I really enjoyed It's Such A Beaitiful Day when I watched it for the HOF. It just feels like something much different than, to put it crudely, a "film". I think it is worthy of the list though, if for no other reason than people will maybe discover it. I think I told MV in the HOF, it feels a lot like Mary And Max in tones and themes. It just has much cruder animation.
Frankenweenie was on my watchlist for this countdown. Unfortunately it remains there.
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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.
Loving the detailed stats breakdowns and the animated headers. Perfect!
Thanks... but it looks like I may not be able to do that for all of the films that made it. There's one in particular that I can't find an existing animated gif for and I don't have the tools or the know how to make one.
Are there any MoFos that can make an actual animated header? I'll PM you with the information for the film in question. Otherwise I'll have to use a still image instead.
It just feels like something much different than, to put it crudely, a "film".
Ha! What the hell is it then?
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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
I haven't seen It's Such a Beautiful Day, but I saw Everything Will Be Ok which is one of the three parts of the former, and that one is very good. I'd call it "experimental animation", but its wicked sense of humor makes it very entertaining. I also was impressed with the non-CGI effects used in the "blank part" of each frame in the latter part of that short, but I'll admit that it does feel like the beginning of a bigger story.
I've always loved the live-action Frankenweenie, which has some spectacular B&W photography and a perfect take on the first two Frankenstein movies. The animated one expands the story, and even goes into Godzilla territory! It's very good too, but I didn't vote for it although I considered it. After the initial sting of disappointment, I can see and say that the list is starting out just fine.
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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden My IMDb page
i saw everything will be ok at an animation film festival when it first came out in 2007 and was blown away (it probably didn't hurt that most of the other stuff was amateur/student films, but still it's an awesome film). still haven't gotten around to seeing the other parts, which is why i voted for just that one.
as for frankenweenie, it's excellent but i didn't vote for it.
Hertzfeldt's It's Such a Beautiful Day was literally the very last one I cut from my list. My extra point would have placed it above Frankenweenie. Eh, no biggie. What I put as my number twenty-five, instead, is one of the revealed one-pointers, which I figured it must be.
Hugo the Hippo remains one of the absolute worst and most misguided films I have ever seen. And I first saw it when I was six-years-old, in the theater. Damn thing gave me nightmares. It was like a cruel drug trip for the kindergarten set. It has an odd lineage. It was produced and made in Hungary with co-production and financing coming from America, sort of, as the company that owned the French perfume company Faberge financed this turkey(???).
Here's the basic story (I'd say spoiler alert, but I hope none of you ever sees this): in Zanzibar harbor, the water is shallow enough that supplies are brought to ships by hand, large bucket brigades, moving the goods across the water. A gang of sharks, who are dressed like a Nazi motorcycle gang (seriously) enter the harbor, start eating the workers, and the city is thrown into crisis, unable to export their goods. So, the Sultan of Zanzibar has a great idea: bring in a bunch of hippos to fight the sharks. Sorry, can't make this ***** up. The hippos, being natural enemies of the sharks (???) defeat them, and the port opens once again. At first, the hippos are treated as heroes, but over time, the people forget about them and stop feeding them. The hippos rampage through the city looking for food, and rather than feed them, the Sultan's evil adviser, Aban-Khan, orders that all the hippos be slaughtered. They are, except for young Hugo, who managed to escape and flee to the countryside. After seeing his family and friends killed.
Out in the country he meets some children who instantly fall in love with him and feed him, but when the adults find out, they put Hugo on trial for wasting the time of the kids, keeping them from their chores and schoolwork. No, really. A trial, in a courtroom. Ultimately the Sultan, who did not order the slaughter, appears at Hugo's trial, basically apologizes, Hugo is seen as a hero again, and he lives out the rest of his days in the idyllic country with the children.
This was a real movie. Marketed for children.
But wait, it gets worse. As if that plot wasn't fu*kin' bizarre enough, the animation is cheap and ugly, the songs written for the flick - yes, this is also a Musical - are even worse than the animation, and lastly the hodgepodge of actors they enlisted for the roles are just plain baffling (at least the English-language roles, as it was released in Hungarian in Hungary).
Burl Ives, who of course narrated the Rankin-Bass "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" special, among others, is the narrator here. OK, that one makes sense. Not sure why Burl agreed? Crippling debt and a complete lack of dignity are the only things that make sense. English character actor Robert Morley, who appeared in dozens of films on both sides of the pond including The African Queen and Topkapi, is the voice of The Sultan. Again, no idea why he would take the job, nor why they went British for the Sultan of Zanzibar (?), but as far as a quality get, good for them. From there it gets downright weird. Some of the songs are sung by Marie Osmond and her little brother Jimmy. Again, for realzies. And for the voice of the evil Aban-Khan who orders the hippos murdered, why naturally they got Paul Lynde! America's favorite center square, known for his trademark over-the-top fey extremely stylized delivery. He voiced Templeton the Rat in the original Charlotte's Web, and of course he'd be your Aban-Khan. At least we were spared from him singing a song (see Bye, Bye Birdie).
Oh, and Hugo the Hippo is also casually racist, brutal (for a children's movie), and some of the sequences are fashioned in a psychedelic mode. Imagine a fourth-rate Yellow Submarine, minus The Beatles or any artistry what so ever, and infused with Colonialism, murder, and the Osmonds. It was, thank goodness, a huge bomb, financially. It cost upwards of a million mid-1970s dollars to produce, and made virtually nothing back.
So....why did I include this smoldering turd on my list? Because honestly, it haunted me so much - we even had the picture book that accompanied it, to keep the nightmare fresh - that I must include it, as it is burned into my brain. It definitely made an impression, albeit a horrifyingly negative one. Copies of this catastrophe are nearly impossible to find, and if you do come across it, it is likely a poorly made bootleg.
I have no idea what possessed my father to take me to this movie, or to stick it out until the bitter end (the U.S. cut was only about 75 minutes), but I assume he had not read any reviews for it, just saw there was a new cartoon out, and then he subjected me to Hugo the Hippo. He's lucky Child Protective Services wasn't called.
Welcome to my nightmare.
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Sorry I didn't see this early, but yeah, like Rauldc said, I would say it feels like a moving comic strip. I'm not trying to be rude or smug about it. I enjoyed it. It is extremely well written and fairly moving. I wouldn't go see this on the big screen though. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is wondering what movie to watch. It feels like a novelty that I would tell my friend to check out on youtube.
Its funny because I am usually more about the script than the visuals when it comes to my movie sensibilities. In the case of It's Such A Beautiful Day I seem to be on the other side of the debate.
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