"See Why We Call Them ANIMALS!" - The 1992 "Trials of Life" TV Ad!

Frequent readers probably wouldn't have to be told about this, but just in case, you all need to be watching the three part "Attenborough's Life Stories" miniseries on "Nature". Your PBS station may vary, but the final episode should be airing tonight, with the previous episodes being rerun through the beginning of this month.

As we all know, anything Sir David Attenborough is involved in will probably be very good, but this series has been particularly fascinating since it focuses on the man himself and his career. Science and technology have changed very dramatically in the past sixty years, and Attenborough has been around to see many of these changes firsthand. The first episode is particularly good, as Attenborough explains how new photography techniques essentially changed his entire career.

Indeed, this is such a lovely, poignant series centered on such a wonderful, sweet person, that this advertisement from the early 1990's comes across as even more batsh*t insane than it did the first time I saw it:





Okay. So the old (and, honestly, tired) joke about the 90's is that they were the X-TREEEEEM Decade. Everything was Darker and Edgier (tm), as well as raunchier, more violent, and too hot for TV. I tend to protest this (the 90's was also the decade of Beanie Babies, Barney and Friends, everyone suddenly being into angels, and "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" for cryin' out loud) but things like this make it hard.

I remember seeing this ad very often during TNT's reruns of "The Muppet Show" and classic cartoons. You can imagine the confused look on my face when I finally got the chance to watch the series years later (the late, lamented chain Buck-A-Book had some of the videos on sale). Really, the only segment in the series that fits the histrionic ad is the footage of chimpanzees hunting -- and evidently that's "safe" enough to show on the PBS series now.  Yeah.

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Art of the Day! Witness the relentless struggle to continue the bloodline!!!



Awww...

In Which we Wintess the Slow Extinction of Saturday Morning Cartoons

The exact reason for the gradual phasing-out in the late 1990's of animated programs for children airing on the big three networks on Saturday mornings is highly disputed.  Many argue that the readily available children's programming on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network rendered Saturday morning cartoon blocks irrelevant.  Others note that networks probably found the 1996 FCC mandate that required at least three hours of educational content for children too restrictive.  And still others will point out the most cynical reason: airing blocks of mostly infomercials instead of a block of cartoons on the weekend was the cheaper, more profitable option.

But whoever you argue this subject with, almost everyone will agree that the beginning of the end, the Chicxulub meteor of Saturday morning cartoons if you will, was the premier of "Saved by the Bell". And that brings us to this remarkable video lurking quietly in my YouTube queue.  It's the first-ever appearance of the "Saved by the Bell" characters on NBC, on a weird special promoting (ironically enough) Saturday morning cartoons.



Now as I said before,"Saved by the Bell" has shouldered a lot of the blame for killing the Saturday morning cartoon tradition... but let's take a look at NBC's lineup here, because the animated alternatives to "Bell" suggest that the death of Saturday morning cartoons was a more excruciatingly slow process.  We've got the very bizarre final season of "The Smurfs", the second-to-last season of "Alvin and the Chipmunks", and two animated "Alf" series, one of which is completely given over to parodies of other things.  New series included the improbable "Camp Candy" and "Captain N: the Half-Hour Nintendo Game Commercial".  A look at other networks' schedules from the same year reveals several long-incumbent series broken up by head-scratching new series.

So with this in mind, I am willing to say definitively that the reasons for the big three networks essentially giving up on Saturday morning cartoons are complicated.

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Art of the Day!

The Insanity of the 1996 Walt Disney World Christmas Parade!

There's a part of me that thinks I ought to be doing a trip report or something more substantial like that, but I've been busy with decorating and other Christmassy things. So here's a weird Christmas and Disney related video instead:



I discovered this barrel of insanity some time before we left for our spur-of-the-moment Christmastime in Disney World Round Two trip. It has been argued that the current age of the Disney theme parks is the strangest ever but looking back at 1996, I don't know. Among the stuff I noticed:

* - Is it me or is this actually a document of Jerry Van Dyke gradually losing his mind?

* - I forgot how obnoxious the hype for the live-action remake of "101 Dalmatians" was back then.

* - How would you like to be on the same stage as that terrifying Broadway Lumiere costume?  How would you like to have to WEAR that terrifying Broadway Lumiere costume?

* - J.D. Roth's entire career seems to be floating from random hosting gig to random hosting gig.

* - "Remember the Magic!!!"

There are two major Weird Disney Things that are worth singling out here:

* - Okay, there was one interesting and different thing we did during this latest WDW trip, and that was staying in Saratoga Springs. It is a very very large and sprawling resort with many buildings spread out over a large area. I don't think we would have liked it nearly as much if we were in one of the more remote buildings (we were in Congress Park in a building overlooking the remains of Pleasure Island across the river and within about a twenty-minute walk to the main building.) But our room was huge as far as DVC studios go, the facilities in the resort were all very nice, and it was fun spotting the buildings like the old theater that betrayed the fact that this used to be the Disney Institute.

