There's been such an onslaught of animated movies over the past year or so, it only feels like they're coming at you in 3-D.
Meet the Robinsons actually does, and it's one of the more tolerable of the genre in recent memory.
Thankfully, it doesn't consist of smart-alecky talking animals spewing one-liners and pop culture references. And the digital three-dimensional effects are pretty spectacular. A lot of times with this technology, it's too easy to zing and fling things at the audience, simply because you can. It's gratuitous — and yes, we're talking to you, Robert Rodriguez. The most recent Spy Kids movie is a prime example of this.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF BVI/SONY
Here, the effects spring organically from the story. You feel like you're immersed in a complete universe, the way the ground slopes toward you or objects seem to come from behind you and enter the screen. As directed by Stephen Anderson, who previously worked on The Emperor's New Groove and makes his feature debut here, Meet the Robinsons has a beautifully retro art deco aesthetic — a sci-fi vision of the future as it might have been imagined during the Eisenhower administration.
The script itself, however — credited to seven people — is strictly two-dimensional. Based on the book A Day With Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce, the film follows the adventures of young Lewis (voiced by Daniel Hansen), a bespectacled boy whose mother left him at an orphanage when he was an infant. Being the science geek and aspiring inventor that he is, he creates a memory scanner in with the hope of going back and finding his mother.
(Never mind his father, who's never mentioned.)
PHOTO: COURTESY OF BVI/SONY
Instead, Lewis winds up in the future, having been whisked away by his new friend, Wilbur Robinson (Wesley Singerman). There, Wilbur's family of misfits and weirdoes offers to take him in. (Adam West and Tom Selleck are among the actors lending their voices, with Angela Bassett as the head of the orphanage. Meet the Robinsons also happens to be mercifully free of the distracting stunt casting that marks so many of these movies.)
So what's the central conflict here? Well, Lewis still wants to find his mom, of course. There's also an overly zealous, mustache-twirling guy in a bowler hat, named Bowler Hat Guy, who's after him for his device. (As voiced by director Anderson, he gets the majority of the laughs just for being such a spindly, delusional goofball.) Plus there are all those pesky time-travel issues regarding changing history, and so forth.
It's hard to feel too emotionally engaged by any of this, but its easy to watch. Kids will probably be sufficiently entertained, and adults can just sit back and enjoy the eye candy. Plus you get these cool, dark glasses that make anyone who wears them look like Roy Orbison.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su