The Frog, he revieweth.
And this fine day he doth review ….
Yee, and indeed, Haw
Author: unshavedmouse
“Nothing’s been the same since New York.”
Before we get into the Iron Man 3 review, I should probably address the elephant in the room.
Dammit Francine, if I mean you I’ll use your name. Sit down.
You may have noticed that the ads that were here for a few weeks have now vanished. The reason for that is that I was kindly informed by one of my American readers that the Trump Campaign had been advertising on my blog.
*CLICK*
And good thing I acted quickly right? I mean, what more fertile pro-Trump ground than Unshaved Mouse? That’s the kind of savvy ad buy that gets you a 10% chance of winning the presidency. Unfortunately this loss of revenue has meant that I’ve had to turn to alternative sources of funding.
“Whoah. Wait a minute, you make MONEY off this?!”
“No hablo Ingles.”
Thankfully, I’ve been able to secure investment from a less morally compromised source. Which is why I am proud to announce Unshaved Mouse’s new partner, the People’s Republic of China! Please give it up for new recurring character Fan Bing Bing!
“Hello decadent Westerners!”
It’s a rapidly emerging market, guys. We gotta move with the times. Anyway, review of movie.
***
Here’s a fun game to play with the MCU. Take each movie and imagine what would have happened if the villain had won.
- Thor: Loki becomes King of Asgard and commits genocide against the Frost Giants.
- Captain America: Red Skull wipes out every major city on Earth and most likely ushers in an era of global HYDRA rule.
- The Avengers: Aliens take over the world.
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Whole alien planet gets wiped out and that’s just for starters.
- Thor 2: Ummmmmm…something bad? With…elves? It’s bad, though.
Play the game with the Iron Man movies though and you always get the same result: “Evil rich guy becomes slightly richer.” These movies are actually kinda low-stakes when compared to other entries in the canon. That’s not a criticism. The Iron Man trilogy has always been less interested in “Can Iron Man save the day?” than “Can Tony Stark save his life from being immolated by the army of obsessions, personal demons and character flaws he has jumping around in the moshpit that is his brain?” That’s fine. Refreshing even. I just think it might help explain why this movie is had possibly the least impact on the larger Marvel universe than any other instalment. I’ve been wracking my brain to think of any elements that were introduced in this movie that got carried over into the larger MCU. Extremis? Aldridge Killian? AIM? Never so much as mentioned again in any of the movies (I am waaaay behind on Agents of SHIELD so apologies if I missed anything that showed up there). The Mandarin? Mentioned in a one-shot to keep the fanboys happy. Iron Patriot? Back as War Machine by Age of Ultron. Tony Stark destroying all his suits and giving up being Iron Man? Did not exactly take. This movie is practically in quarantine, and it’s kind of weird that it’s such a dead end at the front because it is deeply wedded to what’s gone on before, to the point that it’s kinda historic in a way I don’t think people necesarrily realise.
See, this is the fourth movie to feature Robert Downey Junior’s Tony Stark, and that’s pretty exceptional. Christopher Reeves played Superman across four movies of course, but by the third installment that series was running on negative continuity. There is no character arc for Superman from Superman I to Quest for Peace, they are just four movies with Christopher Reeves playing Superman. Again, with the Burton/Schumacher Batman movies you get a little bit of character continuity (tiny references to events in previous movies mostly), but by the time you have George Clooney resplendent in Bat-nipples it’s clear that Batman has drifted considerably from Tim Burton’s original vision. This is different. We have now had four movies featuring Tony Stark where the creators are clearly intent on holding to a consistent vision for the character. Iron Man 3 is one of the most polarising movies in the canon for reasons I will get into, but personally it’s my favourite of the trilogy because it asks a question that had never really been asked in a superhero movie before now. What happens to the superhero after he saves the world?
Duty calls.
Hi guys. Iron Man 3 review is going to be a little late this week. Ms Mouse has been a little under the weather and I’ve been busy running back and forth between the abandoned tractor in the meadow bringing her medicine from the local cabal of genetically engineered rats. Hope to have it ready for you by Monday. Thanks for being so understanding, Mouse out.
Frog Reviews – Pete’s Dragon
BACK.
