Let's go Behind the Scenes of "Walking With Dinosaurs"!

Man, I almost tossed this issue out without even flipping through it.  I mean, that cover.

(I do find it funny that a very dark and serious drama based on what was happening behind the scenes of the Three Stooges was teased... thus.  Then a few years later, rumors started bubbling of a feature film telling the same sad story and peopled with fine dramatic actors, and then when it finally arrived it looked like... this.  Point is, movies about the Three Stooges are probably destined to be confounding.)

I'm very happy that I did not, because nestled deep within the pages is this fine little article about the original "Walking With Dinosaurs" miniseries.  And it's labeled as something you adults can watch with your children because why would you ever otherwise watch something about dinosaurs, which are for the children, I guess?

I appreciate that there's a little acknowledgement of the controversy over "Walking With Dinosaurs"; how a great deal of it is purely speculative.  But I wish it was presented in less of a "pedantic scientist hates fun" way.  I'm from the future, speculative biology bordering on straight fantasy "documentaries" on the Discovery networks and the idea that paleontologists spend much of their time whining about accuracy instead of enjoying things is just going to get worse.

But never mind all that; here's the article in it's entirety:





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Sketch of the Day

For no reason (except for I don't think I've shared them here yet), gestures from the World Figure Skating Championship Exhibition:

Let's See What "Toy Wishes" Thought Millenial Kids Wanted for Christmas!

A Christmas post!  In May!  How timely!  My reasoning is twofold: 1) Going through these old magazines in roughly reverse-chronological order seems like the most fun way to go, especially since I want to save one of the oldest for last.  2) It snowed up here last week.


So today our journey through the '90's starts in the year 2000.  Decades do tend to leak into one-another at the edges.  We'll go over strange ads I found in other, older magazines at the end. Before we go past the cover, though, I'd like to point out that Harry Potter always looked higher than the moon in that particular illustration, and I really don't think anyone can be said to "win" when the prize is live-action "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" merchandise. On that subject...

Every single one of the things in the picture above is terrible.  But especially that ghastly RC car.  And the bath scrubbies.  And those gift boxes that look to be covered in the Grinch and Max's pelts...

On top of that, gifting a movie tie-in book rather than, you know, the original Dr. Seuss book to a child is in every way a nastier, grinchier trick than anything any version of the Grinch has ever done.  You know what, let's stuff all this Grinch movie crap in a box, shoot it into space, and direct our attention instead to Harry Potter merchandise.

Or... maybe let's not.  I do still find it hilarious that anyone ever thought it was a good idea to market mucus and fish flavored candy, when it's clearly meant as a joke in the books.  But basically, this is what you had for Harry Potter inspired food before officially licensed butterbeer.

Honestly, the merchandising of Harry Potter in these days was weird all around.  These limited edition figures aren't pictured but pictures are pretty easy to find on eBay.  I'm just not sure how appealing a ceramic statue of Hagrid about to be mauled by Norbert is to a kid, especially when the damn thing originally retailed at eighty dollars.

Also, LOL forever at that singing fish.  Yeah, we all still have one of those hanging around somewhere.

Man, I don't even know what I could add to these "Disney Dinosaur" toys that would make them funnier.  It is a good reminder of how garish and ugly the advertising campaign was. 

(You'd also think they'd advertise even just one toy of the supposedly highly marketable cute furry things some jackasses insisted this movie about dinosaurs had to have but oh well.)

How about some random ads then?

And I just made us all sad.

The live-action "101 Dalmatians" movies were God-damn inescapable for a few years.  For a reminder of that, stare into these dogs' unnerving people-eyes in despair.

I can say with all certainty that if I did not already know what they were like, this image would have made me never want to play a "Rayman" game ever.  Mother of God...

Aw, but that's why I like TV!  Oh, '90's Enjoying-Violent-Media-Shaming.

Note also that Constable Odo is hip and up with the young people.

I already know that Kiddified versions of Beach Boys songs sung by animals is kind of a Thing, but since I just recently watched "Love and Mercy", this strikes me as... awkward...

And finally, let's have a concert in a place that is currently being plowed over to make room for Star Wars.  Love that Walt Disney Records logo, though.

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Drawing of the Day

Hey, you know what's strange?  I didn't find any interesting "Pokemon" toys in Toy Wishes.

Let's Read _Prehistoric World: Ceratosaurus_!

This is going to be a weird one.

