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And so, the final battle commences…

Okay guys. Here’s the situation. We’re in the final quarter. Bases are loaded. Injury time. Gretsky has the ball. Sports.

Unshaved Mouse has been shortlisted for Best Art and Culture Blog and, unlike in previous years, I might actually have a bloody shot at this.

The shortlist is down to 28 blogs. That’s doable. That’s beatable. But I need your help.

This year is different from last year. There are only going to be two weeks of voting starting today and, near as I can tell, you can only vote once. So, the good news is I’m not going to be pestering you for votes every week. The bad news is, only 30% of the final score comes from the final vote and the rest will come from some poor judge trying to make sense of this Disney fuelled acid trip I’ve been on for the last three years.

“What is this madness?! I never trained for this!!”

So please, click on the image below and vote for Unshaved Mouse. Your support is, as always, hugely appreciated.

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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Thanks guys!

Look at it. LOOK AT IT! Isn’t it beautiful? But y’know, I have just one question.

“Does it come in black?”

Now we’re talking! Thanks to everyone who nominated me. You guys are the greatest. The shortlist will be announced on 02 September (yeah, they don’t wait around do they?) and after that public voting will commence on 07 September and run for two weeks. I’ll let you all know if I make it to the second round.

Thanks again guys! VALIDATION! WHOOOP!

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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Things I’ve learned from three years of blogging.

The third anniversary is a weird one, isn’t it? First anniversary it’s like, yay! Made it! Second anniversary is, yes, definitely in this for the long haul. But the third year is just another year down. It’s kind of a nothing anniversary.

Although, the traditional gift is leather, so it has that going for it.

Anyway, it seems that more and more of you are starting blogs of your own so I thought now might be as good a time as any to set down some of the things I’ve learned about this weird hobby of ours.

Have a plan

Can’t stress this one enough. This is the big one. If this list was a cartoon show it would be “Have a Plan and Friends”. Right now on my desktop I have a list of every movie I’m going to review and the date it’s due to go up until August 2016. “What am I going to write about?” is a question I have literally never had to ask myself. This means I never have to sit down in front of a blank screen and have to figure out what the next post is going to be.

Before you go live, have a backlog built up

You wouldn’t open a grocery shop with only one can of beans. Have a good few posts already written in advance so that when you go live you already have a fairly large body of work for someone to go through (say, four or five posts). When someone reads your first post you don’t want them thinking “That was cool. Wonder what else they’ve written. Nothing. Huh.” And then leaving and never coming back.

Specialise

Picture this, you’re sitting on a bus and someone sits down and asks you if you want to hear some of their “random thoughts”. How appealing does that sound? Starting out, your blog should have a single focus and be aimed at a specific target audience. A blog that tries to have too broad a remit will always struggle to find an audience because, while I might love your overview of early Tudor drama, that’s not really going to make me want to read your dog-grooming tips. It will however, make me interested to read your overview of early Jacobean drama. This will also help you get a readership with shared interests who will actually want to talk to each other. Commenters are a vital and often overlooked element of what makes a blog a success. I know part of what brings people to my blog every two weeks is wondering what swanpride thought of this movie or what terrifying eldritch Australian hell-beast with a delightfully whimsical name Paper Alchemist will teach us about today.

It latches onto your face and eats your eyes while it’s venom paralyses you and reduces your muscle tissue to soup. It’s called the Twizzlewozzer.

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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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Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (2003)

So one day Music was walking down the street somewhere in early twentieth century America and he was feeling on top of the world. Thanks to fancy new technologies like the wireless and phonograph, and this crazy new thing called “Jasz”, more people were listening to Music than ever before and that suited Music just fine.

“Hey there Mistah Music!” the newspaper boys would call as they heard him pass by and Music would tip his hat to them courteously.

Occasionally a bum would yell “You think yer so big! With your phonygrams an’ ragtime! I remember when you was bein’ spit out of a harmonica!” And then Music would drag the loud-mouthed drunk into an alley way, knife him repeatedly, and leave his body as a warning to the other bums.

He stopped on a street corner to roll himself a ludicrously expensive old-timey cigar. It was then that Music saw a tiny, starving artform, no more than a few years old, flickering and shivering on a filthy doorstep.

“Hey kid.” Said Music “What’s eatin’ ya?”

“Golly gee!” Said the infant artform “Who said that?” (Because of course, Music cannot be seen, as Music is an eight legged dragon covered in hooks and shimmering scales that go up and down, up and down and anyone who saw him would instantly go mad.)

“What’s your name, son?” Music asked kindly.

“Animation, mistah.” said Animation “I was just born and ain’t got no cultural relevancy. And I wants cultural relevancy so bad!”

“Well Animation.” Said Music “I’ve been looking for a smart young visual medium to help me expand my business ventures. I like you kid, ya got moxie. You got razzmatazz comin’ out the hooey. You and me could do great things together, kid. Whattya say?”

And so Music and his young new protégé formed a partnership that would stand the test of time. So influential was the fusion of music and animation that it even wiped out other artforms that were hugely popular at the time but have now been almost totally forgotten, like smell sculpture, colour-dancing and Grand Schmopera.

Animation has grown up a lot since the early days and can now stand on its own two feet as a medium. But if you look at the very early animated shorts from the twenties and thirties, you see that animation was almost solely used to give a visual component to music. There’s a reason those series of cartoon shorts have names like Looney Tunes, Silly Symphonies and Merry Melodies. And the link lasted long after animation had started maturing into a more narrative based style with its own way of telling stories. At Disney, even after Snow White and Pinocchio we still had movies like Make Mine Music, Melody Time and Fantasia where the animation is very much guided by and in service to the music.

