Puss in Boots takes the titular character introduced in the Shrek movie franchise and tells the adventurous feline’s story in 90 minutes of 3D animated glory. Yes, the animation executed by DreamWorks Animation is once again splendid and crisp. Do you need to shell out the extra cash for 3D ticket prices? Not at all. There’s plenty of scope in the traditional 2D screenings and the kiddies will be entertained just the same.

The character is a cunning cat version of Zorro set in a screenplay that blends the playful action of a Pirates of the Caribbean flick with a little bit of an Indiana Jones adventure saga. Antonio Banderas energetically voices Puss as the anti-hero is on a quest for the magic beans that have been told in the infamous Jack and the Beanstalk lore. Puss has a lead on the fabled beans, for Jack (voiced by Billy Bob Thornton) & Jill (voiced by Amy Sedaris) – all grown up and cut-throat – have seized the beans that if planted in the right spot, will grow the bean stalk to where the golden goose lays her golden eggs.

Puss has been on the trail of the beans for years, as we see via a brief 15 minute flashback sequence that shows how the legendary character came to be. During that time, we learn about the turbulent relationship between Puss and his best friend, Humpty Dumpty (voiced by Zach Galifianakis), who was also obsessed with finding the beans to gain riches. As the two plotted to locate the magic beans in their small and humble Spanish town, a morale decision separated the two more-or-less brothers. Now that Humpty has reappeared in Puss’ life, sporting a new partner in Kitty Softpaws (voiced by Salma Hayek), the duo lure Puss into joining up with them to snag the beans from the ruthless Jack & Jill.

From an adult perspective, this spin-off is definitely not as funny as the Shrek movies. Granted they scaled back on the go-to pop culture references the Ogre installments eventually beat to death, but there is a noticeable lack of jovial moments. Instead, the screenplay focuses on elaborate action sequences that have the ability to keep both young and older audiences fixated on the screen. The characters travel across vast landscapes and take part in chase sequences on rooftops and through mountains. So while the animation dazzles, the sharp dialogue is precariously set on auto-pilot; leading to the Puss character – who we now have in larger doses for the first time – feel spaded. If the filmmakers had the “go for it” attitude Antonio Banderas displays in voicing the walking upright swordsmen, things would have been more entertaining all around.

Overall, Puss in Boots gives one an eye-full to look at and bask in from an animation standpoint. And the storytelling is concise and delivered in an appropriate manner to please a wide-range of audiences. When there’s a dip in the action though, the film feels underwhelming in the charisma department (i.e. Rango). Therefore, this follows the typical spin-off pattern – a nice addition to the DVD collection. All that said, this will undoubtedly charm the boots off the kids.

RATING: 3 out of 5

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With the release of Shrek spin-off Puss in Boots just weeks away DreamWorks Animation have released one final trailer for the film.

It’s more upbeat than the previous trailers, focuses more heavily on the story, and contains some fun new action scenes.

Watch below:

Way before Puss ever met Shrek, our suave and furry feline hero goes on a swashbuckling ride, as he teams with mastermind Humpty Dumpty and the street-savvy Kitty to steal the famed Goose that lays the Golden Eggs.

Puss in Boots, directed by Chris Miller (Shrek the Third), is set for release on October 28th and features the voices of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis and Billy Bob Thornton.

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The first trailer for Aardman’s 2012 stop-motion feature The Pirates! Band of Misifts has been unveiled online, and it looks great! Read on to watch!

As usual, Apple has all the HD encodes you could wish for.

The Pirates! features a fantastic cast of voices: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen, Russell Tovey, Salma Hayek, Imelda Staunton and David Tennant, and a press release back in May summarised the plot as follows:

Hugh Grant, starring in his first animated role, is the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas.  With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award.  It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London.  Along the way they do battle with the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) and team up with a young Charles Darwin (David Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!

It’s based on the book The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe, and is being directed by Peter Lord (Aardman veteran and co-director of Chicken Run).

I’m an enormous fan of Aardman (Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is one of my all-time favourite movies), and stop-motion is my favourite type of animation. Plus, it tends to actually look brilliant in 3D, if Coraline was anything to go by. The Pirates! looks like a huge amount of fun, and I can’t wait for it – even if all it does is wash away the sour, sour taste of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, it will have done a good job.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits is due out on 28th March next year in the UK, and 30th March in the US.

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Shrek‘s big screen adventures may be over, but they’ll continue for a certain cat with footwear.

The first trailer for Puss in Boots didn’t give us much to chew on (he just walked down a street), but today DreamWorks released the theatrical trailer and it looks much larger in scope than I imagined. It gives off a Zorro and Pirates of the Caribbean vide, just with cats and eggs instead of people.

Watch the trailer below:

Way before Puss ever met Shrek, our suave and furry feline hero goes on a swashbuckling ride, as he teams with mastermind Humpty Dumpty and the street-savvy Kitty to steal the famed Goose that lays the Golden Eggs.

Puss in Boots, directed by Chris Miller (Shrek the Third), is set for release on November 4th and features the voices of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis and Billy Bob Thornton.

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More stop-motion goodness! Hot on the heels of LAIKA’s announcement of ParaNorman for 2012, Aardman Animations have issued a press release for their film The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. Hit the continue reading button to…continue reading.

