Barnyard Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Barnyard: The Original Party Animals -- Only worth renting if your kids have already seen The Ant Bully, Flushed Away, Happy Feet, Ice Age 2, Open Season, Over the Hedge and The Wild. (At least three times apiece.) Plot: A bunch of cows do silly things in a barnyard. Extras include filmmaker commentary, four featurettes, seven deleted scenes, two music videos, etc.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe -- You know how New Line released those really nifty "extended edition" DVDs for The Lord of the Rings? Yeah, well Disney liked that idea so here comes the mega-huge Narnia release, complete with seven additional minutes of in-movie footage, three lengthy audio commentaries, and two full discs over-stuffed with lions and witches and wardrobes, oh my.

The Devil Wears Prada -- The chick-flick version of Hostel. Anne Hathaway plays a "fat girl" who allows herself to be abused by the evil boss Meryl Streep just long enough to earn an oh-so-important life lesson. Extras include a filmmaker commentary, four featurettes, a bunch of deleted scenes and other random trinkets.

Material Girls -- One of the worst studio releases of the past 15 years. Stunningly bad. Highly recommended, however, if you happen to be a member of the Duff family. Anyone who can make it more than 15 minutes into Martha Coolidge's audio commentary has the fortitude of an Egyptian pyramid-builder. Featurettes and music videos are also included.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby -- Will Ferrell brings his patented brand of stream-of-consciousness goofiness to the easy-target world of NASCAR, and the result is a movie just as funny as we expected it to be. OK, so it's not Anchorman, but it's still packed with laughs. (Plus John C.Reilly, Sacha Baron Cohen and Amy Adams are actually allowed to steal a few scenes, with makes me think even more of Ferrell as a comedian.) Snag the unrated edition for extra footage and a truckload of commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes, bloopers, promos and more assorted silliness.

World Trade Center -- The year's second 9/11 movie takes a decidedly different approach than its predecessor (United 93) and turns out to be one of Oliver Stone's more accessible projects. The horrible date is re-captured in chillingly realistic fashion, the performances are pretty great across the board, and the extra features (in the 2-disc commemorative edition) are as informative as they are entertaining. Fans of the film can pick through two separate audio commentaries and a second disc filled with mini-documentaries on the film, the survivors and the event itself.

NPR talked about the onslaught of children's films at the box office lately on Day to Day last Friday and wondered about the quality control going on behind the scenes. They interviewed film historian Charles Solomon, who comments that the scarcity of animated and children's films used to make them an important part of a childhood experience, but things have changed. These days, the sheer amount of films pile on so quickly that before you blink, three different animated movies have been released at the box office. Suddenly you're buying everything from Flushed Away action figures to Over the Hedge video games, but your kids aren't getting the same messages and experience that you had when you saw The Rescuers for the first time.

It's no secret that kid's movies can rake in a ton of dough; the studios are busy falling all over themselves trying to make them. It seems like as more get churned out, fewer of them that have great stories and characters. They'll just market the hell out of them so that every box of cereal, kid's TV show, and billboard is plastered with images of the upcoming film and your children will refuse to eat anything green or brush their teeth until you take them to see it.

Now, I love animated films probably more than an adult should, but the problem is pretty rampant with the films aimed at children that are being released today, as we posted about previously on Cinematical. The trouble is that for every Spirited Away released, there comes a slew of films like Happy Feet, Barnyard, and The Ant Bully. These films took some critical hard hits, but they've made bags of cash (the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of Happy Feet has almost cleared $200 million already). Studios are more concerned with cranking out a product in a timely manner, even if it's sub-par and relies on fart jokes and recycled plots. As a result, quality children's entertainment is getting harder and harder to find. Parents may appreciate the fact that they can now take their kids to see a movie aimed at children almost any weekend now, rather than having to wait ... but at what cost?

What do you think, parents? Is the onslaught of animation worth the decrease in quality kiddie fare? Or is it enough just to be able to plunk your tot down for 90 minutes with a kiddie-pack combo, even if what they're seeing isn't quite up to the standards you remember from your own childhood hours at the movies?

Now here's a weird Oscar rule that you probably never knew (I sure didn't): In order for there to be five Best Animated Feature nominees, there have to be at least sixteen eligible titles. The last time this happened was in 2002, when Miyazaki's Spirited Away proved to be the year's best ieffort n animation. (According the The Academy, anyway.)

Warner's Happy Feet, Weinstein's Arthur and the Invisibles and Sony's Paprika have yet to "officially" open, but once they do it means we'll get five nominees in one of Oscars' more colorful categories. (Last year we only had three, and that wasn't as much fun.) In addition to the three mentioned above, the other eligibles are The Ant Bully, Barnyard, Cars, Curious George, Everyone's Hero, Flushed Away, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Monster House, Open Season, Over the Hedge, Renaissance, A Scanner Darkly and The Wild. (What, no Ultraviolet?)

So if you had to pick only five of those flicks (aside from the three we haven't seen yet, of course), what would be your picks as "Oscar material?" If I'm predicting the field, my five picks would be Cars, Monster House, Over the Hedge, Renaissance and A Scanner Darkly. If I'm casting a vote for my favorite: Over the Hedge. Flick made me giggle.

