Comedy

#09: Bertie Ahern

Name: Bertie Ahern

Party: Fianna Fáil

Terms: June 1997-May 2008

Bertie Ahern is quite possibly the most hated Taoiseach on this list. Haughey’s been dead long enough that the rage has had time to cool into dispassionate loathing, and DeValera now belongs so totally to the ancient past that hating him is like getting your dander up over the atrocities of Genghis Khan. There’s Kenny, of course, who by now has probably brought more people onto the streets than Public Enemy, but I think Bertie still has him beat in the sheer visceral loathing he incites in many people. For Bertie (and you will never, ever hear him referred to as “Ahern”) this is a hard fall for a man who was once the most popular politician in the country. Irish people tend to view their politicians with a mixture of pity, loathing and withering contempt but people genuinely liked Bertie. He had a cuddly, non-threatening demeanour and a thick, reassuring Northside Dublin accent (Northsiders are well known to be princes among men, and the very salt of the earth). The reality though, was that Bertie was a political animal of the first calibre. His mentor, Charles Haughey, was even quoted as saying “He is the most skilful, the most devious, the most ruthless of them all”.

“The Dark Side is strong with you, my young apprentice.”

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#10: John A. Costello

Name: John A.Costello

Party: Fine Gael

Terms: February 1948-June 1951, June 1954-March 1957

Hands in the air. When I began researching this series, I did not have a clue that this guy even existed. That’s unbelievable. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an expert on Irish politics. I do not claim to be an expert on Irish politics. And if you are labouring under the delusion that I am an expert in Irish politics I am sure that there will be plenty of people in the comments willing to set you straight. But still, the fact that there was a guy running my country who I’d never even heard of was kind of eye-opening. I had this notion that the early years of the Irish state went like this: War of Independence, Civil War and then Eamon DeValera latched onto the nation like a lamprey which caused the fifties to happen (not just here, but worldwide). I’d had an idea of DeValera’s tenure as Taoiseach being monolithic and unbroken, but in fact Mr Personality up there actually managed to wrest control from him for a total of six years. It was like finding a Taoiseach where you least expect it, Costello loose change down the back of the sofa that was Eamon DeValera. So, was his tenure as Taoiseach as memorable and exciting as the man himself? Was it ever!

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#11: Charles J. Haughey

Name: Charles J. Haughey

Party: Fianna Fáíl

Terms of Office: December ’79-June ’81, March ’82 –September ’82, March ’87-February ‘92

Little piece of advice. Say you’re a politician and they decide to make a TV series about your life. If the guy they cast to play you is Lord Petyr Baelish himself, consider that you may have been a shady motherfucker.

“I did warn you not to trust me.”

CJ was already fairly synonymous with shady motherfuckery before he even became Taoiseach. As Minister for Finance in the late sixties under Jack Lynch, Haughey became embroiled in the Arms Crisis. See, it was around this time that the Troubles were being particularly Troublesome, by which I mean things were threatening to blow up into a full on civil war and hundreds of Catholic refugees were fleeing south to escape the violence. Haughey and another minister named Neil Blaney were put in charge of a committee to distribute humanitarian aid to Catholic communities in Northern Ireland that were under siege and apparently at some point the group decided: “Know what this situation needs? Guns.”

Soooo…a plan was hatched to import weapons into the country to be given to the IRA with the help of a Belgian Nazi (I am not making any of that up).

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# 12: Liam Cosgrave

Name: Liam Cosgrave

Party: Fine Gael

Terms: March 1973-July 1977

I started this project in part because I’m ridiculously ignorant on the politics of my own country. Seriously, I can tell you who the current House Minority Leader in the United States is and can name around half of the six million Republican presidential candidates but for the love of God don’t ask me who my local TD is. And my knowledge of the Taoisigh was spotty at best. Liam Cosgrave is one that I knew next to nothing about going in and I gotta say, having read up on him?

Not a fan.

Cosgrave was the son of none other than W.T. Cosgrave, our first Taoiseach.

“Gesundheit.”

