Peter Pan (2003)

December 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, New Zealand, Romance, Theatrical, UK

***½/****
starring Jason Isaacs, Jeremy Sumpter, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Lynn Redgrave
screenplay by P.J. Hogan and Michael Goldenberg, based on the play by James M. Barrie
directed by P.J. Hogan

Peterpanby Walter Chaw A perverse lollapalooza of loaded images and disquieting implications, P.J. Hogan's live-action Peter Pan is this year's most intriguing Freudian shipwreck, resurrecting the darkness and poetic pessimism of J.M. Barrie's play–and Peter and Wendy, Barrie's own novelization–that has been all but forgotten since Disney's well-regarded 1953 treatment. (While nowhere near as saccharine as something as mendacious as Brother Bear, that animated version is still of a Disney tradition that washes dangerous source material mostly clean of credible malice.) At its heart, consider that the Pan story is about child seduction/abduction in the Yeatsian "Stolen Child" tradition, and a colony of "lost boys" that have forgotten their parents and, crucially, been forgotten in turn. The mirror of a parent's love discarded in this way renders the film's heart-warming conclusion a touch bitter, with the spectre of the question "but what about their parents?" hanging over it.

Cold Mountain (2003)

December 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Italy, Road Movie, Romance, Romania, Theatrical, UK, War

*½/****
starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Donald Sutherland
screenplay by Anthony Minghella, based on the novel by Charles Frazier
directed by Anthony Minghella

Coldmountainby Walter Chaw Existing in an awards-season netherworld where the ugliest girl is Renée Zellweger (or Jena Malone), dad is Donald Sutherland, and Odysseus is Jude Law, Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain is a tarted-up march to the awards-night podium starring Nicole Kidman, possibly the most over-exposed actor of the last five years. Everything about the film is careful artifice, from its casting to its grandiloquent direction to its half-baked dialogue ("Small moments like a bag of diamonds," indeed), with only Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the magnificent Brendan Gleeson emerging unscathed from the golden wreckage. What Minghella seems best at is recasting edged, emotionally tumultuous novels into sun-kissed temples to the cinematographer's craft, the more dappled sunlight in the eye with which to bedazzle awards-season voters. The strength of Charles Frazier's National Book Award-winning source material lies in its socio-political details of America's Civil War period, but Minghella has focused his picture unerringly on the overrated novel's weaknesses instead: its dialogue, its clumsy Homeric riff (for better country-fried Odyssey, stick to O Brother Where Art Thou?), and its sweeping gothic romance, which finds its characters, at one point, reading the real deal in Wuthering Heights. The result is, like Minghella's previous literary adaptations (The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient), lavish, lugubrious, and off-target.

Teknolust (2003); In July (2000); Taking Sides (2002); Monster (2003)

December 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Austria, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Music, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, War

TEKNOLUST
**/****
starring Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Davies, James Urbaniak, Karen Black
written and directed by Lynn Hershman-Leeson

Im Juli.
***/****
starring Moritz Bleibtreu, Christiane Paul, Mehmet Kurtulus, Idil Üner
written and directed by Fatih Akin

TAKING SIDES
**/****
starring Harvey Keitel, Stellan Skarsgård, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birgit Minichmayr
screenplay by Ronald Harwood
directed by István Szabó

MONSTER
**½/****
starring Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Scott Wilson
written and directed by Patty Jenkins

Teknoby Walter Chaw As the year winds down and distributors great and small try to cram their films into rotation for possible awards consideration, the truism that there are just as many mediocre foreign and independent films as mainstream ones proves sage for a quartet of minor releases. Lynn Hershman-Leeson chimes in with Teknolust, another of her riffs on Derek Jarman, this one obsessed with Tilda Swinton and eternity through technology. Fatih Akin’s second film In July (Im Juli.) is essentially a German The Sure Thing with elements of After Hours, obsessed with eternity through an immortal beloved lit by the nimbus of various suns. One-time Oscar-winner István Szabó offers Taking Sides, a morality tale plucked half-formed from the stage, questioning the eternity of art against the requirements of morality. And Patty Jenkins weighs in with Monster, this year’s Boys Don’t Cry; it’s vérité as lower-class urban ugly, with Charlize Theron seeking eternity through a performance that breaks her out of her starlet mold, Halle Berry-style. Only time will tell if any of it keeps.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) – DVD

December 24, 2003Posted in1950s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Pat Boone, James Mason, Arlene Dahl, Diane Baker
screenplay by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett
directed by Henry Levin

