WDW 2011 - Everything Cool is Old Again... or Something.

Brace yourselves, everyone. I'm taking a big step out of the winter doldrums and attempting to get back to my traditional three-times-a-week posting schedule.

There wasn't much new going on in Walt Disney World since our last visit there. About the only interesting brand new stuff in Magic Kingdom was the fact that Toontown was completely shut down and there was a lot of construction as detailed in this very long Orlando Theme Park News post (with a bonus scary photo of the Space Mountain track with the lights on). The Flower and Garden Festival over at Epcot was lovely as always too (and Theme Park News has a boatload of photos for that event as well.)

The most unusual thing about this year's visit to WDW was the fact that some of the best things we saw were kind of old.



I only had a few days in the park (my primary reason for going was to visit my aunt) so I had to be pretty picky about what I was going to wait in line for. Honestly, seeing the beautiful Epcot flowers and being in the sun was more than enough (especially, and I will freely admit this, for my mental health). But there was one thing I was dead set on seeing this trip:



Hell and yes.

If you are unfamiliar with the greatest and best 3-Effin-D movie ever made, TV Tropes and (of course) Orlando Theme Park News has some decent introductions. If you ARE familiar with "Captain EO", and the very mention of it gave you a nostalgia buzz, you should make this a priority if you happen to be visiting Disney World soon. "EO" looks and sounds better than I remember and "Honey I Blew Your Eardrums Out" can go to hell for all I care. Unfortunately, Disney has been mum as to how long they will keep the good Captain in his rightful place. The attendant at the theater said something lame about "eh, we'll keep it until crowds drop down."



"EO" is still a very big draw. That's a packed house right there; standing room only! Make sure you get to the theater in time to see the preshow as it is a trip in it's own right.



Over in Magic Kingdom, the classic Main Street Electric Light Parade was staging a long-overdue comeback (I apologize for the eye-watering pictures, but that's night photography for you). Now, I might have seen this back when I was too little to remember anything, so it was new to me.

Having grown up during a certain Disney era, one in which most of their parades are either dedicated to their current movie in theaters or to the best-loved moments in their most popular movies, there were some moments in the circa 1977 Electric Light Parade that struck me as a little weird. And you know how I know this parade is from 1977?



Because it ends in a totally awesome Bicentennial-themed float...



With an incredible gigantic Elliot float ahead of it. "Pete's Dragon" was Disney's latest movie in 1977. As Elliot passes by, you can almost hear the chorus of children asking, "WTF is that?"





The "Peter Pan" and "Alice in Wonderland" floats have aged much better, all things considered. But I don't know what they were thinking when they designed these next two floats:



(That thing has got to scare children.)



Would you believe they decided on the Nightmare Fuel-errific Pleasure Island sequence to represent "Pinocchio"? Yep, cavorting mutant donkey-boys and everything.



I love the random goofy bee and centipede, as well as the other cute little beetles, snails, turtles, and such. You'll see why in a minute.



As the parade winds it's way down towards the central hub, let us look back to 1985 why not, and the very best television appearance of the Main Street Electrical Parade ever. (For the more prosaic among us, note that the only real difference between the older versions of the floats and the 2011 versions is that their old Christmas lights were swapped out for new LEDs. Also, I am genuinely surprised the "TRON" people didn't make an appearance in the 2011 parade.)



After the parade, we saw the newly-added prologue to the "Wishes" fireworks called "The Magic, the Memories, and You!" It's a strange ride indeed, with animation projected upon Cinderella Castle itself, in the manner of this breathtaking promotional video (annoying song warning).





----

Art of the Day! Random Imaginary Bird-Creatures! Click for big.

Four Weirder Nutcracker Films

This year's Obligatory Thanksgiving Weekend Holiday Film is something called "Nutcracker 3D". I first heard about it via my Holiday Movie Preview issue of Entertainment Weekly, and I assumed that it was going to be essentially exactly what it sounded like: a taping of the Nutcracker ballet but in (sigh) THREE-EFFIN'-D!!!

How wrong I was.



Gaze upon what "Alice in Wonderland" hath wrought, and shudder when you realize we are going to see more - a lot more - of these. (Nightmare Fuel warning, depending on whether it's creepy wooden doll-puppets or creepy made-up animal-people that scare you. Also, people of a certain age will have horrible Large Marge flashbacks.)

