Gnomeo and Juliet

The Top 10 Animated Movies on DVD of 2011

Animation /

It’s that time of year again, when everyone hauls out their “best of” lists that are always subjective and no-one ever really agrees on anyway. Well, being the objective, engineering type, I’ve decided instead to use Amazon.com’s sales as a guide to how animated films have fared this year.

To clarify, this list is just DVD sales and is sorted after doing a search for “animation” in the Movies & TV department and is also for films that are dated as being released in 2011, hence there are some films that while released theatrically in 2010, did not come out on DVD until 2011.

So without further adieu, here’s the top 10 animated films of 2011 according to Amazon.com (backwards of course):

10. LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers

9. Gnomeo & Juliet

8. Barbie in a Mermaid Tale

7. Megamind (single disc edition)

6. Rango

5. Winnie the Pooh

4. Tangled

3. Rio

2. The Smurfs

And number 1, which you could probably have guessed anyway is…

Cars 2! (which must be selling like hotcakes; $19.73 for a single disc, yikes!)

The Top 10 Animated Movies on DVD of 2011 Read More »

Is Too Much Emphasis Placed on Making An Animated Film Adult-Friendly?

Animation /

Via: The Guardian

The other night I was at a house where one of the little ones was watching a film, which happened to be Gnomeo and Juliet. Although it was never a darling of the critics, the film went on to do respectably well at the box office and presumably thereafter.

While it is not the most sophisticated animated film ever released (and the short clips that I saw certainly didn’t enamour me), the little girl who was watching it was completely enthralled. She loved it, and apparently watches it almost every day.

She doesn’t care about poor writing, bad direction or even the reliance on toilet humour. Nope, she loves the film because she thinks its funny.

Clearly Gnomeo and Juliet is precisely the kind of film for kids. It doesn’t promise any grand, over-arching themes and sly adult humour that Pixar does, and that’s OK. It’s intended audience will never know the difference anyway.

Plenty of great animated films have been released over the years that are loved by adults and children that have no mature jokes whatsoever. So do we, as adults, perhaps place too much emphasis on making animated films cater to both adults and children? Is it possible to create an animated film that does without the jokes that only adults will snicker at?

Is Too Much Emphasis Placed on Making An Animated Film Adult-Friendly? Read More »

What I’d Hoped to Find in New York City

Animation, New York /

I had something in mind for today’s post. I was in New York City (a fairly large metropolis) and I figured that the easiest thing to do was to blog about something animation-related that I happened to run into.

The last time I was there, you couldn’t turn a corner without being confronted by a Tangled poster. This time around, I am sad to report that the only animation-related thing I discovered during a whole day of going up and down Manhattan was a small ad for Gnomeo and Juliet in a subway carriage. So suffice to say, the combination of a not-quite-so-smart phone and an pretty ugly location for the poster meant that I decided to wait till I got home to blog about it.

What I’d Hoped to Find in New York City Read More »