#at this point being disappointed in live action adaptations of books and cartoons is like losing at chess to a parrot | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

naivesilver · 3 years

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@bewilderedmoth FINE. Fine. Since today is a Monday and therefore a day much more suited for a vitriolic commentary on terrible insects, I shall fulfill your request and the anon’s. I’m warning everyone in the premises, though - this is a “no fucks given” list, so it may get ugly at any time. Also, as usual, this is only for things that I’ve already watched, so if you know of some cricket horror and don’t see it mentioned, assume I’ve yet to get to that specific adaptation.

Alright then! To the barricades!

1) Disney’s Pinocchio (1940)

The first of his genre. Look at this asshole - he’s literally the last creature I’d entrust my child to. The fact Pinocchio had to spend his first couple days of life with this guy shadowing his every step is mind-boggling, and it’s made even worse by the fact that the Blue Fairy put him in charge of another man’s kid, as though she had the right to make that choice.

(I won’t fall for the desire of dunking on the Fairy more, as this is a Cricket list, but believe me, the temptation is there. It always is.)

As Disney sidekicks go, he’s one of the worst. He’s not funny, and despite having literally ONE job he manages to fail spectacularly at it. He’s snappish at Pinocchio, he abandons his charge about two hours into the new day, he spends a much longer time flirting with female-presenting inanimate objects/animals/supernatural beings than doing any actual childrearing. He should have been forgotten the instant the movie left the theaters, but instead Disney made him one of his main mascots, giving him the role of storyteller or ghost or whatever the fuck they need him to do at the time. So not only is he single-handedly responsible for every other entry in this list, I keep finding him everywhere I turn my eyes to. A knock-off version of his Ghost of Christmas Past self was in the new Ducktales, too, so my friend freenklin (who already has had to endure many of my complaints) received some VERY disappointed scream-texts as I was liveblogging my watch.

Just...no. Get him out of my sight.

(Also Ewan McGregor is bound to voice him in the live action and like??? Excuse me??? Are we supposed to not make Obi Wan jokes??? Will he abandon his young padawan Pinocchio to the evil Strombolitroopers???)

2) Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (1987)

This movie is at the bottom of my Pinocchio adaptation ranking, and boy, does it deserve the dishonor. The story is a weird mixture of adaptation and sequel, approximately a tenth of the characters actually appear in the book, and I can’t forgive them for ruining what could have been the coolest concept ever (Pinocchio as a pawn in a fight of good vs evil) into this disgrace of a cartoon.

As for the Cricket, in this case he’s not even a cricket. He’s a glowworm, and he’s a goddamn puppet too, to whom the Fairy gave life. I wonder, is the entirety of her job just...transforming people’s creations into sentient beings so that they can lead others to a honest life? Tell me, ma’am, do you want to breathe life into my disappointing Powerpoint presentations too, so that they might bully me into graduating?

Anyway, if you’re wondering what purpose Gee Willikers (sigh) serves, the answer is NONE. Pinocchio gets rid of him at least twice (good for him) and as easily as drinking a glass of water, he’s a burden to the (admittedly cooler) additional characters, like the aviator bee, and not only is he ugly as fuck, but also so annoying every time he gets a chance to speak that it’s a miracle he wasn’t cut out in post-production.

In short, disgusting. If he entered my home I’d swat him with a flycatcher until he leaves.

3) Pinocchio (2009)

This is essentially Disney’s Jiminy Cricket, but female, anthropomorphic, and with a passion for books instead of pretty ladies or ladies-adjacent objects. Mind you, a sapphic Cricket would perhaps have saved more than one adaptation, this one included, but I’m glad they skipped that part altogether. This miniseries has enough issues as it is.

I’m sorry, she’s just too annoying. Luciana Littizzetto can be funny, but in small doses, otherwise her jokes start to become repetitive. Two hours straight - and yes, it’s that much, because SOMEONE decided to follow Disney’s footsteps a little too well - are too long even for the strongest of hearts. Plus, none of the characters’ costumes are very flattering, accurate or well-made (except for Lampwick 💖), but hers just might take the cake. It looks like a mixture between a teenager’s first attempt at steampunk fashion and a Mardi Gras costume lifted from the discarded items’ bin at a cheap store. Takes you out of the fantasy more than anything else.

4) Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio (2002)

I’ve talked at length of the weirdness of this movie, but all in all it’s a pretty accurate transposition of the story, from the dialogue to the scenery.

Except for him.

The Cricket in this case does appear in the scenes belonging to him, but ALSO in a long and extremely useless sequence where he tries to find Pinocchio in the Land of Toys and gets kicked around by literally everyone present. Don’t get me wrong, that’s something I would have liked to do as well, but it was totally unnecessary, and it gave nothing to the overall story. This movie still holds the record as the most expensive Italian movie ever made, so wouldn’t it have been better for everybody to skip that part entirely? Not only it would have saved them some money, but also it would have saved me from seeing this guy for an additional fifteen minutes on my screen.

Still, pretty tame compared to some of the others. Could have been worse.

5) Once Upon A Time (2011)

I debated long and hard before making this choice, and I’m not putting him in with a light heart, but before you come at me with pitchforks, please listen.

I like Archie, okay! He’s a fun character, the human side of his backstory was great and gave him a lot of depth and inner turmoil, and the concept of Jiminy Cricket being a therapist is amazing and hilarious. But he’s kind of a shit therapist, whose actions aren’t always what you’d expect from someone who’s supposed to be a conscience and a guide. And despite the show giving us the impression that he and Pinocchio had the same adventures as in the Disney movie (which doesn’t exactly endear him to me - if it wasn’t for his later character development he’d already be Lil Nas X-ing his way down to the bottom of my list), he and August never interacted on screen after the First Curse broke. Not once. And if there’s someone who needs therapy and support, that’s August Wayne Booth.

Yes, I did say at some point that I’d like to fix this in a fic. I’ll write it when I don’t have like eight projects on my table at the same time.

Finally, two scenes settled the matter for me: one, him pontificating at Snow about her trying to do everything on her own, without even pretending to help her set up the stroller she was struggling with at that very moment. I work with kids every day, I know exactly what she’s going through. Shut your mouth and open the damn stroller, Archie.

And two...That one fucking scene where he’s jumping out of Snow White’s cleavage. Honestly, what the fuck??? I wouldn’t even have remembered it if Libby hadn’t reminded me, so I suppose my brain tried to remove the traumatic memory before it caused any further damage, but it exists, and I’m still wondering why. What exactly was the deal with the writers, when they made that choice? I want a glass of what they were having, because by God, does it sound like a trip-inducing cocktail.

Aaaand we’re done! Remember, this is all part of my personal opinion, and I’m not to be taken seriously even on the best of days. Plus, my favorite cricket-esque character, aside from the book-accurate ones, is Gina from Piccolino no Bouken, who is a duck, a sassy little bastard and no closer to Collodi’s canon than any of these fuckers. So yes, when it comes to choices dictated by the heart, I am an hypocrite. Au revoir!

#the amount of time I spent of this is not comparable to the lampwick post #but it's still A LotTM for a cricket rant #meme gif included #pinocchio

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kinsey3furry300 · 3 years

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Three awesome post-GoT series I would commission if I owned any of the Big three Streaming platforms.

Yo! Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, you have a problem: there are nerds like me who want to give you even more of our time and money, but you’re not making the stuff you should be. Following the hugely disappointing end of “Game of Thrones” there are a huge number of sci-f and fantasy nerds who are currently not getting our fix of epic adventure, and rather than commission a whole bunch of cool series that are just begging to be made to cash in on this, you’re all just sort of doing your own things. And that’s Cool, I’m loving the Netflix Witcher series and Disney’s Loki, and looking forward to the Amazon Middle Earth series with a mix of hope and trepidation (please be good), there are, however, a whole mass of cool book series that are just begging for release in an episodic fashion, and what’s more, I can think of which series plays to which streaming platforms strengths. And unlike Game of Thrones, there are series where running out of source material to adapt shouldn’t be a problem.

So, three sci-fi or fantasy series that play to the strengths of the big three Streaming services, as suggested by me, a big ol’ nerd. One: Amazon Prime. Strengths: successfully adapting darker comic-book or Urban fantasy works Like Preacher, the Boys, Good Omens and American Gods and making a profit. Weakness: has never successfully pulled of a big Grimdark fantasy series, despite having all the talent to do so because they’re working on the Middle earth series, which doesn’t seem a good fit for their brand image as the place you come for for comically dark works, and all their adaptations are too much of a slow burn, which necessitates padding the source material (look at how little happens in any episode of Preacher or the Boy vs the insanely fast pace of the comics). Solution: Malazan, book of the fallen. A deep, insanely dark, insanely Epic story that would actually lend itself to a slow burn and the grim-dark over the top violence of other Amazon shows, and fill the “Tit’s and monsters” gap left by GoT in many of our hearts. And unlike Tolkien, I have faith that the studio that cast Sweary Karl Urban as Billy Butcher could actually pull this off with the correct tone and feel. This would have the Witcher fans from Netflix defecting in droves, and could also pull in some new viewers who might enjoy the anthropology and political intrigue of this complex, multifaceted world.

Two: Disney+. Strengths: near infinite money and ambition, the production team behind The Mandalorian and the MCU, great Hollywood clout to draw in big name stars, but willing to cast talented unknowns, the best mix of live action and CG in the business. Weaknesses: It’s Disney, so they can never go full grim-dark: they can imply or infer dark acts, but need to keep what’s shown on screen PG13 to fit their brand, which rules out a lot of modern fantasy. And they have no true fantasy serries in their stable.

Solution: Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, and other Cosmere works. A rare example of an excellent current fantasy and sci-fi writer who isn’t grimdark as heck, and manages to convey dark and adult themes by implication and hints rather than outright showing them, this is pretty much the only big fantasy series out there that is aimed at and enjoyed by adults but remains consistently PG13. It’s also so epic and super-hero-ish in this various magic systems, that I can’t see anyone other than the team behind the MCU pulling off a live-action version of this that doesn’t suck. In addition to this, the logical starting point for this, Mistborn, is by far the safest and most marketable, coming the closest of any of his works to a standard young-adult plot with Vin as an easily sell-able character to studio brass, being to all intents and purposes Katniss Everdeen with super-powers, which could get a big studio invested and convinced this is a good idea before we get to all the “lets kill and replace god” stuff. If Mistborn was successful, other Cosmere works could follow, and I could see something like the Stormlight Archives working really well with the MCU effects team behind it, so long as they don’t white-wash it: No one on Roshar is white other than in Shinovar, and half of the cultures are based on either Polynesian or far eastern traditions, so cast Hawaiian, Māori, native American and east-Asian actors, and it could be both a great series, and also the most diverse Disney has ever done. You want a new, easily marketable but epic scale franchise, Disney? It’s right here.

Also for the love of god, do Wax and Wayne. I just need this, okay?

Three: Netflix. Strengths: good at tapping into the prevailing nostalgia of Millennials and producing works that speak to them on a relatively small budget (see Stanger Things) and good at grabbing the rights to adapt good but slightly obscure works cheaply. Good working relationship with a ton of Japanese Anime rightsholders. Weaknesses: By far the smallest budget of any of the big three. Tends to produce awful live-action adaptations of beloved works (to the point that the Witcher was a pleasant surprise), but has good relationships with lots of animation studios.

Solution: Animorphs, but do what they always should have done and animate it. It boggles my mind that anyone would every try to pull this off in live action, as the transformations, which are the heart of the series, would be so hard to pull off well (look at the 90’s series). And yet, I’m aware they’re making a film, but dear god, why, when K A Applegate said form the get go that this series of books were written specifically as if they were a 90’s Saturday morning cartoon. This was always meant to be adapted as a series, not a long form film. So, don’t try to modernise it, or relate to “The kids” don’t whitewash the cast, don’t edit out the gore and body-horror, but lean into the 90’s and early 2000’s angst of it, and go balls to the walls insane with the concept. What music do you have playing for this scene? Is it Every day is exactly the same by Nine Inch Nails, and if not, why not? Do the transformation sequence genuinely scare you? No? Then you’re doing it wrong. Is that a happy ending? Get that the hell out of there. Go for the original time period and concept, and go hard, and if you do it now, you’ll just hit that sweet spot as the rolling 30 year nostalgia cycle moves out of the 80’s and into the 90’s. And as an apology to all the bad live-action Anime you produced, Netflix, get a Japanese studio to animate this: the Animorphs books were popular in Japan, with wonderful hand drawn illustrations throughout. Get Studio Orange on this: Beastars proved they can do flowing, fast-moving combat well, and make animal and other non-human characters look good, and what’s more they’d probably be up for it: Animorphs is basically a western Shōnen, so the market for an Anime of it would exist in Japan.

So there we go, the three series I would commission if I ruled the world of streaming sites. As ever, tell me why I’m wrong below, and have a great day!

#animorphs #brandon sanderson #mistborn #malazan #netflix #studio orange #disney plus #disney #MCU #cosmere #k a applegate #steven erikson #sci fi #fantisy #streaming sites #amazon plus

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shlabam · 4 years

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TOP TEN COMICS BOOK VILLAINS WE PROBABLY WON’T SEE IN THE MOVIES

Superhero media is the hottest thing going right now. It was true ten years ago when the MCU was in its adolescence, and it’s even truer now. Even with film production on lockdown, Marvel and DC are still planning on literally dozens of their characters entering their respective cinematic universes. However, for the fans of the source material, things can be contentious. For every memorable Tony Stark quip, there’s Superman destroying an entire city because he’s, frankly, kind of dumb now. A major point of contention is how the various popular villains are utilized. Making an intimidating and potent villain in a comic book is very different than in a film. In comics, you have months to establish motive, powers, and backstory before the villain even makes their first move. In films, that all has to be compressed and spilled out in the scarce few minutes when Captain America and Bucky aren’t making bambi eyes at each other. To be concise, some villains adapt perfectly, and some, no matter how good they are in the comics, just don’t. And to be clear, this list is of popular villains who have the possibility of appearing in a big-budget film, so no, you won’t be seeing Ten Eyed Man or Big Wheel in there. Their powers are, respectively, having ten eyes, and being very good in business. (That’s a lie, he’s just a huge wheel who chases Spider-Man.)

10: Mr. Mxyzptlk:

Cool, let’s get this one out of the way. Despite being one of Superman’s oldest, longest-lasting, and most popular enemies from all the way back in the Golden Age, there’s no way in hell he will be in a movie. For the uninformed. Mr. Mxyzptlk is a 5th dimensional wizard-genie who appears every ninety days to torment Superman with his reality-altering antics, and can only be sent back to his home dimension if Superman tricks him into saying his own name backwards. Yes, it would be very dazzling, as Mr. Mxyzptlk’s powers in a movie would basically look like if Christopher Nolan directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but he’s a little too silly to fit in with the current “everything is gloomy and also a bummer” tone of the Superman films. This silly tone has lent itself perfectly to the Supergirl series, where he’s made a handful of appearances. Besides, if we get Mxyzptlk in a Superman movie before Brainiac, I’ll lose my entire freaking mind.

