Humour

Help me out guys, a Beyonce is what now?

America, I love you. I do. Love your movies, your music, the powdered wigs of your founding fathers and I have never met an American who was not a thoroughly decent skin. But this TMZ shit has got to stop. Seriously, you guys need to cut that out.

So if you can’t see the video, it basically consists of the barking seals of TMZ expressing shock and disbelief that Jay-Z and Beyonce were able to take their daughter for a walk in the Phoenix Park in Dublin without getting mobbed. Clearly, the only reason could be (and yeah, the gobshite who suggests this in the video does seem to be Irish himself) was because these poor potato munchers didn’t know who my man Hove and Queen B actually are. Not because, you know, hassling celebrities when they’re out with their kids is kind of a shitty thing to do. No clearly there’s something wrong with us. Like, as a nation. But worry not, TMZ has not given up on us and even envisions that we may actually know who they are in “fifteen years or so”.

I was going to do a big lengthy response to this but I seem to have gone blind with rage. But fortunately, the guys at Collegetimes.com summed it up perfectly. Enjoy.

Cars (2006)

(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.)

“Sigh.”

“You seem depressed Mouse. What is troubling you?”

“Doctor? Do you ever get…urges?”

“Ah. Well, at last we are coming to the heart of the matter.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your inability to come to terms with your sexuality is the root cause of all your psychoses. This is great progress. Tell me about the fish.”

“What? No, no. It’s not that.”

“Well, back to square ein.”

“For the last few weeks I’ve been having these insane urges to review Cars. But I hate that movie. I hate it so much.”

“And how does this make you feel?”

“I don’t know. Guilty, maybe?”

“Why guilty?”

“Because deep down I know there are movies that are much worse, movies that I even enjoy. But I hate this movie more than all of them and maybe it’s just not as bad as I remember.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Well, because it’s Pixar! I mean, it can’t be that bad, right?”

“Mouse, our course is clear. Your subconscious is telling you to review this movie with an open mind. Come. Let us begin. I shall be with you every step of the way.”

“Siiiiiiiiiigh.”

What am I doing? The first Pixar movie I review on this blog and it’s Cars. That’s like finally deciding to see what all the fuss is about this James Bond guy and watching Die Another Day. A question I get asked a lot on this blog is “Why don’t you review the Pixar movies?” and the simple answer is they’re just too good. The canon Disney movies have a nice mix of classics, forgotten gems and duds to keep things interesting. But Pixar’s record of quality is just so high that I honestly think I’d struggle to keep the reviews varied and interesting. Except for Cars. I’ve always hated Cars. I’m always LOATHED Cars. But that’s just based on one viewing of it years ago and I’d like to think I’ve matured a lot as a connoisseur of animation since those days. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe I judged it too harshly as so many of you in the comments keep telling me?

Maybe hell has frozen over? Maybe pigs can soar, soar like the mighty eagle?

Alright, so a little background. Cars was released in 2006, after The Incredibles and before Ratatouille. It was directed by John Lasseter himself and Joe Ranft, who died before the movie was released in a car accident, ironically enough.

“That’s not what “irony”means!”

Oh Nit. “Irony” doesn’t actually mean anything, it’s just a word people say.

A version of this story was knocking around Pixar as early as the completion of A Bug’s Life in 1998, and it was originally about an electric car in a world of gas guzzlers. As time went on it got postponed and reworked before finally getting released as Cars eight years later. And if that sounds like a long development time, remember that Disney is still releasing movies based on ideas they were toying with in the frickin’ forties.

Coming Summer 2034.

Because Cars merchandise basically conjures money from the ether for Disney/Pixar, it’s viewed by some fans as a sell-out movie, a vulgar cashgrab. That’s…probably unfair. From what I’ve read, for Lasseter Cars was a genuine labour of love, combining his two greatest passions, cars and animation. Well, as we’ve already established here on Unshaved Mouse, nothing works better than taking two things you love and merging them together in an ungodly fusion to appall both God and man.

Pictured: Cars.

Let’s take a look at the movie.

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Check this guy out!

The audio review of Make Mine Music is now ready for your eager ear holes and can be listened to HERE. Video review soon to follow. Also, we got any Doctor Who fans in the house? ‘Cos Erik’s got a new blog called The Doctor Dies at the End, looking at how each episode of modern Who would play out if the Doctor died, with the exception of “Turn Left”, where he will be looking at what would happen if the Doctor lived. And if you get that joke, then it’s the blog for you.

The Goo: Part Deux

Second episode of the Goo has now gone up. Once again, please read your nationality appropriate recommendation.