Then again, Ceratosauria is a weird Infraorder of dinosaurs if you think about it. So let's start reading 2006's Ceratosaurus and Other Horned Dinosaurs.



By Bakker's beard, introducing Ceratosaurus as a "horned dinosaur" will never not be disconcerting as hell. It isn't *untrue*, technically, and that's essentially the translation of "Ceratosaurus" after all. But I'm conditioned to think "Horned Dinosaur" = Ceratopsians, so it's unshakably weird.

Anyway, did anyone in here order a shameless Greg Paul rip-off?



Oof. But at least this isn't as bad as this next picture, which, from the little thumbnail on my desktop, I would have sworn was from the Pachycephalosaurus book.

It's... not a pachycephalosaurus...



Hoo boy. Okay, so this is a rather fanciful restoration of "Majungatholus", who is now known as Majungasaurus. Giving the beast a full-on pachycephalosaurus-style dome is... an interesting choice. And we all know how big a "pumper truck" is, right?



Elaphrosaurus, who was considered a strange-looking ornithomimid in at least one other book, is here correctly included in Team Ceratosauria.



And finally, good old Syntarsus, this time with a fleshy or bony snout-Mohawk. In a book about ceratosaurids, even though he's a coelophysoid (E: Thanks to Albertonychus for the likely reasoning in the comments below.) And still being referred to as Syntarsus, even though this was apparently corrected to Megapnosaurus five years before this book was published. Yeah.

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Sketch of the Day! My go-to response to the "T. rex Trying" meme.

Let's Read More of the _Prehistoric World_ Series!

Last autumn, I shared a few of the books from the oftentimes very odd Prehistoric World series of dinosaur books. I mentioned my local library had more of this series, so here come a few of the rest. As with the first batch of books, these books were all written by Virginia Schomp and published between 2003-2006 by the Marshall Cavendish Corporation. Once again, and unfortunately, the individual artists are not credited. The Ceratosaurus book is meaty enough to have a whole post of it's own, so let's start with this amusing illustration from 2003's Triceratops and Other Horned Plant-Eaters, along with the very obvious joke:



Why the long face, Pentaceratops?



Moving on to Stegosaurus and Other Plate-Backed Plant-Eaters from 2004, we have a disconcertingly old-fashioned illustration of Stegosaurus.



Perhaps that Stego feels down because he isn't part of the "Awesome Shoulder-Spikes" club.



And finally from Stegosaurus, the almost-obligatory plate function theories collection. This one seems oddly sparse. Just once I'd like one of these children's books to acknowledge that gliding stegosaurs were once a thing.



On to 2004's Pachycephalosaurus and Other Bone-Headed Plant-Eaters. Go home, Dracorex. You drunk. Also, possibly an invalid taxon. Maybe.



We'll end with this odd image of a mother Stegoceras charging at another bizarre-looking ceratopsian. The eye-watering perspective aside, this is a pretty neat depiction of speculative behavior.

Next time, we meet up with an old friend yet again...

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Sketch of the Day! Have yet another study of my very favorite model.

Random 90's Animation Month: "Osmosis Jones" (2001)

If I am not mistaken, "Osmosis Jones" is the only DVD for a Farrelly Brothers movie that allows fans to skip right to the gross-out jokes (that's what the second option is in the above screenshot).  I should have taken this as a kind of a warning, but we'll address that in due time.

Pity the studio executive.  (Stay with me here.)  This poor creature never knows what movies will be huge hits, and which ones will be colossal flops.  To wit, "There's Something About Mary".  In 1998, nobody expected this weird little B-movie from the Farrellys to be the massive sleeper hit it quickly became.  But indeed, "Mary" became the kind of surprise hit that both changes the game and briefly ruins any future films from the same genre/format (although some of them ruin that genre/format seemingly forever).  There were a LOT of romantic comedies with jarring grossout humor in them for a long time after "Mary".

Let's go on a little tangent about grossout humor.  Now, as I grow older, I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to -and this is a very scientific term here- gross sh*t.  As with "We're Back!", I found myself desperately running for a beer during several scenes in "Osmosis Jones", but for entirely different reasons.  I'll say it right now: if you do not like grossout humor, then today's movie is going to be the worst kind of endurance test.