IN.
POG.
FORM.
Actually, just regular form. Yes, hello again my internet friends and internet lovers (you love the internet, I mean, not me – although hopefully you’ll come to love me. Eventually).
We’re back in action for another fresh review, this time on the actually correct day of Monday.
And what cinematic treat did I consume this week?
Eleventh Hour (1942)
As Buzz Aldrin once noted “second comes right after first” and the Fleischer Brothers, Max and Dave, seem to have been cursed to always be the Buzz Aldrin to Walt Disney’s Neil Armstrong. A mere year after Snow White, Paramount pictures released Gulliver’s Travels, the second cel-animated feature film ever, directed by Dave and produced by Max. Of course, just because Buzz Aldrin went second, does that mean he was somehow an inferior astronaut to Armstrong? Course not, but while Gulliver’s Travels was a fantastically animated feature, it just didn’t create the same sensation that Snow White did and while it certainly was a success at the box office, the Fleischer’s studio quickly found itself treading water financially. Smarting from the financial strain of Gulliver’s Travels, mired in the production hell of their second feature Mr Bug Goes to Town and with Max and Dave’s relationship having degenerated to Cain and Abel levels and with all parties coming to the realisation that animation is a demon bitch that burns alive all who dare love her, now was really not the time to take on an ambitious new project. So when Paramount approached the Fleischers asking them to make shorts featuring this new Superman character all the kids were going cuckoo over, Max and Dave told them that they could only do it with a budget of $100,000 an episode (or, around four times the cost of the most expensive Disney shorts). In 1940s dollars that was equal to “Holly Hannah! That’s a lotta scratch!” and Max and Dave expected Paramount to tell them to screw off, so they were stunned when the execs made them a counter offer of $50,000 and episode (equal to “Nice little pile. Goddamn, that’s a nice little pile”). Unable to turn down that kind of money, the Flesichers started work on what is still, adjusted for inflation, the biggest budgeted series of animated shorts ever made. And I cannot overstate how amazing these shorts are.
Look.
Look at this.
Here is some more.
Do you see?
Do you see?
Look at this.
Do you understand?
Do you?
DO YOU?!
This series had it all, the cast of the Superman radio show doing the voices, rotoscoping used to set a new standard for realistic animation of human figures, an epic score, one of THE all-time great Lois Lanes and the art design YE GODS! There’s a reason Bruce Timm cites this as one of the major influences on Batman the Animated Series. This series is the reason that Superman flies instead of just jumping everywhere like a grasshopper.
Frog reviews – NERVE
Hello, my friends and lovers.
Yes, tis I, The Frog. I have returned for another bout, another reckoning with the art of cinema.
Are ye prepared? You shouldst be. Verily.
Okay, that’s enough of the wordplay. On to this week’s review!
What did I engage my ocular nerves with this fine past week?
Why, NERVE of course.
Sadly it’s not about a giant head chasing Dave Franco.
I’m not gonna lie, my lovely readers, I went into this looking for blood. I wanted a SUICIDE SQUAD style uber-rant for the ages. I mean, LOOK at this fucking poster. How Neon-soaked can they get?
You’d
be
fucking
Surprised.
Holy shit. This thing looks like Drive overdosed on Drive after doing two speedballs composed of Drive , Drive, Drive and Drive.
“Hey Frog, shut yer noise!”
“Woah, hey Ryan. So sorry. Big fan. Scared me, I thought you were Tom….”
…
…
Anyhow, moving swiftly along.
NERVE is a teen thriller based on a YA novel that the internet tells me it differs from on a a few aspects, including the ending.
But I have a teensie eetsie beetsie confession to make.
I kinda liked this film.
Yes, I know you did. Trust me, I wanted to give it to you. And there will be SOME blood. Some cuts’n’bruises. A light speckle. But… honestly, this film’s pretty good craic for the most part.
Alright, hear me out.
So, basically, NERVE is what happens WHEN POKEMON GO GOES BAD – a new app/game, in which you can choose to “WATCH” or “PLAY” a constantly streaming series of escalating dares performed for cold hard cash. Using their phones and their tablets and their synced-up 3D TV sets and their skateboards and their fuckin’ everything, these cool cats are only one click away from superstardom…. OR DID THEY? DUN DUN DUN.