For Irish viewers

Shenanigans are afoot as Dave and Jonesy take “Baby Goo” Ste Murray under the proverbial feathered appendages and show him the ropes of Goodum. It’s all a bit of craic until the lads get a call from the Gooru himself, and all shite’s about to break loose. Will the lads be up the challenge? Jayus an’ anyway.

For non-Irish viewers

This week we are introduced to “Baby Goo”, played by Stephen Murray, who acts as both audience surrogate and a symbol of endangered innocence. Stephen is the man that Dave and Jonesy once were, the wide-eyed young man full of promise, oblivious to the fact that when he gazes on the wrecked and ravaged forms of these two men he looks not upon mentors or friends but his own terrible future. References to films abound in this week’s episode, the Godfather and Die Hard are both name checked. It is however Darren Aronofsky’s seminal Requiem for a Dream that the work references most strongly, but textually and subtextually, as Dave and Jonesy’s descent into the next level of addiction’s cthonic abyss commences with a summons from “The Gooru”. That Mephistophelean figure has hitherto remained hidden. Now, Dave and Jonesy’s trials shall begin in earnest.

Ever wondered what Mouse’s voice sounds like?

Check out this interview that I did with Oisín Boyce of Belfield FM, where I talk about League of Volunteers, Joanna and of course, Unshaved Mouse.

https://soundcloud.com/oisin-boyce/neil-sharpson-interview

Check these guys out!

Two friends of mine, Dave Fleming and Stephen “yer man from Love/Hate” Jones, have launched a new online comedy series called The Goo and the first episode is up and running and can be viewed HERE. New episodes will be going up every Monday and I’ll be posting links on the blog. It’s brilliant and you should absolutely check it out and like it and share it. However, how you experience The Goo will really depend on whether or not you’re Irish so I have prepared two recommendations for the Goo. If you’re reading this outside of Ireland, please skip to the next paragraph.

For Irish Viewers:

Right lads, so two mates of mine have put up the first episode of their new comedy series The Goo on the You Tube yoke. It’s bleedin’ deadly and tells the story of two lads out on the lash and all the hilarious hijinx and various shenanigans that ensure therefrom. Give it a look and spread the word if you like it and if you don’t you can feck off and anyway.

For Non-Irish Viewers:

The Goo is a harsh and unflinching look at the scourge of alcoholism in modern Irish society. Watch as Dave and Jonesy decent deeper and deeper into substance dependence, moral and spiritual degradation and finally madness. Please like and share this essential document of the greatest and most enduring scourge of the Irish nation. The world needs to see this. Thank you, and God bless.

Thanks guys, and go on The Goo.

Coraline (2009)

“Tell me vat happened, Mouse. In your own vords.”

“Paper Alchemist…it was her fault! She told me to watch it…I thought she was my friend. Those eyes. Button eyes…”

"I don't understand. You had made such fine progress. Ven last ve spoke you had overcome your fear of Pinocchio and were reviewing the entire Disney canon. You seemed in good mental health. Vat triggered zis relapse?"

“I don’t understand. You had made such fine progress. Ven last ve spoke you had overcome your fear of Pinocchio and were reviewing ze entire Disney canon. You seemed in good mental health. Vat brough on zis relapse?”

“Pinocchio? That’s right. I used to be afraid of that movie. God, I was a fool.”

HELLO!

“Hey.”

“Then tell me, Mouse. What triggered zis episode?”

“I remember it like it was yesterday. When in fact, it was the day before yesterday. I’d finally decided to start reviewing non-Disney movies regularly. Walt tried to warn me against it…”

“You’re a fool Mouse! Everytime you review a non-Disney movie you invite terrible doom!”

“But I thought it’d be fine! After all, I reviewed Nightmare Before Christmas at Halloween and nothing bad happened!”

“Ja…of course.”

“You don’t know that!”

"I am sorry, zis is a private session. I will have to ask you to leave."

“I am sorry, zis is a private session. I vill have to ask you to leave.”

“And who the stuttering fuck might you be?”

"I am Herr Doktor Ernst Fiedelman. I am ze Mouse's psychoanalysist."

“I am Herr Doktor Ernst Fiedelman. I am ze Mouse’s psychoanalyst.”

“Psychoanalyses? Mouse why are you wasting your time with this flim flam? Some good old fashioned voodoo is all you need, where’s my cauldron?”

“Out.”

“I think I am beginning to understand. You reviewed a movie horrific enough to undo years of intensive psychoanalysis. Something by Adam Sandler I am guessing, ja?”

