Hey folks, Harry here... I'm genuinely very curious about seeing this film as soon as possible. The characters are beautifully rendered, and the inevitable trailer attached to SHREK 2, should be dazzling. I'm really curious to see the Ziggy Marley Octopus. Well, let's see how it went...
Hi Harry,
I was fortunate enough to attend the 'Shark Tale' presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival yesterday. The glimpses of the film were very enticing, and the descriptions and demonstrations of the making of the film were like the coolest DVD special features made live.
In attendance were Robert De Niro (who only waved to the crowd of 900), Michael Imperioli, Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the directors - Vicky Jenson, and a few members of her behind-the-scenes crew (i.e. a storyboarder, a computer animator, etc.) from DreamWorks, but unquestionably the star of the presentation was the star of the film - Will Smith. He was enormously personable and entertaining, even going so far as to lead the audience in singing 'Happy Birthday,' and providing a 'human boombox' beat and a very brief rap.
In addition, Smith and Imperioli demonstrated how their voices were captured and developed for a couple of their scenes, which we then got to see carried to their fully animated finish by other members of the production and animation crew.
The film itself looks outstanding. The animation is gorgeous, and fish are given a much more human aspect than in 'Finding Nemo,' with special effort given to capturing the individuality of their well-known voice counterparts - down to the sexiness of Angelina Jolie and the prominent mole on De Niro's face. The fish swim and move exquisitely in what is designed to be a more 'cartoony' and less faithful recreation of underwater life than 'Nemo.' Their stated objective was to create more of a melding of an aquatic New York City (complete with a beautifully transformed Times Square), a watery satire of gangster films, and anthropomorphic sealife. From the brief scenes and snippets that we observed, it looks like an extremely successful effort - if the rest of the story and film holds up as well. DreamWorks is clearly hoping to attract an audience of both children and adults, and also to create a picture that will hold up to repeated viewings.
Also prominently featured as voice talent in the film, but not present yesterday, were Renée Zellweger, Jack Black, and Martin Scorsese.
Hope that this whets everyone's appetite for October 1.
A loyal reader - please call me
Mike from Manhattan
And here's the final take on it...
Harry,
Just wanted to chime in with a look at the big Dreamworks' "Shark Tale" event that took place yesterday at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Clearly, Dreamworks is incredibly serious about becoming the big player in CGI and relegating Pixar (and whatever studio they end up aligning themselves with) in the dust. This film is a good 5 or so months away from its October 1 premiere, yet Dreamworks brought out the big guns yesterday for an interactive presentation that included a behind the scenes interactive type-dvd look at how this movie was made, and finally 4 complete scenes from the flick. When I say big guns, I mean starting with the biggest, and no I don't mean Will Smith, although yes he was there and beloved by the audience, but I mean Jeffrey Katzenberg. Mr. K was even on stage at one point as one of Shark Tale's story board artist's pitched a scene to Jeffrey in either an attempt to illustrate to the lay person how the movie's story boards get approved to go to the animation stage or to show what an egomaniac Jeffrey is, in that he needed to get on stage and take all the glory for this sure to be HUGE hit.
Anyway, back to the presentation, and yes Will Smith. Actually the presentation began with one of those pre-show booming voices announcing to the crowd "please turn off your cell phones, no flash photography, blah blah" only to have the curtain revealed and it was Will Smith making the announcement and just basically making stuff up. Will thanked the audience for coming, joked around a bit, and then introduced the director of Shark Tale, Vicky Jenson. Vicky basically took over for the balance of the presentation, taking the audience (which was made up to a large degree with kids) through the various stages of getting this film made. She did an amazing job, and while I realize she was using teleprompters, the presentation was set up great, and its remarkable that she was able to hold the attention spans of the various young'uns in the crowd. If the crowd had been full of movie junkies like myself, the amount of worship thrown at Vicky J. would have been sickening. By the way, did I mention that Vicky is cute, if you are reading this are you single? :). Anyway, sorry, I know most of you just want to hear about the film, how it looked, etc, so I will briefly finish talking about the rest of the interactive presentation. They did a live ADR session where Will Smith and Michael Imperioli (yes Christophah), participated in showing the audience how they give different readings to some of the written dialogue, and even a bit of improvising. At one point, some lucky little 10 year old got to go on stage and read Marty Scorsese character's dialogue in a scene with Will, and remarkably instead of crapping in his pants, the kid did a good job, earning major props from Will and the audience. I do have to mention one other member of the cast who was referred to a bit and was actually sitting in the audience and waived to the crowd a bit... Bobby D. I mean, its predictable he would be there, given he co-created the Tribeca Film Festival, but still it was definitely a thrill to us all to be sitting in Don Lino's presence. (Don Lino being the name of the shark kingpin he voices in the flick).
