Sorry guys, I realise this is becoming something of a habit but a load of edits just dropped on my head and I’m afraid I have to push the Deadpool and Wolverine review back a week.
See y’all on the 21st of November. Look after each other.
Uncategorized
One November night eight years ago my wife was dreaming that she was wandering through a dark castle during an earthquake.
She ran through the castle, the walls collapsing in on her, the ground shaking, the very Earth dancing beneath her feet.
She woke up, and realised that the world was still shaking. She looked over at me, hunched over my phone, literally trembling in fear hard enough to shake the bed as the election results rolled in.
It didn’t feel like that this time. Maybe I’m just jaded now.
I don’t write about politics anymore on this blog. I’d come to the conclusion that everybody spouting off about their political opinions 24/7 is a big reason we’re even in this hyper-polarised nightmare (not the only reason, but a big one).
I wish I could tell you that this isn’t what it appears to be, a catastrophe of terrible magnitude for America, for the West, for Ukraine, for democracy and for the world.
Is there cause for hope? Always.
In 1972 Richard Nixon won re-election with one of the most stunning electoral victories in history. Two years later he was on the ash heap of history. Things can change very, very quickly. A smart politician would not let a victory like this make him reckless. Trump is not smart, and was born reckless. He will fuck up, repeatedly, and badly.
Secondly, there is only one Trump and he is limited to four years. After that, MAGA has run out of road. There has never been anyone able to replicate the weird Svengali-like hold he has on his followers.
Of course now we have to consider the D word. Is he actually going to do it?
Maybe.
But the personal risk might give him pause. If he pulls that lever all bets are off.
Hitler would have been willing to die for a world purged of non-Aryans. Trump cares only about Trump.
But we are off the forest trail, now. There is no map.
Keep your eyes open. Keep your feet on the ground. Watch. Listen. Look after each other. Do not give in to despair.
Evil always contains within itself the seed of its own destruction.
We’ll be praying for you.
Mouse.
Bats versus Bolts: Piss on You! I’m working for Mel Brooks!
Comedy is a lot like politics, all careers eventually end in failure. There have been plenty of Bats versus Bolts matchups on this blog that have been, as one commenter put it “Glass Joe versus Mike Tyson” but this really is a foregone conclusion. On the one hand, Mel Brooks’ 1974 masterpiece Young Frankenstein, which would place in the low single digits on any creditable ranking of the greatest American comedies of all time. And on the other hand we have 1995’s Dracula: Dead and Loving It, a movie so critically lambasted on its release that it killed Mel Brooks’ directorial career stone dead, which is a bit like if Frank Sinatra sang a song that was so bad he was never allowed to perform again. I mean it’s Mel Brooks. If he hasn’t earned a mulligan or two, who the hell has?
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Romeo & Juliet (Sealed with a Kiss)
You know that old saw about walking down a beach that represents the different times of your life and seeing God’s footprints beside yours? I kinda feel that way about animator Phil Nibbelink.
I knew it not, but he was there during The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Oliver & Company and American Tail: Fievel Goes West. Nibbelink worked on all those films and many others. This is a guy who has spent years at the very top echelon of American animation. And, around the turn of the millennium he and his wife formed Phil Nibbelink Productions to make their own independent animation without having to debase themselves before the Hollywood suits. This, mind you, puts me in a hell of a bind.
Because, I want to like Romeo & Juliet (Sealed with a Kiss) very much. This is an independent feature length film animated entirely by one possibly insane man. Nibbelink drew every cel of this. Himself. On a goddamn tablet. Over four years. That is, by any metric, an absolutely phenomenal achievement. Simply by dint of existing this film deserves a standing ovation and as many panties flung at the stage as can be thrown without damaging the structural integrity of the theatre. The movie is amazing. Incredible. Unbelievable. But is it good?
Something I’ve come to realise is that most people only have the time and energy to get really good at one thing, if they even manage that. Nibbelink is a phenomenal animator. Now, I could show you scenes from Sealed with a Kiss, and you probably would not be that impressed. And yes, the models are extremely basic and the animation is around the level of a mid-budget TV animation. But again, this is one man doing this with next to no resources and the fact that everything moves smoothly and crisply and stays on model is a goddamn miracle. So make no mistake, when it comes to animation Nibbelink is a powerhouse. But making a movie requires him to be not just an animator but a director, screenwriter, casting agent and editor. And, like I said, most people can only be very good at one thing.
