I liked the parents, too. It's weird. I can't stand Amy Pohler (the actress who played Arrietty's mom) when I see her live-action work. But I think she's a fantastic voice actress. Maybe she just has better luck when it comes to choosing animated projects.
I didn't mind the Ponyo dub that much. I thought the child actors did OK and neither of them sounded "off" to me. But then again, I had VERY low expectations for them because they were hired based solely on the fact that their older siblings are famous. So maybe that's it. :P
I heard that Howl story before. It's funny. But it's also kinda sad that the recording directors had no clue who Freeman was. I mean, they're the ones who HIRED him for goodness sakes!
Back around 2004, I saw a panel with Billy West and he gave a pretty angry rant about the trend of putting celebrities in big-budget animated projects. It's something he's pretty passionate about because it really does screw over professionals like him by taking their jobs away and giving them to people who have less talent yet demand more money. One story that really got to him was the time he and some other VAs auditioned for leading roles in a feature film. The studio took their audition tapes and had the "celebrities" mimic them in order to make their performances sound less awful (he said it was easy to tell because the celebrities used the exact same vocal inflections and pronunciations that he heard himself and the other VAs use in the auditions). This was a smaller con, so I got to talk to him one-on-one for a bit and it was clear that he was pretty bitter about it. :(
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-02-22 02:22 am (UTC)I didn't mind the Ponyo dub that much. I thought the child actors did OK and neither of them sounded "off" to me. But then again, I had VERY low expectations for them because they were hired based solely on the fact that their older siblings are famous. So maybe that's it. :P
I heard that Howl story before. It's funny. But it's also kinda sad that the recording directors had no clue who Freeman was. I mean, they're the ones who HIRED him for goodness sakes!
Back around 2004, I saw a panel with Billy West and he gave a pretty angry rant about the trend of putting celebrities in big-budget animated projects. It's something he's pretty passionate about because it really does screw over professionals like him by taking their jobs away and giving them to people who have less talent yet demand more money.
One story that really got to him was the time he and some other VAs auditioned for leading roles in a feature film. The studio took their audition tapes and had the "celebrities" mimic them in order to make their performances sound less awful (he said it was easy to tell because the celebrities used the exact same vocal inflections and pronunciations that he heard himself and the other VAs use in the auditions). This was a smaller con, so I got to talk to him one-on-one for a bit and it was clear that he was pretty bitter about it. :(