Ok, now to a description of the 4 brief completed scenes we witnessed yesterday. Mostly non-spoilerific.
Will Smith voices Oscar, the fish at the heart of Shark Tale. In the first very brief scene we witnessed Oscar was being thrown into his boss Sykes' office (voiced by Marty Scorsese) and fast talking all the while having $5000 in unpaid markers thrown in his face. The scene was notable for Will Smith's fresh fast talking dialogue.
The second scene was a lot longer and clearly showcased the amazing visual style this film possesses. Oscar is at the horse track (um, sea-horses) and places a $5000 bet at 200-1 odds on one of the 'horses'. The beautiful amazingly-lipped Lola (voiced by Miss Angelina Jolie...oh angelina why couldn't you have been present yesterday!) overhears this bet and assumes Oscar to be quite the big fish. She swims up next to him and casually mentions that she has never sat in the V.I.F. box and hopes that Oscar may escort her there. Just as Oscar is about to get his swim on, Sykes' shows up along with his two rasta-farian jellyfish henchman Bernie and Ernie (voiced by Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley) and blows Oscar's game. Lola sulkingly swims away realizing Oscar isn't quite Mr. Big Fish, and Sykes and his thugs bring Oscar into the box to watch the upcoming race. This scene was beautiful and in true Sea Biscuit dramatic style we see Oscar's 200-1 long shot make his way through the crowd of sea horses (at one point, I'm pretty sure that the race announcer called one of the sea horses "Sea Biscuit" but I'll have to keep my ears open when I see this flick in the theaters for that one) and is about to win the race, win Oscar $1mill clams so that he can pay off Sykes and be a happy fish, until the most dramatic spectacular sea horse crash in film history occurs right before the finish line and Oscar's horse loses. This scene truly was quite the treat.
The third scene we saw took place at a restaurant where Don Lino (the great white voiced by Bobby D) is out to dinner with his two sons Frankie (voiced by Michael Imperioli) and Lenny (the one and only Jack Black). It turns out that Don Lino is a little worried that his son Lenny isn't prepared to take over the family business. It seems that Lenny is a bit of a vegetarian which doesn't quite fit the killer shark style. This scene was hilarious as Don Lino is telling his son that "he's heard things" (as only Bobby D can say that word) about Lenny, and while Lenny waivers on what to order at this all sea-food restaurant, Don Lino takes a little shrimp, and orders Lenny to eat it. The shrimp then begins to talk and begs Lenny not to eat him, he has a family, his wife just had a baby shrimp, the whole song and dance. It was hilarious. Lenny stands up to the Don and refuses to eat the shrimp and takes the shrimp and his brethren from the shrimp cocktail platter and frees them into the open sea (outside the restaurant window). This scene was great, and just leaving me wanting much more Bobby D.
Finally, the last scene we saw was at Oscar's job at the beginning of the flick. Its a big Car Wash, except actually its a Whale Wash, however the song playing over the soundtrack was the classic "Car Wash" and Vicky Jenson indicated that Floetry is going to do a cover of the song for the final soundtrack. Anyway, this was a big music production number as Oscar led the whale wash team on the job (even though Oscar's job is really to floss the whale's teeth, but he kind of avoids that aspect and tries to supervise the others) and it turns into a big ziegfield follies-esque type number. Visually, this scene again looked amazing and while not at all the same almost-photo realistic style that you found in the under-water scenes of Finding Nemo, the unique look was magically captivating. This film seems to have all the kind of pop culture references that audiences have loved in Shrek (and Shrek 2 for that matter apparently), i.e. at one point in the aforementioned car wash scene Oscar delivers a bag of Kelpy Kreme (clearly designed/logoed to remind us all of certain very addictive donuts) to the receptionist fish character Angie, voiced by Renee Zelwegger, who is secretly crushing on Oscar.
Ok, i think i've rambled on enough about this film. I'm very excited to see the film in full and am certain that we have a $200mill hit club and beyond box-office winner in this one. Thanks to the Tribeca Film Festival for bringing us NY'ers a piece of hollywood yesterday. Oh, and for all you posters on the board. I am so not a plant, but I love Vicky J and Dreamworks for that matter, so Jeffrey if you can get over the minor-slam re: your ego in the first few sentences of my essay here, can I please have a job? :)
Peace out.
I am Jake Ryan.
