"My God... it's full of *ads*!" - Thoughts on "Ralph Breaks the Internet"

I finally watched "Ralph Breaks the Internet", and thanks to my obligation from the early, early days of this blog to review every Disney Animated Canon feature film, I must now review it.  Thing is, I've got a lot of conflicting thoughts here, so I guess I'm going to just transcribe my internal dialogue, kind of like I did with "The Muppets" all those years ago.  Strap in...

First Thoughts: "It's good!  'Ralph Breaks the Internet' is very good!  It's as funny and heartwarming as the first film and it does everything a good sequel should do.  It brings back the characters we love, sets them off on an exciting new adventure with fun new characters, and has them grow and change and learn from their new experiences.  This is a damn good movie."

Second Thoughts: "I know right?  We know fellow Disney nerds who were wailing about the end of the world (or at least the end of this recent streak of good Disney Animated Canon films) when this movie first came out, so it's really nice to finally see it.  Goodness, this is that not-quite-as-rare-as-everybody-thinks sequel that's as good as the first movie.  Heck, we might even like it a little bit better than the first movie!

"... ... ...But..."

FT: "I'll let you get to that 'But' in a minute.  We need to talk about sequels, and Disney sequels specifically.  Even though we live in a world of franchises, there seems to be a particular feeling of dread associated with 'Ralph 2' and 'Mary Poppins Returns' and 'Frozen 2'."

ST: "We're all still traumatized by the DTV Disney sequel era."

FT: "Right, right."

ST: "A lot of that dread seems to be building off all the damn Live-Action-For-An-Extremely-Strange-Definition-Of-Live-Action Remakes.  Which, by the way, we will not be considering part of the Disney Animated Canon.  Direct theatrical sequels to films we've already reviewed here are fine, but remakes?  Ugh, no.  Anyway, this can be a nice segway into my 'But...'"

FT: "Yes, go ahead."

ST: "But on the other hand, this very funny and heartwarming movie is also very definitely what Disney has been referring to as a Brand Deposit.  So are all the sequels and remakes and whatnot.  Hell, 'Ralph 2' is particularly blatant about it: There is a whole sequence set inside the official Disney website and so help me if the opening to that sequence, taking in a vista of everything Disney owned the rights to circa last Thanksgiving, doesn't feel like 'Look upon how much pop culture we control, ye mighty, and despair!'"

FT: "I mean, that's true.  But didn't the first 'Ralph' have a lot of (ahem) Brands involved as well?  All those officially licensed video game characters hanging out?  And anyway, without that visit to the Disney website, we wouldn't have the amazing Princess hangout scene, which we loved!"

ST: "It is a great scene, but consider this dismaying observation: Disney's not only all about Brand Deposits but about Brand Integrity; the fear is that if they don't take all their property super seriously, nobody will.  That means no more 'Star Wars' characters shaking their butts to pop songs and a 'What if all the Disney Princesses had a slumber party' scene that feels like a really heckin' neutered version of a killer idea.  And it cost us a scene where Vanillope would've been all, 'Ah, shut up, Emo kid' to Kylo Ren and tell me we wouldn't do anything within reason to see that."

FT: "Oh damn.  But we still really like this movie, even with all this... this stuff that's making us slightly uneasy."

ST: "Yes, yes we do.  Still, uneasy is a good word for it.  Heck, we have 'Mary Poppins: 2 Practical, 2 Perfect' up next and, honestly, the fact that it seems to have had NO pop culture impact at all, good or bad, is worrying.  I don't think we're going to like it as much as 'Ralph 2'."

FT: "Probably not, but if it sucks, we'll have fun ranting about it."

ST: "Same format as this?"

FT: "God, no."

For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Art of the Day!


I saw a trailer for another movie about video game characters getting into various shenanigans and made this regretful thing:

"... ... ... I *love* it! I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!!!!!" - Thoughts on "Wreck-It Ralph"

But first, I'm 35 years old today.  I refuse to stop loving Disney animation, thank you very much.

Movie # 66: "Wreck-It Ralph"

Well, guys, this is going to be one big old gush session, because "Wreck-It Ralph" is SOOOOO GOOD, YOU GUYS!!! You guys! Guys! It's so good!

This is by far the best-looking CGI Disney feature of all; the entire second half of the movie, set in a "candy-coated heart of darkness", is a veritable feast for your rods and cones and both the characters and the worlds they venture through are top-shelf designs.  The script is terrific and (as demonstrated) it's as quotable as classic "Futurama".  I'll thank director Rich Moore for this as he is responsible for some of the best loved early episodes of both "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" -- though not, as often reported "Jurassic Bark".  It's easy to see where the confusion could come from, seeing as "Ralph" has it's own scene where, if it didn't hit you right in the enteric nervous system ("The Feels" as the kids say), I don't know if I can trust you.