Back to your friend and mine, the studio executive.  Because "There's Something About Mary" was such a huge surprise hit, you can see where the exec would think, "Oh yeah!  You know what would be an amazing idea?  Let's let the Farrelly brothers direct an animated film!  Our animation studio is pretty dead in the water anyway, so why not let them do whatever they want with it?  It's such a perfect idea, it can't fail!  I think it's the best plan I've ever heard in my life!"

"Osmosis Jones" turned out to be one of the most spectacular bombs in the history of animated films, losing nearly sixty-two million dollars in it's theatrical run.  It was the last significant gasp of the Warner Bros. theatrical animation studio, and therefore was a hell of a note for them to go out on.  It should be noted that in one of the two episodes of "The Rotoscopers" about "The Iron Giant" (tragically, I forget which), it was revealed that Warner Bros. theatrical animation was essentially left to it's own devices and the filmmakers could basically do whatever they wanted.  This does help explain why "Iron Giant" and "Osmosis Jones" are the way they are, though essentially opposite sides of the same coin.

Because what we have here in "Osmosis Jones" is the Farrellys at their most uninhibited.  I remember enjoying this movie the first time I saw it, as a stupid teenager who was distracted by the gorgeous animation and who still thought gross sh*t was funny instead of repulsive.  As an adult... Oh God, Oh GOD, oh God.  I didn't recall this movie being so... graphic.  My good God, that scene with the toenail...  That other scene with the oysters...  That F**KING scene with the pimple...

Here I was watching this movie in the afternoon, and doesn't my family ask me, "Hey, honey, you want to go out to the seafood restaurant for dinner later?"

But to be fair, nearly all the really horrible gross-out scenes are in the live-action bits and perhaps it's time to talk about the very odd format of this movie.  This is the story of a man ruining his life and breaking his annoying and unlikeable daughter's heart -- and well over half of it is told from the point of view of his anthropomorphized immune system.  (This setting was evidently chosen to give the Farrellys the greatest opportunity ever for what the rating disclaimer describes as "body humor".)  Overall, the live-action scenes are annoying, nauseating, and distracting.  Any time the movie switches back to them is jarring as f**k, especially towards the end, so let's ignore them entirely for the rest of the review.  How's the animation?

It's beautiful.  Well, very close to beautiful at any rate, because even disgusting things can be beautiful.  The production design and effects are very imaginative.  Michel Gagne was involved here and his mad genius is all over the place.  The character animation is energetic and I love how they aren't afraid to showcase just how weird the characters are.  "Jones" has a hidden gem of a villain character, and overall it looks like the artists had an awful lot of fun working on this.  It's as if they knew that this was going to be their last hurrah, so they went all out.

Of course, to see all this wonderful and inventive animation, you have to endure the disgusting live-action portions.  And also, this scene right here:



Yup, you guessed right.  Those are animated versions of Kid Rock and Joe C.  Their long musical number has, remarkably, aged worse than the "Ninja Rap" scene in the second "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie.  The 90's!

Extremely Delayed Addendum: It could be that I may have the history of this film entirely backwards; that it started as a fully-animated feature with live-action bookends (if even that), and the Farrellys were recruited to film more live-action to edit into the movie because of executive meddling reasons.  Thing is, I have no other evidence that such was the case aside from the comments in this AV Club review.

And so, our Strange Animated Films from the 1990's Made By Random Studios Marathon is in the rearview mirror.  It's been an amazing trip, and I'm glad you shared this magical adventure with me.  Now, with that said, a few very interesting '90's animated films are in the old Saved Queue, and who knows if or when they may pop up? 

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Sketch of the Day!

Ride that Shoopuf!

Random 90's Animation - "Monkeybone" (2001)

Note: I received and watched this movie way out of order too.  In fact, it wound up being the last movie I watched for this marathon.  Who would have ever expected "We're Back" and "Monkeybone" to be so popular?

Okay, technically, "Monkeybone" (alternately "MonkeyBone", but we're not going to be doing that) is a film from early 2001, but I felt it would be silly not to acknowledge it in a marathon of bizarre animated films from random studios.  And anyway, my OCD is sated a little: I think I've now seen all of Henry Selick's features

"MonkeyBone" is the story of a comicbook artist with some issues who has created a bizarre world full of strange creatures including a main character who is basically an unrepressed Id.  Due to complicated circumstances, the artist ends up traveling to the world of his comics which looks like nothing so much as what the director of the movie must have going on in his subconscious at all hours of the day.  There, the artist is haunted by his creations, including the main character, who turns out to be rather unappealing in person and longs to be real and to make out with a human.  Somehow that character turns into a human, and escapes into our world, much to the distress and inconvenience of their creator.  Before the character can cause utter chaos in our world, the comic artist fights to stop that character.  The movie basically just ends when the director seemingly ran out of ideas, but at least the comic character has been thwarted.

