Archives for category: Special Effects

District 9 (review)

August 31, 09 //
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District 9

There’s a scene in Dis­trict 9 when the main char­ac­ter, after endur­ing a lot of pain and humil­i­a­tion, has to make the choice of either run­ning into bat­tle guns ablaze or retreat. He chooses the lat­ter know­ing full well that his actions are dri­ven by fear and selfishness.

Dis­trict 9 or “D9” is many things all rolled up into a hard to describe pack­age. Among them it’s a sci-fi adven­ture with all the ele­ments you’d expect like blaster guns and an enor­mous space­ship. It’s also an unre­lent­ing social com­men­tary and an action-packed romp that refuses to let down its guard.

The effects and cin­e­matog­ra­phy com­pli­ment each other quite well and at times it’s hard to dis­tin­guish between the two. That said, they are not of the slick vari­ety that other films con­vey, but the grimy tex­ture is beau­ti­ful and per­fect for the por­trayal of a enslaved race of aliens liv­ing in South African slums.

It’s an unfor­giv­ing, rav­ished and self­ish envi­ron­ment, leav­ing barely any room for sur­vival. It’s a film that is best expe­ri­enced with­out dig­ging for holes in the plot (of which they are a few) or mak­ing assump­tions deal­ing with the char­ac­ter por­trayal or progression.

I enjoyed it because it didn’t reveal too much of itself and yet what it did expose was raw (human and alien) emo­tion, flaws in the human fab­ric and a detached feel­ing of human­ity, or at least I felt detached at times.

Howard the Duck

July 8, 09 //
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Howard the DuckGeorge Lucas has cre­ated some won­der­ful movies and is unde­ni­ably a vision­ary film­maker, story-teller and influ­ence in the film indus­try. Recently, evi­dence of this has sur­faced in the form of a PDF out­lin­ing the “Raiders” story con­fer­ence.

He’s also respon­si­ble for some real stinkers. Movie stink that could quickly foul a room full of under­de­vel­oped daisies and sel­dom come up in con­ver­sa­tion for fear of one being exiled or worse, thrown to a bunch of rav­en­ous movie crit­ics. Now I’m begin­ning to feel nos­tal­gic for the car­toon, The Critic, but anyways…

Howard the Duck is per­haps the worst movie on George’s resume (yes, fouler than even Clone Wars), failed mis­er­ably at the box office and yet it retains a charm all its own. There are even days when the movie strangely hov­ers around in my thoughts from time to time.

If this were VH1’s Behind the Music, this is the part when the guy would say.. “And now, the story behind the story.”

It all started with some comics

From Wikipedia:

[Howard the Duck] first appeared in Adven­ture into Fear #19 (Dec. 1973) and sev­eral sub­se­quent series have chron­i­cled the mis­ad­ven­tures of the ill-tempered, anthro­po­mor­phic, “funny ani­mal” trapped on human-dominated Earth. Howard’s adven­tures are gen­er­ally social satires, and also often par­o­dies of genre fic­tion with a meta-fictional aware­ness of the medium. [Wikipedia]

If you were to pick up a Howard comic dur­ing this time you’d notice very lit­tle dif­fer­ence between him and Don­ald Duck. This was inten­tional on the part of its cre­ators but for obvi­ous rea­sons wasn’t car­ried over in the movie.

Quack, Quack!

The movie adap­ta­tion, released in 1986, retained some of the traits from the comic in the form of its star, Howard, who was still ill-tempered and anthro­po­mor­phic. Instead of doing an ani­mated fea­ture, which would’ve been an ideal pre­sen­ta­tion, the film was instead live-action and the duck would be part ani­ma­tronic pup­pet, part diminu­tive actor.

It starred a very young Lea Thomp­son and Tim Rob­bins. Tim Rob­bins, up until this point (with Top Gun’s release loom­ing) had been known for bit roles in TV and film. Lea Thomp­son was (and will prob­a­bly always be) known as the Marty McFly’s mother Lor­raine in Back to the Future.

Together, they were sup­port­ing play­ers to their feath­ered star and despite the sub par script and kooky spe­cial effects, man­aged to give some­what con­vinc­ing per­for­mances. How­ever, there is some­thing to be said about the human/duck rela­tion­ship that is, to this day, uncom­fort­able to watch. I don’t think I was ever fully up to speed on the “birds, ducks and bees.”, but I digress.