Now, at first, I was going to be all like, "This holiday season, give your family nightmares!" But then I thought about it and realized that this isn't the first Nightmare Fuel-errific film adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffman's The Nutcracker, nor is it the strangest.

Let's get the Nightmare Fuel out of the way. Back in the 1980's, the Pacific Northwest Ballet allowed our old friend Maurice Sendak to put his own spin on the Nutcracker ballet. The result was filmed by Carroll Ballard (better known for outdoorsy epics like "The Black Stallion" and "Never Cry Wolf"), and released to theaters as "Nutcracker: The Motion Picture". Now, for those of you who thought "Where the Wild Things Are" was too psychological and/or weird for children, I invite you to enjoy the most normal scene from "Nutcracker". (Why did you turn Uncle Drosselmeier into a creepy uncle, Maurice? Why? )

On the surface, Mark Morris' "The Hard Nut" seems like it would be stranger than Maurice Sendak's version -- but it turns out it's actually one of the better adaptations of Hoffman's original, printed-page Nutcracker. It's still very weird; check out Charles Burns' character designs. After all this, "The Nutcracker Prince" is going to look really dull. Ah well. Now, I wanted to finish this post with something special, but sadly all footage of one particular "Nutcracker" adaptation has been pulled from the internet (except for this one Spanish scene and this one English scene. Go figure.) It's a version that is available on DVD, even though it's very obscure, and for whatever reason I loved it as a child. It's "The Care Bears Nutcracker Suite". And yeah, it's weirder than you'd expect. ---- Sketch of the Day! Got something ambitious planned for Thanksgiving morning's post. We'll just have to see if I can pull it off...

So... Brett Ratner is making a Darker And Edgier (tm) version of "Snow White" for some damn reason.

Here's the announcement from something named Deadline. Couple of quick summary/points:

* - This is happening because of Tim "Where's the Guy Who Gave Us Large Marge" Burton's "Alice in Wonderland"

* - It is going to be part of a wave of mutilation Darker and Edgier (tm) versions of childrens literature previously tackled by Disney (though, to be fair, Disney is not the only studio responsible for all the upcoming new movies).

* - These are all going to involve (or have, in some cases, already involved) the most random film-makers imaginable.

* - They are currently planning for all these films to be, you guessed it, in 3 (f***ing) D.

* - Somewhere out there is a version of the folktale "Snow White" that I was unaware of** that involves a dragon. ** - As I have my Masters of Education with a focus on childrens media, this makes me feel sad.

* - This is, and I quote, "not your grandfather's Snow White."

Well. Huh.

In other Darker and Edgier (tm) news, dammitsomuch!!! No! Just, no! Bad studio! (Slaps studio.) Bad!!!

And in other depressing film news, we can't have nice things. Nice things like, say, a Wayne D. Barlowe designed Smaug. (Gee, I was just thinking that "The Hobbit" wasn't taking long enough.)

Addendum: In the words of Tinny Tim, "You built up my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir. Good show!"

----

Sketch of the Day! Let is counteract the sadness with a cute character design!

In Which we finally discuss the CGI Coyote in the Room

That is to say, I'm finally going to say something about "The Looney Tunes Show" and the new Wile E. Coyote shorts. Here's information about both series, via the wonderful /Film:

"Last time Warner Bros. tried to reinvent the classic Looney Tunes stable of characters, the result was a disaster. The 'Loonatics Unleashed' featured absurd 'extreme' versions of the characters that were booed off television within two years.

"Now WB is trying again with a new cartoon series and a set of 3D shorts that will play in theaters. Why would you even think about having confidence in this new approach? Because the studio is going back to the basics... Three new Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote shorts have been approved and three more are in development. The 3D shorts will debut in front of 'Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore' at the end of July. (Great. So now we have to go see that.)

"Then the new 'The Looney Tunes Show', a 26-episode half-hour series, will appear on Cartoon Network this fall. There Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck will be 'odd-couple roommates in a contemporary cul-de-sac' with neighbors Yosemite Sam, Tweety Bird, Sylvester, Marvin the Martian and Porky Pig."

