Sausage Party and Kubo

>The best moment in recent animated films was The Lego Movie song, “Everything Is Awesome!!” An uproarious satire on this consumer age’s feel-good propaganda, it also critiqued the forced progressivism that infects everything from Apple gadgets and Pixar movies to America’s Pravda-inspired news media. Then what happened? The marketplace lost its ability to receive instruction from satire, and our president wound up seriously paraphrasing “Everything is awesome” in response to a partisan candidate.

>The momentary lift one got from The Lego Movie returns with a new animated film, Kubo and the Two Strings, then it gets snatched away by a second cartoon, Sausage Party.

>Both films seem geared toward children — the family and the juvenile trade — yet they’re really adult-oriented. In the Asian-set fantasy Kubo, a boy and his mother have escaped from a treacherous dynastic family and live homeless by their wits. Young Kubo’s left eye was stolen by his grandfather, yet Kubo shows a visionary gift for storytelling using origami and a guitar, which serves his journey toward maturity. The American-set Sausage Party is just a raunchier Animal House — expressing fratboy privilege in terms of supermarket products — particularly junk food like hot dogs and buns — in ways that display obvious and rampant immaturity.

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>Kubo responds to the crisis of our rotted popular culture, while Sausage Party reprocesses its already ground-up entrails. Not a satire like The Lego Movie, Kubo is a delicate tale addressing today’s sense of moral bereavement. This is conveyed through the boy’s search for the father he never knew. Little Kubo’s gallantry parallels the desperation of youth from broken families as well as adults who are estranged from now-outmoded cultural and moral traditions.

>It’s no wonder that Laika, the film’s production company, which also made the very fine Coraline and ParaNorman, based Kubo on Asian folklore. American folklore is in disrepute, undermined by “transformative” politics that question patriarchy and national and religious history. Kubo’s vaguely Buddhist fairytale (featuring vengeful ghosts and ideas on reincarnation) passes muster through its nondenominational focus. When Kubo journeys, carrying a bracelet made from his mother’s hair (plus a monkey charm and a samurai origami figure, which come to life as a furry monkey and a black beetle), he’s told that the bracelet is “Memory — and memories are powerful.”

>The history and emotion contained in memories become the source of Kubo’s moral learning. His expedition differs from Pixar adventures, which always literalize the return to a place. Here, the recovery, or discovery, of a moral state gives Kubo its beauty. One of the boy’s guides is asked, “If you have no memory how can you be certain of anything?” So director Travis Knight continues Laika’s sensuous ochre visual palette with imagery that evokes global myths — from Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones to the Ancient Mariner’s autumnal ship and more. Kubo offers sustenance through the boy’s faithful one-eyed vision and cultural memory. His magically enlivened origami figures attest the spirit of hand-tooled imagination and of storytelling traditions.

Does this guy ever talk about a film's structure or is it always this sophomoric political bullshit?

>One especially striking image represents the cultural process of memory: Early in his journey, the boy and his companions enter the Far Lands and see broken monuments buried in sand like that fearsome image of the Statue of Liberty at the end of The Planet of the Apes. Nothing in the clever, cheery The Lego Movie evoked anything this profound. Through Kubo’s yearning, Travis and Laika suggest a generation deprived of a cultural memory that would sustain them. This may have begun with the bogus mythology of Stars Wars. It’s why even Spielberg’s The BFG felt hollow.

>Since Pixar, animated movies have become a way for society to hide from its own anxieties, placate them with empty technologies that lack tactile dimensions (Laika’s use of 3D in Coraline, ParaNorman, and Kubo results in almost tangible visual perception), and ultimately distract from receiving emotional essence through vision. It is eye contact between Kubo’s parents (“You are my quest”) that aids his — and our — maturity.

>Reviewers who cynically boast that Sausage Party “isn’t kids’ stuff” have it wrong. Or else they have forgotten the capacity that eleven-year-old boys — and post-adolescent frat boys — have for 90 minutes of smirking. What Sausage Party lacks is the innocence of those old grade-school hot-dogs-and-donuts gags. Instead, producer Seth Rogen, who attempted to destroy U.S.–North Korean relations with The Interview, continues his self-amusement with self-congratulatory political satire. He replaces the Hollywood critique of his mostly funny This Is the End with Sausage Party’s atheistic allegory.