Watching this thing, part of me was saying to myself “oh, like you could do better?” and another part was answering:
I think, first and foremost, I’d have had the sense to recognise that the play about the 16 year old who seduces a 13 year old, kills two people and then commits suicide right before the 13 year old stabs herself to death on his corpse is maybe not the best source material for an all ages cartoon.
Your Name (2016)
I don’t know what Makoto Shinkai has against me but for some reason his reviews always show up on my schedule precisely when I have the least time to write them. Maybe he heard that I don’t particularly like trains or weather.
Anyway, this is the third movie of his that I’ve reviewed and, while I didn’t really love either of his previous offerings things are at least trending positive. I liked The Garden of Words quite a bit more than 5cm A Second and I like Your Name quite a bit more than either of them. I appreciate that “I like it okay” is so muted a response to this particular film that it might as well be scathing critique but…I dunno guys, I don’t know what to tell you. Shinkai’s stuff just leaves me kinda cold. EDIT: I wrote this opener before rewatching the film and I’ve since warmed to it quite a bit, as you will see.
But yeah, this movie is a huge deal. It was the most successful non-Western animated film of all time when it released, unseating Spirited Away in its native Japan before going on to conquer most of Asia.
Here’s how it goes.
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Titan A.E. (2000)
“Don Bluth” and “Science Fiction” is not an association you might automatically make even if, like me, you believe that An American Tail should rightly be considered part of the Giant Fighting Mech Animé genre.
And that would be entirely correct. Apart from his video game Space Quest, there’s nothing in Bluth’s oeuvre to suggest that he would ever make a big epic space opera. So, why Titan A.E?
Well, firstly we have to remember where Bluth was in his career at this point. After finding early indie success with Secret of NIMH, Bluth hit the big time by partnering with Stephen Spielberg. When that relationship broke down, Bluth floundered with a number of increasingly bizarre and often subpar films before finding a place with Fox’s new animation studio, essentially as a hired gun. So, if Titan A.E. seems like a complete break from Bluth’s usual fare, that’s because this was basically a work for hire job. And, at the risk of sounding like a heathen…good?
Look, I respect Don Bluth a whole lot, I think he’s a true auteur and one of the most important figures in American animation. But I can’t help but feeling that his best work was done when he was executing someone else’s artistic vision. The Land Before Time is very much a Stephen Spielberg film. Anastasia is transparently Fox demanding a Disney princess movie and Bluth dutifully providing them with one. It just so happens to be the best Disney princess movie that Disney never made and one of Bluth’s most accomplished films to boot. So if you tell me that a certain movie was just a job for Bluth and not a passion project, I’m actually more inclined to breathe a sigh of relief than shake my fist in impotent rage. Because I’ve seen Don Bluth’s passion projects.
Oh. Yeah. So, here’s the thing. Mini-Mouse has been asking to read my reviews so I’m gonna try and keep this one family friendly. Say hi in the comments, folks!
Okay, so, Titan AE entered production in the late nineties which was a weird, febrile and exciting time in American animation. The Disney renaissance was still very much in effect, but Toy Story had landed like a nuclear bomb and everyone was holding their breath to see whether CGI animation would supplant traditional animation or simply supplement it. Additionally, there was a cultural sea-change in how animation was viewed, being driven both by the ever increasing popularity of animé and the success of television animation aimed at adults like The Simpsons, Batman the Animated Series and Beavis and Butthead. In the new millennium, both Disney and its competitors would try to expand the core demographic for feature length animation from pre-teen and predominantly female and try to convince teenage boys that cartoons weren’t just for little kids and chicks. Of this little mini-genre, in which you can include Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire the first was Titan A.E.
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Review delayed
Really sorry folks, I have a deadline approaching this week link an oncoming train. Titan A.E. review should be on your screens 15th August.
Much love, Mouse.
Once upon a Studio (2023)
The Walt Disney Corporation is very good at some things, and very bad at others. And, personally speaking, the one thing they’ve always been worst at is making me like the Walt Disney Corporation.