Above all us, Howard the Duck, like The Dark Crys­tal, was a child­hood favorite of mine because it was some­thing I enjoyed watch­ing with my family.

It was a fan­tas­tic, awful, bewil­der­ing and grossly under­rated cult classic.

The Trailer

Addi­tional Reading:

The Mythology of Heroes

December 6, 06 //
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Heroes [stillframe]If you haven’t seen NBC’s Heroes, I’d sug­gest either Tivo’ing it or watch­ing it every Mon­day (9PM/EST). Next to Lost, it’s been one of the only shows in recent years that I’ve been so involved with — includ­ing hav­ing side con­ver­sa­tions with friends and fam­ily — and that’s due to a few fac­tors that make the show so engrossing.

Apart from the great act­ing, the writ­ing con­tin­ues to amaze me because the story is chock full of inter­est­ing twists, turns and free falls.

There are so many lay­ers and angles the writ­ers have cho­sen to explore and the story itself is rich in char­ac­ter explo­ration and inter­ac­tion. At it’s sur­face it seems like just a show about peo­ple with var­i­ous tal­ents and pow­ers, but if you look fur­ther you begin to unravel the puz­zle and mythol­ogy that is Heroes, which tran­scends the small screen in the form of an online comic and web blog.

Over the course of the first sea­son I’ve made some men­tal notes (mostly spoiler-free) and I’d like to share some of those with you. In turn, I invite you to share your own, as I know we all have our own thoughts and the­o­ries on where the story arch might lead and where it’ll con­tinue to go.

The­o­ries on Heroes

  • Bib­li­cal names used for some of the main char­ac­ters; Gabriel (arch angel), Mica, Eden and Peter.
  • Over­all story arch (so far) has a delib­er­ate sense of urgency and fore­shad­ow­ing: some plot points uncov­ered, ques­tions both answered and unanswered
  • Reminds me a bit of Steven King’s The Stand in that a group of peo­ple, who pre­vi­ously had no con­tact with each other, have come together for a greater purpose
  • The writ­ing is multi-faceted and intrigu­ing, much like Lost, and while it’s inten­tion­ally seri­al­ized it does seem more self-contained than Lost.
  • The char­ac­ters them­selves and their sto­ries are intrigu­ing because of the emo­tional state they share; urgency and for the most part a deep rooted nonac­cep­tance of their tal­ents, almost a resilient self-doubt.
  • Hiro (named appro­pri­ately) comes across as the glue hold­ing every­thing together. He seems to be the favorite for most view­ers and that’s because of his per­son­al­ity and will­ing­ness to work within the lim­i­ta­tions of his power.
  • Mr. Ben­nett (Claire’s father and code­named: HRG for Horned Rim Glasses) seems almost as if his align­ment is neu­tral. He’ll pro­tect those he cares for, but also obeys his supe­ri­ors’ wishes. The writ­ers have men­tioned that he is a but a cog in the big­ger wheel that is his employer and at the moment their true inten­tions and/or motives are still unclear
  • The Hait­ian, while mys­te­ri­ous and obey­ing of HRG’s com­mands, seems like he has his own motives beyond the scope of his employer


Now, what about your the­o­ries? If you have some, please share by com­ment­ing or send­ing me an email at erik(at)kartooner.com.
 

Budgeting Special Effects

November 28, 06 //
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Iron Man posterKCRW’s The Busi­ness hosted by Claude Brodesser-Akner is both a radio show and pod­cast deal­ing with the inner work­ings of the busi­ness of Hollywood.

Claude’s inter­views with direc­tors, screen­writ­ers, adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives and actors/actresses are often fas­ci­nat­ing, if not enlight­en­ing, espe­cially if you share an inter­est in how films are cre­ated like I do.

In his inter­view with actor/director Jon Favreau enti­tled “No Spe­cial Effects, It’s Really Direc­tor Jon Favreau”, Jon reveals his love/hate rela­tion­ship with CGI effects and why home brewed effects are still rel­e­vant and use­ful. His phi­los­o­phy is that while com­puter gen­er­ated imagery has its place (namely a tool­box of end­less pos­si­bil­ity) it can also cloud the visual aes­thetic of a movie.

