Shrek

Good grief. Yesterday, we went to see Shrek the Third as a group. What a waste of time. Apart from the fact that the Odeon cinema is outrageously over-priced - just because it's in Cardiff Bay - it was one of the most ruthless exercises in sequel cash-inism I've ever seen. I mean, the first Shrek was quite original in it's way, but by the third film the whole 'turn the fairy tales on their head' scenario is a bit stale, and we're left with horrible over-acting, poor characterisation and little to no plot to speak of. So, what about the animation? Well, it was... okay. Apart from the normal CG-looking bouncy unrealistic elasticsm you get whith most CG films, it was pretty decent, but having to gaze at a 20-foot tall cinema screen version of shrek's head, complete with fully rendered eyelashes, pores and stubble, is not an experience I'm keen to repeat. Thats' the trouble with films like this; any sense of artistic style is eschewed in favour of trying to make everything look so damn 'realistic'. For a start, they could have tried looking at the shape of the characters they created - every human character had exactly the same weird long-torso'd proportions, and the same movements. Possibly the only visually interesting characters in the whole thing are the dragon and the donkey. And don't get me started on the 'charcter' voiced by Justin Gimperlake. Ugh.

Having said that, I have to admit that there were moments that really made me laugh (such as Sleeping Beauty attacking the castle guards by falling asleep on the ground and tripping them all up), but they were rather few and far between, and didn't save it from an entirely predictable plot.

Oh, and on top of all that, this afternoon I have to do a presentation on Diana Walczak. Marvellous.

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...Just did my presentation. Not bad I thought, just a bit anaemic due to the lack of real information I could find. We're meant to link to these things so.... here it is.