He was elected to the Dáil in the forties during his father’s long period as leader of the opposition before being appointed Minister for External Affairs (great name, innit?) under John Costello during which time he finally got Ireland into the UN where the USSR had been vetoing our membership for around a decade.

Cosgrave 1. Stalin 0.

In 1965 Cosgrave ran for leadership of Fine Gael and won it in a walk, as both the heir of the party’s first parliamentary leader and a pretty accomplished politician in his own right. Cosgrave soon began pissing away that goodwill as he seemed to have a funny idea about what the leader of the opposition is supposed to do. Cosgrave hated militant republicans the way God hates the Oxford comma and when Jack Lynch’s government brought in some fairly draconian anti-terrorism legislation Cosgrave backed the government to the hilt, to the horror of the more liberal elements of his own party. By the time the fiftieth anniversary of the State had rolled around many of these liberals were looking to oust him from the leadership position. Cosgrave addressed their concerns calmly and reasonably in an address at Fine Gael’s Ard Fheis (party conference) saying “… some of these commentators and critics are now like mongrel foxes; they are gone to ground but I’ll dig them out, and the pack will chop them when they get them”.

…

“He’s craaaaaaazy…”

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Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #54: Big Hero 6

(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images and footage used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material. New to the blog? Start at the start with Snow White.)

And so, like putting on an old comfortable pair of shoes, I return again to the Disney canon. Good to be back everyone, feels like I never left. Unshaved Mouse doing what he was always meant to do, reviewing Disney movies! Put the Disney dance party album on repeat because the whole gang’s here! Including my collection of traitorous good for nothing maps who betrayed and abandoned me the very second things got rough and have now come crawling back like the worms they are.

“Hooray!”

“Ah, don’t be like that, Mouse.”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“‘S only ever love, M. You know that.”

“Where did you go anyway?”

“We just hung around with Rubber Lotus for a while. At first it was fun, but then it got a little weird. He kept asking us to call him “Mouse”. Did you know he has a shrine to you in his wardrobe?”

“Yeah. Shrines. Never not creepy.”

And of course, since I’ll be reviewing a Disney movie that means the return of our old pal Walt Disney!

“Hello folks! Good to be back, Mouse. Glad to see there’s no hard feelings over that whole “brainwashing” thing.”

“Hello folks! Good to be back, Mouse. Glad to see there’s no hard feelings over that whole “brainwashing you to do my dark bidding” thing.”

“None. What. So. Ever.”

“Glad to hear it. Say, you keep gritting your teeth like that you might chip your incisors.”

After the marriage of Disney and Marvel, the two companies did what many couples do in this situation; put their children from previous marriages in a room together and try to force them to like each other. In this case, Disney CEO Bob Iger told the Disney animators to look through Marvel’s back catalogue to see if they could find properties that would make good animated movies. Now, people who’ve followed my blog from the beginning know that when Disney adapts other properties, fidelity to the source material is not usually high on their list of priorities. Marvel fans, conversely, have a list of priorities that reads

Marvel fans tend to get a little…um….Rain Man-esque…about movies changing even small details about their favourite characters, and films that don’t respect the source material tend to get eaten alive like a cow being dipped in a vat of piranhas.

Poor bastards never had a chance.

So it’s not really surprising that the comic that Don Hall (director of Winnie the Pooh and writer on most of the Lost Era movies) chose the comic Big Hero 6 to adapt instead of a better known property because…well, no one gives a piping hot shit about Big Hero 6 and this way they could mess around with it as much as they needed to. In the comics Big Hero 6 is a Japanese superhero team that operates as a parody of Japanese pop culture tropes. I haven’t read the comic myself but reading up on it raised a few red flags for me, number one being that the mini-series they first appeared in was written by Scott Lobdell, a writer whose work is (if I may be horribly blunt) not my cup of tea.

Secondly…Okay, there are those who would consider this kind of broad cultural parody to be racist in and of itself. I’m not one of them. Irish people come in for a good bit of this kind of thing and I think as a nation our general attitude is…

But…some of the details about this book, like the fact that one of their enemies is the embodiment of all the people who were killed in the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki…

Yeah, I think we can all agree that “loose adaptation” was probably the way to go on this one.