While CGI has improved over the years, pro­vid­ing the back­bone for things like sci-fi vis­tas and mytho­log­i­cal crea­tures as well upping the ante on dis­as­ter sequences it’s also — in most cases — imme­di­ately rec­og­niz­able if it doesn’t blend in with live action.

Recently Favreau was cho­sen to direct the film adap­ta­tion of Iron Man, a task not to be taken lightly and even though the film itself has a much big­ger bud­get than his other films, he’s also made the deci­sion to bud­get the spe­cial effects. His rea­son­ing is two-fold; that the film’s bud­get is tar­geted at a spe­cific amount and to effec­tively blend CGI with live action with­out going overboard.

In all hon­esty, this is some­thing that I wish more direc­tors (includ­ing George Lucas) would come to terms with. Audi­ences are typ­i­cally over­whelmed with joy when a superb CGI sequence is pulled off but to echo Favreau’s thoughts, in most cases it’s eas­ily noticed and can take you out of the movie, detach­ing you from the film’s oth­er­wise engross­ing atmos­phere and aesthetic.

Yet, to play devil’s advo­cate I sup­pose it’s a tricky thing to avoid and I’d imag­ine why most direc­tors and pro­duc­ers go out on a limb blind­folded, hop­ing that what­ever is put together by their mas­ters of illu­sion comes across suc­cess­fully not only in a visual man­ner but also allow­ing var­i­ous CG ele­ments to inter­act with live action in a real­is­tic way. 

Rolling with Cars

November 21, 06 //
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Lightning McQueen [Pixar]

After releas­ing Find­ing Nemo — one of my all-time favorites, right up there with Toy Story — Pixar announced that they were work­ing on a film about cars. When I first heard the news I think I might’ve been read­ing an issue of Wired and sat in disbelief.

While the talk­ing ani­mal shtick has worn out its wel­come, there’s a cer­tain safety net that accom­pa­nies an ani­mated film of that nature. Espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that talk­ing ani­mals is a for­mula that has been used by sev­eral ani­ma­tion com­pa­nies (Dis­ney and Warner Broth­ers comes to mind) in the past and for the most part, if done cor­rectly, appeals to a vast audience.

While I passed up the oppor­tu­nity to see the movie in the the­ater I did man­age to rent it this past week and it’s safe to say that Cars, despite it’s main char­ac­ters being talk­ing vehi­cles, does work and only because Pixar is at the helm. I’m not entirely sure whether some­one else with this mate­r­ial would’ve been able to make it as inter­est­ing and worth watch­ing, which goes to show that Pixar could prob­a­bly make talk­ing rocks watchable.

The plot is sur­face deep, but the gen­eral out­line is that it involves a pompous NASCAR race car named Light­ning McQueen (per­fectly voiced by Owen Wil­son) who through the course of the movie hum­bles him­self thanks to a few small town denizens who teach him how to slow down in life.

There’s a life les­son here that resounds in all of us, that life is some­times too fast paced for us to real­ize that every­thing is com­ing at us at a blur. It’s been tack­led before in movies but never using a car as the pro­tag­o­nist, who is quite lit­er­ally the embod­i­ment of fast-paced life.

On the other side of the spec­trum, there’s even a deeper les­son about how we are will­ing to sac­ri­fice beauty to shave a few min­utes off our travel time. In the movie, it’s Route 66 that at one point in time flour­ished with tourists and car enthu­si­asts and now stands as reminder of what once was and will never be.

The movie itself is full of chuck­les from the sup­port­ing cast and when it’s all said and done it really does stay with you. I’m an advo­cate of slow­ing down every once in a while, tak­ing a step back, enjoy­ing the sweeter aspects of life (like love, fam­ily and rela­tion­ships) and fig­ur­ing things out instead of let­ting every­thing fall into place.

As the Racal Flatts’ song ‘Life is a High­way’ tells us, “Life’s like a road that you travel on, When there’s one day here and the next day gone.” 

Revisiting Jurassic Park

February 3, 06 //
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Ask any­one who knows me about my fond­ness and utter boy­hood joy for movies and most likely you’ll begin to piece together per­sonal frag­ments that ulti­mately led to the per­son I am today.

