The Chris Sanders Trilogy

You know what's fascinating? Director Chris Sanders has never directed sequels to his own animated features. In his lengthy career, he has directed three all-animated features total: Lilo & Stitch for Walt Disney Animation Studios (then "Feature Animation"), and then How To Train Your Dragon and The Croods for DreamWorks. His latest feature is a …

KUNG FU PANDA and My Autistic Experience

Ska-doosh! DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda came out over 12 years ago, and a real standout amongst their library of over 30 animated features. The Mark Osborne/John Stevenson film marked something of a departure in the realm of computer animated DreamWorks films, in that it wove fun humor and slapstick into a martial arts adventure epic …

Elves, Trolls and Rules

So far, 2020 had been quiet feature animation-wise, before the uncertain times we have been plunged into. In a climate where a new animated feature seems to open every month, this seems rather unusual. January was without a feature, only showings of films released the previous month, like Disney Animation's Frozen II and Blue Sky's Spies …

Hey, Say Something Nice About DreamWorks!

A friend of mine who is a big fan of DreamWorks and their How To Train Your Dragon film franchise posted one day about how frustrated she is at how people talk about DreamWorks. The idea that they are a bad studio, that they are inferior to the "masters" at Disney and Pixar, that they're …

Has The Dream Ended?

It's been a few days since the cancellation of a certain film that DreamWorks had on their release slate for a long, long while. Normally, I don't like to resort to hyperbole or asking big questions like this after these things happen. With DreamWorks however, it has been a string of frustrating news stories. Unlike …

Photographic Animation

Nearly three years ago, an animation legend weighed in on the state of mainstream American feature animation. The legend in question was Gene Deitch, known for his work with the UPA in the 1950s, the Tom & Jerry cartoons that he was tasked to make in Czechoslovakia after MGM jettisoned their animation studio, and his …

‘Trolls’, Release Dates, Box Office, and Such

Trolls, the new DreamWorks film, opened quite well against the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe's newest epic installment Doctor Strange. It seemed like the apocalypse, in a way. Doctor Strange is a PG-13 Marvel Studios movie, and it's true that a lot of families actually go to see these movies, regardless of the ratings they get. …

Cake Icing: Custom Logos

Logos... Custom variants of well-known logos... The Walt Disney studio has a long history of doing this. Disney had signed with RKO Radio Pictures in 1937, who would distribute all of their features and shorts for roughly fifteen years. Before each film (with the exception of the first, Snow White), the RKO logo would precede …

DreamWorks’ Future

DreamWorks has a complicated history, and can be a complicated studio to talk about. Being over 20 years old, they've seen their ups and downs. Jeffrey Katzenberg formed DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, after storming out of The Walt Disney Company in the autumn of 1994. Naturally, given his success with Disney's …