Animation and Music, to put it plainly, are tight. They go way back. They’re best buds. When Film kicks Animation out of the house, he crashes on Music’s couch. Music was the best man at Animation’s wedding, Animation is the godfather of Music’s child…Music…Junior…okay the analogies are breaking down in a big way, moving on.

Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem is French electro act Daft Punk’s 2003 album Discovery. Daft Punk are a band who…

Um…

Shit shit shit. Okay, I really didn’t want to do this, but I’m going to have to ask for some help from by evil brother, The Unscrupulous Mouse. See, he may be a twisted maniac, but he’s also a pretty awesome musician and he knows more about house music than anyone else I know.

"Ha" I knew the day would come when you would bow before my greatness, brother!"

“Ha! I knew the day would come when you would bow before my genius, brother!”

“Oh get on with it.”

“Wait a minute, Mouse.”

“What is it, Nit?”

“I thought The Unscrupulous Mouse was your brother Eamonn? Donal’s your brother who’s a musician!”

“Eh…he’s…look, he’s a composite character. I have three younger brothers. He’s based on all of them.”

“Younger? But TV Tropes said he’s based on your OLDER brother!”

“Yes. Sometimes TV Tropes can be wrong.”

“Gasp!”

“Look, are we doing this thing or what?”

“Enlighten us, Maestro.”

“A person can talk endlessly about Daft Punk’s music career. Their iconic house tracks revolutionised dance music in the mid 90’s and their re-imagining of funk music brought it roaring back into the mainstream right up to the present day.”

“But the main reason for Daft Punk’s success is that they are completely anonymous. That means that it is impossible to hate them! They have no opinions, attributes or features and so can be judged solely on the merits of their music. The hipsters can’t hate them because their earlier music can be compared to what is popular in the underground scene at the minute, and all of the mainstream listeners can’t dislike them because….well I honestly believe that social media has brainwashed these people so they will like anything they’ve heard more than fifty times in the one day (Example: Get Lucky). “

“You don’t like Get Lucky? You monster!”

“In conclusion, the only reason you can hate Daft Punk is because they’re French and have silly names. Now if you’ll excuse, my dark genius is needed elsewhere.”

Interstella 5555 is certainly not the first attempt to turn an album into a full length movie (you’re got The Wall and Yellow Submarine to name two), nor is it the first time Japan and France have collaborated in animation (Uly-seeee-eeeeeeeeee-eeeee-es). You might not know this (I certainly didn’t), but manga is absolutely HUGE in France, making up around half of all comics published there.

Likewise, animé has had a big presence on French TV for many decades, with most young Frenchlings having grown up watching shows like Dragon Ball Z and Robotech. Little wonder then, when Daft Punk were looking for a studio to animate their album, they looked East, not West. Specifically, they turned to legendary animator Leiji Matsumoto (the guy behind practically every animé TV series from the seventies and eighties) and Interstella 5555 is the product of their creative union. How did it turn out? Let’s take a look.

So the movie begins with footage of an interview with Matsumoto, flanked by Daft Punk in their robot costumes, discussing the origin of the film. Although, what with the grainy black and white footage, it looks more like the bit in a fifties sci-fi movie where the mad scientist announces to the world that his robot army will destroy them all.

“Fools! You called me mad! You denied the beauty of my children! But now the whole world shall bow before the steel legions of Doctor Matsumoto!”

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Murica! (and why I may be late with this week’s review)

Happy 4th of July to my American readers! Hope you all have a great one. Remember, every firework you set off is a stabbing pain in the ballsack of Putin himself.

“Ow! Ow! Ow! GOD I HATE JULY!”

Speaking of stabbing pains, I have some rather good news (is a sentence no one has ever written before). Thanks to my wonderful wife’s wonderful new job and their wonderful health insurance plan I’m finally getting something done about those gallstones I told you about in lurid detail back in April. I’m going in for surgery on Monday and I’ll be spending the around three days in hospital recovering. What this means is, unless I get the Interstella 5555 ready by Sunday night (which could happen) this one might be a little late. Thanks for understanding.

See you on the flipside.

Mouse out.

Please nominate me, or whatever.

It’s Blog Awards Ireland season people! You know what that means!

It means I have to dance like a monkey to get as many of you to vote for me. More updates, more reviews, more content, more work, and all so I can funnel page views to the Blog Awards website and their advertisers before inevitably losing to the Waterford Whispers.

“Oh God. Not again. Not again!”

And why? Why do I do it? Because clearly, I didn’t get enough validation as a child.

“Um, we could just not nominate you this year, Mouse?”

“Are you kidding?! I’d kill myself!”

Fortunately, this year I’ve actually prepared. In fact, for all of September, when the actual voting takes place, I will be unveiling a new project and updating every two days. Yes. Every two days. NOT counting the regular reviews. It’s going to be a goddamn posting smorgasbord.

So yes. Please nominate me here. Please nominate this blog.

You goddamn bunch of enablers.

From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)

Remember how, ages ago, I did that list of my favourite non-Disney animated movies? Yeah, that list is probably due an update. There are so many fantastic films that I’ve discovered or re-discovered since then: Coraline, Prince of Egypt and of course Princess Mononoke. Still the highest scoring animated movie I’ve ever reviewed on this blog (or tied for first place if you count Who Framed Roger Rabbit). So when I was asked to review From Up On Poppy Hill, another Studio Ghibli film by Miyazaki that I’d never even heard of I was pumped.

Yes.

Yes.

More.

Again.

Yes.

More please.

So this is the 17^th Studio Ghibli film, released in 2011 after Arrietty and before Miyazaki’s final film as director, The Wind Rises. Aaaand that’s about as much as I know about it. I’m going into this one completely cold.

I mean, c’mon. What else do I need to know? It’s a Studio Ghibli film directed by Miyazaki. The only question is; Great Movie or the Greatest Movie? Let’s take a look.

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