Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
A Cat in Paris: Standard-Issue Action, Except Slower and More Colorful
Movie
Cat in Paris *
If they’d put as much love into the story as they did into the liquid, hand-colored look of things, this story of a sad little girl, a thief, and the cat who divides his time between the two would be a triumph. As it is, <em>A Cat in Paris </em>still deserves accolades for its use of the form -- the thief’s undulating grace, the pleasingly skewed perspectives in the Paris cityscapes, and a charmingly rendered rescue in Stygian darkness make for a visual feast. But oh, that story -- a conventional TV cop drama that wanders before devolving into an implausible action flick.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that I always ask, “Why animate?” when I run into an animated feature. But good or bad, I do it. Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s A Cat in Paris offers several answers, some better than others.
The titular cat divides his time between a little girl named Zoé and Nico, a thief who prowls the rooftops and high walls of Paris like a parkour champion. (Or, um, like a cat.) The girl, meanwhile, has not spoken since her father was murdered by a gangster — a gangster who is planning to steal an African statue when it arrives in town. And who is the police superintendent in charge of stopping him (and also catching the cat burglar)? That’s right, Zoé’s mother. (Just like a cat to cozy up to both sides of the law; cats are notorious for this kind of slippery amorality.) It’s all very self-contained and tidy, which helps to explain the 70-minute run time.
So why animate this caper? Some promising early possibilities are Nico’s undulating fluidity as he slips along unnoticed on his nocturnal missions or the skewed perspective and hand-colored look of the pastel Paris cityscape. Even better later developments: Mom’s vision of her gangster nemesis as a scarlet octopus and a rescue carried out in utter darkness, the figures rendered as white lines on a black screen. Finally, in a Francophilic nod to Pepé Le Pew’s notorious tendrils of skunky stench, a whiff of pungent perfume plays a key role in the proceedings.
But in the end, the temptations inherent in drawing your own reality interfere with the story. What’s the point in being a super-agile parkour dude when an overweight, middle-aged gangster can match you jump for jump (and blow for blow) in the Big Final Chase? Toward the end I felt like I was watching a standard-issue action flick, except slower and more colorful. (And while I don’t know how much the medium influenced the message, the tone did slide here and there from taut drama to Looney Tunes banter.)
It was only after leaving that I thought of the most likely reason for going with a cartoon cat: a real one would have been impossible to train.
Here's something you might be interested in.
A Cat in Paris: Standard-Issue Action, Except Slower and More Colorful
A Cat in Paris: Standard-Issue Action, Except Slower and More Colorful
Movie
Cat in Paris *
If they’d put as much love into the story as they did into the liquid, hand-colored look of things, this story of a sad little girl, a thief, and the cat who divides his time between the two would be a triumph. As it is, <em>A Cat in Paris </em>still deserves accolades for its use of the form -- the thief’s undulating grace, the pleasingly skewed perspectives in the Paris cityscapes, and a charmingly rendered rescue in Stygian darkness make for a visual feast. But oh, that story -- a conventional TV cop drama that wanders before devolving into an implausible action flick.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that I always ask, “Why animate?” when I run into an animated feature. But good or bad, I do it. Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s A Cat in Paris offers several answers, some better than others.
The titular cat divides his time between a little girl named Zoé and Nico, a thief who prowls the rooftops and high walls of Paris like a parkour champion. (Or, um, like a cat.) The girl, meanwhile, has not spoken since her father was murdered by a gangster — a gangster who is planning to steal an African statue when it arrives in town. And who is the police superintendent in charge of stopping him (and also catching the cat burglar)? That’s right, Zoé’s mother. (Just like a cat to cozy up to both sides of the law; cats are notorious for this kind of slippery amorality.) It’s all very self-contained and tidy, which helps to explain the 70-minute run time.
So why animate this caper? Some promising early possibilities are Nico’s undulating fluidity as he slips along unnoticed on his nocturnal missions or the skewed perspective and hand-colored look of the pastel Paris cityscape. Even better later developments: Mom’s vision of her gangster nemesis as a scarlet octopus and a rescue carried out in utter darkness, the figures rendered as white lines on a black screen. Finally, in a Francophilic nod to Pepé Le Pew’s notorious tendrils of skunky stench, a whiff of pungent perfume plays a key role in the proceedings.
But in the end, the temptations inherent in drawing your own reality interfere with the story. What’s the point in being a super-agile parkour dude when an overweight, middle-aged gangster can match you jump for jump (and blow for blow) in the Big Final Chase? Toward the end I felt like I was watching a standard-issue action flick, except slower and more colorful. (And while I don’t know how much the medium influenced the message, the tone did slide here and there from taut drama to Looney Tunes banter.)
It was only after leaving that I thought of the most likely reason for going with a cartoon cat: a real one would have been impossible to train.
Comments