Ellen Goldsmith-Vein Movies
- 2010
Sam Raimi presents this adaptation of Earthworm Jim's creator Doug TenNapel's graphic novel Monster Zoo for Paramount Pictures and Buckaroo Entertainment. The story concerns a boy's realization that his local zoo is inhabited by far more than your average selection of zoo animals. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide
Mark S. Waters's adaptation of the popular fantasy novels The Spiderwick Chronicles tells the tale of the Graces, a family who must adapt to their new strange surroundings. As the story begins, twin brothers Jared and Simon, along with their sister Mallory and their mother, move away from the big city to a mansion owned by their uncle. When a series of strange happenings suggest that Jared may be causing a number of disturbances, the siblings band together to figure out what is going on. Soon they discover the magical history of the property. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, (more)
- 2007
The genesis of the clay-animation "docu-comedy" Creature Comforts was a 1989 theatrical short cocreated by Nick Park of "Wallace and Grommit" fame. This evolved into a British TV series, which first aired in 2003, which in turned spawned the American version four years later. The premise was both simple and sublime: the producers recorded the unscripted conversations of "real people", which were then rendered into Claymation form with anthropomorphic animals mouthing the words. The laughs grew from the bizarre juxtapositions of the "live" soundtrack and the animated image. A middle-aged couple discussing their material possessions were depicted as a pair of pigs; another couple talking about their sex lives were "reinvented" as porcupines; a woman complaining about her dry skin became a goldfish in a water tank; a lady griping about her experiences at a fitness center was animated as a hippopotamus; a brace of sweethearts reciting the traditional "She loves me, she loves me not" were drawn as a pair of monkey picking insects off one another; and so on. Produced by Aardman Animations, the American edition of Creature Comforts premiered June 4, 2007 on CBS; unfortunately, it was not nearly as successful as its British predecessor, and disappeared after only a handful of episodes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
