Guest Review: Rise of the Guardians

By Damien.

Who Am I?

A Weird Rise of the Guardians Guest Review.

Maybe I'm a visionary genius. Or maybe I'm the biggest idiot on Earth... Just look at one of my comments on this very blog, talking about Rise of the Guardians a few months ago :

"I'm somewhat excited for this film, but I think it's not gonna be a huge hit internationally, with the differences in popular cultures.

Basically, in France :

- Santa Claus : Okay, "le Père Noël" is pretty much the same thing. Exactly even.

- Easter Bunny : Replaced by Bells. Yes. Bells bring the eggs.

- Tooth Fairy : Replaced by a small mouse : "la petite souris".

- Jack Frost : Who is this ???"

Rise of the Guardians Posters

DreamWorks' official Facebook page just uploaded five new character posters featuring the main cast of characters from their upcoming adaptation of William Joyce's The Guardians of Childhood books, Rise of the Guardians.

The posters showcase the bad-ass character designs for the Easterbunny, now called Bunnymund, (Hugh Jackman, top), Jack Frost (Chris Pine, above-left), the Tooth Fairy, now called Tooth, (Isla Fisher, above-right) and Santa Claus himself, now simply called North (Alec Baldwin, below). We also get a poster for the villainous Pitch, the Boogeyman, (Jude Law, bottom) who is scorned and angry after having to "to endure generations of parents telling their children not to fear or believe in him, while the Guardians are beloved by all."

There's also some character descriptions for the revamped and re-imagined childhood characters, head here and click on the individual posters to read them.

I think I'm going to grab the Bunnymund or North one for my iPod background; Rise of the Guardians looks utterly fantastic and will surely be a huge hit for DreamWorks.

Remember to visit the Rise of the Guardians Facebook page to keep an eye out for future updates.

Rise of the Guardians is due for release on 21st November in the US and just over a week later on the 30th here in the UK.

Update

Whoops, my bad, I overlooked the final character poster, the awesome and visceral Sandman (no voice actor announced yet) poster (below).

Rise of the Guardians Trailer

The first intense, action-packed trailer for DreamWorks' upcoming animated film, Rise of the Guardians was released on iTunes Movie Trailers today, showcasing the film's troupe of bad-ass childhood heroes. The film, based on the upcoming Guardians of Childhood book series by Moonbot Studios' William Joyce, and co-directed by Joyce, as well as being co-produced by Guillermo del Toro, follows the story of a group of famed fairytale characters, including Santa, the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost and the Tooth Fairy, who must band together to save the children of the world from an evil force.

Rise of the Guardians will be DreamWorks' second feature release this year, after Madagascar 3, and is due out on 30th November.

Prep & Landing: Operation Secret Santa

The sequel to last year's Disney half hour Christmas special, Prep & Landing, hit TV Screens yesterday, I've just saw it now and it was really good. I loved last year's short and thought it was outstanding, whilst this year's was a lot shorter (about 6 or 7 minutes) it was still really funny and original, one of Disney's best efforts in recent years.
The film revolves around the same set of characters from the last film, such as Wayne and Lanny, and introduces Betty White as Mrs. Claus.
You can see some trailers and featurettes on the short's official website.

Aardman News 2

More Aardman news concerning their upcoming 2011 CGI Christmas film, Arthur Christmas. Set in the ultra high tech North Pole on Christmas Eve, the film stars James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Ashley Jensen as hapless and eager son of Santa Arthur, his older and more capable brother Steve, Santa, Grandsanta (the grumpy and cranky father of Santa), Mrs. Santa and lowly elf Bryony respectively.

The film casts many stars who are also in the upcoming Starz Animation film Gnomeo and Juliet, what really caught my attention is that the film is co-composed by the fantastic Michael Giacchino, a staple of Pixar, who is currently compsoing Cars 2.

The film sounds fantastic and you can read the full article here.