Like Michael, I’m like a kid in a candy store — gnaw­ing on an enor­mous Gob­stop­per — when it comes to watch­ing movies, espe­cially those rare cin­e­matic expe­ri­ences where you feel as if you’re a part of what’s occur­ing on screen.

There are very few movies that have immersed me in such a vivid man­ner that when I’m amongst the audi­ence I for­get about real­ity until the cred­its appear on screen. One such movie, which debuted in the early 90s, totally cap­ti­vated me at the time as well as reminded me what a good movie could be.

Sev­eral months prior to the offi­cial open­ing of the movie I can remem­ber strolling past the card­board dis­play, a medium-sized adver­tise­ment with a jeep and the words “Juras­sic Park: An Adven­ture 65 Mil­lion Years in the Making”.

At the time, my brother and I stopped dead in our tracks and just exam­ined the adver­tise­ment won­der­ing to our­selves whether or not it was a dinosaur movie or a cheesy hor­ror flick. Despite our attempts to fig­ure out what the movie was about, I do remem­ber think­ing that the logo was fan­tas­tic, a silo­huette of a dinosaur on a blood red back­ground with huge bold let­ters, that alone guar­an­teed our pres­cence at the film’s release.

How­ever, there was one tiny detail I had ini­tially over­looked upon first glanc­ing at the card­board stand, that Juras­sic Park was not only going to be a movie about dinosaurs, but that Steven Spiel­berg was direct­ing. I decided then and there, with­out a moment’s hes­i­ta­tion, that I was going to see this movie, no mat­ter what.

After doing some more research on the film, which if I remem­ber cor­rectly, con­sisted of watch­ing every enter­tain­ment medium that I could, it was revealed that not only was this going to be a movie about dinosaurs, it was going to be about a “dinosaur amuse­ment park”. In my opin­ion, mix­ing giant rep­tiles of the past with Dis­ney­land seemed like a superb idea.

Hav­ing no prior knowl­edge of the book I decided to pur­chase it and read it before the movie, some­thing I try to avoid since they rarely ever com­pli­ment eachother. A few chap­ters into Juras­sic Park my eyes glazed over and I tossed the book aside in dis­be­lief and frankly dis­ap­point­ment, mainly because of the long pas­sages of text deal­ing strictly with med­ical ter­mi­nol­ogy and the fact that the story itself dragged on.

Luck­ily, Steven Spiel­berg and crew took cre­ative lib­er­ties with the story, some­thing I was happy with con­sid­er­ing the orig­i­nal sto­ry­line, while sim­i­lar and I sup­pose appeal­ing to some read­ers, wasn’t exactly “adven­ture” mate­r­ial (years later I would end up chang­ing my mind, after read­ing the book cover-to-cover).

The movie Juras­sic Park, unlike it’s book coun­ter­part, was sim­ply one of the most ener­getic and visu­ally mind-blowing cin­e­matic expe­ri­ences since Star Wars. The break­through CGI, bring­ing to life dinosaurs you could only imag­ine before­hand, made these dinosaurs seem life­like and in some instances down­right hor­rific, espe­cially the T-Rex and Raptors.

Almost 13 years later, I’ve since revis­ited Juras­sic Park, hav­ing watched the DVD and air­ings of the movie on tele­vi­sion and I’m still cap­ti­vated by it. The per­for­mances are and char­ac­ters them­selves are stel­lar, espe­cially that of Ian Mal­colm as played by Jeff “The Fly” Gold­blum. He plays the neu­rotic, know-it-all char­ac­ter in many films and pulls it off par­tic­u­larly well in JP. The spe­cial effects, which were pin­na­cle at the time, still remain con­vinc­ing and dramatic.

Juras­sic Park is and was truly one of the most ful­fill­ing movie expe­ri­ences that I’ve ever wit­nessed and because of the amount of detail and the thrilling aspects to the film it’ll always remain a clas­sic, earn­ing its spot next to other won­der­ful movies that will be watched and remem­bered by gen­er­a­tions to come, mark my word. 

The Great Conjunction

March 10, 05 //
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dk-dog.jpgJim Henson’s The Dark Crys­tal was an epic under­tak­ing for Hen­son and com­pany in the early 80’s. It also remains one of my favorite movies of all time. Despite the high pro­duc­tion qual­ity of the film the dif­fi­culty in cre­at­ing The Dark Crys­tal was partly due to the mechan­ics of mim­ic­k­ing real­is­tic move­ment with intri­cate hand pup­pets, some­thing that had never been con­veyed suc­cess­fully despite prior attempts and experimentation.