On that note, I'm glad to see Disney make a feature that is overall just so joyous and fun, but isn't afraid to get dark as f*** when it needs to.  It's all in service to the story and characters, and the characters themselves are wonderful.  A few critics complained that Ralph himself is too reminiscent of the title character in "Shrek", but I have to say I loved him immediately, while I can never say I even really liked Shrek over the course of four movies.  Part of this is because Ralph isn't a misunderstood cranky innocent; the whole conflict in the movie is due to him screwing things up for selfish reasons, and his redemption arc is ultimately incredibly moving. 

Best of all, this is the first Disney movie in years where I don't feel like I have to go on and on convincing you all to watch it, because this is the first universally-beloved-by-almost-everybody-I've-met Disney movie since the heyday of the Bronze Age.  Finally we are at the point, and I am so happy to be able to say this, where I can say that the most recent major animated feature from Walt Disney Animation is the best since the last one.  I'm going to tentatively go ahead and say we're finally, finally in the Iron Age of Disney.

It's been a long rough road since the end of the Bronze Age, hasn't it?  But I think we've finally hit the end of it since Disney is finally back to knocking it out of the park each time.  "Enchanted" was quite good.  "The Princess and the Frog" was terrific.  "Frankenweenie" was good, "Winnie the Pooh" was very good, and "Tangled" was outstanding!  Hell, I even liked "TRON Legacy" a lot, and it was a sequel to "Tron"!  As for "Ralph", as I said, it's excellent; made me feel brand-new at the end of a long stressful day.   I had a big stupid grin from the sixteen-bit Steamboat Willy studio logo to the "Kill screen" at the very end of the credits.

For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Art of the Day! Speaking of Disney and video games...



(I'll be the first to admit this really applies better to the later games in this series.)

In Which Trish *Finally* Gets a Look at 3/4ths of "Dinosaur Revolution"!

Yes, I finally saw it.  Out of the kindness of the YouTube elves, since there is not one scrap of evidence that this miniseries will be available in it's original televised form on DVD in America anytime soon.  And with the second episode completely missing, that single episode having been deleted by Discovery Networks (because content providers cracking down on the internet know no logic).  So here are my thoughts, well over a year after anyone could possibly care!  Huzzah and Happy New Year!

Bit of background, first.  The story of "Dinosaur Revolution" (also known by the less-confounding title, "Reign of the Dinosaurs") begins several years ago when a teaser image of concept art appeared on the Internet.  (This was occasionally credited to Pixar, possibly having been conflated with contemporary teaser art from "The Good Dinosaur".)  At the time, we were given sky-high promises about the upcoming miniseries.  Most exciting among these were the promise that this would be a narrative dinosaur film with no dialogue or vocal narration at all, that the dinosaurs would be the most scientifically accurate animals to date, and that noted paleoartists and animators would be contributing to the project.  It was not referred to as a serious documentary, but would instead be a series of short animated vignettes of life in the Mesozoic.  One of the earliest previews shows what they initially intended for the series.

In short, this sounded like the dinosaur animation that I'd been longing for since, like, forever.  And that I'm still longing for because "Dinosaur Revolution" isn't it.

But it comes really damn close to it.  A lot of what's bad about the miniseries has been blamed on executive meddling, so let's tackle the not-so-good parts of "Dinosaur Revolution" first.

There are, to be sure, segments with excellent animation.  There are also segments with very sloppy animation, with "floaty" physics and wonky walk-cycles, and the inconsistency can get jarring.  I didn't have as much of a problem with the more stylized aspects of the series that most people did, looking back at reviews of the series from the time.  That said, there were a couple of scenes that had me thinking, "really?"  Most of them have to do with the non-dinosaur characters, like the weirdly dolphin-like Mosasaur and the pterosaur mother with her babies...  Hey, you know that scene in "The Land Before Time" with the cute baby pterosaurs going after the one berry?  There's a scene in "Dinosaur Revolution" that is the exact diametric opposite of it. <8(

The narration is oftentimes just awful, sounding exactly like what you'd imagine the end-result of a long string of bad decisions from wimpy execs would.  It just keeps showing up again and again, stating the stunningly obvious, and getting in the way right when I was most enthralled with the visuals.

