Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again
- TESTED
Bruckheimer, the action genius behind the likes of the Pirates of the Caribbean, Con Air! , The Rock, Armageddon, and many more, here teams with visual effects maestro Hoyt Yeatman, who writes and directs. The combo is potent, and the fact that they streamed their blow-'em-up vision through a film about tiny rodents saving the world makes the whole confection a hilarious family-friendly experience as well as a satisfying action adventure. The premise isn't earth-shattering: oddball, unexpected heroes are called on to save the day (Men in Black, Underdog, etc.). But the lowly guinea pig has been long overdue to get its moment in the spotlight. And now the free world knows whom it can really trust. The film mixes the animated heroes with real-life actors, including the sardonic British character actor Bill Nighy, who plays an evil mogul out to take over and/or destroy the world. The U.S. government, it turns out, has been nurturing a special squad for occasions just such as this. It's just that it's been nurturing them in small ! pens with wood shavings on the floor and running wheels for ex! ercise. Will Arnett, deadpan and spot-on, plays the human agent who has the unenviable task of wrangling the guinea pig G-Force, and is a deft foil for the bad guys as well as for the mini-heroes.
But the true powerhouse acting belongs to those giving voices to the guinea pig agents, including Sam Rockwell, Penélope Cruz, Steve Buscemi, and, as the voice of a domesticated layabout, Jon Favreau. The film's standout, though, is Tracy Morgan, whose Agent Blaster is bellicose, fearless, and as full of malapropisms as Morgan's character on 30 Rock. (In fact, the viewer keeps half-expecting Blaster to turn to Cruz's female agent, Juarez, and yell "Liz Lemon!") G-Force is full of belly laughs for kids, as well as their action-film-fan parents. --A.T. Hurley
Stills from G-Force (Click for larger image)
The fun, quick and affordable way to create animations, Anime Studio is the ideal solution for first-time animators, hobbyists and digital artists. A Beginner's Mode and Character Wizard allow you to design your own ready-to-animate characters in minutes.
Move your character naturally along the timeline with keyframes, creating smooth animations. Use multiple layers to edit your animation and add sound, special effects and more.
A unique bone-rigging toolset allows you to create a skeleton that can be easily manipulated to animate characters, simple drawings, or objects in your animation.
Draw your own art with intuitive vector-based draw and paint tools or use pre-built content from the Library to get started. Easily import your hand-drawn sketches or existing artwork from popular graphics programs and automatically convert them to ready-to-animate vector drawings.
Export to the most popular web and video formats, or upload and share on YouTube or Facebook directly from within Anime Studio.
Free Characters: Use pre-built characters including Jace, Liz, Lightning Man, Dexter and Anime Boy. All are royalty-free, vector-based creations.
Import and Export Art: Bring in your Illustrator or layered Adobe Photoshop files; instantly gather all your project files in one location.
Tons of Tutorials: Access videos and sample files to master powerful features and start animating right away.
Bring Your Photos to Life: Import your favorite images from your digital camera, attach bones and easily turn your photographs into animated movies.
Creating your own characters has! never b een easier. Quickly design ready-to-animate characters using the built-in Character Wizard. Select a preset, dial in the body proportions and choose from dozens of predesigned 2D components such as hands, feet, mouths, eyes, noses and heads. The look and feel of each character is fully customizable with the help of easy to use sliders. Choose from various clothing choices and custom color combinations, or create a virtually endless amount of fun and different characters using the Randomize feature. Each character comes with multiples views and can be imported with a complete walk cycle, allowing you to have your characters walk in your scene with the click of a button. Even attach head shots of you and your friends for fast and easy jib-jab style animation.
Quickly bring your scanned drawings and photos to life by converting them to ready-to-animate vector art with the click of a button. Color your vector art, resize without loss in image quality and animate using bones. Existing drawings such as heads can quickly get attached to a pre-animated character that you created with the Character Wizard, providing versatility and speed when creating your own characters.
Combine the freehand tool's smart welding feature with the Delete Edge tool to create complex shapes quickly. This eliminates the need for precise drawing, giving you the freedom to sketch as you desire. Additional brush styles have been included and optional rounded end caps have been added to the drawing tools.
Quickly find and edit vector layers using the Vector Shape Selector. You no longer have to worry about naming each layer to easily find the one you're looking for. Just click on a shape in your project, and! the corresponding layer automatically gets selected for editing. This eliminates tedious searching for the layer you want to edit.
Quickly apply a cut-out style effect to any character or object. Set the width and color for each outline and customize the look and feel of your animation.
Anime Studio 8 introduces new User Interface colors, allowing you to choose from various preset color schemes or create your own. The new Smart Tool Palette provides a less cluttered interface and a better user experience by hiding irrelevant tools.
Anime Studio Debut provides an extensive content library with hundreds of pieces of ready-to-use content that includes fully rigged, vector-based characters like Jace, Thorn, Anime Boy and Liz, as well as props, scenes, action words, stock video and images, sound effects and more so you can start creating your ow! n animations right away.
But Max longs for the action enjoyed by the likes of Agent 23 (a godlike Dwayne Johnson), with glamorous deployments around the world. When he finally gets his dream assignment--as the newly minted Agent 86--he's paired up with the slick and experienced Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), who provides great lines, not to mention some interesting chemistry, while she continually saves Max from harm's way. The cast is terrific, with memorable appearances by Alan Arkin as the Chief, Terrence Stamp as the head of the uber-evil KAOS, and Bill Murray as a (literally) ! put-out-to-pasture agent whose spy post is inside a tree ("rea! lly grea t, old-school stuff" he calls his assignment). And there's plenty of action, explosions, and creative shootouts with the bad guys (highlight: a freefall from a plane, with two people and just two parachutes). But it's Carell and his combination of insecure yearning and deadpan delivery that make Get Smart as, well, smart as it is. When Max learns he's finally been promoted to agent, he slips into the Cone of Silence--which unfortunately is malfunctioning. "I'm so happy! I'm so happy!" he yells, as his colleagues sit nearby hearing the whole thing. Discovering that, he purses his lips and says, "Well, that's a sucker-punch to the gonads." Sorry about that. --A.T. Hurley