This is pretty much all we know for now.  Eh....... Could be worse. Not digging the "Bugs Bunny living in a suburban house" thing (that should have stayed in the comic books), but it could be worse.
Speaking of worse, that Fully-Rendered 3D CGI Wile E. Coyote.  Ugh.  It reminds me of this wonderful essay (with a follow-up here) written by Will Finn addressing the fact that not every computer animated character has to be almost-realistic. 

You can't really say that CGI!Wile E. isn't photo-realistic like, say, the characters in "Avatar" are. He is still recognizably based on the wonderfully expressive Chuck Jones character design we all fell in love with. Yet, for some dang reason, every damn strand of canine fur and scale of skin on his cold nose has to be fully rendered in ludicrous detail. Why? Just... why?

----

Sketch of the Day! My Crack Pairing! Let me show you it!



Speaking of Crack Pairings, I kinda wish I was a projectionist right now. Because if I was, I would swap out the last reel of "Sex and the City 2" for the last reel of "Splice". I'd be fired on the spot for doing this, but I would regret nothing! Nothing!

Top Five Unresolved Plot Points from... "Avatar: the Last Airbender".

I know, but It's going to take me a while to process the "Lost" finale. (Exceedingly minor spoilers in that link.)



So here's a rundown of mysteriously abandoned characters and plotlines from another television series my entire family was in total agreement of and that none of us wanted to end. Supposedly, the producers are working on some feature-length direct-to-DVD sequels. Hopefully, these will be at least be addressed if not fully wrapped up.
Mind you, I love the hell out of this series. Unfortunately, this kind of thing kinda comes with the territory when the network decides that they're only going to give you half a season to wrap everything up in your epic fantasy series. Wah.
These are in no particular order:

The White Lotus Society
They built this up so badly in the final season. This secret society made up mostly of cool older characters did show up in the finale, but their previous mentions in the series were so mysterious. So this isn't technically a dropped plot, but it's one of those things, like the Blue Spirit and Combustion Man and, infamously, Uncle Iroh's jailbreak, that we expected to have a much, much bigger payoff

Toph's Family
For a lot of people, this is one of the big ones. So Toph is a character who joins the main cast early in the second season, and she quickly becomes one of the best characters in the show. Thing is, she is a runaway; she went off on her adventures with Aang and company without saying anything to her rich parents. In the *final season* she decides to send a message to her mom to let her know she's alive. This is never again acknowledged. Heck, we don't even know if Toph's family received the message, as it was sent via Sokka's messenger hawk. And since I brought Hawkie up, that leads us naturally to...

Dropped Characters
This is a series with loads and loads of characters. Not all of them are going to appear more than once, but there were several who seemed to have been developed enough that they were going to have larger roles later on. Among them are Aang's mentor Guru Pathik, eerie spirit Koh the Face-Stealer, the aforementioned Hawkie, and probably many more that I can't remember right now. But the big one here deserves her own entry:

OK, So What's the Deal With Ursa?
She is Zuko and Azula's mother. She has been missing, presumed dead, since before the series began. There is a great deal of evidence that she's still alive in the series, she appears -as a hallucination- in one of the final episodes, and in the very last episode it is revealed that she is indeed alive. It is wildly speculated that the first DTV film will focus on her somehow.

And Finally, What's the Deal With Bosco the Bear?
Katara: (reading a newspaper) "The king's having a party tonight for his pet bear!"
Aang: "You mean platypus-bear?"
Katara: "No, it just says, 'bear.'"
Sokka: "Certainly you mean his pet skunk-bear?"
Toph: "Or his armadillo-bear?"
Aang: "Gopher-bear?"
Katara: "Just... 'bear.'"
(There is a pregnant pause.)
Toph: "This place is weird."
That dialogue pretty much speaks for itself. Bosco is the pet bear of the Earth King and he is one of the odd little non sequiters in the show that was treated as kind of a joke for those of us who were paying attention. However, this "joke" has some pretty weird implications for the Avatar universe. All of the non-supernatural animals seen in "Avatar" are weird hybrids, very likely in tribute to "Dungeons and Dragons" (Owlbears anyone?) Taking for granted that the very act of calling a Turtleduck a Turtleduck is a translation convention and normal animals like Bosko are unknown, if Wuzzles/Firffels are normal for the Avatar world then...?

