Word: katzenberg
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...Like some supersequel - Freddy vs Jason or Alien vs Predator - that never bothered with any setup episodes, Monsters vs Aliens bursts onto the screen this weekend. Onto it and out of it, for this latest concoction from the tummlers at Jeffrey Katzenberg's DreamWorks shop is being tub-thumped as the first feature-length animated movie to be conceived as a 3-D spectacle (not just converted to the format). As such, it's zazzy and colorful, its creatures no less graphically plausible for seeming like they're ready to leap into your lap. (See pictures of animated movies...
...visions more or less on their own, despite all the support they get from their staff; DreamWorks movies, made near Hollywood, are team efforts. In Pixar features there's a purity of narrative line, an emotional clarity, that the DreamWorks films don't achieve or, for that matter, attempt. Katzenberg's boys, and the characters they birth, are Catskills entertainers, tossing gags into the audience like confetti, sweating to please you every single moment. A Pixar film may have one writer besides the director; it's total auteur handicrafting. Monsters vs Aliens credits two directors and half a dozen writers...
...that Pixar movies are inevitably superior to the DreamWorks stuff - though Oscar voters seem to think so. Eight years ago, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences established an award for Best Animated Feature, DreamWorks got the first one, for Shrek. Since then, Katzenberg's homegrown product has been shut out (the studio distributed Nick Park's veddy English Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), while Pixar has won four: Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and WALL-E. "Each year I do one DreamWorks project," actor Jack Black told the crowd at this year's ceremony...
...this economy, will people spend as much as $15 a ticket for a movie? Katzenberg is optimistic, pointing out that consumers are cutting back on everything but cheap entertainment. "The movies have been the greatest beneficiary of this," he says. "So to offer a new, exciting premium version of a bargain will be a big winner...
...happened: 3-D theaters reported three to four times the box-office gross as those that showed the 2-D version. (All 3-D movies can easily be stepped down to 2-D and are typically shown in both forms.) That was the jump start digital 3-D needed. Katzenberg predicts that more than 2,000 theaters will be 3-D-ready by this week. (See the top 10 movie performances...