The film focuses on Vee Delmonico, the most YA-novel-name-having YA-novel-name-haver in the history of anything. She is played by Emma Roberts, the daughter of Eric Roberts, and niece to Julia Roberts. You’ll remember Julia from that time she murdered the souls of all Irish people with her accent in Michael Collins.
Ah shore Jaysis and Begorrah Mickey, don’t be going off now and doin’ de big war on de British.
And you’ll remember Eric Roberts from that time he murdered the first attempt at reviving Doctor Who.
(Actual Snake Noises, seriously)
Emma Roberts is pretty good in this movie. I was surprised. I thought she’d be a precocious awful teen. She is, in fact, very charming and affable. She makes the most of some occasionally horrendous dialogue. She sells it. I liked her. I think she’s good.
We’re losing him!!
No, I’m awake! She’s good. She’s fine. Vee (short for Venus UGH) behaves like a pretty realistic and believable teenage girl throughout, except Emma Roberts is clearly 25 but eh, child labor laws aren’t what they used to be am I right Short-Round?
“This is what I look like now.”
Ok, Cool.
Emboldened by her bratty/troubled cheerleader friend (also a capable actress), Vee decides to give this NERVE thing a try and see what happens despite the fact that her Mom (Juliette Lewis, yes Juliette Lewis is playing people’s Moms now) is in a depressed funk following the motivational DEATH OF A SIBLING DING DING DING well done Nerve you’ve won the Suicide Squad award for Motivational Dead Family Shorthand. Good job.
In order to get from Staten Island to the big city, she is driven by her PAINFULLY FRIENDZONED friend, Tommy (played by Miles Heizer). Okay, let’s talk about Tommy for a second.
Seen here being Zoned off into the Friend-zone
Tommy is the best buddy/but just a buddy character. Heizer really does a good job of selling the “unrequited love” bit without ever showboating or overdoing it or anything. He’s actually really quite good in the movie, and I secretly really empathised with him. I mean, Teenage Frog certainly would have been a “Tommy”.
Pictured here, forlorn in the rain.
That said, Tommy has some hilariously nonsensical dialogue regarding his time on “The Dark Web” and features in the prolonged climax of the film in a “Morgan Freeman Dark Knight” vibe that is utter balderdash. It suits the character to a tee, but he goes a bit HAxorNoob in a way that is just a bit cringe.
Anyhoo, Vee jets off the to city where her first dare is to kiss a boy!!! OMG!!!! ZOINKS. And who does she kiss except James Franco after 30 seconds in a microwave. Nah, I’m just kidding. It’s Dave Franco, James Franco after having been rolled in coconut flakes and nutella. Holy hell this guy handsome.
Ah, STOP!
The two then jet off on adventures where they do relatively normal dare stuff, like get tattoos, drive fast on a motorcycle and all that jazz, encountering a rival evil player who has a mysterious tie to Dave Franco’s character and his shady past, and then the dares get darey-er and dangerous. Can you guess what the last dare is? Of course you fucking can.
Spoiler Alert – it is sadly not a hot dog eating contest.
The film is shot really fecking well – it taps completely into the current nostalgia-chic vibe going on these days that I personally am a complete sucker for. Neon lights, bokeh on a carousel, and synth-tinged ambient score make it a real treat for A E S T H E T I C wankers like myself. I fully admit all of the above may be a turn-off for some (likely many), but I really just love films that look saturated like this one does.
It also has a crackin’ soundtrack that has gotten me several new bands to explore, and any film that does that gets major props from me.
Sure, the thing goes off the rails at the end a bit. Maybe totally off the rails. The idea of “adults just don’t get us teens” doesn’t exactly extend to secret gladiatorial combat arenas in my book but it gets the central message of the film across to it’s intended audience and to be honest, I respect it for doing that in a way that is engrossing and seems to have something to actually say about current social media trends, today’s teenagers, and oppressive omnipresent gadgetry, without talking down to it’s teen audience them too much.
If I were 15 I’d probably really like NERVE.