----

Totally unrelated, but happy Towel Day!!!
Also, here's a nifty interview with Don Hahn via the wonderful /Filmcast.
Also via /Film, a preview of illustrations for Josh Cooley's upcoming book Movies R Fun! Oh good lord, they are beautiful
ALSO also via /Film, our first look at fully-rendered CGI Wile E. Coyote in Three-Effin-Dee. Dear reader, you can probably guess with 99% accuracy how I feel about this...

----

Sketch of the day!
Let's consider this a teaser for the next post:

Reasons Why the New "Clash of the Titans" Bothers Me.

I have not seen the new "Clash of the Titans". I will admit this up front. Honestly, I don't really want to see the new "Clash of the Titans". But this stupid movie has inadvertently brought up some things that bother me:

1) It turns out some people will take any CGI, even the not-so-good CGI in "Clash", over the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion in the original. This makes me unspeakably sad. So I went to the library and got An Animated Life to read.  This is a big, huge book I've salivated over for a while, so I was elated that they had it. I'll review it soon.

2) The 3-D in "Clash" was added as an afterthought. This fact has been wildly reported. It was thought that people wouldn't pay extra for crappy 3-D... but guess what?

3) This plot point. (Deftly illustrated by the wonderful Coelasquid [naughty language warning], who has done an entire series of comics based of ridiculous things in "Clash".)

4) But I think the thing that bugs me more than anything about this remake of "Clash of the Titans" is this: Of all the things they changed from the original "Clash of the Titans", couldn't they have swapped the Kraken out for, I dunno, some scary sea monster out of ***GREEK*** Mythology?!? It isn't like they don't have a surplus of them.

In other movies I have no interest in seeing news, I am sincerely disappointed that the movie entitled "Furry Vengeance" is NOT about "Secret of N.I.M.H." fans out for justice, as the title would suggest. Because I would watch the hell out of that movie and so would you. Admit it.
----
Sketch of the day! How about some happy after all that uncharacteristic vitriol.

Yaaaaaaay!!!

"I wanna live like the blue catpeople!" - Thoughts on "Avatar"

Alright, just got back from the Gandalf Google-plex. Bad immediate thoughts first:
1) The 3D can get very overwhelming. In particular, I'm thinking of the scenes where there were leaves or bubbles or dust particles floating around, where the camera was looking at a transparent surface with smudges or marks on it, and where there were two characters fighting or chasing each other and the camera follows them around. They messed with my visual cortex badly. It couldn't keep track of what to focus on during these scenes. ("That's just the illusion of a window. But it looks like a real scratched-up window and I have to adjust my focus to look at the thing behind that window... but neither the window or the thing behind it is real and - woah... woaaah... woaaaaahhh.")
2) With that in mind, walking out of the theater was very like coming down from a weird high. I was a little disoriented and had a bit of a headache. So the 3D technology still needs some work. It could also be partially because, so help me, Pandora still looks like everything on DeviantArt ever. (On that note, it took a remarkably short time for the "Avatar" fandom to grow a scary-obsessed branch, didn't it?)
3) And while this isn't the most unusual thing to b*tch about in a review of "Avatar", it does bear repeating: I've seen this story before. You've seen this story before. Heck, if you like animation and fantastic fiction, you've seen many, many different versions of this story multiple times. So yeah, the story is pretty boring and the initial "Ferngully: Dances With Thundercats" assessment from the early trailers was pretty spot-on.
As for the good things:
1) The overall impact of the movie, my knee-jerk reaction coming out of the theater was, and I quote, "Holy sh*t!!!" "Avatar" is awesome. Really, really awesome.
Aside from the nagging things I already mentioned, the 3D is crap-your-pants amazing. It sounds like a broken record by now but you really have no idea how amazing this movie looks until you see it in the theater.
With that said, I'm not sure what I'd have thought of "Avatar", or if I'd enjoyed it as much, if I'd seen it in a conventional theater or in an IMAX 3D theater. The IMAX 3D, as you know, was very uncomfortable for me after a little while, and based on subsequent comments I've read/heard online, I would have greatly disliked the IMAX version.
2) If there is an Art of Avatar book out there, I want it. Because I want to pore over those crazy awesome Wayne Barlowe and Neville (happy "Cloverfield" day!) Page creature designs. Tapejarid-wyverns! Hammerhead Lairons! Hoverchameleons! This may be as close as we ever get to an honest-to-goodness Expedition movie. (Yeah, I know, but "Alien Planet" sucked.)
(Turns out that such a book exists, but does not include much in terms of concept art. Still, might be worth a thumb-through.)
3) It's James Cameron! I like him! Hell, I've got "Terminator 2" in the background as I write this!
4) I cannot. Effing. WAIT. To see what WETA does with this technology next. As you may have heard, Cameron was inventing new technology as he was making this movie. Future animated and live-action/animation films will benefit greatly from what he learned. You realize what this means? It means "The Hobbit" is going to be unreal.
In short, you should go see "Avatar". This movie is an experience. I went with three other friends and not one of us had a bad time watching it. We went on a weekday and joined a very diverse crowd - there was every imaginable "target audience" present - and the whole theater was enthralled (and very quiet, which is darned refreshing). You don't want to wait until this hits DVD and I don't care how good your theater system is at home. "Avatar" is on a different level, and it demands to be seen in a theater.
That said, be prepared for a pretty lackluster story (with a puzzling subtext, but more about that in another review.) After a few days, I realized that the things that really stayed with me about the movie were the amazing setting and creatures and trippy visuals. But this isn't "Disney's Dinosaur"; "Avatar" does not qualify as an epic fail by any stretch of the imagination. It is, in case I haven't stated it before, really awesome.
The right attitude here is to go in expecting the best "scenery porn" ever.
----
Sketch of the day!

