Video Reviews #1: Snow White
So now, not only do we have Erik Copper doing the audio versions of my reviews, Mauricio Guarua is doing video versions of Erik’s audio versions of my reviews. At this rate by next week we’ll have turned this thing into an all singing, all dancing musical and will be coming soon to a theatre near you. In the meantime though, please enjoy Mauricio’s/Erik’s/My review of Snow White:
League of Volunteers now available for online purchase!
Right, so you may remember that back in August I mentioned that I was writing a three issue arc for superhero comic, League of Volunteers and that the first issue would be on sale soon. Okay, so I may have stretched the definition of the word “soon” to the point where it could now probably play in the NBA but I am delighted to announce that League of Volunteers: Return of the King #1 is now on sale at the Atomic Diner Website for €5 (’bout seven dollars). If you like superheroes, and you like this blog…you see where I’m going with this right?
If so inclined, you can buy the comic here. Ah go on.
LISTEN UP!
Say, do you like reviews of Disney movies that are more surrealist stream of consciousness with a heavy seasoning of cuss words but don’t hold with all that fancy book reading? Well, starting from today we’ve got you covered. Erik Copper, a fan of the blog, has taken it upon himself to record audio versions of the reviews which I’ll be linking to and uploading as they become available. Now, at last, you’ll be able to enjoy Unshaved Mouse while driving, operating heavy machinery or making love to your spouse. What’s more, since I’m not reading them myself you can enjoy the reviews without being distracted by my impenetrable Irish brogue.
“Ah muise and begob sure ’tis a fine Disney movie to be sure, to be sure, to be sure.”
At the moment we have Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi
and Saludos Amigos. Erik’s done an awesome job and really should check them out.
All the best,
Mouse
Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #40: The Emperor’s New Groove
(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.)
***
So let me tell you a little story about the worst movie Disney never made. It was called Kingdom of the Sun, an epic retelling of the story of the Prince and the Pauper set in the Incan Empire. Roger Allers, director of the Lion King was at the helm, Owen Wilson was cast as the Pauper, David Spade was the Prince, Eartha Kitt was playing the villainous sorceress Yzma who was to be animated by the legendary Andreas Deja. Oh, and the score was to be provided by legendary rocker Sting. Sounds pretty awesome, right? So what happened? Well, the movie making business is a huge, complex and labyrinthine affair and the reasons why certain movies fail and others succeed is never clear cut but if I had to guess I’d have to say it was because it sucked balls. Test audiences hated the movie, which was a problem because half the damn thing was already completed. So Mark Dindal, director of Cats Don’t Dance, was brought in to make the movie a bit more light hearted and audience friendly. Dindal and Allers pretty soon found themselves at odds to the point where each director was essentially making a different movie. The Disney execs had been willing to give Allers a lot of leeway because…y’know…fucking Lion King…but it was becoming increasingly apparent that Kingdom of the Sun wasn’t going to make it’s 2000 release date. And this was a problem because Disney had signed merchandising deals with McDonald’s and Coke who probably had Michael Eisner’s daughter as collateral or something. Allers asked for a six month extension to get his shit together. 
And so Allers left and it fell to Dindal to pull off one of the most amazing salvage jobs in modern movie history. Out of the ashes of Kingdom of the Sun, came Emperor’s New Groove, which I have now rewatched and feel confident in saying is the single greatest comedy in the entire Disney canon. Funnier than Robin Hood and Jungle Book. It’s hilarious. In fact, it’s so funny that I’m pretty much totally screwed. There is nothing harder to review than a good comedy, especially if you are a quote unquote “comedic” reviewer. I mean, look, I think I can be pretty funny on a good day, but there is no way in hell that I can write a review that will make you laugh more than just watching this thing. But, as long we’re all agreed that this is an exercise in futility, I’m game if you are. Okay, so Dindal basically decided that there was no chance in hell they could do the kind of epic, Lion King-esque movie that Allers had planned in the time left, so they might as well just have fun. Gone was the Prince and the Pauper storyline. Yzma was now a wacky mad scientist. The Emperor, Kuzco, was now an entitled jerk. The tapes for Owen Wilson’s performance were taken and cast out into the wilderness to be feasted on by jackals with a taste for deadpan Texan delivery and John Goodman was brought in to replace him. Everything was now stripped down, small cast, simple plot, no big animated set pieces. Oh, and all but two of the songs Sting wrote were tossed out. Sting would later say: “At first, I was angry and perturbed. Then I wanted some vengeance.” Well, having had to listen to My Funny Friend and Me, I too want some vengeance, Sting.
And here it is.
Let’s take a look at the film.
***
Well…that’s that.
Mr Neil Sharpson and the Sunday Independent
The Press Ombudsman has decided that the Sunday Independent made an offer of sufficient remedial action to resolve a complaint by Mr Neil Sharpson that an article published on 25 August 2013, reporting certain claims about alternative technologies, was in breach of Principles 1 (Truth and Accuracy) and 2 (Distinguishing Fact and Comment) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines.
The article reported on what it said was a groundbreaking new Irish technology that “could be the greatest breakthrough in agriculture since the plough.”
Mr Sharpson complained that the claims made in the article were not justified and that the newspaper had compromised its authority as a source of public information by publishing them. The newspaper responded that the complainant was perfectly entitled to enter into a debate on the merits or otherwise of the claimed breakthrough, and invited him to submit a letter for publication.
The complainant submitted two letters strongly challenging the scientific claims reported in the article and the newspaper’s decision to publish it. Neither of these, however, satisfied the newspaper’s requirements that the response should be a measured one capable of being published in a national newspaper as opposed to on a blog, and left open its offer to consider publishing a more appropriate version of his letter subject to the usual legal and editorial constraints.
It is clear that, in matters of controversy, newspapers provide a service to their readers by making space available to the protagonists of different points of view and this article was, on the face of it, likely to give rise to substantial controversy. At the same time, the newspaper was within its rights in limiting its offer to publish a letter from the complainant to one that would comply with the necessary legal and editorial constraints and, for this reason, the offer constituted an offer of sufficient remedial action to resolve the complaint.
Check this Guy Out!
My brother’s band Feeding Time at the Zoo have released their first EP and you can listen to them here and you should listen, and like and share and download and tweet and cyber…surf (I’m old) because it is seriously awesome.
Really, it’s the shit. Really, really good.
Now I know what you’re thinking: “Well, of course he’s going to say it’s good, it’s his brother.”
WRONG!
Because right now, we are embroiled in a bitter inheritance dispute and if I could do anything to hurt him, I would. But I can’t badmouth this track, it’s just too good.
“Ha! Just as I planned, brother! And soon, the plantation shall be mine!”
“Never! Our parents promised that land to the orphanage!”
“Yes! But they “tragically” died in that plane crash, leaving everything to me in the will!”
“You bastard! That will was a forgery and I’ll prove it!”
“No need, Mouse!”
“Doctor Drake Ramoray!”
“Yes! And I have shocking news! Your parents are still alive! AND THEY’RE NOT YOUR PARENTS!”
TO BE CONTINUED?
Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #666: The Nightmare Before Christmas
(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.)
***
Hi everyone. So, unfortunately I’ve got some bad news. I know you were all looking forward to my review of Emperor’s New Groove but I’m afraid I just wasn’t able to get it done on time. Sorry. I’ve actually been going through a lot of personal problems recently that’ve been making it hard to write. You all know of course that I recently suffered a severe trauma.
Why God?
But reviewing Dinosaur was just the straw that broke the mouse’s back. I’m just…
I’m tired of this. I’ve reviewed over forty movies now and it’s just getting so hard to come up with new jokes every two weeks. It’s just the same routine over and over again.
And I! Mouse! The Un-shaved king…have grown so tired of the same old thing…
Oh, don’t say that meu amigo. You just need a little break.
Hmm…you seem vaguely familiar. I feel like I know you, but blocked out the memory for some reason. Weird.
I get that a lot. You know what you need? You need to review something a little different. Like this!
The Nightmare Before Christmas? Well, it is a great movie. And it is Halloween. But…no, I couldn’t. It’s not part of the canon!
You’ve reviewed plenty of movies that aren’t in the canon. You even reviewed An American Tail when you were in the Bluthverse.
That’s true…wait, how could you know that?
Let’s just say I’m well informed. Come on Mouse. Review the movie. You know you want to.
No, no. I can’t. All the reviews I do are in strict chronological order. Nightmare Before Christmas came out in 1993, I’m already into 2000.
And what a great decade that was! You’re right. I’ll leave you to review Brother Bear, Chicken Little, Home on the Range…
Okay! Okay! You’ve talked me into it. I mean, it’ll be fine. So I temporarily forsake my sacred oath to review all the canon Disney classics in order? What’s the worst that could happen?
What indeed?
Okay. So, The Nightmare Before Christmas. Little basic housekeeping out of the way first, this movie was in fact neither written nor directed by Tim Burton.
Yeah, NO idea why you might think that.
You’ll remember from the Fox and the Hound review that Tim Burton was an animator at Disney before leaving to become a big time Hollywood muck-a-muck. He came up with the concept for the film, based on a poem he himself wrote in 1982, and designed most the of the characters but when the time came to actually shoot the thing, Burton was too busy making Batman Returns and handed directing duties off to Henry Selick, and scriptwriting chores to Caroline Thompson and Michael McDowell. However, I don’t want to undersell Burton’s contribution as this is still probably the most “Tim Burtony” film ever made. That’s really down to the fealty with which Selick treated Burton’s designs and ideas. I mean sure, they put Burton’s name over the thing because he was the bigger draw, and that kind of sucks for Selick…but at the same time, it does very much feel like Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. But of course, the clues are there that Burton didn’t actually direct it. Because Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter aren’t in it and Burton never does anything without Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. And I’m not just talking about movies, either. Burton doesn’t go to the bathroom without Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (Depp pulls the fly down, Carter pulls it back up).