So much for the book. What about the movie? Oh, and while I’m not in the habit of putting up spoiler warnings I’m aware this movie only came out in 2014 so yeah, I will be discussing all major plot points just like I always do. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, get on that. The rest of you? Let’s roll.

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#13: Brian Cowen

Name: Brian Cowen.

Party: Fianna Fáil

Term of office: May 2008 to March 2011

Well, this dead horse ain’t gonna beat itself. I would almost almost be willing to give Cowen a pass. I mean, he came into office in mid 2008, the recession started around September when he was probably still getting his correspondence sent to his old address. It’s not his fault, right? I mean, most of the bad decisions that led to Ireland’s rather spectacular fall from economic grace were made long before he took office, right?

Well yes. They were. By him. When he was Minister for Finance from 2004 to 2008.

Calling Brian Cowen the worst Taoiseach is probably not going to be that controversial (he said, sweet naïve fool that he was) because the sheer scale of his failures simply dwarf those of his predecessors. Cowen was not a crook, and he wasn’t a liar. He was something far more dangerous; an ordinary bloke in WAY over his head.

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Every Taoiseach-Worst to Best: Introduction

Probably the single greatest blog I’ve ever come across is Wait But Why, run by two dudes named Tim Urban and Andrew Finn. It’s the kind of blog that makes other bloggers really, really, really depressed, that’s how good I’m talking here. The kind of blog that blows your mind while giving your funny bone an enthusiastic reach-around. Anyway, WBW is currently in the middle of ranking all 44 American Presidents (give or take a Grover) and that got me thinking, why has no one ever done something similar for the Taoisigh?

Well I care, dagnabbit. So here it is, my list of every Taoiseach ranked from worst to best, here we go…

Uh, Mouse? What are you doing?

Ah. As I’m aware that the vast majority of my readership consists of ~~perfidious yanks~~ friends from across the water perhaps some explanation is in order.

Yeah. What’s a…no, back up a step. How do I pronounce Taoiseach?

You don’t. I mean c’mon. Look at this.

That, my friends, is a trackless jungle of hidden vowel sounds, treacherous guttarals and untameable sibbilants. You even attempt that word and the chances are your saxon tongue will spasm into a knot and choke you. I don’t want that on my conscience. However, “tee-shock” is close enough to be getting on with.

Okay, so what’s a Tee-shock?

Easily offended golf-balls.

No, no, but seriously folks. Ireland, being a republic, has a president as its head of state but in truth the office of President is largely (although not totally) ceremonial. Irish presidents spend most of their time opening museums, visiting other heads of state and trying to find ways to fill the long, empty hours.

Our current president, for instance, spends his nights making shoes for kindly cobblers.

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Moomin and Midsummer Madness (2008)

When trying to understand the appeal of the Moomins, you first have to look at their creation back in…

Hello?

Anybody?

"Congratulations Mouse. You’ve finally done it. You’ve finally succeeded in completely alienating your entire readership. Bravo. Genius. Take a blog that’s largely supported by Disney fans and devote it to obscure European cartoons, Irish politics and a film that was literally never even released."

“Congratulations Mouse. You’ve done it. You’ve finally succeeded in completely alienating your entire readership. Bravo. Genius. Take a blog that’s largely supported by Disney fans and devote it to obscure European cartoons, Irish politics and a film that was literally never even released.”

“WHAT HAVE I DONE!? Surely its not too late?!”

“Nope. They’re gone. You had your one chance at internet stardom and you blew it. That was it. Let’s go boys.”

“Wait, where are you going?!”

“Back to the Google images page you stole us from. Farewell, Mouse.”

“See you, Mouse. It was fun except for that time I was almost fed to wyverns.”

“Peace out, dawg.”

