Announcing the Unshaved Mouse 20/20 Oscars!

People in the past are idiots. Look at them there, waging pointless wars, dying of diseases that we can now easily cure and not appreciating the genius of Van Gogh. Bunch of putzes.

Here in the future of course, we know better. Wouldn’t it be great if we could go back in time and show those darn pasties how do to do things right? Well, here’s the next best thing.

Every year the Oscars roll around and every year I mark the occasion by doing absolutely nothing. You see, despite being a movie buff I just can’t frickin’ stand the Oscars. I hate the whole dull circle jerk. I hate that the “right” movie almost never wins, and that even when it does it inevitably suffers a hipster backlash from insufferable  up their ass movie nerds like…well…me. But I also object to the whole idea. What was the best movie last year? I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows. Because that shit takes time to sort out. It takes years of watching and re-watching and cultural commentary and perspective to mark a film as being a true classic. That’s why, this year, I am announcing the 20/20 Oscars, a (hopefully) annual event here on Unshaved Mouse. Every year we will look back on what was being considered 20 years ago and vote in the major categories and this time we will get it right.

So, 19 years ago the 71st Academy Awards were voting on 1999’s crop of movies. It was a pretty good year overall, with plenty of films that could benefit some hindsight. Vote below and we will announce the results on Oscar night.

Best Picture

 

The Breadwinner (2017)

This review was requested by patron Alex Hu. If you’d like me to review a movie, please consider supporting my Patreon.

Fuck Wikipedia.

I had one hell of an intro lined up for this one. I was going to open with a description of the Book of Kells, and detail how the blue dye illustrating this mediaeval masterpiece of Irish art had to be imported all the way from ancient Afghanistan. I would then tie that into a line from The Breadwinner where the character Nurullah describes how the ancient peoples of Afghanistan traded all over the world. Then  I was going to connect that to how director Nora Twomey’s previous film The Secret of Kells led directly into The Breadwinner, showing how Ireland and Afghanistan have, improbably, been transmitting ideas and beauty between each other for millennia. And how even between two incredibly distant nations there can be bonds of shared history and culture. How we are all, truly, one people.

And then I go to Wikipedia and discover that the theory of the Book of Kells being created with ink from Afghanistan has been debunked so never fucking mind then.

“Don’t know why I bother really.” 

Anyway, this is the third film of current animated hotness Cartoon Saloon. Like their previous two movies, this is an international co-production, this time between Ireland, Canada and Luxembourg.

“I helped!”

“Aw, you sure did.”

Directed by Nora Twomey  and produced by Angelina Jolie, The Breadwinner is based on the novel by the same name by Deborah Ellis. Upon the movie’s release in 2017 it was heralded as an instant classic and became the only non-American film to be nominated for Best Animated Feature in 2017.

Boss Baby was also nominated. Because the Oscars are meaningless nonsense.

But is it really that good? Does it really deserve to be spoken of in the same breath as classics like Boss Baby and Ferdinand (seriously, fuck the Oscars)? Let’s take a look at The Breadwinner or, as I call it, Mulan but Everything is Terrible.

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New patrons!

Another new patron joins the ranks of the few, the brave, the mice:

Sam Minden, star of the police drama of the same name which ran on CBS from 1957 to 1972. The show’s unique selling point was that it was not a “whodunnit?” like Kojak or a “howcatch’em?” like Columbo. Instead, Minden would use his knowledge of fashion to deduce the killer based on their designer outfit alone, becoming TVs first (and so far only) “whohewearin’whenhedunnit?”

New patrons!

Hi folks,

Two new patrons to introduce to you all:

Rudi Baeten, legendary Netherlands football player (1968-1974). He invented the concept of “Total Football” where players would undergo intensive psychological conditioning until they believed that they were footballs. Unfortunately, the technique ultimately took its toll on Baeten’s marriage when he abandoned his wife and three children and eloped with an imitation plastic Adidas Tricolore, with whom he spent the rest of his days rolling gently down a beach in the Dutch Caribbean.

Adam Davis was the 13th Vice-President of the United States for all of five minutes before the notoriously fickle James Buchanan jilted him in favour of John C. Breckinridge. Davis never forgave this betrayal, and when informed that Breckinridge had betrayed the Union and joined the Confederacy is said to have remarked “Well, what would you expect from that tramp?”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Scott. Unless I have to.”

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“Okay, that’s it. I’m officially done with the Marvel movies.”

‘Uh huh.”

“I mean it. I just don’t care anymore.”

‘Uh huh.”

“I mean, I’ll probably watch Infinity War 2.”

‘Uh huh.”

“And any new Thors.”

‘Uh huh.”

“And Black Panther 2, definitely.”

‘Uh huh.”

“Oh, and I’ll probably check out Captain Marvel.”

‘Uh huh.”

“But other than that, I am DONE.”

“Yikes. Careful hon, going cold turkey is dangerous.”

“Ugh. Curse your sexy irresistible snark and flawless reliability as a narrator.”

Yes, the grim spectre of Marvel Fatigue has reared its skeletal head in the Mouse household, rattling its chains and wailing about lacklustre villains and nondescript movie scores. And while this malignant spirit has claimed my beloved spouse I, thankfully, remain immune.

Or so I thought.