“Nein. Coraline.”

“Mein Gott! Mouse, ve have no choice. You must face your fear, and talk me through the review. Only then can we undo the psychological damage.”

“Really? Because that sounds like it would make things so much worse.”

“Ve’re talking fifty fifty either vay. Now begin!”

Well. Okay. Here we. go. Coraline.

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Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #43: Treasure Planet

***

Occasionally, before beginning a review, I will don a simple disguise and mingle with the common folk of the Disney fandom. “Tell me good sirrah,” I might enquire of some good-hearted peasant in a small, provincial internet forum “What do the people think of Lilo and Stitch?”.

“Why sir, it is rightly lauded as a most wondrous film and much beloved.”

“And the Unshaved Mouse? I have heard that he is a reviewer of passable skill?”

“Passable skill? By thunder sir, he is a very God amongst the reviewing class, and most sorely do I wish he were here, that I might shake his hand.”

“Mayhap he is closer than you think, good pleb” I would say with a benevolent smile. I would then toss him a Bitcoin to see the light of thanks in his eyes, and be on my way.

My point is, I try to take the pulse of where we as a fandom are on a particular film and what I found with Treasure Planet made me a little worried. A cursory glance at the internet shows that this thing has a healthier fanbase than many other movies in the canon. Lots of fanart and fanfiction, plenty of people willing to fly the “Lost Classic” banner, some of the most soul scarring motherfucking Jim/Silver porn you have ever seen in your life that I can now never unsee for as long as I live…

But on the flip side…

Yeah, so there is a lot of hate for this thing out there. Robert Louis Stevenson purists, animation nerds who blame it for the death of traditional Disney animation, people who just flat out hate it as a movie, Somalis who were suckered into a life of piracy by the unrealistic portrayal in the movie…

These young men were promised robots.

This movie has made more enemies than Boba Fett. And this puts me in a tough position because when it comes to Treasure Planet I fall into the controversial camp of: ”Meh. ‘Sfine.”

Treasure Planet was actually originally pitched by Ron Clements and Jon Musker all the way back in 1985 but it was passed over in favour of Little Mermaid which…yeah, probably the right call. I was surprised to learn that this was a Clements and Musker film because it feels a lot more like something by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, particularly Atlantis. Clements and Musker were actually happy for the delay because by the time they got a chance to make it the technology had caught up with their vision for the film. And I’ve got to say this up front; this film is gorgeous. In fact, almost all the Lost Era movies are. The quality of the movies may have gone down after the renaissance, sure, but if anything the animation just kept getting better and better. Let’s take a look.

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Video Reviews #5: Bambi

And I meant to post this earlier but Christmas got in my way.

Disney Reviews #42: Lilo and Stitch

Sometime before production had started on Mulan, Michael Eisner took a load of the Disney animators out to his mother’s apple orchard so that they could get inspiration from the gorgeous autumnal colours and also because there were a load of apples that needed picking , chop, chop. As the pasty, pencil armed creatures hoisted bushels and sweated against the magnificent backdrop of a September sunset, Michael Eisner’s thoughts turned to Dumbo, another endeavour that would not have been possible without cheap, non-union labour. Why was it that Disney couldn’t make movies like Dumbo anymore?, Eisner mused later that night, enjoying a frothy mug of Mama Eisner’s finest apple cider as the sweet melody of the animators singing their spirituals in the nearby camp wafted through the night air. Dumbo, you’ll recall, was pretty much the only Disney animation of the forties to turn a profit, not because it did that much better at the box-office than the other films but because it had been so cheap to make. The next day, the surviving animators were rounded up and taken back to Burbank and the basic idea for Lilo and Stitch had been planted; to create a successful animated film that did not cost the GNP of a small European nation to make. Lilo and Stich had a budget of $80 Million, which only sounds like a lot because we are poor and clad in filthy rags. For a feature length animated film it’s peanuts. But fortunately, some cartoons work for peanuts.

Eddie Valiant, however, does not.

Actually, the relatively small budget was the gift that kept on giving for this movie. The fact that directors Chris Sanders and Dean deBlois weren’t gambling with a huge chunk of Disney’s money meant that they could work without the execs breathing down their necks like a pack of asthmatic vampire bats. In fact, management was remarkably hands off on this one, which is why it looks, sounds and feels like nothing else in the canon. This movie is shaped visually by Chris Sanders own unique artistic style, and if you came to this movie cold you probably wouldn’t even know it was a Disney movie. But is that a good thing?

Let’s take a look.

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