“No…my readers. My maps. They’re all gone…”

“There’s a grief that can’t be spoken.”
“There’s a pain goes on and on.”
“No more views and no more comments.”
“Oh my blog is dead and gone…”

Guys, I swear, I will review a movie you’ve actually heard of as soon as I’ve done this one. Contractual obligations and all. If it helps, I’m as much in the dark about this one as a I think most of you are (with apologies to my Scandinavian readers). That’s not to say that the Moomins are unknown in Ireland, I know quite a few people who are fans, but the whole Moomin phenomenon just kind of completely passed me by. My blind spot on the Moomins honestly extends to most things Scandinavian. I just don’t know that much about those countries apart from the fact they constantly conspire to keep Ireland out of the top five on the Human Development Index, the Nordic Marcia Brady to our Gaelic Jan.

“Sweden did it again! Sweden, Sweden, Sweden!”

Okay. So. The Moomins. What are they? I don’t know. I mean literally, I have no idea what they’re supposed to be. Wikipedia describes them as “fairy tale” characters, which is just wonderfully specific. I suppose, since they’re called “Mumintrolls” in Swedish they’re supposed to be trolls from Scandinavian folklore but…

Yeah, how did I not get that?

Well anyway.

Okay. So. The Moomins. They’re a family of white, hippo…things. Who hang out. And have whimsical adventures tinged with an unmistakeable air of melancholy. They were created by a Swedish-speaking Finn named Tove Jansson who wrote and illustrated nine books featuring the characters between 1945 and 1993 and who also takes a hell of a stylish photograph.

Who you know fresher than Tove, riddle me that?

There have also been EIGHT cartoon series based on them, and numerous movies with the most recent being released this year. They are, like all things that are cute but difficult to explain, huge in Japan.

And yes, they have their own theme park.

Because Europe.

So, now we’re ready to talk about the movie? Oh, we have not even begun to unpack all this.

So, one of those eight (!) cartoon series was Opowiadania Muminków, an Austrian, German and Polish co-production that ran between 1977-82. Then, in 2008, a Finnish company took that series and edited into a single movie called Moomin and Midsummer Madness, the English dub of which I am reviewing today. So, to recap.

Swedish speaking Finn writes a book.
Germans, Austrians and Poles adapt it into a TV series.
Finns adapt TV series into movie.
Americans dub movie.
Man kills God.
Man creates dinosaurs.
Dinsosaur kills man.
Woman inherits the earth.

Got that? Okay, let’s do this.

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The Fantastic Four (1994)

Sometimes, a movie comes along that is so notorious, so terrible, so gosh-fucked appalling that no one reviewer may safely tackle it alone. To that end, Unshaved Mouse has teamed up with the illustrious NewtCave and Erik Copper to review the never-released Roger Corman-produced superhero movie; The Fantastic Four.

UM: Hi guys and welcome to Unshaved Mouse. Make yourselves comfortable, don’t touch the continents. They bite.

“Hssssssssssss!”

UM: So. Erik. Newt. What the fuck did we just watch?

EC: I was under the impression that we were just witness to the birth of the anti-christ of comic book movies.

NC: Pretty much. This thing gets my vote for “Worst Marvel Film.” Including Howard the Duck.

UM: Was it though? I mean, can’t we grade of a curve? There were extenuating circumstances here.

NC: Fair point, furry one. But let me put it this way. Elektra? Released in theatres. Hulk? Released in theatres. Howard the Duck? For some reason, still released in theatres. Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four? Kept secret. Kept safe.

EC: Gandalf’s wise words were still not strong enough to keep this mess off of the internet, though. Because as we all know, technology is the MOST powerful of the dark arts.

UM: Speaking of dark arts, Erik, aren’t you supposed to be dead?

EC: Huh?

UM: Yeah. I totally fed you to a shark at the end of our last review.

EC: Oh yeah. Dick! That was the single most tortorous experience of my life! I had to chew my way out of the shark’s stomach! I still have nightmares! I

UM: Heh.

EC: It’s not funny!

UM: It was funny to everyone who wasn’t you. Which, y’know, was the entire human race. Needs of the many, Erik.

NC: Should I step outside while you two work through your prior history?

UM: Nah baby, we cool. Let’s get started. Newt, as our resident Marvel buff, what can you tell us about the good ol’ Fantastic Four?

