MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: MINIONS (2015)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Sunday, May 29, 2016

MINIONS (2015)

More ADHD fun from the DESPICABLE ME gang, a sort of backstory prequel on those yellow, pill-shaped assistant critters. It’s pretty relentless stuff, like an animated sugar-high for the pre-school crowd, but with surprisingly witty gags for the grown-ups tossed in the mix via ‘60s Pop (music clearance rights must have cost as much as animation), along with a few good jokes found among signage, decor & extras. (Not the crappy reference snark of a typical DreamWorks’ product.) It’s fun to see so much plot carried out in unintelligible Minion-Speak; and note that the animators don’t cheat by relying on their starry and talented voice cast for easy recognition points or for borrowing jokey personality traits. Still, pretty thin stuff most of the way.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The DVD transfer is unusually bright, headachy bright. Perhaps this was originally done to alleviate the 3D projection darkening everyone complains about. Why it couldn’t be adjusted down a notch or two for non-3D DVD viewing is puzzling.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

Sunday, May 29, 2016

MINIONS (2015)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE