Anomalisa is a Movie that is Playing in a Theater Somewhere

So I saw this movie the other day. It's called Anomalisa. If you haven't heard of it, check it out. It was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. If you haven't heard of him, check him out. Because he and his work... well, it's definitely out there.

Anomalisa is a stop motion animated film that follows protagonist Michael Stone as he travels to Cincinnati to his latest book at a hotel service convention. The story is extraordinarily simple. Michael checks into his hotel. He meets a girl. And he falls in love with her. It's basically a 90 minute movie about a one night stand.

But, if you know anything about Kaufman, you'll know that things are never that simple. Every character that Michael perceives in the movie has the same voice and the same face (whether they are male or female, they are voiced by Tom Noonan). This is an extremely original and clever way of showing Michael's inability to connect to anyone.

But when he meets Lisa, he's immediately attracted. Why? Because Lisa doesn't sound like everybody else (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh). She doesn't look like everybody else. She's her own person.

Finally, somebody different. Somebody unique. Somebody to make a connection with. Right?

I don't want to give anything away, so I will say no more. But I highly recommend this film. I don't remember a film that made me feel so many different feelings all at once like this film did. So go out and see Anonalisa.

Supporting Characters Are Sometimes The Best Characters

I have recently noticed within a couple of different movies that people talk more about the supporting characters than the main characters that the story is placed around. The most recent movie I have noticed this in was the Disney animation film Frozen.

I was watching Frozen for the seventeenth time with roommate and she stated that she really just watches the movie for Olaf, who is the snowman in the movie. Every single time I have seen this movie I fall more and more in love with him. He is just so funny and entertaining, to be honest I really watch the movie for him as well. There are also other supporting characters like Kristoff and Sven who just make the movie amazing. They add so much to the film. Without them the film would be a good story, but very little entertainment. When you search the best scenes from Frozen, the majority of the clips that are chosen contain these three supporting characters. Here is proof!

The same thing with the Despicable Me movies, both the first one and the second one. While I love the movies as a whole I really watch the movies for the minions and the three little girls they are adorable! After watching the second movie I realized that they really created it around the minions. There was a lot action from the minions and the little girls.

 So with all that being said there are many movies that I have seen where the supporting characters are better then the actual main characters. Supporting characters are my favorite characters!

Disney's New Short "Get A Horse!"

Having seen Disney's Frozen three times in the week and a half that it has been out in theaters, I am very clearly obsessed. But instead of raving over how many boundaries it broke in the Disney sphere, I'm focusing this post on the short that proceeds: Get a Horse! As I mentioned in my last post, although Frozen is the first Disney film directed by a women, Jennifer Lee is one of two directors. The second director is a man. However, Lauren MacMullan of Get a Horse! is the first woman to single handedly direct a Disney production. Now let's be honest, Disney short films have a strong reputation of being wonderful. And in my opinion, MacMullan held her own.

My favorite part of Get a Horse! is that it reminded me a lot of one of my favorite movies, The Purple Rose of Cairo. In the Woody Allen romantic comedy set in the 30s, Jeff Daniels plays a movie character that walks out of the screen and into the real world. Similar to this concept, Micky Mouse breaks through the movie screen in Get a Horse! and plays between the two worlds.

Both pieces of work use color to differentiate between the worlds. I remember loving the idea of a character from a black and white film emerging into the colorful real world when I first saw the movie. Get a Horse! also did a great job contrasting the black and white screen with the colorful real world as a means to tell the story. MacMullan took it even further though when Mickey breaks through the screen and into the real world. He actually breaks the screen, ripping a hole in it. And through that hole, we can see the world inside the screen in color. I thought the idea was a very clever add on to the use of color in The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Six More Days Until 'Frozen'

On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the newest Disney animated film Frozen will be released in theaters. It will be the third movie I see in theaters this break, after Catching Fire (which was amazing) and Thor: The Dark World (which I hope will be amazing). But still, I have decided it is worth becoming broke over. And here is why.

For the first time in history, a woman is directing an animated Disney feature. Screenwriter Jennifer Lee is doing the honors and I must say, it sounds like she did a killer job. Animation has a male-dominated industry for decades and this is the start of an era of female creative leadership. However, animation does not differ that much from the overall Hollywood breakdown of directors by gender.

One of the major perks of a female director is the perspective that she can add to the story and animation. Frozen is a Disney rendition of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale The Snow Queen. The story revolves around the struggles between two princess sister, Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell) and Elsa (voice by Idena Menzel) in a fictional Nordic kingdom. With Lee's perspective impacting the sister conflict, reviews claim the sister relationship is relatable. Lee's goal was to humanize Anna and I'm excited to find out how she tried to do it.