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Video: Cool animation in search of a movie
The computer-animated Final Fantasy doesn't get any better with a second look.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 25, 2001
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (PG-13)
[Columbia Pictures]
Ming Na provides the voice of Dr. Aki Ross in a film based on the Final Fantasy video game series. |
The popular video game series moves to the silver screen, completely animated by computers, even the human-looking actors. The plot is standard eco-science fiction about space phantoms sucking the life force from Earthlings. Dr. Aki Ross (voice of Ming Na) is infected, but her dreams hold the key to saving humanity. Other dubbers include Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi and Donald Sutherland.
First impressions: "(Director Hironobu) Sakaguchi occasionally devises a sequence that delivers on the potential of computerized hyper-reality. A cybersurgery procedure is fascinating, and a wild buggy ride through Old New York City to escape phantoms is a doozy. Yet, we're stalled from total belief by admiring the tricks' perfection and wondering if someone like James Cameron could have done the same thing with real props and sets. Usually, the answer is yes."
Second thoughts: Not even sci-fi geeks embraced this one.
Rental audience: People who know how to say "cool" in Klingon.
Rent it if you enjoy: Anime adventures, video games.
Bad plot still overwhelms good effects
Dr. Dolittle 2 (PG-13)
Eddie Murphy returns as a kind-hearted veterinarian who speaks with his patients and any other critters crossing his path. This time, he's trying to make a love connection between a pair of bears to prevent the destruction of a forest.
First impressions: "It's difficult not to admire the technological achievement of making animals appear as if they're talking to Dolittle. The effect is even more impressive than it was in the 1998 film. . . . Maybe next time, Levin or another writer will come up with a story as accomplished as the technology." (Philip Booth, Times correspondent)
Second thoughts: Has anyone stopped to consider that Eddie Murphy's career now consists of regurgitating himself?
Rental audience: Animal lovers, Murphy fans.
Rent it if you enjoy: The 1998 original, Cats and Dogs.
One word for 'Freddie': disgusting
Freddie Got Fingered (R)
MTV moron Tom Green got his first (and hopefully only) starring role in a movie, doing the same annoying garbage that inexplicably made him a star. No real plot, just a series of jokes so crude, insensitive and downright mean that you'll want to wash your VHS or DVD player after the show. You've been warned.
First impressions: This is the only movie in a terrible movie year that I exited halfway through. How's that for a first impression?
Second thoughts: Still the front-runner for the worst, most disgusting film -- or is that phlegm? -- of the year.
Rental audience: Nobody you want to know.
Rent it if you enjoy: Olestra side effects.
DVD
New and noteworthy for digital players
'Star Wars' gets DVD treatment
[Photos: Twentieth Century Fox]
Sebulba tries to knock Anakin Skywalker out of the Boonta Eve Podrace by sideswiping him. |
Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace
It's hard to believe that George Lucas hasn't designed a suitable DVD tribute to his Vader-Skywalker saga before. The first three films -- actually parts four, five and six in the story line -- were previously available without bonus materials. Those discs aren't produced anymore, paving the way for huge sales whenever Lucas gets around to upgrading the DVDs with extra stuff.
Episode 1 is the first Star Wars movie to get the full-blown DVD treatment. That's a shame when you consider The Phantom Menace is by far the least cherished of the four chapters. The 2-discs set is as childishly technical as the movie, like listening to a science fair contestant explain how he got the baking-soda volcano to erupt. Lucas describes each step on a commentary track with six technicians whose names mean little to anyone except Jedi disciples.
Lucas is not an exciting guy, and neither are his colleagues. The commentary is all nuts and bolts rather than hearts and minds. Tech-heads will be pleased. The rest of us hope Lucas has a vault stuffed with material from the first three movies to build DVD monuments we can care about.
Darth Maul works his evil in Star Wars: Episode 1.
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Seven new sequences for The Phantom Menace were polished for this set, either extended from the original cut or deleted for obvious reasons. The pod race turns into a drawn-out introduction of alien competitors, just because Lucas wants to show off his puppets. A waterfall crisis that almost kills Jar Jar Binks reveals how close Lucas came to improving his film by eliminating that pest.
A one-hour documentary takes viewers on a tour of Lucasfilms and Industrial Light & Magic, duplicating the technical drone of a 12-part Web series that's also included. Viewers can scan storyboards for the pod race and submarine chase, then see how they were converted to computer-animated blueprints and compare them to the completed scenes. A handful of featurettes focus on the creation of fight scenes, costumes, visual effects and set design.
International ad campaigns are interesting since they weren't run into the ground on U.S. television like the "video poems" profiling characters weeks before the movie's release. They're here, too, but at least you can avoid them now. A John Williams music video that never flew and an extensive photo gallery have a degree of freshness. But the inclusion of a featurette detailing the Star Wars: Starfighter video game is a shameless plug as annoying as Jar Jar.
Rewind
Videos worth another look
Time to pull out the Michael Myers masks
Halloween arrives Wednesday, but it isn't too early to reserve a copy of any of the movies named for the holiday. The grisly adventures of mass murderer Michael Myers are traditionally hot rentals at this time of year.
Writer-director-composer John Carpenter built the perfect slasher-flick beast when he dreamed up Myers, an unstoppable, faceless killer. Actually, he did have a face: That blank-stare mask Myers wore was a Halloween mask of William Shatner spray-painted white. Very scary, and that was before Shatner started making Priceline.com ads.
Carpenter tired of everything about Myers after the first film except the residuals. He got credit and presumably easy cash for allowing others to carry on the series. Carpenter's chilling musical score survived the shuffle. You'll probably hear it again next year when Halloween: The Homecoming is released. Yes, Jamie Lee Curtis will return again.
Until then, ask for Michael Myers at your favorite video store. Don't say "Mike" or else you'll end up with an Austin Powers movie.
Halloween -- Curtis was crowned scream queen of the slasher-film generation playing a babysitter stalked by Myers, an asylum escapee. One of the few examples of the genre deserving the description "classic."
Halloween II -- Curtis cashes in on her new fame, but Carpenter is smarter, just co-writing the script and leaving direction chores to newcomer Rick Rosenthal. In a strange cultural twist, Myers became more popular than his pretty victims.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch -- One of the worst mistakes in horror movie history. No Myers, no Curtis, just a stupid story about possessed trick-or-treat costumes and greedy producers with title rights.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers -- He's baaack, chasing his niece and stepsister to maintain the proper teen demographics.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers -- That niece isn't out of danger yet. Myers survives yet another apparent death to make her life miserable again.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers -- The killer's nemesis, intense psychologist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence), gets the starring role and a fitting swan song. Pleasence died the year it was released, 1995.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later -- After the Scream series poked holes in everything that made Halloween frightening, Curtis returned in a lively spoof of her first meal ticket. Casting her mother, Janet Leigh, opened up plenty of Psycho gags. The second-best movie in the entire series.
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