Generally speaking, if you are walking around in Walt Disney World and you see something very strange that has been there since the mid-80's through mid-90's, you can explain it with two words: Michael Eisner. The story with the Disney Institute is that supposedly Eisner went to a resort in upstate New York once that catered to older adults and during your whole stay there you took classes in various subjects. "I LOVED it," he said upon his return, "I LOVED spending the whole week in classrooms learning how to cook or arrange flowers or whatever! You know what, I WANT that! I WANT that in my park!"

And so the Disney Institute, a resort where you'd stay in and take classes all through your entire stay in Walt Disney World, was built. As you can see in the segment about it in the video, the concept didn't go over as well as Michael Eisner thought it would.

* - Castle. Cake.


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If you enjoyed this weird Christmas special from days gone by, I'm planning something big -and probably ill-advised- for next week. Until then, here's the Sketch of the Day with Santas galore!

"You cold-farted itch!" - Thoughts on "Food Fight!"

(NOTE: This isn't the "old friend" I said we'd be catching up with last week.  That was just delivered a few days ago, but a few other more immediate things popped up and I will get to it next week, I promise.)

It feels like ages ago when I found that lonely book-that-makes-sounds adaptation of the troubled animated film "Food Fight", doesn't it?  (And oh dear, the format of this blog during it's first year.)  Since then, it felt as though "Food Fight" was going to end up being one of those strange pieces of animation lost to history that I'd never get to see.  Then again, this was a film that was explicitly a feature-length commercial with various advertising mascots as the characters.  With visions of a movie-length version of the astonishing ill-conceived mall scene in "Eight Crazy Nights" in my head, I wasn't too heartbroken over missing out.

Well, turns out somebody out there in the vast seas of the internet acquired a copy of "Food Fight".  That kind soul decided, for reasons that are unclear, to stream the thing on an ongoing 24-hour loop.  And out of morbid curiosity, plus the fact that OCD is a hell of a psychological problem and I have to tie up loose ends whenever I can, I watched the whole damned thing from the beginning.

Welp.

I'm always kind of grudgingly impressed when I already know that a movie is going to be a worthless piece of crap just based off its reputation, but then that movie actually turns out to be even more horrible in every imaginable way.  Furthermore, "Food Fight" is horrible for many reasons that nobody could ever imagine.  Yes, we've got ourselves a fascinatingly bad movie here.  I'd go so far as to call it the "Manos: the Hands of Fate" of animation.  It's that inept and insane.  (And speaking of classic "Mystery Science Theater 3,000" episodes, nobody has learned from the "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" episode never to allude to good movies in their terrible movies.  Hell, "Food Fight" goes ahead and makes a lot of weird references to "Casablanca".  Yeah.)

So first off, obviously the fact that there are real life advertising mascots in this movie that was probably going to itself be marketed towards young children (even though it is really not appropriate for anyone) is disgusting.  But the thing is, here are far fewer advertising mascots than I had been led to anticipate from all the reports of "Food Fight" over at Cartoon Brew (which also have some incredible war stories from people who worked on the film in the comments).  None of the mascots who do show up are the "stars" of the movie.  In fact, most of them only show up as very brief sight gags.  And furthermore, and most puzzling, they're all advertising mascots that were either already kind of obscure in 2005 (the California Raisins show up for Pete's sake), or who represent products that kids tend to not be all that emotionally invested in (ie, syrup and floor cleaner).  If this was meant to be the ultimate product placement movie, then it's remarkably bad at achieving even that dubious honor. 

The name-brand products in "Food Fight" are therefore mostly fictional.  At any rate, they're at war with their nefarious off-brand generic equivalents.  The vilification of generic brands is genuinely despicable and, honestly, making it through this film made me want to support every strange generic off-brand product I see.

So already the movie is morally repugnant, but I kind of figured that already.  What I never could have anticipated was how incredibly incompetent and ugly "Food Fight" is, given all the companies that were supposedly supporting it and all the stars in the cast.  As far as the latter is concerned, I would not dare spoil the fun by naming anyone here.  But your brain will probably crap itself during the voice cast list.  And I'm guessing that the reason why certain mascots who were supposed to show up in the movie didn't is because their owners sat down, watched the movie, and bailed as soon as possible.

"Food Fight" is easily the worst-looking CGI animated feature I've ever seen.  The whole thing looks like the dirt-cheap dollar-bin cash-in of itself.  It's hard to even describe it, because I have never seen anything this inept before.  It looks like it's only the second or maybe third pass after the wireframe stage.  The more I think about it, the more I'm trying to convince myself that there is no way in hell that the version of the movie I watched was the final version.  Nobody in their right mind would sign off on a feature-length piece of animation where everything looks very literally like sh*t.

The animation is so terrible, it's actually hard to tell what the hell is supposed to be happening at any given moment.  Nothing moves -nothing even looks- like anything anyone has ever observed in this universe.  It's unreal how the most basic principles of sequential art and animated art are ignored or even violated in every scene.  I'm talking about things you'd learn the first week of drawing class, like how drapery looks and how it works, or the fact that different substances look different and move in different ways, or how gravity affects objects in a space, or how people have skeletons with joints in specific places and muscles that visibly change shape when they move.  There is one character in particular -an annoying comedy relief weasel-thing- who does not move or behave like any healthy living thing in the history of ever.

