Hey Mouse what the hell! Where’s the Captain America 3 review?
Aw jeez, sorry, I done goofed. I completely forgot that I’ll be on holiday this week which means, unfortunately, that the review for Captain America 3 has to be pushed back to 22 June.
Mouse, you’ve let me down and you’ve let yourself down. Good day to you.
Not so fast.
What the…I can’t click out?!
I think you’ll find escape quite impossible.
A trap? Treachery, sir!
Relax. I just need to ask you something. Since Shortstember ended I’ve been mulling over ideas for a new series of animated short reviews and because I couldn’t settle on one, I thought I’d let you, my fabulous readers, decide.
What are our options?
Behold!
1) Word War 2 Propaganda Shorts
All the major American animation studios contributed to the war effort by making animated propaganda shorts. Some were profound, some were hilarious, pretty much all were racist as all hell. But, y’know, racist for FREEDOM.
2) Over the Garden Wall
An all-star cast, beautiful animation and a sublime score, Over the Garden Wall is ten shorts of pure cartoon awesomeness.
3) The New Mickey Mouse Shorts
Mickey Mouse is back and actually great! It’s like 1929 all over again and not just because of the imminent collapse of Western democracy!
4) The Fleischer Supermans Supermen Supermens Cartoons featuring the DC Comics Character Superman
Look! Up in the sky! Some of the greatest animated shorts in the history of the medium!
5) The Animatrix
You have many questions, however, despite the changes brought about by reading this blog you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of the following you will understand and some you will not. Interpolated between the release of The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded the Wachowskis released a series of short films by some of the greatest anime directors of the day telling stories within the world of The Matrix. Concordantly, you may wish me to review these shorts, but only if you believe it is your choice to do so, at least on a sub-conscious level.
6) Batman: Gotham Knight
Or…if you like the idea of short animés directed by top tier Japanese animation talent meant to bridge the gap between the first two installments of a major film franchise but aren’t really arsed about The Matrix we could just do the same thing with Batman instead.
7) The Censored 11
The Censored 11 are eleven Warner Bros shorts deemed so appallingly racist that they’ve been permanently pulled from broadcast.
So. Who wants to just get really, really sad?
***
There’s a poll below, so get clickin’ and I’ll see you on the 22nd.
So, you gonna take a year to finish this series too?
Shaddup. Yeah. Probably. Shaddup.
unshavedmouse 
Awww, just one possible vote? I would have liked at least a second choice. Which would have been the Mickey mouse shorts, btw. Propaganda is my first pick, because I think that we really need some good propaganda analysis is the current environment.
Amen.
No, let’s leave the political talk on CNN before I have to drop the nuke on the comments section.
Hmm, do I vote for the Mickey Mouse shorts or Over the Garden Wall… two series with absolutely sublime music, though sharply contrasting in tone. Normally I would’ve been very interested for a review of Der Führer’s Face as well – but honestly, reading WaPo on a daily basis has left me hungover on the sight of bumbling, cartoonishly-incompetent Nazis.
I haven’t really watched the rest, but I won’t sic an army of Russian hackers at you if you do decide to review any of them. Probably.
It’s /probably/ just a coincidence that a tale about two superpowered factions initiating hostilities following rising tensions and doing so with shock and awe and much collateral damage, is set to be featured on the anniversary of Operation Barbarossa.
Probably.
Hmmm, tricky. I can’t decide between the new Mickey Mouse or Over the Garden Wall. (I’ve already seen a couple other reviewers do the Censored 11 so I’m less interested in that option.)
Yeah, the Censored 11 has been done so often already. Same with the Superman cartoon.
Tough choice! As long as the censored 11 reviews are more than just “oh man…this is racist”, I’d be more interested in that mainly due to how different (I think) each are. Everything else is part of the same series and that could lead to some inevitable sameyness.
So yeah, voting for that one.
