Friday, November 23, 2012

Review and Trailer - Rise of the Guardians

"Rise of the Guardians"
 
 
  
 
On Monday night in New York, DreamWorks Animation held the first metropolitan-area screening of Rise of the Guardians, its highly anticipated awards hopeful, which previously had screened only once, on Wednesday night at the Mill Valley Film Festival in Northern California.

 Based on the quality of this film and the relative weakness of the rest of this year's animated feature field, it is probably the film to beat at both the Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards.
Guardians, a 3D film, is sort of a computer-animated version of The Avengers. Fundamentally, it is a story of good vs. evil, with a team of heroes uniting to take on one really bad guy. The good guys are a brooding Jack Frost, voiced by Chris Pine; a badass Santa Claus, voiced by Oscar nominee Alec Baldwin; an Australian Easter Bunny, voiced by Hugh Jackman; a flirty Tooth Fairy, voiced by Isla Fisher; and the Sandman, who speaks nary a word. They come together to defend children from Pitch (voiced by Oscar nominee Jude Law), also known as "The Boogeyman," who is the embodiment of all of their fears.

Several people noted Monday night that this film doesn't look like or feel like most others from DreamWorks Animation, which tend to be glossier and more concerned with getting consistent laughs than Guardians, which places a much greater emphasis on story development.

Finally, for my money, one of the most impressive elements of the film is the score composed by the ridiculously prolific 51-year-old Frenchman Alexandre Desplat, who has received four best original score Oscar nominations in the past five years and this year has scored no fewer than five major awards contenders in Guardians, Moonrise Kingdom, Rust & Bone, Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. Because an individual can be nominated for multiple works in the best original score, Oscar category,  it wouldn't be at all shocking to see Desplat wind up with two or three this year.

No comments:

Post a Comment