Chris Sanders Archives | Otaku No Culture

When Infighting Causes Problems with a Nest of Vampires

The world is very familiar, and anyone not paying attention will miss the punch line early in the film. We’re led down a story that’s one part heist (seeing an innocent girl get kidnapped) and another part recovery (of said woman) and vampires are involved!

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

Add in how one hominid family differs from another, and if the advances in technology (ala Gilligan’s Island) are good, I would say making a new Netflix series should have been considered instead.

By 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

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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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How to Train Your Dragon 2 Preview Trailer Released and Analysis

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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.

How to Keep on Selling How to Train Your Dragon Beyond its Source Material.

Both the novels and animated series in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise can be enjoyed as its own separate entities.

Dreamworks has a solid product with How to Train Your Dragon. Loosely based on the novel of the same name by Cressida Cowell, this movie version makes for a refreshing take in dragon folklore. With allusions to the tales of yore, the cartoony caricature driven CGI world created here does more than stir the imagination. It harkens to a potential saga in the making. With more books in this series, there is potential to adapt the later novels. And the altered storyline is something that writer Chris Sanders is not too worried about.

This veteran in the animation scene is better known for his work in the Lilo & Stitch series, and he repeats his winning formula for Dreamworks. If one looks carefully, Toothless the dragon looks a bit like the alien Stitch.

And instead of a girl meeting an extraterrestrial, the tale takes a spin in a world of fantasy where a young boy, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) encounters a dragon. His Viking village is at war with the entire dragon race and in order to train the next generation to fight against them, Hiccup goes to school. With this film, what he does is play hookey instead. Little do his classmates know, he is rehabilitating a serpentine beast behind everyone’s back. But it’s a question of who is training who, and those moments are particularly engaging. Just like Lilo and Stitch, there are a few adorable moments as the two bond.

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