Nightmare has two big influences, the old Rankin/Bass stop-motion Christmas specials and even more so, the 1966 animated version of Dr Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jack Skellington was envisioned by Burton as being a kind of anti-Grinch, a macabre character who adores Christmas instead of loathing it, but whereas the Grinch changes once he comes to understand Christmas, Jack never does and the movie implies that really that’s okay. Christmas is not for everyone.
Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #39: Dinosaur
(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.)
“All that remained of his herd were his mother, grandmother and his grandfather. He knew them by sight, by sound and by their love.”
The Land Before Time, 1988
“That, children, is what’s known as a jerkasaurous.”
Dinosaur, 2000
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the classic Disney movies are a lot like hardcore porn, and I’m not just saying that because putting the words “dinosaur” and “porn” in a blog post is my best chance of scamming a few page views before this “dino-erotica” news fad runs its course.
I’d say “don’t judge me”, but honestly I’d think less of you if you didn’t.
What I mean is, it’s hard to exactly define what makes a Disney classic, but you know it when you see it. Like porn. Even dinosaur porn. Read my blog, perverts. Take for example, Sleeping Beauty and The Avengers. They’re both technically Disney movies in that they were released by Walt Disney studios, but one is considered part of the canon classics and the other isn’t. Why is that? It’s not because Sleeping Beauty is wholly animated, because there are plenty of movies in the canon that are partially or even mostly live action (Saludos Amigos for example.) It’s really more just a question of looking at a movie and saying “Yes…this fits.” Today’s movie did not clear that barrier when it was first released. Disney did not consider Dinosaur part of the canon classics, which means that by rights I should have skipped over it and should be pissing my pants right now watching the side-splitting awesomeness of The Emperor’s New Groove. But no, Dinosaur has since been retroactively shoe-horned into the canon and it’s all thanks to one person.
You are fucking DEAD blondie.
Sigh. Look, Rapunzel? I’m glad you now get to call yourself the fiftieth canon Disney movie. Good on you. You earned it, what with being the beloved fairytale princess character who rescued the flagging fortunes of the Disney studio.
In Disney’s defence, it’s only the fourth time that’s happened.
I just have one question, Rapunzel. Did you have to ruin my life to do it?
See, I hate this movie. Like a lot. Like, “congratulations Black Cauldron, you no longer live at the bottom” hate it.
Dinosaur was in the works for a long time, originally pitched to Disney as a stop-motion film by none other than Paul Verhoeven. Because, when I think of creators and studios who were made for each other…I do not think of Paul Verhoeven and Disney. At all. Like, not even a little. Verhoeven’s original pitch was for a silent, almost nature documentary film which would be extremely violent and end with the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous. And yeah, Paul? Did you just get high and walk into the wrong studio? Disney instead decided to sit on the idea until computer effects technology had advanced enough to create realistic animated dinosaurs and that is your problem right there. People who like this movie always mention the visuals. The whole advertising campaign was just showing the first few wordless minutes of the movie to showcase the animation. The damn tagline is “Like nothing you’ve ever seen”. This was a movie made to showcase special effects technology, not because anyone involved had a story to tell. Which is why everything outside the animation is rote, tacked-on, hacky and mediocre. And even the animation isn’t that great. I mean, I suppose it’s impressive considering it was Disney’s first fully computer animated feature.
Actually Mouse, since it uses live action backgrounds it’s only partially computer animated…
NIT, SHUT UP I AM IN NO MOOD FOR PEDANTRY!
Deep breath.
Okay, I always try to be positive so let me tell you the two things I like about this movie:
1) I like that they avoid the usual T-Rex/Triceratops/Stegosaurus/Diplodocus clichés and actually use some more obscure dinosaur species.
2) There is the kernel of an interesting debate here about a society’s obligation to look after its most vulnerable members versus the greater good of the strongest and fittest. Kind of…the Obamacare debate with dinosaurs.
Aaaaand…
That’s it. Nothing left but to unhinge my jaw like a python and let the bile gush forward.
Ah well, ’twas not to be…
So unfortunately, this time around the Unshaved Mouse is out of the running for the Blog Awards Ireland. Although it didn’t make it into the top ten, it held steady at around the 14/15 mark which, for a one year old blog run by a single rodent I think is pretty damn good going. And not’s not down to me, that’s down to you. I want to thank everyone who voted and who put up with my constant haranguing for more votes. I didn’t enjoy it, but I did quite enjoy getting back into weekly posts and finding stuff to write about outside of my usual Disney wheelhouse. In fact, if I get nominated next year, I’d like to make October “Post-a-week” month. Anyway, your support has meant so much to me the last few weeks, and has made me feel simulataneously proud and humble. That shouldn’t be possible, but here we are. I am so damn prumble right now.
Thanks everyone,
Mouse.
unshavedmouse 