Then you have the segments where Coachella Tupac hologram scientists talk about *sort-of* sciencey-stuff in a very fake looking science lab set.  Oh dear, these were indeed very silly.  Now, it's always fun to have Scott Sampson talk about dinosaurs in a television show, and I like how they interviewed Scott Hartman.  It would have been very nice to have the show's contributors talk about their reasoning behind the animated sequences after each episode.  Apparently, this was the original plan, but the network caved and decided to throw the interviews randomly in during the show itself.  Like the narration, these segments just interrupt the dinosaurs we're here to see.

There's also that damned strange ending.  Spoilertext: You cry for the mother Troodon desperately trying to save her last egg. But then, there is flash-forward to modern times with some incredibly sh*ttily animated birds to show that all is well and some Maniraptors made it! Man, if they had just stopped there it'd be fine. But they end on a very, very different note - and you cry again.

The other big point of contention people had with "Dinosaur Revolution" has to do with the tone.  Discovery shot itself in the foot advertising this as a straight, serious documentary.  Indeed, it feels as though they took the animated segments, which are as a whole essentially like a more rigorously accurate original "The Land Before Time", and tried to force them into a dead-serious science documentary by adding the narration and interview segments.  The end result is jarring, to say the least.

So, basically, the main criticisms I have with "Dinosaur Revolution" have to do with what it isn't, and what the networks tried to force it to be.  Ignoring all that, there is a lot to love in the miniseries.

First off, these animated dinosaurs look absolutely fantastic.  I dare say they may be the most believable CGI creatures this side of "District 9" - when the animation is at it's best, at least.  I love how they're allowed to look and behave much stranger then we're used to seeing in this kind of CGI dinosaur series.  It's not always realistic but it's believable, and that's what counts.

Most significantly, in many ways, "Dinosaur Revolution" reminded me of the "a paleoartist is going to inevitably be wrong about what dinosaurs really looked like anyway, so why be wrong and boring?" philosophy of Brian Engh's astonishing Sauroposeidon illustration.  Or the illustrations in All Yesterdays, come to think of it.  It's mind-blowing at times, and I hope the re-edit of the miniseries (with the facepalm-worthy title, "Dinotasia") is closer to the original vision for the series.

Overall, what I liked in "Dinosaur Revolution", I liked a lot.  I'll try to ignore the rest. 

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Sketch of the Day!  The very first entry in Sketch of the Day 2013!  A pretty Troll bride-to-be and the difference between the "Jurassic Park" and "Dinosaur Revolution" T. rexes.

"No. Unless You Count Birds." - Let's Finish Reading _If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today_!

Ay-yi-yi, we're almost done!



Here's that other strange-looking Triceratops I promised way back in the beginning.

The whole final section of the book may actually be the most brain-hurting.  It purpotes to be a "Question and Answer" section that intends to show some genuine non-speculative science in this otherwise very silly book. Well...



First off, that's a metaphysical question I never thought I'd see. Secondly, "Mammals are only here because there are no dinosaurs.  In the Age of Dinosaurs mammals were small... new meat-eating animals evolved -- first into giant flightless birds, and then carnivorous mammals."

So much wrong in one little rectangle of text, it boggles the mind.  And here is another unsuspecting human who looks like he was blissfully unaware of what they were going to use his photo for.



But then the answer is "Yes" isn't it? Anyway, at least Dixon is nice enough to elaborate on this. Kinda:



Yeah.



That's downright philosophical.  And what do people have against chickens anyway?



"I've always wanted to ride a Chocobo!"



Yeah, so who else has ever heard of this "Vivaporous Pachycephalosaurs" theory? I've only ever heard of live-birthing sauropods and that was long enough ago to feel like a childhood fever dream. Elsewhere, Dixon notes that since their eggs are always in pairs, a female Troodon must have had a pair of "egg tubes" in her body where modern birds only have one, which, if true, is news to me.

And then, there's this:



I feel Dixon stopped just short of screaming, "'Jurassic Park 3' is stupid, stop even acknowledging it!"  This is part of a brief listing of science fiction involving dinosaurs in modern times that mentions "Jurassic Park", of course, and The Lost World and Journey to the Center of the Earth and Pellucidar...  but NOT The New Dinosaurs.  Huh.

Anyway, it's time to touch base with an old friend:



Syntarsus sans Mohawk! Man, he looks strange without it.

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Sketch of the Day!

"Save the Ichthyosaurs!" - Let's Keep On Reading _If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today"!

Clearly this book is a goldmine.

Today, we're going to explore how Mesozoic creatures of the air and sea would deal with modern times.  As we've seen, most Mesozoic animals, when suddenly transported somehow to modern times, make a big conspicuous show of themselves.  These guys won't be any different:



Dear Quetzalcoatli, please don't mess with airplanes. Just don't. I've seen you do this before and let me tell you, it will only end in tears. (By the way, obligate scavenger Quetzalcoatlus.)