And that brings us to the characters.  Now, we've seen a lot of movies with eye-bleeding character designs before (what's up, "We're Back"?), but somehow the herky-jerk nature of cheap CGI makes everything look even more terrible than it already is.  The character's faces are so stiff and expressionless, they end up having to flay their arms around to express whatever is on their minds.  Imagine Ralph Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings" and you have the idea, except everyone looks unflexible, mechanical, and totally unaffected by normal physics.

A couple of things make the characters more awkward and awful than they already are.  First off, do you miss all those uncomfortable stereotypes from the early 80's?  Because if you do, you will find some here.  The "jokes" in the movie on a whole would make Piers Anthony proud as they are a discordant mix of childish puns and inappropriate sleazy gross humor anyway, but the mind-blowing sight of old offensive stereotypes stood out (WTF forever at the gay panic vampire bat thing) and I don't even want to know what they're doing in a feature film made in Twenty-Anything.  I also don't ever want to meet the person who approved of that horrifying Catgirl thing who never even looks at anyone she's supposed to be interacting with. She's named Sunshine Goodness, by the way, because this is the kind of movie that is stupid enough to name a character something as impossibly awkward as Sunshine Goodness.  I am guessing that the only reason she is even a Catgirl is because she was originally a human but they figured it'd be weird to have her marry Dogtective (and this is the kind of movie that is stupid enough to name a character something like Dogtective), so they stuck cat ears on her and called it a day.

I do have one positive thing to say about "Food Fight": it is, like so many of the very worst animated films, mercifully short.  And it's kind of heartwarming that a film so shameless and soulless in concept got as far as it did and never got a theatrical release; hell most people have never even heard of it.  You may be lucky (if that's even the word) enough to still catch it as its pretty easy to search for.  Meanwhile, everyone involved in the movie should take a moment and just sit and think about what they've brought into this world.

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Sketch of the Day!

My Summer of Sequels Review Index

The full list of reviews from My Summer of Sequels.

During a time period roughly stretching between 1994 to 2008, Walt Disney Television Animation created nearly thirty dubious sequels to popular (or not) Disney Animated Canon features, nearly all of which went straight to video.  No, I did not watch each and every one of them, just the ones available via Netflix that are supposedly not terrible.  (And strictly speaking, I didn't have to watch any of them.)

This was a deeply strange and mostly regretful period in animation history.  Here are eight reasons why I call it the Dork Age:

* - "Pooh's Grand Adventure: the Search for Christopher Robin"

* - "Return to Neverland"

* - "The Jungle Book 2"

* - "The Lion King 1.5"

* - "Bambi 2"

* - "Brother Bear 2"

* - "Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time"

* - "The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning"

More -and far, far better- Animation Marathons

* - The Chronological Disney Animated Canon

* - Don Bluth Month

* - Dreamworks' "Tradigitals"

* - The Short Animation Blogathon

* - My Summer of Sequels

* - Random 90's Animation

* - The Princess Project

"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

Ill-Advised Oscar 2012 MOBILE Live-Tweetery!

Go forth, fellow Oscar-watchers, and read them! Read all of them!

Edit: Complete List of Winners and my Tweets, reposted for prosperity and for the benefit of anyone watching the Oscars on DVR (please excuse the wonky spelling):

* - My fearless prediction is that the Dictator thing will be the only spontaneous/interesting moment on the red carpet.

* - My other fearless prediction: "The Artist" wins all the things. Even though it was much better when it was animated and titled "The Illusionist"...

* - Methinks Nick Nolte's crows would consider him their pet human.

* - Also "Warrior" is excellent and you should see it. #BlatantOscarSnubs

* - God, there's another 1/2 hour of this? Get to the part about movies winning things!

* - (Plays with her Audubon Guide to New England app. LOL random animal sounds.)

* - When are they going to stop talking about clothes already???

* - Not that I am in any position to talk, but Brian Grazer is an odd-looking man.

* - OTOH, I am digging Chris Rock's 'fro.

* - OMG almost time!

* - I still can't choose between Morgan Freeman or Sir David Attenborough for who should narrate my inner running monologues.

* - Random Bieber!!!

* - Should note that's the only part of "The Help" I've seen...

* - Glad to see "Hugo" get cinematography

* - And for best art direction! Hmmm...

* - Hell of a montage going right from "Titanic" to "Twilight". #WhyThisGenerationFails

* - Oscar-nominated Madonna movie. #Things80sComediansWouldPointOut

* - And a million Harry Potter fans cried out...

* - D'aww at Brad Pitt waxing nostalgic about a monster movie.

* - Welp. Good jarb offending all of China, Sandra Bullock.

* - The Oscar goes to the woman involved in the SECOND-best moment of scatological humor in the bunch!

* - OK, the Christopher Guest Gang focus group bit was hilarious.