9: Hobgoblin:

There have been eight Spider-Man movies so far, and of those eight, four of them have, in some capacity, featured the Green Goblin. And that makes sense, right? The Green Goblin is easily Spider-Man’s most memorable and reoccurring nemesis, with Doctor Octopus and Venom close behind, and Peter Parker’s link with Norman and Harry Osbourn makes their tragic story perfect for film adaptation. On the other hand, we have the Hobgoblin, who is essentially Green Goblin with all the gimmicks, none of the Parker-adjacent backstory, and an orange and blue color scheme, likely tying him to the Denver Broncos [citation needed]. Still, in those four cinematic attempts at tackling the Goblin, none of them have quite gotten him right, and I can’t imagine this character, who is, even in canon, an intentional Green Goblin rip-off, would fare any better.

8: Starro:

Brave and the Bold #28 from 1960 featured the first story with the Justice League, and this story put them up against a very unique new villain: Starro the Conqueror, a giant telepathic starfish who can release tiny versions of himself. If these tiny starfish latch onto your head, you’re under his control and obey his commands. The Justice League have battled him fairly regularly over the last fifty years, and he’s a distinct and powerful enemy that the fans generally appreciate, leading to him being referenced occasionally in Smallville, Arrow, and Flash. Why won’t he ever be in a movie? Because if you’re a Hollywood producer, you stopped paying attention at “giant telepathic starfish”. Sorry. Maybe Shuma-Gorath will pop up in the next Doctor Strange movie, and he’ll set off a Twilight-esque wave of starfish monster movies! Then again, almost absolutely not.

7: Puppet Master:

Speaking of mind control, what’s scarier than that? For my money, nothing. Having your body and will taken away from you by an unseen force is a terror greater than death. How could you possibly make a villain based around such a chilling concept and have him not be scary? Well, maybe if it’s an old bald man in an apron playing with dolls. The Puppet Master is an ongoing threat for the Fantastic Four who is just that: he makes models of his foes out of radioactive clay, and makes them punch themselves and dance around and kiss each other, because he’s, y’know, a weird old man. Why is he such a consistent threat who hasn’t fallen into obscurity like other dumb gimmick-based villains? His stepdaughter, Alicia Masters, is the Thing’s longtime girlfriend. As long as she keeps appearing in movies (including being played by… Kerry Washington? That can’t be right), there’s always a chance he’ll pop up, but I don’t think any movie studio is that stupid, despite the quality of every Fantastic Four movie blatantly defying that prediction.

6: Bizarro:

Superman has always suffered in the villains department. When you’re essentially a god, what can they throw at you? As it turns out, Lex Luthor, almost always. But why not another Superman? Bizarro is essentially that, an imperfect clone of Superman who speaks in opposite speak - “Bizarro am good! Me not punch you until you live!” - and features the same abilities as the Man of Steel. Sounds great, right? Putting a hero against a villain with their same powers has worked for nearly every Marvel movie (shots fired). So why won’t we see him grace our silver screens any time soon? Because they’ve never really figured him out. Is he funny? Is he lethal? Does Kryptonite work on him? If he does everything the opposite of Superman, why does he wear clothes? Isn’t being naked the opposite of being clothed? Bizarro is a major Superman side-character and has made appearances in Smallville and Supergirl, but the idea of him being the Big Bad going toe-to-toe with Henry Cavill doesn’t sound like it would generate a lot of views.

5: Impossible Man:

You remember what I said about Mr. Mxyzptlk? Remember? So take that bit, but everywhere I say Superman, have it say Fantastic Four instead… yeah, that should do it.

4: The Wrecking Crew:

Thor has a unique quirk of having a very cinematic rogues gallery. Sure, most of the movies have pitted him against Loki, but if they were to run him up against the Enchantress, or the Absorbing Man, or Ulik the Troll, or Kurse, or even the Stone Men from Saturn, that’s not a bad movie! However, in one of the attempts to give Thor more of a mortal nemesis, they put him up against the Wrecker, who has an… enchanted… indestructible… crowbar. Yeah. Incredibly, the Wrecker and his Wrecking Crew have become very present characters throughout the Marvel Universe, essentially serving as “jobbers”, being rolled out to get beaten up by the new top hero or villain, but that may not work in a movie, where villains have to be seen as having some level of potency before being struck down. That means we’d need at least a short scene where it seems like Thor might lose to a guy whose power is “crowbar”, and that’s about as likely as an Edward Norton cameo in the next Avengers. Ho boy, they did NOT part on good terms!

3: Clayface:

When the movie-going public goes to see a Batman movie, they generally want something a bit more grounded than your typical superhero fare. After all, Batman has no powers, and therefore the most supernatural thing that should happen in these movies is a gas that makes you smile, or a different gas that makes you think your dead parents are back and disappointed in you. Might wanna put a mouth covering on that mask, Bruce! The one and only they’ve made a movie where Batman fights people with real, off-the-wall super powers (Batman and Robin), it did not go great. And those guys pale in comparison to Clayface, who is, yes, made of clay. In the comics and cartoons, Clayface looks awesome, turning his limbs into weapons and being very challenging to incapacitate, but in a live-action, realistic Batman adventure, we wouldn’t want to see the Dark Knight fight a poop-colored version of the T-1000, especially if it’s got the same chemical composition of a little dreidel that I made.

2: Red Hood:

A relative newcomer to the Batman universe, Red Hood is the revived body of Jason Todd, the second Robin, who was brutally killed by the Joker in one of the most controversial storylines DC Comics ever produced. Literally, fans called a 900 number to tell the writers to kill him off. A 900 number. That’s how much they hated the little turd. Anyway, Jason Todd, whom Batman and the rest of the world believed was dead, was revived by Ra’s al Ghul and became a ruthless villain. Since then, he’s gravitated more to the side of the hero, though one a bit more willing to spill blood than his mentors. Why won’t we see him in the darker, edgier Batman films? Because… that’s Bucky. It’s the same thing that happened in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Teen sidekick killed in controversial manner, revived by super villain to be a thorn in said hero’s side, later changes his mind and becomes a good guy again, though with enough PTSD to fill a PTSD super store. The two storylines even occurred in the comics in the same year, 2005, to much fanfare and across-the-board declarations of one company ripping off the other, reminding the world of the great Aquaman-Namor debates of the 1940s. Considering that DC’s films have criminally underperformed compared to Marvel’s, the last thing they want to do is be accused of lazy plagiarism, so Jason Todd will likely remain a permanent fixture in the afterlife, hanging out with Batman’s parents and, at the rate that people are coming back from the dead, literally no one else. (Plus, if they can’t even get Robin right, how are they gonna do this?)

1: Mister Sinister:

Yes, he was teased at the end of X-Men Apocalypse, but ignoring that the film underperformed both critically and commercially, Mister Sinister is never going to be in a movie. It would make sense for him to appear, though, right? He’s one of the most present and potent X-Men villains, he’s played crucial roles in many memorable storylines, he’s got a sick cape, but… something a lot of comic book fans tend to overlook is his murky backstory, powers, and motivations. He was a biologist in Victorian London who did genetic experiments on homeless people in the hopes of finding clues about the oncoming threat of mutants. In this time, he unearthed the long-dormant En Sabah Nur, whom you plebeians may know as Apocalypse, and Apocalypse gifted him with great abilities. What abilities you ask? HA HA, good question! At various times, Sinister has displayed: telepathy, telekinesis, energy projection, shape-shifting, regeneration, and teleportation, but these powers will mysteriously disappear whenever they want him to get sliced up real good by Wolverine. Additionally, it has never been made very clear what Sinister wants. Does he seek perfect mastery of the human genome? Does he live to torment Cyclops? Is he a blind follower of Apocalypse? Is he just running through all the different kinds of goatee? Of course, in adaptation, the writers would pick and choose the aspects they’d want to use, but I doubt they’d want to untangle the Christmas lights mess that is Mister Sinister, especially when they’ve got a perfectly good villain whose power is just “magnets”.

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purplesurveys · 3 years

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1069

survey by dragonov

What is your favourite dinosaur? I’ve never been into dinosaurs... I’ve always found the T-Rex costume that goes viral every now and then absolutely hilarious, though.

Would you rather live with wolves or tigers? Wolves.

Have you ever forgotten what a certain kind of pain felt like? I have only gone through the loss of an immediate family member once. Of course my grandpa’s death will always make me feel as sad as I was on the day that I found out; but it’s been a while since I’ve been hit with news that heavy. I don’t quite remember the feeling of being slapped in the face with such a tragic update, and I’m not looking forward to the next time.

Do you prefer water from the tap or bottled water? Bottled. We can’t drink tap water here; though some rich households will put some fancy purifier thing hooked to their sink so that they can drink ‘tap.’

Do you actually use any of the shampoo hotels provide? Yeah haha. We always buy the same products at home and it gets boring, so it’s fun to try out and experiment with the different shampoos and body washes provided in the hotels we stay in.

What do you remember the most about your childhood? My cousins, siblings, and I largely alternated among three channels - Disney, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network every day. We would also play outside from around 5-6 PM. It was the same, simple routine every weekday, but we were happy kids nonetheless. Also, watching wrestling every single day, back when it was a lot bloodier.

Do you feel as if someone has robbed something from you? I feel like it would be selfish of me to claim this, since I never like to point fingers...but this does feel like the case when it comes to a few people.

Have you ever stared at the sky and wondered if it was all worth it? I get into such a mood at least once a month. I just did this last Monday.

Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or have mythical creatures be real? Erm, neither. I’m wary of dinosaurs’ temperaments and I’m not too fond of mythical creatures.

What age did you get your first hair cut? I think I was around 3.

Do you have a favourite toy from childhood still? I didn’t even get to keep any of them. I knew I had a favorite cash register, toy laptop, and Blue’s Clue’s toy telephone, but my mom threw each of them out the older I got.

What are your thoughts on the end of the world? I personally wouldn’t have a problem with it as I don’t think much about existentialism and things like that. I’d be more concerned with people panicking and panic-buying all over the place, and the possibility of the end of the world being hugely destructive. If it ever does happen, I wish it’d come calmly.

Which sports do you enjoy watching? Wrestling, tennis, and volleyball. Sometimes basketball when my university’s team is playing lol, but I never understood the different rules. I love playing table tennis, but I never particularly enjoyed watching the sport.

Would you ever have a breed of dog that is considered aggressive? Like pitbulls? Yeah, for sure. I personally do not like chihuahuas though.

Have you ever made bread? I think...we have?? In home ec?? Back in Grade 6? I have a vivid memory of playing around with yeast and dough, but I no longer remember if it had been bread we ended up making. I do remember making rainbow cake, apple pie, and macarons from that year though, so it’s likely we also made bread.

Would your childhood self be disappointed? I say this a lot, but she would probably be surprised I’m still here. She’d also be surprised I managed to be in a long-term relationship, regardless of its failure. One of my biggest worries as a kid was that no one would ever like me, and I was so certain I’d end up being single forever lol.

Do you think in the future you'll have done yourself proud? God I don’t know. I hope so.

Did you read The Great Gatsby before seeing the movie? I have done neither. Idk if it’s my kind of content.

What do you feel about movies made from books? I wish the entertainment industry would take them more seriously. There are hits, of course - like how Harry Potter fans seem to like both books and movies - but there are misses that have been embarrassing like the Percy Jackson movie adaptation. But idk, I have a bigger bone to pick with other movie types (aka live-action adaptions of Disney animated classics lmao), so movies made from books aren’t much of an issue with me.

Has anything ever fallen asleep on you? A few dogs here and there. My ex also used to.

Do you have to use the bathroom? Not at the moment, no.

Is the above question too invasive? Not even remotely. I’ve encountered more intense questions on surveys.

What do you feel about surgeries? Do they worry you? Ugh, yep. I hope I’ll never need one. Needles just freak me out.

Do you have a tumblr? :))

Would you rather have an open book shelf or one with doors? Open. If I had an impressive collection of anything, I’d want to show it off.

Do you need a large or small place to live comfortably? Large. I get uncomfortable if I’m in a small room for too long, which is why I have to take work breaks every now and then and leave my room (which doubles as my workspace) just to pace around the house and play with the dogs for a little while.

Would you ever consider moving to another country? Yeah, but I’d prefer an area with a considerable English-speaking population, practicality-wise. I feel that a language barrier would just stress me out and would keep me from getting fully excited about being in a foreign land.

Have you ever dropped everything and reevaluated? That’s what the last three months have been about, haven’t they?

Do you play minecraft? if so, feelings about servers? No I don’t play Minecraft, though I did use to watch Pewdiepie’s Let’s Plays of it haha.

Do you long for easier times? Not always. But this is where I’m at right now, given how tough life has been for me in the last few months. I just want a break, no matter how tiny.

Do you believe that life gets easier or we just get stronger? The latter. At least, that’s what I tell myself to cheer myself up and to encourage myself to keep going.

Does it weird you out to think that humans are just more advanced animals? It fascinates me, it doesn’t weird me out.

Do you ever wonder why religion came about? I have no clue. I’d love to learn why.

Would you ever consider shaving your head? If it was for a cause that’s close to my heart, this would be no problem at all.

Would you rather belong to a cult or a religion you feel is wrong? I guess religion? so I could at least get out of it. Also, I’ve already personally abandoned the religion I was baptized in because it never felt like a good fit, so this is coming from experience.

Have you ever considered murder? Never.

Kill a man or a woman? Again, no.

Would you like to live in a realm where the zombie apocalypse is possible? Nope.

Are you afraid of any animals? Reason? Wild animals likely to chase or attack humans, because duh. And cockroaches, because everything about them is just bleck.

Someone knocks on your door three times right now, do you answer? I’d tell them to come in, yeah.

Do you read creepypastas? Not really. It was never a pastime of mine when I was younger either.

Can you sleep afterwards? I can, but I won’t. It’s only 5:20 and I’ve still got 40 minutes until the end of my shift. I also want to hang around with my family after work, so.

#survey #surveys

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charleskenny · 4 years

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Animation Articles 03-2020

A selection of the best animation news, opinions, and features from around the world for the week ending January 11th, 2020.

Report: ‘Road To El Dorado’ And ‘Shark Tale’ Director Bibo Bergeron Indicted In France

Cartooon Brew

This news was quite a shock on a Monday morning; especially since A Monster in Paris is a favourite. But it’s a reminder that art and artist are not the same. Along with John K. this now makes two the number of alleged sexual predators I met at the 2013 CTN expo…

‘The Simpsons’ Star Hank Azaria Will No Longer Voice Apu

/Film

This is just a confirmation that the current status quo will continue but once again thrusts the argument over stereotypical portrayals into the limelight.