... ... ... What?



DIVER 1: "Shonisaurus! Oh, how majestic!"

DIVER 2: "It's only a painting."

DIVER 1: "Shut up, you."

To be fair, the painted animals look awesome especially since the CGI animals look so goofy. The Photoshopping is still so very awkward. To wit:



This otter looks so happy to have caught a badly-Photoshopped-in painting of an Ammonite!

And this reminds me of another odd aspect of this book.  It happily ignores the fact that there were such things as fish, birds, small mammals, and such in the Mesozoic.  Scenes like this or the sight of a small pterosaur competing with small birds for food aren't quite as bizarre as the book makes them out to be.



Coming at this from a different direction, the book also ignores the fact that large predatory animals, giant sea creatures, enormous herbivores, and -duh- birds exist in modern times.  It's not so bizarre to see birds roosting in and flocking around the Statue of Liberty -- except they aren't as conspicuous about it. And dig the early interpretation of Microraptor. "We can be sure that it was brightly colored like the tropical birds of today," says Dixon, even though the Microraptors in the illustration are more subdued. Yeah.

And now, the second most-ridiculous image in the book.  Gaze upon it in despair:



There is absolutely nothing I could add to this. At all. Moving on...



"Birds is Birds!" Yes, but Microraptor is classified as a Deinonychosaur, so...? And then there's the strange assurance that if you're a bird you aren't a dinosaur anymore.  I cannot emphasize this enough: that is like insisting that whales are no longer mammals.

And finally, the most ridiculous, and my absolute favorite, image in the book:



I wonder if this person knew what they were taking her picture for?

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Sketch of the Day!

Yeah, what if dinosaurs were alive today?  Hmmm...   HMMMMM...

"No, What Are You DOING?!?" - Let's Continue Reading _If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today_

When last we left off in the big barrel of insanity that was Dougal Dixon's If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today, we saw a monstrously huge and very 90's Tyrannosaurus attacking a herd of longhorn cattle. This brings us into the chapter about how Theropods would have to deal with modern times.

We're going to ignore for the moment that, uh, there are theropods dealing with modern times, but we'll have to wait a while to get to them. For now, enjoy the above implication that if there were nonavian theropods around, we'd all be reenacting "Reign of Fire". Reason being that big theropods ate everything, including animals that hadn't even appeared in the fossil record yet:



Even the Hartbeeste is like, "I don't even know..."



Note: not an image from that one Animorphs book with all the dinosaurs.

This is as good a time to note that obviously Dixon isn't attacking the "what if dinosaurs were still around" premise from the same angle he did in the New Dinosaurs. New Dinosaurs is the "Primer" of alternate universe nonavian dinosaur survival fiction compared to this. With this book it almost looks like they started out with the basic idea, "Let's compare dinosaurs to modern animals" and then things went south.



I like how they just drop in the "warm-blooded" issue with no elaboration at all. Also, what?  No!  WHAT?!?



These "Gorilla suit" Troodons are all like, "We got your low metabolism dinosaurs right here!" More importantly, these guys are the first feathered theropods we see in the book. Brace yourself for a bunch of brain farts, including this strange looking "adult Troodon":



Sticking with the maniraptors for a bit, here's a small flock of badly rendered crab-eating Oviraptors:



This is a particularly strange Oviraptor behavioral theory that I've seen exactly twice; the other instance was illustrated by no less than Wayne D. Barlowe. I hate to be a spoilsport but wouldn't Oviraptor habitat be lacking in seashores and crabs?

And then we see this:



Alright, let's ignore the hilarious sight of a flock of Struthiomimids joining a horse race (like so many wild animals who like to run do today). "Struthiomimus resembled today's large, flightless birds... and were the ancestors of all modern birds."

What? WHAT? No. But... WHAT?!?

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Sketch of the Day!

"What in the...?" Let's read _If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today_!

Full confession: our dear friends at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs already covered this book, but I happened to order my copy around the same time Marc did and since there is WAY more than enough WTF-ery in the book to go around, he said it was okay.  (I will try to come up with different funny things to say about the illustrations we both picked to show.)

The book we shall be exploring this week is If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today, written by our old buddy Dougal Dixon with consulting from Professor Mike Benton of the University of Bristol.  Illustrations by Simon Mendes, Andrew Kerr, Roger Harris, Leonello Calvetti, Franco Tempesta, Peter Scott, Frank DeNota, and... Luis Rey?!?  Why do I feel as though this may be an old shame for him?  Even though -and this is the strangest thing- it isn't all that old; the book was first published in America in 2007 by Running Press Book Publishers.  That's... surprising, given what we're going to see.

