Tag Archives: Chris Sanders

When Infighting Causes Problems with a Nest of Vampires

10 Mar
null 4

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Coming to Digital
March 15th
Amazon, Tubi, iTunes

Exclusive screening on Facebook March 13, 2021 at 1 PM PST

When human blood suckers gather, what are they called? Is it a coven or a cauldron like the bats they are? It’s hard to say, but Chris Sanders’ Nest of Vampires is an aptly named film about a cadre who is having trouble keeping quiet in a small town in England. Kit Valentine (Tom Fairfoot), a top MI5 agent, lost his wife to a group of them and the authorities are not investigating. His daughter, Anna (Daria Krauzo), is kidnapped and no self-respecting father will let this case go cold.

Had Dracula ever wanted to lay down an empire as detailed in Bram Stoker’s novel, this movie would be a perfect followup! There’s no relation to the Victorian work. Instead, this crowdfunded film project by Sanders is styled to fit in the world of The Lost Boys. Yes, the setup is cheesy, and this nest is in over their heads, but the concept nicely works.

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Evolution is in Trouble with The Croods: A New Age

19 Dec

null 10By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

Available on VOD
For outlets, please visit www.watchcroods.com

A DNA sequence must be missing to make The Croods sequel, New Age stand out. One problem is the time it took to make this animated film. Seven years, not including the Netflix prequel, is quite the long time. One issue is because of Universal Pictures’ acquiring the DreamWorks Animation and the uncertainty which resulted. The other is handing over the directorial reigns to story artist, Joel Crawford.

This franchise created by Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco is good. Who doesn’t love a Flintstones like family trying to make sense of a changing world? The duo had ideas. Whoever said their story required the help of The Hageman Brothers, Paul Fisher, and Bob Logan to fine tune needs a rock tossed at him.

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Booyah! Looking at How Dawn of the Croods Fits in the Continuity

26 Dec

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

Dawn_of_the_Croods_poster

The translation of the family-adventure comedy film The Croods to a Netflix television sitcom, simply titled Dawn of the Croods, works well enough to sate fans of prehistory’s first dysfunctional family. To see them survive being turned from a 3D to hand drawn animation in Dawn of the Croods is great. The character designs are faithful to the film’s cave drawn intro. The two that stand out are Sandy (the youngest child, voiced by Grey Griffin), who takes after the eldest, Gran (Laraine Newman), in looks while Ugga (Cree Summer) — the matriarch — tries to keep the family together Flinstone’s style. She rarely gets livid, and the best episode of this lot is with the eighth episode, “Mom Genes.”

The later half of the 13 episode full-season release is far more engaging, and this series is amusing because the problems the Croods family has to deal with is typical for a modern nuclear family. There are moments where this series becomes reminiscent of Married…with Children meets Family Guy. Had the writers dealt with authentic problems cave people faced, one of them would have included how they turned from hunter gatherers to agrarian. They trade in meat instead of plants. Surprisingly, this concept is gently explored when the tween, Eep (now voiced by Stephanie Lemelin) decides to become vegetarian and tries to convince her family to switch in “The Garden of the Eaten.”

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Video

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Preview Trailer Released and Analysis

19 Dec

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Poster

The fantastic looking official trailer for the second movie in the How to Train Your Dragon series was released today. It shows that a danger is in store for the village of Berk. Years have no doubt passed since the first movie and as for how the television series fits in, the emphasis on the main hero becoming a confident warrior is very evident.

In the trailer, Hiccup meets up with a person from his past and the reveal will be a welcome to viewers’ eyes. Spoilers exist and it tells of what happened to his mother. And a terrifying force will invade the Archipelago. That will no doubt cause future ramifications for everyone living within this desolate land. Although the ideas seem far from Cressida Cowell’s books, maybe it is not. Perhaps the force that’s coming is another civilization looking to expand its borders.

In the books, Hiccup will no doubt unite all the local tribes and be crowned king. But in this movie, just who will he be facing is unknown. Writer/Director Dean DeBlois is helming this project without Chris Sanders and his ideas presented in the trailer look confidently strong. To not have the talented Sanders providing additional input should not affect the direction, but his artistic interpretation of the expanded world will be sorely missed.

By all indications, this trailer shows that the CGI will be just as good as the dynamic visuals produced in Disney’s Frozen. All the snow and ice sculptures look alive, and in high-definition resolution, the details are simply stunning. This movie looks like it will no doubt be nominated for technical awards in the 2015 awards season.

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Finding Ohana in Stitch! the Animated Series

2 Jul

Lilo & Stitch!By Ed Sum

Whatever happened to Lilo and Stitch? The series that began in 2002 enjoyed a good five-year run in North America. After three more movies and a television series, Disney put an end to their adventures with Leroy and Stitch. This 2008 direct to video release tied up all the loose ends and set the blue fuzzy terror free. Thanks to Lilo, he learned how to be civilized.

During this run, Experiment 626 (Stitch) still had his moments of being wonderfully nasty. He was more of a selling point of the series than the subplot of building ohana, a Hawaiian term meaning family. In this series, Lilo further defines it as, “Nobody gets left behind.” In this series, she sought to find a place where each quirky experiment, a cousin of Stitch, can safely belong. A few gems in the TV series existed which reinforced this point. But the one that says it all is with “Remmy,” where Lilo tries to cope on the anniversary of when her parents died. Nani, her older sister, tries her best to raise her, but that’s difficult to do when neither have an appropriate coping mechanism in place for them to grieve. Instead, what they do is to build their familial relationships to include everyone, so that no matter where the person (or alien) is from, they have brothers and sisters to rely on when hope is needed.

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