Because it's been a wacky Memorial Day Weekend! And that means we're on a two-posts-per-week summer schedule! Here is some news I managed to read in time to regurgitate here:
I should save this one for last, but here is a review, on Comics Alliance, of what just might be the greatest ever work of western literature. That was written by a nine-year-old girl. Circa 1990. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect.
Speaking of teaser trailers. When I reviewed "Happy Feet" back when this blog was young, I said that nothing in the world could be as deeply surreal as the in-film sight of a cute little newly hatched baby Emperor Penguin singing "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash. Suffice it to say that in the new teaser for "Happy Feet Two: Penguin in the City", George Miller has outdone that scene. Twice.
And on the same subject, the very funny "How Did This Get Made?" podcast discussed the notorious super-long McDonald's commercial/"E.T." rip-off "Mac and Me", and tried to determine exactly what the message of the movie was supposed to be.
And yet more things that might scar a child for life! While we're stuck with the incredibly stupid "Hey we should sue ourselves for stealing our own taste" campaign, Bogleech showed us that the way they advertise Coke Zero in the UK is... different.
There's a nifty new website called Living Lines Library with a ton of animation production art to sift through.
Well first off, because this just occurred to me, let's marvel at the fact that an early 80's flop with a modest but very loyal cult following has been given a gigantic, ambitious, big-budget sequel (the first of a hopeful long-running franchise) by a massive mainstream studio. Whether or not you think the movie is good, that is pretty amazing.
And all things considered, I rather liked "TRON: Legacy". I've got a soft spot for the original and given how long this film has been in development and how much Disney has been crapping itself over the film promoting it, it's much better than I expected it would be.
Of course, what I mean by this is that "Legacy" is a worthy sequel to the original "TRON". And that is to say, it's basically CGI eye-candy. It has a few interesting ideas here and there and it bothered me a little in hindsight that it didn't really play around with the interesting sci-fi concepts it easily could have. But to be honest, I didn't really expect it to (then again, it is very sad that I'm conditioned to not expect interesting sci-fi from big franchise sci-fi movies). The film takes a little bit to find it's footing, the villain's evil plan is incomprehensible, and there is an early scene that rivals Jim Hawking sky-sailboarding in "Treasure Planet" in it's hamfisted attempt to show the kids in the audience how awesome the hero is. All things considered, those weren't the things that I disliked most about this movie. If you've read this blog for a long time you probably know already what I'm going to rant about in the whole next paragraph.
There are three characters in this movie who are brought to animated life via motion capture. Two of them are little virtual TRON people, so it isn't too distracting. And of these, one of them is seen only briefly and the other is the villain so it's fine that he creeps you out a little (but oh ye Gods, when he shouts near the end... )
The third character is a person from the real world at a younger age. He looks fine at first when he faces away from us and when he is completely obscured by shadows and such. When he finally faces us, he looks terrible. Completely terrible. Like, in the same year we got the Winkelvoss twins in "The Social Network", he looks like something out of "Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within". No, worse than that. He looks like he was animated by somebody who had only the most vague idea of how human cheek muscles and jawbones work but has never ever actually watched someone talk before.
But other than this, the movie is really neat. Like the original, it's got a production design that doesn't really look like anything else that has come out of Disney, and I liked it for the sheer fact that the animation in the updated TRON universe is *really* pretty (hot dang, the new lightcycle transformation sequence!) Where the first "TRON" was basically, "Look at what we can do with computer animation!", this movie is, "Look at what we can do with computer animation NOW!" I'm genuinely sad that I didn't get to see this in IMAX.
I would be remiss if I did not mention Castor. I wouldn't dream of ruining the fun by explaining who he is or what to expect from him. Just know that Michael Sheen knew exactly what kind of movie "TRON: Legacy" should have been (a big retro cheesy meal). He comes in at just the right moment (after the movie almost grinds to a halt and nearly reaches a "9" level of Young Newbie: "Let's go actually do something" Old Fart: "No, everything must stay the same" wallbangery). And he steals the show right out from under Not Sam Worthington. Remember when we first saw Jack Sparrow in the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" and wondered, "how the hell did Disney let this fly?" Yep, same deal here.
Quorra's another fun character and I like how she takes the old Cute Girl Who Saves the Boring Hero meme in some different directions and the little flashes of the "things humans take for granted that an alien wouldn't quite 'get'" part of her personality. The music is amazing and overall the movie is a fun ride for fans of the original. I am actually pretty curious as to where Disney's going to take this franchise from here.
ADDENDUM: As this just hit me, months later: The weirdest thing about me reviewing "TRON: Legacy" as part of the Disney Animated Canon is the fact that CGI eye-candy is EVERYWHERE these days. So why consider "TRON" part of the Canon and not, say, "Pirates of the Caribbean"? "G-Force"? "Sorcerer's Apprentice"? You cannot deny that all these films include computer animated characters.