* - And a win for Team Fincher!

* - The Oscar-nominated Transformers 3. #ThingsModernComediansWouldPointOut

* - Yay Hugo!!!

* - Cirque Du Soleil is all like, f--- you, we got your 3-D right here!

* - Meanwhile George Clooney 's date is all like "I'm not familiar with the kind of thing I'm seeing...?"

* - For reals, Cirque Du Soleil are amazing and anyone who disagrees can go right to hell.

* - Brace yourselves, here comes the intro to the Best Animated Film award...

* - No, animation is hard if you're the person who is ACTUALLY DOING THE ANIMATION!!!

* - YEAAAH!!! The only award I was in any way emotionally invested in and my fab film won!

* - Emma Stone , WTF?

* - 0.0 #ActuallySurprisingOscarWins

* - Incidentally, this is where I should note that I was hating Michael Bay before it was cool.

* - D'awww Christopher Plummer

* - Yo, fellow Leo DiCaprio fans: let's school them little Twilight fans when Titanic 3D comes out.

* - And that's how you keep all the Muppet fans in suspense.

* - Though I have to say, with all the dancing birds, my 12-year old self would have gone nuts over Rio

* - And now I live on a planet where both The Muppets and Flight Of The Concords (on a technicality) have Oscars.

* - And now I live on a planet where Dean Shelton has an Oscar #EarthIsTheBestPlanet

* - And special effects legend Doug Trumble won an Oscar !!! But not during this broadcast. #SpecialistFilmmakerGhetto

* - Best. Callback. Ever. #ScorseseDrinkingGame

* - Yaaaaaay!!!

* - The only other award I was emotionally invested in and my favorite won again!!!

* - Best Director already?

* - I like the traditional Polish Christmas ornaments Merryl Streep is accessorizing with

* - James Earle Jones ALSO won an Oscar! Also not during this ceremony.

* - Here comes the sad part so get out your hankies...

* - This must be how adults felt towards us kids born in the late 70s with our Ataris and pocket calculators. #SamsungSmartTVAd

* - Uggie was robbed!!! #BlatantOscarSnubs

* - This is as good a time to note that we are going to hear a LOT of interesting comments on Pharrell's house band.

* - This is also as good time to note that times like these, I regret my sensitivity to high frequencies... #WTFTechnicalGlitches

* - Seriously, those are some nice Christmas ornaments.

* - Hurry up Tom I'm running out of wine!

* - D'aaaaaw, Uggie!!!

* - BTW, if The Artist win surprises you at all, welcome to being disillusioned with the Academy.

* - Seriously, am I the only one kinda bothered by the fact that it's THE SAME THING as Chomet's "The Illusionist"? #AnimationAgeGhetto

* - Ah well. A fine night to celebrate the Art of Film.

* - I'll be back for the Jimmy Kimmel show. Until then, go watch "The Illusionist".

* - Not gonna lie. I'd watch the hell out of "Movie The Movie".

In Which Trish is Late to the Blackout "Party".

This site's going dark for a while. Because apparently the best way to cure the sniffles is to shoot the patient. Paleo King and ApeLad explain things better than I could. Sign the petitions. Use all your email addresses. DO IT. Then get off the Internet for the day. Go read a book.

EDIT: An even better explanation, via The Oatmeal.

Live-Blogs Are Always a Good Idea! Trish Live-Blogs the 2012 Golden Globes!

Yes, because my other attempts at live-blogging things went over so very well. Unless something spectacular happens during the Arrival Special Thing, we'll get rolling at 8:00 PM EST. as always, please do not say anything about the spelling.

Until then, here's what I spent my day making:



This is based off a concept that's been sitting around in my imagination since I was a teenager. Yeah, I was a strange person back then. Like anything's changed.

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Award Commentary!

7:17 - I still can't get over this: The Golden Globe nominated "Gnomeo and Juliet".

7:22 - Evan Rachel Wood's dress should be in our upcoming Art Evolved gallery.

7:25 - Walt Disney Pictures presents "John Carter: Based on the Novel 'Nothing in the Title to Do With Princesses We Swear'"!

7:27 - RE: "Big Miracle" First thing I thought of was this, from the very ending of The Animated Films of Don Bluth, courtesy of John Cawley's website:

A SONG OF THE ICE WHALE - This tale... was based on the incident in the arctic when whales were caught in the ice. Countries around the world spent millions of dollars to free the whales before they would perish.

7:35: The imaginary freshmen college girl from 1998 inside Carson Daily is flipping out right now.

7:36: "Yeah, I'm in a genuinely scary-looking Gothic horror film. It's still probably not going to cause as many nightmares as that thing under the bench in 'Deathly Hallows part 2'." - D. Radcliff

7:39 - You don't have to introduce Kathryn McPhee to us, NBC. Please stop doing that.

7:46 - Funny how the prettiest animation goes to commercials about birth control and antidepressants.

7:48 - Well, and the Disney commercials. Derp.