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover By any rational standards, the 1959 version of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth is swill, an all-pro hackjob that marshalls a vast array of technicians and designers in the hopes that the money and effort expended will mask the total artistic void at its, um, centre. There's no sense of cinema to its mechanical vision of life beneath the surface–and yet somehow, despite Henry Levin's non-direction and the bizarre casting of James Mason alongside Pat Boone, the film works like gangbusters. Watching it is like being a kid at Christmas and getting a thoroughly useless but fun piece of plastic to play with. It won't do you any good in the long run, but as a mass-produced waste of 129 minutes, it has the steel-and-chrome charm of a bloated '50s gas-guzzler.

Destry Rides Again (1939) + The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) – DVDs

December 23, 2003Posted in1930s, 1960s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Western

DESTRY RIDES AGAIN
***/**** Image B+ Sound A
starring Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, Brian Donlevy, Charles Winninger
screenplay by Felix Jackson, Gertrude Purcell and Henry Mayers, based on the novel by Max Brand
directed by George Marshall

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX
***/**** Image A- Sound A
starring James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Kruger
screenplay by Lukas Heller, from the novel by Elleston Trevor
directed by Robert Aldrich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The word "clever" can be used as a compliment or an insult–it's either a means of saying how ingenious you are, or a way of showing how far you are from being "intelligent." The same goes for the star rating, which can be used to mark a sleeper that shows some real talent or to warn you that something is "only entertainment"–when is three stars just right, and when is it not enough? This is the conundrum that faces me in reviewing Destry Rides Again and The Flight of the Phoenix, two films completely separate in time and subject matter, but which both rate about the same in terms of their achievement. But despite their equal entertainment value, I have a better feeling about Phoenix than I do about Destry: it's more creative and resourceful, even if it doesn't come off perfectly. That doesn't mean you shouldn't see Destry, though it is an indication that you shouldn't raise your hopes too high for it–and that you might be surprised by the lesser-known Phoenix.

Jeepers Creepers II (2003) [Special Edition] – DVD

December 22, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror

Jeepers Creepers 2
*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Ray Wise, Jonathan Breck, Travis Schiffner, Nicki Lynn Aycox
written and directed by Victor Salva

by Walter Chaw Beyond the pretty fair rhetorical question of what convicted child molester Victor Salva is doing making another film about children in peril, in showers, and pissing en masse in a field, Jeepers Creepers II is a surprisingly run-of-the-mill action/adventure film with horror elements that reminds mostly that Jaws is still the high-water mark for stuff like this. Promising to be a Spam-in-a-bus sort of picture, it washes out eventually as a rip-off that’s only missing someone deadpanning “We’re gonna need a bigger bus” when the creature from the deep starts pounding on their stranded conveyance. Credit is due Salva, however, for employing some sharp non-CGI creature effects, even if the premise this time around (and its showcase special effects set-piece) is starting to more resemble John McNaughton’s The Borrower and less an original concept of a demon that, for twenty-three days every twenty-three years (not insignificantly, the description of high holy Jewish feasts is set out in Leviticus: 23), gets to feed.

Real Perelman: FFC Interviews Vadim Perelman

December 21, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

VperelmaninterviewtitleDecember 21, 2003|Long story short, a few years ago as I was applying for a life insurance policy, I got to know an ex-paramedic who told me that he once answered a call to Denver’s beautiful Brown Palace Hotel. One of its maids had just been let go after working there for decades, whereupon she proceeded to take the elevator to the top floor and jump to her death several stories into the central dining area. “Her face was perfectly preserved, perfectly peaceful,” he said. “When I got there it looked as though she were standing in a hole in the floor, looking up with something like wonder at the ceiling.” I think about this story a lot, it sticks with me for some reason; it has elements of betrayal, death with symbolic meaning, the grotesque–the sort of high human drama at extremis that leaves an indelible imprint on my imagination.

