Sky King and the World of Tomorrow
Great fun. Even better eye candy. Go see it.
This is a fabulous film to look at. It's gloriously stylized, retro state-of-the-art. Lovely muted colours and sepia tones. It's never less than beautifully rendered and the digital sets and backgrounds are full of cultural in-jokes that are fun to find. I also found that the abundance of digital work (some scenes, especially the battle scenes, feel like they're straight out of an animated movie) didn't overwhelm the film, like I felt happened in "Attack of The Clones". "Clone's" digital world felt sterile, but "Sky King's" digital art had a sense of grit and dimension. It should walk away with the bulk of the technical awards at the Oscars next year. The bar has been raised for Lucas to match next May.
The story and characters were somewhat more underwhelming than the art direction and the atmosphere, but within this tribute to old serials, they still worked OK. The main characters were somewhat stilted and they dealt with every cliche in the genre with varying degrees of believability, but everything is retro-stylized enough that you forgave them and even grew to like them. It's the first movie ever where I really liked Angelina Jolie.
It kept flashing on me how much this movie reminded of me of "Star Wars". Not in its look or story, but just the nods to the serials, the pacing, the hodge-podge of adventure, the irreverence.
John caught a lot more of the background in-jokes than I did. I may have to give the movie a second look just so that I can spot those references, too.
This is a fabulous film to look at. It's gloriously stylized, retro state-of-the-art. Lovely muted colours and sepia tones. It's never less than beautifully rendered and the digital sets and backgrounds are full of cultural in-jokes that are fun to find. I also found that the abundance of digital work (some scenes, especially the battle scenes, feel like they're straight out of an animated movie) didn't overwhelm the film, like I felt happened in "Attack of The Clones". "Clone's" digital world felt sterile, but "Sky King's" digital art had a sense of grit and dimension. It should walk away with the bulk of the technical awards at the Oscars next year. The bar has been raised for Lucas to match next May.
The story and characters were somewhat more underwhelming than the art direction and the atmosphere, but within this tribute to old serials, they still worked OK. The main characters were somewhat stilted and they dealt with every cliche in the genre with varying degrees of believability, but everything is retro-stylized enough that you forgave them and even grew to like them. It's the first movie ever where I really liked Angelina Jolie.
It kept flashing on me how much this movie reminded of me of "Star Wars". Not in its look or story, but just the nods to the serials, the pacing, the hodge-podge of adventure, the irreverence.
John caught a lot more of the background in-jokes than I did. I may have to give the movie a second look just so that I can spot those references, too.