I love the movies. I hold them dear to my heart. But whenever I see one of those corporate promotional videos where everyone is wandering around Disneyland in a state of wide-eyed joy like they’re the first good souls to be welcomed into God’s kingdom I come out in hives. You know what I’m talking about.
CHARACTER 1: It’s so incredible that [text from marketing press release announcing newest venture] is finally here!
CHARACTER 2: Woooooooooow…
I hate it when Disney tries to sell itself because it always feels so…the vibes are wrong. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s probably why the Oh My Disney sequence in Ralph Breaks the Internet is still my least favourite few minutes in the entire canon. It’s also probably the reason why I steered clear of Once Upon a Studio for so long, and why it took me two tries to actually watch it all the way through. And that’s because it begins like this:
Hives. Hives all over.
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Megamind (2010)
Before you ask, no, this wasn’t planned. It’s just a coincidence that I’m doing this review so soon after Megamind: The Doom Syndicate defiled everyone’s childhood memories like a randy Gungan. Not my childhood memories, obviously. I was engaged when this thing came out. But apparently there are people out there who were children when the original movie released and now are, like, allowed to vote and stuff? It’s a mad world.
I haven’t seen the sequel but I did watch the trailer on YouTube. This was the most upvoted comment and the sense of historical tragedy and pathos was just too great for me not to share with you all.
I’ll be upfront, upfront. I like Megamind just fine but I don’t know how much I have to say about it. It doesn’t have a special place in my heart but neither is there a lot of stuff to make fun off. Plus it’s a comedy that is actually unironically funny on its own merits and you know how much I love writing about those!
But that doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting movie. It actually belongs in the category of film that I would argue are among the most interesting; movies that were re-appraised after their initial release. When it dropped in 2010 Megamind was mostly dismissed as an inoffensive but unremarkable bit of fluff chasing the trend started by The Incredibles and Despicable Me. Since then it’s been re-evaluated as one of the best Dreamworks movies with a devoted cult following. And that’s interesting (to me, at least) because when that happens it’s usually less to do with the movie itself and more to do with society changing and seeing the movie in a new light.
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Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #62: Wish
Missed you all!
So, what’s next on the old docket? Why what’s this? A canon Disney movie? One of the films that this very blog was established to review?
Why, this is something of an occasion! Maybe we’ll have lots of cameos from long running characters like The Horned King or Walt Disney himself? Maybe a long and overly complicated kidnapping arc? Might Otto Von Bismarck appear? He bloody might!
But before surgery commences, I want to talk about conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy Theories, counter-intuitively, are a way to make the world seem less scary, to make sense of an otherwise terrifyingly random existence.
To many Americans, the idea that a shadowy cabal within the US government would kill a sitting president of the United States was actually a less unsettling prospect than the idea that some random nutjob could decide to kill the most powerful man on Earth and just…do it.
Or that a lunatic fundamentalist in a cave with a few followers and some bolt cutters could have handed the US its most devastating attack on home soil since Pearl Harbour. Or that…a majority of Americans just didn’t think that Donald Trump should get another term.
Which is why, if you’re about to get angry at me for bringing up the extremely well known conspiracy theory that Wish was either wholly or partly the creation of generative AI, I think you’re missing the point. To understand a conspiracy theory’s appeal, you have to look not at the theory itself but the reality that it would replace if it were true. People want to believe that Wish is AI generated because it’s less scary than believing that this is just the kind of film that Disney’s creative process produces now.
Recently I gave an interview for a podcast where we discussed how the publishing industry is becoming totally, crushingly data driven and where books are increasingly commissioned, marketed and read for and by micro-targeted audiences. Books are becoming products rather than pieces of art, not something the artist wrote because they cared about it but because the algorithim says that Becky in Minnesota is jonsing for an enemies-to-lovers mafia werewolf story. And this isn’t just limited to publishing, the whole entertainment industry is sick with it.
So I know why so many people believe this theory is true*, because the reality is actually scarier. The same market and technological forces that make AI art so…off are now infecting even human created art. The machines aren’t just getting more human-like. We’re meeting them in the middle.
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unshavedmouse 