Well, the reason why "Legacy" (and any possible future "TRON" movies although the future looks a bit dim there right now) makes the cut is simply because it's parent did. And the one and only reason "TRON" made the cut is because Disney considered it one of their animated films in the early 80's, back when it was the most impressive recent thing they had to brag about. I don't suppose anyone is going to necessarily complain that I am not reviewing "G-Force" et al, but I supposed I ought to say something about it to cover myself.
For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.
Hooray, another Disney Animated Canon post! It's been too long. Ideally, we'll get two this week; I watched Disney movies while recovering from my cold and I now feel like approximately $990,988..
Movie #62: "Tangled"
2010 was a year full of amazing animated features. "The Illusionist" and "Legend of the Guardians" and "Tales From EarthSea" were very nice, I loved "Toy Story 3" and "Despicable Me" and "How to Train Your Dragon", and both "Secret of Kells" and "Sita Sings the Blues" knocked my socks off for entirely different reasons.
So I hope nobody takes it as *too* much of a criticism when I say that "Tangled" wasn't as good as some of these other films, OK? I am saying it isn't as good as "Toy Story 3", for goodness sake, and what recent movies are? (I am a little anxious about this because I got a few comments that implied that readers thought my saying, "'Alice in Wonderland' didn't suck as much as I thought it would" meant "Holy sh*t, this movie was amazing!" instead of, "Literally the best thing I can say for this movie is that it didn't entirely suck.")
"Tangled" is very good and well worth a watch (it pains me that some of you may have a hard time being convinced of this but we'll get to that in a minute). Overall, comparing it to other recent D.A.C. films, I didn't like it as much as "The Princess and the Frog". (Tangent: In particular, the songs aren't nearly as good. Alan Menken is working with a new lyricist and the lyrics are... Menken needs to get Joss Whedon on the phone.) But it is a damn sight better than "Bolt". The CGI is far better and more confident than in any of the previous CGI Disney films, and it is SO pretty. Only criticism here is that you have never noticed until now that some of Glen Keane's human characters' faces are, like, 40% eyeball.
Lastly, Disney needs to get a new marketing division like woah. As with "Frog", they've done a capital job of making the movie look like exactly what it isn't (I nailed it earlier last year when I called the "Tangled" ads a "Scott Pilgrim" level of misaimed marketing). Just how worried were they about the supposed "boys think princesses are icky" thing? This little-seen trailer, on the other hand, makes me want Disney to have a copy of my portfolio to review yesterday:
For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.
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Sketch of the Day!
I like water monsters. You like water monsters. We all like water monsters, so I did a digital painting of that water monster sketch from an earlier post:
Quick post today since I'm a bit busy IRL and, tragically, haven't had a chance to upload any new art anywhere. I can assure you that I am finished with my antibiotics and am now starting to almost feel like myself. (Not to be too graphic, but I've been eating lots of yogurt. After taking an antibiotic for more than a week. Biologist friends, think about it. Yeah. Euwww...)
I would like to thank the random person on the animation message board I happened to be reading for bringing my attention to this short film. It's called "Thought of You". It is by animator Ryan Woodward. And it is kind of mind-blowing.
And this is because, as far as I can determine from scouring Woodward's website, the whole thing is hand-drawn. This is worth watching in fullscreen, and while the song is a little blah, it is astonishing to realize that there's no rotoscoping, no motion capture (go look at that still from the "Tintin" trailer again, or better yet wait until Friday), just obsessively gorgeous observational drawing based off live dancers. There are no words for how simple and beautiful this is.
Speaking of little treasures of animation, it's incredibly rare to see any "news" about "The Brave Little Toaster". Thank Heaven I stumbled upon this interview with the film's director, Jerry Rees, and voice actress Deanna Oliver.
It's an hour long, but it's worth it for their stories of the symbolism of the characters, the absurdly small budget, the very strange release schedule, the deeply infuriating reaction of the judges at Cannes, sequel denial, deleted scenes that will never see the light of day (shades of "The Land Before Time"), and (Yes!) that scene with the flower. Obviously, don't watch this if you haven't seen the movie yet. But for longtime fans, it's a reminder of why "BLT" was one of those rare movies that feels like it appeared right out of the blue, in complete defiance of everything you know about mainstream animation, like a gift just to make you happy.
So... remember how I said I was sick last post? Yeah. Well, guess who has been infected by the magnificent bacterial Bronchitis?
Penicillin is a hell of a drug, it turns out. At this point, I am really miserable and sick and tired OF being miserable and sick and tired. I hope I am really getting this blog post ready to publish and that this isn't one of those horribly vivid dreams I've been having.