8:06 - And we're off! I am glad I am DVR-ing this whole thing since I missed much of Ricky Gervais' speech. Which, by the way, if anything he says offends you, like deeply, please re-evaluate your life.

8:08 - Man, I need to get my butt in a theater and see "Hugo". And "The Muppets". And "The Artist". And "Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol". Yeesh, I think I may be part of the problem...

8:10 - Christopher Plummer for Best Supporting Actor! This happened while I was typing the above stuff! Now I remember why I hate Live-Blogging! I'm not gonna mention the winners again unless they do something interesting; you can look that up later.

8:13 - Laura Dern better mention "Jurassic Park" somehow...

8:21 - I maintain that the Globes are the most fun awards to watch. There are technical mistakes like crazy and EVERYONE IS FED LOTS OF WINE. (My poison of choice for tonight. Oh, hey Kate Winslet won something!)

8:38 - If you are surprised that "Game of Thrones" didn't win, welcome to being a fantastic fiction fan, kid. It never gets any easier.

8:45 - Adam your music is bad and you should feel bad! Seriously, I cannot wait to only have to hear Maroon 5 on "Back to the Zilches Friday Night".

8:47 - Even Leo thinks "The Artist"'s composer is the cutest thing.

8:48 - Seriously, I can't let it go: THE GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATED "GNOMEO AND JULIET"!?!

8:50 - And as a nice anticlimax of sorts, Madonna won. Have no idea for what movie, though.

8:51 - Wait... wait, so Madonna MADE a movie?!? Well, on behalf of every humoridian from the era of "Shanghai Surprise" and other not-good movies involving Madonna, I say (ahem) HOLY SH*T, AN AWARD-WINNING MADONNA MOVIE!?!

9:00 - Well, thanks, Seth, you just made things way more awkward than they were before. Also, "My Week With Marilyn" is a comedy.

9:10 - Thanks to the Magic of DVR, I can not miss whatever it is that I just missed right now!

9:12 -
(But is it me or did the announcer seriously mispronounce the name of the show and the character?)

9:16 - Congrats, editor, on making "Moneyball" look interesting. Now brace yourselves, here comes the introduction for Animated Film...

9:18 - And the Motion-Captured TinTin for the WinWin. How badly do you think the guys at Cartoon Brew are crapping themselves right now?

9:23 - D'oh, forgot I could fast-forward the commercials!

9:27 - OK, that was adorable.

9:27 - Woah, actors from genre shows are winning stuff tonight! Young fantastic fiction fans, enjoy this.

9:29 - Surreal IRL Discussion of the Night (so far): My dad trying to convince me that when the announcer said that Jessica Lange won a Golden Globe for "King Kong", they actually did mean the Dino DeLaurentas 1970's monstrosity. When I am Queen, I will perform an Inception on everyone so that when they are about to whine about how they hate the Peter Jackson version, the shower scene from 70s!King Kong plays on an endless loop in their heads.

9:31 - Oh shizz, Madonna just Goth-served Ricky!

9:39 - WAAAAAY-after-the-fact cherring over Clair Danes winning for "My So-Called Life". I need to revisit that series.

9:40 - I just realized that I should have based Victoria the Deinonychus Angel's... "wings"... after Madonna's...

9:41 - So now that "Bridesmaids" exists, can we stop seeing everyone in Hollywood being so surprised when it turns out that women like to go to movies with more than three female lead characters? Because I swear I started seeing this as a kid when "Waiting to Exhale" was in theaters and it should have ended there.

9:47 - Confession: Speaking of movies with more than three female lead characters. I have not seen "The Help" in it's entirety. I have only seen the sh*t pie scene. That was enough for me.

9:55 - And now, many kind words about Morgan Freeman. I've nothing sarcastic to say about this.

10:03 - Incidentally, "RED" is a pretty damn good movie if you've missed it.

10:04 - Also, you can tell if a new acquaintance is worth a damn if they start weeping openly if you show them a clip from "March of the Penguins". If they don't, forget 'em.

10:10 - Have to admit, "John Carter" looks pretty badass. I'm actually rooting for it not to bomb.

10:13 - Out-loud "D'aaaaaaw"-ing at Scorscese's win, Leo's reaction, and the well-deserved Brian Selznic shout-out.

10:17 - Pretty sure at this point that the only people who'd classify "Glee" as a comedy are people who have never watched an entire season of the show.

10:24 - Disconcerting Phrase of the Night: "From the UPCOMING film, 'Total Recall'!"

10:36 - Repeat: this is why this is the Best Awards Show.

10:38 - Every endangered species of bird just went "what" at Merryl's mixed metaphor. And Merryl's Mixed Metaphor is a good name for a band.

10:40 - Calling it now: "the Artist" is going to be this year's "The King's Speech". But awww, Uggie!

11:00 - Just realized that "Tree of Life" was nominated for nothing at all. Huh.

