Hello.
Anyone see THE HAPPY ELF Friday night - on NBC and from Vanguard Animation. It was a CG animated Christmas Special.
What did you think?
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It was pretty good.
The thing I didn't like was the curly haired school girl that the elf befriended. she didn't look "cute" to be a school girl at times. her face looked "bumpy" at different angles.
why was harry connick so hyped in the commercials?
he had a 3d appearance and a song.
Awful. Just plain awful.
The story was poorly paced, the modeling and texturing were rudimentary, and the animation was only passable. I was very disappointed, and I'm a guy who'll sit through some of the cheesiest Christmas specials ever made.
Harry Connick was hyped heavily because the special was based on a Christmas song that he wrote.
I couldn't handle it. Horrible timing. Mediocre at best animation (with a handful of decent moments that didn't make up for the rest of it). And the writing was comparable to what I hate most about PDI (lame, predictable, bathroom humor, at best). I couldn't watch more than fifteen minutes of it and changed over to the Rankin/Bass "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." And for once I really appreciated it. Sure, it's no Rudolf or Charlie Brown Christmas, but it sure wasn't as bad as The Dumbest Elf.
TANGENT ALERT!!!
Perhaps I just don't care much about 3D anymore. More likely, I just don't care about poorly written animation (3d, 2d, etc.). Although I found I was much more engrossed in "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" even thought the quality of animation was sub-par by today's standards, the timing in all of Rankin/Bass animations is a bit off, and the writing is very dated, I found that I really enjoyed it.
I'm sure a good part of that was a good helping of Nostalgia with a capital N. But I can't help but think that there was a quality to the hand made puppets that is hard to capture in 3D (although there are people like Pixar that have proven that it can be done). As many of you know, I'm a big fan of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics", in particular his discussion on iconic vs realistic imagery.
Perhaps 3D generally leaves little to the imagination, and has to work that much harder to make up for it (ie. the story has to be TIGHT). Where 2D and stop motion (stop motion less so), often are imperfect and leave the audience some place to fill in the gaps, actively engaging them and forcing them to take part in the telling of the story. That isn't to say that it will make up for poor writing, but it is something that it has over 3D more often than not. 3D is often so precise (even using full frame rates) that the audience is reduced to an observer.
But then again, maybe I just really love rough animation that doesn't try to be slick where you can still see the wires holding things together....
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It was pretty boring. The story was not very interesting. My 8 year old and 4 year old who were watching it with me were not that engrossed in it.
On a technical note, what was up with the shading on the teeth? They came out greyish in color. The first shot with the Harry Connick character I thought that he was wearing braces on his teeth! Then I realized that all the characters had that look. The entire effort was mediocre at best. Definitely DON'T count on this becoming a holiday classic that plays for decades!
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I thought the animation, the actual acting of the characters was good esp for TV. I don't know from that tech stuff.
The story was weak, to say the least. It was about 15- 20 minutes to introduce the title character. "Ok. He's Happy. I get it, already.I read the title, y'know."
Maybe Mr. Connick, whom I admire as an entertainer, had too much control. The story was Lame-O.
The thing could've been whittled down to 22 minutes.
I liked it even less than last year's Popeye special.
I wish they'd make stop-motion specials again. :(
... and can someone explain this "I can see my house from here" "joke"? I don't understand why that's supposed to be funny. :confused:
haha, that is a good point. I bet it is from something and is just referenced a lot. I wonder who first said it and what its originally from. anybody know?
and as for this topic.....i didnt even hear about the show, id liked to of seen some of it to say that i have and see what kind of stuff is out there. I remember the one one year it was like a star wars kinda thing. Santa vs snowmen or something. i liked that one.
"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo
http://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/
http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2000/12/05/star_wars_tv/
Ugh, the Star Wars Christmas special... I'd rather claw my eyes out than try to sit through that again! It's so bad it's not even make fun of it bad. I physically was in pain after seeing it.
The "I can see my house joke". My take on it (and answering a rhetorical question): It's supposed to be funny because this character has just been thrown so far that there's no way it's not going to hurt... a lot, and the first thing they do is notice a mundane detail like being able to see something they see everyday, like their house.
It was probably funny, back in the '80's (or possibly '20's) when they first used it. I remember it in "Hot Shots" (Charlie Sheen Top Gun parody) and it wasn't hysterical, but I didn't cringe when I heard it like I do now. But, I agree, it's way, WAY overused and as a result about as unfunny as the typical joke about a fart or J-lo's butt or J-Lo's butt farting in a PDI/Dreamworks film. Kind of like Disney using the Goofy yell in movies that Goofy isn't even in (or the Tarzan yell for that matter). Get over it and hire a new writing staff you hacks.
Producing solidily ok animation since 2001.
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Now with more doodling!
www.galaxy12.com/latenight
The earliest instance I could find of the quote was in a 1989 episode of MST3K, [i]Women of a Prehistoric Planet:
“I can see my house from here!â€[/i] -Joel (as Linda) et al.
An excellent example of a great new-ish christmas special. Directed by Steve Oedekirk (Jimmy Neutron), Santa Vs. the Snowmen is available on DVD, and comes in regular and 3D versions on the same disc, with glasses provided.
Another recent favorite is Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire. Wacky story about Rudolph's son and a grudge held by one of Santa's reindeer. Do yourself a favor and watch the version with the original British actors. The dialog's identical to the American dub, but the British audio is just funnier somehow. Also available on DVD