As I am merely (REDACTED) Frog-years old, I’ll just say that I thought it was enjoyable. It features charming leads, a great look, it zips along at a nice pace, it features some great tunes, and it has a bit of fun without forgetting what it’s about.
It was a good (not great) way to pass the time.
Though, it would have passed in any case.
But not quite so Neon-y.
Frog out.
Music Land (1935)
Seven years is not that long a time. Seven years ago we got the first of the Star Trek reboot movies, Michael Jackson died and Jay Z and Alicia Keyes released Empire State of Mind. Not exactly ancient history. Go back and watch Steamboat Willie. Now watch Music Land released by Disney a mere seven years later.
So what the hell, right? How did we get from that to that in a mere seven years?
Gargoyles: Eye of the Beholder
Okay, let’s get the important business out of the way.
IT HOLDS UP. LIKE, DAMN.
Rewatching Gargoyles for this review I was expecting a sugar rush of nostalgia and maybe a melancholy recognition that it was good for its time but not the masterpiece I remembered from childhood. I did NOT expect to get hooked and embark on an epic binge watch that had me wondering whether I could squeeze in just one more episode at four in the morning. For those of you who never saw it, and you zygotes who are too young to remember, let me explain what Gargoyles was.
Take the shadowy urban action and moody aesthetic of Batman the Animated Series, add the “team of superhero creatures fighting evil in secret in modern day New York” setup of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, stir in some exceptionally high calibre voice talent, stellar writing and the finest animation Disney had done for TV up to that point, ladle in generous portions of Shakespeare and world mythology and add salt to taste. Boom. You got salty Gargoyles.
By the mid-nineties, there was something of a renaissance in television animation underway as studios moved away from the cheap, thinly disguised toy commercials of the eighties and started to create shows of a higher calibre. I described this in the Ducktales review, and while this renaissance was kickstarted by Disney, by the mid-nineties their TV output had in many ways been surpassed by rivals Warner Brothers, who had brought the thunder with such classic shows as Tiny Toons, Animanaics and of course Batman the Animated Series. This last one is the most relevant because Gargoyles is very much an attempt to beat Warner Bros at their own game and create their own BTAS. This led to some bad blood between the two shows, with Batman creator Bruce Timm dismissing gargoyles as “namby pamby…with all that Celtic fantasy crap.”
“Hi. Mr Timm? Unshaved Mouse. Huge fan. Go fuck a stoat.”
Which of the two series is better was a subject of fierce debate when I was growing up but having re-watched both I have come to the profoundly unsatisfying conclusion that they were both superior in different ways. Batman pushed the envelope of what was possible in kid’s animation artistically. In its Art Deco style, its mood, and its use of shadows and camera angles it’s hands down the more visually arresting show. But, while Gargoyles might look a little generic compared to Batman, I think the former beats the latter in terms of narrative ambition. Remember, Batman had a cast of characters that had been part of pop culture’s consciousness for almost sixty years at that point, but Gargoyles creates a new cast of characters, mythology and history out of whole cloth and uses them to tell a story with a depth and scope that hadn’t been seen in children’s animation in the West up to that point. The characterisation is also phenomenal. While at first glance the gargoyles are stock character types, peel them and you’ll find the layers have layers. And that’s not even getting into the villains. Most cartoons are extremely lucky if they can boast one of the all-time great cartoon villains. Gargoyles has at least four.
So what’s our premise? Well, in 10th century Scotland Castle Wyvern is guarded by a clan of gargoyles. Stone by day, big scary demonic lookin’ bastards by night. The gargoyles are led by Goliath (Keith Motherfucking David at his Keith Motherfucking Davidist). The gargoyles have lived in peace with Castle Wyvern’s human inhabitants for years, but they’re still distrusted by them because this is the dark ages and they look like the devil. The gargoyles get caught up in a load of court intrigue and betrayal and counter betrayal complicated enough for an entire series of Game of Thrones and the upshot is that Goliath comes back from patrol to discover that almost his entire clan was smashed to pieces by humans while they slept during the day. Only seven of the Castle Wyvern clan survived and they were placed under a spell by a vengeful wizard who thought they had killed someone who they actually hadn’t killed long story. The spell caused the gargoyles to turn to stone and stay that way, day and night, forever. The only way the spell could be broken would be if Castle Wyvern were “raised above the clouds” and if you’re getting a real “til Birnham Wood come to Dunsinane” vibe off this then that’s entirely intentional. This series could not be more indebted to MacBeth if they made MacBeth a character on the show which by the way they totally did.
