first and foremost, if you haven't seen the late Adam West's reprise of his iconic role in Batman vs Two-Face go watch it. It won't be for those who don't enjoy Adam West Batman but if you do enjoy his version of Batman and you haven't seen it then you have to go watch this!
I admit I saw the cast of Adam West, Burt Ward, Julie Newmar and ... William Shatner as Harvey Dent!? Sold! The animated film is like some zany photo negative of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Now I still dig The Dark Knight but I just as much dig Batman vs Two-Face. I've just liked Batman much of my life. I'm going to go see the new film when it comes out and I'm stoked that Jeffrey Wright is playing Jim Gordon. I'm not going to do what I usually do and spoil the entire plot and themes. Nah, I'm just going to recommend a cute animated film that I think was a perfect final curtain for Adam West as Batman (it was the last project he worked on and the film is, of course, dedicated to his memory). The only way Batman vs Two-Face could have been more joyous is if Shatner had sung a song. It also, since I'm kind of a fan of Two-Face, rectifies the long-standing absence of one of the Caped Crusaders more formidable foes and brings him into the Adam West Batman world in a way that is suitably goofy yet of a piece with that Gotham (and it includes Dr. Strange, someone else who's really a classic old-school Batman foe who I don't recall showing up in the old TV series).So that's my first and foremost recommendation for an animated film this holiday season. If you liked Adam West Batman you're practically obligated to go see this one.
Now if you want to venture into French animated films (and you should) I recommend a couple of older films from the last decade-ish. Persepolis, an animated film based on the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, is worth your time. The story is about a girl who comes of age in Tehran during the Iranian revolution when the Shah is deposed and how she ends up in Europe and misadventures and adversities she encounters. I strongly urge you to watch it in the original French with subtitles, although if you're a hard-core Iggy Pop fan he lends his voice to the English dub.
Another French language film I picked up a few years ago is The Long Way North, but it's actually about a Russian girl who is searching for the remains of her presumed dead grandfather, an explorer who was looking to be first to get to the North Pole. This, too, is a coming of age story but the heroine's goal is not so much an American "girl power" theme as to search for her grandfather both to recover his body if he has died and to restore the honor of her family name, which has fallen into disrepute since her grandfather's ill-fated quest. My brother told me that the French-Russian production looked interesting and so I picked it up. The English language dub is alright but the original French is more fun. When we watched it my brother pointed out that part of the fun of the film is that although the characters are Russian the Russian aristocrats of the story's setting would have been conversant in French so the on-paper linguistic disconnect isn't far-fetched for the time period of the story.
I prefer subtitled films because generally there are nuances and extravagances in voice acting traditions within a language that can't be replicated effectively in dubs. For instance, I have often encountered aggravating English language dubs from anime that got releases in the 1990s. Ghost in the Shell had one of the most atrocious English language dubs of any I can recall. Conversely, I suppose, it might be a huge challenge for a non-English voice-acting cast to even approximate the ensemble work of, say, Kim Possible (I love the show and it's a great example of a spectacular voice cast which also included a role for the late great Ricardo Montalban ... you might be noticing a Trek theme here. ; ) ).
So, anyway, I haven't blogged about animation or animated films or shows in a while and so I wanted to mention a few films I'd meant to blog about earlier.