>Here, Rogen’s usual vulgar human characters become animated comestibles. But these aren’t just products; the horny male sausages, lusty female buns, and assorted other items on Shopwell’s shelves represent humanity — but humanity revealed as commodities. Despite the use of animation (directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon) this is only a new version of Moloch: mankind seen as merchandise waiting to be consumed by the cruel and malignant gods they worship. Sausage Party opens with a pale riff on “Everything Is Awesome” — a song called “Dear gods,” a mash-up of South Park and The Book of Mormon.

>It’s not enough for Rogen to satirize gluttonous habits; he appeals to debauchery — James Franco injecting bath salts, Nick Kroll as a douche product who rapes Vincent Tong as a juice box, Salma Hayek as a lesbian taco, with a climactic food orgy. Rogen flaunts human instincts repressed by religion: Michael Cera and Kristen Wiig play the hot-dog-and-bun couple who argue logic over faith

>A surprising misstep in Kubo confronts the boy hero with a malicious ancestor who exploits religion, promising immortality from “hate, heartache, suffering, and death.” Not exactly sure how this modern skepticism sneaked into Kubo, but, as part of the way contemporary animation traffics in social turmoil, it doesn’t help. Neither does the surprise of Rogen’s Mideast parody (David Krumholtz as lavash arguing/sexting with Edward Norton as a bagel) or Rogen’s anti-American skits (Craig Robinson as grits, Bill Hader as tobacco, Scott Underwood as a Twinkie, representing respectively “nonperishable” black, Native American, and gay groups). This is Rogen mocking the basic banality of tribal politics. None of this elevates Sausage Party’s “message.” It stays in the toilet. That’s what you get after ingesting junk.

wtf I love Armond now

Why isn't he being needlessly contrarian?

>he fell for the "Armond is a contrarian" meme

I can't argue with thay

2deep4u
>Yes, even comic-book franchises promote ideology. This may come as a shock to consumers still stuck on the idea that Hollywood wants to entertain more than indoctrinate. Even normally sophisticated folks who are unschooled in recognizing hegemony or realizing how the culture system functions today prove susceptible to the lure of apparently innocuous entertainment. They hold onto adolescent consumerist gullibility, and this is the ideology that Suicide Squad’s producer, Zack Snyder, is up against.

>If DC is the conservative comic-book universe to Marvel’s pseudo-progressivism, it couldn’t be more unpopular among kids who enjoyed the ludicrous platitudes of Avengers: Age of Ultron.

>They both (Snyder and Ayer) approach a childish genre like adults — and that’s what annoys the Marvel kids, whose bad rap on Suicide Squad has already gone viral.

>Think metaphorically again, and see that Suicide Squad entangles post-Vietnam and post-9/11 notions about heroism and citizenship. Deadshot does the right, patriotic thing, yet compliments Waller, his treacherous superior, saying, “That’s gangsta!” This use of hip-hop cynicism speaks more directly to modern confused ethics than most lines from other movies and most politicians. Suicide Squad is The Dirty Dozen for millennial viewers (and voters), who think their patriotic moral conflict is new.

Sophomoric and basic.
This guy has no notion of PS or anything he talks about
English-based liberal arts are tripe.

>>Reviewers who cynically boast that Sausage Party “isn’t kids’ stuff” have it wrong. Or else they have forgotten the capacity that eleven-year-old boys — and post-adolescent frat boys — have for 90 minutes of smirking. What Sausage Party lacks is the innocence of those old grade-school hot-dogs-and-donuts gags. Instead, producer Seth Rogen, who attempted to destroy U.S.–North Korean relations with The Interview, continues his self-amusement with self-congratulatory political satire. He replaces the Hollywood critique of his mostly funny This Is the End with Sausage Party’s atheistic allegory.
Seth Rogen unequivocally, unilaterally, transparently, literally, metaphorically, metaphysically, concretely, utterly, indisputably BTFO for life.

is he right, someone spoonfeed me.

You keep repeating the same basic criticisms without elaborating on them. It is you who is the sophomoric and basic one here.
He is, not that any of us really needed Armond to tell us that Sausage Party was going to be a piece of shit.