Aladdin’s John August Will Pen Animated Movie Musical About The Wizard of Oz‘s Toto

Playbill

If you thought Hollywood’s bar for flogging dead horses was too low, guess again.

Japan Academy Awards Announces Five Anime Films for Animation of the Year

Crunchyroll

Two live-action film adaptations of Japanese manga, Kingdom (based on Yasuhisa Hara’s historical manga) and Tonde Saitama (Mineo Maya’s comedy) are selected as “Excellent Film of the Year,” alongside Shimbun Kisha, Heisa Byoutou – Sorezore no Asa-, and Hachimitsu to Enrai.

Onward

/Film

The website /Film is helping put the marketing juggernaut for Pixar’s forthcoming feature ‘Onward’ into high gear with two articles this week. The standard puff piece may not interest you, but the more detailed article on the film’s production may deliver a more rewarding experience.

The Token Female Pixar Story Artist

Vulture

What was it like for Brenda Chapman as the only woman in a department of men at both Disney and Pixar? (Hint: not the friendliest places to work.)

Playmobil Movie Ends Theatrical Run With Just $1.1 Million

Comicbook.com

I want to see this movie as badly as I want to see Cats.

The Oscar Nominations

The nominations came out on Monday and depending on who you are and what you like, you were either very happy or very disappointed. Plenty of articles made at least a passing reference to Frozen II being ‘snubbed’, but aside from the usual ‘outrage‘ on social media, there were a few aspects that made it likely the film wouldn’t get the nod:

the competition was unprecedented this year (32 films!)

The Academy in general is still smitten with Toy Story

Box office performance tends not to matter at the Oscars

There’s also plenty of buzz about the impact that Netflix on the nominations, but I believe this to be overblown. Plenty of their animated films (and Klaus is certainly a specimen sample) are produced by third parties before being acquired by the company. Netflix is merely providing convenient distribution and opportunities. If I were GKIDS, I would be extremely nervous since Oscar nominations play a huge role in their marketing, and without a nomination their films become harder to sell to the general population.

Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli and the Citroën 2CV

Autoweek

Animators are not exactly famous for their cars (notable manga artists on the other hand…) but like any personal artefact, they can have a meaning and a purpose to the artist. Hayao Miyazaki’s Citroën 2CV says more about him than might be apparent on the surface, and Autoweek does a nice job of exploring why. For a take by the man himself, his essay in the collection ‘Starting Point‘ is a true insight.

Social Media of the Week

top 4 english filler texts 4. star trek's federation charter in patlabor 3. the lyrics to danger zone in sailor moon 2. the back cover of the muppet movie novelization in Black Magic M-66 1. an extremely bored vfx artist typing random shit in gundam the war for earth for ps1 pic.twitter.com/BdUf9KR0vD

— D?CFUTURE (@topherflorence) January 12, 2020

Oh hi #PortfolioDay a lot of my work is under NDA atm but here are some fun stuff I've done! I love making fun characters with candy colored schemes. https://t.co/cPi3tVnSDo pic.twitter.com/ue8all8Vh7

— SEN-PY NOTICES YOU (@pyawakit) January 15, 2020

Hello! I make cartoons and comics! My webcomic updates every Monday: https://t.co/rAyTEy99d1 You can buy my books and art at these fine places: ? https://t.co/MGCaXEIpKT ? https://t.co/IXdIoI51Fk ? https://t.co/SwGG2zE07R ? portfolio: https://t.co/aoTVVL35HT pic.twitter.com/zith3KsJub

— Brianne (@potatofarmgirl) January 14, 2020

#Bibo Bergeron #Brenda Chapman #Frozen #Hank Azaria #Hayao Miyazaki #John Kricfalusi #Netflix #Onward #Oscars #Pixar #Playmobil #The Simpsons #The Wizard of Oz

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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“After the disappointment of the Andrew Garfield-led Amazing Spider-Man movies, everyone’s favorite wallcrawler has been having a renaissance. Entering the Marvel cinematic universe in 2016's Captain America: Civil War, the webslinger fully redeemed himself with well-crafted live-action film in Spider-Man: Homecoming.”

Yes...okay...that was definitely what Homecoming was....

“and a wildly successful spin-off film Venom, ”

I mean financially successful sure...

“In the midst of all his success, Spider-Man has quietly become one of the most inclusive and socially conscious superheroes of today.”

*raises eyebrow*

Okay...go on...

“Last week, it was announced that Spider-Man: Far From Home would feature two out transgender actors playing trans characters, the first big-budget superhero film to do so. Spider-Man: Homecoming also featured a queer character, as well as numerous people of color.”

Wait who was the queer character in Homecoming?

“It’s also worth mentioning that Spiderverse included a Jewish version of Peter Parker, who is typically portrayed as either secular or Christian.”

....ehhhhhhhhh....yes and no.

In media adaptations barring maybe one (the 1994 show cos I do not remember where he got married) Spider-Man is portrayed as...I guess secular but really it’s more that they just don’t say anything.

It’s not that the character is not a believer in a faith per se, especially if you go by older adaptations during times when hardly anyone was secular. It’s just that they, understandably, aren’t saying anything.

In the comics Peter is some kind of Christian but probably a Protestant (unless you go by Amazing Grace where he is an atheist but that’s hot trash we don’t talk about) but we don’t really talk about it that specifically.

We just know that he and his family celebrate Christmas and very, very occasionally Aunt May references going to church and that she, Peter and MJ believe in a monothetistic deity they refer to as ‘God’.

And really apart from the Church thing there is no clue to Peter’s religion and Marvel probably (wisely) would rather keep it that way. He even got married in a civil ceremony!

However in the SUBTEXT...he’s Jewish. And it’s basically an open secret that he is and always has been Jewish.

“The Spider-Man video game also featured a wonderful easter egg for queer fans by having a giant rainbow flag, as well as several smaller ones, scattered around the game’s fictionalized New York City map. ”

I mean that’s wonderful but I wouldn’t call that an Easter Egg so much as...it’s just what you’d find in modern NYC.

“Even the Venom film got in on the fun, with fans shipping Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the titular male alien-symbiote after the two kissed in the film. Sony even encouraged the pairing, releasing a romantic comedy-esque trailer for the film to promote the home release. While some complained of queer-baiting, most felt that it was all in good fun and included queer people in on the joke, instead of making us the target.”

Again, good for them but I don’t think that was the movie actively trying to be positive towards queer people.

Brock and Venom kissed when Venom was bonded to Brock’s ex-fiance and had a pronounced female form, being an adaptation of a character literally called She-Venom.

And it was based upon a script written in the 1990s so really it was more the movie did it and then people took it as a thing that was shipping Venom and Brock (even though Venom is sexless). Brock and the symbiote have been shipped numerous times in the comics but the subtext has always been that the symbiote, if any sex, is female. In the Spec cartoon it is referred to as Symbi (a pun on Cyndi) and in the Spider-Girl comics it is marked out as female (granted this happens after it’s bonded to a woman).

And again, headcanon away but like...that probably wasn’t intentional at all Sony were just being goofy or unintionally made something people took a certain way.

“Indeed, even in the comics, Spider-Man has always been a fairly inclusive hero. Miles Morales was introduced in the early-2000s, taking over the mantel from Peter Parker for several years. ”

Okay, this is so weird for me to be correcting such a praising point but lets really look at this.

First of all Miles didn’t take over Peter’s role for several years he did it permanently.

Second of all Miles is from 2011 so that’s not the early 2000s, that’s the early 2010s, but okay maybe that was a typo.

Third of all, is it really all that logical to say this franchise that began in 1962 has always been fairly inclusive and then cite a character from 2011 as proof of this? Wouldn’t examples from during the FIRST quarter century have been more apt?

Fourth of all...eh. Has Spider-Man been fairly inclusive from the start? Yes, no, its complicated.

Look there were exactly 0 LGBTQ+ characters in Spider-Man until maybe the 1990s and even then I couldn’t off my head tell you who they were. Felicia Hardy is bisexual but we didn’t find out until the 2000s and it was most prominent in an AU. Really the most significant LGBTQ+ character who’s had the fact that they are queer be more than a one off reference was Max Modell and he debuted 2011 and IIRC wasn’t established as queer until 2012. In defence of Spider-Man the Comics Code literally FORBID any character be anything other than straight until the 1990s and even then it was relatively rare, even in X-Men which you’d think it wouldn’t be.

If we’re talking POC again this one is a bit complicated Glori Grant, Joe Robertson, Randy Robertson are frequently appearing POC characters but not in every run and they aren’t usually as prominent as like Jameson, Aunt May, Harry Osborn, MJ, etc. Characters of other ethnicities are even less frequent and I don’t even know what we should make of Puma/Thomas Fireheart. I mean A for effort, they wanted a Native American character who wasn’t really a villain and wasn’t exactly a sterotype so there is that I guess.

Again though...most other Marvel franchises decade by decade weren’t much better with this and we should give credit where credit is due to the same guy who created Black Panther writing a nuanced scene where 2 black people in the 60s separated by age discuss different approaches to civil rights with neither being proven right or wrong.

When it comes to disabled people, outside of evil insane villains, forget it, there is nothing before Flash Thompson in 2008 unless you count Aunt May’s chronically poor health.

“Spider-Gwen quickly became one of the highest-selling female superhero comics. Spider-Woman was a prominently featured bisexual character, and the female Asian-American hero Silk also had LGBT supporting characters, Rafferty and Lola, who were in a healthy relationship. Additionally, many view vampire villain Morbius, who is getting a spin-off film starring Jared Leto next year, as a metaphor for those suffering during the HIV crisis of the '80s. ”

Again...Spider-Gwen and Silk are 2010s characters so that’s not ‘always fairly inclusive’.

I don’t even know if Jessica Drew is bisexual, I’ve never heard that but I don’t think she is.

Morbius as a metaphor for HIV...MIGHT be true if we are specifically talking about his 1990s solo-book which I’ve never read. But the character as originally created 100% was never about that because he was created in the 1970s before HIV was known about.

“Unlike his Marvel counterparts Thor, Iron Man and Captain America, Spider-Man’s world has accurately reflected real world diversity for years.”

....Not really.

I’m not even saying Spidey maybe haven’t been comparatively better at it than those guys but he’s deffo not been accurate.

Plus to be fair to the other guys, Captain America and Iron Man have had at least one major black supporting cast member and in Cap’s case he was fairly candid about social strife and issues.

And with Thor it’s not that fair to throw shade at him for not reflecting the real world given that 90% of this characters and stories are literally pulled from fantasy and myth. I don’t even know if there are any queer figures in Norse myth let alone poc.

“While it’s a seemingly simple idea that any of us can be a superhero, it’s sadly still a radical concept in a endlessly growing film genre that has predominetly centers straight cisgender white men. ”

Well that’s mostly because the comics the movies adapt are about those types of people.

“That is because relatability and inclusion has always been core to Spider-Man’s appeal and message. It’s why the late Stan Lee decided that, unlike other superheroes who expose parts of their faces, Spider-Man had to wear a full-face mask.”

Stan Lee only speculated that that was part of Spider-Man’s appeal, he never had any input on that design choice it was all Steve Ditko...who frankly was unlikely to have been thinking about that...

“Even further, Spider-Man isn’t the king of a country, a billionaire, a woman out of a Greek myth, or a brilliant scientist. He’s just an average high-school kid from Brooklyn who always strives to do the right thing even while struggling to balance his everyday life and hiding a secret identity.”

WHOA there buddy...Spider-Man isn’t routinely ‘a kid’ nor is he from Brooklyn.

MILES is from Brooklyn but Peter, as evidenced by that great big caption in Captain America: Civil War, is from QUEENS.

“And it’s the idea of balancing a secret identity with everyday life that has always allowed Spider-Man to connect with queer audiences long before comic writers were allowed to explicitly include LGBT characters.”

...I’m not denying this necesarrilly but whilst i’ve heard stories from poc who connected with Spider-Man I’ve never heard this about LGBTQ+ fans of Spider-Man.

“Indeed, perhaps the strongest part of Spider-Man’s inclusivity is the subtlety to which it has been done. While Black Panther, Black Lightning, and Wonder Woman rightly put issues of identity front and center, Spider-Man’s quiet diversity allows audiences who typically cry “SJWs are ruining my favorite characters” to actually see diversity showcased without it being overt.”

Errrrrrr...sure....*represses memories of when Miles Morales was first announced*

Lets um...wait and see what happens when those trans characters show up in the movie this year okay.

#Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Miles Morales

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manabingu · 5 years

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How the Grinch SUCKED at Stealing Christmas 🎄😒

I honestly never thought I'd ever make one of these but I have never felt THIS salty over a film adaptation. I am a huge Suess fan & I love the previous Illumination retellings of Horton Hears A Who & The Lorax. I also really enjoyed Dr. Strange. And the song "Happy" by Pharell is a bop. BUT THE 2018 Grinch movie is one of THE most disappointing film I have ever seen.

Like?? Starting from the top, WHO THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO PLAY "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE INSTEAD OF THE STEALING PORTION OF THE FILM??? LIKE?? WHO GREEN LIT THAT IDEA??

When the stealing scene happened, it was incredibly boring, uninspired and the regular bland score took away from such an iconic scene. How could they mess the best scene up THAT bad??

•They added unnecessary characters like Fred the Reindeer (literally the sub plot of this character could have been scrapped & things woulda been JUST fine). They made Cindy Lou Who have this squad she hangs out with & showed some shenanigans of her and her friends plotting a way to trap Santa?? Like WTF ?? That ALSO was unnecessary, I just wanted to get to the main story. The creation of these new characters that added NO substance to the story just made it feel like it was a movie about going on meaningless tangents.

•They added unnecessary "relevant ™" things. Like ok as a person who grew up in a single parent environment. I appreciate the "representation" of Cindy Lou Who's family. But it made her sub plot feel so forced? Like it was just tossed in there for the sake of B Plot so that the movie could be longer. It didn't make me care about her character motivations either :/ and her relationship with the Grinch was SO weak compared to the original cartoon and the live action version. Like? They are supposed to have this friendship dynamic that is heartwarming but they BARELY interacted AT ALL throughout the film that when the stuff at the end happens, it doesn't feel believable :/! It just felt slapped together like we're supposed to accept it :/....sorry but no. Plus it derailed from showing what the ACTUAL moral of the Grinch story is?? About showing that the holidays aren't about commercialism and materialistic desire, it's about spending time with loved ones. But they didn't make that the main focus of the film 😡

•The score was not memorable & didn't make me feel the spirit of Christmas. And was too washed out with trendy radio tunes that felt SO out of place it was ridiculous. My sis fell asleep in the middle of the film lol 😂 they just... oh boy... I can't even.