“My friends call me Scottish Play.”
Anyway, flashforward a thousand years and David Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes), billionaire playboy philanthropist has Castle Wyvern disassembled, and rebuilt, brick by brick, at the top of his Manhattan skyscraper just to see what would happen. The spell is broken and Goliath and his surviving clan of gargoyles become the defenders of New York from all threats both human and supernatural.
I went back and forth over just how to approach this review. At first, I was going to do a general review of the whole series before remembering that there were 65 GODDAMN episodes.
And that’s not even counting the third season that never happened and which we shall never speak of again.
I then thought about reviewing one of the story arcs like “The World Tour” or “City of Stone”. But “City of Stone” focuses more on two side characters than the main Gargoyles and also there’s a lot of flashback stuff that would get really confusing and probably be boring to read. And as for “Word Tour”, I had (again) forgotten that Goliath and Eliza were putzing around on that damn boat for nineteen episodes so once again…
So finally, with the deadline approaching like an oncoming walrus on a bobsled I decide to just review one single episode which I think encapsulates the things that I most loved about this show.
That episode is Season 2’s “Eye of the Beholder.”
Let’s take a look.
Steamboat Willie (1928)
When talking about Steamboat Willie it’s almost more important to talk about what it’s not than what it is, as so many myths have sprung up about these seven minutes of animation. So, for the record Steamboat Willie is not:
- The first Mickey Mouse cartoon.
- The first Walt Disney cartoon.
- The first cartoon to feature sound.
Willie’s real claim to fame is a little less sexy. It’s the first cartoon to use fully integrated sound and visuals, where the sound and pictures were recorded on the same film. There were other cartoons that used sound and music before this, but that basically involved playing the movie and the music on two separate tracks and hoping that they’d keep in sync like Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon. It doesn’t sound like it should make a huge difference but it really does. Take a look at Inkwell’s My Old Kentucky Home from 1926.
Wow, second sentence. You are so out of date in so many different ways that its almost impressive.
Now take a look at Steamboat Willie.
Synchronisation completely changes how you experience the cartoon. When you’re watching My Old Kentucky Home your brain thinks “I’m watching the dog move his mouth while a recording plays.” When you watchSteamboat Willie your brain thinks “The mouse is whistling.” With this marriage of sound and image all the elements are finally in place. This film, rough, scratchy and monochrome though it may be, is nonetheless the first modern cartoon.
Steamboat Willie was a sensation when it was released, making household names of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. And of course it also made a star out of Ub Iwerks who actually animated the damn thing…
Sorry Ub. To quote another Disney character, “Life’s not fair, is it?”
But, aside from its monumental historical and technical influence is Steamboat Willie any…y’know…good? Well, it’s probably not the best work of any of the people involved. And it certainly doesn’t fill me with the wonder of Winsor McCay’s shorts of almost twenty years prior. But it’s not without its charms. If Disney’s new series of Mickey Mouse shorts have taught me anything it’s just how deceptively versatile and charming the original Mickey Mouse design is. And there are some scenes, like Minnie running alongside the boat, that are actually quite technically challenging and impressive. But we will never really be able to understand the impact this short had on its original audience. We’ve spent our entire lives so immersed in sound and images that we’ve lost that innocence.
Our minds literally cannot conceive of how jaw-dropping this little short about a mouse goofing off on a boat must have been.
***
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Frog Reviews – Suicide Squad
Well, well, well. What have we here?
Huh? Me?
No, not you, Sandy Claws. Me. Frog. I’m reviewing films now for my old partner in crime (not real crime, though – just the kind against theatre, and even then they were more misdemeanours) Unshaved Mouse.
I’ll be posting probably about once a week with a new rant / rave (likely rant) about the most recent film what I saw. I’m new to the blogging world, so let’s all go on a journey through my damaged psyche, because the first film I viewed for you lovely internet-people was… well…
unshavedmouse 