Wizards

Rating:
Summary: about time
Review: This is an incredible film and it is about time it made it to DVD. Like Fantastic Planet, Fire and Ice, and the Last Unicorn you have to have this in your colection.

Rating:
Summary: Wizards not on dvd? it is now
Review:

Set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, this fantasy adventure follows the story of Avatar, the kindly, eccentric sorcerer-ruler of Montagar, a rainbow paradise inhabited by elves and fairies. Avatar's evil brother, Blackwolf, dominates Scortch, a bleak land of goblins and wraiths. When the power-hungry Blackwolf attacks Montagar, Avatar, accompanied only by a spirited young woman and a courageous elf, must enter the darkness of Scortch to save his world. WIZARDS is a thought-provoking, kaleidoscopic feast for the eyes that will enthrall animation fans and film lovers of all ages.

Features:

1.85:1 Widescreen
English Stereo, English Mono, Spanish Mono
Dubbed: Spanish
Subtitled: English, Spanish
Feature with commentary by Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi: The Wizard of Animation
theatrical trailer
theatrical trailer B
TV spot
Still gallery 300 stills


Rating:
Summary: Best animation of its time
Review: The animation in this movie is still about the most vivid and compelling that I know of. It combines cel animation, processed photography, some beautiful hand-painted backgrounds, and more. This is late 70s film, so "processed" means optical processing with some hand-drawn enhancements - no computers. Still, today's effect-fests would be improved by a few of this movie's lessons in creating images that truly communicate.

The plot's depth encompasses one or two of the little marks on a ruler. It has the good and evil, spawned by the same birth. It has the small band of improbable but plucky heroes. It has the final showdown in the bad guy's stronghold. It's just good enough that it's not actually bad, but you won't spend much time on it's greater meaning.

This movie won't be for everyone. Try it, though - it may open your eyes to some of the 70s' best animation.

Rating:
Summary: been looking for this
Review: I've always loved this flick since I first saw it
I have a few friends that love it as well
I would love to own this unfortunately havent been able to find it till now
might have to break down and buy the VHS. since its not available on DVD
anyone that that is saying the animation is bad...umm it wasnt supposed to be the greatest... but i love it anyway

Rating:
Summary: Kicks Tail !!!!!!
Review: I first saw this movie at a midnight showing in San Antonio, Texas, circa 1980.

Lets just keep this simple and short.... Wizards is the ultimate "stoner" flick. I recommend watching this movie under heavy sedation. What better way to handle the serious and mature content of the film? Its a RIOT!

Rating:
Summary: Bad Rap by Rapp
Review: Rapp's review is so childish it is not funny. Of course Wizzards is not to the level of the High-tech animation of today or even 10 years ago. Dahhhhhh...it was originally shown back in the days when animation beyond the old glass photo process was just starting. It was a protest film created in the era of protest films like Clockwork Orange, Watership Downs, Farenheight 451, etc. That is what makes it a classic and it will remain a classic of the era of protest and concern on what our fears and concerns were duing the time of nuclear expansion, politcal cold war, etc. That is also why anyone viewing the vhs version enjoys it, not because of its problems but because it voices fears even today that still exist. The battle of good and evil still exist and our hope that in the end, one way or another, good will prevail even with all its problems. So if you like a classic and an interesting political move with good animation from an era before High-tech computer....you will enjoy Wizzards. If you are only interested in the quick-fast-track-entertain-me-now flick, you may find this classic dull. But then, that is true for anyone who does not get the meaning of the great classic movies, books, and poems that continue to exist. Lets get this on DVD is my wish.

Rating:
Summary: Rotoscoping Scenes Worth Watching...
Review: I became a fan of Bakshi's works after picking up American Pop after seeing a preview for it on "Heavy Metal". I saw this movie in 1999 and was absolutely flooring by the realism of the characters movements. I think American Pop is one of the greatest stories and animated features ever made. The characters were very vivid and the animation using rotoscoping was sick, in a good way!

I picked up Wizards as this week I decided to up my animation collection and pick up ALL of Bakshi's titles. Wizards arrived to me yesterdayalong with Issac Azimov's Light Years and I popped it in right away. The beging had me captured as I saw traces of live action mixed with animationn which Bakshi is known for, but the rest of the movie, minus the cool rotoscoping scenes, didn't really do it for me. The story was pretty bad and it seems the story boards were thrown in to an already short movie cause Bakshi and his team were too lazy to complete the animation.

