An Owlin' good time

Super-stylish director Zack Synder’s latest project is the Australian film Legend Of The Guardians, which was previously known as The Guardians of Ga'Hoole. I prefer to call it the animated Owl movie, but hey, I’m a sickly mole person.

The trailer popped up online yesterday and while the film’s premise (in a nutshell) of talking Owl’s fighting each other gave me traumatic flashed to Howard The Duck, the taste-tester looks, well, pretty fly.

Like every other movie released these days, Legend Of The Guardians is based on a series of best-selling books. It follows Soren, a young barn owl, who is kidnapped by owls and forced into the St. Aggie’s orphanage where owlets are brainwashed into becoming soldiers. He and his mates escape to the island of Ga'Hoole to join its noble, wise owls who fight the army being created by St. Aggie's. In other news, is owlets just about the coolest term ever or what? It’s like Chipmunks, but not annoying.

The film is based on, sigh, the first book in a trilogy and features a huge range of vocal talent from Helen Mirren, Hugo Weaving, Geoffrey Rush, Sam Neill, Ryan Kwanten and Movie Mazzupial favourites David Wenham, Abbie Cornish and Emile De Ravin. Quite the cast, yet nothing compared to the AMAZING visuals shown in the trailer (from the artists behind Happy Feet no less).

This is the first animated film from Zack Synder, who has shown an interest in computer generated visuals before with his flicks 300 and Watchmen, but never gone full-retard into purely animated territory. Just quietly, I dig animated films that deal with adult themes and I can’t wait to see this. I’m going to have to wait a while though because Legend Of The Guardians isn’t released until December 9. Ho-hum.

Until then, since the above was a bird-related post I figure what better time to introduce to the . . . .

PIGEONSHARK!

Say what you will about owlets wearing body armour, I don't think they would win a fight against the Pigeonshark. For other badass hybrid monsters such as Bearsharktopus go here.

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Who watches the Watchmen? I do!

Watched Watchmen yesterday (pun intended). Consensus? One of the most faithful novel to movie adaptions I've seen. The characters are spot on and the visuals are simply delicious. I could eat this film up! It's great to look at and Zack Synder has done an absolutely stellar job of making every scene look like it has been lifted straight from the pages of the graphic novel. In the film-maing process, Synder hasn't lost the apocolyptic-noir feel of the source material and the result is a comic-book movie unlike any other. The main thing fans will notice is the major adjustment to at the end of the plot which, personally, I think doesn't detract from the movie and was a smart move to make Watchmen more compatible with audiences and those unfamiliar with the graphic novel. The soundtrack is taken straight from the original comic with awesome results plus the opening credits are so, so, so clever they compact the background story perfectly. Overall Watchmen is a movie experience fans of the graphic novel and adult newbies alike will enjoy.
Warning: those easily distracted may find Dr Manhattan's swinging appendage a little, erm, distracting. Above: A quick visually summary of the sleek, flawles costuming of Watchmen's lead characters.

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