Polling, polling, polling, keep those doggies polling…

Okay everyone, the final(ish) ranking of every canon movie has now gone up HERE.

But, bafflingly, some people will insist on having opinions that differ from my own which is why I put up a poll asking readers of this blog to name their favourite canon movie and favourite Unshaved Mouse review. So without further ado, let’s talk to Katya who’s coming to us live from Sofia. Hello Katya!

“Hello Mouse! What a cool time we are having! Here is how the people voted.”

Dinosaur: 1 (Oh ha ha ha ha. Yeah. Funny guy. Thanks to you, this movie beat out Bolt, Princess and the Frog and Cinderella. I hope you can live with that on your conscience, you monster.)

Three Caballeros: 1

Peter Pan: 1

Lady and the Tramp: 1

101 Dalmatians: 1

Sword in the Stone: 1

The Black Cauldron 1:

The Rescuers: 1

Treasure Planet: 1

Atlantis The Lost Empire: 1

Snow White: 2

Rescuers Down Under: 2

Hercules: 2

Pinocchio: 3

Big Hero Six: 3 (Man, that is some effective marketing Disney.)

Robin Hood: 3

The Great Mouse Detective: 3

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: 3

Bambi: 4

Emperor’s New Groove: 4

Sleeping Beauty: 5

Alice In Wonderland: 6

Jungle Book: 8

Tangled: 8

Wreck It Ralph: 8

Mulan: 8

Tarzan: 8

Fantasia: 9

Lilo and Stitch: 11

Aladdin: 13

The Little Mermaid: 14

Frozen: 17

The Hunchback of Notre Dame: 31

Beauty and the Beast 39

Lion King: 40

“Lion King for the winner!”

Well few surprises there, but a fairly inevitable result, wouldn’t you say Katya?

“Mouse? Someone is hammering on the door, I think the station is being……”

You’re right Katya, it’s hard to argue with a result like that. But what about their favourite review, can you tell us how the readers voted Katya?

“Da. The readers have voted to return to the Motherland.”

Ooooookay. Did they happen to mention anything about their favourite review?

“This voting process was both fair and transparent. Talk of irregularities is simply fascist propaganda.”

Akira: 1

Frozen: 1

Home on the Range: 1

Fantasia 2000: 1

Little Mermaid: 1

Robin Hood: 1

Aristocats: 1

Jungle Book: 1

Basil the Great Mouse Detective: 1

101 Dalmatians: 1

Lady and the Tramp: 1

Peter Pan: 1

Tarzan: 1

Brother Bear: 1

Princess Mononoke: 2

Lilo and Stitch: 2

An American Tail: 2

Mulan: 2

Emperor’s New Groove: 2

Batman Under the Red Hood: 2

Hunchback of Notre Dame: 3

Sword in the Stone: 3

Song of the South: 3

Lion King: 3

Beauty and the Beast: 3

Pocahontas: 4

Aladdin: 5

Black Cauldron: 5

Three Caballeros: 5

Foodfight!: 6

“Most popular review Foodfight, Black Cauldron and Three Caballeros. From this we know, readers like you to suffer.”

Tell me something I don’t know. Thanks Katya.

“Soon I will crush you.”

The Hangman’s Daughter- Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22: THE GREY STONE SKY

We will move past Thomas searching Groethuis’ body, gazing with a puzzled eye over the curious, dark room, full of plastics and strange smells and weird constructs that he does not have words to name. We will skip over him pushing open the heavy steel door and stumbling down the dark corridor with walls made of what feels like granite, his legs screaming blue murder as they fizzle with pins and needles. We will instead move ahead to Thomas reaching the door at the end of the corridor and finding that it opens not into a room but onto a balcony. And as he stands on this balcony he sees that he is in a great tower, and as far as the eye can see …

People.

Hundreds of the… Hundreds? No.

Thousands?

Millions?

(more…)

Your opinion matters! (Not as much as mine, but still!)

Hey guys.

So as you all know the Frozen review has just gone up, meaning that this two year long journey is very nearly at an end until a few months from now when Big Hero Six comes out, because I’ll be doing this until the day I die, let’s face it. Anyway, I’ll be posting up a big stonking rankings list where you can see exactly how each movie fared. This is how we have fun in the future, because the internet has turned us all mildly autistic. Anyway, for the big wrap up I want to hear from you. What is YOUR favourite Disney canon movie? Clicky doos below…

Also, you can vote for your favourite Unshaved Mouse review HERE (the poll is too big to fit in a blog post, sorry).

