Showing posts with label *animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label *animation. Show all posts
My Brain in Wayne
A recent dream that found me in the heart of lovely Wayne, PA, where I resided for a couple of years much longer ago than it seems, reminded me that I’d jotted down another one set there several months back.
The newer one: I’m walking on a side road that feeds into Main Street when I hear Dido singing “Thank You” during an outdoor photoshoot. I approach her because she’s an old friend and we catch up a little but she’s busy working — so after confirming that she still lives nearby I tell her that Em and I have a place in Manayunk now and we should meet for lunch.
Zero idea who Em’s supposed to be.
The older dream: I’ve gone to Minella’s Diner with someone whom, per my notes, I couldn’t place upon waking and in hindsight I would very much like to believe was the mysterious Em. Bruce Springsteen, the E Street Band, and their entire touring entourage are there and have taken up several tables. I hear another patron tell his server that any drinks they order under $55 are on him and, dear reader, I’m at least as curious about how my subconscious came up with that cutoff point as you are. Once my friend and I have been seated, Lex Luthor turns around from the next booth to speak to us — not a generic version, but Lex Luthor as voiced by Clancy Brown in the DCAU Superman and Justice League animated series, fleshed out in real life and threatening us with something I can’t recall.
Related: Of Was and When • REM Brands • HIVE Minded • Fight and Flight
El and the Misfit Boys
How I hadn’t come across “A Stranger Things Christmas” before this week, I’m not sure.
The video dates to 2016 but we’re in better late than never territory since the penultimate episodes of the series at hand drop today (and the grand finale on New Year’s Eve). While I’m unfamiliar with the work of co-creator Leigh Lahav, I look forward to exploring her channel further because this is absolutely perfect. [3:15]
Related: Happy Feet • Lead the Wild Rumpus, Stark • Coffee and Synchronicity
Art Men and Reubens
The National Cartoonists Society held its 72nd annual Reuben Awards dinner
on Saturday, May 26th, in Philadelphia.
Glen Keane was crowned Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year — a prize known
simply as The Reuben — for his 2017 short film “Dear Basketball”. Past winners include Walt Kelly, Mort Drucker, Bill Watterson, Milton Caniff, and Will Eisner. It appears to be the first time the top award has been given for work in animation.
Bowled Over
Screenshot © 2014 Disney Enterprises.
The new animated Disney feature Big Hero 6 opens this weekend. I’m not being insensitive to the cost of movie tickets when I say the six-minute animated short that precedes it, “Feast”, is worth the price of admission all by itself.
Pieces, Love, and Understanding
Who has a pair of thumbs that look like they're made out of big pink sausages, like
eagle talons mixed with squid, and finally saw The Lego Movie? This guy!
Promo image from The Lego Movie © 2014 Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Although not in the best head space, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to watch it with my nephew. Given how great the overall messages were, I am kinda disappointed that it doesn't pass the Bechdel test (unless there’s a stray line I forget between Wyldstyle and Unikitty; even then, Unikitty’s… a Unikitty) or just plain have more girl power, and especially considering how much the film’s portrayal of Batman has blown up it’s quite sad that Wonder Woman’s appearance here is her first in a theatrically released motion picture.
Still, I totally get why everyone raved. The all-ages factor is very high and I agree that it's far cleverer than, not to mention in some ways 180° from, what you'd expect a branded Lego Movie to be.
Related: Chill Acts • Past of Future Days • Amazon Primer
Crazy Talk
Nothing against Heath Ledger or Cesar Romero, who each took an indelible turn as The Joker, but for me the animated incarnation voiced by Mark Hammill is the definitive screen version of Batman’s nemesis. In a clip from a one-on-one interview during a recent Star Wars Weekend at Walt Disney World, Hammill gives the dialogue of Paul Dini some mad love after treating the audience to an improvised exchange between Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime and Luke Skywalker.
Related: If You Meta the Batman, Kill the Batman • R2 Details • Dinner on ME
Chill Acts
I’m glad but a little surprised that Frozen is doing so well.
Image © 2013 Disney Enterprises.
Which probably says more about my critical eye and very specific tastes — a mite too critical and crazily specific, I’ve been told — than with the quality of the film or the general public’s own appetites.