Since when were you under the impression

That Kubo was here to help?

So SP is garbage and Kubo is awesome? I can live with that

Post colonial and post structural analysis of storytelling is cancer, Armond White is everything wrong with current academia, I'm sure he cares more about discussing if Conrad was racist than how the motifs of heart of darkness interact with the structure of the novel.
All this political bullshit is fringe.

>kubo was good
>sausage party was bad
Armond haters will try to refute this.

huh armond liked the lego movie ?

Yeah, I'd see Kubo if I were you.
Any attempt to analyze and critique art outside of the cultural zeitgeist in which it was created is going to be inherently flawed and hollow, unless you wish to discuss the purely technical aspects and completely disregard the soul of a project. Everything is politically influenced, consciously or not.
>I'm sure he cares more about discussing if Conrad was racist than how the motifs of heart of darkness interact with the structure of the novel
You know nothing if Armond White if this is your interpretation.

I like how you can always tell (despite what he's trying to push) when Armond genuinely likes a movie by the number of Obama mentions or rep/dem comparisons. Kubo must've been really good.

>You keep repeating the same basic criticisms without elaborating on them.
So he's just like Armond.

I know. Everybody likes the Lego Movie which is exactly why you'd expect him to hate it.

It's visually great and has a lot of satire to it

>he hates movies because other people like them

>say a thing
>frame it in the context of the times
>explain why it relates
Your assertion falls on its ass right out the gate.

>discuss the technical aspects and disregard the soul of a project
So analyze what I actually have and disregard abstract notions that may or may not exist? Sounds like what I'm supposed to do, besides putting it within the context that created it.

Neither of you have read enough of him, nor do you understand his criticism, if you don't understand why he would like The Lego Movie. Also saying that he hates what everyone likes is a bit ridiculous. I would recommend looking at some of his lists and reading more before you form an opinion on him. If all you do is label him as a contrarian then you have only been reading his criticism, often cherry picked, from a very short period.

There are enough critics that do that well enough, Armond comes at film criticism from a pretty unique perspective so I always want to hear what he has to say, even if I might disagree.

I understand why you would enjoy a more political/ideological take on film criticism if you feel saturated with traditional critique, I'll read more Armond to see what are his direct thoughts on storytelling.

>explain
lol ok.

"Contrarian" is just a term the powerful use to make nonconformity look bad.

Are you honestly still looking for someone to spoon feed you formal analysis? Yes, Armond White is a cultural critic. If you don't want that then go read Rosenbaum. What the fuck are you expecting? It's a market. If you want a little bit of everything then don't even enter these threads and go to your library.

>I'm sure he cares more about discussing if Conrad was racist than how the motifs of heart of darkness interact with the structure of the novel.
Armond doesn't give a shit about that tribal BS. He's concerned with class and tradition. His philosophy is like Burke meets bourgeois socialism. Its great.

It's especially nice that he exists outside of the typical framework of two thumbs up/down and 9/10. There aren't enough people that do that anymore. His articles are just as much think pieces as they are film critiques.
A well-balanced and hearty refutation, I bet you were captain of the debate team in high school.

>“Everything Is Awesome!!” An uproarious satire

Lying to fit your political agenda is film criticism now?

Always on point.

>a pop song about conformity and commercialism over a montage of everyone looking the same, acting the same and buying the same products
>not a satire

youtube.com/watch?v=-jmV6aRikhA

Nigga, it fucking is.
They weren't even trying to hide it, its a fucking joke and the movie knows it...wtf is wrong with you?

Damn son. Literally the most redpilled black man alive

>It's especially nice that he exists outside of the typical framework of two thumbs up/down and 9/10.
So many idiots online try to write political thinkpieces on the arts and they're always incredibly trite. Armond is one of the only bastions of the pre-20th century mode of criticism where the criticism is art in and of itself rather than a dull consumer review.

Woah...it seems Mr White was...a patrician...all along...

>So many idiots online try to write political thinkpieces on the arts and they're always incredibly trite.
This is a fact, but I don't generally regard bloggers as critics, no matter what RT wants me to think.

I swear none of you Armond fans have read film criticism in your life and think all non-Armonds are RT bloggers.

Almond has never lied to me