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #53: Frozen

(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.)

“Come again?”

“Well…I was wondering if you wanted to come over and destroy me? You know? Like old times?”

“You…want me to destroy you?”

“Yeah, you know. You trap me in some alternate universe and then I escape and…you know?”

“Mouse. What’s this all about?”

“Oh. Well, see I’m supposed to be reviewing Frozen…”

“OH MY GOD SHUT UP YOU’RE AT FROZEN ALREADY?!”

“Yeah!”

“NO WAY!”

“I know!”

“It seems like just yesterday that…”

“I know, right?”

“Well congratulations!”

“Thank you.”

“No, seriously. I mean, you know. You stuck with it through to the end.”

“Well, you know, it was all for the fans…”

“That’s just…go you.”

“See, the thing is, I think people are expecting some kind of big epic climax with all the plotlines of the last two years just being tied up neatly and I just thought that since you’re my arch-nemesis…”

“I’m your arch-nemesis? Really?”

“Well yeah, I mean…amn’t I your arch-nemesis?”

“Oh…of course you are. (Yikes).”

“So…you want to come over?”

“You know Mouse, I’d love to but I don’t really have a lot of time what with this new job…hang on, call on the other line.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you for calling EA customer support, your call is important to us. Please hold. Sorry, where were we?”

“The Frozen review.”

“Right. Right. Listen, Mouse you’re overthinking this. Is this going to be the last review you do?”

“Well, no.”

“Right. Then it’s not an ending. You don’t need a big climax. And besides, if you just try to cram in as many cameos and running jokes as you can it’s just going to turn into a massive circle jerk. Your readers just want to see you review a movie they love. Trust your instincts, do the best job you can and that’ll be enough.”

“Wow. You’re right. Thanks HK.”

“Think nothing of it. Soon I shall destroy you.”

***

So.

Yeah.

What crushing burden of expectation?

Okay.

Alright.

Okay.

Wow.

Okay.

(more…)

The Hangman’s Daughter-Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21: GROETHUIS AND THE GOLDEN SCORPION

He lay on the slab as still as a gutted fish. His arms were bound. Strong, wiry cords clasped him to the hard bed, and he could not stir an inch. There was no need for binding. He was broken, his bones shattered, his skin seared red. With every breath he took he saw himself in his mind’s eye, tiny and naked, climbing a great mountain of black razor rock. Everything burned. There was not a cell of skin or speck of bone, it seemed, that did not cry out in pain.

He lay in agony. And he waited.

At times he would drift asleep, and then he would be woken by voices. Two dark figures would stand over his bed and talk in whispered tones , like great black clouds growling thunder at each other.

A harsh white light, of a kind Thomas had never seen before, hung from the ceiling and blinded him so that he could not make out their faces, and was forced to listen.

The first voice was silky and vile, it’s tones clipped like rose buds, all wormy and sly and it made him shiver when he heard it.

The second voice was cold, hard and deep. The voice of a killer. He could tell that much. He could tell simply from the way his fingers tried to form fists when he heard it.

(more…)

The Hangman’s Daughter- Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20: KATHY

When she awoke, she was in bed.

Mariana’s perfume was still trailing in the air, and she could smell wisps of it on her clothes and sheets.

Mariana…

She wrestled with the idea of Mariana killing Virgil. Was that the right word?

On the one hand, she knew he deserved it. But then, that wasn’t the reason she had done it. And was it ever right to kill, even a monster like Virgil?

Even as her body ached for sleep her mind was flying, battering itself from one thought to another like a blind bird in a cave. She lay awake, thinking over everything that Virgil had said. To even try to rescue her father, it seemed, was suicide. The Nine Unknown Men would kill her without a qualm if she tried to alter history for her own ends, no matter how noble. In the darkness she gnashed her teeth in anger. It was so unfair. She spoke to herself silently:

I am Marie. I can travel back in time. I can slow time around me. And one day I’ll be able to move across oceans just by thinking it.

Wow. But, say if you wanted to save someone who you loved very much from dying, could you do that?

Well, no.

But, what if you knew that they were in Hell and the only way to save them was by going back in time and warning them, you could do it then surely?

Nope. Can’t. Rules.

