> The season already began earlier this month, with Brother Bear, a Disney animated film that is well-liked but not well-loved. It'll apparently be the last traditionally animated film from Disney for quite some time, and future Disney releases will be 3D-animated. It's an unfortunate move. Nothing about 3D animation makes it inherently better (or worse) than traditional, and there is much potential in it to mine.

I prefer 2-D animated movies to 3-D because the look of 2-D animation differs from film to film and the results are occasionally pleasing. All 3-D animated media looks the same way to me every time--plastic.

> Looney Tunes: Back In Action tanked at the box office, which is a good thing if the characters aren't handled any better than in Space Jam. I love Bugs and the gang to death, but let's face it, magic ages.

It will probably make money the same way the Scooby-Doo movie did--the newest Harry Potter movie trailer which precedes it.

> That brings us to the present. Here's what we've got to look forward to, or dread, as the case may be.

> Nov 21 - The Cat In the Hat
>
> I am singularly uninspired by live-action adaptations of Dr. Seuss, especially after The Grinch, which not even Ron Howard could keep from being over-saturated and unwieldy. There's a lot of talent behind the look and feel of both movies, but filming Seuss is like trying to film, I dunno, da Vinci. It doesn't translate. The Cat works much better with his voice unheard, and his world works better in two dimensions.

I was at rottentomatoes.com yesterday, and the reviews for this movie are scathing. Recalling how critics received the Grinch two years back, I shouldn't be surprised.

> Nov 26 - Bad Santa
>
> Con artists Billy Bob Thornton and Bernie Mac...I don't know, dress up as Santa and swindle people or something. The trailers look horrid. If they are to be believed, the movie's single joke is that the characters hold unChristmaslike attitudes at Christmastime. Har har har.

And there's also an eight-year-old that counteracts said unChristmaslike attitudes and in some way teaches these two the true meaning of Christmas.

Oh yeah. This looks promising.

> Nov 26 - The Haunted Mansion
>
> As was mentioned earlier in this forum, Eddie Murphy is talented, but not at picking projects. The Haunted Mansion offers me not one single ray of hope that it'll be anything but terrible. The advertising likens it to Pirates of the Caribbean, presumably because they're both based on Disneyland/World rides, but I don't know who's gullible enough to figure one will inevitably be as good as the other.

Judging by the IMDb entry and TV ads, this film looks significantly stupid. Funny, though, I didn't think Pirates would be as successful as it was.

> Dec 1 - Forbidden Warrior
>
> The granddaughter of an Emperor is raised by a sorcerer and...probably some bad things happen. It looks to be a cross between the fantasy genre and Crouching Tiger. Depending on the balance, helpless villages may actually not get ransacked, and monsters might not even ooze goo. It's being released by "Cinamour Entertainment," so I bet you won't even be able to find this one until it hits DVD.

I need to see Crouching Tiger sometime soon.

> Dec 2 - The Land Before Time X (direct-to-video)
>
> This series is the most hilarious series I've never seen. Well, I did see the first one. I wouldn't have thought, in a million years, that it would spawn nine sequels.

Ten movies in fifteen years. Yikes.

> Dec 25 - Peter Pan
>
> Was I just talking about good-looking movies? WOW this looks fantastic. Of course, I liked Hook. But the look and feel of this upcoming live action version of Peter Pan absolutely dazzles me. I'm there.

The first I heard of this movie, I thought it was another Disney remake. Some of the stills at IMDb look interesting.

> Dec 30 - Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood (direct-to-video)
>
> Ain't nuthin' but a hip-hop thang. Just bidness in tha hood.

Err...riiiiight.

> Jan 1 - The Gingerdead Man
>
> From IMDb: "vil yet adorable Gingerbread men come to life with souls of three convicted killers - these real life cookie monsters reak havoc on the girl who sent the killers to the electic chair."

Whoa. "Jack Frost", anyone? The titular pun alone makes the film all the more ridiculous.

Adam "bits of popcorn stuck between my teeth" Bomb