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.
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?
Hello boys and ghouls! Just in time for Halloween, the second volume of Irish horror anthology The Dark Corner is out and your favourite morbid murid has a piece in it!
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.
Titus Andronicus, now THERE’S fun for all the family.
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.
“Bastard!”
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.
While I know it isn’t true, I like to imagine there’s one guy in Warner Bros who was put in charge of the Batman films in 1989 despite knowing nothing about comics in general or Batman in particular and who spends every day banging his head against a desk and screaming “what the FUCK do you people even WANT?!”
Because to a casual observer, there really is no rhyme or reason to which Batman movies succeed and which fail. Why was Batman Forever a massive hit and Batman and Robina franchise-killer? Why did audiences love Batmanand largely steer clear of Batman Returns? Why is a grim and gritty Batman great with Christopher Nolan but not with Zach Snyder?
And there’s no one answer, really. Audience expectations. The marketing. The directing. The acting. The writing. The music. There are hundreds of factors that decide whether a Batman movie will succeed, same as any other movie. And added to that there is a very specific problem with adapting this character to screen: nailing the tone.
Getting the tone of a Batman story right is a damnably tricky thing, and it’s something that writers have struggled with ever since the character was introduced 85 years ago. Let’s take a moment, firstly, to acknowledge that Batman has often been campy and fun and played for laughs. And often, as in the sixties Adam West series, or Batman: The Brave and the Bold, it’s been done to great effect. But, fundamentally, this is a character rooted in a mashup of crime fiction and the horror genre. Batman stories, from their very beginning, deal with murder, corruption and violence. A child witnesses his parents’ brutal slaying and devotes his life to waging violent nocturnal war against the criminal element. It ain’t baby-town frolics. And I think what trips up a lot of Batman writers is that they succumb to the temptation to wallow in miserabilism. They lean into the violence and the horror and the awfulness of the setting to a degree that it stops being in any way enjoyable.
The best Batman stories have stakes and drama and darkness, but it’s a certain kind of darkness. A darkness that takes itself seriously, but not too seriously. There is a dusting of pulpy camp that stops the darkness becoming overwhelming. It’s a very, very tricky tone to capture and, if I’m perfectly honest, no single live action director has ever managed to capture it perfectly.
That is, until Matt Reeves knocked it out of the fucking park in 2022.
“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.
Get in the robot, Fievel.
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 withSecret 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 Timeis very much a Stephen Spielberg film. Anastasiais 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.
And they’re weird as the dickens.
“Mouse, you seem to be swearing a lot less than usual. Are you feeling alright?”
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!
“Can I say “hi” back?”
“To THAT shower of degenerates?! Absolutely not.”
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 Planetand Atlantis: The Lost Empire the first was Titan A.E.
“Hey, what if cartoons, like, had sex?” is actually not as new a question as you might think. The cartoons have actually, like, having sex far longer than many people realise, with the first pornographic animations appearing at least four years before Micky Mouse did Steamboat Willy (which was not a porno which now seems like a bit of a missed opportunity).
But, while there has been sexually explicit animation for almost as long as there has been animation, it was always restricted to “stag” films. The mainstream perception of animation in the West, especially after the Hays office started cracking skulls, was that cartoons were for children.
Enter Ralph Bakshi.
Okay, if you’re a longtime reader of this blog then this isn’t your first rodeo. We have discussedhis workhere many a time and oft. Short version: Ralph Bakshi is at once a towering and transformative figure in the history of American animation and also kind of a terrible animator and film-maker. I can’t say I have actually enjoyed any of his films, but his best work tends to be the kind of grungy, ugly, politics-heavy film-making that you aren’t really supposed to enjoy. And, at least, Bakshi at his best his never boring.
No, you want really bad Bakshi you got to look at his tamer stuff. Either because he was taming himself to try and appeal to a broader audience (like Wizards) or because the studio held him down and cut his hair and forced him to conform to their, like, rules, maaaaan (like this fucking thing we’re about to review right here).
I will not mince words. This is the last of all Ralph Bakshi’s feature animations. I say “last” as in “last one he made” as well as “if all his movies were in a race, this is the one that wouldn’t even cross the finish line because it ate its own legs.”
This movie had a troubled history in the same way like, the Balkans, have had a troubled history and it’s easy to just blame the studio. In 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, gave Disney their biggest hit in history up to the that point, due in no small part to the instantly iconic appearance of Sexiest Cartoon of All Time Jessica Rabbit. Ralph Bakshi decided that, as the grandfather of sexy cartoons, the time had come for selling out. Bakshi approached Paramount and pitched them a dark cartoon horror story about a live action human who has sex with a cartoon woman and fathers a demonic half-human/half-toon child. Paramount greenlit the movie but forced Bakshi to cast Kim Basinger as the cartoon woman. Basinger wanted a more family friendly movie which led to the studio and Bakshi butting heads and resulting in the deeply compromised, barely coherent mess of a movie that we were left with. Everything that could go wrong with this movie did go wrong. Paramount launched a raunchy marketing campaign that completely oversold the limp PG 13 offering as some kind of taboo shattering sex-fest and then pretty much bribed the City of Los Angeles to allow them to descerate the Hollywood sign with a 75 foot cutout of Basinger’s character, Holly Would, which brought a hurricane of negative publicity.
What kind of monster would try and make the Hollywood sign TACKY?
Savage critical reaction and utterly abysmal word of mouth did the rest.
As I said, it’s easy to read that and assume that Bakshi was just another brilliant creative screwed over by the soulless suits but you know me. I never do things the easy way. Frankly, I think this project was doomed the second Ralph Bakshi thought he could do his own Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
See, the animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was overseen by Richard Williams who I would probably rank as the single most brilliant animator I have ever had the pleasure of reviewing if Hayao Miyazaki didn’t exist. And one of the reasons why Roger Rabbit works so well (apart from the fantastic script, excellent direction, phenomenal world-building, perfect score, terrifying villain, a career best performance from the late great Bob Hoskins and Jessica Fucking Rabbit ushering an entire generation into sexual awakening) was that there was literally nothing Williams could not do as an animator. That movie has characters from eight different animation studios from across three decades and they’re all rendered flawlessly. That movie is like Once Upon a Studiobut without the benefit of modern technology and feature length. That’s Richard Williams. That’s the guy.
Hey folks! As I’ve already mentioned, my third book The Burial Tideis due to hit shelves in Spring of next year. BUT! I can now reveal that my FOURTH book will also be released at around the same time!
That’s right! There will be twin Sharpson book babies in the new year. So what’s the newest addition about? Well, after starting out with a hard-boiled sci-fi/spy-thriller and two Celtic mythology influenceD horror novels, I’ve decided the next step in my writing career will be…a picture book about fish for kids aged three to seven.
Don’t Trust Fish will be published by Penguin Dial in the US, Andersen Press in the UK and Ireland and Penguin Australia in Kazakhstan *checks notes* I mean Australia and New Zealand.
Oh, and it’s illustrated by DAN FREAKING SANTAT, #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLING AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR AND WINNER OF A FRICKETY FRUCKETY CALDECOTT MEDAL.
Dude. Is. Legit.
Anyway, this is something I’ve been sitting on since the Pandemic and I cannot tell you how happy and proud and excited I am to finally get this out in the world.
unshavedmouse 