Pre-production

Before pro­duc­tion was to begin, Hen­son part­nered with Gary Kurtz, who served as pro­ducer on Star Wars and Brian Froud, con­cep­tual artist, to bring the story to life. The next step was brain­storm­ing and out­lin­ing how The Dark Crys­tal was going to be cre­ated within their pro­jected bud­get. Accord­ing to Froud in an inter­view about the Mak­ing of Dark Crystal;

There were so many dif­fer­ences of opin­ion and so many com­pro­mises had to be made to accom­mo­date the char­ac­ters to the phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions of the human body. But every­thing did turn out all right in the end.

Recog­ni­tion

The film opened on Decem­ber 17th, 1982 with a final bud­get of $15 mil­lion, funded and dis­trib­uted by Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios. Crit­ics either hailed it as a “bit­ter­sweet spec­ta­cle” or noth­ing more than an “overblown pup­pet show”. Through my eyes it was some­thing that broke the mold and pushed the bound­aries beyond con­ven­tional Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions. It’s some­what unset­tling that movies that sel­dom break any molds gar­ner critic appraisal and yet “unique” films with a sense of vision — espe­cially inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tions — rarely receive wide­spread recog­ni­tion. Henson’s The Dark Crys­tal, while fan­tasy in nature, was also an explo­sion of col­ors, tex­tures and cul­ture. As you watch the film you appre­ci­ate the amount of work that went into research­ing the char­ac­ters, his­tory and spe­cial effects.

Spe­cial Effects

In an age before CGI (or Com­puter Gen­er­ated Imagery), The Dark Crys­tal uti­lized extremely detailed and yet com­pli­cated pup­petry. In some scenes, peo­ple small in stature were used for the Gelflings and full-sized actors for many of the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. Like any Hen­son pro­duc­tion this was needed to envoke a sense of real­ism and yet, with the addi­tion of lay­ered pup­petry, it gives the illu­sion that the crea­ture on screen is liv­ing and breath­ing. These meth­ods, if used prop­erly, can be very suc­cess­ful in film­mak­ing, but it’s also noth­ing new. Since the advent of film, peo­ple have dressed up in cos­tumes to rep­re­sent crea­tures plucked from their creator’s imag­i­na­tions. How­ever, in recent times, film­mak­ers have added more real­ism by cou­pling the cos­tume with noth­ing more than gad­getry (for the eyes, limbs or other pro­tru­sions) cov­ered in mate­r­ial such as latex, foam or fur which is usu­ally con­trolled by radio receivers or computers.

The Dark Crys­tal will for­ever remain in my mind as one of the movies which influ­enced by own inter­ests in pup­petry and spe­cial effects. As a kid I must have sat down and watched it a few hun­dred times and never, even to this day, have I grown tired of repeated view­ings. It’s a clas­sic in my opin­ion as far as Hen­son and fan­tasy films are con­cerned and should be a part of anyone’s movie col­lec­tion, whether you be a die-hard fan­tasy or science-fiction film aficionado. 

Half-Life 2

November 17, 04 //
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Half-Life 2 Review Teaser 

Bill and Ted

October 29, 04 //
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Bill and Ted“Socrates strolls through the crowded high school audi­to­rium in a bathrobe, nod­ding hello to Sig­mund Freud, as Genghis Khan swings his bat­tlestaff nearby. Abra­ham Lin­coln, Napoleon Bona­parte and Billy the Kid sink back in the plush seats, while Joan of Arc plays with her dog. On stage, Beethoven faces a large array of syn­the­siz­ers, with a com­put­er­ized light­ing sys­tem to intro­duce him to the MTV generation.

The cen­ter of atten­tion, how­ever, is two teenage boys who have brought these leg­endary fig­ures to the present-day to help them pass a his­tory class.

