Who knows if the 2009-2010 season will be remembered for the triumph of the old toys? Only time will confirm that, but it’s a fact that in a few months three similar movies who celebrate vintage toys have been produced: Panique au village by Vincent Patar and Stephane Aubier, In the Attic by the veteran  Jiri Barta, and now Toy Story 3 3D. Pixar debuted in 1996 with the first Toy Story, changing the history of cinema with the first digitally animated feature film, then shocked everybody with Toy Story 2 that proved that Pixar wasn’t only guarantee of tecnichal excellence, but also of story telling quality, proved by the narrative complexity of the movie itself. Today, Toy Story 3 faces the challenge of closing a great saga after three masterworks like Up!, Wall-e and Ratatouille.

Once upon a time, in 1989, the first Prince of Persia videogame, created by Jordan Mechner for the Software House Bruedeberg and developed for Apple II, was acclaimed as a revolutionary game. For the first time in a platform game, the main character was animated with rotoscoping technique, with complex, realistic and soft movements, never seen before and raising up the visual standards of the entire videogame industry.

The relationship through Roald Dahl and cinema is quite strange. Despite his books for children were among the all time bestsellers since the Forties, the first adaptation from Dahl is Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, released in 1971 and written by Dahl himself. Movies’ adaptations from Dahl’s books begin to proliferate after his death, in the Nineties, and they are quite good movies: The Witches (1990) by Nicholas Roeg, Matilda (1996) by Danny De Vito, James and the Giant Peach (1996) by Henry Selick, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, (2005) by Tim Burton, and the unsuccessful cartoon The BFG by Brian Cosgrove. The most recent adaptation from Dahl, Fantastic Mr. Fox by Wes Anderson, which has released in the Italian theaters on April 16, is a high budget cartoon and marks the exciting meeting between two strong personalities, with very different careers and artistic paths.

Unexpectedly, the Vikings became trendy lately; in fact, in the past they were main characters in few and forgotten movies such as The Vikings by Richard Fleischer, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent by Roger Corman or the unsuccessful Erik the Viking by the former Mony Python’s Terry Jones. We’d like to mention also the comic strip Hagar the Horrible (1973) by Richard Browne and the anime Vicky the Viking (1974) by Studio Zuiyo. But in the last two years the Vikings appeared in the ambitious b-movie Outlander by Howard McCain, ruined by the crisis of Weinstein Company, and in the critically acclaimed Valhalla Rising by cult Danish director Nicholas Winding-Refn.

The new and awaited movie by Tim Burton, a new interpretation of the novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865) will be released on March 5th. We will find again the well-known characters, Alice (Mia Wasikowska), The White Rabbit (Michael Sheen) the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Red ...

My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro), is one of the most beautiful animated movie by Hayao Miyazaki (winner of the Accademy Award in 2002 and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2005), become a cult movie. The film is now released in Italy, 21 years after the ...

After three long years of production, Coraline is now on Italian screens. The stop-motion feature lenght film is directed by Henry Selick, the stop-motion master who has directed in 1993 The Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas and in 1996 James and the Giant Peach....

It’s now on Italian screens Terminator Salvation, the fourth episode of the science fiction saga created on 1984 by James Cameron. The movie, directed by McG (Charlie’s Angels), picks up the story of the previous episodes (Terminator by James Cameron, 1984, Terminator 2: Judgment Day by James Cameron, 1991 e ...

A new voyage in the world of Star Trek, the greatest space adventure, is now on Italian screens. The saga is now a cult and it continues with this new and eleventh episode directed by J.J. Abrams (Mission Impossible III, Lost and Alias) and the screenplay by Roberto Orci ...

Presented as closing event of Future Film Festival eleventh edition (January 27th – February 1st 2009), The Tale of Despereaux is now released on Italian screens. The latest mouse of a lot of rodents on tv and cinema, Despereaux is a strange mouse, little and brave, elegant and full of enthusiasm. ...