•The character design of the Grinch was honestly REALLY disappointing for me. He looked the the Mayor of Whoville from Horton except green. HE LOOOKED 👏🏼 TOO 👏🏼 CLEAN 👏🏼. This is THE GRINCH WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. The iconic song describes how creepy he's supposed to look? Why were his teeth and eyes not yellow? Or if like the special features of the DVD implied, that they wanted to capture the original book. WHY NOT MAKE HIS EYES PINKISH RED? THE GRINCH IS SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY LOOKIN. And be portrayed as a villian to Whoville or an anti-hero.

•WHICH BRINGS ME TOO MY MOST IMPORTANT POINT.

DISCLAIMER: I like Benedict & think he is a fantastic film actor! I don't hate him. I genuinely love his live action work !

But I hate to be blunt. Him and Pharrell are NOT voice actors.

Please 👏🏼 stop 👏🏼 hiring 👏🏼 celebrities 👏🏼 to do a PROFESSIONAL 👏🏼 VOICE 👏🏼 ACTOR'S 👏🏼 JOB 👏🏼!!!

I apologize if I'm being too picky but I care about voice acting WAY too much. People don't take it seriously and this goes to show that they REALLY should. It's not about hiring trendy celebs. Give jobs to VAs who do this for a living & deserve those jobs & are GREAT at it 👏🏼I can LITERALLY name 10 non celeb VAs off the top of my head who would have NAILED the vocal performance for the Grinch & would have brought that depth that the character requires.

I would rather watch that whole film (even tho I hated the plots they threw in there) but dubbed over with say someone like Steve Blum playing the Grinch. I bet he would be 10x more fun to watch & listen to & he would nail all the nuances & give me an emotional performance. The Grinch is supposed to sound mean & scary the whole film up till the end when his heart grows 3 sizes? THEN after that, I can understand him sounding a bit kinder. THIS GRINCH SOUNDED WAY TOO NICE ALL THE TIME. WHERE WAS THE SASS? THE SNARK, THE SINISTER EVIL LAUGHS? l didn't feel ANYTHING from this Grinch. Literally like?? Nothing? And I wanted to REALLY bad cuz I ❤️ the character. Jim Carrey knows how important the voice is when it comes to portraying characters not only in live action but in animation as well. THAT is why HIS Grinch is way more believable & WORKS than Benedict's. HIS BACKSTORY WAS SO WEAK TOO??

Ben's Grinch was an orphan who grew up w/o anyone to share Christmas with. But he would go to town and EVERYONE WAS NICE TO HIM. He didn't have any bullies. No enemies, he just didn't talk to people so he thought he was "alone" BRUH. NO OFFENSE. BUT SHOWING A BUNCHA CLIPS OF A TINY GRINCH SADLY LOOKING OUT A WINDOW DOES NOT EQUAL "TRAGIC BACKSTORY". I didn't sympathize at all. Plus that's a plothole. Aint no way an orphanage is Whoville "the happiest town ever" would have an abandoned orphanage. They are all jolly people and would surely notice a kid Grinch living by himself. They would help him. The live action version made his backstory 10x more interesting and dynamic imo.

I adored Bendedict as Dr. Strange. And Pharrell sings lovely but I'm terribly sorry to say that they are NOT voice actors. They sounded like they were just reading a script. There was no nuance. No depth. They were just there for a paycheck,& it shows in the vocal performance :/ I WANTED TO ROOT FOR THEM SO BAD. But I LITERALLY COULDN'T CUZ THEY SOUNDED ROBOTIC AND STATIC. I wanted to hear emotions but OMYGOD it was just all so uninspired. And not just them it was the rest of the cast too. Literally the ONLY GOOD VA WAS MAX AND HE IS A DOG. ALL HE DOES IS BARK. That... omfg thas sad.

This movie has no "rewatchability factor". I'll just stick to the Jim Version. That's the only one that characterized everyone accurately.

But tea ☕️ THAT was the tea of how the 2018 Grinch sucked at Stealing Christmas. Thank you for coming to my TED talk gnight.

#mana blabz #The Grinch 2018 #Dr. Suess

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crystallized-shadow · 5 years

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The Killer Meme

Tagged by @a-kid-named-hiro

[Me, Myself, I]

What is your philosophy/motto in life? Always try your best; you can’t always be the best but you can do your best.

How did you choose your User Name, and what does it reveal of your character? It’s my username from a different site and I really like it. I guess it could mean I’m the shiny thing in the dark?

What did you want to be “when you grew up” when you were younger? If your current job/plans are different, why did you change? I wanted to be Veterinarian when I was a kid but an allergy to dogs put a kibosh on that pretty quick.

What was the worst nightmare you have ever had? I usually don’t remember my dreams, but I can remember one where someone me shot in the back.

Tell the story behind one or more of your scars (physical, not emotional). I have several but the story is the same: I’m a fucking klutz.

What one thing would you like your great-great-grandchildren to know about you? What one thing would you NOT want them to know? I don’t intend to reproduce.

How do you learn (things-for-exams)? Re-reading notes and frantically cramming right before the exam (I do NOT recommend this method)

What was the cause of the worst physical pain you have ever been in? I slipped on the ice; over-extended two tendons, concussed a nerve, bruised my tailbone, and hurt my knee (I had to sit through 4 hours of classes before I could do anything about it, not fun)

Where do you live (a country is fine, just name a place)? USA

What is your biggest fear? Not living up to my own expectations

[Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be]

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done? (Not the best, or the most accomplished, or the most life-altering, just the coolest). Gone tubing down the river

If you could change one event from your own personal history, what would it be and how would you change it? I let something very dear to me go, if I could change anything, I would never have made that decision

Describe the one thing you have learned in the course of your education, either inside school or outside of it, which you consider the most valuable. Actions speak louder than words, especially among people who are supposed to be your friends.

What memory would call up your personal Patronus spell? (in other words, what memory is your happiest or sweetest?) Any memory featuring my precious people happy

Describe the three best pairs of shoes that you’ve ever owned - favorites because of comfort, the way they look, the brand, any reason at all. Any shoes that I don’t have to tie are fucking amazing

[If I Ruled the World]

If you could have been born and grown up somewhere else, where would that have been? I liked where I grew up, so I wouldn’t change it

What would you demand in exchange for giving up your personal freedoms and civil liberties? Would never give them up

If there were no laws, which (former) crime would be the first you’d commit? I’d make all student loans disappear forever!

If you could do one thing or grant one wish for someone else, what would it be? I’d wish that those near and dear to my heart be happy for the rest of their lives

If you could know anything about your future, what would it be? If I’m happy with my life

Owing to a peculiar concatenation of events, you are the wealthiest person in the world, and the latter will end in 24 hours. Money being no object, and saving the world being impossible, what would you do during that last day? I’d make it the best day ever for everyone I care about. If we’re all going to die we might as well go out with a bang!

If you could hunt down one childhood tormentor (whether it be bully, tattletale, mean teacher, or friend’s mother who hated you for no good reason) and exact revenge upon them in some spectacular, prankish fashion without worry of consequences, who would you choose, and what would you do to him/her? That’s hard to say since karma has taken care of a few of these people. There is one person I’d love to slap in the back of the head for being incompetent when I got hurt, so I guess I’d do that.

If I offered you a chance to have anything you wanted, the cost being someone you didn’t know dies, would you accept? If I could stipulate the that person has to be a piece of shit that no one will miss, then hell yeah! Otherwise I’d have to give it some thought.

If you could have any one superpower, what would it be? Time travel

If you could punch any one person from any point in history, who would you pick? I have a list of people that deserve a good punch in the face

If you were given the opportunity to live another life, what kind of life would you like to have? I’d want a life where I could be happy and not have to worry about anyone hurting me or those close to me

If you could alter history in one specific place, where would it be, and why? Stopping someone close to me from ever dating the fucking whore who did nothing but fuck them over

Assuming you (or a group of friends) conquer Earth, which section(s) of the planet would you personally desire, and why? Somewhere quiet with good wi-fi so we could have a place to relax

If you could, with no repercussions, subject anyone you wanted to one day of utter and complete torture, who would you choose, why would you choose them, and what would you do to them? Conversely, if you could give anyone you wanted (other than yourself) one day of perfect happiness, who/why/what would you choose? The fucking whore I mentioned earlier, I would subject her to a day of torture, without hesitation.

It might be cliche, but my mom deserves the best fucking day ever so I would pick her.

[Media and Culture]

Hollywood called: they’re filming your life story. Who do you cast as yourself? I would just laugh and hang up the phone

They want to make your life into a Cartoon. Which graphic artist do you want to draw it? Not sure why anyone would want to do that, but I would pick @sinyaru or @artbythedarkside because I fucking love their art!

Your favourite Blackadder episode and why? ???

Movie adaptations of books - heinous, evil and always disappointing or perfectly acceptable? It really depends on the book and the actors they pick

What one song brings up the strongest emotion (negative or positive) for you? Hold Me Tight or Don’t by Fall Out Boy Killing Kind by Mariana’s Trench

If you had the choice to live in any fictional world, as in transposed into a book, which one would it be? Please explain why. Naruto, preferably during the Fonder’s Era because I want to me Madara and Tobirama! Also ninjas.

What is your favorite artwork (painting, sculpture, etching, whatever) and why? I can’t say I have a favorite piece, but personally I enjoy painting.

Name twelve songs for the soundtrack of your life. (In no particular order)

1. Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day) 2. Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea (Fall Out Boy) 3. THNKS FR TH MMRS (Fall Out Boy) 4. It’s My Life (Bon Jovi) 5. High Hopes (Panic! At the Disco) 6. Natural (Imagine Dragons) 7. Teenagers (My Chemical Romance) 8. Head Above Water (Avril Lavigne) 9. I Don’t Care (Fall Out Boy) 10. Numb (Linkin Park) 11. Victorious (Panic! At the Disco) 12. Get Out Alive (Three Days Grace)

If you could have only five cds, which would they be? No burned cds count - only ones you physically purchase in a store/online. (In no particular order)

1. Mania (Fall Out Boy) 2. Phantoms (Mariana’s Trench) 3. Save Rock and Roll (Fall Out Boy) 4. Them vs. You vs. Me (Finger 11) 5. Pray For The Wicked (Panic! At the Disco)

Batman or Superman? Loki

What fictional character do you most identify with and why? If I had to pick I would say maybe Tobirama Senju. I can come across as cold, will do odd things to satisfy curiosity, and my intentions can be misinterpreted by those that don’t know me.

[The Completely Hatstand Section]

True or false: pineapple on pizza is wrong. False.

If you were a color, what would you be and why? Black or red, they are my favorites.

If you could be an inanimate object, what would you be and why? A dictionary so no one would use me

Assuming reincarnation exists, who do you think you may have been in a past life? How would you like to come back in the next? The running joke in my family is I was a pirate in my past life because my alcohol of choice, when I drink, is rum. I’d like to come back as a cat so I can be lazy and knock shit over XD

If you were a weapon, what would you be and why? A katana because they are badass

Do you wear orange? Why/Why not? Not really, it’s just not a color I own a lot of.

If you could ask your deity of choice one question and have it answered, what would you ask? I’m honestly not sure, maybe what’s the secret to the universe?

True/False: Green buffalos come from Albania. (seriously, now.) Um, false?

[Fair Trades and Dilemmas]

If remaining a virgin (or abstaining from sex) for the rest of your life would allow you to do real magic, would you do it? Fuck yeah! Magic is fucking awesome!

How much money would it take for you to appear naked (full-frontal) for five seconds on national television? A fuck ton of money, like more money than currently exists; I am very self-conscious.

Would you rather be a complete idiot with a charming personality, or intellectually brilliant but have no friends? I’d rather be intellectually brilliant, because my true friends would still be my friends, regardless of how smart I am.

You can start any business of your choice, whether for-profit or non-profit, regardless of whether this business exists practically in the world or not and whether there’s an existing business model to make your chosen business work or not. Irrespective of what it is, it will start off moderately successfully and eventually become very successful. You will make a very satisfactory wage and your investors/sponsors will be very pleased with your work. What business would you start? Some online business that rivals Amazon.

Would you sacrifice an unknown portion of your life so that a loved one could live for one more year? Without a doubt

Tagging @theintellectualweeb @sinyaru @artbythedarkside and whoever else wants to do it

#Crystal speaks #tag game #thanks for the tag Hiro!#sorry it took me so long to do it!

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duhragonball · 5 years

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Seeing that you're a big fan of Caulifla and Kale, do you have any thoughts on their (and Kefla's) portrayal in the manga? I've seen some people say that it's an improvement, but I found some aspects disappointing in comparison to the anime.

I haven’t read the manga, and I don’t plan on reading it anytime soon. It kind of bugs me that the manga and anime are as different as they are, you know? I just mean in general. I don’t like having two versions of the same story like that.

I was thinking about this the other day with regards to the new TMNT cartoon. I haven’t seen it, but it looks good and all. There’s been several different takes on the Ninja Turtles over the years, and while I accept this, I find it frustrating whenever they change something beyond a certain point.

This isn’t anything new. Thirty years ago, I was a big enough fan of the cartoon that I eventually read the early comics, and found out that Splinter’s origin story was completely different. In the cartoon, he was a human, Hamato Yoshi, who mutated into a rat-dude. In the original TMNT #1 comic, he was Hamato Yoshi’s pet rat who mutated into a rat-dude. I forget which way it went in the first live-action movie, but the point was that they couldn’t do it both ways.

To be sure, a lot of stuff was different between the comics and the cartoon. April O’Neil worked for Baxter Stockman in the comics, and in the cartoon she worked for Channel 6 News, but to me that was close enough that I could wrap my head around it. What frustrated me about Splinter was that he wasn’t even remotely the same person from one version to the other. At least April was an adult human woman across the board. The turtles were more or less the same, even if one version was grimmer and gritter than the other.

I’m not really complaining about how this works, but I guess it only bugs me when the characters end up being totally different. The new version of April looks adorable and I’m sure she’s a worthy addition to the franchise, but it sort of irks me that it’s a zero sum game. By introducing a new version of April you have to wave good-bye to all the old ones. You can’t have Channel 6 April on that show, because they’ve already got an April, and she’s too young to be a reporter. Splinter is either a rat who became a dude, or a dude who became a rat. He can’t be both. I guess I feel the same way about Raphael being the leader this time around. It’s one thing to tweak his personality from show to show, but making him the oldest brother and the leader feels like a bridge too far.

Nevertheless, TMNT makes it work because there’s no confusion that they’re starting over with a new story. That’s part of the advantage to having a new April every time, and making Raph twice as big and so on. Under no circumstances are they trying to suggest that this is the same continuity as one of the other versions. If there’s a comic book based on Rise of the TMNT, they’re not doing some goofy switcheroo where all the character designs are the same, only Mikey’s the leader, and April’s a Krang alien, or some other damn thing. They’re not trying to confuse their audience.

