On our journey through Disney animated movies, and Cass and Camille's journey through animation, I somehow noticed that Steve Carell's Despicable Me and Will Ferrell's Megamind both came out in 2010. And then I noticed that How to Train Your Dragon also came out in 2010. Between Illumination and Dreamworks, they nailed some bangers that year.
But the reason I really remember 2010 in animation was because that was our full-Texas year, as in, we arrived from Brooklyn at the end of 2009 and left for Long Beach in April of 2011, so 2010 was full-Texas. And that summer we saw what I remember considering the most intense and mature animated film in, dunno, forever? That was Toy Story 3.
After I noticed that Shrek Forever After (Shrek 4) was also released in 2010, I thought I'd look a little deeper at that year's releases. Then I made a few graphics:
This first graphic is essentially the list, in order, for box office revenue for animated films in 2010. Toy Story 3, Shrek 4, Tangled (didn't even realize it came out in 2010; underrated)...the last two are Studio Ghibli's Arriety, based on the novel 'The Borrowers', and rounding out the group is the WB-released, Aussie-company Village Roadshow's Owl movie, "The Legend of the Guardians."
Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, Illumination, Ghibli, and Village Roadshow (WB). Seems like it makes sense, but three major films from Dreamworks? Get some!
As I persued the list for realeases that year, I also found some other nifty movies I'd watched before, as well as some weird stuff that I'd never heard of for various reasons:
The first movie on this second graphic, Une Vie de Chat, or, as it gets translated, "A Cat in Paris" (which is weird because the translation is, like, 'The Cat's Life'). I saw it years ago, and it's splendid. A cat arives each morning at a little girl's apartment, and leaves each night. Maybe we see its night life first...anyway, it has two lives, one at night with a respectful cat burglar, and one in the day with a little girl. There's a bad crook who ties the two worlds together, as the little girl's mom is a divorced police detective. There's a wonderful animated sequence in which the burglar has to rescue the little girl, with the help of the cat, in a room in total darkness. The burglar is wearing goggles, but everyone besides the cat is blind. It's animated with white outlines on a black field, and it---and the entire movie---is worth checking out on artistic merits.
Chico and Rita is from Spain and I'm pretty sure I saw it years back. It's a grown-up animated film, about love. The third one is obviously French and the fourth looks like it's named "Heroes." The full title is Heroes Verdaderos, and it was a big budget Mexican Epic about Hidalgo and Morelos, the nominal "fathers of the Mexican Revolution." The next, Alpha and Omega, was a big budget American movie I never heard of (starring Justin Long, Christina Ricci, Dennis Hopper in his last performance, and even Danny Glover---it went on to spawn an entire movie franchise lol), and then some random Japanese movie that looked interesting.
Then, some of the other things I learned about were big movies in their own countries: like two from China; two epics from India; the Philippines's first digitally animated feature ever' an animal adventure from Germany' a Russkie digital entry about their heroic dogs that survived their trips to space; and, something I do want to see, a Turkish traditionally animated movie about a historical event when the Japanese emperor sent a treasure gift envoy to the Ottoman sultan, only to have it stolen by bandits, which causes a team-up between an elite Ottoman warrior and a samurai (doesn't that sound crazy?)
The last bit of time wasting here is the main thing I wanted to saw about The Black Cauldron but totally forgot: in the beginning of the voyage the group had a follower, a bit of a nuisance, but eventually he becomes part of their team. His name is Gurgi, and you can see him on the left in the picture below. If you recognize the other character below, that's deliberate:
When we first put eyes on this movie during our watch through, it was startling: Andy Serkis's Gollum is an impression of Gurgi---the voice sound, the cadence, the quality...there was even a rumor on Reddit that Serkis was deliberately doing a version of Gurgi, and I was like, A version?
Anyway, catch "A Cat in Paris" if you feel the need to watch any of these.
Time wasting posts!
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