NC: Probably more than is either necessary or interesting. But, limiting myself to relevant information, the Fantastic Four have often been referred to as “Marvel’s First Family.” and that’s only because that’s exactly what they are. Back in the ancient past of 1961, Stan Lee took it upon himself to create a team of superheroes like none that had come before. Instead of a bunch of square-jawed Super Friends, he elected to make a team that was more like a family trying to make the best of a bad situation.

UM: With Square Jaws.

EC: Rather rubbery and slightly malleable jaws, too.

NC: When The Fantastic Four #1 hit newsstands, they didn’t even have costumes or secret identities. They were all about breaking the norms of what people had come to expect from the superhero genre.

UM: I think the FF was really the big bang of the modern Marvel universe. So many of the characters and concepts that make up that world got their start in the pages of Fantastic Four. Doctor Doom, Black Panther, the Inhumans, the Skrulls, the Kree, the list just goes on and on.

NC: Exactly. The company wasn’t even called “Marvel” before the FF came along. Anything before that was published under the not-so-timeless brand of “Timely.”

EC: It was incredible how fast the superhero boom took off. Most of the heroes we know today didn’t even start off as anything other than one-off stories that were just too popular to remain that way. Spider-Man? He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15. Thor? He was first introduced in Journey into Mystery. Iron Man? Tales of Suspense. These heroes didn’t start off timeless, but they slowly captured our hearts. The Fantastic Four is no different.

UM: Which is kind of why it’s so sickening how Marvel are treating this title now, basically sweeping it under the rug because they can’t get the movie rights back from Fox.

NC: Well, to be fair, they’re doing that with ALL the properties they haven’t regained the movie rights to, which seems a bit like dirty pool to me.

UM: I dunno dude. The day I see Wolverine and Spidey at the dole office maybe. It seems like the Fantastic Four have gotten it worse than anyone.

EC: I don’t even know who’s side to be on. Fox is being a child not willing to share its toy, and Marvel is being a child throwing a tantrum because they want that toy SO VERY BAD.

NC: It’s a crappy situation, and I think everybody involved lost. I mean, I know we’re supposed to reserve judgement on Fant-four-stic… but yeah. ‘Nuff said, am I right?

UM: I will lay good money on it being the best Fantastic Four film ever.

EC: I will lay good money on it being an attempt. And that’s about all I can give it.

NC: I will lay good money on the team being rebooted with the SAME DAMN STORY enough times that the filmmakers all throw their hands in the air and finally adapt Neil Gaiman’s Marvel 1602.

UM: Ah, the Fantastick Four!

EC: Yes, and Peter Parquagh! (GOD WHY?!)

UM: Okay, but what about today’s movie? If I may?

NC: Go right ahead.

UM: I thank ye. So, back before Marvel decided to stop letting other companies fuck up their characters and just do it right themselves, they sold the movie rights to the Fantastic Four for a song and a wink to a German producer named Bernd Eichinger. Eichinger had a limited amount of time to make the movie or else the rights would revert to Marvel so, when he couldn’t get the money in time, he teamed up with legendary cheapo movie-maker Roger Corman to make a superhero movie in three weeks with $1 million. The resulting…thing…was never meant to be seen by human eyes. It was solely created to allow the company to hold on to the movie rights. Thankfully, such shady business practices would never occur in Hollywood today.

Ha! It's a joke! Because it happens all the damn time!

Now how did that get there?

UM: So, just how bad can it be?

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Asterix in Britain (1986)

TINTIN CAN SUCK A DICK!

Sorry! Sorry! That was uncalled for. I apologise unreservedly. Old habits just die hard. See, when I was growing up, every public library in Ireland had a well stocked collection of both Asterix books and Tintin books (because this is the greatest damn country on Earth). And pretty much every playground was divided, Sharks and Jets style, between Tintin fans and those of us who felt that the tales of a group of superpowered Celtic warriors battling against the most powerful empire on earth might be a tad more compelling than the adventures of LITERALLY THE MOST GENERIC MAIN CHARACTER IN ALL OF FICTION…

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

I apologise to all fans of Tintin and Hergé and his wonderfully crisp ligne claire style. Some wars are still being fought long after they say “We have peace.”

I acually love the Tintin books, I just wish Herge had wised up and renamed them “The Adventures of Captain Haddock and his ginger sober companion.”