In Which Trish Tries to Reassess "Cars" and Wonders if She Even Wants a Fourth "Jurassic Park"

I have been seeing an unusual sentiment lately that you've probably also already seen around the Internet wherever animation is discussed: "This might be the first year I ever voluntarily skipped a PIXAR film." "I love PIXAR, but I can't see myself paying to watch this." "I'll go, but once the short and the 'Brave' trailer are over, I'm out." "Why the hell are we not getting an 'Incredibles' sequel instead of this?" The film in question, this summer's annual PIXAR entry, is "Cars 2".

Admittedly, "Cars 2" has quite a lot going against it. It's explicitly been made as a moneymaker, even though PIXAR *really* doesn't need one. And also, well, it's a continuation of "Cars".

It's fairly common knowledge among animation fans that "Cars" is widely considered the "least best" PIXAR film. Fans have a hard time finding good things to say about it for a number of reasons I'll get to. It had been a while since I watched it, so I decided to revisit it and try to give it a fair reassessment. Maybe the movie was better than most people thought?

I fell asleep halfway through.

If you've read the Chronological Disney Animated Canon from a few years back, you know that (a) I don't sleep through animated films under normal circumstances and (b) when I do, it generally means that they are pretty bad ("Home on the Range" is a notable example). But being the nice person I am, I watched the rest the next morning.

I still don't like "Cars". But having watched the movie again, I have a better understanding of why I and most other PIXAR fans don't like "Cars":

First off, it's very definitely a film for little kids. PIXAR has made it's name by making movies for everyone. Moms and dads, boys and girls, dogs and cats, adults and children - every other PIXAR film appeals not just to the whole family but to that coveted demographic: everyone. But "Cars" is aimed squarely at the Matchbox/Tonka/Micro Machines set. There were scenes in the film where I couldn't help but think, "This is kind of stupid, but I'm sure a four-year-old would find it funny."

That said, there are also weird little moments that only an adult fully versed in car culture would appreciate. Racing stars have vocal cameos. There's an underlying nostalgia for old-fashioned cross-country road trips. Every vehicle is exhaustively researched to the point where they make the right sounds. For me, whose heart belongs to her fellow organic life forms and who does not get car culture at all, it was like peering into a window on an alternate universe, where I didn't understand the language or anything. (Though it is unspeakably reassuring to know that even when PIXAR swings and misses, they're still going to research their asses off. Therefore, I am foaming at the mouth with anticipation for the Celtic mythology-based "Brave".)
"Cars" was bookended by "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" on one end and "Ratatouille" and "WALL-E" on the other in the PIXAR chronology. These titles, and the fact that almost everyone has a hard time with the "but 'Cars' was made for children, chill out" argument, shows you what kind of reputation the studio had at the time. And in comparison to these films, "Cars" can't help but feel like an also-ran.

But the one thing that really bugged me during the film is also the one thing that gets brought up again and again as I was reading other people's reviews: The world of "Cars" is not very well constructed. As in, it makes no damn sense, and the more you're forced to think about it, the further you're sucked out of the story.

The characters in "Cars" are talking cars, and as I said, it appears as though most of the research and development for the film went into making them as realistic as possible. It's too bad, then, that almost no thought went into issues like, if they're cars, how -and why- did they build the houses? No, even better, how did they build the tire lugnut screwdriver thing since nothing in this world appears to have appendages with fine motor control? If everything is a car/plane/whatever, even the insects, why is the Dinoco logo still a tyrannosaur? Why is the Ferrari logo still a horse? Where did the fuel come from anyway? What in the world is even in "organic fuel"? Why are there military vehicles? Was there a car war? If (and granted this is from the "Cars 2" trailers but it's worth mentioning here) the Popemobile is indeed Catholic, what in the world kind of religion do these cars have? What would the Order of Mass in a car church look like? Why are they growing lettuce?

It's not just that this is the only PIXAR film completely lacking in the human element. It's worse because everything seems built by and for humans who are never seen, none of this is ever acknowledged, and the viewer's mind can't help but jump to some weird conclusions (my favorites being that this is a cheery distant sequel to "Maximum Overdrive" or a pro-machine propaganda film from the world of the Matrix). It reminded me more of something out of one of the not-good Dreamworks movies really. In "Shark Tale" (aka, the one where Will Smith is a fish and he quotes other movies and it is allegedly hilarious), the world was populated by fish and yet their city looked exactly like New York and they had a car wash and other human things a fish would have no need for. Say what you will about the movie I reviewed earlier this week, but at least "Legend of the Guardians" put some thought into what kind of castle owls would live in and what their tools and armor would have to look like.

So unless the reviews are spectacular, I doubt I'll be rushing to see "Cars 2". Speaking of sequels, last week, /Film reported that "Jurassic Park 4" just flat out refuses to die. The discussion under this report became quite lively and I had to join in. I apologize, but I'm going to be That Person on the Internet and repost some of my thoughts about the possibility of a fourth "Jurassic Park" movie.

The big one is, "Why?"