House of Sand and Fog (2003)

December 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Ron Eldard, Frances Fisher
screenplay by Vadim Perelman and Shawn Lawrence Otto
directed by Vadim Perelman

Houseofsandandfogby Walter Chaw Based on an award-winning novel by Andres Dubus III, son of Canadian novelist and short-story writer Andre Dubus, Vadim Perelman's hyphenate debut House of Sand and Fog is difficult to gauge on its own merits, given that the typically invasive grandiosity of another abominable James Horner score sinks the picture almost by itself. With no moment uncommented-upon by Horner's bank of weeping violins and no lovely Roger Deakins tableau unmarred by Horner's insatiable taste for schmaltz, the picture is a prime example of two things: the prestige picture/Oscar grab; and the film of grand emotions that decides to trust its composer over its cast and screenplay. The similarities between House of Sand and Fog and In the Bedroom (a film based on Dubus Sr.'s short story "Killings") are obvious, but where the latter allows its cast to breathe, House of Sand and Fog smothers Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly in a fatal dose of Horner's saccharine ministrations. In Horner's defense, however, the extended climax during which a vein-popping Kingsley is allowed too much rein is awful without help.

Mona Lisa Smile (2003)

December 19, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical

*/****
starring Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal
screenplay by Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal
directed by Mike Newell

Monalisasmileby Walter Chaw Julia Roberts films, by and large, seem to hate men. In a real way, her pictures are as objectionable as those films regularly pilloried for objectifying women (and those like the unforgivable Love Actually that somehow slip under the radar for doing the same), functioning as something of a reactionary version of feminism that seeks to denigrate the opposite gender as the sole means toward gender equality. The big secret about films like Mona Lisa Smile is that they're every bit the big-budget Hollywood spectacle film derided by a goodly portion of its audience as puerile, predictable, and thematically reprehensible. Because Mona Lisa Smile is so much the child of formula, it's difficult to muster much energy in condemning the film by itself–by itself, after all, it's handsomely mounted and well-performed. But as a symptom of that facile societal desire for superficial uplifts and comforting negative stereotypes, the smoothness of the coating for this bitter pill deserves some measure of profound distaste.

Dawson’s Creek: The Complete Second Season (1998-1999) – DVD

December 18, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Teen, Television

Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
"The Kiss", "Crossroads", "Alternative Lifestyles", "Tamara's Return", "Full Moon Rising", "The Dance", "The All-Nighter", "The Reluctant Hero", "The Election", "High Risk Behavior", "Sex, She Wrote," "Uncharted Waters", "His Leading Lady", "To Be or Not to Be…", "…That is the Question", "Be Careful What You Wish For", "Psychic Friends", "A Perfect Wedding", "Abby Morgan, Rest in Peace", "Reunited", "Ch…Ch…Ch…Changes", "Parental Discretion Advised"

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. In striving for an original approach to reviewing the sophomore year of a show for which there are already umpteen online episode guides at one's disposal, I've decided to take inventory of "Dawson's Creek: The Complete Second Season"'s seven major players. A series driven by personalities, if far from light on incident, "Dawson's Creek", as executive producer Paul Stupin says in his DVD commentary for the season finale (or is it the premiere?), hit pay dirt with its core ensemble, so let's examine how their roles evolved beyond the preliminary 13-episode run–and meet a couple of interlopers while we're at it.

Love Don’t Co$t a Thing (2003) + Something’s Gotta Give (2003)

December 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Jack Nicholson, Romance, Theatrical

LOVE DON'T CO$T A THING
½*/****
starring Nick Cannon, Jordan Burg, Jackie Benoit, George Cedar
screenplay by Troy Beyer and Michael Swerdlick, based on Swerdlick's screenplay Can't Buy Me Love
directed by Troy Beyer

SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE
*/****
starring Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Amanda Peet, Keanu Reeves
written and directed by Nancy Meyers

by Walter Chaw The only thing stranger than an urban remake of the late-'80s Patrick Dempsey teensploitation flick Can't Buy Me Love is a blow-by-blow remake of 2000's What Women Want, the latter suddenly more understandable in light of the stultifying limitations John Gray-disciple Nancy Meyers brings to the table as writer-director of that unforgivable rom-com and the dedicatedly unremarkable Something's Gotta Give as well. The disturbing realization is that both Love Don't Co$t a Thing and Something's Gotta Give are products of women filmmakers, writing and directing films in an industry, at least in the United States, still dominated by men–and that both films are non-descript, fairly unflattering to women, definitively unkind to men, and ostensible comedies that wring the genre dry with great droughts of meet-cute, contrivance, bad direction, and enough predictable, twee dialogue to fill a dozen Ephron sisters pictures.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003) [Special Collector’s Edition|Widescreen Collection] – DVD

December 16, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD

*½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciaran Hinds, Djimon Hounsou
screenplay by Dean Georgaris
directed by Jan De Bont