Okay. So. Asterix. When I announced two weeks ago that I’d be reviewing an Asterix movie the response was predictable mix of “Yay Asterix!” from my non-American readers and a big “who’s the blonde midget Viking?” from my American readers so now’s probably a good time to explain who and what Asterix is.

Hey, I know which side my blog is buttered.

So Asterix is a Franco-Belgian comic that is still going since its first appearence in 1959 but was originally created by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. The setup is this; it’s 50 BC and Rome has conquered all of Gaul (modern day France). All? Not quite. A tiny village of indomitable Gauls stills holds out against the Roman invaders thanks to a magic potion brewed by their druid, Getafix, that gives the Gauls superhuman strength. The heroes of these stories are Asterix, the blonde short-arse, and his buddy Obelix, who was dropped in a cauldron of magic potion as a baby and so is just superhumanly strong all the time (why the Gauls don’t just do this with all their babies is never explained). The main gag is not entirely dissimilar to that of the Flintstones, the past and present are pretty much exactly the same. The series draws its humour from many sources; slapstick, political satire, puns (as in, every single character’s name is some kind of play on words) and especially from affectionate riffs on European cultural stereotypes (the Goths are always punctual, the Greeks have flat noses like figures on urns etc). Despite the basic premise being “French people make fun of foreigners” the series is hugely popular, not only in its native France but everywhere in Europe from Malta to Finland.

“I literally could not give two fucks about…holy shit, ASTERIX!? I love that guy!”

Asterix is also huge in Latin America, India and even China. How popular is he? Goscinny and Uderzo have sold more books worldwide than any other French author. That’s right. More than Victor Hugo. More than Balzac. More than Dumas.

Well, its not like DArtagnan has his own theme park, does he?

Well, D’Artagnan doesn’t have his own theme park, does he?

So why are these books so popular? Well firstly, they’re just really, really good. Seriously. The artwork is beautiful, the character designs are Disney good in terms of being expressive, appealing and versatile and they’re goddamn hilarious. Also, the Asterix series have been blessed with legendarily good translators (the series has been adapted into over 100 languages). And yet Asterix has never really found much purchase in the United States. Why is that? Culture gap, partially. A joke about how Corsicans are constantly swearing vendetta would probably prompt some head-scratching on the other side of the Atlantic.

“You’ve made an enemy today, Mouse.”

“Oh, get in line.”

But mostly I think it was just due to bad timing. To get a foothold in the United States comic market Asterix would have needed to become popular in the fifties, before the Silver Age began and American comics just became SUPER HEROES SUPER HEROES SUPER HEROES SUPER HEROES FROM NOW UNTIL THE END OF TIME. The distributors for European comics just weren’t there and so Asterix missed his shot unfortunately. Oh well. Fear not Americans. It may be tricky for you to track down copies of his books but you can still watch one of the many fine animated adaptations of Asterix books that have been made over the years HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAHAHAAAAAA …*collapses into a weeping pile.*

Oh Christ.

There have been nine (NINE!) animated Asterix movies and four live-action movies (all starring Gerard Depardieu as Obelix).

My God man. You were in Jean De Florette.

Now, I haven’t seen all of the animated movies. But I have seen a LOT of them. And they can be broken down into four categories;

1) The ones with terrible animation,

2) The ones with terrible voice acting,

3) The ones with terrible animation and voice acting.

4) The ones with ALL THREE.

But honestly I think that even with top-notch talent in every area it would be damn hard to make a good Asterix movie that still resembled the original in any meaningful way. The comedy just doesn’t…work when you translate it to film. The timing is always off, it just doesn’t translate well (which is ironic, since Asterix is one of the most successful examples of translating comedy in human history). Today’s movie is Asterix in Britain, an adaptation of the eighth Asterix book and one of my personal favourites, firstly because it’s just classic Asterix and also because it included this guy:

His name is O’veroptimistix. He was the only Irish character to ever appear in these books. He had one line, that included the word “Begorrah”. And I loved him.

So. Will the movie be a one, a two, a three or a four? Let’s find out.

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