Thank God creative and animation types aren't as myopic as your average talkbacker. Can you imagine if this was fifty years ago? It'd be "What? Rodents that TALK? WTF?" and "For fuck's sake - ANOTHER Bugs Bunny/Mickey Mouse/Droopy/Donald/Daffy Duck cartoon??? Can't these guys come up with something new instead of repeating themselves for decades? If I see another animated mouse..."

Or... "A puppet that wants to be a boy? WTF? Who thought THAT stupid shit up?" or "A poisoned apple? Ya gotta be kidding me - how stupid IS that chick?" or "A FLYING elephant? EVERYONE knows it's PIGS that fly (!)!" or if you want to make things a bit more analogous, "Ballerina HIPPOS? WTF? How stupid can you possibly be? That's about as far from a real dancer as you can get - what moron came up with that? And still with the animals???"

Are the dipsticks getting my point? Maybe I need to be a bit clearer?

As for the Mars movie, when they say it'll be live-action/animation cross (Isn't that what Wall-e is too?) do they mean just a live action flick with lots of animation (like say Phantom Menace which was jokingly referred to in-house as the 'aminated movie' having 2000 effects shots) or do they mean part live-action & photoreal and part non-photoreal/stylised like all their other movies??

You talk about complexity and simplistic American stuff then reduce things down to the 'talking animals' bonehead critique. Whatever man. Of course the answer is YES, if it's still a great story.

As far as being coherent goes, maybe a lot of people are confusing it with ambiguity. Many cultural references can be recognised through their context in the scene even if we aren't familiar with the actual custom or reference. Ambiguity however is used differently by Japanese and western films. In American films it's acceptable to use ambiguity in relation to character traits or motivation whereas we baulk at ambiguity in plot though Japanese audiences have no problem with it.

Not trying to sound all wanky, I just don't know how else to say it.

The thing is we're living in the age of morons whose defence is "Why should I have to know that? It's before my time!". Hey, I didn't grow up with the Beatles either but fuck me I'm not that myopic or pigheaded that I'd even try to comment on music or defend myself if I didn't even know THAT much.

ANYway what I'm saying is that these says lowest-common-denominator pap like Shrek can't even do the classic Warner pop reference stuff right because it seems to me that even if a young audience doesn't 'get' the song reference in a Bugs Bunny cartoon they still have the tools to inform you as to the intent of the scene. Stuff like Shrek is so ridiculously specific (to the point where only U.S. audiences will understand) with the references I don't see how it will possibly stand up for another 5 years, never mind the better part of century like Bugs. Is this unfair? Toy Story for that matter has plenty of references but they all work on both levels too.

I know I know I'm rambling again...

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