I love movies but have over a period become a bit selective. It's not that I can't watch Commercial ones. I have divided movies into two categories. The ones we leave our brain at home and have fun and the ones which can be watched with them in! The third category of course is those rare ones where they make us both think as well as are fun! Tare Zameen Par, PK, 3 Idiots come to mind!
One of my favourite genre is cartoons or to be more precise, Animations. While I still like a well done kids cartoon like Transformers (Original Cartoons), Ducktales etc. I somehow love the new ones which aren't designed just for kids. Some are designed for both while nowadays there are enough viewers for some to be made exclusively for Adults. The concepts are complex, themes are at times very dark, sexual content is present where necessary (though not the prime drive of the movie) and blood and gore come in as well.
Shrek I think was the pathbreaker with a movie having ( to use one of their own phrases) layers like an Onion!
On one layer is a story of a reluctant and bitter Ogre setting out to protect his swamp. At another it's about pushing beyond our comfort zone to find who we are ( and love!). At yet another level it's a hard hit on societal standards and how the "Ugly" is shown as "Bad" and Vice Versa and how in most societies, the niceties, primness and pretty faces cover a deeper level of ruthlessness and real ugliness.
And then if the movie has one of the most iconic songs, many fart jokes, the Legendary Eddy Murphy as "Dunkey" and superbly choreographed action scenes poking fun at some of our pop culture movies ( like the scene where the Princess does a copy of Trinity from Matrix by freezing mid air while the camera pans) the movie is bound to be satisfying on so many levels!
Of course, the painting / animation / VFX have to be good too!
But some recent animations which have taken the pure artistry to a whole new level are The Dragon Prince (Studio Mir!), Arcane, Spiderman Into the Spiderverse and Across the Spiderverse.
In each of these, it feels at times that every frame is an art work worthy of printing and pasting on a wall!
The Dragon Prince:
The sheer bright colours, the beauty of the world built, the scale of each painting blows ones mind! How cute and adorable many of the characters are drawn and the sometimes super complex paintings, the sometimes intentionally simple frames with hardly any depth makes great viewing!
Add to this, the complexity of the story, the world building happening in parallel. The really dark and large scale consequences of the powerful people making simple decisions of hate based on fear and you have as amazing a world as you want in a fantasy story!
You have even the worst villain have redeeming traits. You have most of the heroic people also having anger, short sight, bitterness and even arrogance at times.
I LOVE ( not love, LOVE) how they are able to show ideas as black and white while still keeping the characters as gray!
The next Sub-Genre if we may call it that is the For Adults Animations. Arcane, Paradise PD, South Park all come to mind. Some are purely focused on the adult comedy. Like South Park, Paradise PD. The Animation there needs to meet acceptable levels. The enjoyment is in the ridiculousness of the scenario, the dialogues and the mirror they show to society.
Then comes stuff like Arcane! Like Dragon Prince, just the scale of artistry blew me away! As a non-painter I'm not really an artist in any sense (Except Literature maybe?). But even for me, the artistry was at such a superlative level, I would just pause the screen and enjoy one "Screen" for sometime. The bright and colourful "above ground" city, the dark and drab lower ground world. The seemingly nice and beautiful people, well dressed and well mannered above contrast with the "Dog eat Dog" world below where every character is out for his own growth.
Then, as the story evolves, you start seeing the Humanity in those below and the cruelty in those above. And the worlds reverse! You see the top world survives by exploiting those below! Behind the facade of genteel lives is a iron clad fist willing to take whatever they need at whatever cost to the other simply because they have a "right" to it!
And in all this I have not even started to get into the story!
So for those who enjoy good story telling combined with great cinematography ( That's the equivalent to awesome frames I think?), do give these and many more Animations a viewing.
ENJOY!
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