Movies

Check out the fantastic short animated film Alma, which, as the title of this post suggests, concerns a creepy doll shop. The visuals are really amazing, and it's been described as a "Equal parts Pixar and The Twilight Zone." In fact, It's an independent film written and directed by Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas, who took time off to make Alma in his native Spain.

I won't write any more about it—you'll just have to watch and find out what happens. Apparently it will only be viewable on the Web for a short while, so watch it while you can. You can view the film here, after the jump.

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Ponyo is the English-language version of the 2008 Japanese film Gake no Ue no Ponyo (literally, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea), the latest creation of animation master Hayao Miyazaki. This movie is a rare creation: an art-house piece that's enthralling to both children and adults.

The plot revolves around Sosuke (voiced by Frankie Jonas), a young boy, and Ponyo (Noah Cyrus), the goldfish-like sea creature/little girl who befriends him and longs to become a real human. Sosuke and his mother (Tina Fey) live in a house on the seaside and await the return of his sea-captain father (Matt Damon, who doesn't have all that much to do). One day, the little boy happens upon a odd, small fish with a human-like face, whom he christens Ponyo. It turns out Ponyo can speak and has an extreme fondness for ham, but before long she's retrieved by her father, Fujimoto (voice of Liam Neeson), a formerly human magician who lives underwater and helps tend the environment, and has a really cool submarine powered by flippers.

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To cartoon or not?

I fondly remember E.B. White's classic book Charlotte's Web from my childhood, and of course also remember the animated movie that came out in the '70s. I figured that my son, who's about to turn 4, would love the new live action (as live action as a CG-heavy movie can really be) version that came out a while ago, so I added it to our Netflix queue. Meanwhile, my wife bought the DVD of the old animated version, so we had the opportunity to watch the two films back-to-back. Whoopee. Funny thing is, we only got about halfway through the new version, but we've watched the old animated one about, oh 823 times. What is it about animation that entrances kids so much? The movies are pretty much carbon copies of each other, although one lacks musical numbers. I guess there's just something incredibly appealing about cartoons. Perhaps it's the colors, or the simplification of form and setting that is necessitated by the medium.
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As my older child, now 3, has gained more and more awareness of the world around him, I'm constantly reminded of how many things in popular media are "too scary", which is to say, a lot of things. When they're babies and don't really understand what's going on you can sit around watching House of 1000 Corpses on DVD in the living room and it doesn't really faze them. Not that we ever did that or anything... really. But give it a year or two, and that'll change. The first time I noticed it is when on a visit to the grandparents my dad and I thought it would be a swell idea to watch Master and Commander on the big screen TV. Bad idea. At the first cannonball smashing through the Surprise's gun deck we hear a shriek that's not part of the soundtrack, that of a small child behind us: "TOO SCARY!" Off went the TV. From then on it's been a series of surprises in learning what exactly is too scary. An episode of The Simpsons, for example. Then there was the Three Little Pigs. He insisted on reading that story every night. This was fine for about two days, but eventually he started waking up in the middle of the night terrified of, not unsuprisingly, the Big Bad Wolf. Thus began our love-hate relationship with ol' Big Bad. Screams in the middle of the night would be followed by my wife asking "Did you read him that book again?"

At first I thought that he was being a bit oversensitive, but then when I thought back to what scared me when I was a kid, and how silly these things seem now, then I manage to understand a little more. Things that still exist with me to this day include something my parents were watching that I'm pretty sure at this point—we're going way back into the memory banks here—was an episode of the Avengers. Then there was this movie I saw on the airplane when I was maybe six or seven, and to this day I have no idea why my parents actually paid for the headset and all for me, really, that involved James Coburn and a bunch of commandos flying hang gliders to rescue a kidnapped family. I don't know what freaked me out more; the kidnapping by terrorists or all that orangey-red 70s-movie blood. That movie's stayed with me for thirty years. Amazingly, I ran across it on TV last week, totally by chance. I turned the thing on while I was getting ready for work and there it was, on AMC: Sky Riders with James Coburn, Robert Culp, and a bunch of Greek actors. And it was awful. I was scared by this?

Last story: When I was about 3, my dad and I watched the old 50s Harryhausen giant octopus flick It Came from Beneath the Sea. My mom, of course, being a mom, tried to dissuade us from watching on the grounds that it was, potentially, Too Scary. "No, it's fine" my dad said as we settled down in his easy chair to watch. And indeed we watched the whole thing, including the famous scene of the Golden Gate Bridge being pulled down of the octopus, without incident. Now, fast forward to several months later. We're cruising along in the family Volvo on our way to an outing in San Francisco. This of course involves crossing the Golden Gate Bridge (see above), since we lived in Marin. About mid span my parents here a shriek from the back seat, which (and I'm sure you've already guessed what it was about) went something like "THE OCTOPUS!!! THE OCTOPUS!!! TURN THE CAR AROUND!!! IT'S GOING TO GET US!!!" or something to that effect. Boy was my dad in trouble.