Bee Movie...BUZZ OFF!!!

[can-o-phish]

After the first minute of Seinfeld's constant nasal whining I knew I was in for a long and brutal movie trip...

IMO Bee Movie is THE WORST animation film by Dreamworks and any other studio to be released in years...

It seems to me that Seinfeld being the self-appointed king of comedy felt that anyone could write, produce and provide an entertaining voice personality...

WRONG!!!...think again Jerry...

The only thing that helped ease the pain of the 91 minutes of agony was that I paid the low price of $4.00 at Rainbow...but even that was too much for this piece of crap...

Just my opinion but if you're thinking about seeing this one, choose another and don't even bother renting when it hits the shelves...

[bouche]

oh no's!

I was really expecting seinfeld to come out on top here. The promo was so unorthodox that I was sure it would be surprisingly excellent.

I'm a Seinfeld fan. A solid one, but I guess his y image comes from.... well...the show. I don't want to see this at all for fear of losing my fanboyiness

[Jaimoe]

I'm going to rent it.

[Ms.Huxtable]

I didn't believe for one second that this would be a good movie. It's really too bad.

Seinfeld marketed the hell out it, and yes, it was done in some innovative ways, but to me, that meant that it needed to be sold that much, that it wasn't going to sell through word of mouth.

Season 9 of Seinfeld is selling now. I'll spend my money that way.

[jayr]

I went to see this with my daughter. I've seen worse movies.........

[Jaimoe]

If you haven't seen it yet, check out Brad Bird's late 90's animated masterpiece The Iron Giant (based on a poem by Ted Hughes). It's one of the best films of the 90's IMO. Bird directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille. The Iron Giant is done in the old drawn animated style instead of computer-animation like Pixar:

[Ol'Hickster]

I like the Iron Giant alot !

[Kanada Kev]

If you haven't seen it yet, check out Brad Bird's late 90's animated masterpiece The Iron Giant (based on a poem by Ted Hughes). It's one of the best films of the 90's IMO. Bird directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille. The Iron Giant is done in the old drawn animated style instead of computer-animation like Pixar:

Iron GIant is a FANTASTIC movie. I loved it (and have seen it a number of times). I didn't know that Increds and Ratatouille were all directed by the same guy. No wonder i love all three of those flicks.

I am pretty sure that in Iron Giant that they utilized computers for a number of aspects of the animation. Its just that it's not as noticeable since it blends into the style (like the kind they used in the Simpsons Movie or on opening sequence to Futurama, etc.)

[Jaimoe]

Yes, they do use computer for backgrounds and the like, but The Iron Giant was for sure hand-drawn. Incidently, Miyazaki's films are still 80% hand-drawn.

Edited November 18, 2007 by Guest

[Kanada Kev]

They did use CGI in Iron Giant ... but primarily for the Giant himself. They made the computer make it 'look' like it was hand-drawn though Check out this cool article on the making of the film:

http://irongiant.warnerbros.com/cmp/ig_how_movie.htm

A Rock and a Hard Place

The Iron GiantThe title character of the film, however, is made of metal, which posed an interesting challenge for the artists. Bird comments, "It is difficult for a human to draw a big, solid metallic object. Animators excel at drawing movement and living, fluid objects. The giant originates from a different world, so we chose to create the giant using computer animation, CGI, which would give him the mass and solidity and also give the impression that it’s from a different place. The separation between the 2D-animation and the CGI is something that helped establish the fish-out-of-water facet of the story."

Filmmakers took great care, however, to bring the giant into Hogarth’s world, not wanting the character to appear so foreign that it would not mesh into the scenes in and around Rockwell, Maine in 1957. Bird explains, "I gave the crew sort of an edict–imagine that this is 1940 during the golden age of animation. How would you draw something like this by hand? So we simplified the character’s shapes and also analyzed the qualities of hand-drawn animation versus computer animation, ultimately looking for ways to meld the two."

Animators knew that computer-generated lines are exact and lines rendered by hand are imperfect. ("We took months to create a computer program that actually wobbles the lines of the giant a bit–just enough so that it feels hand-drawn," adds Bird.) Existing special software was also extended and modified to accomplish a myriad of things–aiding in shading of the giant, varying the lightening and darkening of some frames and altering grain patterns–to affect the giant’s realistic inclusion in his strange new (and classically animated) world.

The Iron GiantThe first sketches of the giant were completed by Joe Johnston, who then worked with Bird and production designer Mark Whiting and supervising CGI animator Steve Markowski. Whiting shaped the giant’s look to match the bucolic landscapes he had meticulously designed for the film; Markowski brought the giant to life with movement. The giant designers also incorporated visual references from period sci-fi films, such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still," in creating their "homage" to the giant robots of the post-nuclear horror films.

"But there is also an innocence to the giant," counters Abbate. "His design is very simple and clean. We wanted him to appear almost like a baby at the beginning of the film. He’s a little bit like all of us–we all start out not knowing who we are, where we come from or why we’re here and we all have to choose our life path."

Someone else who contributed to the realization of the giant was artistic coordinator Scott Johnston, who drew on his extensive experience in computer graphics to help Bird and his staff of artistic supervisors solve the problems inherent in mixing classic animation with CGI.

"We wanted the giant to be an alien presence," offers Johnston. "We also wanted to keep the rigidity of his form, yet allow him to be able to express a wide range of emotions. He has a simple jaw shape that can’t really bend into a smile or a frown, but he has other ways of expressing thoughts and ideas through physical movements."

The Iron GiantEarly in the production, the filmmakers and staff had traveled to Maine to absorb the feel of the film’s setting. Abbate comments, "Brad liked Maine for its innocence, and we chose the time period because it was an era before people became jaded. Maine is rugged and beautiful, and graphically, a little stark. It is also a place and a time where you would be able to hide a big, giant robot in a small town and not have it discovered for a few days. We also wanted to set the story in the fall, starting with colorful foliage and ending with snow."

Filmmakers also looked to period artists, such as Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper and N.C. Wyeth, for their style and use of color. Period magazines, graphics and films were additional inspirations for the look of the film. The decision was also made to shoot the film in "wide screen," a format popularized in the 1950s.