I like this dragon! I may have to bring him to finish later.
----
BIG DAMN NEWS!!!
It's funny I mentioned DeviantArt above, isn't it? You may notice a new link under "My Other Websites" at the right. Yes, I have joined the DVA party. I figured, even though Flickr is ridiculously easier to use and looks much nicer, and even though DeviantArt has a case of Sturgeon's Law like nothing else in this world and is far harder to navigate, it behooves me (whatever that means) to join the most popular art-sharing site and make more contacts. Plus, I am on good authority that their print service is very good. It was certainly easy to set my store up. And to that end, you know you want a Liopleurodon coffee mug. I will make a little less than a dollar if you buy one!
For now, I've got three pieces on DVA (not counting my ID). I may roll out three more every... as-yet undetermined length of time. I'll see how these first three go over.

It's almost Thanksgiving, so let's chew on "Food Fight"!

I have a talent for running into weird animation-related ephemera and stuff. Stuff like, oh, this:



This made me stop in my tracks. I seemed to recall Cartoon Brew bemoaning the existence of a movie by this title. I checked their archives and yes, they were discussing a film entitled "Food Fight".

In 2005.

There's a more recent discussion in early 2007. There is an IMDB page, optimistically saying the film was (or will be) released in 2009. And there is an Official Website, consisting of some phenomenally ugly art*. So apparently this thing is real. Whether it ever got past the book that makes noise stage is a mystery.

I didn't want to pay the five bucks at Mardens for this book just to find out what the hell was going on here. (More to the point, I don't want to become one of those Ebayers who buys things just to sell them on Ebay.)

* - The character designs on the cover may range from strange to bland, but I kinda like them. They have that "Ferngully"-ish "We like Disney a lot but we also want to make our characters a little stranger to be different" approach. (And the fact that there is a film out there that involves a scary CatGirl, a dead-effin'-serious looking moose, Chilly Willy, and D.J. Scatcat intrigues me.)
But the final film, according to the art in the website, will be incredibly cheap-looking, badly-rendered, sub-SciFi Channel made-for-TV-movie quality CGI. *sigh...*

Update: I did a double-take at this Cartoon Brew post. Seems "Food Fight" books are popping up elsewhere too.

Update on that last Update: The story just keeps getting stranger and stranger.

----
Feederwatch Friday!!!
First entry of the season and, uh, NMH:
Downy Woodpecker - 1
Blue Jay - 1
Black-capped Chickadee - 3 (Actually, this was kind of interesting as Chickadees usually show up in pairs.)
White-breasted Nuthatch - 1
Northern Cardinal - 1
House Sparrow - 50
And there was a trio of squirrels, of course, but we don't count them.

----
Oh my God, tomorrow is SKETCHCRAWL! I might actually get some people together and actually do it right this year! To Facebook!