Laracroft2by Walter Chaw The weirdest thing about the pretty weird Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (hereafter Tomb Raider 2) is that the filmmakers either haven't seen Raiders of the Lost Ark or, more likely, hope that no one in the target audience has. With Angelina Jolie and her costume-enhanced bod serving as the distaff version of Harrison Ford's grizzled globetrotting heartthrob, the doubling becomes fascinating when looked at through the prism of Hollywood's (and society's, if you want to go there) hots for professorial old men and sexy young women. Consider, after all, that Indy gets eyes made at him while providing exposition in a dusty classroom (fully clothed), while Lara Croft delivers vital plot information in a rubber bikini; the dichotomy between brains and bust is pretty striking, even as the faux ancient frieze featuring the Ark of the Covenant/Pandora's Box appears to be identical, along with the dire consequences of opening the respective crates.

Jet Lag (2002) – DVD

December 15, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, France, Romance, UK

Décalage horaire
½*/**** Image B Sound A Extras N/A
starring Juliette Binoche, Jean Reno, Sergi López, Scali Delpeyrat
screenplay by Christopher Thompson & Danièle Thompson
directed by Danièle Thompson

by Walter Chaw A beautician (Rose (Juliette Binoche)) fleeing an abusive relationship and a frozen-food magnate (Félix (Jean Reno)) on his way to the funeral for an ex-in-law meet when Charles de Gaulle Airport is shut down during some kind of labour strike. Bonding over a constantly ringing cell phone (ah, what's more romantic than a goddamned cell phone?), the unlikely twosome decides to share a hotel room, where Félix browbeats Rose into taking off some of her makeup, and Rose decides that she's already ready to settle down into another abusive relationship. With the airport forever threatening to open, Binoche and Reno move around various sets in exact two-shot medium compositions that find them spouting their deadening monologues at one another in a failed attempt to convince that they are actually occupying the same space, head or heart or otherwise.

And the Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: FFC Interviews Paul Feig

December 14, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

PaulfeiginterviewtitleDecember 14, 2003|Sitting conspicuously on a prominent LoDo street corner, Denver's Nuevo-Mexican restaurant Tamayo is the epitome of hip–so while I was thrilled to be meeting Paul Feig, co-creator of television's "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared", the eatery seemed a little incongruous a setting for a man who's made his mark as champion of the sensitive uncool. Natty in suit and tie and fresh from an introduction (to a group of high-schoolers, natch) of his new film I Am David, Feig impresses with an open intelligence, an engaging charisma, and what appears to be a genuine appreciation for where he is in his career and life. The author of the heartbreaking/hilarious Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence, Feig is one of our most vital chroniclers of the heartache of youth and the angst of being intelligent in an anti-intellectual world. He stands with the bright lights of the American letter, folks such as Sarah Vowell, Dave Eggers, and David Sedaris, in defining a new collective voice in our popular discourse. The of-the-moment setting didn't seem as incongruous after meeting the wise, funny, and engaging Feig.

The Brave Little Toaster (1987); The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1998); The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue (1999) – DVDs

December 11, 2003Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Sci-Fi

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER
****/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C-
screenplay by Jerry Rees & Joe Ranft, based on the book by Thomas M. Disch
directed by Jerry Rees

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER GOES TO MARS
**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
screenplay by Willard Carroll, based on the book by Thomas M. Disch
directed by Robert C. Ramirez

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER TO THE RESCUE
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
screenplay by Willard Carroll
directed by Robert C. Ramirez

by Walter Chaw I'm most familiar with Thomas M. Disch for his sterling non-fiction work (The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of and The Castle of Indolence) and a few samplings of his less impressive genre short fiction, and though I was aware that he'd written a couple of children's books about a band of appliances, I'd never felt compelled to investigate. The first taste of Disch's novella The Brave Little Toaster, then, came to me by way of a feature-length animated adaptation from Disney that, a little like Babe: Pig in the City, probably caused enough consternation in the hearts and minds of studio PR to result in its relegation to a minor theatrical push with a botched advertising campaign. Here's a film, after all, that's as innovatively disturbed–as usefully frightening–as any of Uncle Walt's own vintage Merry Melodies and Silly Symphonies. In the whitewash of modern American children's entertainment via the Big Mouse, anything that isn't facile and patronizing is to be avoided and disdained.