OVER THE GARDEN WALL
As a devoted Superfan (and fan of DC in general) how could I vote for anyone but Big Blue in all his deliciously retro splendour? (besides, with the most successful President Lex cosplayer in History currently occupying the Oval Office we need more reminders of just how COOL the Other Guy can be to cheer us up – and in lieu of a President Superman movie starring The Dwayne* the Fleischer Shorts will do nicely).
*Who could possibly be better qualified to play Calvin Ellis than Ba-rock Obama himself?
@ED: I think you may be giving President Trump (oh, how yucky I feel inside typing that pair of words) too much credit. Isn’t Luther supposed to be a DIABOLICALLY SNEAKY and CLEVER villain who’s fooled the public into thinking he’s not so bad? Trump is an idiot who most Americans now know is bad news.
Well, Lex has certainly had his Trump stages. Like the time when he injected himself with liquid Kryptonite (long after just wearing a Kryptonite ring had made him cancerous…) and thought it’d be a good idea to French Amanda Waller (which, mind, I’m not against in the basis of her body, I’d actually hit that, but because… well, she’s Amanda The Uberb**ch Waller), or that Superman: Brainiac Attacks flim, or Superman IV, or…
I would never accuse President Trump of actually being Lex Luthor (hence “cosplayer” as opposed to doppelgänger), not least because when Luthor steals from another villains playbook he makes the plays WORK … unless some combination of Superman, Lois Lane and/or Clark Kent shows up.
I don’t suppose you could either change the polling system or mentally add more votes to the poll numbers based on what’s said in the comments? Because there’s four that I’m having trouble choosing between.
How about this, a comment for another series counts as a vote.
Thanks! I vote for WWII propoganda, Over The Garden Wall, The Animatrix and the Censored 11 (1,2,5 and 7 on your list).
By the way, do you think you’ll ever review “Escape From Tomorrow”? I bet there’s some amusing jokes you could make about it being “a film straight from Bahia” or something like that.
Probably not. I’m booked solid till the end of 2018.
Mouse, how can you watch from Europe to Garden over the wall? I searched, but it seemed all options were region-locked.
If there is a way I can watch that, then I will vote for it. Otherwise, I vote for the propaganda shorts.
My computer has VLC which doesn’t about no stinking region lock.
Weirdly, I wound up voting for what I thought was the weakest link: Gotham Knight. Everything else seems to be either A: too good to make fun of, or B: too racist and dated to not reject out of hand. Gotham Knight is nice and uneven and, despite the marketing, it has virtually fuck-all to do with the DK trilogy. And it gave us a Bruce Wayne who belongs on a love pillow!
Taking a year? My, we’re optimistic today, aren’tcha.
I voted Superman, because I don’t think Animatrix deserves a series of reviews (a single one for the whole movie should be enough), ditto for Gotham Knight (and I’d rather see a review on Public Enemies, Mask of the Phantasm, Sub Zero or Return of the Caped Crusaders instead), the Mickey shorts are great but there are just too many of them, and the War and Censored shorts are so damn hard to find, what’s the point of reading on them if I can’t watch them? And I saw a single Garden Wall episode and wasn’t especially impressed, sorry.
By the way, on the subject of Caped Crusaders… RIP Adam West. His show may have been uneven as heck (when it was good it was great camp on fire, but past the nostalgia filters more often than not it was a stinker), but that was never his fault, or that of the rest of the cast, most of whom were frequently brilliant and overall very appropiate.
I already voted for it, but just in case you get a tie with it and another, lesser, cartoon and you think to yourself “I’ll look at the comments for a tiebreaker”:
OVER THE GARDEN WALL
Enjoy your holiday, you deserve it! Although I love me some controversial cartoons, my love for Over the Garden Wall is far bigger.
Well it sounds to me like I’m the only one voting for Censored 11. I always find the racism in those interesting, if disgusting. I have no problem believing that Mouse is fully capable of discussing all of these options. But yeah, it was either that or propaganda.
It’s a short film, it’s insanely expensive, it’s the Fleischer Superman coming to Unshaved Mouse.