So.  This book.  To borrow a phrase, it sure is a book.  It has pages that are stitched together, and those pages have words and pictures on them.

Okay, seriously.  This is a book about how well animals from the Mesozoic era would be able to deal with modern times... hypothetically.  See, there are moments where the goofy-as-hell premise is taken seriously and there are many MANY more moments when it isn't.  This creates its fair share of mood whiplash.  There are also some deeply bizarre moments that have nothing to do with the premise.  Basically, every two-page spread in this book has at least one thing about it that will make you say, "Wait, what?!?" I wouldn't dare spoil the fun by posting every single illustration here, since the book is available for dirt-cheap on Amazon. It's worth it to have a copy of your own to gawk incredulously at.

The fun begins right on the Table of Contents:



So far this is the most recent book I have seen that associates Archaeopteryx with pterosaurs instead of other dinosaurs.  (I didn't mention it at the time, but Dinosaurs Discovered does the same thing.  It was slightly more excusable since that book is quite old.)  The weird thing is, now Microraptor is brought into the -ugh- "Flying Reptile" fold too.  Don't worry, there will be more brain-farts involving winged theropods later on.



For now, enjoy this herd of elephants chilling with a Sauroposeidon who suffers from a severe case of Shrinkwrap Face.  Behold!



"Dear sweet Littlefoot... Do you know the way to the Uncanny Valley?"

Now, to be fair, it's neat to see the scale of certain prehistoric animals next to modern animals.  And this image is appropriately epic.  If you ignore the eye-bleedingly awful CGI and Photoshoppery.



This might just be the nadir of "Pachycephalosaurs were just the dinosaur equivalent of bighorn sheep" paleoart meme.



After we get to see a Styracosaurus facing down a White Rhino, we get to see the first of two very odd-looking Triceratops. We'll get to the other one in a little bit.



Now this illustration is our first focus on the probably unintentional underlying theme of the book: modern day mammals are just better at everything. We're told that poor Plateosaurus (whose neck looks painful) wouldn't stand a chance against a tiger. Well, no kidding! It'd be no more fair to drop a tiger in the middle of the late Triassic would it? I'm giving the stupid premise of this book way too much thought, aren't I?



Oh God oh GOD, bad "Dinosaur" flashbacks!!!

At some point we're told that herbivorous dinosaurs would have a hard time of it in modern times since the foods they are used to are relatively rare and take many years to mature.  Even so, humans would domesticate them and not cows and pigs and whatnot.  This is a book that exists outside the land of logic.



Man, another sauropod suffering from the unspeakable heartbreak of Shrinkwrap Face.



Said Diplodocus (Seismosaurus in the book) is part of a herd that has wandered into a busy commercial airport runway, like you do when you are a very big animal. "They would not be disturbed by the movement of taxing aircraft," Dixon assures us, "as to them they would be just like other big sauropods to which they are accustomed." Yes, because airplanes are what sauropods look like.



I have nothing to add to this. Anyway, time for one of the most ridiculous pictures in the book before we pause for now:



90's as f***!!!

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Sketch of the Day

"You'd be surprised there's so much to be done..." - Thoughts on "Winnie the Pooh" (2011)

Movie # 64: "Winnie the Pooh" (2011)

"Winnie the Pooh" is adorable and sweet and, miraculously, completely and utterly unironic, unsarcastic, and unhip (ie, it's not the bad sort of hip; more on this in a bit). It features terrific character animation by such Disney legends as Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg, and Mark Henn and some cute songs by Zooey Deschanel and -heh- one of the songwriting minds behind "Avenue Q" and "The Book of Mormon". The animation is digital (using the ToonBoom software) but beautifully simulates the look of the beloved "Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" from back in the late 70's and the use of straight-up CGI is kept to the very barest minimum.

And "Winnie the Pooh" is also very definitely for young children (and their attendant adults of course). And it is short. Really, REALLY short. Like, barely qualifying as a theatrical-length film short. Like, were it not for the prologue and opening credits, it'd just make it to one hour short. That short.

Now, as we have seen, short animated films are not a bad thing, especially because they tend to be tight as heck and leave little room to screw things up. So every minute in "Winnie the Pooh" is dedicated to fun character moments and furthering the refreshingly basic plot (Pooh is hungry, he and the gang get caught up in searching for Eeyore's tail, a note left by Christopher Robin gets misinterpreted and this sparks another adventure, etc.)

And I probably don't even have to explain why an animated film for children that does not include any instances whatsoever of gross-out humor, sexual innuendos, cute animals singing catchy songs with horribly inappropriate lyrics, cute animals begging to eat at Chain Restaurant You Must Beg Your Parents To Take You To After The Movie, coprophagy, or Happy Madison alumnae is a freaking Godsend. (Side Note: You used to not have to worry about these things so much but we live in strange times.)

