Month: June 2013

Torsten Reitz Leave a Comment

Screaming in Digital: Pixar Takes Us to College in Monsters University

Monsters University
Sulley and Mike chase a fraternity mascot.

Ever since John Lasseter’s Toy Story in 1995, the Disney-owned Pixar Studios have been leading the charge when it comes to computer-generated animation movies. Like the parent company, however, the CGI pioneers have been struggling in recent years – hitting rock bottom with head honcho Lasseter’s Cars 2 in 2011. Despite Brave winning the Oscar as Best Animated Feature Film in February, the studio’s latest releases wowed neither critics nor audiences. Now Pixar has brought back some favorites from 2003’s crowd-pleaser Monsters, Inc. with the hope of returning to former glory. Will Dan Scanlon’s $270-million prequel Monsters University do the trick?

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Bitter Sweet Symphony: Terrence Malick Takes Us To The Wonder

Neil (Ben Affleck, left) and his old love Jane (Rachel McAdams, right).

There is no other director like Terrence Malick. Granted, you could probably say that about pretty much every other filmmaker out there. The American director, however, remains a peculiar case. After all, we’re talking about an eccentric, reclusive artist who deliberately stepped away from the limelight and the Hollywood industry after a really promising debut, Badlands, and an equally fascinating sophomore effort, Days Of Heaven, before finally resurfacing with the anti-war movie The Thin Red Line and reaping a whopping seven Oscar bids.

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The Millionaire Waltz: Rekindling the ‘Roaring Twenties’ in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby

The eccentric, enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) is literally the toast of the town.

With his leading role in Baz Luhrmann’s modern version of Romeo & Juliet, Leonardo DiCaprio burst onto the Hollywood scene in grand style in 1996. So when the news spread that the charismatic superstar and the director of the Oscar-winning musical Moulin Rouge! would reunite for an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby, expectations were enormous. How would the filmmaker’s flamboyant audiovisual style mesh with the source material, in itself a harsh criticism of its own raucous era, America’s ‘Roaring Twenties’?

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