/10 . So, how much money did it make with a "64.97 index" ?
I took it as a good sign last week that when I was looking around to buy the BluRay/DVD combo package for PATF that it was SOLD OUT at every store I went to. Finally got it yesterday as my local Best Buy has it back in stock.
it probably sold 64.97% of what the number 1 (100%) sold...
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