----
I've been getting into the Thanksgiving spirit by watching the video clips included in X-Entertainment's truly epic recaps of Macy's Parades of the past. They are all linked in this blog entry; they take about an hour each to read but it's worth it.

It's really hard to pick out one favorite moment from these incredible clips, but I will say this: when I woke up this morning, I was not aware that the Cabbage Patch Kids line had a mythos as elaborate as any self-respecting 80's toy. With heroes and villains and a (deeply unsettling) origin story and a larger-than-life folklore hero a la John Henry or Paul Bunyan. Now I know, and my life is all the more enriched for it.

I also recommend Strongbad's Thanksgiving. And there is a new review of "La Planet Sauvage" at The Realm , because nothing says Thanksgiving like a movie that resembles what you see after trying every kind of drug there is at once.

In which Trish whines like an old lady about annoying trends at the Book Store.

So I was in a book store the other day and I brought my camera along. I went ahead and recorded some of the irksome things I've been noticing lately:



Now I know you've all run into these "Whatever-Ology" books recently. (SO much Flash in that website. All I wanted to do was learn who the illustrators were. They're Wayne Anderson and Douglas Carrel.) The art is nice for the most part, but the main thing that gets me all chagrined is that they're full of stuff. Maybe I'm being an old lady about this thinking that an illustrated book should stand on the merits of it's artwork and not on how much glitter they can package in, how many jewels can be embedded in the pages, and how many books-within-books they contain. One last thing:



People inventing creatures to inhabit alternate universe versions of Australia, please stop doing this. (Yes, that's a kangaroo-dragon and a koala-dragon. Because no matter what kind of animal you are, living in Australia will make you evolve into a marsupial.)



Manga, manga, manga. Now you know I like Anime. But it's also sadly impossible to discuss the "let's learn how to draw by drawing in this one style" trend without sounding Old (I wonder if earlier illustrators had the same problem criticizing the Draw Fifty Whatever books?) A gateway drug is a gateway drug (there's got to be a better analogy for "a thing that gets you into whatever your passion is"), but it just seems like every "learn how to draw" book out there is in this same one style. Wait a second...



A. WTF?

B. Hmmmmm?

For a while, it looked like I was safe from the 3-effin'-D trend in the bookstore... until I saw this:


(Note: I couldn't find the credits for the illustrators for either this or the Manga books. Go figure.)

This series of oversized books might be the most annoying thing I saw at the book store. Again, maybe I'm an old lady but I thought the point of an illustrated book about dinosaurs was to -call me crazy- illustrate the dinosaurs, showing what they looked like.



Can you even identify this? Did the person who drew (or badly rendered, from the look of it) this picture even know what this animal looks like? (HINT: Draw a cross between a weird emu and a weird ground sloth. Add fluffy feathers. Add Wolverine's claws.)

A less recent trend in Books that Do Things Books Don't Normally Do is the Book That Makes Noise. These were wildly popular about fifteen years ago, and I recall thinking to myself the first time I saw one, "man, why don't they do a Guide to Bird Calls in this format?" (They eventually did, a decade later. Which is kind of hilarious.)

You don't see publishers making these very often anymore. The most recent variation I found was this, which hurts my inner child:



Why, why, why?

----

Hey, take a look at this thing, which exists:
Now, why do I not think strapping a hummingbird feeder to your face is a good idea?

The Sketchbooks of summer/fall and the nadir of remakes.

Above, you'll see my last Sketchbook and my current Sketchbook. Summer '09 is a 6 x 12 '' Pentalic Nature Sketch. It was amazing for just pure drawing and for watercolors. However, it did not play well with scanners. It's weird how that factors into choosing a Sketchbook for me now. Here's a look inside:

Fall 2009 is an 8.5x11'' Cachet Earthbound I found in -of all places- Wall-Mart. I'd used one of these books before and while the unbleached paper takes a bit to get used to, it's fantastic to draw on. This is 100% recycled paper; this is paper with history. I like sketching on paper with some history.


