I just saw ebert and roeper and they both said monster house is by far the best animated film of the year so far and the clear front runner for the animated oscar, With cars getting average reviews it looks like this one is the animated film to beat.

Hmm, I wasn't thinking about this one actually. Not too surprising if the reviews are good, considering it's friggin Speilberg and Zemecks producing. Could be.

Yeah, but it came from Ebert & Roeper....

HR gave it a negative review.

Happy Feet!!!!.....

I think it's still Cars.

Happy Feet.

George Miller, man.

I think Ant Bully has a strong chance.

Ant Bully and Barnyard are both gonna be big stinking piles of shit. Monster House will have previews the weekend before to boost WOM, and Harry Knowles said it's like the best movie of the year so far. I think it'll be a surprisingly big hit if Sony doesn't fuck up the marketing Zathura style.

Wow. I actually thought this one looked to be a bit crap, but maybe not.

Even though they're off sometimes (sometimes simultaneously), if both E&R are saying that this is the best animated film so far this year...

I think it just cemented itself as a contender.

I'll reserve my opinion till I've seen it, plus: Ant Bully, Happy Feet, & Flushed Away - from the ecstatic audience response to both of the Happy Feet trailers, Aardman's win last year, and the cool story of Ant Bully, I'm far from counting any of them out.

And so far this year, the clear leader is Over the Hedge - much more entertaining than the stodgy Cars...

I just saw the review..and E&R kept comparing it to Polar Express quality-wise, another movie they splooged over. Considering how awful Polar Express was, not only do I doubt that Monster House is an Oscar frontrunner, I doubt it's even watchable.

I think we can now officially add motion capture to a list of Ebert's fetishes, along with Angelina Jolie and a score of others.

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"Flushed Away" will win Best Picture Oscar.

Thank you.

Polar Express and Monster House were made the same way so thats not a suprise.

Anything Exotic is another big one, through a foreign director (The Cell) and suddenly Ebert has positive things to say about very mediocre films.

Ebert reviews are well written, but there is little rhyme to his reviews. Normally you pick out a person's tastes, but with Ebert you can never tell when he randomly going to like crap and dislike a perfectly good film.

I still think that Flushed Away will win.

Saved.

I think this year Pixar will claim it's crown from Aardman.

But then again... BOTH could lose... which would be UNBELIEVABLE

Saw the sneak preview tonight of Monster House with 15 other people in a 450 seat theatre, and I can assure you that it is in no danger of scooping the animated Oscar for 2006.

Boy, it was sloooow. The main story, when they finally got around to it, was a strange and melancholy one. But before that the set-up with the babysitter and then the videogame guru were drawn out and pointless. The finale was kinda fun, but this movie seemed boringly long at 91 minutes. It might have made a good hour-long Twilight Zone episode with a 46 minute running time plus commercials. As it is, I can't imagine who's going to be lining up to see this one...

2 out of 5.

How does it compare to Cars, (which you also give 2 out of 5 to)? Which one was slower? Was any aspect of this movie better than Cars?

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HAPPY FEET WILL OWN!

best pick easily

They both approached their use of boredom as a story device in different ways, but with the same yawn inducing results. Both would have been much better movies if they were 25% shorter.

BO-wise, at least Cars might appeal more to younger kids...

Must be good if bradley didnt like it. Okay, now it has a chance at winning best animated.

Heh! Can't wait to hear the general reviews next week, and see how the WOM and BO pan out.

Let's see if I really do live in Bizarroland...

He also hated Cars. Now he just has to hate Flushed Away or Happy Feet (Not both), and we'll have our catagory!

However, Motion Capture = Big no-no if you wanna be an Animated Feature contender. Waking Life was considered a near lock in the catagory's first year (Behind Shrek and Monsters, Inc.), but got snubbed for Jimmy Neutron. In 2004, THe Polar Express was also thought to be a near lock (After two more Pixar and Shrek movies), only to get shot down by the critically panned Shark Tale. I think the animation branch doesn't like the format because its not "true" animation. So, I'd count this and Scanner Darkly out easily.

Question (since I haven't seen either) is Cars more generic and broad? It's Pixar, so I'm assuming it's "safe" comedy.