Word: balle
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...playmates. No matter how toylike and frivolous they may appear, monsters are unnatural and, in the end, deal in unresolved fear. But monsters also have a way with children. Consider the suspicious charms of the Pokemon creatures--Gengar, Cubone and Chansey, for example. The first is a ghostly purple ball with a devilishly cute smile, horns to match and a crocodile spine. The second is a sort of bear cub with a skull over its head--or is the whole thing its actual head? The third is a vaguely dinosauric pinkish cloud. Their equally bizarre compatriots range in height from...
...witch plan to do to Hansel? When kids collect dinosaurs, parents, blinded by science, simply shrug when their children yell in the museum, "Look, mom, that allosaurus is eating the brachiosaur's baby!" After that, what can be objectionable about the too-cute-to-live Pokemon named Jigglypuff, a ball of fluff whose greatest power--not to be scoffed at--is a stupefying lullaby...
...says Kubo. Some graphic scenes involving punching were taken out. The names of the characters and monsters were Westernized: Satoshi became Ash, and Shigeru became Gary. And the Pokemon were given cleverly descriptive names. For example, of the three more popular Pokemon, Hitokage, a salamander with a ball of fire on its tail, became Charmander; Fushigidane, a dinosaur with a green garlic bulb on its back, became Bulbasaur; and Zenigame, a turtle who squirts water, became Squirtle. Others winked at familiar pop images: the martial-arts Pokemon Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee are tributes to Jackie Chan and Bruce...
...Hundred Years' War, and with the same stench of anticipated defeat. In the title role, Danes is too shrill, lacking in nuance, a Princess Monotone. But there are images to pry open jaded eyes: the boar, cloaked in wormy tendrils, slithering over the landscape like a killer Koosh ball; a god-deer that causes flowers to spring up when its paws touch the earth. Miyazaki is a magic maker too, creating a fresh, complex, doomed universe--Tolkien meets Kurosawa...
...there a Headless Horseman? Then he'd better cut off some heads--heads that, when detached by the whoosh of the Horseman's blade, go spinning, rolling, bobbing as if each were a top, a bowling ball, a Halloween apple on its way from Hollow to hell. (The terminally cool Tussaud effects are by Kevin Yagher, who also worked on the script.) Irving's Horseman, a long-dead Hessian mercenary, was most likely a story to scare away intruders and, when Ichabod sees him, a human prankster toying with the gullible schoolteacher. Here, though, the creature must be realer than...