Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Movie Music Musings: The Goldsmith Award 2011

It wasn't just animation, it was motion capture based animation, so that made it even more expensive than a typical animated feature. Add to that the simple fact that whenever someone talks about these types of animated films like The Polar Express or Beowulf or the 2009 version of The Christmas Carol, they usually use the world "creepy looking" in there somewhere. I'm not sure that a budget of 150 million was ever going to see any profit.

But Robert Zemeckis was obsessed with getting this motion capture animation to take off. Mars Needs Moms was such a bomb it pretty much ended that idea. The film came out before Spielberg's Adventures of Tin Tin, but that superior film got tainted and that seems to be last of that odd animation experiment. Most motion capture animation remains in the realm of video games.

All that said, Mars Needs Moms may have been a bomb (and a half) but the score isn't. John Powell composed a fun and exciting score. It is what he does best and animation really seems to ignite his creative powers. His scores for the two How to Train Your Dragon films are some of the best of the decade. Mars Needs Moms is right behind them, with lots of orchestral color and energy.

So enjoy the end credits suite to Mars Needs Moms by John Powell. No creepy dead eyed characters shown here. :)


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4 comments:

  1. Richard BellushJuly 7, 2017 at 1:47 PM

    I thought this movie was better than its reputation -- taking into account the young target audience, that is. The title probably hurt in much the same way the title "Adventures in Babysitting" hurt a very good movie. Besides, a 10-year-old is not likely to get the wink-wink reference to "Mars Needs Women."

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    1. Roman J. MartelJuly 8, 2017 at 7:45 AM

      I remember seeing the trailer for this movie and just wondering what the target audience was. As you mentioned the title references something that would be well beyond the ken of the target audience. And then there was the animation style that just never really caught on with the general public.

      Adventures in Babysitting is a really fun flick and it holds up very well today. Elizabeth Shue is such a cutie in that film. Even when she is wilding a gun and telling a gang member "Don't f*** with the babysitter."

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  2. El VoxJuly 8, 2017 at 12:27 PM

    I'd never even heard of this film, but have a copy of Tin Tin, Polar Express, and even Beowolf. I'll have to track down a trailer of the movie to see what it's like. But then there are literally hundreds of films I've never heard of, and probably for good reasons. :) With my Roku there are tons of them in the horror genre alone, most being B, C, and Z grade that I'd never heard about. Probably some of that left over from the VHS days.

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    1. Roman J. MartelJuly 17, 2017 at 7:55 AM

      Yeah I remember seeing the trailer for the movie and it not really sticking with me. I didn't even know it had come and gone from theaters when I ran into it on the DVD shelves at Target.

      Some of those B, C, and Z grade horror films can be a lot of fun. And sometimes you do find a gem in there.

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