Could you even make a "Jurassic Park" movie in the 2010s? We've learned (and here I am going to use a very scientific term) a metric sh_t-ton more about the signature dinosaurs in "JP" since even the third movie, and at this point things like naked coelurosaurs would look stupid. Furthermore, you can't really do anything with the reoccurring human characters, nor can you really introduce new ones, without it feeling really forced. (And anyway, who cares about the humans in a "Jurassic Park" movie? :)

So you would either have to do a massive retcon, or come up with an excuse as to why the velociraptors don't look like velociraptors, or go for broke and do something totally insane like the anthropomorphic dinosaur soldier hero squad idea that was floating around a while back.

Or -and call me crazy- maybe come up with a totally new and different prehistoric animal franchise?

About the only thing that might make sense at this point would be a prequel. In the novels, there's a lot of implied (and not) backstory which could fuel a good "JP" prequel. All from memory, since it's been a while: A better explanation of the lysine contingency. The genetic engineers being asked to make the real live goddamn non-avian dinosaurs look and act more like what people "expect" (in the late 80's remember). Alan Grant being called in the middle of the night with the question "seriously, what would a baby Miasaura eat?" since the Park scientists have no zookeepers among them and have *no* experience with animals. Struggles with adapting the animals to modern diseases and parasites. And of course they could show exactly how the Park scientists learned how unruly the pterosaurs and maniraptors are...

And this was my favorite idea until a poster named Jonas came up with:

"They should set it in a distant future when humanity is extinct and the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park have populated the Earth and evolved to talk and make an amusement park where they can interact with real flesh and blood HUMANS recreated from genetic information preserved in fossilized rolled up gym socks: HOLOCENE PARK!"

Oh sweet Raptor Jesus, I need this movie yesterday (although the title really ought to be "Neogene Park", heh). The whole thing writes itself and I shall repeat my off-the-cuff dialogue for prosperity:

Dinosauroid!Alan Grant - "Well, perhaps humans are more closely related to our modern Rabbucks than to ancient reptiles. Look at the mammary glands, just like a Rabbuck's! Perhaps they even had hair like a Rabbuck!"

Dinosauroid!Annoying Child - "THAT doesn't look very scary! More like a fifteen pygostyle tall PARASHREW!!!"

Dinosauroid!Alan Grant - "A Parashrew. Well, imagine you're in the late Holocene. You see this fifteen pygostyle tall parashrew walking towards you, rather ungainly since it's hind legs are so absurdly long and it's skull is so monstrously large. But suddenly, you are attacked! *WSSHT!!!* By the other six billion humans that you didn't even know were there. And when they kill you, they kill with this: a gun. Point is, you will be stripped bare, have your bones and organs torn out, be cut into little pieces, and set on fire when they start to EAT you. So next time, show a little respect, hm?"

Dinosauroid!Annoying Child - 😨

(Later...)

Dinosauroid!Ellie Satler - "Gosh, Alan, if you wanted to scare the kid you could have just jumped up and screamed while flashing your talons at him."

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Sketch of the Day!



Ducks and Chickadees...

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Other Person's Art of the Day!

I'm going to link to this piece by concept artist Jake Parker. It's his take on Lightning McQueen and, honestly, it is glorious because it pretty much sums up my thoughts and feelings RE: "Cars".

Inside Lightning McQueen

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Ridiculously Important Addendum!

Guess who almost forgot to remind everyone that "Futurama" returns tonight at ten?

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Even MORE Ridiculously Important Addendum!

So... this post prompted a rebuttal from Scott at the Coherent Lighthouse. You should read it. (If only because it is so far the very first rebuttal I've prompted from *anything* I've written on this blog. Yeah...)

I feel a little silly that I could potentially get into an argument on the Internet over "Cars" of all things. Also, more importantly, I guarantee my response to Scott's post was exactly what he was probably doing while reading mine: Nodding politely while drumming his nails and thinking, "Yeah, but..." So, I am going to respectfully agree to disagree here.

(Even though I really really REALLY want to re-emphasize that the "it's just a kid's movie, chill out" argument is hard to swallow since I and practically every animation fan in the world expect so much more from PIXAR and... OK, Trish just breathe...)

Things I Must Post About!

This is partially for my benefit, partially for you readers to laugh at. I just finished an archive binge on my own blog and here are all the subjects I said I would write more about "someday":

* - WACOM Tablets and why they own so hard.

* - Jeff Smith's Bone. Actually, let's just get this one done: It's very good. Great art, terrific story. Just be aware that this is the kind of graphic novel that starts out like "Pogo" and ends like Dragonlance, and we all know what those are like, right?

* - Executive Meddling. Though I think between Don Bluth Month and the "Alien 3" review, I think that's been adequately covered. If you just can't get enough sad stories about an artist's vision being screwed by the higher-ups, you may read the namesake Trope, or listen to the whole spectacular debacle that the director of the film "Fanboys" suffered in this episode of the /Filmcast.

* - Speaking of: Podcasts! I got another shout-out by the very nice guys at "Science... Sort Of" in a recent episode. I think it's time to return the favor.

* - Obscure and or strange cartoons and shows like the previously and very briefly mentioned 1990's "Land of the Lost" reboot, "Kidd Video," and"Glow Friends".

* - The 1980's "Dinosaur" documentary with Phil Tippet animation and the PBS "Dinosaur" documentary with cel animation.