It’s all part of the mad­ness of Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture, a high-spirited comedy-adventure rang­ing from the Dawn of Time to the 27th cen­tury. With the futur­is­tic assis­tance of Rufus, played by George (Out­ra­geous For­tune) Car­lin, Bill and Ted travel the cir­cuits of time to round up the ingre­di­ents for a suc­cess­ful his­tory project. But are the likes of Billy the Kid and Napoleon Bona­parte ready for shop­ping malls and water­parks?” Star­log Mag­a­zine (May 1998, Num­ber 30)

Noth­ing sums up the late 80s and early 90s like Bill and Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture (1989) and it’s sequel Bogus Jour­ney (1991). Star­ring Alex Win­ter and Keanu Reeves as Bill and Ted, the movies depicted their “excel­lent” adven­tures and the char­ac­ters they meet along the way and ulti­mately take back with them to their own time in San Dimas, Cal­i­for­nia, dude.

Nowa­days, San Dimas is only known for Rag­ing Waters and sadly no futur­is­tic Acad­emy ded­i­cated to Bill and Ted, although the city coun­cil should con­sider such a gov­ern­ment invest­ment. You’d have to see the sec­ond movie to appre­ci­ate that com­ment, oth­er­wise its just con­fus­ing, isn’t it?

As far as the stars are con­cerned, since Bill and Ted they’ve approached a mul­ti­tude of projects. Alex Winter’s Freaked, a movie about freaks stars Win­ter as a nor­mal Joe who is trans­formed into a green dis­fig­ured winged crea­ture. He meets other freaks along the way and even­tu­ally, through care­ful sluething, fig­ures out why the freaks exist. As far as Keanu Reeves is con­cerned, he’s done quite well with the Matrix tril­ogy and of course that role in Steve Martin’s Par­ent­hood in the early 90s. George (Out­ra­geous For­tune) Car­lin has been mak­ing com­edy appear­ances all over the globe and var­i­ous guest spots on tele­vi­sion and in the movies.

Let us not for­get the role of Death (aka Grim Reaper) in 1991’s Bogus Jour­ney played by the fan­tas­tic actor William Sadler. Sadler’s most recent movie appear­ance was in the Green Mile play­ing Klaus Det­t­er­ick and as the Sher­iff in WB’s ex-Alien series Roswell.

Despite the 12-year gap from Bogus Jour­ney to now, accord­ing to Keanu and Win­ters they plan on revis­it­ing their char­ac­ters in a movie that will depict Bill and Ted in their excel­lent 40’s. Con­sid­er­ing both of the actors are near­ing their 40s (pend­ing mid-life cri­sis), it’s a bold step for each but a wel­comed one at that. Let’s hope that they craft a excel­lent script and ulti­mately cre­ate a most excel­lent of a movie.

Dude.

For more Bill and Ted-related info, please visit BillandTed.org and XE’s Bill and Ted’s Excel­lent cereal write-up. 

Why I Love E.T.

October 4, 04 //
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etcover.jpgI’ve always been intrigued by the fan­tas­tic. More specif­i­cally, movies that explore ideas out­side of the box (such as ET and Con­tact) and allow me as the viewer to also think out­side the box. With the mediocre scripts that have been cir­cu­lat­ing Hol­ly­wood cou­pled with sub-par act­ing it’s no won­der the pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies are hurt­ing. The mate­r­ial isn’t alive. It doesn’t shout cre­ativ­ity or imag­i­na­tion. Why? The stu­dios are bank­ing the suc­cess of a movie based on big name celebri­ties, hop­ing they will in fact draw in the crowds rather than focus on writ­ing with sub­stance and pro­duc­tion qual­ity material.

E.T. at the time fea­tured a cast of mod­er­ately ‘unknowns’ — aside from Peter Coy­ote and Dee Wallace-Stone — includ­ing younger cast mem­bers Henry Thomas, Drew Bar­ry­more and Robert Mac­Naughton. Henry Thomas’ per­for­mance was notably excel­lent because he emoted fear and sad­ness suc­cess­fully onscreen, all in front of a mechan­i­cal puppet.

I love E.T. and it will remain my all-time favorite film out of every movie I’ve seen in my life­time. It’s as sim­ple as that with­out com­pli­cat­ing things. The movie is a con­stant reminder of the spe­cial attrib­utes of friend­ship. Look­ing past the fact that it was a movie about an alien and his first-hand encoun­ters on Earth you start to peel away at the lay­ers and find some­thing spe­cial, almost inde­scrib­able and more impor­tantly, heartwarming.

To this day I still see it as one of the pin­na­cle movies of the early 1980s.