Dragon Ball Super, on the other hand, they just toss out comics and cartoons, and they both say “Akira Toriyama” on the credits and all the characters look exactly the same, and sometimes the story is the same and sometimes it’s not, and you’re just supposed to know that it’s meant to be this way. Is one more “official” than the other? Are we supposed to care? Why are they making the comic at all if we’re not supposed to care?

In the end, I’m not even sure why they expect me to buy the comic. If it was a completely different story, I’d want to buy it for the new content. If it was an adaptation, I’d want to see how it tackles the same story in a different medium. But it straddles this dumb fence, where they changed just enough stuff to make it incompatible with the anime, but they also kept just enough stuff the same to make it tedious. From what I can tell, the only reason to read the manga is to play Spot the Difference. “Well, Caulifla does this and this in the anime, but in the manga she does that and that.” If Toyotaro made her a Krang alien, at least it would be worth checking out.

And at the end of the day, Dragon Ball Super wasn’t such a great story that I want to go out of my way to see it remixed that way. One of these years, I’ll probably want to watch all the Ninja Turtles cartoons I’ve missed to try to make sense of it all, but that’s because TMNT is a classic. As much as I like Caulifla and Kale, Dragon Ball Super was hit-or-miss, and so far I’m not hearing that the manga really did anything to change my mind.

#ask duhragonball #dragon ball super #real talk 2018 april is as cute as a bug in a rug #i miss banana jumpsuit april but she had a good run #the april torch has been passed #star-searcher17

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notsodarkacademic · 6 years

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2018 summer film & tv bops that i watched + my opinions

FILMS

to all the boys i’ve loved before (6/10): it was pretty cheesy and exactly what i expected to come out of a contemporary teen book adaptation. i liked the actors in it and the representation, but otherwise, it wasn’t that unique concept-wise. it felt like i was watching a movie i had already seen before or like i was watching an old wattpad story come to life. i hadn’t read the book beforehand so i went into it thinking that it’d focus more on lara jean’s letters being sent out and her own personal development rather than a fake relationship that turns into a real one. it was just overall a little too unrealistic and cheesy for my taste.

the big sick (9.5/10): hilarious and fresh. i actually laughed out loud during this movie. the relationship between kumail and emily is so cute and their families are even cuter.

eighth grade (9.5/10): i LOVE bo burnham with a passion and his movie did not disappoint. it was realistic and brought me back to the weird and uncomfortable eighth grade feeling. i’m glad that kayla didn’t necessarily do anything monumental, but started to learn how to deal with her own issues.

baby driver (10/10): i’m kinda biased towards this movie bc i’m in love with ansel elgort AND lily james. setting my crushes on them aside, i loved this movie a lot. it was exciting and had just the right amount of everything. it’s in my top fave movies now so yah. go watch it bc it’s really good and lives up to the hype.

ex machina (8/10): tbh i don’t know what i was really supposed to learn from this movie, but i’m sure there was a lesson in there somewhere. beautiful to watch in my opinion.

emo the musical (7/10): i watched this movie bc i thought it’d be kinda cringey and funny, but it was surprisingly good for what i was expecting. it’s definitely a self-aware movie. definitely gave me some dear evan hansen and be more chill vibes even though they’re all very different. good movie for when you kinda just need to watch something while doing something else.

leave no trace (8/10): really cool story. i got annoyed with the daughter’s voice at first, but eventually just got use to it. i thought it’d focus more about them actually living in forest park, but the rest was interesting too. the ending was kinda weird and most of it felt weird tbh, but still a good movie.

anna karenina (7/10): first off, anna is kinda annoying and vronsky is literally way overrated. i liked the side story with kostya and kitty better. however, i thought the transitions and how to story was told was super intriguing and made watching anna turn into a mess a little more enjoyable. i do sympathize with anna for some parts of the movie, but ultimately, i think that she got the fate that she chose for herself. i did like the look into russian society and the role of women in the male-dominant world. overall, it was visually beautiful and had unique storytelling, but anna and vronsky’s love story wasn’t enough to make me root for them.

anne with an e (8/10): started this thinking it’d be kinda boring because it’s just about farmy people back in the day, but damn.... farmy people got a lot going on. the stories are intriguing and most of the show is pretty wholesome and sweet. anne can be a little annoying, but what 13 year old isn’t? gilbert is my man and i love him. i also love cole a lot. all the characters are well-written and have their own nuances. this show also deals with big issues pretty well like racism, sexism (kinda), LGBTQ+ issues, and more! seriously

series of unfortunate events (7/10): this show is obviously geared towards younger kids, but it wasn’t any less enjoyable because of it. the show is clever and has a unique charm to it. this show is pretty perfectly cast and has good comedic timing that isn’t kiddish. i especially enjoyed all the references to difference works of writing.

dear white people (10/10): this show is so so so good. idk even know why i love it so much, but the characters are all so amazing. i was really sad when i finished season 2 bc i binged it and didn’t have anything to watch anymore.

i am not a robot (8/10): skeptical about the concept of this show at first, but it turned out to be really cute and good. i also am a fan of chae soo bin (loved her in cheer up and strongest deliveryman). yoo seung ho was also cute in this show and i’m glad that being a rich person wasn’t his only defining character trait. all the side characters were phenomenal, even the ones that i got annoyed by sometimes.

my only love song (k-drama) (6.5/10): if you haven’t noticed yet, i tend to watch things with my faves actors and actresses in them. i only watched this k-drama because gong seung yeon and lee jong hyun were in it. it was an ok drama. the story wasn’t the most interesting and it felt slow at times. the buildup to on dal and su jeong’s relationship was almost non-existent which was weird. i still liked it for the most part, but wish it were done better.

suits season 8 (usa) (8/10): i’ve been really enjoying this new season. tbh idk why everyone hates katherine heigl, but she’s doing pretty well in suits. i need harvey and donna to just get together already bc if they don’t, i will sue. i miss mike’s character and his relationship with harvey, but i also feel like his story’s ending on the show made sense. even though she’s a great actress, meghan markle’s character honestly was one of my least favorites so i didn’t really even feel like there was anything missing from the show when she left like i do with mike.

the package (k-drama) (8/10): super beautiful to watch since it’s set in france. the characters in the tour group ensemble are so interesting to watch. their stories each slowly unfold throughout the show. it was lighthearted and playful while also dealing with big life issues and it was all done so beautifully.

judge vs. judge (k-drama) (9/10): literally one of the best plots in a k-drama that i’ve seen so far. there’s always a twist every episode and the story is crafted so well. the romance in this drama is very subtle, but the plot is amazing. has a different feel than other k-dramas, probably because it doesn’t have a romance as the main plot point. seriously could not recommend this drama more, especially is you like crime dramas.

super tv season 2 (8/10): tbh i liked season one a tiny bit little more bc it focused on suju more rather than other groups trying to promote, but this season was good too. it was fun seeing suju interact with other groups. my fave episodes were the last two when they went on vacay with ryeowook.

ducktales (9/10): i like watching cartoons as a therapeutic type thing bc cartoons are less serious than live action things most of the time and they’re simpler than real life. ducktales has been a solid one for me lately. it’s a cute show with a good plot. there are definitely a bunch of filler episodes that have nothing to do with the big mystery, but those ones are still pretty fun to watch. if you feel like being nostalgic and just more like a kid, watch ducktales.

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scrawnydutchman · 6 years

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‘The Breadwinner’ Movie Review (Spoiler Free)

It has been too damn long since I’ve put together a film review for this blog, due mostly to the fact that it’s been too long since I’ve seen a film. I’ve been a busy bee as of late and my year is only expected to get busier. As a result I missed out on a TON of great animation from 2017. I still haven’t seen Loving Vincent, I still haven’t seen Don Hertzfeldt’s new film, you get the idea. But I HAVE found the time to see the latest film in the repertoire of Cartoon Saloon, the Irish studio behind such phenomenal work as The Secret of Kells and my favorite film The Song of the Sea. That said . . . The Breadwinner may very well take The Song of the Sea’s place. What can I say except Cartoon Saloon does it again! Based on the book of the same name (otherwise known as Parvana), This film does everything Cartoon Saloon always does masterfully with a take on a culture they haven’t adapted yet. Wonderful composition, elegant hand drawn frame by frame animation, effective colour, wonderful voice acting, heart wrenching drama and clever experimentation await you in this masterpiece of 2017.

PLOT SYNOPSIS & CRITIQUE:

Parvana is an eleven year old little girl living in early 2000s Afghanistan under the complete control of the Taliban. She lives with her ill mother, her argumentative older sister, her adorable little brother and her kindhearted father in poor conditions, but together they are complete. Things change though when her father is placed under arrest and taken away by the Taliban. With no man old enough to earn the family food and water, Parvana has the idea of disguising as a boy to get what she needs for her families survival and goes on a venture to find and save her father. Will she be able to reunite her family in spite of all odds?

This film really puts you in the shoes of this little girl and her family in such a desperate situation and it is both parts disturbing and enchanting. A good chunk of this film is just her life trying to gather food and water without getting into trouble and along the way you see imagery of desperate mothers trying to defend themselves and their children and abusive older men cheating and overpowering children. Even though the camera pans away from a great deal of the violence and the effect is shown through reaction shots it’s pretty disturbing. I’d maybe shy away from showing this film to very young kids; maybe only show them at the age of 10 years old or something. The climax of this film is ESPECIALLY powerful and heart wrenching; I don’t dare spoil it but I can easily say it absolutely floored me. On the flipside, Cartoon Saloon manages to use their signature storytelling methods to give an otherwise gloomy story a necessary dosage of enchantment. A great aspect of this film is an ongoing story being told by Parvana to different people along her adventure, told sort of like a myth or a folktale that really integrates some culture. Much like the mythological edge of Song of the Sea the story mirrors the events of the main plot in an indirect way. It’s brilliantly subtle and creative and The Breadwinner executes it with nuances in character action and stunningly executed imagery. Speaking of the visuals . . .

ANIMATION & DESIGN CRITIQUE:

When talking about a Cartoon Saloon production, can you expect anything short of breathtaking? Frame by frame traditional animation has become something of a taboo subject in recent years in that many will claim it’s the “black and white” of animation. 3D animation seems to be more desirable by the general public and whenever 2D happens you’re more likely to expect rigged cutout animation on TV as it’s more efficient and cost effective. That being said, The Breadwinner proves that in spite of all these claims the beauty and shear majesty of a good hand drawn animated film will never fade. This film will last because it’s subtle movements and charming design are a sight for anyone to behold. Perhaps the most impressive thing to me about this film is just how on model every character is all the time. I watched through this film deliberately looking for inconsistencies after a certain point and don’t think I found any. I’m a hand drawn animator myself so I know what to look for. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO KEEP HAND DRAWN ANIMATION ON MODEL, ESPECIALLY WITH MOVEMENT AS SLOW AND AS SUBTLE AS THIS??? I think part of what makes this more practical to achieve is Cartoon Saloons simple but beautiful approach to character design. Heads are large spherical shapes so their expressions are visible even from a distance. Their noses are only a few lines at the time and make for perfect symmetry in their faces. Many of the men and women in this film are modeled similarly so alternating from model to model is a simple transition. Turthfully for how crisp and manageable Cartoon Saloons designs are I think they’re definitely worth studying when it comes to developing your own look for a show. Their backgrounds and frame composition are excellent too. They always have such a high amount of depth and pop in colour; I could snapshot every frame of this movie and hang it in my house as art. Not to mention a lot of these choices serve as a symbolic callback to returning themes of the film. The choices made for the movies visuals are simply wonderful; I could go on forever.

Now, remember when I said this film had an aspect of mirroring the main plot with a sort of mythological children’s tale? Well, that part of the film has a completely different animation style to it than the main plot. Rather than traditional animation it takes on a paper puppet cutout aesthetic; similar to the works of Lotte Reineger (in fact I think one part of this film straight up homages it but I could be wrong). This aesthetic is charming and as well executed as the rest of the film and REALLY implores some clever methods of showcasing things like rain and clouds. This film is eye candy from beginning to end.

Voice Acting & Character Critique

Those of you reading who are advocates of an ethnically accurate cast for a film centered around one culture will be pleased to know that everyone in this film is authentically Afghan and that every character does a fantastic job in executing their character. Saara Chaudry plays a compassionate but brave Parvana and does an excellent job carrying this movie. Ali Badshah plays a gentle and eloquent father and instantly wins the viewers affection despite his limited screentime. Soma Chhaya plays a streetwise Shauzia who makes a great foil and partner for Parvana. Kawa Ada plays Razaq, a Taliban soldier who has a good heart despite his alignment and quickly became among my favorite characters after his little arc. I could go on and on, but truthfully my comments are the same everytime; this entire cast is amazing. But one particular character and performance stands out in my mind among all others. Laara Sadiq as the mother, Fattema. Throughout the film she’s a sickly and weak mother, but within the climax . . . .. HOOOOOOLY SHIT does she get one of the most suspenseful and exciting scenes. I don’t dare spoil it but man, it’s the highlight of the movie for me. Those who have seen it probably know what I’m talking about.

Music & Sound Critique

To be honest, I’m always not very sure what to say about this section. Even the worst movies I review in my blog tend to be serviceable at the very least in this category. The Breadwinner, however, once again succeeds. The movie has a culture even deeper enriched by it’s soundtrack of middle eastern instrumentals and it effectively immerses the viewer in the environment. Whenever a scary moment happens in this film the sound effects and music are perfectly mixed in such a way that almost assaults the senses (in a good way). The sound always beautifully coincides the visuals and further amplifies the beauty of each reoccurring symbol.

Conclusion

The Breadwinner is a visual marvel you absolutely cannot afford to miss out on. Everything about it from the beautiful designs to the clever use of symbolism to the engaging story (ESPECIALLY the climax) is something that must be seen to be believed. This film frankly should have won best animated feature for it’s year. I know that Pixar always wins it because the Academy is uneducated as shit, but . . . MAN does this film need to be talked about more. All well. Cartoon Saloon always recieves a nomination for their films and that’s a strong presence for a team keeping 2D animation alive. For that I am thankful. Go check this out; you won’t be disappointed.

Plot: 1/1

Visuals: 1/1

Characters & Performance: 1/1

Music & Sound Design: 1/1

Overall: 4 out of 4. A Masterpiece.

#animation #classical animation #2d animation #cartoon saloon #secret of kells #song of the sea #the breadwinner #cartoons #film #film review #movie review #2017

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nerdfighterwhatevernumbers · 6 years

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okay below the cut brief psuedo-review of A Wrinkle In Time

Things I wasn’t huge on:

There was almost no explanation to what was going on most of the time, to the point where they don’t even explain what a wrinkle in time is supposed to mean. This might have been to make up for the book, seeing how as I was listening to it on audio I kept wondering how they’d adapt so many talking scenes for a visual medium. Apparently the answer was throw in a couple of flashbacks that don’t actually explain very much.