Coming up to this particular review I experienced, for this first time in this series, something in the outer boroughs of dread. The first Ant-Man, was fine but only fine and the closer the time to review Ant-Man and the Wasp crept the more I realised that I just didn’t care and would much rather skip ahead to whatever reader request I should have done like two years ago (I’m trying guys, I’m trying).

So, because I have little to nothing interesting to say about the movie, how ‘bout some comic history? You know you love it.

Janet Van Dyne aka The Wasp was the second major female superhero created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the early sixties, coming a few years after Sue Storm and a few months before Jean Grey and the Scarlet Witch. And she was, much like her sisters, originally a bit crap. To put it bluntly, the superheroines of this era were drippier than a melting ice-cream who just stepped out of the shower to answer the phone.

Pictured: The time Stan Lee invented millennials.

Jan was first introduced in the pages of Tales to Astonish as the daughter of Vernon Van Dyne, a scientist who once worked with Hank Pym, the world’s Most Generic Man. When Vernon is killed, Jan comes to Hank looking for help and he’s all:

  1. I’m Ant-Man.
  2. I could make you an Ant-Woman. Would you like that Jan? Would you like to be my Ant-Woman?
  3. Vernon would totally have wanted us to bone.

Hank gives her shrinking powers, making her a god among mortals, as well as some nifty little wings and energy blasts and they fight crime as Ant-Man and the Wasp. They also became founding members of the Avengers, with Jan actually being the one who comes with the name for the team. Originally depicted as shallow and flighty the character has been deepened and expanded on by various writers over the years into one of the most respected superheroes in the Marvel universe.

She’s also the only one of the founding Avengers to never have her own solo series. For some reason.

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Flight of Dragons (1982)

Man, you guys do love your animated fantasies from the late seventies/early eighties don’t you? In fact, I’ve now reviewed enough of these things that they’re starting to run together. Which animated fantasy centring on wizards and a war between science and magic with seriously dodgy gender politics is this again? Nit?

“Yessum?”

“I need some kind of filing system.”

“I have waited many long years to hear you say those words. It was worth it.”

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Bats versus Bolts: Universal Horror

This review was requested by patron Mathom. If you’d like me to review a movie, please consider supporting my Patreon.

New Year, New Mouse, New Regular Feature!

This is Bats versus Bolts!

…

Someone ask me what Bats versus Bolts is.

“Sigh. What’s Bats versus…”

Glad you asked! Dracula and Frankenstein are two of the most famous and frequently adapted stories of all time. Hell, Dracula alone has been adapted…hang on let me just Google that…

Uh. No, Google. I’m pretty sure that’s not right.

Anyway, in every decade there are Dracula movies and Frankenstein movies that reflect the culture, trends and social forces that created them and I thought it would be cool to take two from each decade and pit them against each other in a no holds barred monster mash. So let’s start with the two most iconic versions, Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein from the nineteen thirties.

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Happy New Year!

I don’t hold with New Year’s, personally, it’s just a fake holiday cooked up by Big Calendar. But I suppose it’s as good a time as any to take stock of everything that’s happened last year and check for structural damage.

So, 2018 was…mixed.

A better year than 2017, definitely. 2017 (for me) was just an series of unending failure, rejection and humiliation culminating in me hitting my lowest point since…ever, pretty much. 2018 on the other hand, was a series of sharp highs and lows and I’ll definitely take that over the alternative. If current trends continue, 2019 might actually be (whisper it softly now) good?

The bad was losses in the family, the occasional depressive episode and just the general mental and emotional wear and tear of living in a world run by an insane wall-obsessed golden tamarin.

“NO COLLUSION!”

So let’s talk about the good.

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“It’s a mutation. It’s a very groovy mutation.”

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Much like an awesome party where someone suddenly showed up with a suitcase full of tainted MDMA, the X-Men film franchise got real bad, real fast. From the dizzying (well) highs of X2 the franchise had laid two massive turds in a row and was now in the unenviable position of having exactly as many bad films as good ones (also known as the Star Trek ratio). What was to be done?

“REBOOT!”

“Well hang on there, let’s not just go with the most obvious knee jerk response let’s think about the best way to erase past mistakes and inject new life into…”

“GRITTY REBOOT?”

“Okay, good, good, we’re thinking outside the box now, let’s just try a little harder…”

“Urrrrrrrrrr…”

“YOUNG AND SEXY REBOOT!”

“YES! HE CAN BE TAUGHT!”

Alright, all joking aside, the idea for a movie about the early days of Xavier’s School for Gifted Child Soldiers had been knocking about since the shooting of X2, and as an idea it’s pretty damn bad. Making a movie about the earliest adventures of the X-Men is like making a movie about John Lennon and focusing solely on his time in the Quarrymen. That was the worst part. Virtually all the good stuff came later. For a while. Then things got really, really awful.

In this analogy, Rob Liefeld is Yoko.

But First Class also shares much of its DNA with what was originally going to be the second instalment of the X-Men Origins spin off series, Magneto. After Wolverine Origins bombed so hard that the box office was glowing in the dark, the ideas for Magneto were bundled up and worked into First Class.

So how does this grab-bag of sewn together bad ideas and discarded movie bits work as a film?

Surprisingly well! Except when it doesn’t. It’s complicated.

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