Dream a Little Dream (1989) – DVD

December 10, 2003Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance, Teen

*½/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Jason Robards, Corey Feldman, Piper Laurie, Meredith Salenger
screenplay by Daniel Jay Franklin and Marc Rocco & D.E. Eisenberg
directed by Marc Rocco

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover How to describe the sublimely awful experience of Dream a Little Dream? Imagine a whacked-out homage combo to John Hughes and Nicolas Roeg–one made without the talent or intelligence of either–and you’ll have an idea of its astoundingly ill-advised combination of temporal step-dancing and teenage romance. You have to admire the guts of director Marc Rocco for going so far out on aesthetic limbs that he’ll inevitably crash to earth–if nothing else, he’s willing to try things, and his plotting and editing rhythms are so unlike anything in the rest of the ’80s teen genre that they border on the avant-garde. Dream a Little Dream isn’t actually good, but it’s certainly never dull, and it will keep bad-film enthusiasts forever wallowing in pig heaven.

Seabiscuit (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

December 9, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Sports

*/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper, Tobey Maguire, Elizabeth Banks
screenplay by Gary Ross, based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand
directed by Gary Ross

by Walter Chaw In a summer redolent with superhero melodramas, Seabiscuit, a Golden Age bodice-twister about a plucky boy and his intrepid horse populated with a cast of good-looking cut-outs to fill out the good-looking backgrounds, isn't even the most interesting. All of it feels a little airless–a carefully-manipulated arrangement composed entirely of meticulously-preserved flowers that give the illusion of vitality when in truth, they're taken out of time and well past their prime. Seabiscuit could have been made in the 1940s–and it was, really, as My Friend Flicka: two untamed spirits tamed by one another while various authority figures wisely cheer them on. Like that film, writer-director Gary Ross's adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's excellent non-fiction washes out as something creepily nostalgic, weightless, and unintentionally disturbing. There's something poetic about a scene in the middle of Seabiscuit when Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges, always good) leaves in the middle of a bloody bullfight when taken with a line later in the film when plucky boy jockey Red (Tobey Maguire) warns his replacement not to beat Seabiscuit on his left flank because "that's where he was beaten when he was young." Beat him on the right side, is the implication, and decades of conditioning from other films (particularly Disney's anthropomorphic films) have made driving animals to the brink of exhaustion and death at the end of whip a little hard to take with a blithe indifference.

The Last Samurai (2003) + The Girl from Paris (2003)

December 5, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Japan, New Zealand, Theatrical, Tom Cruise

THE LAST SAMURAI
**½/****
starring Tom Cruise, Billy Connolly, Tony Goldwyn, Shin Koyamada
screenplay by John Logan and Marshall Herskovitz & Edward Zwick
directed by Edward Zwick

Une hirondelle a fait le printemps
***/****
starring Michel Serrault, Mathilde Seigner, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Frédéric Pierrot
screenplay by Christian Carion and Eric Assous
directed by Christian Carion

Lastsamuraiby Walter Chaw Concerned with the encroachment of technology, spawned by the humanism of the French Revolution, Romanticism as a movement in poetry is involved in nostalgia for an idealized Natural history. On film, it occasionally manifests itself in period pieces that focus on the encroachment and proliferation of the railroad: its engines (as in King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun and Beyond the Forest, or the Hughes Brothers’ From Hell) the manifestation of the industrial revolution in terms of hellmouths and serpents–William Blake’s “Tyger” burning bright in the forests of a primordial night, all-consuming and inexorable. That loss of ritual to the march of time, tradition and heritage falling before the metal chimera of technology finds itself articulated in two very different films: Edward Zwick’s curious, derivative, workmanlike The Last Samurai, and Christian Carion’s bleak and affecting The Girl from Paris (Une hirondelle a fait le printemps).

Looney Tunes: Reality Check (2003) + Looney Tunes: Stranger Than Fiction (2003) – DVDs

December 5, 2003Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Looney Tunes, Satire

LOONEY TUNES: REALITY CHECK
½*/**** Image A Sound B Extras B-

LOONEY TUNES: STRANGER THAN FICTION
½*/**** Image A Sound B Extras B-

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover So it's come to this: after decades of revelling in the hair-trigger-timed, artfully-drawn, beautifully lush fruits of the old Warner Brothers animation stable, we are now reduced to badly animated web broadcasts slapped haphazardly onto DVD. This cynical cash-grab has nothing to do with the craft of classic-Hollywood Looney Tunes and everything with trying to muscle in on an animation market largely dominated by Disney. But the iron that forged the greatness of the old shorts has largely run cold, replaced by the pathetic brandishing of the only other big cartoon trademarks in town–making for something from which only the very young or the very easily amused could derive any pleasure.