I kept getting the feeling that if I hadn’t read the book I would be extremely confused, and the book is a little surreal to begin with.

I feel like this was one of it’s biggest problems, there’s a limit to how much you can expect people to just accept even in a fairy tale ‘child logic’ kind of way because it becomes disorienting or hard to get invested if you don’t know what’s happening or why.

Mrs. Whatsit semi-dating the happy medium didn’t affect the story very much so it was just kind of a question mark as to why that was there other than to maybe make us care more about him when he gave Meg a pep talk or give us comic relief

Some scenes I also felt went on longer than they could have because they wanted to add more action even though they had little to do with the story and again weren’t really explained (specifically the log storm scene)

There were also things I’m not sure I would talk about differently if I hadn’t read the book, but I did so here they are-

Meg has the same arc about learning to love herself, but my favorite aspect of the book and her arc was removed- the fact that she had to learn her father wouldn’t fix everything. A huge part of growing up is having to realize that your parents, a teacher, a specific life goal, it won’t fix all your problems. You have to fix your problems or at least learn how to deal with them. Meg’s complete and utter belief that simply finding her dad would make everything bad in her life disappear was such a big part of the book, and her dealing with the fact that no, he did not know exactly what to do to make everything right and he was not able to even if he did know- that was so so so big and I loved that. Don’t get me wrong, her going against her dad because she knew she needed to save her brother was there, but the total disillusionment about her strongly held belief wasn’t.

Charles Wallace was also kind of short changed, he wasn’t really given a full arc like the book, where he was a bit arrogant (I mean he’s a psychic genius 5 year old boy of course he is) and that was what caused his being overtaken by It along with his psychic powers, not eating a sandwich and that means he passed a test somehow and then chanted math and that means he’s possessed (again these things kind of happened in the book but in the movie it was just a big question mark). His arc was front and center like Meg’s but it was still there- he also wanted so badly to see his dad who he doesn’t even remember but he has to realize he is the kid in this situation, his abilities do not mean he can or has to do all of this on his own without listening to warnings or being careful. It’s a good metaphor for the way people don’t think they can be pulled in by badness because they’re strong or good enough to fight it but we’re all susceptible.

I think Mrs. Whatsit was more likable as an old lady I’m just saying- and I know they didn’t want to waste Oprah but it’s weird that in this version Mrs. Which is so good at talking when in the movie Whatsit specifically says she was chosen because they needed her for verbalization skills.

Making Camesots basically the It in physical form is weaker to me than it being a planet overtaken by It- I know with all our dystopian stories and real life dystopia it seems weak to have it be a world where you’re completely controlled and that’s what evil looks like, but I think that would ring true in today’s world and being in a planet with real people who are really being hurt and are a sign of what could really happen to you is more unsettling than ‘i made some illusions to tempt you even though i’m really bad at traps’

I mean, the whole point is that it makes life suck for people by the way it influences them right? What’s more appropriate for that- showing a world where people live in fear and live under It’s power and work for It and do as it says and don’t rebel or speak out or help each other- or a world where It just makes everything up?

They also skipped Aunt Beast who I loved and didn’t quite get into Meg’s anger and disappointment at her father making her almost give in to It which was hugge

Things I liked:

They did manage to make the climax scene a strong scene for Meg, which I’m really proud of them for, because her shouting “I love you” to defeat the villain wasn’t exactly a powerhouse move, at least visually speaking it wouldn’t have been if they hadn’t moved the scene from a room to a giant writhing cave being’s body. Her having that moment be when she realized how to use her faults worked a lot better than in the book imo when it was just her resisting It’s will the one time, this felt like a way stronger thing because it was her finally accepting that her faults mean that not only can she use them to her advantage, they also don’t make her unlovable or unworthy or useless and tying those realizations together made a much stronger scene

The It itself was also more impressive, I mean a brain thing is unsettling but modern audiences would just be like ‘it’s just a brain?’ I mean we literally have Saturday morning cartoons about talking brains. I don’t think as much metaphor was lost on that change too, so good on them.

I liked them finding ways to work Meg’s smarts in casually, like her calculating stuff and knowing about science in action scenes and appropriately showing Calvin being impressed.

Meg’s character was pretty good even though it was shortened from the books and I like how they made her stubborn and frustrated without coming off as unlikeably whiny, and Charles Wallace is cut down but still decent and it goes without saying they are VERY well acted, I’m especially impressed with CW given his age and his being called on for the villain role in the end

Calvin was just spot on, nuff said

The visuals were obviously a whole lot of fun and SOOO colorful, even if you don’t know what’s going on you still get a visual treat and a lot of cool factor, especially when it’s matched with the soundtrack

It was great seeing how much love their mom made in their home since that was such a huge deal, along with her never giving up on their dad, and I love that CW being adopted never once lessened how much the dad missed his baby boy or how important he was to his sister

The dad’s stuff was cut short but you definitely got the desperation and fear when he had to tesser them away without CW

Everyone just loving each other wand wanting the best for each other it was so pure

Mrs. Who saying ‘Tomorrow there’ll be more of us- Miranda, American’ got me okay I’m a sucker

Overall I think it had a lot of problems with storytelling and stuff I definitely miss from the book but it still had a strong moment for Meg that was really effective and it was candy for your eyes

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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Anime in America Podcast: Full Episode 6 Transcript

We may not be able to go to the movies right now, but at least we can live vicariously through anime history in the latest episode of Crunchyroll's Anime in America podcast. Read on for the full episode 6 transcript!

The Anime in America series is available on crunchyroll.com, animeinamerica.com, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

EPISODE 6: AT THE MOVIES: EVENTUALLY

Guest: Jerry Beck

Disclaimer: The following program contains language not suitable for all ages. Discretion advised.

[Lofi music]

There is one name you HAVE to talk about when it comes to anime. A foundational influence on the entire medium and an enervating force in the animation market. A man without whom we may not even have the anime we know and love today.

It’s not Tezuka, but good guess.

When it comes to the world of animation, and honestly most media, all roads lead back to Walt Disney. The man who all the animators in Japan’s growing post-war industry were trying to emulate. Most prominent among them, the legendary manga author and Japanese national treasure Osamu Tezuka who truly lived up to Walt’s legacy both by popularizing the medium of animation and establishing many regrettable business practices still felt in the modern industry.

Disney’s beloved animated features were the envy of every studio on both sides of the Pacific and the pursuit of that special magic Walt brought to the silver screen was what kicked off the race to bring Japanese animation to America. So, I guess…we can start there.

[Lofi music]

In the ‘50s Toei Animation was basically the only major animation studio in Japan and had the stated intent of becoming “The Disney of the East.” Toei’s first 3 films, Hakujaden, Shonen Sautobi Sasuke, and Saiyuki were all released near the end of that decade and all stuck very closely to the Disney formula, retelling traditional folktales with colorful animation, plenty of cute animals, and, in the case of Saiyuki, musical interludes.

Back home in the U.S., Disney was deep in a run of blockbuster releases with titles like Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and, umm [cough] Song of the South. Just about every major studio was trying to figure out how to steal some of that thunder. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer was one such studio who considered Disney their rivals at the box office. If you wanna know how that turned out for MGM, uh, Disney acquired their parent company Fox in March 2019.

It was never much of a rivalry to begin with. MGM put out a behind the scenes docu series called The MGM Parade aping Disney’s “The Magical World of Disney” series in 1955 and decided to close their animation department in 1957, the heads of which, a Mr. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, would depart along with most of the staff to form the very successful Hanna-Barbera Productions.

So, what do you do when you want to compete with a company like Disney in animated features but don’t want to go to the trouble of producing any animated features? MGM became the first company to license and release a Japanese anime in the United States, premiering Toei’s Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, retitled Magic Boy, in theaters in July 8th, 1961, winning a close race against Global Pictures and American International by only two months ahead their releases of Toei’s two other films, Hakujaden, retitled Panda and the Magic Serpent, and Saiyuki, retitled Alakhazam the Great.

They didn’t do too great, which probably explains why between those three movies released in 1961 and Hayao Miyazaki’s debut in American cinemas in 1986, only 3 other anime made it to theaters in the U.S.

Not even Tezuka’s magic could break open the box office for anime in the ‘70s. His production company, Mushi Production, had two films, A Thousand and One Nights and Cleopatra: Queen of Sex that were both released early in the decade and flopped. In the case of the latter, Xanadu Productions’s attempt to sell the erotic historical drama as a porno probably didn’t help.

The rest of the following two decades saw plenty of anime films being released in the West but only for direct to video releases with major Japanese studios leaning hard into this new market. Many U.S. distributors were now exploiting Japanese studios to animate their own cartoons, so many of the same era took on a sort of Western bend. Toei Animation in particular released a number of films during that period that seem pretty focused on replicating that Disney formula even more closely, using Western history and folktales as source material. Some of my favorite examples are The World of Hans Christian Andersen (originally Anderson Monogatari), Les Miserables (originally Jean Valjean Monogatari), 30,000 Miles Under the Sea (yes, miles), Animal Treasure Island, and even Puss n’ Boots (who became Toei’s logo) during the ‘70s.

[Music from “Toei Logo History” plays]

In 1986, Hayao Miyazaki finally appeared in the American scene. If you haven’t heard of him… how the fuck not? How is that possible? I don’t, I don’t understand. Often referred to as the Walt Disney of Japan, Miyazaki is the primary creative force of what would become the internationally renowned Studio Ghibli which we’ll get into a bit later. Their first film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was created before the studio even had a name, wowing American audiences with its beautiful art and epic story involving environmentalist themes... kind of. Well not really, actually. Manson International and Showmen Inc. got their hands on the movie and cut it up so bad you couldn’t really call it a Miyazaki work anymore. I mean, they didn’t, they changed everything. They changed the title to Warriors of the Wind, [Clip from 1985 commercial for Warriors of the Wind] renaming Nausicaa to “Princess Zandra” and doing their best to make it an action movie while cutting out any of the environmental themes at the core of the narrative by cutting out a whole 22 minutes of the film. Then they drew up a He-Man ass poster with a whole squad of dudes and a pegasus that were not even in the movie.

[Lofi music]

Enter Streamline Pictures.

Co-founded by Jerry Beck and Carl Macek. Each already working to spread the good word of anime, the two were disappointed in early dubs and brought a new philosophy to the localization game with Streamline.

Do. Not. Mess. With. It. Don’t do that. For your own good.

Beck: We were quite proud of them, because we had a theory on how to do this, which was to use the original music and effects tracks, not cut anything, uh and to do the dubs as accurately and as correctly as we possibly could, with the best actors we could get. Our model was the Warriors of the Wind, meaning we were going to be everything that movie wasn’t. We were going to be the opposite of Warriors of the Wind.

That was the man, Jerry Beck himself. The formula was simple, arguably a lot less work than completely changing a movie to shoe-horn it into some western film archetype, the two-man company began visiting Japanese studios… or rather their Los Angeles offices since every major Japanese studio had one of those in the 1980’s, and asking for dubbing and distribution rights.

Both passionate anime fans, the two had a ton of knowledge of emerging anime titles and an interest in bringing many of them over which larger studios would have passed up for dumb reasons like “profitability.”

Beck: We literally made a checklist that we got all the films. We wanted Fist of the Northstar, we wanted Wicked City, we wanted Vampire Hunter D, we wanted Castle of Cagliostro, we wanted- you know, we wanted Lensmen, but I’m not sure why, I actually know why at the time, but that’s such an odd film. So, but we ended up getting them all.

After handling the theatrical screenings of the Mangum Dub of Castle in the Sky, Macek secured a deal with Japanese publisher Tokuma Shoten to dub future titles, including My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service. After that they went on a tear, where they were basically the only company in the game theatrically releasing anime from 1985 to 1995, averaging almost 2 movies a year in a period where non-Streamline anime films could be counted on one hand with room to spare.

I cannot emphasize enough how much Streamline did for anime in America. They even helped the medium properly break into American television in the early ‘90s alongside Central Park Media by contributing to Syfy’s anime block which aired Dominion Tank Police, Robot Carnival, Project A-Ko, Vampire Hunter D, and another film brought to the U.S. by Streamline which could be considered their greatest achievement.

Akira. Or AH-ki-ra [first syllable stress], if you’re a purist.

Beck: Marvel Comics was printing an adaptation of Akira and we knew about the film [Requiem from Akira plays]. And at that point, that was like, of course like ‘88 or so, you know there were already bootleg VHS copies for sale at comic book conventions and stuff. But we looked at it and went “oh my God, this is like state of the art, you know? This is really a big deal for film.” And I don’t even think we had seen it on the big screen or anything, we just knew we wanted it, if it was gettable. And the good news was that the Akira Committee was kinda desperately wanted it to be shown in America, and they had gone to Paramount, Universal, Fox, everywhere, trying to get somebody to pick up Akira, and nobody would because it was too violent. The idea of that kind of thing being shown in America was, you know, unthinkable. So we were like “we’ll do it!”

Akira was a cultural and technological achievement in animation. It set a new record number of colors used in an animated feature at 327, 50 of which were unique colors created specifically for the movie. You could fill a mega size box of Crayons with colors that only exist thanks to Akira, which is insane. The film consisted of 160,000 frames, clocking in at almost 3 times the average for an animated feature of that same length. It was also the most expensive anime film ever produced at the time with a budget of 1.1 billion Japanese Yen. As Jerry said, it was also intensely violent, considered graphic in Japan and especially in America which still considered animation almost wholly a realm of children’s entertainment. The Akira Committee was desperate to get it in American theaters. And obviously, there were difficulties.

After being collectively shot down by Hollywood, the Akira Committee was approached by the small and unproven Streamline with a unique offer: if the Akira Committee could put up the cost to dub and distribute, Streamline would give them 100% of the profits up to a cap before beginning to collect their own percentage.

And it was not easy. Jerry had to negotiate for months with an agent from the committee who basically watched their operation at work to make sure they knew what they were doing. Then Streamline was given an opportunity to prove themselves by hosting a screening of the film in the Spreckles theater at ComicCon. Only once they pulled that off did the committee ink the deal, but with one demand. They were adamant about getting a quality dub and wanted someone who had, at the very least, been nominated for an Academy Award to manage it. At the very least. Carl Macek had one of his associates search around and eventually they landed on Sheldon Renan, who had previously received recognition from the Motion Pictures Association of America for a documentary short just to fit the bill.