If there is anything negative I have to say about "Winnie the Pooh" it is that it is not *quite* as good as "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh". (In particular, the Backson song ain't got nothin' on the Hephalumps and Woozles number.) It more closely recalls a particularly lavish episode of the Saturday morning cartoon. It is however much closer to the original Disney Pooh shorts and anthology film, and the way the characters get to play with the text again is wonderful.

There is also a fantastic gag involving Owl, Piglet, and a pit trap that is way too fun to spoil here and appears as though it was written just for kids who think the way I did at that age (and still do, of course).

For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Picture of the Day!

I hope everyone had a lovely Halloween. In lieu of a drawing, I bring you this lovely autumn market scene:

Beautiful Freaks, Mystical Cacti, and Isopods - Thoughts on "Rango"

We've hit a milestone here at the Obligatory Art Blog. This is post number 365: a full year's worth of posts. I declare this small triumph to be awesome.

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I will admit I had almost no interest in "Rango" when it was first announced. Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp making an animated film for Nickelodeon Studios of all things? The ads came out on the heels of things like "Alpha and Omega" and "Gnomeo and Juliet". The film was the first feature out of Industrial Light and Magic. Given some other films I had seen that were basically showcases for effects houses (what's up, "Disney's Dinosaur"), I wasn't convinced that this wouldn't be utterly terrible.

Then the good comments and positive word of mouth started up, and I became intrigued.

Then the negative comments flared up and I became genuinely excited. Funny how that works out sometimes, eh? See, it didn't take me long to notice that nearly all of those negative comments were coming from people who were having conniption fits over seeing and hearing cartoon characters smoking and cussing and shooting and drinking in a "children's film". In other words, these were people who are under the delusion that animation is only for children, and the very saddest thing about people who perpetuate the animation age ghetto is this: when they see something that flagrantly contradicts the thought that all animation has to be only for kids, instead of realizing that they are totally wrong, they fly into a rage of "think of the CHILDREN! Protect them from this FILTH!"

If "Rango" made people like that angry, I needed to see it on general principle.

And oh, what a wonderful film it is. It does take a little while to find it's groove, but when it does, "Rango" turns into one of those movies you feel like being a fan of just for the fact that it even exists. Seriously, how the hell did this movie happen? Can you imagine the pitch meeting?

"So Johnny Depp is a cartoon chameleon who is basically him as Hunter S. Thompson and he's never been outside his terrarium. He's lost during his family's road trip through the Mojave Desert. Said family is never mentioned again and Chameleon!Depp gives no crap about attempting to find them --wait, stay with me! He winds up in a mash-up of spaghetti westerns and 'Chinatown' that takes place in a town where everyone who would normally be a cute cartoon critter of ambiguous species instead is based on a specific animal. And did I mention that even though the characters are cartoon animals, everyone's going to be realistic as all get out with buggie eyes and flaky skin and ragged feathers and even the traditionally cute species will look like the contents of a barfed-up hairball? Oh, and there's guns and death and swearing and spitting and weird heat-hallucinations and mystic cacti and existential themes and Joseph Campbell's Monomyth and smoking and shooting and drinking! Also, the female lead is a lizard in a wig who introduces herself in a monologue full of SAT vocabulary rattled off at great speed, there's a lot of cerebral stuff about the various personalities we take on in our lives, and there is this one other character who spends all of his time onscreen with an arrow through his eye socket. We want to do this as ILM's first-ever animated feature."

"An animated existentialist spaghetti western with a barfed-up hairball who has an arrow through his head you say? Brilliant!"

In short, this is one of those very rare case where "WTF?" is a drat good thing. Now, you know I don't hate CGI, but after a while CGI animation tends to look... too "neat", for want of a better word. This is the first CGI animated film I have seen that sincerely did not look like anything else out there and that alone makes it a gem. I got more of a first-season "Ren and Stimpy" feel from the movie. And the characters, as already implied, look less like they were designed to sell toys and more like something unpleasant out of a Jim Henson/Brian Froud collaboration.

The whole movie is beautiful in it's own weird-ass twisted way. I love how every resident of the town has their own little abnormality or other shamelessly weird detail. (If your going to render every single scale or feather or strand of hair on a character, the creators of "Rango" realized, it's going to look weird and unnatural if they're totally symmetrical and all "pretty". This is a problem that has plagued Disney's early CGI films.) The film may have another of my usual bones of contention: a cast made up mostly of "names", but each and every one of the characters is terrific and ceaselessly quotable (my favorites are the "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"-ish strolling mariachi band who cheerily sing of the hero's imminent doom). There are some terrific little gags I'd have missed without pausing. And the animation is just straight-up pants-sh*ttingly gorgeous. My good God, that road-crossing scene.