Oh. Well, at least you won’t get old.

Um, well actually I will.

Oh. So this time travelling? Is it actually any use at all?

Well. No. No it isn’t.

Right so.

(more…)

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #52: Wreck-It Ralph

Before we get into Wreck-It Ralph there’s something I want to say.

See this? This is Loki.

He’s a lying, traitorous, sociopath who brought untold death and destruction on Earth and plotted on several occasions to murder his own foster brother and father.

The ladies of the internet love Loki. And you know what? I get that. He’s charming, he gets all the best lines, he’s got a tragic backstory and he loves his muddah. And he’s played by Tom Hiddleston, who’s a right bit of yum. Ladies of the internet? I get it.

See this? This is Turbo.

Y’all are fuckin’ nuts.

***

I’ve mentioned before how Disney movies often take their sweet-ass time from conception to release (for example, the movie that eventually became Frozen was first conceived in 1937) and Wreck It Ralph is no exception. Disney first toyed with the idea of making a movie set in the world of video games (then titled High Score) all the way back in the 1980s, back when you could be forgiven for thinking that these new-fangled “video games” were just a passing fad that would soon be swept aside by the next big thing.

In hindsight, Disney dodged a bullet by not green-lighting POGS: The Movie.

“What?” I hear you cry (Mouse hears all) “Disney almost made a movie about video games thirty years ago.” Of course they did. This was eighties Disney. Desperate, starving, try-anything-to-seem-relevant Disney.

Make-a-pact-with-the-forces-of-pure-evil-for-a-chance-of-making-some-bank Disney
Oh-God-what-were-they-thinking? Disney.

And frankly, I don’t think we missed out on anything. I’ve mentioned already how I feel that some movies in the canon were made in the wrong era. For example, I will eternally lament the fact that the Peter Pan we ended up with was the pastel-coloured, safe, stultifyingly conservative Restoration era movie we got and not the gorgeous, dark, wild, Tar and Sugar movie that might have been. Wreck-It Ralph is not one of those movies. Wreck-It Ralph is like a wizard. It was neither late, nor early. It arrived precisely when it needed to. Firstly there’s the animation. I’ve made my peace with the notion of CGI canon movies. They’re here to stay, they can be done very well and I just have to live with it. But while I would have loved to see a traditionally animated Frozen or Tangled I can’t say the same about Wreck-It Ralph. This movie needed to be in CGI because, duh, these are computer generated characters. A cel-animated Wreck-It Ralph would just feel wrong. But aside from that, the world of computer games is just such a deeper subject for exploration now than it was in the eighties. There is a culture and lore and mythos to be mined that just wasn’t there thirty years ago. The whole medium is a thousand times broader and more diverse, and in fact some of the very best stuff in this movie is seeing character from vastly different generations and genres of game reacting to each other.

But was the movie worth waiting thirty years for?

Yes. Yes it was. Let there be absolutely no mystery of suspense on that point.

But just for hoots and chuckles, let’s take a look at the film.

(more…)

A long overdue thank you.

So huge thanks to everyone who voted for Unshaved Mouse in the Blog Awards. Voting’s now closed and we came in a very respectable fourteenth place considering the very broad and strong field (Irish Blogging. Serious Bidniz).

Congratulations to the top ten winners, may your readers be loyal, your hits many and may death come swiftly to your trolls.

Thanks again guys, the support is hugely appreciated as always.

Mouse.

The Hangman’s Daughter-Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19: VIRGIL

There was a great yellow moon sewn into the black and grey fabric of the night sky and the path ahead of the two men was a golden thread, leading them home.

“I hear there was a murder.”

“Yes.” Luke replied “Our magistrate.”

“I’m sure you’re all distraught.” said the youth tonelessly.

Luke did not reply, not wishing to lie, but not wishing to show disrespect for the dead.

“Did they catch the murderer?” and again the words were passionless.

“No.”

“Do you think they will?”

“I don’t know.”

The youth snorted at this, as if it amused him.

(more…)

My friends, the time has come for begging.

Okay guys, we’re now down to the wire for voting for the Blog Awards Ireland and Unshaved Mouse is now only a few (hundred) votes short of getting into the final ten. You know, some might think it’s impossible to get that many votes in three days. But I know you’ll simply consider it a challenge, because you are without fear.

If you got a mo, any votes would be most welcome. The link awaits beneath. Thanks guys.