* - Reviews of illustrated books that somehow influenced me. William Stout's Dinosaurs, Rien Poortvliet's Gnomes, and Wayne D. Barlowe's Expedition.

* - Hazel Hedgehog and the Smurfette Principal. Maybe. Once again, the namesake trope pretty much covers it. Hazel herself is mentioned in the "Comics" section.

* - Classic Ranger Rick, though this is seeming less and less likely, and that makes me sad.

* - "Inception" and how much it melted my face off. Actually, yeah, there's my review. "Inception" = Awesomesauce.

"Trish, this is a movie that is essentially a victory lap for one of your favorite directors, stars an actor you've been a fan of since forever, the rest of the cast is incredible, it has amazing music, a brilliant fight scene unlike anything ever attempted before, and many shout-outs to M.C. Escher and Jungian symbolism and other stuff that you find awesome. And all you have to say about it is, 'It's Awesomesauce'? You know you wrote an entire blog post about a Tinkerbell book..."

Yeah. Yeah I know. It's just that I'm very late to the party and better writers have beaten me to everything interesting I could say about "Inception". I'm pretty sure I don't need to sell the movie to anyone at this point either. And I consider the Tinkerbell review an Old Shame.

By the way, Christopher Nolan was totally robbed. Bad Academy! Bad!

* - Other good 2010 movies I haven't got a chance to review yet and deserve long write-ups because they are underrated/obscure/whatever.

* - MOER OLD PALEOART!!! Especially the tale of Syntarsus (got that ready for Thursday!) and the Simon and Schuster Encyclopedia.

* - "Fraggle Rock" for cryin' out loud! Jim Henson's stuff in general.

* - "Invader Zim" and "Super Mario Brothers"

* - Movies That Are Good But Have a Ton to Answer For.

* - Expensive bird seed failure.

* - Dinosauroids and maybe other weird pop culture paleo-stuff.

* - And maybe this will be the year I write about the classic Christmas specials, yah?

OK, I'm promising nothing, but there's a good long list of subjects. Hopefully "someday" will be "over the next few weeks".

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Art of the Day!

I have updated my DeviantArt ID finally! I don't know, I think Spewey is a good mascot don't you?


DA ID 2011 by ~babbletrish on deviantART

Triceratops lives! -or- Why the mainstream press makes me cry.

WARNING: Uncharacteristic vitriol and some naughty language ahead.

Consider this another episode of Things I Need to Catch Up On Because They Happened During Don Bluth Month.



So around the middle of July, my wonderful regular reader/commenter Zach Miller posted this article on his blog: Toroceratops. I suggest you read it and his other two posts on the subject before we go on.

My reaction was, essentially, "Huh. So John "T. rex was an obligate scavenger" Horner proposed that Torosaurus is actually just a really, really old Triceratops and therefore all Torosaur fossils should be renamed Triceratops? That's... interesting, I guess. I, like most of the commenters, will buy it if we ever find an unmistakable transitional 'Toroceratops' skull."

And then I pretty much forgot about it.

Until I was well into the Don Bluth reviews and learned, via FARK.com, that the mainstream press had got a hold on this story. Ladies and gentlemen, the poor former (maybe) Torosaurus is unwittingly at the center of a fine demonstration of every single thing I cannot f***ing stand about the way the mainstream press reports on science, animals, nature, and... f*** it, everything.

Choice headlines:

"The Triceratops Never Existed!" - Yes it did. It's Torosaurus who would be getting the name change. Please learn how scientific nomenclature works. Also, changing an animal's name doesn't magically make it disappear. Seriously, WTF?

"Triceratops 'never really existed but was just a young version of another dinosaur'" - Same points as above, and just who the hell are they quoting? Honestly, this might be my favorite of the reports because you've got that headline and then, buried deep within the body text of the report itself: "All torosaurus specimens will now be reclassified as triceratops, the scientists said."

"Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us" -
1) Christ in a hot rod, I didn't pass five MTELs to see an affix used as a verb in a newspaper.
2) I don't know if this offends me more as an armchair paleontologist or as a sci-fi fantasy fan (by those "physically changing as you age" standards, aren't we all shapeshifting?) But at least it prompted this stupid thing which is hopefully funny:



Rest assured, dear readers, that the "nonexistence" and "shapeshifting" (I seriously couldn't type that without cringing) of dear old Triceratops has been highly exaggerated. But you wouldn't know from these articles. They have utterly failed to understand how scientific nomenclature works, have happily reported this theory -which many have called into question- as a universally accepted fact, and seem to be of the opinion that Triceratops (who doesn't give a sh*t what name us puny humans call it by anyway) has somehow vanished from the fossil record altogether.

I need a cold drink. 

Edit: See also this.


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Art of the Day: On a much, much happier note, joy and rapture! The Art Evolved Pop Culture Gallery is up!

Other Person's Art of the Day: Also, Gregory S. Paul's Dinosaur Coffee Table Book on Blurb Want... so... much... (Cries at lack of money.)