Oh God, oh God, the dreams... My recovery schedule has been like, 1) Wake up and take drugs; 2) Pass right back out; 3) Dream an entire day; 4) Wake up and learn than only an hour or two has passed by and freak out; 5) Repeat for second and third doses during the day.
So in lieu of anything of real substance, here are some Links of Interest...
ToughPigs shared their photographs of an incredible Epic Muppet Mural.
If I could round up enough pictures, I would love to do a post about Mickey Mouse with totally random and unlikely people. This picture would be a grand place to start.
The beloved film "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" is - ready for this? - forty years old. The cast recently had a reunion to celebrate. This article reports on it and what every child who grew up with the film is secretly thinking.
Apparently Barry Sonnenfeld and Grant Morrison are working on a hopefully better than it sounds multimedia franchise informally called - and I promise you I am not making this up - "Dinosaurs vs. Aliens". (I move that we retitle "Independence Day" to now be, "Mammals vs. Aliens".)
Speaking of strange dinosaurs, Tetrapod Zoology has written a fine article about a very weird theory about sauropods that I am very happy I didn't imagine.
Speaking of strange, er, Ornithodirans, guess who's back? Back again? Dave Peters is back. Tell a friend. More serious stuff involving dinosaurs: our own Dave Maas has created an awesome CGI Archaeopteryx. OMG, that walk cycle!
Wow, this trailer looks pretty especially the scene with the pirate ship and the desert near the end! Maybe they will finally reveal what Tintin looks like at the end of this trailer?
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Sketch of the Day!
I love designing T-shirts!
And yes, this lake monster might be from a Penicillin-induced dream.
Err, that is to say, drugs are bad, impressionable younger readers. Don't do drugs.
I am suffering a particularly nasty cold this week. It's making me tired all the time (when it isn't giving me insomnia) and I'm feeling pretty darn miserable.
So instead of a longer post where I whine about being sick, or try to form coherent thoughts about Disney movies or dinosaurs or whatever, I am going to share this old Disney animated short I rediscovered recently. In it, Goofy adopts a pet dog. (And not that this would make it better, but note that it is definitely Goofy and not his creepily even more anthropomorphic George Geef persona.)
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Oh hey, what's this (aside from just slightly more content)?
(Yeah, it still looks like "Lost McAvatar - But they're in the Late Cretaceous!")
Yeah, It's going to take me a very long time to sort through all the Comicon stuff. Especially since the Evil Norway Maple in front of my house has been making up for time lost during the terrible winter we've had by spewing it's pollen everywhere. It feels like my entire respiratory system is coated with yellow and I've been coughing up a storm. Just took some famous name-brand medicine advertised with one of the most irritating ad campaigns ever devised and now I feel like I could never cough again ever. Or make typey fingers make sense of words in brain-thingy
So today, to save me some stress, we're going to play a game based off something I'd been wanting to write about for a while: the striking similarities between some of the crazier Pokedex entries and the descriptions of real animals in Medieval Bestiaries.
Consider: According to the in-game story, the Pokedex is the first collection of information about the Pokemon species in a new area. Bestiaries were apparently the first attempts at natural history field guides. And they both have some... *interesting* theories about the local animals' behavior and abilities.
So everybody get a sheet of paper and number it 1-10. Write down whether you think the following interesting facts about creatures (I will be replacing the terms "this animal" and "this Pokemon" with "this creature" to avoid dead giveaways) are from a Pokedex or a Bestiary. Then check the answers in Spoilertext (highlight to see it) and lie back with a strong drink and reflect on just how far the study of biology has come.
1) These creatures come from trees that grow over water. The young hang from their beaks from the trees. When they are mature, they fall from the trees and transform into birds.
2) This creature sleeps while cleverly balancing itself on one foot. As soon as it spots others of its kind, it congregates with them and then begins crying noisily in unison.
3) The mother nourishes her young with her own blood. After three days of mourning over her dead young, the mother pierces her side and lets her blood fall on their dead bodies to revive them.
4) This creature pines for the mother it will never see again. Seeing a likeness of its mother in the full moon, it cries. The stains on its face are from it's tears.
5) This creature arose from the spirits of people interred in graves in past ages. Each retains memories of its former life as a human.
6) To rejuvenate itself, it flies up to the sun, which burns off its old feathers and eyes. It tears off its old beak and claws with a stone. It then plunges three times into water, and its body is entirely restored.
7) The fierce nature of this creature makes it so hot that its blood can dissolve diamonds.
8) This creature senses coming disasters and appears before people only to warn them of impending danger. Mistaken as a bringer of doom, it fled high into the mountains. Its life span is over a hundred years.