[Akira versus Kaneda, english dub clip]

And it was a hit. Screenings pulled in profits on par with or even exceeding critically acclaimed live action foreign films. Streamline established their reputation in the industry on the success of Akira, and the next step was home video, which turned into another battle for Streamline as one of the principles of the committee, Kodansha, was intent on selling out the rights to a large distributor based on Akira’s success in theaters. Still they were turned down and once again, despite not even being a home video distributor, Streamline made an offer.

Beck: We said to them, you know, we’re gonna get you the reviews, you’re going to get reviews in every town. We got Siskel and Ebert, they reviewed it; we got it on Entertainment Tonight, we got it everywhere. And so we were doing all this stuff, the idea though, the goal, was to get all this coverage and then they would go, they would instead of going to movie studios they would go to the home video people and try to convince them to put it out on home video. No home video distributor wanted it. Nobody. Because there was nowhere, we found out later, there was no place in a video store, then, for them to put it. They couldn’t put it in the kids’ cartoon section, the idea of putting it in science fiction, I don’t know why that didn’t work, that should’ve worked, but they probably had Heavy Metal there, but they for some reason that was not a thing that- they didn’t, there was nowhere to put what we call “anime” in a video store at that time. They did say to us “you gotta have a bunch of them. Five, six, seven, and we’ll create a shelf, we’ll put a shelf in our stores.” This is what Blockbuster said, this is what Suncoast said. So we ended up, we ended up, what we did was we got the vid- they couldn’t sell the video rights, so WE got the video rights, even though we weren’t a video company! And so we ended up putting out Akira on VHS. We couldn’t sell it in video stores. So we ended up- and there was no Ebay or Amazon, that didn’t exist, so we actually went to comic book stores and obviously it was the perfect thing to do, because Akira was a comic book, it was manga, and Marvel was printing it. And we ended up selling them to comic book stores and we- it worked. It was exclusive to comic book stores, it was the only place you could get it. Oh my God, we sold… thousands.

Streamline hung up its hat with the release of Space Adventure Cobra in 1995 but many of their partners who handled the theatrical distribution like Tara Releasing and Fathom Events continued without them. Just as TV anime was headed toward its own watershed moment, the field for anime movies broadened in the second half of the ‘90s. Manga Entertainment brought over Ghost in the Shell with Palm Pictures in 1996. VIZ Media broke into films by capitalizing on Ranma ½’s growing popularity with the release of Ranma ½ the Movie: Big Trouble in Nekonron China alongside CBS theatrical in 1998.

And then the big one came. 4Kids partnered with Kids WB and dropped Pokemon: The First Movie in 1999. And to call it a smash hit for anime movies would be an understatement. [Pokemon: The First Movie, trailer 1 plays] I saw it. Because my dad bought the VHS from one of those dudes that sold bootlegs in the Kroger parking lot. The one he hand recorded himself. You remember those? We had ‘em.

The movie hit $10.1 million in the box office on its opening day, which was a Wednesday, by the way. Over its opening weekend it would climb to $31 million and eventually cap out at $85 million at the box office which has remained the record anime movie in the United States for 20 years. For a moment in time it even claimed the best opening weekend for an animated feature full stop until Toy Story 2 dropped two weeks later. [Pokemon Bumper - 2000] Plastic-faced newscasters began referring to its opening weekend as “Pokeflu,” since so many kids mysteriously called in sick from school the same day.

“Pokemania Comes to America - 1999, ABC News”: Pokemon is now in full mania! And others may follow suit, when a new Pokemon movie hit theaters this fall, spurring even more… Pokemania.

"’Pokémania’: 1999 MSNBC Pokémon News Report”: School officials are finding that Pokemon cards are responsible for fist fights and the constant trading is not only distracting kids from classwork, but turning the playground into a black market.

And ya know what? Given recent events, Pokeflu sounds very racist. But that’s what they called it.

Anime was still a few years off from its Oscar grab and even today hasn’t fully reached acceptance as a respected form of media, but the Pokemon movie proved there was lots and lots of money to be made from anime if you played your cards right. Although it’s difficult to tell if that's what 4Kids and Warner Bros did. Each subsequent Pokemon movie pulled in roughly half what the previous managed. Pokemon: The Movie 2000 scored a total box office of $43 million and Pokemon 3: The Movie grabbed $17 million before the whole thing fell off a cliff. Pokemon 4Ever pulled in only $1.7 million and Pokemon Heroes didn’t even crack $1 million. Mind you, this still gives Pokemon the 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 19th highest box offices of anime films in the U.S., so, you know, what do I know?

Pokemon’s explosive success at the box office inspired other attempts to grab some of that Disney demographic. Fox was the first to jump after the 1999 success of the first Pokemon movie with Digimon: The Movie which I’m definitely gonna talk about in a little bit. 4Kids itself also tried to recapture that Pokemon magic as the franchise was showing diminishing returns with Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light.

Unfortunately the Pokemon movies were also a return to form for crazed American producers with scissors. 4Kids onigiri erasure in Pokemon TV series is notorious on its own, but its former president Norman Grossfeld also feared the Pokemon: The Movie movie would do poorly as written. Casting Mewtwo as a sympathetic antagonist confused and angered the profit-minded execs who produced content for children despite probably never having children of their own. They cut out the prologue describing Mewtwo’s past as the victim of genetic experiments and made edits to portray him as a generic villain and Mew as… like some kinda savior, messiah-type thing?

[Lofi music]

Fox, in its desperation to compete with the success of Warner Brothers’s Pokemon looked to Digimon, spawning the creation of the cinematic chimera Digimon: The Movie. You see, there wasn’t actually a movie called Digimon: The Movie in Japan, but several short Digimon films titled Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure:... um… Children’s War Game?, and Digimon Adventure 02: Digimon Hurricane Landing!!.

The first two had been directed by the acclaimed Mamoru Hosoda and the last by Shigeyasu Yamauchi. I really want to emphasize these were three different movies utilizing different art styles and creative processes with the last one even focusing on an almost entirely different cast of characters. So, like Harmony Gold before them, they took a knife to all three features, leaving more than 40 minutes on the cutting room floor to create a bizarrely paced, three-arc, Digimon feature before slapping on a mostly ska soundtrack and Angela Anaconda short in the beginning [Angela Anaconda part of the Digimon Movie]. The movie premiered in 2000 and was panned by critics but walked away with a $9.6 million box office, making it the 9th most successful anime film in the States, so I’m sure the producers cried all the way to the bank while the rest uh… learned that evil pays.

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light came later in 2004 and might be an even more bizarre feature than Digimon, since 4Kids produced the movie rather than just chopping it up after the fact. In fact, it might be the first anime film to be screened in the United States before Japan, releasing in August while Japan didn’t get the theatrical release until November. Somehow the Japanese version was still a full 14 minutes longer than the U.S. release. It’s not really clear whether Studio Gallop made the film whole cloth and 4Kids cut it down, as was their usual practice, or if they added some extra content after the fact that 4Kids didn’t want for the American audience. I guess we’ll never know.

Since it was produced for the U.S., we did get the bonus of having all the cards appear like the actual game complete with english text, even if it sometimes appeared upside-down. Pyramid of Light also had ska music unfortunately. Umm… the 2000s was a, it was a big time for ska. Once again the movie was panned, finding a place in Rotten Tomatoes’s 100 worst reviewed films of the 2000s, but became the 4th most successful anime film in the U.S. ever, with a $19.8 million box office.

But that is enough about box office for now. Now we can talk about home video releases.

[Lofi music]

If you’ve ever tried to catch an anime film in theaters, you’ve probably noticed that even today they usually have extremely limited showings. At Streamline’s peak, they weren’t the only company localizing anime films, they were just the only ones making a push to put them in theaters. Other publishers were going for the straight to video route, but there was one serious hang-up. Blockbuster just didn’t give a shit.

Streamline’s own Akira release had limited theatrical showings, meaning they were leaning heavily into home video and the movie really beat the odds, finding success in the two markets mom and pop video stores and comic shops. Bootleg fansubs of Akira had been in circulation for months before the film’s official release, so Streamline sweetened the deal by including actual original animation cels with the VHS which seems less an intelligent marketing gimmick and more of a giveaway of cultural artifacts in retrospect. Those people are probably very wealthy, now. It was probably also unnecessary. Akira’s home video success was a moment in anime history in many ways, but it was also an exception.

The direct to video market would never find the same success in comic shops that Akira had. You could find anime in privately owned video stories but even then they were being crowded out by mainstream outlets like Blockbuster who were much less interested in putting anime on their shelves, especially of the famously violent variety like Akira. For anime to get its foot in the door, it would need a new face that was not only child friendly but also insanely popular. I know I just talked about Pokemon’s breakout success, but its home video wouldn’t hit the shelves until 2000. Instead, the man who would help open Blockbusters’s blue and gold doors for other anime in the late ‘90s was one of its creators who most famously hates home video. Hayao Miyazaki.

Miyazaki was already making the rounds in the U.S. via World Pictures and Streamline dubs of a few of his films which was probably fine by him, as he seems to resent the idea of people watching his movies in any setting other than a theater, but Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki had his sights set on dominating the animation industry and Disney just happened to be in the market for international films. Former Head of Disney Home Video International Division and current CEO of Herbalife Nutrition Michael O Johnson inked a deal with Ghibli in 1996 granting global distribution rights to their entire library of films.

This was thanks in large part to the effort of Disney’s Steve Alpert who went so far as to film a mini-documentary in Disney studios to basically show Eisner and his fellow suits that every single person they employed to draw moving pictures was already a diehard fan of Miyazaki’s work. Alpert himself would jump ship to Ghibli to work alongside Suzuki battling his former employer at every turn to make sure they kept their promise about not cutting Ghibli films.

Probably expecting Ghibli’s next film to be another Totoro or Kiki, Disney was shocked to see limbs flying off people's bodies in Princess Mononoke and pushed the distribution under their Miramax label to distance themselves from its morally objectionable content, which I can only assume came from a place of deep ignorance of both their own company’s history and the work of their HR department. Also the notion that um… just producing the same thing under a different wing of your company makes you any less morally objectionable… is also morally objectionable.

Unfortunately the Harvey Weinstein-lead Miramax was dead set on changing everything about Mononoke that it possibly could. And with Ghibli holding onto an iron-clad contract giving them final say, this transformed into all-out warfare with Miramax trying to weasel in every change they could and Alpert flying over the Pacific to nip that shit in the bud, only ending after Weinstein himself was twice humiliated in public. And to that I say: Good. First in a now iconic story wherein Suzuki presents him with a unsharpened prop sword at a meeting full of Disney and Miramax suits while shouting “Mononoke-hime NO CUT,” and then when Miyazaki and crew left in the middle of their own post-premiere party to carefully consider the suggestion Weinstein had been shouting at Alpert to chop 40 minutes off the movies runtime or they’d “never work in this town again.” And then several years later, the entire entertainment industry said “no, YOU’LL never work in this town again!”

Although Streamline had been following our modern era’s best practice of not messing with the source material for about a decade, Ghibli’s “no cuts” policy was one of the first pushes in that direction to come from Japan and doubtless helped to normalize the practice… eventually. As I said before, 4Kids and Fox raked in millions spinning out heavily edited films but Buena Vista bending the knee to Ghibli’s demands, the lasting cultural impact of Ghibli movies, and an increasingly saturated market of TV anime untouched by an editor’s razor eventually pushed the industry in the right direction. After all, no edited anime movies ever have been nominated for Oscars, but more on that later.

Despite being a global hit, Princess Mononoke didn’t really take off in the way Disney had hoped, only pulling in $2.3 million in its first eight weeks. But it recovered in… that’s right, home video releases! Boom. Got ‘em. They also started churning out actual VHS releases for other Ghibli titles like Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro and then, when Streamline’s rights expired, Disney produced their own lavish dubs for DVD re-releases featuring a star-studded cast with voices like Dakota Fanning, Kirsten Dunst, Patrick Stewart, and uh, Shia LeBeouf. What?! Blockbuster was finally persuaded to start moving in anime content when Disney’s Buena Vista came knocking and the doors were officially open for more anime content.

Ghibli was way ahead of its time in many ways and rights management was no exception. Or at least Miyazaki’s insistence on the purity of a theater-only movie-viewing experience had some unintended benefits. A mere two years before 4Kids would pull off the heist of the century screwing Shogakukan and Nintendo out of millions in profits in their deal of the explosively popular Pokemon franchise, Ghibli would deny Disney digital rights to their works in their contract. Disney was fine with that, the prevailing belief among executives being that those rights were basically useless. Ha-ha! Imagine that.

Disney wasn’t interested in digital and if Disney, the most powerful media rights holder in the world, wasn’t going to push into that new sphere of distribution, then it was doomed to failure. Which, looking at the titanic size of Netflix who recently acquired streaming rights to the Ghibli Films worldwide minus Japan and the U.S. and is now staring down the barrel of Disney’s own competing streaming service Disney+ and Warner’s HBO Max, is kinda funny in retrospect.

[Lofi music]

Buena Vista might’ve helped Ghibli in another way though. Let's talk about when anime won an Oscar. No one’s quite sure how it happened, really. Not that Spirited Away didn’t deserve it. It definitely did. It’s a good movie. It’s just, uh, this was the first and only of Miyazaki’s works to have even been nominated. Ever. In fact, no anime films before Spirited Away in 2003 received a nomination for best animated film in the Academy Awards, and only The Tale of Princess Kaguya has been nominated since. Maybe the stars aligned, maybe it’s because Spirited Away’s stiffest competition in the 75th Academy Awards was Lilo & Stitch and Ice Age [Spirited Away Wins Animated Feature: 2003 Oscars], maybe it's because Spirited Away carried extra credibility by being released in the U.S. under the auspices of Disney. Whatever the cause, anime, via Ghibli, had grabbed a piece of critical acclaim in the American entertainment industry that seemed otherwise determined to ignore it.

Not that Hollywood hadn’t noticed anime long ago. Two of America’s most celebrated directors, Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky, have both committed what can charitably be described as borrowing from a certain Japanese director by the name of Satoshi Kon to build their respective, uh repertoires. Aranofsky heavily borrowed story, themes, and imagery from Kon’s Perfect Blue in his film Black Swan and even recreated the bath scene from Perfect Blue in his Requiem for a Dream. Guess which two of those three movies were nominated for Oscars? Nolan’s Inception collected four Oscars in 2010 which contained several scenes that anime fans got a sneak preview of 3 years before in the limited screening of Kon’s 2007 Paprika. And also in that one uh, Donald Duck comic strip.

Uh, look, I’m not trying to roast anybody or anything like that. Maybe Aronofsky. But you just can’t talk about Spirited Away grabbing an Oscar without giving mention to not just anime films, but foreign films in general which Hollywood seems to find value in but only when filtered through one of its own creators. So what does this get us? It gets us Scarlett Johansenn playing a woman named Motoko Kusanagi and an Oldboy remake that completely misses the point.