The film is due out on March 30th 2012 in the UK, and will be the first stop-motion feature from Aardman since 2005′s fantastic Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It’s being developed for Sony Pictures Animation, and will be distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Again, animated movies always have a hell of a cast, and this one has a large array of mostly British talent, all of whom should be great in their roles: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen, Russell Tovey, Salma Hayek, Imelda Staunton and David Tennant. It’s certainly going to be lively. The press release summarises the plot of the movie in the following:

Hugh Grant, starring in his first animated role, is the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas.  With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award.  It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London.  Along the way they do battle with the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) and team up with a young Charles Darwin (David Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!

It sounds like it will have the humour and charm present in Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, and basically everything else Aardman have done.

You can see basically all of the image above, but for purists, here’s the larger version:

I’m loving the style that’s going on here. And The Pirates! will also be released in 3D. Usually I sigh at that being tagged onto an announcement, but considering Coraline was the best film I’ve seen in 3D (Harry at AICN agrees) by a mile, this should be beautiful too.

Aardman Animations are also currently working on a CGI project for Sony Pictures Animation; Arthur Christmas, which is due out on November 11th this year in the UK, and November 23rd in the US. It also boasts a great list of voice actors: James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, and again, Ashley Jensen and Imelda Staunton. It tells the story of Father Christmas’s son, and while I’m sure it’ll be a large amount of fun, my fondness for stop-motion makes me much more excited for The Pirates!

So, I can’t wait for this. I first read about it back in a large press release from Aardman in 2007. Stop-motion is my absolute favourite type of animation, and there truly isn’t enough of it. The detail and care that usually goes into it makes it a joy to behold. Aardman in particular continue to release quality products, so this is high up on my list of anticipated movies. What with LAIKA’s ParaNorman too…2012 is looking good.

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Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps director Oliver Stone has got together an impressive cast for his next movie, Savages, which is based on the Don Winslow novel and follows a pair of marijuana growers who come up against a Mexican drug cartel when their girlfriend becomes kidnapped and held for ransom.

Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass) and Taylor Kitsch (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) will play the growers, with Blake Lively (The Town) set to play their kidnapped lady friend. Deadline also has word that Stone is arranging a Pulp Fiction reunion with John Travolta and Uma Thurman joining the film. Thurman will play Lively’s mother, Paqu, and Travolta will play a burned out Drug Enforcement agent.

Also among the cast are Salma Hayek, who’ll play the role of Mexican cartel queen-pin Elena; and Benicio Del Toro, who plays the vicious cartel enforcer Lado. Emile Hirsch (Into The Wild) has also joined the film according to Variety, although his role has not been revealed. Other parts are yet to be cast, so we can probably expect more names to join the project before it’s planned July shoot.

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In an attempt to suck the marrow from the bones of the Shrek franchise, Dreamworks and Paramount are releasing Puss in Boots, the fifth movie of the storyline, though actually the first to feature a protagonist other than the once-ubiquitous ogre.

The trailer itself reads like checklist for standard issue, non-Pixar, post-millennial animation, right down to the obligatory pop song played while Puss in Boots walks determinedly toward the camera (in this case, Pitbull’s pulsating “I Know You Want Me”), sure to prompt annoying adorable 7-year-old boys to do the same.

Combined, the four films in the Shrek franchise have grossed nearly 3 billion (that’s with a ‘b‘) dollars; that figure doesn’t take into account the numerous television specials, theme park rides, merchandising, etc.

Why couldn’t they make a Donkey movie?

The animation doesn‘t look terrible; the quality seems adequate, but there are a couple instances of weird animation physics that seem to indicate that Puss in Boots will not toe today’s line of modern computer animation. At one point, a bull rampages past Puss, and he simply disappears. Not moves with the bull, but just vanishes from the shot. One second he’s there, the next, he’s not. And later in the trailer, the camera pans up to see Puss standing over us, but he’s literally not standing on anything; his feet just sort of hover in the air.

Based on the trailer, I have almost no interest in seeing this film. The fact that the trailer itself tells us absolutely nothing about the plot notwithstanding, I still would be extremely surprised if this movie ended up being anything more than a generic, run-of-the-mill animation movie.

Puss in Boots is set to come out November 4th and features the voices of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis and Billy Bob Thornton.

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Salma Hayek is known for A) being a female and B) having large boobies. So if anyone has any fantasies of her for those reasons I suggest you divert your eyes, as the image below may ruin them. Unless, of course, you have a thing for women with facial hair.

Hayek has this look for her role of Madame Truska in Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, and the image comes from EW who asked director Paul Weitz why he chose Salma:

Hayek costars as Madame Truska, the hirsute woman in a traveling freak show and girlfriend of the titular vampire (John C. Reilly). The fantasy, based on the popular young-adult books, follows a boy (Chris Massoglia) who becomes an apprentice to Reilly’s vamp. Hayek’s character sprouts whiskers every time she gets passionate with her boyfriend. “So she needs to be very comfortable with herself, which Salma really is in real life,” says director Paul Weitz (About a Boy). “I thought, of all people to have that problem, she’d be an interesting one.”

We got the trailer for Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant 2 days ago. Click here to watch it (if you have good eyes you can see Hayek and her beard in action).

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