I should re-emphasize that the movie is as weird as all get out. It's good that it was even made in the first place, but it may not be for everyone. I can already tell I'm going to see some comments from the other end of the "love it or hate it" pool, much as I did with "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (which is due for a re-watch since it never got a proper review come to mention it) and "Where the Wild Things Are". It's cool, it's cool. But ask yourself if you'd rather watch "Rango" or another damn two-hour-long toy commercial.

By the way, if you loved the film too, here's a scene that never made it in and serves as a nice little epilogue.

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Sketch of the Day!

Random creature designs!

The Cyber-Dude Cyber-Abides. - Thoughts on "TRON: Legacy"

Movie #63: "TRON: Legacy"

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.

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Sketch of the Day! It's a raptor! How exciting!

Never Mind "Terra Nova", Let's Watch Dinosaur Children's Shows!

So there is a show called "Terra Nova" coming to Fox sometime next year. You love dinosaurs, I love dinosaurs, we all love dinosaurs, so you might have heard of it. We know exactly this much about it:

1) It involves Steven Spielberg.
2) There's at least one dinosaur in it.
2.5) But don't call it "'Lost' with dinosaurs".
3) The plot has something to do with some humans from the future traveling through time to live in the Mesozoic era. Apparently the Earth is dying in the future and so people go back to the past to set right what once went wrong.

Now, call me cynical but it occurs to me that the plan to send humans back to pre-human times in a bid to fix the ecological catastrophes humans have caused in the future is... flawed. What if it just gives us another seventy-million years to eff things up?

(Light-bulb goes *ping!*)

Oh my God -- here's my bet on how this series will end. The humans settle in about a thousand years or so from the end of the Cretaceous, and it turns out that (wait for it) Natalie Portman was a swan the whole time! Also, that time-traveling humans contributed to the K-T extinction.

Also, I will wager you that whatever the plot actually is, the dinosaurs will still look like they did in the "Jurassic Park" movies. I am ready to say I will wear a frilly tutu or something equally silly all day long, with all the inconveniences that implies, if we see just one feather.

Sketch of The Day, right in the middle of the post!



Yeah. But never mind "Terra Nova" for now. Are there any shows on TV involving dinosaurs we could watch right now? Well, yes there are.

The first series is the one I have the least to say about, for ill and for good. It's called "Dino Dan" and it airs on Nick Jr. It is - and this is the intriguing part - made with the cooperation of the venerable Royal Tyrell Museum. You can bet your hindquarters the dinosaurs on the show are going to be as accurate as possible given the production date.

And the limitations of the animation budget. The dinosaurs are CGI creations (we will be seeing a lot of this) and the animation can get a little wonky. It's nice that the Compsognathus has feathers, but it also looks like he stuck his toe in an electrical socket. .

The premise behind the show is that Dan Henderson (awesome) is a kid who loves animals and knows an awful lot about them. And he sees dinosaurs where others don't. Aside from teaching the audience about Ornithodirans of all kinds, the show informs it's young audience that everyone loves small children who are insufferable know-it-alls total nerds. Interesting.

"Dino Dan" is at least far better than our second dinosaur-involving children's show. Then again, most things are. Currently airing in an early-morning death slot on The Hub, "DinoSapien" is a British/Canadian co-production. And it is *weird*. And I don't mean the fun kind of weird.

The plot: A girl goes to a dinosaur-themed summer camp in the woods and meets the titular creature, named Eno. Eno looks like what would have happened if E.T. had an illicit affair with Dougal Dixon's Dinosauroid (seen at the 2:00 mark). He is, all told, an odd-looking protagonist for a kid's show. On the one hand, I like that they aren't afraid to let Eno enter the uncanny valley (I can't help but think we'd have a horrific instinctual reaction to an actual flesh-and-blood anthropomorphic animal-person; I base this theory on the comments under those Orangina ads), but a part of me wishes he'd been allowed to be a little cuter.

He's supposed to be a kind of Dromeosaur, and he sports a few feathers but is otherwise naked. And he has really strange hands. He at least is a little more believable than the Diggers, which are another kind of dinosaur lurking around the campground. I have no idea what's going on with them.

The show itself is very reminiscent -for ill and for good- of the live-action sci-fi series from Nickelodeon in the early '90s. You're going to see a lot of bad animation and annoying children. I was beginning to feel very distraught over this project...

But then...

Oh, but then...