For some reason, this story felt a little bit familiar to me...

The good news is that "Monkeybone" is not nearly as obnoxious as "Cool World".  (Then again, few movies are.)  What "Monkeybone" is is basically just what I said: what I'd imagine Henry Selick sees when he closes his eyes.

Therefore, at the very least, "Monkeybone" is worth a look because it does not resemble anything else you have ever seen.  Love it or hate it, it's a singular creative vision that just gets more and more off the wall as the movie goes on.  It has more in common with "Being John Malkovich", say, or "Southland Tales" than it does with most other live-action/animation combos.  And if you are familiar with Henry Selick only thanks to "The Nightmare Before Christmas", man, you don't know how crazy his diamond can shine.

I said in an earlier review that Selick is the kind of director who does what he wants and if other people like it, well, good for them for being able to keep up.  "Monkeybone" is apparently based upon a graphic novel, but it appears as though that source material (which, to be fair, I have never encountered, so I don't even know) was merely used as a stepping-off point so Selick's imagination could fly free.  We get to see every kind of animation technique there is and there are several characters who are brought to life using two or three techniques at once.  The characters themselves are often rather grotesque, and a few climbed right out of the Uncanny Valley.  Only a small handful of characters are anywhere near intentionally cute.  There are some impressively random cameos; the live actors in general are a little iffy, and it's genuinely frightening when they get partially-animated.  The live-action sequences are rather cloying and feel like a different movie entirely, but things pick up once a zombie gymnast played by Chris Kattan shows up.

And we all know what movies with zombie gymnasts played by Chris Kattan are like, don't we?

"Monkeybone" is weird as hell, but it is definitely worth a look simply because it's weird as hell.  Look, most of the films we've seen during this marathon look like they were inspired by powerful hallucinogens; this movie is (at least in part) about a powerful hallucinogen.

Next up, our final Random 90's Animated Film might just make you sick.

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Sketch of the Day!

Randimal Andimals:

My (slightly sarcastic) 2000's Time Capsule!

This is my version of the Obligatory End-Of-The-Decade List, mostly cobbled together from a semi-yearly version I posted at LaGremlin Land.
Here is a no-particular-order list of things I would put in a time capsule to represent the lovely decade that has just ended. I am sure the people of the future will understand the significance of each and every one of these items without question, as they will have passed into history:

* - A sun-shaped nipple ring
* - "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water" CD
* - An "Edward can BUST my headboard, BITE my pillows, and BRUISE my body any day!" t-shirt
* - A magnetic yellow ribbon
* - "Some Kind of Monster" DVD
* - A bottle of Bling2O
* - A "Free Katie" t-shirt
* - A TMX Elmo doll
* - Spenser and Heidi's How to be Famous
* - A Snuggie for dogs
* - "Hung for Christmas" CD
* - The O'Reilly Factor: For Kids!
* - A "Vote or DIE!" t-shirt
* - A huge "Mission Accomplished" banner
* - A pair of Crocs
* - The MySpace servers
* - A bottle of Pimp Juice
* - An Anduril letter opener
* - "The Swan" DVD
* - The Kazakhstan Tourism brochure
* - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
* - The Mtv All-Stars "What's Goin' On (2001)" music video
* - "Crazy Frog" CD
* - Of Pandas and People
* - "Bratz Babies" DVD
* - The International Astronomical Union definition of the word "Planet"
* - Green "Shrek" ketchup
* - Going Rogue
* - "Chinese Democracy" CD

What would you add to this time capsule?

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Before you answer that, read this excellent Total Media Bridge essay about "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (It's still timely. In the olden days, Christmas hype started immediately before Christmas Eve and lasted for several weeks after Christmas Day until Epiphany/Three Kings Day [there's the real significance of "The Twelve Days of Christmas"], instead of starting as early as August, leaving you burnt out by Thanksgiving, and leaving you with a deep disillusioned "now what" feeling that doesn't get resolved until New Years if even then.) I could not have written this better myself.
OK, real updates will start the second full week of January.