It is absolutely worth a watch if you are a true Bakshi fan and want to see his first attempts at Rotoscoping which were great and impactful. But he surely goes on to create better works in American Pop and Fire and Ice so check those out for sure...

Rating:
Summary: Good movie, and a background you would never expect...
Review: "Wizards" has grown to cult fandom in the past decades after it was released. A story about an evil wizard who resurrects Nazi propoganda and old technology to overrun the kind elves and fairies who live right next door, it lacks perhaps quality in animation but remains strong in its goal and storyline.

And I bet you would never expect the inspiration for that storyline. I never found out until I read an interview with Ralph Bakshi.

It is really about the birth of Israel and its struggles against its enemies. Unless you know the history of Israel, you would never understand the parallels between "Wizards" and Israeli history. Many of the Arab nations, shortly after the creation of Israel, began to oppress their Jewish citizens and even brought forth propoganda not seen since World War II. This includes stories on how Jews eat children, Jews caused both World Wars...the list goes on and on. Even today, some Islamic terrorist groups stick by this rational, and its been attributed to a reason why conflict between Israel and Palestine has continued. "Wizards" mocks this by presenting the villains "resurrecting" Nazi propoganda and using it against a nation representative of Israel.

When the end of the movie quotes, "Hitler was dead again" it doesn't mean exactly that technology is evil nor that magic did Hitler in (some thing people have mistook it as), but instead that in defeating their enemies, Israel defeats the propoganda (when Israel took the West Bank from Jordan, the only change they made to Palestinian lifestyle was removing anti-Semite propoganda).

Its a subtle, political satire, and few people fully realize that.

Rating:
Summary: Wizards
Review: .... If your a Ralph Bakshi fan, ... then you will no doubt enjoy wizards. Forget abou the previous reviews, especially those that point to the rotoscoping technique as being old fashioned and point to anime films 30 years later for comparison!!!
Wizards is, animated with style, and the story IS worthy of a repeat visit. Nevertheless, if you do appreciate something different, Wizards is worth the time. It is interesting animation particularly the way it is put together, and if that is not enough the soundtrack should keep you going until the end.

Rating:
Summary: A step in animation, but a black-and-white story
Review: Before Ralph Bakshi got involved in the animated version of Lord of the Rings, he ventured into the fantasy animation realm with his classic, Wizards, which pitted cute, cuddly nature against evil, mutated technology.

I saw this first when I was relatively young and was struck by both how interesting the tale was, the great potential for the story, and also how clumsily it was told. Seeing it several times in later years has reinforced those views.

First, the animation. It was in Wizards that tested the use of 'rotoscoping', or using live action footage - colored in - to work with animation. The effect is rather unkempt looking in the movie, sort of like the animators didn't feel like putting the work in for complex scenes and instead stuck in a movie sequence they thought would fit.

The drawing style is very in-your-face. The good guys are light and airy and cute. The bad guys are dark and evil and nasty. There's no complexity, no understanding of motives. The bad guys are just "bad".

You've got Avatar, the hippy-wizard, with his big-breasted babe by his side. Together they go off to track down his evil brother, BlackWolf. BlackWolf isn't just 'mildly bad'. He is very deliberately shown with Nazi and other propaganda around him. He and his kind want to totally wipe out the fairy folk.

Avatar claims that war is bad. But of course, he in essence declares war against BlackWolf and in the end uses those same "nasty, evil" weapons to bring BlackWolf down. Which reminds us that nobody really *wants* a war. But when we are faced with something we feel that we (and those around us) simply cannot live with, sometimes war seems to be the only option.

I have fond thoughts of *bits* of the movie. There are individual, cute scenes, and the basic idea was a good, if quite overused, plot. But the movie was incredibly heavy-handed and obvious just about the entire way, and the message was beaten into you. The bimbo-girl was saddening as the representative of what females were, and in the end, was the lecherous hippie really that much better than the evil twin? Except, of course, he was "cute" and stood for the "cute people".

Yes, the movie sweeps you along in a feel-good "trounce all evil! stop all war!" mindset. But any movie that trains you to chant mantras and look at things as black-and-white is not a movie that makes you think or constructively evaluate. Lord of the Rings had an 'evil ruler' that 'good people' had to struggle against, and that story is FAR more complex and thought-provoking than this even began to be. So maybe rent this one to learn more about how animation changed over the years, but this is not a movie that deserves multiple watching, given the wealth of quality anime that exist.