I watched The Plague Dogs, Wizards and The Cave. And of the three I have to say The Plague Dogs was the best. There was more warmed and humor in it, and it had better characterization. Like with Watership Down I have to say the author and the film director did a very good job in peering into a world and making us feel for the main characters’ plight.

Wizards is just well… Weird. It may have been fine if I didn’t watch the director’s take on it. After watching that I decided I really didn’t like it. He missed every target he wanted to hit in my personal belief. It isn’t a”family” show (The female main character shows that for heaven sake), it doesn’t have an intreging plot nor character nor characters. As for the animation style I have to say that the addition of the rotoscoping felt tagged on (which it was), and he may have felt he did justice to the movie when in reality it was just too stark of a difference.

Ok, before I go forward let me step on a soapbox. Friends of mine have heard me rant about this before, and those who are getting into animation and filmmaking sit down and take note. These are two of my major pet-peeve of mine.

• First and foremost any work is about CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. I honestly don’t care what any English teacher may have stated in school. If you don’t have a growing, evolving character. You have just random scenes strung together, and you may as well give up.
• Second, you have to pick an overall style for a film or animation.  Now I agree with Ralph Bakshi that you can break this style when needed, but even in breakage you have to UNDERSTAND HOW. Something I sadly have to say Mr Bakshi failed to learn. Something Disney struggled with in the making of Tarzan(If you don’t understand my bash of Tarzan look at the lovely computer generated backgrounds and the off-model hand drawn forgrounds in the “vine
  surfing” scenes).

Anyways, I’ll step off my soapbox now.

As for “The Cave”, *shrug* it was just felt flat to me. I can’t give exactly why. I just didn’t get into the characters (lack of development?) and the
lack-luster ending. The environment was lovely, and I was impressed with
the visuals since it was actually shot within a cave environment and not on
a sound stage pool.

Next on my list is Metropolis. I’m not sure what to expect. I’ve wanted to see it since it has peeked my interest a few times, but this will be the first time I’ll get a chance to see it.