Trust me when I say the only good adaptations by Hollywood are Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow and the Wachowski sisters’s Speed Racer. You heard it here. If you want a new Ghost in the Shell movie just open your wallet, call Mamoru Oshii, and ask him to make another one. Stop with this weird shit.

Although many films were in uncertain licensing situations until GKIDs started recollecting them, the works of visionary directors like Mamoru Hosoda, Satoshi Kon, and Isao Takahata have managed to find their way to American theaters over the years without edits and a minimal delay that recently has been reduced down to less than a year. Not quite simulcasting, but given none of them have had a real breakout hit, it’s long strides to think that fans have had consistent opportunities to watch their movies in theaters over the years and purchase them in home video.

[Lofi music.]

Since Miyazaki’s most recent retirement, Ghibli underwent a sort of identity crisis on what to make of their studio or even if they would continue making films at all. During this period many of their creators left to join other studios, some of them even forming their own Studio Ponoc itself dedicated to continuing Ghibli’s traditions of movie making. Ghibli itself was just kinda there until very recently, when the aforementioned GKIDs secured the rights to Ghibli within the U.S. and entered into a deal to stream the entire Ghibli library on HBO Max. Ghibli also recently announced that it's nearing the release of TWO new films, Miyazaki’s own How Do You Live? and the studio’s first entirely CG feature film Earwig and the Witch, by Miyazaki’s son, Goro.

And I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing until I saw the images and I will just say I’m definitely gonna go see it.

And y’know what? That’s great for Disney, but Ghibli’s downtime created an existential dread within the anime industry and fandom, because there wasn’t any other big name director to replace Miyazaki in the collective consciousness of America as “THE anime director,” or as Mother’s Basement on YouTube would say “the new Miyazaki,” until only recently...

Makoto Shinkai has been directing anime movies, arguably the SAME anime movie, since 1998 and has been a well known quantity in the fandom since his 2002 film Voices of a Distant Star. But something changed in 2016. His movies are almost always about young people in love separated by time, space, circumstance, or supernatural circumstance, but each iteration has refined his technique until one finally reached critical mass. Your Name became the most successful Japanese film of any kind in multiple countries, including China, and Japan’s second most successful anime film domestically behind Spirited Away. Didn’t even crack the top 10 in the U.S., though.

And no Oscar.

That said, Your Name was a resounding success in the United States, now surpassed by Shinkai’s newest film Weathering with You last year. Each pulling in $5 million in the box office is no small feat for anime films. Appearing more frequently in mainstream outlets may be slowly growing Shinkai into a household name which, matched with his own formula for successful films, could be the beginning of another single director legacy that will pull the industry up with it.

Now although we’ve seen less explosive releases since the children-focused anime movies around the turn of the millenia, it’s hard to describe our past decade of the 2010s as anything but a stateside renaissance for anime film. While the collective box office brought in by anime in the U.S. during the 2000s completely dwarfs that of the ‘90s, there weren’t all that many more films making it over. The real difference in the marketing and theater availability after Pokemon provided a proof of concept. Although there’s been roughly 50% more anime films coming out per year in Japan in the 2010s than the 2000s, the yearly average with theatrical releases in the states more than doubled between the decades.

And while TV anime are slowly being consolidated into a few select streaming services, more distribution companies have entered the industry to put anime films in theaters. Nowadays GKIDs, Fathom Events, and Eleven Arts have an almost monthly churn of screenings that actually top the daily box offices… on their Wednesday showings. Wednesday. Still, given the movies are airing in limited theaters and showings, the numbers are very good. Just last year Dragon Ball Super: Broly had the 3rd most successful box office for an anime film in the U.S. at $30 million.

Sounds like we’re in a pretty good place. Well, it’s all- I mean, it’s all relative. We have doubled the number of movies we license every year since last decade, but American theater-goers still only get the opportunity to watch maybe half of the anime films that come out every year in Japan. Meanwhile, there are an average of over 200 TV anime produced every year and, with rare exceptions, every single one is licensed and distributed in the United States across a number of streaming services. Next up, we’re going to talk about anime on TV and how it's grown into one of the largest, fastest, and most sophisticated localization industries in the world.

Bye!

[Lofi music]

Thank you for listening to Anime in America, presented by Crunchyroll. If you enjoyed this, please go to Crunchyroll.com/animeinamerica to start your 14-day free trial or just log on for some free, ad-supported anime.

Special thanks to Jerry Beck. You can find more of Jerry’s work over on cartoonresearch.com along with the history of Streamline Pictures written by Fred Patten, one of the co-founders.

This episode is hosted by me, Yedoye Travis, and you can find me on Instagram at ProfessorDoye or Twitter @YedoyeOT. This episode is researched and written by Peter Fobian, edited by Chris Lightbody, and produced by me, Braith Miller, Peter Fobian and Jesse Gouldsbury.

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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rieshon · 5 years

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Winter 2019 Season Preview

I can't believe it's another goddamn year. 2019 marks my fifteenth year of watching anime, which fucks me up to even write. The about 540 anime I've seen in the intervening years doesn't even feel like that many when I think about how I've literally spent half my life watching these Chinese girl cartoons. Onwards and upwards, I guess.

1 Girly Air Force: Oh fuck yes. Sukasuka is still the best LN I've read, but Girly Air Force is far and away my favorite and it should be obvious why: it's got cute girls, it's got airplanes, it's got cute girls who ARE airplanes! The story is surprisingly well-done and if Satelight's adaptation is on point this could be a pretty good show. Phantom is best girl and Izawa Shiori sounds perfect as her, so we've already got that going for us.

2 Endoro~!: Okay, so Release the Spyce was bad. That's not Namori's fault, though, 'cause the characters were still adorable. This is Namori's next try at being an anime character designer, and it definitely looks better than Spyce ever did. Cute girl lighthearted fantasy is definitely a good genre (it's why I played Priconne for as long as I did despite the game being terrible) and the pastel colors all over this show tell me I'm home. Kaori, director of one of the best cute girl anime of the last decade, Yuyushiki, helms the project and venerable Studio Gokumi animates. Yeah, this is AOTS.

3 Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai: Based Tsutomu is BACK, babey! Somehow, this is his first TV project in three years (after the lackluster Mayoiga) though he's obviously been hard at work making more of Garupan as slowly as possible and probably also working on that Shirobako movie that's in the oven. I'm sure it's hard being an anime god. It's definitely disappointing that this is a full CG anime, but the fact that it's about planes and being made by Tsutomu is enough for me to overlook that fact. It's not quite the Daisan Hikou Shoujotai anime we've all been waiting for, but it's close enough.

4 Ueno-san wa Bukiyou: I have a hard time believing this will be anything but comedy of the season in three months' time. The excerpts from the manga I have seen are amazing, and the trailers have been brilliant as well. Plus, Serizawa Yuu in the lead role, and it also has one of the surest signs of a comic hit (at least in my book) which is the male lead also being played by a girl―Tanaka Aimi in this case. The character designs definitely capture tugeneko's unique style. This should be great.

5 Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita!: Clearly this is the spiritual successor to Uzamaid. Perverted channee hnnngs over some cute lolis? That's almost always good. Said lolis look incredibly adorable, and the protagonist will be played by the always-brilliant Ueda Reina, who should shine in a role like this. It's definitely hard to imagine this one missing.

6 Kakegurui XX: I never expected this show to get a sequel, but I'm sure not complaining about it. Everyone's favorite hot Akagi expy is back, babey. I can't wait to see some more sexy gambles. Hearing Hayamin's lewd voice is worth the price of admission by itself, and it looks like there are new hot channees coming by the truckload in this second season. Sign me the fuck up.

7 Gotoubun no Hanayome: I'm mad at this show because I thought Ayaneru was supposed to play all five heroines, but apparently that was just for a commercial for the manga and they cast five different people for the actual anime. I wanted to hear quintuple Ayaneru! This show still looks like a good harem, though, and of course does still provide one Ayaneru. The rest of the cast are no slouches either, and despite the Ayaneru presence I think Ayachi's character looks like the best girl.

8 Domestic na Kanojo: Schoolteacher romance anime!?! FUUUCK YES. This is exactly what the doctor's been ordering. The Hiyocchi-voiced sensei looks adorable (as all anime teachers should be) and I am just 100% here for what is happening. There's also another cute girl, but, just give me Hina-sensei and I'll be happy.

9 Date A Live III: Hard to believe the original DAL anime was almost six years ago. I stopped following the series closely when DAL2 was bad, but I'm still excited for this new sequel. The girls are still great and so is the premise, they just need to actually have money to make a good anime this time around. Happily, J.C. Staff have been pegged to animate this time instead of the perenially inconsistent Production IMS, with the principal creative staff (including director Motonaga Keitarou) still intact. So it should be pretty good!

10 Kemurikusa: Yes Tatsuki, yes tanoshi! I still haven't seen Kemono Friends so I can't speak personally to Tatsuki's alleged genius but I have seen some of his short anime he posts online and they're always brimming with atmosphere, so I'm excited to check this out.

11 Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka: The latest in a seemingly endless line of anime that ask, 'How can we take the concept of magical girls but make it edgy?' Okay, I admit, the idea of magical girls who wield Kalashnikov rifles is actually pretty great... It just depends on how seriously the show takes itself, because this is not a concept that should be played straight. Strike The Blood's Yamamoto Hideo is set to direct, and STB was a show that definitely knew how to toe the line between serious action and lighthearted antics, so hopefully it will be good.

12 Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai ~Tensai-tachi no Ren'ai Zunousen~: Though I'm a long-established devotee of the Church of Blondenblu, black hair and red eyes is pretty close behind as far as I'm concerned, so this show's titular Kaguya-sama definitely looks good. Plus that forehead! There's also a nice blondenblu girl voiced by Hanabee. Looks like a cute romantic comedy.

13 Manaria Friends: Yeah, this is finally happening after years of development hell, apparently being produced entirely in-house by Cygames and their animation studio CygamesPictures. From what I hear, this is supposed to be a lot different from the mainline Bahamut anime: kind of nichijou-kei, and apparently gay as hell. Cute girl and her demon girlfriend? Yep, sign me the fuck up.

14 Circlet Princess: It's always good when the "story" tab on your show's website is under construction when your show starts in like two weeks. This is apparently based on a DMM web game, but the writer and designer is Kio Nachi, who was responsible for the game and anime of the way-better-than-it-should-have-been Ao no Kanata no Fourhythm, so it might be good. The voice cast is a star-studded assemblage of veterans like Gotou Mai, Nabatame Hitomi, and Mizuhashi Kaori... With the turnover in the seiyuu industry as of late it's nice to see that vets like this can still get main-cast roles and aren't just relegated to playing the moms of the latest 18 year old darling. But I digress.

15 Boogiepop wa Warawanai: Otherwise known as Boogiepop Phantom in the West, this is the latest classic property to get the remake treatment. I've always meant to watch the original, but never did. Boogiepop was one of the original series to start the modern "light novel" movement, and I've always heard great things about it, but other than that I really know nothing about the story so I'll be going in blind. I'm sure Ao-chan and Oonishi will be great in it at least.

16 Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan: I have no idea what Ekoda-chan is about (other than it's a 4koma manga) but this adaptation looks like it's some art. Apparently every episode will have both a different director and a different actress playing the titular Ekoda-chan. Presumably, we are about to See Some Shit. Names set to direct episodes include some names like Sugii Gisaburou (Touch, Ginga Tetsudou no Yoru) and Mochizuki Tomomi (Ranma 1/2) and Kitani Yoshitomo (GaoGaiGar) so we're definitely in for something.

17 Egao no Daika: It's time for your seasonal dose of robot anime with hot girls in it. It's going to be awhile until I can see a show like this again and think "Gridman was better," but hey, this one's got some hot girls in it too. This is brought to us by longtime mecha anime guy Suzuki Toshimasa, who was responsible for a recent sentimental favorite of mine, Rinne no Lagrange. The character designs are the work of Nakamura Naoto, who also did the job on High School Fleet. That show was notable more than anything for having an incredibly large and diverse cast of incredibly cute girls, so that's a good sign.

18 Pastel Memories: This show has nothing to do with Plastic Memories, but that doesn't stop be from thinking of that every time I see the title. If you immediately suspect it to be a social game adaptation after seeing the art and logo, you would be extremely correct. The key visual on the show's homepage does not inspire confidence, but the animation looks fine in the PV at least. As a genre, "cute girls from social games fighting monsters" generally produces rubbish, but I appreciate that the action at least looks to be hand-drawn in this one. The show does have Rieshon in it, who I feel like I haven't heard in ages, so that's nice.

19 Bermuda Triangle ~Colorful Pastrale~: I've always been on record as saying mermaid girls suck because they don't have legs, and I still stand by that. Why should I get excited about a cute girl anime if there's no ftmm to ogle??? I'll still watch it cause it promises to be a nichijou-kei cute girl anime (and there's a channee mermaid who wears hoop earrings which almost makes up for the lack of legs) but I'm not going to be happy about it damnit.

20 Minitoji: It's some kind of SD Toji no Miko spinoff. I'm sure I'm in the minority just like, in general, but I really enjoyed Tojimiko so I'm happy enough to see this being made. It looks like the protagonist from the (truly dreadful) mobile game adaptation is making an appearance, so I guess that thing is making enough money to have this produced... Hey, if I get to see more of Hiyori-chan being gay, I'm down.

21 Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari: It's light novel anime. When the show's "characters" page is half dudes it's never a good sign, especially for a show in this genre. Probably the most interesting thing about it is that Kevin Penkin, who did the fantastic music for 2017's Made in Abyss returns to anime work here... But it will probably be in service of a lame, too self-serious fantasy plot with lots of dudes grimacing.

22 Grimms Notes The Animation: Grimms Notes is a shitty social game so you can already see where this is going. It feels like a waste of my time to even write a preview for it since I know I'll be dropping this before the first episode is even over. At least it has a blondenblu girl, I guess.

23 Yakusoku no Neverland: Did you guys know noitaminA is still a thing? Remember when it was relevant? This is this season's noitaminA show and it looks like exactly the kind of thing I watch out of obligation because it looks like "art" and then drop even after saying I'll give the second episode a chance. The protagonist's face gives me bad juju. At least most of the male characters are voiced by girls since they're kids.

24 revisions: Enver Hoxha's least-favorite anime is brought to us by Netflix. It looks like, honestly, exactly what I expect from Netflix at this point. The CG animation doesn't look great (Shirogumi doing it this time, instead of Netflix stalwart Polygon Pictures) and it has the same kind of serious sci-fi feel as shows like A.I.C.O. Incarnation. Probably won't be that good, but these shows that strive to feel like Western cable thrillers have a bad habit of being pretty easy watches.

25 Virtual-san wa Miteiru: I don't think I actually want to watch this. I like to watch some virtuals sometimes but... No.

#season preview

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