Let us now watch "Dinosaur Train". Indeed, let us watch "Dinosaur Train: every day. Because it might be the greatest and best kids' animated series with dinosaurs in it and should maybe even have a spot on my DVR in-between "My Little Pony" and "The Walking Dead" (someday, my prince will come ). But I am getting ahead of myself.

Initially, when this series was announced, people were skeptical. It was hard not to be when all we had was a title. Muses Ryan Roe of the great Muppet fan site "Tough Pigs", "they (must have) arrived at the idea of Dinosaur Train after rejecting Space Bulldozers, Kittens Eating at McDonald’s, Cupcakes Playing Drums, and Dead Bugs with Moustaches." And then... the show premiered.

I am not going to get to wordy here. People, there is an episode with Therizinosaurs doing Tai-chi. There are Therizinosaurs and they are in a cartoon for kids AND THEY ARE DOING MARTIAL ARTS AND THIS IS AWESOME!!! Also, they have feathers. Matter of fact, minor theropod characters are more likely to have them then to prance around naked. Nerd glee!

Addendum: More, and far more detailed, reasons you need to let your kids watch "Dinosaur Train" over at DinoGoss

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Feederwatch Friday!

Sharp-shinned Hawk 1
Rock Pigeon 4
Downy Woodpecker 1
Black-capped Chickadee 2
Tufted Titmouse 1
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
Northern Cardinal 1
House Sparrow 25

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Festive Things of the Day!

Speaking of Muppets, those of you in the New York City area (specifically, Brooklyn) can attend the Muppet Vault Christmas event this coming Sunday! Nobody made Christmas specials like the Muppets, and the Tough Pigs gang will be showing some of their favorite lost classics. Perhaps they will include this crazy thing?

And if you are in North Conway, New Hampshire, you can do what my cousin and I did this July and visit the Christmas Loft. Granted, visiting this place during Christmas isn't going to have the same impact, but even so it... it is something to see, I can promise you that.

AND there is, finally, a new Homestar Runner Decemberween episode!

"Creating the Impossible" airs tonight!

Argh, I can't believe I forgot to mention this. Encore is airing a documentary about the legendary effects studio Industrial Light and Magic tonight at 8:00 EST. It's by the same director as the wonderful "PIXAR Story", and should be pretty nifty.

If you miss the show tonight, it will air again Sunday after a marathon of films featuring ILM's animation! Timeless classics like... "Hook". Also "Jumangi". (To be fair, the marathon consists of the ILM-involving movies that the Encore channels have in their playlist, and it also includes "Starship Troopers". I usually keep politics way the heck away from my blog, but it needs to be said that "Troopers" is the kind of rare work of satire that played one way back when it was released, and a very, very different way now. If you have not seen it before, yes it is a terrible adaptation of the novel, but it is a good movie. Just be prepared to go, and I quote, 😨 at least once. Twice for Neil Patrick Harris fans.)

A girl and her Wyvern. It's a beautiful thing.

A lot of you have probably already seen this but it's new to me.



It's... it's very dusty in here. Hang on a minute...

OK, the really amazing thing about this short film is that it's basically a demo reel to show what the open-source animation program Blender is capable of. Here's a brief explanation, from the short's YouTube page:

"Sintel" is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. With initial funding provided by 1,000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film.
This 15 minute film has been realized in the studio of the Amsterdam Blender Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. In addition to that, several crucial technical and creative targets have been realized online, by developers and artists and teams all over the world."

"Sintel" premiered on the first of October and already hit one million views on YouTube by the end of the week. The creators expressed their joy in the way only an animator can, "seems we’ve made everyone cry!"

Pretty amazing. I love how they've demonstrated everything their software can do while producing a short that gets me, as an animation fan, a heck of a lot more excited than, say, the "Megamind" trailer.

Be sure to check out the production blog, which has some wonderful treats like this super-adorable early concept art and creature designs.

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Announcement... really more like a disclaimer/apology in advance: I hurt my back pretty badly a couple of days ago. I'm in the "original injury is starting to feel better; too bad all the other muscles who had to compensate for the first injury feel worse" stage. It basically hurts to do anything besides lie down.
So basically, it hurts to sit up and type. I'm hoping I can find some way to work around this; I want to have *some* content for Halloween.
Yes, the holiday season has snuck up on me again. This, then, is getting older; "every year is getting shorter" and all that. I'll have some fun with that little existential crisis prompt while staring at the ceiling later.

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Sketch of the Day!
I haven't been able to upload anything new at the time of writing this, but I promise you the Pink Dinosaur Sketchbook project is still going.



OMG, this is AWESOME!!!



Bwahaha...