Frozen’s other pleasant surprises:
Hope of Good Capes
I saw the latest Marvel flick this weekend and got into a new version of an old
debate: Thor vs. Superman.
Superhero films during the first three decades of my life were essentially limited
to Superman and then to Batman. A Thor movie, let alone more than one, was all but unthinkable. In my 30s it was pretty much just the Marvel stable and Batman’s resurgence, as Fox launched its X-Men dynasty, Columbia teed up a Spider-Man franchise, and even lesser Marvel-inspired films put DC, sister company to and/or division of Warner years before Marvel was purchased by Disney, in quite the awkward position regarding the dichotomy between its library of legendary characters and lack of live-action achievement.
M*S*H
Just a few years after the team’s 1963 debut on newsstands, the Avengers leapt from comic books to television in episodes of The Marvel Super-Heroes — a syndicated block of five rotating features produced by Grantray-Lawrence, 13 three-part episodes apiece, that aired in various US markets either on its own or within a locally hosted children’s program.
If You Meta the Batman, Kill the Batman
The seemingly paradoxical nature of the Zen koan adapted for this post’s title is reflected in its subject: Friday night’s series finale of Batman: The Brave and
the Bold.
Screencap from “Mitefall” © 2011 Warner Bros. Animation. Characters TM/® DC Comics.
I expect that fans who loved the series loved the episode, “Mitefall”, whose title is a reference to Bat-Mite, the magical imp who appeared regularly in the often-goofy Batman comics of the early 1960s, and to Knightfall, the grim-’n’-gritty Batman storyline of the early 1990s. (A Mitefall one-shot parodying that era was published in 1995.) It spotlights many of the show’s most popular traits and co-stars B:TBATB’s breakout version of Aquaman — less rooted in past depictions of DC’s sea king than in his pompous Marvel counterpart Namor the Sub-Mariner, with a big nod to Gaston from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
Clocking In
Since I’m not finished converting my list of comics milestones to actual on-sale dates, the 25th anniversary of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen is being observed late. The first issue came out in June 1986, three months before its cover dating. You can read about this practice at the above link, and expect more commemorative posts once I finally get The Comicologist online.
The mid ’80s were a renaissance era for the American comic-book industry, as the direct market of specialty shops led to a rise in alternative / independent publishers, creator-owned projects, and sophisticated narratives.
Mind Games
Yes, “Mind Games” it will be, since “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” felt both a little
too on the nose and not really descriptive of ...
I’m going to try to blog weekly on Fringe, quite possibly my favorite TV experience
of the moment, as I said the other day in recapping the past couple of seasons. My oft-cited online problems and innately unpredictable abilities mean no guarantees, although I suspect that having gotten a new overview of the show out of the way will help. Now, better late than never, I offer my thoughts on one of the most intriguing
and most disappointing installments of this excellent series to date.
Men of Letters
And one woman, too.
Fabien Gonzalez has created a superhero alphabet, rendering letters from A to Z in the costumes and colors of characters both iconic and obscure. I first came across it on EW’s PopWatch blog; you can purchase a print from Gonzalez’s Flickr stream.
Curls on Film
I’m not entirely sure why, but not only didn’t I expect to like Disney’s Tangled
— I almost didn’t want to like it.
Much to my surprise, however, it was one of my favorite movies of the year.
Stocking Stuff
Christmas arrived at The Late Show with David Letterman a day early. Dave is always preempted on Christmas Eve so that CBS can air Mass, but this time the fabled meatball was toppled from the Ed Sullivan Theater’s Christmas tree on the night before the night before the Night before Christmas — when Dave rammed into the tree on a go-kart. He was trying out toys again with Shannon Eis.
A clip of the joy ride is up at the show’s website now; I don’t know how long it will last.
Quick Hits, Continued
Picking up where I left off yesterday…
Image © 2010 and characters TM Bryan Lee O’Malley.
“Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation” is a flashback to events not depicted in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The short video first aired as part of Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s late-night block, when SPVTW opened back in August. Michael Cera and Alison Pill reprise their roles from the live-action feature, voicing the title character and high-school girlfriend Kim Pine. It was produced by the production company Titmouse and is visually based on creator Bryan Lee O’Malley’s art in the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels.