Filed under: Movies

In Focus: ‘Open Season’ opens in crowded animation season

by Alan Gardner

Steve Moore’s movie, “Open Season,” wasn’t intentionally planned to open up in the fall around the time of traditional hunting season, but sometimes timing is everything in the entertainment industry.  Steve ought to know that. In many ways, his entertainment career has been aided by providential good timing since the day he decided to take a swing at cartooning. His “In the Bleachers” submission landed on the editors desk at Tribune Media at the same time another sports cartoon was ending. Pitching the movie idea for “Open Season” to Sony Pictures came at a time when they were just opening their animation studio and were hungry for a great movie project.

Over the Hedge DVD Release date set

by Alan Gardner

According to the Reuter’s story the DVD will include a hybernated feature that can be activated after November 28 (presumably to coincide with peak Christmas buying season), a four minute mini-movie with all the original voice talent. The mini-movie is a parody of reality tv called “Hammy’s Boomerang Adventure.”The DVD also includes “Behind the Hedge,” a look at the real-life animals that inspired the film’s critters; filmmaker commentaries; a mock “infomercial” spoofing the career opportunities of pest control; a “making-of” documentary; cast interviews; and a virtual drawing lesson by a DreamWorks animator on how to sketch Hammy.Over the Hedge took in $151.7 million domestically.

Garfield movie debuts at #7; takes in $7.2 million

by Alan Gardner

“Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties” was number 7 over its opening weekend and only took in $7.2 million according to The Numbers.Most reviews that I read thought the script was less than stellar, but I’m sure as a parent, if I had a choice between Pixar’s “Cars” and “Garfield,” I’d take the former.  “Cars” is in its second week at number 1 and took in $31.2 million over the weekend for a growing total of $114.5 million.Here are a couple of more reviews: The Patriot News in Harrison, PA thinks it wasn’t too bad, but the VUE Weekly hopes Garfield doesn’t have nine lives; The Boston Globe wasn’t impressed as well.

Garfield: Tale of Two Kitties reviews trickling in

by Alan Gardner

I’m late in getting in contact with the Garfield/20th Century Fox crowd to see if there is a prescreening of the new Garfield movie that is coming out this Friday, so I’ll try to be diligent in posting links to other reviews.First up we have a disappointed MSNBCDespite (Bill Murray) droll delivery and a couple of amusing lines here and there, Murray can?t wring many laughs out of the mostly lame script from returning writers Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow….  A sure sign of complete creative bankruptcy in any sequel, this time the action shifts overseas to England, where Garfield (voiced by Bill Murray) is given the opportunity to do the usual European vacation things, including a pit stop at Buckingham Palace where his dog pal Odie pees on the stoic royal guards.

Woman claims Over the Hedge creators may have been influenced by her strip

by Alan Gardner

Like clockwork, every time a successful movie comes out, someone comes out of the woodwork claiming that the movie idea was based on their earlier work and that the creators are plagiarists who are raking in money off of someone else’s idea.According to Minnesota public radio, Moira Manion is a cartoonist from Minnesota who had a comic strip about a fox and a snake living on the edge of suburbia back in in the early 1990’s that was distributed through Argonaut Entertainment….  Despite the hand-written notes of encouragement in their margins, she decided to lay down Franky & Ralph temporarily to pursue other ideas.A few months later, with her suburban streetwise fox and naive rattlesnake still fresh in her head, Manion ran across a notice in a newspaper trade magazine.”It said that coming in October, United Feature Syndicate would be launching a new strip about a streetwise raccoon and a practical, naive turtle who lived in the suburbs because their woods had been destroyed by the suburbs,” Manion says.It was her first notice of a strip called Over the Hedge.

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