Have you noticed how many animated movies have been in the theater over the past few months? There have been Monster House, Open Season, The Wild, Over the Hedge, Barnyard, Cars, and The Ant Bully to name a few, which doesn't even cover the glut of sequels and straight-to -video DVDs that have been released and re-released, including last week's The Little Mermaid: Ultimate Line Our Pockets Disney Adamantium Edition. Of those, only Monster House doesn't focus on talking animals, insects or vehicles. As a result, the novelty of both animated films, and the concepts they bring with them are making audiences weary, according to The New York Times.

Popular animated movies used to belong only to Disney, and they released them sparingly, not wanting to step on the toes of their own product. However, once Disney/Pixar became a force to reckon with, Disney was releasing CGI films on top of its own traditionally animated films, and began crowding the schedule with more films each year. These days, animated films crowd theaters with offerings from Disney/Pixar, Sony Imageworks, Dreamworks Animation, Warner Bros., and Paramount/Nickelodeon. It's a jungle out there -- or a forest, or a farmyard, or ... well, you get the idea.

This is typical of the Hollywood "me too!" syndrome that hits when something works well and starts making tons of money for a studio. Everyone else wants in on it. Horror films started making money, so now everyone is putting out a lot of horror movies. The Lord of the Rings opened the door for more fantasy films like The Chronicles of Narnia, and Eragon, and the popularity of X-Men gave rise to a slew of comic book movies including Spider-Man, Superman Returns and the upcoming Ghost Rider.

Animated films have always been a treasure for younger and older audiences alike, and are part of a dwindling part of the theater experience that people can still enjoy as a family. Are you still going to see animated movies?


Other animation on Cinematical:

The Demise of Hand-Drawn Animation

Studios Still Don't Get Animation

Dreamworks Choosing Quantity over Quality

Golden Globes Adds Animation Award

Though Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby repeated at the top of the box office (its total of $23 million was down 50% from last week), the big surprise this weekend was the success of Step Up. The poorly reviewed teen dancing flick earned $21.1 million on fewer than 2500 screens via a per-screen average of $8500, easily the best among mainstream films this week -- who knew that a supporting turn in She's the Man had turned Channing Tatum from former model into box office god? Since the film cost only about $12 million to make, one assumes the people at Buena Vista are doing a little celebrating today.

Also doing solid business during its opening weekend was Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, which made $19 million from Friday to Sunday, earnings that ran its total to $27 million over five days and were good enough for the third spot in the weekend charts. Rounding out the top five were Barnyard which, unaffected by awful reviews, made $10.1 million in its second week in release, and J-horror remake Pulse, which earned only $8.5 million despite an exposure roughly equal to that of Step Up.

Full numbers are after the jump.

Reportedly surpassing many studio expectations, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby easily took the box office crown this weekend, earning approximately $47 million at a rate of over $12,000/screen. The film outdistanced its closest competition (insert racing cliche here) by more than $30 million; the miserably reviewed animated feature, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, finished a distant second with a surprisingly healthy $16 million. The weekend's other big debut, The Descent, ended up in fifth place with $8.8 million from just over 2000 screens.

Despite reducing its exposure by nearly 400 screens, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest continued to rake in the cash; its $11 million this weekend pushed the movie's domestic take to nearly $380 million in five weeks. Miami Vice, meanwhile, took a dive of 63% from its triumphant opening earnings, finishing the weekend in fourth place with $9.7 million; the movie has now made back $45.7 million (domestic) against its $135 million production budget.

I can't imagine anyone else would recall this, because frankly there isn't really anything particularly memorable about it, but it tickled the back of my mind when I read this story, so I looked it up. Not so very long ago, when she signed on to Tim Allen's Zoom Courtney Cox explained she was doing it for her little girl. It makes sense, really. She's a mom with a new daughter, of course she'd want to do a family film or two -- "something fun for the whole family" as she put it. And so she signed agreed to do Zoom, and the obligatory "CGI animals in an environment we don't expect" movie, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals. Every actor in Hollywood has to do one of these movies, it seems, and what better time than when you are on a daughter-safe films spree?

But here's the kicker, my friends. Cox took her two-year-old daughter to the premiere of Barnyard, and hearing her mommy's voice coming out of a cow gave the poor child nightmares. No, I didn't make that up. Apparently, the CGI coyotes were a little much for the youngster to take as well. The irony of this situation amuses me terribly, although I of course feel bad for the daughter -- the jabberwock from Through The Looking Glass petrified me as a pre-K child. Needless to say, Cox is no longer planning on taking her daughter to see Zoom.

When it comes to summer family films, who, we figured, is better to ask than kids? So we gathered our junior film critic crew in Seattle ( AKA my kids): Neve (9), Jaxon (6), Veda (4.5) and Luka (2.5), and asked them to tell us what they think about the summer kiddie-flick lineup, based on the trailers. We watched each trailer two times, and I recorded their reactions and asked a few questions about what they thought, and which movies they're most excited about seeing. Here's what the junior squad has to say about the summer family lineup. (Note: I included Superman Returns and X-3 because a lot of families will take their kids to these flicks, or at least watch the "family" version of X-3 on pay-per-view. Also, the crew flatly refused to watch the trailer for Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, so you're on your own on that one).