9) This creature is always hermaphroditic, and must therefore never be eaten. They live near tombs and eat the dead bodies they find there. These creatures will circle a house at night, calling out words with the voice of a human. Anyone who goes out to investigate is eaten.
10) Its beautiful mane is made up of hair in every color and at the tip of its tail is a tuft of magical fur. If captured, the creature bites off the tuft so that nobody can get it. It cannot turn its neck, so if it wants to look behind itself it must spin its whole body around. It is said that if this creature looks at you before you see it, you won't be able to speak.
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An Swears!
Before I give the answers, I'd like to thank the Medieval Bestiary website and the Psypokes Pokedex. They were both invaluable in jogging my pollen-addled memory.
1) Bestiary entry for the Barnacle Goose. I'm honestly surprised there isn't a Grass/Flying type based off this legend yet. This was so widely taken for granted that it was considered perfectly okay to eat goose during Lent. After all, its really a plant, right?
2) Pokedex entry for Baltoy. Funny how one of the weirdest Pokemon has a fairly mundane entry.
3) Bestiary entry for the African Pelican. This is surprisingly prevalent in folklore of the time and helps explain why you may see stained glass windows of pelicans feeding their own blood to their young in churches. And how did the pelican's babies die? Well, sometimes they are killed be a hunter or another animal, and sometimes the mother pelican herself accidentally kills them. Thankfully, they always come back to life at the end of the story, but even so, I think the mother pelican needs to go have a string drink with Cubone. Speaking of...
4) Pokedex entry for Cubone! And this was absolutely the saddest Pokedex entry ever until...
5) The Pokedex entry for Yamask! Because it would have been too much of a giveaway, I left out the part where Yamask carries around a mask to remind itself of what it looked like as a human. "Sometimes," says the Pokedex, "they look at the mask and cry." Ye gods. The sheer existential horror of Yamask's situation is ridiculous. It changes everything about Ghost-types. These past two entries are the main reasons why I am hoping for goodness sake that the Pokedex is based entirely on folklore.
6) Bestiary entry for the Golden Eagle. Now you know where that ridiculous Powerpoint thing your aunt sent you came from. (The entry for the "Eagle Rebirth" over at Snopes is priceless.)
7) Bestiary entry for the "He-Goat". Honestly, if an animal with a body temperature that is hot enough to melt diamonds isn't right out of the Pokedex, I don't know what is.
8) Pokedex entry for Absol. The disdain for an animal based upon serious misconceptions about it reminded me a great deal of the next bestiary entry.
9) Bestiary entry for the Hyena. For my money, this is the craziest entry in the whole book.
10) Bestiary entry for the Ethiopian Wolf. To which one can only say, "what?"
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On a lighter note, a post over at SomethingAwful brought this very very very weird and undeniably awesome piece of animation to my attention. I can't even imagine how long it must have taken to do all this. I'm linking it because the animation style is freaky enough to scare the young 'uns. Also, it is in Russian, so you may want to activate subtitles... though you really won't need them.
As one comment says, "I feel like I was shown everything. Ever. All at once." ----
This was easily the best Boston Comicon I've ever attended. Mad props to the show-runners and event organizers and the convention center and to and all the artists and vendors and costumed characters and like such as who participated and/or attended. Major major thanks to everyone I met who bought a print or a card or who just took the time to visit my sites or who picked up a Comicbook Artists Guild application. And thanks to the Guild itself for letting me take up a few cubic feet of their table for the better part of the show.
As usual, I'm overwhelmed with free stuff along with photographs and drawings to sort through. And that's going to take... a while. Like, I'll probably save my Comicon stories for next week. Until then, here are some new
Links of Interest!
So... you may have heard that some serious *EEsht* went down Sunday night. The Hollywood Reporter compiled some of the best/sweetest/strangest reactions from popular Twitter feeds. I am the person John Legend is talking about. If you were wondering, it's more weird than hilarious.
On a (much) lighter note, I love "Scott Pilgrim vs the World", I love "Friendship is Magic", and thus I wish I had come up with this trailer mash-up first.
O.T.I.S. visited the New England Aquarium and came back with lots of great photographs.
I read this weird story about Mike Tyson's tattoo artist and immediately wondered if he was suffering from the same ego-inflating disease that recently infected Greg Paul.
The blog "Good Show, Sir!" is a repository of really weird trade paperback cover art. I think their newest find is my favorite so far.
We didn't talk much about current happenings in mainstream comics at the CAG table, but I did overhear some people wagering that once our old friends the Mainstream News (click the "Epic Fail" tab below) heard about a certain plot twist that happens in Action Comics #900, they'd blow it way the hell out of proportion. Guess what? They did. (Guys, he's an alien. Chill out.)