Now as for the meat of this post, I may have to scream (or type angrily rather) and swear a lot, so sensitive readers may want to wait until Thursday, when I'll post about another Weird Disney Thing. OK? OK.
You'll notice a "Yellow Submarine" bumper sticker on Fall 2009. This is my silent protest. You see, recently, Disney announced that Robert Zemeckis is all set to helm a 3-D motion capture remake of "Yellow Submarine":
"'Yellow Submarine' is one of the greatest fantasy films of all time, and making this new 3D performance capture movie is a dream come true for me. With the latest advances in technology, we will be able to take moviegoers on a voyage unlike any other, and bring new excitement and dimension to Pepperland and the various sea worlds they encounter." - Zemeckis (from here)
.....
Robert Zemeckis. Is going to remake "Yellow Submarine". Using Mo-Cap. In 3-D.
.....
One more time. Let it a-a-a-a-a-a-l-l-l-l-l sink in:
.....
1) Robert "About to lose the Free Pass For Life I gave him for 'Roger Rabbit' and 'Contact'" Zemeckis.
2) Is going to remake as in "not bring something imaginative and new to the screen". "Yellow 'Essentially "Fantasia" with Beatles songs and one of the few full-length animated features that really doesn't look like anything else out there' Submarine".
3) Using Motion Capture technology...
4) ...In Three-Effin'-D.
5) And the reason given why he is doing this is, essentially, "Because we can."
Well, folks, we've finally reached the absolute, uncontroversial nadir of the (not as) recent (as everyone thinks) "Let's Remake/Adapt EVERYTHING!!!" trend in modern (mainstream) film-making. The word "soul-less" is coming to mind here.
Speaking of which, this exists.

Edit - Best counterpoint to this "Yellow Submarine" remake: the teaser trailer for "Beatles Rock Band". I agree, I'd love to see an entire feature done in this style:

So, about the *other* "Avatar" teaser.

"Avatar" as in the 3D animated movie that James Cameron has been working on since before you and I were born, unless it just feels that way. Not the dubiously necessary live-action adaptation of the well-loved recent animated series of the same title. Here's the trailer for you to watch before I share my thoughts:


OK? OK.
So I'm actually of two minds looking at this trailer. Let me explain.
The twelve-year-old in me was thinking, "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! Floating islands and spaceships and glowy blue catpeople riding dragons!!! DRAGONS!!!"
But the mean old lady in me was thinking, "Is it me or is the animation downright sh**ty when the alien guy starts talking? Why in the world is the guy who directed 'Aliens From the Deep' giving us a movie where the aliens look like weird humans*? And, aside from looking like 'Ferngully: the Spirits Within' and vaguely reminding me of this music video, what is this movie even about?"
Now with all that said, I still can confidently predict that the actual movie will probably kick all of our asses. Do you remember back in the day when everyone was SURE "Titanic" was going to tank?
(OK, so "Titanic" had The Power of Leo going for it, where "Avatar" seems to have only The Power of Catgirls, but still.)

* - I am watching this trailer on the day of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Burgess Shale fossils. I've read a lot of positive comments admiring how "REALLY alien" the glowy blue catpeople are. My friend Opabina would like a word with you.

In other news, why in the hell is this happening?!?

"Love is Allllll!!! / Love is AAA-AA-AAALL!!! / At the Butterfly Ball!!!"

Speaking of "Rupert and the Frog Song" got me thinking about another psychedelic staple of my childhood. They used to show this music video as filler almost daily in those wonderful, crazy early days of Nickelodeon. Now I was of course wholly unaware that this was part of a concert film (!) based upon a concept album (!!) based upon a picture book (!!!). That is like a perfect storm of awesome. I am Netflixing the hell out of the concert DVD.

(pause...)

OK, I am "Saved Queue"-ing the hell out of the concert DVD because they do not yet have it. (I always wonder why they bother listing things when that happens.) Oh well.
Enjoy the very 70's mind-screwyness:



I watched this for the first time in a long time at like two in the morning and amazingly, I didn't start freaking out until around the 1:42 mark. O.o
I love, love, love how those three salamanders are totally nonchalant about the Dio-Frog transforming into a hydra-plant-thing.----

Comic and illustration loving residents of the Westford, MA area: this weekend you have the good fortune of being able to attend something called Larry's Pop Culture Extravaganza. And if you live in Westford and can somehow have no desire to attend something called Larry's Pop Culture Extravaganza, I do not understand you at all.

Note that for now, I'll be adopting a twice-weekly post schedule. I need to concentrate on saving things from Geocities. At least now, I have a deadline: the last weekend before Halloween (October 26, for those who need a real date). Anyway, check for "new" (meaning post-dated and thus hilariously a few days behind on the news) posts on Tuesday and Thursday for a while.

I can't wait to cry hysterically like a little sissy again during "Jessie's Song" --- but IN THREE-EFFIN'-D this time!!!

I can walk like a penguin in 3-effin'-D!

As always, click for big and for more drawings from the Aquarium.
I went to the New England Aquarium with my aunt and cousin who were both suffering a mean case of Bermuda withdrawal. The sketches I did pretty much speak for themselves, so do look at them please. We had a fantastic time.
Although I would like to talk about the Simon's IMAX 3-Effin'-D Theatre, since I'd never experienced the fury of a three-effin'-d (it will never stop being funny) IMAX film before.
It was... different.
The film we saw was something called "Under the Sea 3D", in which you look at beautiful footage of the Coral Triangle as Jim Carrey explains what's going on. (This is one of those documentaries that suffers from too much narration. So you start wondering if whomever was in charge of the narration hired Jim Carrey and asked him, early on, "Dude, could you tone it down a little?") It's nice. It also probably would have been just as entertaining as a conventional IMAX movie.
Now, the 3D glasses were comfortable on me, so that wasn't a problem (I've seen enough people complain about this that it felt worth mentioning). And the 3D itself wasn't too much of a distraction either -- not for the first half-hour anyway, but more on that later. It felt, oddly, like looking through a really big window. I'm used to 3D films where the fish and the sea serpents and the seals and all the little squid would appear to be floating out into the theater. Here it looked like all the animals were just about to break the fourth wall, but ultimately did not.
Then my eyes started to adjust to the effects and everything looked foggy and out of focus. It's a good thing this movie was only about forty-five minutes long, but it made me wary of seeing a full-length feature in this format.
For more on this, listen to this Onion AV Club podcast.
It's worth noting that, with me sketching everyone that caught my eye, we managed to see closing time. I have a talent for that.

(Man, it's funny to write about something you did a month ago. Am I up to date? I think I may finally be up to date! Woo! Did you know X-Entertainment has finally picked up the Advent Calender thread?)

Some thoughts on "3-effin'-D!!!"

3.28.09 - 3-effin'-D!!!
Originally uploaded by Babbletrish
Click for big (and legible).

Now, I lurk in a lot of discussion boards (and post in... two or three of them). Every so often, you catch a moment of sheer brilliance. I was inspired to draw this parody of the "Monsters v. Aliens" poster after reading this exchange at FARK.com. Full comments and the related article can be read here:

Cold1s: "I love puppetry... Gesture and posture are the game here. Big Bird's bowed head after (his memorial performance of 'It's Not Easy Bein') Green' spoke volumes.
In an age of digital whatever-you-want-to-see-you-see, I hope true stage performances like puppets and Muppets come back."

Dokool: "I had similar thoughts when I saw the Wallace & Gromit link two rows below this one.
In an age where we're bored of CGI-based films because there's so many of them (imagine anyone taking you seriously if you were to predict that around when 'Toy Story' came out!), nobody even considers returning to the older methods. If you watch an average episode of the 'Muppet Show', or 'Fraggle Rock', or even 'Sesame Street', the level of the craft is astounding.
The fact that articles (and threads) like this even exist is testament to the fact that they connected with us in such a meaningful way that even 20 years later people remember it. I was only born in '85 but I remember all of my 'Sesame Street' and Muppet-related VHS tapes like I'd just watched them. Will they say the same about any of the stuff kids watch these days?"

Note that, although I think the "CGI vs. Hand-Drawn" debate is stupid as hell (so where do stop-motion, cut-paper, pixilation, and so on fit into the debate?), I have no problem with CGI films.

When their scripts don't suck. When I actually end up caring about their characters. When the people making the films do so with intelligence and heart and creativity, rather than an overall attitude of "Ooh CGI, shiny!!!".

Actually, why don't I just direct you to this, by way of Cartoon Brew (of course. And, yikes, they really all do that one eyebrow thing.)

As far as animation that does not suck goes, the Onion AV Club has posted a lovely review of "Spirited Away" (which you are not allowed to read another word of this blog unless you promise me you will add it to your Queue immediately). It's sparked a lively discussion as well.

Am I hearing Orioles already? Seems a little early given that the trees haven't leafed out yet.